"What?" he said. I smelled whiskey.
I swallowed. "Can I come in?"
"You sellin' somethin', kid?"
"Just let me in, please?"
His eyes narrowed. The door slammed shut. I started to turn for the stairwell but I heard the chain slide in its groove. He'd closed the door to open that final chain, and then he opened the door wide.
"Well, come on." He leaned on the doorknob as if it were a cane. He wore a sleeveless undershirt and polka-dot shorts and open-toed sandals.
"You make me open up, now you ain't comin' in?" he said. "Man, that's some balls."
I entered. Beer cans littered the floor. It was the same cruddy linoleum as in the hallway, just slightly less worn. There was a small TV in the middle of the room, set upon a cardboard box. Wide-open windows fronted the elevated train tracks. It looked as if you could reach out and touch them.
The paint-starved walls were the color of raw leather. Had they been painted since my mother lived here, if indeed this had been her flat? I moved to the windows, needing the air. I could smell grease from the tracks.
The man openly scratched his balls. "What business you got here, kid?" I saw bits and pieces of a uniform draped over a wooden chair - blue pants, a shirt with a badge on it, a cap with the same kind of badge.
"Are you a policeman?"
He shook his head as if it pained him. "Night watchman. You woke me up."
"I'm sorry." I hesitated. "My mother used to live here."
He looked at me with sudden interest. "You Puerto Rican?"
"Italian. And Irish. My mother was Irish."
"She died?"
"Yeah."
"That's tough, man." He yawned, then flopped onto an unmade bed with sheets that looked gray. Or maybe it was just the light in the apartment, the lack of it - the el blocked most sunlight.
"Where you livin' now, kid?"
"Shepherd Avenue. Is this the place where my mother lived?" I was suddenly bold. "I know she lived on this floor. Her name was McCullough -"
"I don't know who lived here last. I only been here six months."
"Oh. I'm sorry I woke you," I said. I moved to the door, but he held a hand up.
"Wait, wait around. Stick around a few more minutes, man."
"What for?"
"Just wait." He'd cocked his head toward the window, seeming to be listening for some distant sound. "Few minutes, that's all. Go by the window."
"Why?"
"Just do it . . ."
I obeyed him. Now I could hear what his ears had detected - a train was coming from deep in Brooklyn, bound for Manhattan.
The floor started to tremble. The man chuckled. It sounded as if the train would come crashing through the wall but instead it roared past the windows, casting the room into darkness.
Cheap curtains flapped like dove wings. The gust hit me and I backpedaled toward the door as if someone were shoving me.
The man was hysterical on the bed. He kicked his skinny legs in the air. I glimpsed his dick.
"Fuckin' A, man, fuckin' A," he roared. I groped for the door. There were four locks on it and three chains, not just one. They dangled like earrings.
The knob felt greasy. I tried turning it a few times before getting the door open, and I could hear the guy laughing all the way down the stairs.
I ran back to Shepherd Avenue, my heart hammering. It was impossible to imagine my mother in a place like that. Maybe it had been nicer, back then - fresh paint, plants, clean sheets - but how much nicer could it have been? I couldn't get that horrible man out of my mind, either. His sick laugh lingered in my ears.
I slowed to a walk a block from home, knowing Connie's hatred for human sweat. I was going to get yelled at for destroying Grace's groceries but I didn't care. Nothing could be worse than what had just happened.
In the basement, noodles filled the table. When I came in, the breeze I brought caused them to wave like fingers. Angie was there, reading the Journal-American.
"You look like you just saw a ghost," Connie said.
"I did," I murmured.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Well, you sure stayed late at the park."
I was shocked. Grace had made up a lie for me, told them I'd gone to Highland Park to play.
"I forgot what time it was," I said. I was allowed to help take the noodles off the table after I'd washed my hands and Connie'd scrutinized them. She saw the scabs Grace's nails had left.
"What happened to your arm?"
"Nothing."
"Eh. What am I, blind?"
"Scraped it on the swings."
"Clumsy . . . you shaking?" she asked, still clasping my hands in search of dirt. "I feel you shaking."
