by Dennis Smith
“Poor Mario is dead, huh?” I ask.
“I guess so,” Mommy says. “I never knew him, except I saw him sitting on the stoop like he was hypnotized.”
That’s why they call him crazy Mario, I am thinking as I lie in the top bunk, thinking about the day. He just sat around staring at the cracks in the sidewalk. He made no response if you talked to him, even if you said “Excuse me” when you passed him in the hall or if you held the vestibule door for him. He was old enough to be in college, but, I am thinking, if all he does is stare at the sidewalks, he probably doesn’t know how to read. I wonder what he stared at in his apartment. Did he have a certain part of the wallpaper that he liked more than the other? I knew they had wallpaper because I saw it once when I passed down the hall and their door was open, a million little flowers. Wallpaper was expensive, like a phonograph or one of those big radios that got Chicago, and you didn’t have such things unless somebody gave them to you. I wondered what it was like to have no life at all, and to have wallpaper and just stare out in front of you like some statue, and to have no voice to say nothing to no one. It’s like being dead, not talking to anyone, or not knowing if anyone was around you. And Mario is probably better off being dead, but I wonder where he is. Up or down? Heaven or hell? Did he do a lot of sinning behind those eyes that just stared out? Did he see Sue Flanagan’s thighs when she crossed her legs on the stoop? That would give him a sin. And now he is dead, plopped like a pancake in my backyard, and I hope he is in heaven because in heaven your eyes are opened and you see everything, and Mario could have his voice back and he could say hello to everybody. But can you go to heaven if you jump out the window? I wonder who can answer that for me.
Chapter Seven
We are in a big hall, a Democratic club up on Third Avenue and 59th Street. When the trains aren’t going by outside on the Third Avenue El, we can hear the fiddle music. I am counting, seven, seven, seven, and then three and three. This is an Irish reel, and it is not so hard to do, but there are so many kids in the room we are tripping over each other. The music never stops. It just goes on and on, the fiddle player at the front of the room with a cigarette curving out of his mouth looking out of the window as he plays, watching the trains go by, or seeing who is walking into Bloomingdale’s across the street.
I hate it here, everyone crowded in this big room, sweating, jumping up and down like we were crushing grapes. I could be at Kips Bay in the swimming pool, but I am here because of my grandfather.
Mommy takes me here twice a month—Billy, too—to learn how to do the dances of the old country. The old country is not my old country. America is my old country. I’ve been in this country for seven years, since the day I was born in the Jewish hospital in the town of Bedford-Stuyvesant in the state of Brooklyn, and so it is old to me.
Mr. Mulvehill is doing the teaching, and he just goes on and on like the fiddle player, counting the numbers aloud like a cash register taking a bagful of pennies, “… and a one two three four five six seven and a one two three four five six seven and a …” He goes on and on until he yells at somebody for not listening to the music, but I wonder what a miracle it would be to hear the music over the screeching of the trains on the Third Avenue El and Mr. Mulvehill’s countless numbers.
The lessons are free, and that is why Mommy drags us up here. We used to go in the back room of Breffney’s Bar on 58th Street, but the crowd of kids got too big and they had to move it to this place. Some Irish society, I don’t know which one, pays Mr. Mulvehill to teach us the reels and the jigs and the Stack of Barley and the Siege of Venice, which I think is a place in Italy that I guess the Irish captured in a war. The Irish have wars the way the French have girlfriends, my grandfather says, a new one every week or so. I don’t understand my grandfather very much, because he comes from Cork, which besides being the top of a bottle is also a town in Ireland where they talk so fast that they say ten words for every one of ours. I am guessing that the fact that my grandfather came from Cork is the reason we have to do the dances of the old country. Why couldn’t my grandfather come from some nice place like Mexico, so that instead of learning the dances we could learn how to take a nap after lunch?
