Outside In

by Karen Romano Young

  I kept shoeboxes full of things to build with: nails, glue, wooden spools, dowels, leftover chopsticks, cardboard tubes from toilet paper, springs, and clothespins. And I had paint things: poster paint and model builders’ enamels, turpentine and paper cups and paintbrushes.

  If I liked something, I kept it and collected more. I never made anything with some things, just sorted them out and admired them. Someday I might build something with them, but even if I didn’t, they were good to keep.

  Some of these things I bought at the Singer sewing machine store downtown: sequins, buttons, beads, thread, snaps, hooks and eyes, squares of felt. Others I got at Center Crafts: florist’s green wire, little mirrors, wheels and axles, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, string and yarn, plastic gimp string. Some things I picked up around the house: bottle caps, flip tops from soda cans, leftover balloons from birthday parties. I got things out of the gumball machines at the grocery store: little pistols and charms and Rat Finks. I got things from Aunt Bonnie, such as Faux Pas’s discarded dog licenses or little sample perfume bottles or the worn-off skin of a baseball. A lot of my stuff was free things I picked up in the woods or at the beach: shells, sea glass, moss, acorns, the prickly shells of chestnuts, milkweed pods full of soft fluff, perfectly round stones from the Little River. My favorite things of all were the actual wings of a real dragonfly that I’d found dead on the side of Marvin Road when I was riding home from my route. (When I was looking through Lucy DeLuna’s name book for a name for my bike, Reshna is what I found. Reshna means “dragonfly.”)

  All these things were in my room in shoeboxes. Some were in littler boxes inside the shoeboxes. But Aimée’s feet were not very big yet, and I had lots of her little shoeboxes from her Keds and the saddle shoes we had to wear at St. John Vianney’s.

  I thought about making something for the baby. But what? Once I made Aimée a mailbox full of cards and letters. Once I made a message sender (out of string and two hooks and a clothespin) that Aimée and I could use to send each other notes without either of us having to get out of bed. Dear Baby, I thought, but no more words came to me. Often I’d take the shiny white cardboards that the cleaners put in Dad’s work shirts and glue things on them in pictures or patterns. They were collages, Aunt Bonnie said. She admired them. Would a baby?

  Sometimes I made clothes for Aimée’s Barbies, but lately she’d been more interested in her birthday elves, the thumb-size dolls that came in perfect little elfin outfits, boys in triangle hats and girls with little flower petal hats and tiny wings. I swiped an elf from the box in Aimée’s room. It was a boy elf with dark hair and a dark green hat, a purple shirt, and red pants. I cleared a space on my table and sat the elf down on the base of the lamp. I studied the elf. What would you need if you were so small?

  I walked from the closet to the bookshelf and back again, poking into shoeboxes and choosing things and pulling things out. When I had a pile of good stuff on my table, I began to work.

  CHAPTER 4

  I RODE HOME FROM MY ROUTE ONE DAY in May and found Dave sitting on his front curb with his feet in the gutter.

  “What are you doing?” I rode over and bumped my bike, Reshna, gently up the curb, then bounced down. Up again, and down.

  “Nothing.”

  “Want to play curb ball?” I’d found my pink ball in the yew bushes in front of our porch.

  “Nope.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Gee, you’re charming today.”

  “Just go away, Chérie,” Dave said.

  I stood there. “What did I do?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, forget it!”

  Aunt Bonnie’s white Valiant station wagon came down Marvin Road and pulled into the driveway.

  “Hi, cherubs!” she said, waving, and clacked up the cement steps in her red high heels. Now Dave looked as if he might cry.

  Pete climbed out of the driver’s seat. He gathered grocery bags out of the back, two in each arm, and lugged them over to where Dave sat on the curb. “Get it out yet?” He looked over his brother’s shoulder into the sewer at Dave’s feet, then kicked Dave sharply in the rear, so hard my own tailbone seemed to sting.

  “Hey!” I yelled. Pete acted as if he didn’t see me or hear me. He walked inside with his head high, as though he’d done something good. Dave turned his head away so I couldn’t see his face.