"It got cold out," I lied.
CHAPTER FIVE
I was in my old room in Roslyn, under the covers of my bed, swirling my skinny legs against the cool cotton sheets, waiting for my mother to come up and tuck me in, the way she did every night. When I heard her footsteps on the carpeted stairs I shoved the blankets down to my waist, so there would be something to tuck. I wore pajamas with baseball players all over them - swinging bats, catching balls, sliding. Since the time I'd gotten beaned this was as close to the game as I was allowed to get.
As she entered the room I shut my eyes and faked sleep. It was one of our favorite games.
"Are you asleep, Joseph?" she stage-whispered.
I kept my eyes shut and tightened my lips to block a smile. Suddenly her hands were tickling my ribs, almost hard enough to hurt, but not quite. She never hurt me, my mother. I shrieked with laughter, windmilling my legs and tangling up the bedding.
"Look what you did! The maid's going to be mad when she sees this bed."
"We don't have a maid, Mommy."
"Oh no? What do I look like?"
"A mommy."
"All right, smarty-pants, all right." She pulled off the sheets and blankets, shook them straight and covered me, tucking me up to my armpits. This was just the primary tuck. Before leaving my room she would tuck me all the way to my neck.
"Did you wash your hands and brush your teeth?"
"Yes."
Her hand pushed my hair away from my forehead, giving her moist lips a clean target. I smelled the residue of dishwashing soap on her hands, a sweet fake odor of some chemist's concept of lemon.
"What a face. What a beautiful face. Why, I wouldn't trade that face for a diamond ring."
Time for another nightly game, in which I tried to think of things for which she would trade my face.
"How about a castle?"
"No, sir."
"How about . . . a big piece of gold, like at Fort Knox?" I pulled my arms out from under the covers and held them a brick-length apart.
"No deal, buddy."
"Ummmmm . . . how about a horse?"
"Now where would we keep a horse?"
"In the garage. He could eat the grass. Daddy wouldn't have to mow it."
"You silly. You'll have to do better than that."
I shut my eyes tightly to help my imagination fly, then opened them suddenly. "How about a hundred dollars?"
"Hmmm." She put one hand on her elbow and cupped the other under her chin. "Well, okay. For a hundred dollars it's a deal."
"Mommy!" I tried to sit up but she kept me down by leaning on my shoulders. She kissed my strained neck.
"All right, all right, no deal," she said when I'd calmed down. "Not even for a hundred dollars."
"What can you get with a hundred dollars?"
"Anything you want, Joseph."
"Anything?"
"The world." She smoothed back my hair again and smiled. "You can go anywhere you want with a hundred dollars."
"Asia? Europe?" I strained to remember the other continents I'd learned during geography lessons. "Africa?"
"Uh-huh."
"Did you and Daddy have a hundred dollars when you went on your moneyhoon?"
"Honeymoon. Yes, we did."
"Was I there?"
"In a way. You were here." She put a hand to her waist, over a hen that was embroidered on her apron. "A tiny seed, waiting to be born. Whenever we went someplace nice I lifted up my shirt so you could peek through my belly button."
"I don't remember that."
"That's because you were little. Very little."
"Like . . ." I recalled the dinner we'd just eaten. "A pea?"
"Oh, smaller. You could have danced on the head of a pin." She grinned at my doubting face. "It's true," she said softly. "That's how everybody starts out."
"Wow."
"But look at you now," she all but boomed. "You'll be even bigger than Daddy by the time you go on your honeymoon!"
"How come they call it a honeymoon?"
"Because you can take your honey all the way to the moon, if you want."
"Aw, Mommy, nobody can go to the moon."
She shrugged. "Maybe you will, someday." She dinked my nose with her fingertip. "All right, all right, no more stalling, sweetie. Go to sleep now."
"But I'm thinking about the moon."
"Think about your pillow. Pretend it's the moon."
"The kids in school say the moon is green cheese."
"When you go bring me back a piece, baby, I never tasted green cheese. Good night."