Mr. Mulvehill gives other lessons for money, but there are not too many kids in those classes. Those that go to the paid classes are mostly girls. I don’t know why we have to come here for our free lessons, except that Mommy has told us that in America the Irish have to keep their dances and their songs, or they will be in danger of getting the jobs in the banks and becoming milquetoasts, which is a toast as white as milk and a complete failure as toast. And, anyway, there’s not much for free in our neighborhood except for Saturday confessions at church and the Ping-Pong game at Kips Bay Boys Club.
Mr. Mulvehill calls everyone “you dare,” and then he ends every sentence with “got it?”
I have my count going pretty good, and I can see between my hops and three steps that Mr. Mulvehill is coming over to me. Oh-oh, I am thinking, because Mr. Mulvehill hardly has anything good to say except a yell.
“You dare,” he says to me, “listen to the music dare, an’ keep your eyes dare on your nose an’ keep your head straight dare, got it? An’ hands down like fists glued against your sides, got it?”
“Yes, Mr. Mulvehill,” I say, bopping away from him in my sevens.
He says this to everyone, but I don’t know why I should let him yell at me like this. I think everybody in the room is looking at me, and I think he should yell at somebody else, because I have all my sevens and threes memorized. The kick steps are coming in another month, and we’re going to have to remember much more than the sevens and threes, and Mr. Mulvehill will just go on yelling at everybody, anyway.
The music breaks and I look around for my mother through the crowd of forty or so kids who are still bopping up and down just for the fun of it.
Mommy is sitting on a wooden seat at the side wall, and I go over to her.
“Get back in line,” she says. I can hardly hear her in the clack of the bopping kids.
“I am tired of dancing, Mommy.”
“You are not tired.”
“I am, and I don’t like it.”
“Dancing is good for you, it makes you stand up straight.”
“You told me that milk is good for my teeth, too, but how come I get so many toothaches? And don’t say it’s growing pains.”
“Don’t argue with me, Dennis, until you gain another hundred pounds.”
I guess she means that I can argue with her when I get bigger, but somehow I know that she won’t let me argue with her even if I’m in high school.
I go back to the line when the music starts, and I start counting my sevens. How long, I am thinking, before I can argue with my mother, before I will be able to not do something that I don’t want to do? Some kids have been coming here for years, from kindergarten all the way up to the eighth grade. So many dances to know, and so many numbers to count. And I’ll be here, too, until I’m an old man. All because of my grandfather.
Billy took an old wooden liquor box and made a stable for Christmas. Mommy put a bunch of straw in it and a few figures she bought at the five-and-ten, and we made a little Christ child out of some cotton and a piece of old sheet. She bought a baby Jesus with the other figures, but the one we made looked like the real McCoy and not like a doll. Billy cut a hole in the back of the box for a tree light, and when it was all lit up, it looked like there really was a baby God in the stable.
There were lots of good gifts under the tree: flannel shirts, pajamas, socks, a football game that runs on batteries, a bunch of coloring books, and a paint box with watercolors, made in occupied Japan.
Now it’s two days after Christmas, and we still don’t have the batteries for the football, and Mommy gives us the money to buy them at the candy store across the street next to the Hotel Sutton.
Billy is racing me down the stairs two by two to go to the candy store, and when we get to the vestibule, somethin
g happens that is so different from anything I have ever seen that I can only think about what fun I am going to have.
All we can see before us is a wall of white. The snow is up and over the stoop and almost up to the top of the front door, tons and tons of snow. It must have come down from the sky like a falling mountain, even bigger than the Alps. I am now wishing and wishing, feeling my eyes getting bigger and bigger, that I got a sled for Christmas instead of the electric football. What fun we could have today with a sled. Maybe someone on the block has one and will let us take a ride.
A bunch of neighbors are in the hall and talking about how everything is closed for the day: banks, grocery stores, churches, everything.
We run up and tell Mommy that the candy store is closed and that there is the biggest amount of snow on the ground that ever fell. But Mommy doesn’t seem so happy. In fact, she looks sad and disappointed.
“I saw the snow on the windowsill,” she says, “but I didn’t think it was this bad, and I have to go to Mr. Austin’s.”
“But,” Billy says, “everything’s closed.”
