The Boys of My Youth

by Jo Ann Beard

  I wake her up three times between midnight and dawn. She doesn’t usually sleep this soundly but all the chaos and company in the house tonight have made her more tired than usual. The Lab wakes and drowsily begins licking her lower region. She stops and stares at me, trying to make out my face in the dark, then gives up and sleeps. The brown dog is flat on her back with her paws limp, wedged between me and the back of the couch.

  I’ve propped myself so I’ll be able to see when dawn starts to arrive. For now there are still planets and stars. Above the black branches of a maple is the dog star, Sirius, my personal favorite. The dusty rings of Saturn. Io, Jupiter’s moon.

  When I think I can’t bear it for one more minute I reach down and nudge her gently with my dog-arm. She rises slowly, faltering, and stands over me in the darkness. My peer, my colleague. In a few hours the world will resume itself, but for now we’re in a pocket of silence. We’re in the plasmapause, a place of equilibrium, where the forces of the Earth meet the forces of the sun. I imagine it as a place of silence, where the particles of dust stop spinning and hang motionless in deep space.

  Around my neck is the stone he brought me from Poland. I hold it out. Like this? I ask. Shards of fly wings, suspended in amber.

  Exactly, he says.

  Bulldozing the Baby

  At age three, my most successful relationship was with Hal, a boy doll. He had molded brown hair, a smiling vinyl face, and two outfits. One was actually his birthday suit, a stuffed body made of pink cloth with vinyl hands and feet attached. Clothes encumbered me; I liked the feeling of air on skin, and when left alone for more than five minutes, I’d routinely strip us down to our most basic outfits and we’d go outside to sit on the front stoop. Hal’s other outfit was a plaid flannel shirt with pearl buttons and yellow pants with flannel cuffs. He had black feet molded in the shape of shoes.

  The gorgeous thing about Hal was that not only was he my friend, he was also my slave. I made the majority of our decisions, including the bathtub one, which in retrospect was the beginning of the end. Our bath routine was like this: My mother would pick me up and stand me in the tub — I had fat, willful legs, and I wouldn’t bend them while she was touching me — then while I was settling into the water and coordinating the bathtub toys, she’d undress Hal and sit him down on the toilet tank to watch me.

  “Tell Jo-Jo she is not to stand up in the tub,” she’d say to Hal, before leaving us to our own devices. I found it unnerving to have her speak directly to him; didn’t she know he was a doll? Plus, Hal couldn’t stop me from doing anything. The moment she left I’d stand up and sit back down whenever I felt like it. Hal’s job was to watch.

  The bathtub toys were dull in an indestructible kind of way. You could drown them or bounce them off the ceiling and they were still unbreakable plastic in primary colors. Hal, however, was both filthy and destructible; my mother had proved it by trying to scour his head with an S.O.S. pad — he now had a small bald patch on the crown of his head, just like a real guy.

  I decided on impulse to bring Hal into the tub with me, just to see what would happen. First he floated, then when I pressed on his stomach he submerged, smiling placidly. It was at that exact moment that the spark went out of him — he became waterlogged in an unflattering way and all I could do was put him back up, dripping, on the toilet tank. He sat more slumpedly, and the pink cloth of his stuffed body had a gray cast to it. Something had gone wrong with my experiment.

  My mother came in and tried to wash my hair. She’d given up reasoning with me long ago, had adopted a style that married brute force with loud comforting comments. “You’re such a good girl,” she lied, struggling to hold my head in the water. Soap was lapping onto my face. I shrieked and tried to shake my head; a wave washed over my mouth. “One more time and then we’re done,” she said resolutely, sitting me back up with one viselike hand and squirting soap on my head with the other. I looked her in the eye and shrieked again. My father came and stood in the door of the bathroom, watching.

  “What’re you doing to her?” he asked my mother.

  “She’s doing it to me,” my mother replied grimly. She gestured with her head. “Look at Hal.”

  Crap. Now I’d have to listen to that. I stepped up my end of the struggle.

  “Oh dear,” my father said. Hal was collapsed on himself, dripping slightly. My father rolled him in a towel and wrung him a couple of times. I screamed; they were trying to kill us.