Her lips on my forehead: at their touch I closed my eyes, as usual, only this time something was wrong, very wrong. The blanket wasn't being tenderly tucked under my chin, it was crushing my neck, choking me. I opened my eyes to find myself in my mother's childhood home, flat on my back on the tacky linoleum. Grace Rothstein knelt over me, holding a stickball bat by its ends. The middle of it was pressed to my throat. She was determined to break my neck.
I couldn't even cry out. Her hair was loose, the blonde snakes wiggling - they'd developed mouths that snapped on air as they lashed around, trying to bite my nose.
"Wise guy," she breathed, over and over again, barely audible over the hissing of the snakes. "Little wise guy, little wise guy . . ."
The floor trembled beneath us, and I heard the roar of a train blasting past the window. I couldn't even turn my face to look at it. I saw only Grace, whose eyes were furnaces that blazed blue fire.
She leaned harder on the bat. Bones crunched in my throat. "Now I'll fix you."
She leaned her face close to mine. The snakes opened their mouths in unison, exposing dripping fangs. . . .
I was being shaken vigorously. I opened my eyes (weren't they already open?) and saw Vic in a sleeveless undershirt, squatting beside my cot, clenching my upper arms in his hammy hands. He held me steady for a moment, then added one more shake in annoyance before letting go of me.
"You wanna wake up the whole house? What the heck's the matter with you?"
I gulped air, surprised to find my throat working. "What'd I do?"
"You're moanin' and groanin' all over the place, that's what you did." His voice was whiny, cranky. He hated being awakened. "What'd you have, a nightmare?"
I shivered in response.
"Y'all right now?"
"I don't know."
"Go back to sleep, it was only a dream."
I grabbed his upper arm. Even when he was at rest, the muscle there was rock solid, "Vic. Stay with me a minute."
"Aw, Jeez! Joey, I got the last game of the year tomorrow. I gotta make an impression, you know what I'm talkin' about?" He blinked calf eyes and jutted his lower lip. "How'm I gonna hit the ball if I don't get some sleep?"
His hair stuck out in all directions, making his appearance funny enough to take away some of my fear. "Okay, I'll go to sleep," I murmured, knowing I wouldn't.
He sighed and scratched his bristly brow, where bangs would have hung if his hair hadn't been so wiry.
"Long as I'm up tell me about the nightmare."
The details were too horrible to describe. "I don't remember."
"You feelin' any better?"
"A little. . . . How come I don't have any brothers or sisters?"
The calf eyes widened. He shrugged his huge shoulders, nutbrown against the white undershirt straps. "How should I know?"
"I think you do. Grace says I killed the baby seeds in my mother when I was born."
"Oh boy." He swallowed, scratched his walnut-sized Adam's apple. "See, you were, like, what they call a difficult birth, ya got me?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean ya didn't come out of your mother head first like babies're supposed to. You were twisted around, like. Pointed the wrong way." He whirled his hands, then poked a forefinger into his navel. "So they hadda cut your mother open to get you. See?" The finger slid to the half-moon neckline of his undershirt. I could practically feel it on my own skin, "And that's how you were born."
Vic sighed as if he'd just delivered a lecture on nuclear physics. "That's all I know, kid."
Blood, blood - that was all I could see, flooding from the slash on my mother's belly. And me emerging from it like some kind of a swamp monster from a pond of human organs that were simultaneously beating, pumping, digesting, and croaking like bullfrogs.
Vic patted my head. "Hey. You want a glassa water?"
"No. . . . So she couldn't have more babies?"
"The way I heard it, the does said it'd be real dangerous for her to try. So she didn't. She coulda died. Okay?" He picked mucus from his eye. "That's why they raised you so careful, like. I mean it's why your mother wouldn't letcha play baseball."
My revulsion turned to fury. "How did you know that?"
"Shhh! Keep it down, willya?"
"Mel told you that, didn't she?"
"Yeah, she told me. You told her, so it wasn't no big secret, am I right?"
I was confused about whether or not Mel deserved my anger. "Look at me," Vic said.
