three
Six days a week, I deliver the Sarnia Observer. It doesn’t come out on Sundays, so that’s my day off. You have to be ten years old before you can work for the Observer. It’s a pretty important job and I have to get the paper to my customers on time. If I don’t, they get all bent out of shape. It’s like the end of the world for them or something.
I’ll be celebrating my third anniversary of working for the Observer this November. It seems like only yesterday that I noticed the Help Wanted ad in the classified section.
“Are you a responsible young adult?” the ad read. “Do you live in or around one of the following areas? Are you looking to make your own money and have fun all at the same time? If the answer to both these questions is yes, the Sarnia Observer is looking for you!”
I felt like writing to the Observer to point out that they had asked three questions, not two. But when I saw that one of the neighbourhoods on the list was mine, I called them up right away. The very next week, I had my own canvas Observer bag and thirty-two people who relied on me to bring them the world every night.
The person I replaced was John Geddes. He lives on Elm Street. I think John is a bit retarded. He wears thick glasses and slippers instead of shoes and buttons his shirts up to the top, even in the summer. He’s older, too. Not old like my dad, but too old to be a paperboy.
“He’s fuckin’ thirty-five,” Daniela told me once. John Geddes lives behind her, so she spies on him all the time.
“How do you know that?” I asked her.
“Because his mom told me. He was having a birthday party in the backyard. Just him and his mom and that fuckin’ little poodle they got. They were wearing these stupid birthday hats and playing pin the tail on the fuckin’ donkey.”
“Are you sure that’s how old he is?” I asked. “What kind of thirty-five-year-old plays birthday games with his mom?”
“A retarded thirty-five-year-old,” Daniela said. “I’m telling you the truth. I heard it from his own fuckin’ mom’s mouth. You know what, though? I heard Mr. and Mrs. Geddes were brother and sister. That’s why John wears slippers instead of shoes.”
I asked my mom if that was true, but she said Daniela was pulling my leg.
“That’s terrible!” she said. “She shouldn’t go around telling lies like that.”
Then my mom said that the real reason John was “off” was because Mrs. Geddes went on the Scrambler at a county fair while she was pregnant.
“You shouldn’t do those things when you’re pregnant,” my mom said. “All that jerking around. It’s no wonder he didn’t turn out right.”
Anyways, one day John was caught rolling around in the field at Clarkedale with Linda Eckerman. Linda is retarded, too, and lives at the end of Birch Street with her mom and two brothers.
“He was sucking on Linda’s tits like there was no tomorrow,” Daniela said, even though she wasn’t there. But she did see the police car pull up in front of the Geddes’ house.
I guess someone called the Observer to report what John had done. Maybe it was Mrs. Eckerman. She was probably scared that John and Linda were going to do It and then Linda would have a retarded baby.
So John got fired and that’s how I got the job as an Observer paperboy.
There are lots of kids out there dying to make the cash I do. After my collecting is done, I make close to twenty dollars a week, sometimes more, depending on the tips. Most kids my age just get an allowance, and you can’t work at a regular job until you’re fifteen. Then you make minimum wage at McDonald’s.
I know Daniela wants my job, but she doesn’t come out and say it. That’s because she’s too proud, but I’m not really sure what Daniela has to be proud about.
Daniela and I are kind of friends, but it’s weird to think that, because we have nothing in common. She’s not very stylish and wears tank tops that show off the stubble in her armpits. Plus, Daniela is Catholic and goes to St. Michael’s. She says that the two big differences between public school and Catholic school are that you have to take religion classes and that you have nuns for teachers.
“Do they look like the nuns on TV?” I asked her.
“No,” Daniela said. “The nuns on TV are young and pretty. At St. Mike’s, they’re all bitches and have B.O.”
Daniela told me the nuns beat students if they talk in class. She said that one time, her cousin Teresa got locked in a broom closet just because she sneezed during religion class.
“They forgot about her being in there and the janitor found her the next morning. She’d been in that closet for the whole fuckin’ night. To this day, if you show Teresa a broom, she goes ballistic. That’s how fucked up she is.”