  “Shut up,” my mother said. She stood me up and began brass-knuckling my head with a towel. When she was done she swatted my wet rear. It made a loud insulting noise without exactly hurting. I collapsed on the bath mat, wailing, while she strode off to find my jammies.

  The bathroom ceiling had sparkles on it. The dog-in-the-boat stain was still there. Hal was wadded up inside a towel on the floor. I unrolled him and we lay on the bath mat together, panting quietly. They had manhandled us.

  My mother has hung Hal upside down on the clothesline. I’m spending the morning in the sandbox to be near him, using an old comb to make furrows and lines which I then plant blades of grass in. I’m making a farm. Every once in a while I use the comb on my own hair, and warm sand falls down the back of my shirt. Hal is watching from upside down, clothespins pinched into his calves, vinyl hands dangling near his ears.

  “I am not hurting him,” my mother said dangerously as she pinned him up there. I better not pull a trick like that again or somebody’s in trouble. I try to reach the measuring cup and my leg makes the grass fall over. I have to stand up and stomp on it carefully and then sit back down and start over, combing in the rows. Once I find a caterpillar and hold it up to show Hal. He can’t see too good upside down. The caterpillar won’t get off my finger so I scrape it onto the sand and use my scoop to throw it out on the ground, along with a considerable amount of sand.

  I have on blue sunglasses with wiener dogs on the frames. I can pull up my shirt and fill my belly button with sand except if I do she’ll dig it out with the washcloth tonight. I’m starting to learn cause and effect. Hal in the bathtub means Hal up in the air. He still doesn’t have his clothes on. I climb out of the sandbox and sit down on the ground to take my sandals off. I put my sunglasses on top of them and stand back up. After I push my shorts and underwear down I have to sit again in order to pull them off my feet. The shirt gets stuck on my head and I can’t see. After a frantic second I get it off but it yanks my nose. The barrettes slid out of my hair while the shirt was going past; I put one inside each sandal. I get up and sit on the edge of the sandbox to rest.

  A bee is on the hollyhock by the fence. It steps into the flower and walks around, then steps out again, flies to the sandbox, and hangs in the air in front of my face, buzzing. I shake my head at it and it hovers for another instant and then takes off again, flies to Hal, and lights on his hanging hand.

  Injury laid right over top of insult. I start screaming.

  When she comes out we look at each other for a long moment, then she sighs, reaches up, releases the clothespins, lets him drop, then catches him before he hits the ground. She hands him over and stoops to collect my clothes while I put my sunglasses back on. I follow her to the back door, carrying Hal by the feet. His shoes are warm from the sun and he smiles as I drag his face along through the grass and then — bump, bump — up the two steps and into the house.

  Hal’s body has become lumpy, with protrusions of wadded stuffing in some spots and absolutely nothing in others. My mother tries to fix him each morning by squeezing him like a tube of toothpaste, forcing the stuffing from his lower body into his upper body. A gritty, sandlike substance is coming through his pores. He’s still smiling. Hal and I are the only ones who don’t care about personal appearances.

  “She tried to give him a bath,” my mother tells my aunt, who is holding Hal and looking at him through the bottoms of her bifocals. They’re trying to figure out if he can be given a torso transplant. My aunt runs her thumb over his bald spot.
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  “The paint’s wearing off his head,” she says definitively. “Throw him out and get her a new one.” Thus spake Bernice.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head vigorously. I get right up in Aunt Bernie’s face. I shake my head again, harder. She holds Hal out of my reach. I do one short bloodcurdling scream and she hands him over.

  My mother, the one who is not taking credit for the bald spot on his head, lights a cigarette nervously and exhales. Bernie is the oldest of five brothers and sisters. My own big sister Linda is playing jacks on the kitchen floor and every time I move she calls out She’s getting my jacks. My mother believes her. One more time and I’m going to be sat right down in a chair. Aunt Bernie is still waiting for a reply. Her eyebrows are in the middle of her forehead.

  “Listen,” my mother tells her. “She will scream until we’re all in the asylum, you included.” Bernie snorts, takes a cigarette and lights it. Smoke pours out her nose.

