Court of the Myrtles

by Lois Cahall

  Chapter Four

  Julia and I met on the very first day of first grade. Swinging our lunch buckets we stood in a lazy line awaiting the sound of the copper bell. Recess was only moments away as Julia stared at me with that vague white-bread-girl look that I’d grown accustomed to whenever I did something that didn’t fit conventional life, like chomping on a chewy piece of rosewater-flavored Turkish delight, its powdered sugar falling onto my navy plaid skirt.

  I knew Julia was about to ask me why I was eating that instead of a Snickers bar, but before she could, I held my sticky hand to her face. “My grandma makes it, okay?”

  “Your grandma makes candy?” Julia made a googley-eyed expression. “I wish my grandma made candy. I wish I had a grandma.”

  Not what I expected to hear. I even stopped chewing. How do you compete with that?

  “Can I try some?” she asked.

  “I suppose,” I said, half willing to share, and then rethinking it. ‘Half a piece.” And so I bit into a fresh candy and handed her the smaller half, our fingers sticking together in between, instant sugar-sisters.

  “It’s good,” was all she could say.

  And just like that, we were best friends.

  Midway through second grade, and several pounds of Turkish delights later, my mother Rosie decided to break free from grandmother.

  “I’m leaving,” she announced to Grandma, who wiped her hands on the dish towel before snapping back, “Leaving? For what? Are you crazy? You have everything here. A television, card games Tuesday nights, bingo at the church hall, every comfort you could want…”

  Nobody mentioned the comforts I had, entertaining Uncle Zaven with my dance routines—the ones I’d perform off-beat to Mario Lanza’s albums blaring from the old turntable in the parlor. Grandma would stand in the doorway while I invented Irish jigs after running out of jitterbug moves. Her eyes would narrow, her shoulders slump, fists clenched at her sides, a stance that only an Armenian grandma could make. “You’re just like your mother!” she’d holler. It was never clear to me whether she intended this as a compliment or criticism.

  All our belongings were stuffed into a couple old plaid-maroon suitcases. This was it. We were leaving.

  Then, Mom dragged a small wooden stepladder to the attic door. Up on the shelf, tucked in a hiding place I’d never have noticed, sat a metal container, an old turquoise-colored candy tin that depicted Peter Rabbit on parade. Mom blew dust from its top then put her finger to her lips. It was just a candy tin, for gosh sake! What could possibly be inside? Candy!

  Our new apartment was smaller than Grandma’s house. So small that our orange, velvet divan had to serve as a sofa by day and a bed by night. For the both of us. That sofa was the centerpiece of our tiny domain, surrounded by five Casey & Hayes moving boxes of books, an avocado folding tube chair, a half-dead spider plant and the poster of a curly haired blond woman in a blue sailor suit that read, “Go Navy.”

  The radiator spit cold air instead of heat, but the air-conditioning came cheap and naturally, just by raising the window. Stick your head out and you were sucked into a vortex of Boston noise pollution, bus fumes and Motown. Tip your head down to the courtyard below and you could spy a trio of Afro-haired brothers pulling their Cadillac up for a polish, their radios pumping out Smokey Robinson or Marvin Gaye. Mom wasn’t a “Tracks of My Tears” kind of gal, so she’d position herself in the middle of our living room on an imaginary center-stage and await the next song—“I Second that Emotion”—moving slowly at first, her unsteady hand dripping martini onto the gold shag carpet. She’d sip, move and spill, sip, move, and spill, until eventually handing me the near-empty glass so she could strip down to her lace bra and panties for the finale. I know, I know… but I loved her lack of inhibitions.

  Grandma would have vetoed this behavior in a heartbeat, of course, and that’s why we were here. The apartment lease had Mom’s name on it and Mom would proudly proclaim, “I only answer to the person who pays the rent!” And then she’d point to her chest and tip her head back in mad laughter.

  My best friend Julia lived in the same building and she’d beg to come over so she could watch my mother first-hand. I could have charged admission and handed out popcorn the way Julia would show up, plop down on our velvet couch, and smile encouragingly up at my mom.

