by Betsy Byars
He went into the living room with the package under his arm. He would have liked to hide it, but the package seemed somehow attached to him. Would he ever be able to open it, he wondered, or would he carry it through life, always wondering, worrying—
“Come on, Bingo!”
His mother was on the sofa, the stethoscope against the curve of her stomach.
“There it is,” she said softly.
She handed him the ends of the stethoscope. Bingo had to put down his package in order to take them. He couldn’t release the package, of course, because of the curse, so he stuffed it between his knees.
Bingo hated to do that because now his mother was sure to notice he was standing knock-kneed and then she would notice the reason for the knock-knees and then she would say, “Why is that package between your knees?”
“Can you hear it?” she asked.
“I hear something like stomach noises, sort of a gurgling sound.”
“No, that’s not it. Wait.” She paused to shift the stethoscope. “There. Try that.”
He listened and she watched for his expression.
“Can you hear it?”
Ta-da-dum ta-da-dum ta-da-dum ta-da-dum ta-da-dum—
“Oh, yes.”
“What does it sound like to you, Bingo?”
“Like a heart, I guess. This is the first heart I ever heard. Ta-da-dum ta-da-dum, like that.”
The beat was steady, rhythmic, but Bingo’s own heart began to race with emotion. He closed his eyes.
He did not understand the intensity of his feeling as he listened to his brother’s heart. Maybe it was listening to a small heart that was sort of practicing, getting ready for the day when it would have to pump for real—to race with emotion or slow or flutter or do whatever it had to to keep up with the unexpectedness of life.
Or maybe there was some sort of brotherly tie that bound, like in literature where the Corsican brothers felt each other’s joy and pain or where—
He opened his eyes. His mother was smiling up at him. “Oh, Bingo, I want this little baby so much.”
“I do too.”
“Now, let me listen to your heart. I’ve never heard your heart, Bingo.”
“My heartbeat won’t be anything special. It’s just regular. However…” He raised his sweatshirt to reveal his chest.
“That’s the way heartbeats are supposed to be—regular.” She raised up on one elbow. “Oh, there’s the phone. Get that, will you, Bingo?”
“Sure.”
“If it’s your dad tell him to come home before six so he can listen to Jamie’s heart. Then stick around so I can listen to yours.”
Bingo removed Melissa’s package from between his knees. He had forgotten about it. The emotional moment of hearing his brother’s heart had caused his knees to clamp together and the package had suffered a serious cave-in as a result.
Bingo carried the package with him to the phone. “Hello?”
His mother had the stethoscope in her ears again, listening, smiling faintly.
A girl’s voice said, “Bingo?”
“Yes.”
“Bingo Brown?”
His mother raised up on one elbow. “Is it your dad?”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know! The conversation hasn’t started yet.”
He could tell from his mother’s expression that when it did start, she was aware it would be a mixed-sex one.
“Bingo?”
“Yes.”
“This is Boots. Do you remember me? I was the girl in the mall—remember the day something terrible happened to you?”
Boots—this was the girl who had interrupted him while his arms were growing. “Oh, yes, the bookstore.”
“Well, you may have forgotten all about this, but you mentioned you wanted a book called Gypsy Lover and, Bingo, guess what? My sister has it!”
Bingo/Romondo
BOOTS SAID, “BINGO, DID you hear what I just told you?”
“Yes, yes, I heard.”
“You don’t sound excited.”
“Well, you caught me by surprise,” Bingo said. He began to fan himself with Melissa’s package.
“It’s one of my sister’s very, very favorite books. She’s read it so many times, it, like, falls open at the good parts. Wait a minute, I’ll make it fall open.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.”
On the sofa, Bingo’s mother had abandoned all pretenses of listening to fetal heartbeats. She was watching him with one of her smiles.
“I want to. Oh! It did it on its own. Wait a minute, I have to check for the good part.” There was a pause. “Okay, here it is. Are you ready for this?”
Bingo told the truth. “Not really.” But Boots began to read anyway.
“Romondo’s lips curled into a slow, lazy smile, but his dark eyes, staring at her across the campfire, had deepened with longing.
“The music of the gypsies seemed to have deepened with longing, too, and couples began to drift off, arm in arm, to their wagons.
“Finally she and Romondo were alone. He put down his guitar and in one flu-id-ly—”
Boots paused to say, “I had to sound that word out—sorry.
“—in one fluidly graceful move was at her side. In a low voice she murmured, ‘Romondo.’ ”
She paused to catch her breath, and Bingo had been waiting for just such a pause. He broke in quickly with, “Thank you so much for, er, sharing that with me.”
“Wait. It gets better.”
“Romondo murmured, ‘Marianna.’ ” Boots broke off to say, “Am I pronouncing that right or should it be MariAHna? That’s better—don’t you think, because she’s a countess. MariAAAHna.”
Bingo took a deep breath to calm himself. His heart was pounding in his throat. He couldn’t let his mother listen to his heart now. When she found out it was in his throat, she would demand to know why. “Boys’ hearts don’t jump up into their throats for no reason, young man, now you sit right down here and tell me—”
He cleared his throat. In a new, surprisingly mature voice he said, “I’m sorry, Boots, I don’t think that’s the book I was looking for.”