  “She may run you,” Bernie says dryly, “but she doesn’t run me.” Her own daughters are in the living room standing in separate corners. The crime was cursing. It’s time for Hal’s thumb to be sucked.

  “She’s got that thing in her mouth,” Bernie says.

  “Don’t put that in your mouth,” my mother tells me in a stagey, I’m-the-mother voice. I stare at her until she reaches over and gives his hand a yank. It doesn’t move.

  “She’s biting on it,” Bernie says.

  “I don’t know what’s got into her today,” my mother says nervously. She lights another cigarette and gives me a desperate glare. Linda’s rubber ball bounces one, two, three, four times. Hal’s hand drops back down to his side. “Okay then,” my mother says.

  When they put me down for my nap Bernie looks around the bedroom and says she doesn’t know why they’ve got me in a crib. “It’s either a crib or a leash,” my mother says shortly. When they leave I cry the minimum amount and then put my feet through the bars. Hal is lying with his head on the pillow and the blanket up to his chin. I put him down at the bottom where he belongs and then I go down there with him. The ceiling is white and has sparkles just like in the bathroom. If I pee in this bed it doesn’t matter but I don’t have to pee right now. I put my face next to Hal’s and close my eyes. The ceiling sparkles appear against my eyelids, like stars. Hal’s got his arm under me.

  In my sleep I show my girl cousins how to tie shoes, just like my dad showed me. Make a bunny, cross over, push one ear through, and pull. It’s supposed to be a bow but it unravels, just like always. I can’t do it. My girl cousins disappear and in their place is Bernice, who points to the corner. I shake my head. She takes the manual, grasp-and-steer approach. This is not a good idea, my mother whispers. I’m in the corner all alone and I can’t feel Hal’s arm in my back. Wherever I am, that’s where Hal’s supposed to be. I turn around and around, but the corner is completely empty. All that’s in it is me.

  Under the sofa: quite a bit of dirt, several jacks, a book called The Wait for Me Kitten, a ballpoint pen, and the crust off a peanut butter sandwich. No Hal. To look behind the refrigerator you have to put your cheek against the kitchen wall. All that’s back there is dirt. The broom closet doesn’t even have a broom in it, just the vacuum cleaner. Under Linda’s bed are about ten sandwich crusts, a clear plastic coin purse with an empty lipstick tube inside, the usual dirt, and a strange piece of red felt that looks like the tongue of a stuffed animal. The bedroom closets yield nothing but shoes. Hal wouldn’t be able to go out to the sandbox by himself because he can’t walk. Nevertheless, I open the back screen door and call to him.

  Nothing from Hal, but in the kitchen my mother drops what she’s doing and moves directly to the telephone. She dials with a pencil, puts a cigarette in her mouth, fishes around in her pocket for a lighter, finds it, snaps it open, lights the cigarette, and says into the receiver Let me talk to your mom.

  The kitchen counter can be gotten to by way of a red step stool; you can climb up there while your mother is in the other room and eat chocolate chips out of the cupboard. You can also stand in the sink and look at the whole backyard through the window. She stops me before I make it up to the counter. She’s carrying the phone, the receiver pinned to her shoulder. The other arm picks me off the stool and sets me on the floor. I point to the cupboards.

  “He’s not up there,” she says shortly.

  She knows something.

  Back in the living room I watch her as she finishes the call and hangs up. She leans back in her chair, lights another cigarette, and blows large ragged smoke rings up to the ceiling. Even when I lie down on the floor right at her feet she won’t look at me. From upside down she doesn’t resemble herself; she could be a lady from anywhere.

  I gently kick the rungs of her chair, once, twice. Her eyes flicker downward for an instant, and then back up. She checks her watch, and then a second later checks it again.

  Any minute now our menfolk should be coming home.

  From the kitchen come the sounds of sizzling and whispering. Fried chicken and a mother and father. From outside, the rhythmic thump and scrape of a game of jacks being played on the front stoop. Linda and her best friend, Pattyann. In the living room is the sound of a thumb being sucked. My mother has brought out Petie, a stuffed dog with a missing tongue, to sit with me. We’re on the sofa, being quiet and waiting. My mother peeks her head out of the kitchen and then summons my father.