  My mom tried to get her to join me as another back-up singer, showing Julia the swimming moves our arms should make. Julia threw out her limbs as if she were some tribal leader in an African dance troupe, while her head started going up and down like one of those bobble-head dogs you used to see in the back of cars. There we were, three white women transformed into the Supremes. And Mom was our Diana Ross.

  The balding man across the way, with the big belly and the eagle tattoo on his forearm wanted her to be his playmate, too. He watched us from the stool on his fire escape, his cigarette dangling between his lips, his hands clapping, his feet stomping. He wasn’t as trustworthy as Uncle Zaven but he was our lone audience. And sometimes, you take what you’re given.

  When we were done, we always peered down to the Cadillac boys waxing their “boats” below and scream “High five, brothers!” They tolerated our pathetic shouts, waving a lazy arm from where they polished their tires’ white walls, refusing to stand, let alone glance up at the foolish white girls.

  Fixed in my memory is the day we ended our routine by tossing a polyester Pucciknockoff scarf into the air where it hung for a magical beat before billowing down like a flying snake. Below, the little girls with banana curls stopped jumping double-dutch, dropped their ropes, and skipped delightedly over to catch it before it landed on the concrete.

  My mom was always happy, always smiling, always greeting the sun. There was only one occasion when I felt her fear.

  We had been walking home from the Star Market juggling heavy bags of groceries in our arms. There was a sound of footsteps from behind. Mom and I had been discussing the multiplication tables I had for homework when she looked down at me and her tone turned to something I’d never heard. “Would you know what to do if a man was following you down the street?” There was a slight crackle in her voice.

  “Sure,” I lied, the footsteps gaining on us.

  “What?” asked Mom.

  “I’d… I don’t know…”

  “You’d walk proud and tall like we’re doing now. You’d even turn around,” which she did. “Make sure you make eye contact with him—nod, maybe smile.” She did that, too. “Let him know you have an inner sense of security and you’re having a good day and nobody is going to change that feeling,” she said loudly, and I got the courage to turn my face up to meet his just in time to see his stubbly chin break into an embarrassed smile. He gave me the once over and then limped by us in his dirty sneakers, leaving a trail of unwashed odor as he passed by. It all happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to be afraid, and besides, I was busy shuffling my bags of deli meats and ginger ale from one arm to the other.

  “And never show fear. Ever. Stay in control,” said my mother, exhaling and regaining her schoolteacher tone. “Good girl. Now, what were we saying?”

  After dark the “combat zone” was off limits to anybody with an ounce of brains in their head—unless, of course, you were my mother, who did have an ounce of brains, but also a pound of guts to go with it. She worked in an old brick building on Washington Street during the day, though a thin stream of sunlight only made it through the casement windows from 10 a.m. until 10:45. I know this precisely because Mom would tow me in on the school holidays, sit me down next to her on a metal chair, and instruct me to quietly color my books. It was fine, because I loved being with her, and I loved coloring, even though my crayons were mostly broken and I was always missing a yellow.

  In that dingy room with stained walls that matched the lone, grey file cabinet, my mom was tutored in hotline crisis, safe-home rules, court advocacy and childcare supervision. This was long before women’s shelters existed anywhere else. It
took seventy hours of training before she was considered for a temporary position at the local halfway house called No Place to Go in the Back Bay. Here she helped to empower the victims of unwanted pregnancies and domestic abuse. She taught the women to move forward and be “free to be.” After only three days, the shelter’s coordinator saw my mom’s passion for her job and offered her a full-time position. A position with benefits, ones that she stashed inside a blue shoe box where a pair of stilettos also lived—leopard black ones that never saw an evening’s dinner and dancing in their lives. It was supposed to be a secret, but of course I knew. Yet the one secret spot I most wanted to know about was that Peter Rabbit tin now above the refrigerator at the back of a small cupboard. It seemed impossible for me—or her—to reach even with a ladder. I often wondered how she got it up there in the first place. Besides, even if I could reach it, if I could get up there, she’d secured it shut with a simple satin ribbon in a French bow that might be easy to remove, but impossible for a child to re-tie. What made the tin so special? Wouldn’t the candy on the inside be old and stale? Shouldn’t we just eat it already?