“Boots!” his mother snorted.
He gave her a withering glance, but, as usual, she refused to wither. She grinned and turned the stethoscope toward him as if to listen in on the conversation.
“It has to be, Bingo. There couldn’t possibly be two Gypsy Lovers,” Boots said.
“Perhaps I had the title wrong.”
“No, I remember the title. You said Gypsy Lover. And this book is Gypsy Lover. If you don’t believe this book is Gypsy Lover, I can come right over and show you it’s Gypsy Lover!”
Boots’s voice had risen, and she was punching home the title with such force Bingo was afraid the words would reach his mother across the room. It was bad enough that his own words were reaching her. He pressed the receiver against his ear to smother the Gypsy Lovers.
“No, no, I do believe that the title of that book is—is the title you just said.”
“What was your gypsy lover’s name?” she asked.
A low gypsyish voice trilled Rrrromondo in his brain, but his mouth stuttered uncertainly, “I—I—”
“Romondo doesn’t ring a bell?” She paused. “How about MariAHna?”
“Er, I wonder if I might call you back,” Bingo said.
“Well, yes, I guess so, but if it’s definitely not the same book, there’s no need. I can’t believe this. I go to all the trouble of finding this book and calling you up and letting it fall open to a good part and reading it out loud and—”
“I appreciate those things. Most people don’t go to enough trouble.”
“I could just cry.”
“No, no, please don’t, because I have to go do a—” Bingo broke off to think of something he could claim he had to do. “—an errand. And I couldn’t go do this, er, errand if you’re going to—” He turned his back on his mother. “—to do
that.”
Boots paused.
“Please,” he said.
“Oh, all right, I won’t.”
“Thank you very much, and I’ll be in touch.”
In one fluidly graceful movement of his own, Bingo hung up the telephone and disappeared into his room.
“Bingo, come back here,” his mother called.
But Bingo, who sat fanning himself with Melissa’s package, did not answer.
The Nightmare with Handles
IT WAS MIDNIGHT. BINGO was not asleep, and Bingo knew that he would never sleep again, not as long as Melissa’s package lay unopened on his dresser.
Bingo got up and crossed the room without a sound. He eased his door shut. There was a faint click as the latch caught, and Bingo waited, frozen, for one of his parents to call, “Bingo, are you still up?”
Nothing happened, and so after a moment Bingo turned on the light. Then he crossed the room and reached for the package.
Bingo had stared at this package so often that he knew every wrinkle in the paper—it had been wrapped in a brown Bi-Lo grocery bag and there was a grease stain beside the postmark. The words DO NOT OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS went around the package like a decorative border in bold Magic Marker letters, but Bingo knew that for the sake of his mental health he had to disregard this message. If ever he was to close his eyes in sleep again—he would have to open this package and face whatever was inside.
He eased off the Bi-Lo bag covering—no sound must alert his parents to what he was doing—and lifted out the package. The inner wrapping paper was blue with snowmen involved in wintry activities—sledding, ice-skating, and opening packages that contained useful objects like scarves.
Bingo forced himself to stop watching the snowmen—this was stalling, he reminded himself firmly, he had never before shown the slightest interest in what snowmen did in their off-hours. He then forced himself to loosen the tape on either end, forced himself to pull up the flaps, forced himself to take out the box.
The box was also decorative, but Bingo did not pause to see what was on it. Like a man with a mission, he lifted the lid. Manfully, he reached inside. With trembling fingers he lifted Melissa’s gift to the light.
Then a cry escaped from Bingo’s throat. He didn’t even know he had cried out. He turned the object over, and another cry burst from him. A third cry might have followed if Bingo’s mother had not thrown open the door.
“Bingo, what’s wrong?”
“Mom—”
“What happened? Are you all right? Did you have a nightmare?”
“I wish it were a nightmare.”
“What is it? Tell me.”
“Mom, oh, Mom—”
She wrapped her robe around her stomach and sank down beside him on the bed. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so the light fell directly onto her face, highlighting her concern.
“Mom, I opened Melissa’s present.”
“What?”
“I got this present from Melissa—” He paused to swallow “—and I opened it—Mom, I really dreaded opening it—don’t ask me why I dreaded opening a package but it’s just my nature to dread some things that other people do not dread. If there is some sort of phobia about dreading to open packages then I may have that.” He swallowed again. “At any rate I forced myself to open it and finally I did open it and I looked inside and saw—I saw this.”
He held up Melissa’s gift. His mother stared at it without comprehension. She looked from the present into Bingo’s face.
“Mom,” he explained, “it is a piece of cloth with handles on it. I was prepared for anything—a book, a T-shirt, a wristwatch—anything but a piece of cloth with handles on it. Mom, what is this?”
His mom looked at it. “Bingo—”
“What?”
“Bingo, it is a piece of cloth with handles on it.”
“Mom, Mom, don’t try to be funny. Not now, please, not now when I’m desperate.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I’m stating a fact. It’s a piece of cloth with handles on it. For some reason Melissa has sent you a piece of cloth with handles.”