“Mr. Austin isn’t closed, and he wants me there today.”
“The snow is higher than the door,” I say.
“You guys will have to come with me,” Mommy says. “I just have to get there.”
“No, Mommy, we have to play in the snow.”
“Later, maybe,” Mommy says, “but you’ll have to come with me.”
Now Billy is making a path with a shovel he borrowed from Mr. Bopp, the super. People all over the block are digging away to make pathways, and there is a big path in the middle of the street, with snow so high on both sides that you think you’re in a tunnel without a roof.
We reach the middle path, and we make our way down to Sutton Place, and then Billy and I have to dig our way out of the middle path and into one of the buildings on York Avenue, where we meet a doorman who is digging a path of his own.
Mommy talks to him for a minute, and he tells her that she can’t go into the main entrance.
“I’m sorry, lady,” I hear him say, “but the rules are the rules.”
It is a warm day, and there is no smoke coming out from anyone’s mouth when they talk.
We make our way in the middle path again and go around to 57th Street. There we have to dig out of the middle path again with the shovel and our hands, Mommy and me acting like steam shovels scooping up the snow, until we get to the iron gates of the service entrance. The service elevator man takes us up to the tenth floor, the four of us crowded into the elevator with a big burlap bag of garbage.
Mr. Austin has a marble floor when you go into his apartment, and he tells Mommy that the marble floor has a lot of stains on it and that it has to be clean for a party he is having tonight.
“Who will ever come out in this snow?” Mommy says, and she laughs a little.
Mr. Austin doesn’t think this is so funny, and he sort of scolds Mommy.
“Well,” he says, “whoever comes will walk on a clean floor, anyway.”
Billy looks at me, and I know that he wants to hit Mr. Austin over the head with the shovel. Mommy brings us into the kitchen, where we sit on the windowsill and watch her fill a pail with soap and water. We don’t say anything as we watch her because we know that she is embarrassed. I feel pretty bad that she is upset.
“Okay,” she says finally as she throws a brush into the pail, “so he is not a very nice man, but we need the money. I can’t wait around for sunny days to get some work, you know.”
Chapter Eight
Billy is ten years old, and he shouldn’t have done it. I am putting my tie on, getting ready for school, and Mommy has been going through Billy’s homework book, checking his lessons, and she has just seen what he has written on a back page. And she is yelling at the top of her lungs.
“This is so disgusting,” Mommy is saying, “and you should know better than to say this. To write this vile thing. Filthy, gutter mouth. How did you get to be so repulsive? Your father would never use language like this, and your grandfather, either.”
I hear Billy running, and Mommy is running after him. She has a wooden hanger in her hand.
“Your grandfather is a gentleman, and he cares about keeping his mouth as clean as his shirt. But you …”
Billy is now through the kitchen. I hate it when Mommy goes on and on like this. She gets something in her mind and it is there forever, and she never gets off it.
“You,” she is yelling, “you make me sick.”
Billy runs into our little room and jumps into a corner of the bottom bunk bed, trying to hide. Mommy is right behind him.
“Detestable piece of work,” she yells. “I’ll fix you, young man.”
She is now swinging the wooden hanger, and the hanger goes off Billy’s leg and it breaks in half, but Mommy is still swinging, and the broken part of the wood goes into Billy’s leg, and Billy’s skin rips and he is bleeding all over the bottom bunk, and Billy yells, but just once.
I run out into the kitchen, and I see Billy’s notebook open on the top of the kitchen table, and I pick it up and read the words. I can see why Billy should have known better, for he is ten years old, and should know that if you have to write, in large block letters, PAULIE FRYDE IS AN ASS-SUCKING FAGGOT, you should write it on a piece of paper that isn’t in a notebook where your mother can read it.
Mommy comes into the kitchen, and I drop the book, and she opens the medicine cabinet above the kitchen sink and pulls out a box of Band-Aids. But there is only one Band-Aid, and Billy will need a much bigger bandage to stop the bleeding, and so Mommy takes a kitchen towel and tears it in half and runs back into Billy, who is as silent as a lamb under a shady tree.