  I inched my bike onto the sewer grating and peered into the hole. In one corner sat a white baseball. “Is that yours?”

  “Don’t be a moron. He bought it this morning for try-outs.”

  “So?”

  “He threw it to me, and I missed, and it just had to roll down there. If I don’t get it out by five, I’m dead.”

  “Can’t he use another baseball? Don’t they have them there?”

  “It’s All-Stars, Chérie.” He was mad on top of being hurt. And it wasn’t like Dave to miss a catch in the first place. Ever since he’d started Little League, he’d been playing up, on the team with kids a grade older or more.

  “But Pete’s playing football!” I said.

  “Only until school’s out. All-Stars is in summer.”

  “You’re better than he is,” I said automatically. Dave’s being better was precisely the problem.

  Dave used his finger to draw a face in the dust. A round head, two dots for eyes, a slash for a nose, a line for a mouth.

  He glanced over his shoulder at his house. “I have to figure out how to get it out. My arm won’t fit into the drain hole, and that’s the only part wide enough for the ball to get through.” He changed the eye dots to x’s.

  “Why x’s?” I asked, turning my head to see how it looked from Dave’s point of view.

  “He’s dead,” said Dave. I leaned down, bicycle and all, and used my finger to make a tongue hanging out of the mouth. Dave nodded solemnly.

  “You need to take the grate off,” I said. Behind Dave, I saw Pete at an upstairs window. I took off, spraying sand.

  “Thanks for the facts, Einstein!”

  Dave was scared of Pete, and who could blame him? If it had been anybody else—Lucy or Sandy DeLuna or me—Dave would have told us to get our own rotten ball out of the smelly sewer. Also, Lucy or Sandy or I would have figured out how.

  A clatter came from behind the Rankins’ house. When I went back there, I saw Pammy and Aimée peeking through the rhododendron bushes. On the other side was Lucy’s face, her short light hair and dark green eyes, higher up than usual.

  Stilts! Made from Lucy’s old crutches, from when she broke her ankle pogo-sticking. The rubber tips of the crutches were taped over, and hardware was tacked and tied and screwed on.

  Lucy balanced on them, tottering along the DeLunas’ driveway. Sandy shambled along behind her, his hair flopping along just like his sister’s, screwdrivers weighing down the pockets of his baggy plaid shorts, checking the mechanism.

  I wanted to beg for a try, but as soon as I got a closer look, I had another idea.

  “Do you have anything to pry off the top of the sewer with?”

  Sandy looked at Lucy.

  “The grating part, do you mean?” Lucy asked.

  “What sewer?” asked Sandy.

  I hesitated. At sixteen, Lucy was solid, could be trusted, but Sandy was jelly-sly, the way he’d have to be to be Pete’s friend some days, Dave’s friend other days. They were never a threesome the way another three boys might be, all friends together.

  “The one in front of the Ascontis’ house,” I said.

  “What’s in there?”

  “Pete Asconti’s new baseball.”

  “Who gives a—” Sandy said. Now, that was interesting.

  “How’d it get in there?” Lucy asked, sounding skeptical.

  “Dave’s trying to get it out,” I said. Lucy frowned at Sandy. For a second I thought he would start teasing me about Dave or sticking up for Pete. But Sandy wasn’t a fan of Pete’s today.

&nb
sp; He shrugged and suggested, “Crowbar?”

  They dug a big yellow crowbar out of their basement. That could have been the end of their involvement, but Sandy climbed onto the stilts, saying, “My turn!” and headed for Marvin Road. Aimée and Pammy and I got the giggles. “What’s so funny?” asked Sandy in a severe voice, making us laugh harder. His legs in his shorts were long and hard and knobbly and hairy. His feet were so big that only the toes fitted onto the blocks of the stilts.

  I climbed onto my bike, with the crowbar across the handlebars. Aimée and Pammy ran along, hop-skip-jumping behind.

  Dave was poking at the sewer grate with a big pancake turner.

  “Look!” I said, riding up to him. I put my feet on the ground and held up the crowbar in two hands like a trophy.

  Dave looked up at Sandy. “Nice stilts,” he said.

