But as it is, no one cares that I have eaten crusts. I say it over and over—as my mother comes creeping in the front door, leaning on my father. I say it to the nurse who comes in carrying the package of the baby. I shout it while they climb the stairs to the bedroom. I tell it again and again all that afternoon—while the nurse is doing something to my mother’s breasts, while the baby is wailing in her new carriage, while my grandmother is stirring chicken soup. I come right up to my mother’s ear and shout it at her, right in the opening of her ear: “I ate my crusts!”
And she slaps my face.
“Stop that, Issa! You’ll wake the baby!”
I do wish they had died. I wish they had all died in whatever ways were possible—choking to death or drowning in the tub or being killed by bombs, any way at all. Then I would have been left alone to freeze to death in my bed. It would have been better than this, any day.
CHAPTER 7
Because the baby is here, everything has to change. For one thing, the house has to be cut in half. My mother argues with Gilda for days before Gilda will agree to the plan to have a carpenter convert the house. My mother wants Gilda and my grandmother to have the top half, and we the bottom half. There will be a staircase with doors that lock, top and bottom, so my grandmother can’t get down and I can’t get up, at least not without knocking or ringing a bell. There will finally be—right here in Brooklyn—this thing everyone wants so badly: privacy. Doors and locks and keys will be between my mother’s scaring me and my reaching Gilda’s side. The ladies and the shampoos and haircuts will be upstairs; the stories and busyness will be upstairs; the chicken soup will be upstairs, Bingo will be upstairs—and where will I be? Downstairs, with liver flaring on the grate, with nothing to do, and with…Blossom.
For that is the name they have given my sister—Blossom. The lilac tree that I love, with its sweet purple blossoms, now is spoiled because she has a name like its fragrant parts. My sister (I have to call her “my” sister although I don’t want her to be mine) has a red, screaming tongue that vibrates day and night with anger. It flails in her little open mouth like a flipper. Why do they all hold her in their arms and look into her face? Hot steam comes up from her mouth—she’s a small, wild furnace.
“I can eat crusts!” I shout, going from one person to another, pulling on their arms, punching their thighs, “Watch me chew!”
Nothing looks the same. The upstairs bedroom where my mother and father slept is now becoming the kitchen-living room of the upstairs apartment. The beauty parlor is staying the beauty parlor, but the bathroom where I had all my stomach aches is to be used only by Gilda and her customers and my grandmother. We, downstairs, will have our own, new bathroom—free of hairs in the sink.
I already feel lost: the dining room has become the living room (and the piano is moved in there), the living room is now where my mother and father sleep, and the sun porch is where “my sister” and I have to sleep, close to the street, close to the cars whooshing by on the icy road, close to the wild outdoors. I have lost the room of my own. The Screamer’s being here has cut everything in half. My mother and father are only half mine; Gilda and my grandmother are divided in two, also. Although The Screamer is little she gets more than half. Our shared bedroom is full of her things—carriage, Bathinette, little swing, little rocking chair, little rocking horse—my father went somewhere and bought out a household of baby furniture. What belongs to me in my bedroom? Just my blackboard, nothing else. I hate this sun porch room, which has nine big windows in it—not even counting the front door with a stained glass peek-a-boo window. Anyone could look in at us.
Hammering and sawing goes on all day. The Screamer screams and the drills drill, and the radiators clank, and not once does my mother get a headache. I am looking forward to the day she gets one—then she and I can rest in her bed together as we used to in the old days and I can bring her a wet washcloth. I wait and wait, but it never happens. Her head never hurts—instead the pain goes to her breasts. She holds her breasts, which drip, making her rock in pain. The Screamer is not drinking out of them—though Gilda told me that mothers have always fed their babies this way (I can’t believe it). I am relieved to hear that my mother refuses to do this, it is a great relief to me. When they drip and tears come to her eyes, my mother covers their drips with my father’s handkerchiefs to catch the drops. He watches her cover them with his handkerchiefs. Once he has to help her squeeze the drops out with a rubber pump. When they see me watching, my mother tells me the doctor said they have to do this. She says she has “milk-fever.”