  “She’s back to sucking her t-h-u-m,” she says.

  “B,” my father tells her.

  “What?” she says.

  “There’s a b on it,” he explains.

  “What did I say?” she asks.

  “’T-h-u-m,’” he says.

  “Either way,” she answers.

  She’s wiping her hands on a dish towel and he’s holding a spatula. They’re looking at me. Two thumps, a scrape, and Linda tells Pattyann she’s a cheater. I use my foot to move Petie down to the floor where he belongs. They consider me and I consider them. My mother is the first to fold.

  “Jesus H.,” she says, disappearing into the kitchen.

  My father brings a pencil and a piece of paper over to the coffee table. We’re going to draw pictures. I climb down off the couch and stand watching.

  “You don’t want to step on Petie, do you?” he asks me. Petie is underneath my feet.

  I take the thumb out of my mouth and nod, then put it back in.

  He draws a triangle with a beak. “That’s a bird,” he says, and offers me the pencil.

  I can draw pretty hard as long as the pencil doesn’t break. When I’m done the whole paper is covered with a picture, and the bird is nowhere in sight. My father licks one finger and rubs the extra pencil marks off the coffee table.

  “Jo-Jo made a gorgeous picture,” he calls to my mother. He considers it carefully, turning the paper sideways and then back.

  “Is it a house?” he asks me. “Is it a dog? Is it Mommy?”

  No, no, and no.

  My mother comes in and stands over us. She looks at the picture and then at me.

  “Hal?” she asks.

  I take my thumb out just long enough to nod.

  “This is truly unbelievable,” my mother says. She’s sitting in the rocking chair with her shoes off, smoking. My father is walking back and forth across the living room, singing. Each time he gets to the fringe on the rug he turns around and walks to the other fringe. The song is one he made up, called “Bye Oh Baby,” and usually I hum along but not tonight. I can’t actually cry anymore but I can still make the crying noise. He’s patting me on the back and I’m patting him on the back. We’re walking the floor with each other.

  “She’s a sandbag,” he tells my mother as we go past.

  “Tell me about it,” she answers.

  Linda appears suddenly, squinting in the light. She has her nightgown on backward and her hair is messed up from being asleep. She shields her eyes with one hand and stares at us all. “Can we have pancakes in the morning?” sh
e asks the room.

  “I’m going to pancake somebody right now,” my mother says, preparing to stand up. Linda stomps back the way she came.

  “I’d like to pancake Bernice,” my father says darkly. He moves me to the other shoulder, turns, and walks. My hand is tired of patting, I’m just watching the rug go by. Three more times and he walks me over to the rocking chair and points me at my mother.

  “She asleep?” he whispers.

  My mother and I are looking at each other. “You asleep?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  She sighs, stands up, goes to the telephone table, dials, and scratches her head with a pencil while she waits. “Wake up and smell the hysteria,” she says into the receiver, and then carries the phone out to the kitchen. My father switches shoulders again and we sit down to rock.

  When my mother comes back in she’s carrying a bottle of beer. She’s glad we’re sitting down. Bernie and the monsters stopped at the Dairy Queen out on Route 50 to get ice cream cones on their way home.

  “You bet they did,” my father says, rocking. His shirt smells good.

  There was no reason to cart the d-o-l-l in question all the way home, so he was placed in a t-r-a-s-h b-i-n at said Dairy Queen. Under the awning, next to the counter. That would have been approximately three o’clock, and it would be now, oh, twelve-thirty.

  My father groans. “Shit,” he says.

  The chair is rocking and rocking.

  My mother lifts her beer bottle by the neck and takes a sip. The chances are slim to none but maybe Roy Rogers should get on Trigger and ride out there. Dale Evans will stay here with her beer.

  Rocking and rocking.

  My eyes won’t open, but I’m still wide-awake. I go back up in the air with my eyes closed and then down the hallway and to the right. My arms flop when he puts me down, but I’m not asleep. He leaves and comes back with Petie and I try to make the crying noise but nothing comes out.