  We didn’t have much in that studio apartment, but we had love, records, martinis and each other. We were “free to be!” as she would scream over the sounds of the neighbors fighting through our paper-thin walls, drowning them out with the help of Diana Ross’s “Baby Love.”

  One day I finally asked, “Free to be what?”

  “Anything you want,” she said, mussing up my hair.

  It had been a few years since Alice tossed the keys back at the Laundromat owner and said, “Thanks for the memories, but I need to get some sleep.” And sleep she did, until her career took a new direction via a bus route—hers, as it happened—driving the elementary kids to class.

  Alice loved her new position as a driver because she finally got to sit down on the job while also seeing Joy off to school. Of course her daughter would have preferred a mother who stood up, one preferably at the bus stop, like the other mothers. Poor Joy: the yellow bus pulls up to the curb, the doors peel wide and… there was her mom with her wild, cropped red hair, sitting in the driver’s seat, right hand on the clutch and a big smile on her face. “Morning, Sunshines! Hop aboard!”

  “Is that your mother?” asked the little girl with perfectly coifed pigtails in satin white ribbons. Joy pretended she didn’t know what the pigtail girl was talking about for a while before casually admitting, “Oh her? Yup, that’s my mommy.” She tried to ignore the stifled snickers. Instead she focused on the ritual of mounting the Everest of steep black steps onto the bus, the tightrope walk down the center aisle and the grateful safety of a vinyl-ripped seat. Once snuggled into the window side of the school bus, she placed her Casper the Ghost lunchbox onto her lap, opening and shutting the little metal latch, clickity-clack, as Casper’s face reassured her with his half-moon smile.

  Joy was happy to be as invisible as Casper the Ghost at school. She was used to it, after all, barely having an identity at home. Every morning she reflected that she didn’t even have a slot in the toothbrush holder. It only held four. One for Alice, one for her dad, and the back slots for two of her three older brothers. The rubber shoe mat at the front door only handled three pairs at a time and no matter how many attempts Joy made at maneuvering her Mary Jane’s alongside her father’s black wing tips, her brothers’ muddy sneakers would somehow always edge them out.

  After school, Joy would return home to find her father was sitting comatose, staring at the television commercials. Today it was Folgers. “Instant Folgers tastes good as fresh perked” explained the overly enthusiastic 1960s housewife in floral apron and house-dress.

  Joy ran her fingers along her father’s barker lounger and asked, “Want to watch me do cartwheels in the yard?”

  “Can’t,” he’d say. “I’m busy.” And then he returned his gaze to the Calgon woman in the pink bubble bath: the one who wanted to have him “take me away.”

  Joy turned to wander off singing to the tune for Slinky. “What walks the stair without a care, and makes the happiest sound, runs up and down just like a clown, everyone knows, it’s Slinky. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky for fun it’s a wonderful toy; It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, a favorite of girls and boys…”

  “Quiet down!” her father hollered, as Joy stared longingly into the eyes of the Madonna statues that graced the hissing radiators. The Blessed Mary with the rosary beads had a chip on her big toe.

  Piles of knitting, unfolded laundry and stacks of clipped coupons from old newspapers consumed all the sofa cushions. Nowhere to sit. But she didn’t feel like sitting today anyway. Slipping quietly down the hall, past the glassy-eyed deer head hanging on the wall—a gift to her father from the Elks Club for helping them with a burglary—Joy made her way into the tiny cramped kitchen. She ignored the dried spaghetti dishes piled in the sink, she ignored everything, for today Joy was on a mission—she headed for the pantry shelves. Her hand blindly groped for the package, the sound of the crinkling cellophane competed with the soap opera voice on the television as her fingers closed around it. Got it!

  She squeezed down between the laundry basket and the cases of Pepsi. And there, safely tucked in her little nook, Joy discovered the comfort of Oreo cookies. They made their way to her mouth, her tummy—and eventually to her hips, thighs and waistline. And to her heart. The delayed gratification of separating the chocolate outer from the crème was out of the question. She inhaled them. She needed love and she needed it now.