Daniela is chunky and her nose is always plugged up, so when she talks, it sounds like she has a cold. She has curly black hair that hangs down to the middle of her back, too. One day, she told me that her hair was her best feature, but I said she had split ends.
“You should give yourself a hot oil treatment,” I said.
The next day, Daniela chased me down the street with a baseball bat. She had poured hot olive oil on her head and burned her scalp.
Daniela’s parents don’t speak English very well, even though they moved to Canada before Daniela was born. They subscribe to the Observer, but I don’t get that, because if you can’t speak English, you can’t read it. Maybe they’re just trying to fit into the neighbourhood. There aren’t many other ethnic people on my paper route besides Mrs. Guutweister. She’s a German lady who makes apple head dolls. She’s married, but I’ve never seen her husband. I know he’s alive, though, because every time I go collecting, I can hear him coughing. Maybe he’s on his death bed and Mrs. Guutweister has to make apple head dolls to help pay for doctor bills. Either that, or Mr. Guutweister is very mean and keeps Mrs. Guutweister a prisoner in her own home. Sometimes, when I take her money, I check to see if anything is written on her dollar bill, like “Call the police!” or “Help me, Peter!” But so far, there’s been nothing.
Mr. Bertoli is short and fat and has a blind eye that creeps me out. I never know who or what he’s looking at. He owns the Papa Bertoli restaurant in the Westown Plaza. I have to be very quick when I walk by the window on my way to the Shop ’N’ Bag or else Mr. Bertoli will yell at me to come inside. At least, that’s what I think he’s yelling. Like I said, Mr. Bertoli doesn’t speak English too well. But I’ve figured out a system. If I think he’s asking me something, I’ll answer “Yes” because that’s safer than “No.” If I think he’s telling me something, I’ll nod my head and say “Hmm . . .” and hope for the best.
Mrs. Bertoli is tall and thin and missing a few teeth. She always wears a wool Blue Jays toque on her head, even in the summer. For the longest time, I thought she was bald. But when I asked Daniela, she got mad at me and said her mom wears the Blue Jays toque because she gets bad headaches and what was I, fuckin’ stupid or something?
Gianni, Daniela’s older brother, is a bit of a rebel. He’s seventeen and works at Burger King. He hardly ever shaves and drives a powder blue Camaro that Daniela says is a piece of shit. I don’t think I’ve ever said one word to Gianni. He scares me because he’s a bit of a Banger.
I know that Daniela wants my job because she watches for the Observer van to drop off my bundle of papers at the corner. If I’m late picking them up, she carries them to my house.
“You better get these fuckin’ delivered, eh?” she’ll say when I open the door. “People are waiting.”
Daniela says the f-word more than anyone else I know. I think someone played a trick on her once and told her that the f-word was part of normal English language. She sticks it between any two words she feels like.
“Here’s Peter’s fuckin’ papers,” she said to my mom one day last winter.
I never saw my mom’s face turn green before.
I know Daniela will never get my job, because you can’t go around saying things like “Good f’n afternoon, Mr. Philips” or “You f�
��n owe me a dollar f’n eighty-five this week, Mrs. White” without them calling to complain about you. It’s not very professional. Besides, I think Daniela is a little stupid.
For starters, she failed grade 6. She said it was because her nun-teacher was jealous of her naturally curly hair, but I don’t think that’s true. And besides, Daniela is stupid in other ways because she still wets the bed.
I know this because I’ve been over to her house a couple of times. I think the Bertolis are poor, because they don’t have carpeting. Their furniture is pretty old, too, and there’s not much of it. The only expensive thing they have is a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary that stands in a corner of the living room. Daniela says it’s a “loaner” from St. Mike’s.
“Everyone gets to borrow her for sixty days,” she told me. “We’ve got fifteen days left, thank god. From here, we pack her up and send it to my Aunt Francesca’s apartment.”