I run away to watch the carpenter and his helper make the new pantry and the new bathroom where before there was nothing—I watch them lay the tiles, two pink and one white, over and over again in the same design. And then they put the doors at the top and bottom of the staircase which before was free and open. Big heavy doors with locks. I start to cry at the sight of them. How will I ever get into the upstairs if I don’t have a key? How will I ever find Gilda when I need her?
“Isn’t it wonderful?” my mother assures me. They are now building an open back porch where just “our” family will eat in the summertime; Grandma and Gilda are getting a new side entrance for themselves, for “their family,” complete with a stoop, a black steel mailbox, and a gold doorknob. Gilda and I will now have different addresses: mine is 405 and hers is 405 and 1/2.
The first night I sleep in the new room I watch the moon coming in all nine windows. Nine moons. And then I see what I was afraid of: the faces of nine little men hanging onto the nine windowsills, watching me.
In the summertime, my mother puts Blossom out front in her carriage. My job is to sit there and watch her sleep. Bingo sits near me under the bench. Sometimes my grandmother sits next to me. We watch till there is nothing to watch. The Screamer is either asleep, or waking up and getting ready to boil, her tongue curling up like a slice of cooked liver. I think, for the first time, that we are all made of meat. That if we put my sister on the grate over the flame, she would cook and could be eaten.
One afternoon while I am watching my sister, a dog comes over to the carriage and pee-pees on the wheel. He lifts his leg and a stream comes out of a tube on his belly. His tube points up toward his face, while my father’s tube hangs down toward his feet. Or so it seems to me. I don’t know if my father lifts up his leg—he never lets me watch him make.
Then another dog comes along—he’s white and fluffy—and he also makes on the carriage in short squirts. What is this? A parade? I wonder how many more will come. Only two—it seems they are all traveling together in the neighborhood, these four friends. The others arrive and do their pee-pees as if they are playing follow-the-leader. Just then my mother comes out and sees this happening. She screams. She runs in and gets a broom and starts to hit all the dogs. She smashes them on their heads. They run away howling. It’s too bad—I liked seeing them pee on the carriage. It was the only entertainment for a long while.
Now my mother snatches up my sister and yells at me as if I have peed on her. At dinnertime (we are now eating separately from my grandmother and Gilda) she says to my father, “Bingo is attracting these dangerous animals.”
“I don’t think so,” my father says.
“We can’t have this,” my mother says. “They could attack the baby. They could kill her.”
My father is busy eating. Working in the defense plant makes him hungrier than ever. He still eats in big chews and great swallows. He tears meat from the bones with his powerful teeth. He scoops potatoes up as if his spoon is a shovel and he is digging a hole to China.
“I wonder what they’re eating upstairs,” I say.
“We’re our own little family now,” my mother says sharply. “Don’t think about them.”
Gilda has to go to the bank. My mother suggests that I go along for the walk. This is a treat for both of us. Gilda hardly ever has me to herself anymore. We get spruced up (“spruced up” is what Gilda says as she sprays perfume
on both of us. I am allowed to be in the old bathroom with her for this—my mother is feeling very generous). Gilda puts a lilac bloom in my hair with a bobby pin. She lets me wear a gold locket of hers that she keeps in a blue leather jewel box. Inside the locket is a picture of her father, my grandfather. “If he had lived,” Gilda says, “my whole life would have been different. I wouldn’t be beholden to your mother for every bite I eat.”
We walk in the sunshine to King’s Highway. The vault in the bank where treasures are kept has rows of silver drawers filled with the gold lockets and rings of the whole Kingdom of Brooklyn. Gilda takes me with her into a secret room (a guard in a uniform is there to watch us) and we look at our precious things: a pair of diamond earrings that once were worn by my grandmother and war bonds and birth certificates.