At that moment Bingo’s father appeared in the doorway. He braced his hands on either side of the door. He was framed like a photograph of an unwilling subject. “What is going on here?”
“Sam, look at this. Now, Bingo, don’t give your father a hint. Let him tell us what—”
“It is after twelve o’clock at night,” Bingo’s dad interrupted. He frowned at his watch and then at them. “You are supposed to be asleep. A pregnant woman needs her sleep. And, Bingo, I asked you to be more considerate of your mom.”
“Oh, Sam, I wasn’t asleep. My back was hurting again. Now!” She held up the piece of cloth, pulling it apart by the handles as if it were an accordion. “Now! What do you think that is?”
“Maybe you two like to play games at twelve o’clock at night, but you two don’t have to get up and go to work at seven.”
“Sam, we need your input. It’s like that game show where the celebrities have to guess strange objects. You’re so good at that. Please.”
Bingo’s dad sighed. “Well, I had a back scrubber that had handles like that—only it had bristles so that when you scrubbed…” He trailed off.
Bingo’s mom said, “It could be a tote bag, if it were sewed up on the sides.”
“She wouldn’t give me a back scrubber or a tote bag!” Bingo said. “Now stop making fun of Melissa’s present.”
“If Melissa had not wanted us to make fun of her present then she shouldn’t have sent you a piece of cloth with handles on it,” his mother said.
“Give it back, please,” Bingo said coldly. He reached for the gift and knocked the box onto the floor. A note fluttered out.
Bingo picked up the note and, without considering the consequences, began to read aloud.
“Dear Bingo, you may be wondering what this is. Well, it’s a—”
Bingo broke off and folded the note.
“Well, don’t stop now. It’s a what?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“Listen, you got me up out of bed with hoarse cries of anguish and—”
“Not hoarse cries of anguish. I went, ‘Oh,’ like that.”
“An ‘Oh’ like that wouldn’t have awakened me from a peaceful sleep which I—”
“You said you weren’t asleep. You said your back hurt. You—”
Bingo’s father said, “Bingo, your mother is not going back to bed until you tell her what that thing is. Now tell her so we can all get some sleep.”
“Oh, all right.” Then he added in a low voice, “It’s a notebook holder.”
There was a short silence. Then his mother said, “Bingo Brown! Do you honestly expect me to believe that thing is a notebook holder?”
“It is! Melissa knows I keep notebooks and so she made this for me to keep them in. Wait!”
He went to his drawer and pulled out two of his notebooks. “See, you put the notebooks in here and here.” He inserted the notebooks. “Then you fold it over and carry it by these. In the note, there are instructions, also a sort of diagram.”
He turned the note around. In Melissa’s diagram he wore a dignified suit and appeared to be holding a businessman’s briefcase. In the mirror beyond, he saw a more realistic picture. There, he wore short, wrinkled pajamas and appeared to be holding a ladies’ purse.
His parents regarded him without expression. They sometimes did this just before they exploded into laughter, which, to be honest, Bingo felt they now had every right to do.
Bingo was very grateful that his mother limited herself to, “Well, I guess it could be a notebook holder.”
His father sighed and said, “Can we go back to bed now?”
Bingo said, “Please.”
His mother went out the door, but Bingo’s dad paused in the doorway. “Bingo, do you think you’ll be getting other presents from girls this year?”
“I hope not,” Bingo said sincerely.
“Oh, I will.”
“Good night, son.”
“Good night.”
Bingo waited a moment, listening to see if his parents were holding their explosion of laughter until they were in the privacy of their bedroom. But the house remained quiet. Bingo turned out his light.
Sometimes, to Bingo’s surprise, he found he actually loved his parents.
A Bingo Letter Holder
BINGO HAD NOT READ all of Melissa’s note to his parents, and he was glad his parents had not pressed him to do so. Melissa’s note was far too personal for any ears or eyes other than his own.
Bingo had read the note seven times. He had read it three times in a row last night, and he had read it four separate times this morning. The note seemed to improve with each reading.
Bingo was going over it in his mind as he pedaled to K Mart. He knew it by heart now.
Dear Bingo,
You may be wondering what this is. Well, it’s a notebook holder. I invented it and sewed it myself. What it is is a place to put your notebooks.
At first Bingo had, as a writer, been bothered by two is’s in a row, back to back like that, but now he was beginning to like them.
See, Bingo, you really are going to become a great writer one day. I know that. And your notebooks will be valuable. Only sometimes valuable things get thrown out by accident. I know this from personal experience.
Last week Mom threw out your letters, and it really hurt me, Bingo. My mom saw the letters on the floor of my room, by my bed, and the reason they were on the floor by my bed was because I always read them the last thing before I go to sleep. My mom was in a very bad mood and she also threw out a pair of my brother’s favorite socks. She said, “In this house, anything on the floor is trash. Remember that from now on.”
Bingo, please write me some more letters and I promise you they will never get thrown out. The reason I can promise is because I am making a letter holder to keep them safe, like I did for your notebooks.
Take care of your notebooks and of yourself and write me some letters. Now you have a special reason—to fill my letter holder.
