by Diane Munier
I can’t believe my ears. Abigail May and I still wear undershirts. My Granma wouldn’t even believe she has to get me a bra cause I’m flat as a board.
“Was she embarrassed?” I ask meaning Jennifer.
“I was,” Abigail says.
Well I’m embarrassed just hearing about it.
“Imagine your Aunt May buying you a bra in the five and dime and along comes the Hardy Boys,” I say, barely able to.
Abigail squeals and kicks her feet and her flashlight goes rolling off her lap. We’re in the bomb shelter by the way. We’re lying back on the blankets rolled up. It’s cool down here.
Granma yells down then. What is going on down there, and I say nothing. “Come on out of there and go play in the sunshine,” she says.
“Yes ma’am,” I say and we sigh and get up.
Later on we are wearing our new sunglasses from Moe’s. He got some in in pink and blue and Abigail May wanted to buy the pink ones too, and I got mad and said fine I just won’t get any, and she gave in and got blue and I’m telling her they are real nice as we skate along. Oh yeah we’re skating and we got our new shoe skates on, our Roller Derby Street Kings we both got last Christmas. No more keys and clamp-ons for us.
Hers have yellow pom-poms and mine have pink. I wanted red but Granma got mixed up so I got pink.
Anyway we skate at Moe’s most evenings after supper. That way we don’t terrorize the shoppers, as Moe puts it, cause we take that corner where the stoop and the door are located pretty fast and mean. Luckily he closes at five so it’s a pretty dead corner and paved without cracks, just one big L of smooth, smooth.
So we get pretty fancy and folks are used to the two of us going back and forth around Moe’s.
Now catty-corner to Moe’s is the other store Mac’s. Granma and Aunt May don’t deal there except after Moe’s closes if we want ice cream or we get desperate for something.
Mac is real nice to kids if they got a big person with them, but if a kid goes in to look at the comics he won’t even let you look he says, “Hurry up there. Hurry up there now,” cause he lives in back and he wants to get back to his television. But if I go in with Granma he plucks at me and gives me a sucker and he smiles so big it looks like The Twilight Zone.
“That big phony,” Granma says.
But we’ve been skating a while when I hear this whistle, like Frank Sinatra might whistle at Marilyn Monroe if he knows her.
I’m rounding the corner at Moe’s, going fast like I do, and sometimes I lift my foot even and I’m getting ready too, and there’s the whistle and I look over at Mac’s and there are the Hardy Boys and I go right off the curb and halfway into the street and a car comes to a screeching halt and I’m on the ground right in front of it. Abigail May is yelling her head off and I think I’m gone for a minute, like out cause I’m coming to and it’s James Darren, I swear, right over me. And Abigail says later I say, “Moondoggie?”
But I don’t think I say that at all.
Darnay Road 5
After my famous almost getting killed skating show I have to stay in bed for a couple of days. Once my broken arm heals I’ll be good as new the doc says.
I have a cast made out of plaster. It’s huge. I can’t believe it. And I lie on the porch when I get home and over the next couple of days kids from school come by, well three or four do with their mothers, and neighbors come and I tell my story again and again and again. And they sign the cast with red pen.
Now I can’t go swimming but I can put on my swimming suit if I want but I tell Granma what the heck for? I can’t even go to the pool or anything. What about swimming lessons? And how will I make a necklace out of Indian beads at day camp or dance with Abigail? And my spy work is over. Mostly. Abigail says it’s like Rear Window, almost my favorite movie ever. So now I’m Jimmy Stewart? What is she, Grace Kelly?
I should never have gone up to the altar. God is punishing me. I say rosary after rosary that he won’t punish Abigail too. I ask that my punishment is enough for us both. But I don’t tell Abigail. I do give her my lucky rabbit’s foot, the pink one because it’s not working for me, and I don’t say this, but she needs all the help she can get.
When God is mad at you you’re in so so much trouble because he owns everything and he can use it.
Granma says God is not mad at me, for heaven sakes I’m dramatic but she doesn’t know what I’ve been up to. She says if God was mad at me I would have gotten hit by Mr. Ferguson instead of scared silly and getting my skate caught in the bricks and going down like that.
But I broke the wheel off my new skate and one of the pom-poms are gone and Abigail May tried to find it and she couldn’t.
Who would tear it off of me, a poor kid lying in the street? I don’t know what to think.
But I know what I think about, yes I do.
James Darrin. I know I hit my head, but it’s not hitting my head that made me see him. He was the first thing when I woke up and he was right there. I call him Frank Hardy. Abigail says a hundred times I said Moondoggie but I don’t let her know I saw him—Frank Hardy. I don’t tell her that because how else can I deny it? I didn’t say Moondoggie. I would never say that.
But as the week goes by and I’m lying on the lounger on our porch licking on a cherry bomb pop that Abigail brings me about everyday even if her hot little hand makes them melt some, Disbro Peak rides by, that one good arm working the banana handlebars, and his two Devilish sidekicks Harpie one and Harpie two are behind him, also on their bikes. Mike has a couple of baseball cards pinned on his spokes and he’s making a lot of noise. They see me lying there and Disbro calls out so loud Miss Little up the street probably heard him, “Moondoggie.”
I know I pee a little. And I’m so mad I don’t even know the first ten times that bomb pop stains my white eyelet crop top.
I can never leave this porch again.
I do like to go to the show. Abigail and I go every single Wednesday, two movies and cartoons for fifty cents. Granma always lets me go. When I come home she’s sitting on the porch drinking out of the dark green glass singing, “Kansas City Here I Come.”
But before that I go to the matinee with Abigail. Her Aunt May drives us, I mean we don’t walk like usual now that I’m practically a mummy.