  Pete came out onto his stoop. “What are you, DeLuna, a circus freak?” He didn’t even smile when Sandy fell off and barely stopped himself from going splat on the pavement.

  Everyone stood around the sewer and watched as I stuck the crowbar under the grate and lifted it a few inches. Sandy handed Aimée the stilts and lent his muscle. Dave sat there as if he needed to be rescued and couldn’t do a thing for himself.

  “Who’s going to go down there?” said Pete, not liking this change of events.

  Before Pammy took a step, Dave darted down into the slimy sewer and snatched up the ball. He set it on the grass beside the curb and began to climb out. But Pete grabbed the ball and knocked Dave’s hands from the edge, all in one swoop. Dave fell in, scraping himself hard.

  “Hey!” we all protested. Aimée screamed. Pete jumped onto his bicycle and sped off. Dave stood looking up, his head a foot below the ground level.

  “He’s gone,” I told him.

  Dave leaned on the edge again and hauled himself up.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Aimée, staring into her eyes. She sucked in her breath and shut right up.

  “Thanks,” Dave said. I didn’t know if he was being sarcastic because I hadn’t helped him out, or sincere because of the crowbar, or sincere because I’d kept Aimée from bawling.

  Dave got his baseball glove off the curb and took off running toward the park. I wondered what he’d done with his bike, or what Pete had done with it—flattened the tires or something? I could have lent Dave Reshna if he’d waited two seconds. Instead I stood with the others like spectators after the parade has gone by.

  I stood behind Mom’s chair while she read the paper, ran my hand down her braid. Mom dyed her hair, but nobody guessed, since Aimée and I were blondes. Would the baby have Dad’s red hair?

  Mom asked, “What’s the trouble, bubble?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Just the world, huh?” Mom sounded so sad. The paper said: 68 HURT IN CAMPUS PROTEST.

  “Pete Asconti,” I said. He was hardly the world.

  Mom turned and looked up into my eyes. “Did he hurt you?”

  “He’s not even outside.”

  Mom looked puzzled.

  “Maybe you’d better stop going over there,” she said. That was reason enough not to tell her. Mom didn’t try to solve our problems with other kids, just told us to avoid them.

  “Has he hurt anyone?”

  “Not me,” I said, too quickly.

  “Dave?” Aimée must have told her about the ball in the sewer.

  “Why doesn’t Aunt Bonnie keep him away from Dave?”

  “She wants them to work out their own troubles,” Mom said.

  “Pete shoved Dave in the sewer. His elbows got all bloody.”

  “Well,” Mom said, “brothers—”

  “He kicked Dave right in the butt!” My voice cracked.

  “Don’t use that word, Chérie,” Mom said. “Say—”

  “He’s a big baboon!” I blasted her, holding back the tears.

  Mom sighed and leaned her head on my arm. “Feel sorry for him,” she said. “For anyone who has to hurt other people.”

  “Who says he has to? Nobody’s making him.”

  “Oh, Chérie.” Mom looked at me as if there were something I should understand. But I didn’t understand anything, least of all Pete. “Do you know how lucky you girls are? Our baby’s going to think he’s got the best sisters in the world.”

  “He?” This was news. Some little he without braids?

  Mom smiled. “I think so. But what do I know?”

  It was paper time. I asked her to braid my hair in one braid, just for a change. It looked sleeker, straighter. But by the end of my route the frizz had all come out and made a fuzzy halo around my head. I was lucky, Mom always said. Lucky to have pretty blonde hair (she said it was pretty), not to have to hurt people, to have a family that loved me, to have a new baby brother or sister on the way, to have food on the table.

  What good did it do to be lucky, I thought that night, if bad things happened on TV and in the newspaper and right in the road in front of my house?

  My dad, who built helicopters, was glad for the Vietnam business and glad he probably wouldn’t get drafted. “We’ve got to keep the Commies down somehow,” he’d say. Was the war okay, then, like the war against the Nazis?

  “No,” said Mom. “If I see one more coffin coming back with a flag over it, I’ll collapse. I don’t care who we’re fighting, it’s not worth it.”