“Someday these earrings will be yours,” Gilda whispers to me. I shake with a thrill. Then I think of The Screamer. Maybe they will forget her when it’s time to give the earrings away. Otherwise, I will kill her. I will have to.
When we get home, Gilda goes around to the side door and then upstairs to her house, while I go in the front door and in the downstairs to mine. While I am having my milk and cookies, I hear her running back down (her shoes pound on the stairs), and she bangs on the locked door that enters to our new living room. “Where is Bingo?” she calls through the closed door to my mother. “He’s not upstairs.”
“I don’t know,” my mother calls back. She looks at the ceiling.
“You do know,” Gilda says. She hits the door with her fist. I think my mother knows, too. Where could he be? Bingo is always under the table in the upstairs kitchen, waiting for scraps of chicken heart.
“Where is he? Tell me!” Gilda shouts, pounding on the door.
“In the cellar,” my mother says.
There is complete silence. Then I hear Gilda turn around to run upstairs, where she has to get the key to the outside cellar door. Then down again, outside, and to the cellar door, where she pokes the key in the lock. I hear all this in my ears. I can get into the cellar by opening a door at the side of our kitchen, but I never do because why would I ever go into a black hole where the furnace is breathing fire?
But once I know Gilda is down there, I slide the bolt on the kitchen door and peek down the steps. I see the shelves above the steps that contain soap powder and bug Flit. I see Gilda’s dim form at the bottom of the stairs. She is calling, “Bingo! Bingo!”
“Forget it,” my mother calls from over my shoulder. “Bingo is gone.”
Gilda and I both turn to look at her. Then why did she say he was in the cellar? My mother is smiling, but it’s not a good smile. “He’s gone, Gilda.”
“Where?”
“The pound came and got him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I gave him away. He was a danger to the baby.”
“You gave Bingo away?“
I can’t believe it either.
“He was gentle as a lamb,” Gilda says, but the word lamb goes up like a scream. She runs up the few extra steps to where my mother is in the kitchen and butts my mother in the stomach with her head. Gilda is butting my mother as if she has horns in her head. My mother falls down, she has no breath, and the smile has gone off her face.
“Oh God, you bitch,” Gilda says. She runs to our phone, which she is not allowed to use anymore. “Oh God.” She is trying to use the phone book.
“Don’t bother,” my mother says when her breath comes back. “They’ve already put him to sleep.”
This takes some time for Gilda to understand—even I understand it first.
“They should put you to sleep,” Gilda cries out finally, tears jerking out of her eyes. Her shoulders shake. She is choking on her tears. “Oh my precious baby Bingo.”
Oh, my mother is bad. She has been very bad lately; I have had to punch her many times. This time a punch isn’t enough. I don’t know what will be enough. I decide I will go upstairs and live there in the better house. I take Gilda’s hand and tug on her. “Let’s go back upstairs,” I tell her, patting her and kissing her backside. “I’ll come and live with you,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, darling Gilda. I’ll take care of you.”
CHAPTER 8
Even when the worst things happen, the mind calms down. People still have to go to bed at night and eat cereal in the morning. No matter how hard Gilda butted my mother in her stomach, the two sisters still have my old grandmother to take care of, they still have me walking down there, below the level of their hips, talking up at them, asking things, needing things, demanding what I want. That I can be afraid and then stop being afraid, and that they can hate each other and stop hating each other, is an amazing fact to own. It smooths out the long story ahead, which is bound to be full of terrible times, of fights and yelling and hating.
Best things can go the other way, too—the dropping off of excited, wild feelings down to dull and ordinary. If I get a new ball—which I actually have got: pink, bright, clean, a Spalding—that bounces as high as my head and higher, I am so happy that I think I will always be happy, even if The Screamer screams and even if Bingo is gone forever. I wake up thinking about the new ball; I look for it the instant I wake up and bounce it; I clean it with my toothbrush so it stays pink, I rub it dry on my dress. I kiss it to my lips, feeling that rubbery hard pink curve against my mouth.