Billy limps a little, but it is not too bad, and Mommy says that the cut won’t need any stitches. She taped the kitchen towel around his leg, and we are going off to school now. Mommy is at the door, and she has Billy’s homework book in her hand. Her bright green eyes are all watery. She kisses Billy and gives him the book.
“Tear that page out,” Mommy says, “and throw it in the garbage under the front stairs.”
“All right, Mommy,” Billy answers.
“And we won’t talk about it again.”
“All right, Mommy.”
Billy has to walk down the stairs one step at a time, and as we limp down together he makes me promise that I won’t tell anyone at school what happened, I guess because Paulie Fryde will have a good laugh if he found out that Billy got beat because he wrote that Paulie Fryde was a faggot.
I promise, easily, because there is no way I would ever tell anyone, anyway.
St. John’s school yard, just across from us on 56th Street, is filled with running and shouting children, the girls all in blue jumpers and white blouses, the boys in white shirts and blue ties. Billy and I get there just as Sister Regina, the principal, rings the big brass handbell. It is almost like watching a movie go into slow motion to see what happens when Sister Regina rings the bell, for all the running and shouting stops immediately and everyone walks quietly to their class line and gets lined up, like boxes on a drugstore shelf.
Sister Stella looks very old to me, older than Mommy, and her face is always in shadows and just barely sticks out from her bonnet, like it would stick out from a small cave. Sometimes I expect to see bats flying out from Sister Stella’s bonnet. On the first day of class she wrote on the blackboard, “Be happy and you will learn.” She is the only nun I ever heard of who talks about being happy. Petey Poscullo says she probably takes opium.
But she told us that her favorite saint is Saint John Bosco of a long time ago, who was a teacher like her and who said that the teacher has to love the students or else nothing happens. So she is always talking about love and being happy.
There are twenty-one of us in the classroom, and I am sitting in the front row, next to Marilyn Rolleri. Marilyn is a quiet girl, one of those girls who you never know is there except that she has the right answer to every
question that is ever asked. And Marilyn has the thinnest legs, so thin that I wonder how they hold her body up. She wears white socks which she folds over neatly, and when I have nothing to do in class, I look at her legs against the old, gray wooden slats of the floor and think about touching them, maybe playing Trust Me, where you keep inching your hand up a girl’s uniform saying trust me until she says I don’t trust you anymore. Then you have to stop. I have never done this, but Joey Jurgensen told me he did it with Jenny Gilmore before she transferred to public school. Joey got lucky there, but I know that he never got to kiss her. It is not easy to kiss a girl in our neighborhood.
There are three tall windows that shine light into the classroom like it was a movie set. I am doing my penmanship lesson, practicing the capital letters as Sister Stella has written them on the board. It is the Palmer Method of writing, and it works out pretty good if you remember to use the Sunday cane at the front of the H, K, M, N, U, V, W, Y, and Z.
“More than a third of the alphabet,” Sister Stella told us, “depends on the straightness of the Sunday cane.”
I think I am doing them all right, but Sister Stella is now behind me and hits my knuckles with a ruler. It doesn’t hurt. Sister Stella wouldn’t hurt anyone because it would interfere with them being happy, and if you are not happy, you can’t learn.
“Your Sunday canes,” Sister says, “are wiggly, and you could make them a lot straighter.”
The problem is that I can’t get Billy out of my mind. I never saw Billy being a wise guy, or a tough guy, and I wonder why he would write curse words in his notebook. Mommy has a small sign on a piece of cardboard that she tacked up on the wall next to the icebox in the kitchen. Let your speech, it goes, be like apples of silver set in pictures of gold. I think it’s from the Bible, but it doesn’t say. I only know that Mommy always wants us to use proper language, and cursing is not allowed.
I work on my Sunday canes, especially the starting lines on the Ms and Ns, making them perfect half-moons at the top and lines straight as a fire pole at the bottom. I do this, and I am happy, the way Sister wants us to be.