  Aunt Bonnie cared who was fighting, even though she said it was giving her gray hairs. She had it all figured out, such as which person running for president was going to do what about the war. Like Uncle Joe, she’d put all her hope in Eugene McCarthy, and then, when he stopped running, switched to Robert F. Kennedy.

  “It’s too soon to think about that,” Uncle Joe argued. “There’s still Johnson shipping out the bullets.”

  I sat with my sketch pad on the floor behind Dad’s chair, sketching the elf escalator, which had a soda cap chair at each end for the elves to sit on while they rode up or down.

  There was something I needed to know, so I was listening to the news, which was better than watching it. There was the usual sad list: the grim-sounding names of the towns where the fighting was, the count of American deaths and wounded, the loss to the Vietcong. “Dad? Are the Americans winning?”

  “Well, the South Vietnamese are fighting, too,” Dad answered. He ran his fingers through the crunchy waves of his hair. “We’re all fighting the Vietcong, not just the Americans…. No, I don’t think we are winning.”

  “But we’re going to, right?” I knew these things took time to win. The colonists had been losing in the middle of the Revolutionary War, the North had gone behind in the middle of the Civil War, and the middle of World War II had been bad, too.

  “I don’t think so, Cher. It’s really turning now, since Tet.” I thought I’d heard that word someplace but wasn’t sure what it meant. It was from before I was delivering the Bell. Dad’s voice grew softer. “There are just too many Vietcong.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Was it past the middle then? Was it too late to start winning? I gathered up my pad and pencils and stood up. I could hear Mom’s footsteps coming down the stairs. As I passed the TV set, an explosion on the screen made me jump.

  Dad said (to me or Mom?), “And they’re going to need more helicopters before it’s over, no matter what the Big Man says.”

  “Yes, and we know where they’re going to come from.” Mom touched my cheek as I passed her. I went slowly up the stairs.

  Losing? More guys were going to die, and we’d still keep on losing. How would we know when it was really lost?

  I kept going past my bedroom doorway, down the hall to Aimée’s door. She was still awake, reading Little Bear in bed, her braid wound around her arm like a pet snake.

  “Read to me,” I said, and curled up beside Aimée. The wall over her bed was completely covered with pictures of the Monkees. Cute, but Lucy and Dave both said the Beatles were better.

  “This is the easiest book in the world,
” Aimée said, embarrassed at being caught with an I Can Read book in her hand.

  “Yes, but it’s the best.” I settled down to listen to the story about Little Bear’s mother making him warm clothes to wear and daydreamed about the things I would make for the elves.

  That night, when Aimée was asleep, Mom and Dad had their first loud argument about the house. Up until then I hadn’t thought about what having a new baby would mean, other than that Mom might be throwing up at odd times.

  “What if we added on?” Dad was asking. He had graph paper spread across the dining room table and was drawing plans, using the mechanical pencil he used at work. I could see his hairy hand going over the paper when I craned my neck around the corner of the landing.

  I couldn’t resist: I went downstairs to say one more good night. Dad stopped and showed me the plans: There was an addition out the back, where the swing set stood, that would be a den downstairs. There was an addition out the side, a little sunroom for Mom (it included a shelf for an aquarium). My favorite was a plan for the attic that involved splitting the whole space into three equal-size bedrooms for Aimée and the new baby and me.

  I trudged back upstairs, wishing my elf house drawings looked like Dad’s design, which sat on the paper looking solid, like something that really could be built. Not much like mine, which were more real in my head. Dad drew, and he and Mom talked and discussed until suddenly it got so loud I came out of my room and stood on the stairs to hear what they were saying. If Aimée woke up, this would be a rotten way for her to find out about the baby. Things being what they were with Aimée, Mom and Dad weren’t going to tell her, “until they had to.” Somehow she stayed asleep, but I didn’t even try.

  “Why does it have to be this house?” Mom yelled.

  “Because this is our house,” Dad exploded right back. “There’s plenty of space to work with, right under this roof.”

  “The attic would be too hot for bedrooms,” Mom protested. “Have you been up there lately? It’s June, and the place is already a steam bath.”

  “So we’ll go to plan B,” Dad said calmly.