When I asked Daniela why her family has a life-size Virgin Mary statue in the first place, she said, “It’s a Catholic thing. You wouldn’t understand. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’ll be happy as a fuckin’ clam when she’s gone. Every time I get up in the middle of the night to take a whiz, she scares the crap out of me.”
In their kitchen, the Bertolis have a small table in the corner and not much else. They do most of their cooking in the basement. They’re the only people on my paper route that have a stove, a sink, and a refrigerator in the basement.
“Why do you have two kitchens?” I asked Daniela once.
“Because we’re Italian, that’s why,” Daniela said, which didn’t explain anything.
Anyways, I know that Daniela wets the bed because her room smells like Lysol. It’s so strong that it’s hard to breathe and I can taste the Lysol in my mouth. But I know why the smell is so heavy, because underneath the Lysol, I can smell pee. A normal person might not be able to detect it, but I’m not normal. I have super-strong smelling powers, or as I call them, the SSP. People are amazed by what I can smell. Like one night last summer, Christine and I were outside on the back porch and I could smell pogo dogs. So I said to her, “Somewhere in this city, right now, a wiener is being battered and deep-fried.” Christine said, “How do you know that?” I put the tip of my finger on my nose and whispered, “The SSP.”
Christine said that I was a retard and went back into the house. But later that night, my parents and I drove by the Sears parking lot and sure enough, there was a mini-carnival set up with a Tilt-A-Whirl and Skee-Ball. And as plain as the nose on my face, there was a booth selling pogo dogs. I made my dad pull over and I ran out to buy one. It was the best-tasting pogo dog I ever ate.
Another reason why Daniela wants my job is because she doesn’t get paid for any of her jobs. She waitresses at her dad’s restaurant during the week, and on Saturday nights she works at the Basilico Club, the Italian club in Sarnia. Most people have their wedding receptions at the Basilico Club whether they’re Italian or not. That’s because the only other decent place to have a reception in Sarnia is the Golf Club and three years ago, someone almost got a concussion when a golf ball crashed through the window.
Daniela works as a banquet server. Her boss doesn’t give her any money, but she gets a free meal at the end of the night.
“Sometimes chicken, sometimes roast beef,” she told me. “Depends on how much money the bride’s parents cough up.”
Daniela says that the banquet servers are very competitive.
“It’s fuckin’ hell,” she said. “Every bitch wants to serve the head table.”
Serving the bridal party is the highest honour and only girls who have worked at the Basilico Club for a long time get to do it. It’s like getting a badge of bravery in the Italian military. I guess that’s because if you spill any food on the bride’s dress, you could get sued.
Daniela says that her manager doesn’t let her serve the head table, even though she’s worked at the Basilico Club for three years.
“I haven’t spilled one drop of minestrone since I started working there. But the asshole says I make him nervous so he gives it to Maria Punta and she’s only worked there six months. You know why Maria gets to serve the head table? Her tits are so big, she could rest a fuckin’ platter on them.”
I don’t understand why Daniela would work and not get paid, but then, there are lots of things I don’t understand about Daniela and her family. For example, why do they leave their Christmas lights up all year? And why doesn’t Mrs. Bertoli take an aspirin to cure her headaches?
Anyways, the other day while I was delivering papers, I saw Daniela in her garage. She was bent over, laying out rows of tomatoes on paper to ripen. The Bertolis make their own sauce every year.
“Why do they go through all that trouble when there’s Ragú?” my mother always asks.
Daniela didn’t see me coming up the driveway and when I called her name, she practically jumped ten feet in the air.
“Don’t fuckin’ do that!” she yelled, dropping a tomato. “What are you, a jerk or something?”
“I wasn’t trying to scare you,” I said. “What’s your problem?”
“Nothing, I just got a lot on my mind, okay?” She picked up the tomato, spit on it, then wiped it off on her apron. “Fuckin’ bruised.”
She turned to look at me and sighed.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to snap at you or anything, okay?” She sat down on an empty milk crate. “I’ve just been under a lot of pressure lately. I’m talking large fuckin’ pressure. The kind that builds and builds until one day, you go psycho and start killing everyone with a bread knife.”