  Ten minutes and five cookies later, with two nestled in her palm for safe keeping, she washed the last crumbs down her throat with Zarex, not a hero from Greek mythology, but a sugary juice drink with the funny-looking zebra on the label. She imagined what it might be like to see a real zebra at the Franklin Park zoo and just knew this might finally be the Sunday her mother kept promising to take her there. But in the meantime, she had the next best thing. Her cookies.

  What was to become a ritual was always interrupted by her brothers bursting through the front door like horses through the starting gate, except these ponies punched, jostled and called out obscenities. That was Joy’s cue to become a ghost again, sliding out the backdoor, past the basket of wet laundry into the backyard. There she found her best companion, her trusty wooden swing, hanging under the oak tree. Hopping up onto its weathered seat, she twisted into a large loop, her palm squeezing the last cookie for dear life.

  And there he was. Georgey Pfeifer. The boy she’d first met in kindergarten: the one she’d lifted her pink dress for to show her scallop-edged polyester slip underneath, the one who made her feel like a fairy princess and who responded like Prince Charming reaching out to touch it…“Is it supposed to be so soft?”

  Joy craned her neck to see what he was up to now, two backyards over. His family had moved there during the middle of the school year after his mother found out she was pregnant with twins. The only thing separating Georgey from Joy was a green chain-link fence and a revolving clothesline of pink-striped sheets.

  Joy watched Georgey line up his Matchbox cars in a straight row on the metal bulkhead. Once in order, he let them fly at full speed and crash to their destiny below… a walkway made of flagstones. Some cars would ricochet across the lawn as Georgey let out a loud “Yeaaaah!” before he fell to the ground dead.

  And then he looked up, as if he knew she’d been watching him all along “Hi,” he mouthed, with a half-ass wave, the kind little boys do when they don’t really want to be bothered waving.

  As far as Joy was concerned it didn’t really matter if he waved now or not, because someday she would kiss him and then they’d have to get married. He could bring all his toy cars into their big bedroom and she’d line up all her Barbie dolls on the shelf next to the dresser. And they’d live happily ever after.

  Joy slammed the toes of her white Ked sneakers into the dirt pit she formed beneath her. Twirling her ropes into a mad twist, she hummed a song to herself.

  Joy li
ved in a Houdini world of disappearance and illusion. Her mother hadn’t been there today to know she lost the spelling bee to the word “soapy” (she’d spelt it “ey.”) and nobody ever attended her school plays, not even the recent one where she was a pilgrim girl. She had practiced her one line in the bathroom mirror every morning “Let us harvest cranberries and be bountiful.” Georgey Pfeifer got to be a Wampanoag Indian. His mother had hand-cut and glued him a loin cloth with a full-feathered headdress, adorned by beads that twinkled in the stage lighting. If he’d only landed the role of Governor William Bradford of the Mayflower, Joy could have married him right then on the spot. But everybody knew pilgrims didn’t marry Indians. And besides, she almost lost her role as the pilgrim girl because Alice kept forgetting to sew Joy’s costume since the brown leather buttons cost too much. It was quite a surprise when all the other mothers chipped in and sewed a smock out of brown felt that tied in the back.

  Joy waited for the sound of a car door in the driveway, the signal that Alice was home. She dug her sneakers deeper into the hole, making sure the dirt on her sneakers killed the white laces for good. With each stamp, she counted wishes. “Wish one. When I grow up I’m going to marry a rich man and stay at home and bake cupcakes all day long with my daughter. Wish two, we’ll go to Disneyland and—”

  “Hey, brat!” her brother screamed out. Joy froze from swinging, knotted up in her ropes. He called again from behind the kitchen screen door, “Who do you think you’re talking to out there?”

  “None of your bee’s wax,” Joy mouthed back. “Wish three,” she whispered, while plugging her fingers into her ears. “Have no mean brothers for my daughter.”

  “Hey brat! I’m talking to you,” he persisted. “Did Mom say you could eat those cookies before dinner? Did she? I’m talking to you! Answer me!”

  “I’m telling,” said her other brother. And then they sing-songed in unison “I’m telling, I’m telling…”