Happy! Oh, I am so happy! I will always be happy! Won’t I? Won’t I?
And then what happens?
One day I wake up and think about something else, not my ball. Even when I do think of the ball, I don’t want to leap up and bounce it. It is still clean. It is still rubbery. It still has that same smell. But I don’t feel so much love for it. I am not even close to happy, thinking of the ball. When I finally get up and bounce it, I am thinking about something else already, and I forget I am bouncing it.
This is mysterious to me—how the shape of the thing I love, the thought of it, feel of it, smell of it—what used to be everything I needed to feel happy—now is getting away from me, shrinking, getting smaller and littler and tinier until—even though it’s right in my hand—I no longer feel any love for it.
I bring it right up to my eyeballs, I blink my eyelashes against it, I feel them scrape the rubber, and I look, look, look at it. It’s right there, sticking into my eye.
But I don’t care.
Now I want roller skates.
Ruthie has them. Myra has them. Myrna has them. Linda has them. Everyone on the block has roller skates. The little girls who live on my street roar along the sidewalk, pumping away over the cracks, making a sound like ZZZSHEE, ZZZSHEE. One knee and then the next pumping along.
I want, I want…I tell what I want to everyone in my house. All of us happen to be standing outside in the street buying cupcakes from the bakery man. My grandmother. Gilda. My mother. My father. They can’t help but hear what I want.
“Too dangerous,” they all say, which is the twin sister to “Be careful.” They tell me I can’t be careful enough if something is too dangerous, though I have no idea why. I can be careful. I tell them so. I’ll do it carefully, I assure them, whatever that means to them. The little girls are doing it out there, on the sidewalk, ZZZSHEE! ZZZSHEE! over the cracks. They’re not getting killed.
“That’s enough,” Gilda says. My mother agrees. My father agrees. “Don’t ask again.” This time they all miraculously—agree, they all say the same thing.
“Do you want to break your neck?” Even my grandmother chimes in. The chickens she cooks have all had their necks broken by the kosher butcher—do I want to be like a dead chicken?
I can never be a chicken, dead or alive. They are stupid and wrong. I’m just a child. I just want to roller skate, to fly fast along the sidewalk, to see the hedges go by in a blur. What do they know? They are too old to see any use in it, but I know it must be the secret of happiness. Flying fast, making wild noises. Forgetting whatever it is that goes around and around in my mind, the stuff
of stomach aches.
Linda and Myra and Myrna and Ruthie. For years they didn’t interest me, being wheeled in their strollers by their mothers, or driving by in their fathers’ cars, or sitting on their front stoops eating chocolate pudding or having a glass of milk before bed. They were just other helpless children like me, being guided here and put there and told what to do, but suddenly they are out here on the sidewalk, ZZZSHEE, and they have turned into what I want to be: free. I must meet them, join them, despite my mother’s assurances that other children are of no interest, are dumb, bad, stupid, useless.
How odd, that just as I determine I need to be outside, they all determine it’s best that I be locked inside. Eating the cupcake the bakery man has given me (free! he does it to be nice, seeing what I have to contend with), I sit on the front stoop listening to their boring arguments. Dangerous traffic. Dangerous germs. Dangerous old men. Dangerous insects. The women circle around me, doing the dance of danger. Best to stay inside, best to color, best to read, best to help Grandma cook, best to…
“How can I help Grandma cook if I can’t go upstairs?”
They are silent.
“Then can I go up to the beauty parlor?”
Gilda and my mother look at each other. My mother does a calculation, I’ve seen that look on her face when she’s doing the budget envelopes—so many dollar bills in here for the milk, so many for the butcher, so many for…
The Kingdom of Brooklyn Page 5