Daniela can be very dramatic when she wants to be and she’s always talking about murdering someone. A few weeks before, she was planning to kill her mom because Mrs. Bertoli had let Gianni go out instead of cleaning the garage. She made Daniela do it.
“She lets that lazy son of a bitch get away with everything,” Daniela had said. “She thinks he shits gold nuggets. One of these days, I’m going to sneak up on the fuckin’ old toad and strangle the life right out of her.”
“Why are you under pressure?” I asked.
“I went and signed up for the Miss Basilico contest,” Daniela sighed. “I’m gonna be in a fuckin’ beauty pageant.”
Every September, the Basilico Club puts on the St. Marco Festival. I asked Daniela once what St. Marco did to get a festival named after him and she told me that he drove the mange-cakes out of Italy. The St. Marco Festival is like the carnival in the Sears parking lot, only it’s for Italian people. I guess white people could go, but every-one’s afraid of the Sarnia Mafia.
Every year, a young Italian virgin is crowned “Miss Basilico” on the last night of the St. Marco Festival. There are many duties she has to fulfill as a beauty queen. For example, she has to be nice to people all the time and pose for pictures. She also has to dress as an elf at Christmas and hand out candy canes to children at the mall. Most importantly, Miss Basilico has to set an example for Italian girls everywhere and show them that no matter what your dreams are, they can come true if you really believe in yourself.
“I’m looking forward to winning the food basket,” Daniela said, picking a scab off her knee. “Nutella for days.”
She sounded pretty impressed, but I wasn’t. Beauty pageant winners are supposed to win money, not groceries. Besides, I was getting a bad feeling about this beauty contest. What was going through Daniela’s head? She wouldn’t look good in a bathing suit and what kind of beauty queen has armpit stubble? The bottom line was that Daniela wasn’t pretty enough to enter the Miss Basilico contest. I know it wasn’t a very nice thing to think, but it was the truth. And I didn’t want Daniela to find out the hard way.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked her. I could almost hear the audience and judges laughing when she stepped across the stage. “Beauty pageants are kind of sexist, you know.”
“Who the fuck cares? This is my big chance! I’m gonna get that crown on my head if i
t’s the last fuckin’ thing I do. Then they’re all gonna be sorry when they see my picture on the front cover of the paper.”
Each year, Miss Basilico gets her picture in the Observer, which I guess is a pretty big deal for someone who failed grade 6. I had my picture in the Observer when I was nine. My parents and I were at a home show at the Sarnia arena when some guy came up to me and asked me if I’d lie down on this waterbed. I thought he was a pervert at first. But then I noticed his camera and the Observer badge on his shirt. He must’ve thought I had star quality. Anyways, the picture came out a few days later and my fly was down. I was so embarrassed. Everyone at school teased me. My mom bought a bunch of papers and sent them to all my relatives, even though I asked her not to.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to change Daniela’s mind, at least not without telling her the truth, and even though Daniela bugs me sometimes, I just couldn’t do it. So instead, I smiled my best fake smile and said, “If you need any help deciding what to wear, feel free to ask me.”
There are lots of rules a young Italian girl must follow if she wants to enter the Miss Basilico contest. For starters, she must be pure Italian, which means that neither of her parents can be white, because then she’s a half-breed.
She must be between fourteen and eighteen. She must also say a speech in Italian. But the most important thing of all is that the young Italian girl must have a talent.
“That’s where it all comes down,” Daniela said. “That’s when the winner gets separated from the losers.”
We were sitting in Daniela’s garage. The pageant was only a week away and Daniela said she was “sweating buckets,” that’s how nervous she was. I asked her what she planned to do for the talent competition.
“Are you going to serve tables at the pageant?”
I wasn’t trying to be mean, but Daniela got pretty angry.
“What, you think that’s the only thing I’m good at doing?”
“Well, what are you good at? Can you sing?”
Daniela thought for a bit. “No,” she said, shaking her split ends. “I sang ‘Ti Amo’ once at my cousin Angela’s wedding, but everyone booed me. Gimme a break. I was only eight.”
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