I obeyed. He made a fist and rapped it against his forehead. "Suppose you got killed that time you got conked on the head. God forbid, but just suppose. There'd be nobody to inherit the house and stuff. No heirs, see?"
"My father sold the house."
"Well, there'd be nobody to inherit his money. Me and your old man, there's two of us, so even if one of us dies there's one left to get everything here."
"What if you both die?"
Vic's eyebrows hiked up. He'd never thought about that. "Nah," he decided after five seconds of consideration. "That ain't likely. The odds are against it." He chuckled. "I'm gonna die? Look at me." He rapped his fists against his chest. "Let's turn in."
He took my chin in thumb and forefinger and twisted my face toward his.
"Do me one favor and don't go askin' my mother about this stuff, all right? And don't tell her what I told you."
"Why not?"
"Willya just do me that favor, Joey?" For the first time that night he was truly angry and not just annoyed.
"I won't ask." I pulled his hand off my chin. He clambered over to his bed and rumbled his way under the covers. "Two in the morning. The ball's gonna look like an aspirin." He lay still for maybe a minute, then rolled over.
"Hey, Joey. They call babies born like you cesareans."
I sat up. "Say that again."
"Say-zee-ree-yuns."
"Say-zee-ree-yuns?"
"You got it."
I felt a shiver of pride at the word, which suggested to me soldiers in armor wielding flashing swords.
"It's how come you got a round head," he explained. "See, you didn't have to come through what they call the birth canal. That's what squashes people's heads on the sides."
My hands flew to my temples. My head felt round as a basketball. "Hey, Vic, your head isn't squashed."
"It is a little. Everybody with a normal head is like that."
"I'm normal!"
"Shhh! I didn't mean normal, I meant . . ." he exhaled, probed the meager shelves of his vocabulary for the right word. "Regular," he finally said. "You ain't regular."
"I am too. What's the birth canal?"
It was too dark to
see if he was blushing, but he must have been. "Can't tell you, Joey."
"Aw, come on."
Sigh. "Well. It's where a woman takes a leak."
"You're kidding me."
"No, I ain't. I swear it's true." His right hand crossed his heart. "I came through it, Joey."
"And my father?"
"Yup. Everybody in this house but you."
Isolation. The thrill of being a cesarean soldier was fading fast.
"I gotta go to the bathroom," I said.
I groped my way there, flicked on the light and looked in the mirror. It wasn't the roundness of my head I noticed, it was my slitted eyes, narrowed to protect my retinas from the sudden hundred-watt glare. I thought I looked like a Chinaman but I didn't think my head was any rounder than Vic's. I went back to the room.
"You forgot to flush."
"I didn't go. I just looked in the mirror."
"Oh, God, what did I start here?"
"Come to the bathroom with me, Vic, I wanna see your head."
"Joey, you get under those covers. I mean it."
"Please."
He jumped off his bed, landing like an ape on his thick hairy legs. "Gonna strike out four times tomorrow," he groaned, but he followed me.
"God, that's bright." He covered his eyes with his hand, peeking through the fingers. I squinted at our reflection. He needed a shave. His fingers went to his temples. "See how it's dented here? You ain't got that."
If our heads were different, it was a minor difference, at best, the sort that would go unnoticed unless mentioned.
But of course everything was mentioned on Shepherd Avenue. I was a marble in a world of peanuts. I blinked back tears. "Do you still like me, Vic?"
The hands fell from his temples. "Of course. Jerk. Whaddya think?"
Ghostlike, dentureless, unbraided hair flowing, nightgown billowing, Connie appeared at the doorway.
"What are you two doing?"
Vic scratched his chest. "Comparing our heads, Ma." Connie looked at us as if she wondered what planet we'd be returning to. Luckily for us she was too tired to pursue it.
"Go to bed before I call Bellevue." She shuffled away. "Coupla nuts."
Vic giggled on the way to the room. When we were under the covers I apologized for keeping him awake.
"Ah, don't worry about it, I'll still murder the ball."
It was thrilling to hear him talk baseball, the only part of his life that swelled his ego.
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