“Why do you hold it like a baby?” Abigail says.
“It makes my shoulder tired,” I say like she just can’t understand because she can’t.
“Where’s your sling?” Aunt May asks me looking in the mirror.
“It gets too hot,” Abigail May answers for me from beside Aunt May. So I close my mouth because Abigail May has all the answers in the world. She got her pixie cut fresh just that morning at Edna’s beauty parlor and Aunt May is all poofed up and ready to go nowhere.
I sigh. Granma pinned my braids on top of my head like a crown. I think I look like Heidi, almost my favorite story but one of the pins is digging my scalp. Granma always says we must suffer to be beautiful. I sure hope I’m beautiful someday cause I am suffering, that’s for sure.
Then I think of Miss Little. She is suffering. I think that, I don’t know why. But she is not beautiful. So I just sigh again.
When we get to the show there is a long line. We are walking to the back and everyone is looking at us because of my arm and me almost getting killed. So I’m a little proud and a little embarrassed. Well a lot embarrassed cause Disbro Peak is last in line, but he’s by his skinny self. So we get in line and it’s so embarrassing. Disbro’s elbow sticks out to the left and mine sticks out to the right. I just feel so dumb and then he turns around grinning and says, “Moondoggie,” with a face like a jack-o-lantern. Apparently he’s never suffered. Well except for his arm, but he doesn’t seem to mind, I will say that.
I stare at him like I don’t know who he is but I feel those dark red splotches burning into my cheeks. Abigail May steps in front of me and stares at him. I know she’s crossing her eyes. She can get by with it cause of Ricky.
Then
what do you think. This just gets worse by far and I think the skin on my cheeks will split like two plums cause Ricky comes out of nowhere and he says to Abigail, “Hey give me some money.”
I have to back up a little cause Abigail swings her purse, the patent leather one with the silver snap closure that can double for a weapon cause she brings it when we’re on a case just like I bring my red one with the sharp brass corners but I don’t have it now because of my mummy baby growing where my arm used to be.
Then he’s right there, behind Ricky standing with the other one. Alias Frank Hardy standing with alias Joe Hardy alias the Hardy Boys.
I wish they had wrapped my face too, like the invisible man. Thank goodness I’m wearing my sunglasses. Maybe he can’t see my eyes. But he’s kind of looking. And he’s smoking. I think he’s eleven but he’s tall and he has big hands and somehow, I just don’t think his mother loves him like she should, either one of them with their thin, ripped t-shirts.
“Hey Kookie lend me your comb,” Abigail says to Frank. I mean right to him cause his hair is long and he combs it back with his hand but it flops onto his forehead. He smiles and takes a pull of that Camel. I see it’s Camel. Joe laughs too, this kind of punk smirk. I cross one ankle over the other.
I can’t believe she said that. It’s like what a big girl says. I can’t believe it. And he liked it cause he’s laughing and so is Joe, calling him Kookie and he knocks Joe’s hand off.
Ricky waves his hand in Abigail’s face like the three stooges would and they move off and I can’t speak. Someone nudges me from behind because the line is moving and I am stuck.
I turn around and it’s him. “Hey ballerina,” he says, and he does this thing with his lips so he doesn’t blow that smoke in my face but he blows it to the side in a stream then he pitches that smoke and I’ll tell you one thing…brother.
They really do leave then. Abigail says they’ll sneak in. Big boys do it all the time. They go around back and sneak in as soon as the cartoons start. I look at Abigail. “He called you ballerina,” she says.
But Disbro is right there. “Greenie has a boyfriend,” he says like three times.
“Shut up Disbro Peak,” Abigail says right in his face. “Don’t you talk to her.”
Oh we are gonna pay for that. But I can’t even be scared right now.
Why would Frank Hardy call me ballerina?
This might be the best summer of my whole life.
Darnay Road 6
We saw The Nutty Professor and we loved it, loved it, loved it. But not as much as what happened before waiting to go inside.
I watched the side door and the Hardy Boys came in during cartoons and they got thrown out before the movie started cause Steven was working, and he’s the owner’s son and he’s a senior in high school so those boys had to run and get out and everyone clapped.
So on the way home we’re not talking to Aunt May and Abigail is sitting next to me and we’re slid down in the seat, well me not so much with mummy baby, but we have our heads close and I can smell the cube-steak sandwich on Abigail’s breath because we went to Wellman’s after the movies and ate lunch.
We’ve already talked about the ballerina thing in Wellman’s, not that we’re done with it because I’ll be talking about that the rest of the summer probably, but he touched me on my back and I’m flat as Olive Oil and he probably noticed there was no bra.
“I’ll bet Jennifer….” I can’t even finish that sentence. I’d die if I saw him with another girl.
“I know,” Abigail says excitedly. She sunk even lower, “we’ll go to Woolworth’s and each buy a you-know-what.”
I am staring at her. I know all of her faces and she means business.
“There’s nothing to put in them,” I remind her, barely able to think about such an embarrassing thing as standing at that counter and picking out bras then walking through the store holding them, then standing in the check out. I know my face has the blotches again.
“That’s what toilet paper is for,” she says, pinching my good arm.
I shove her a little for that, and she licks where she pinched, then I say, “Ew,” but I can’t get my hand over there to wipe it off so I’m telling her to wipe her cube-steak spit off of me, and Aunt May tells us to settle down.
Later that evening after supper we’re hanging around on my porch while the sun goes down and the crickets start up and the lightning bugs twinkle. I just love everybody.
Abigail has been singing for me and Granma, dragging the hose nozzle up on the porch and a good length of hose with it so she has a microphone. Right now she’s singing, “Easier Said Than Done,” by the Essex. She has the whitest teeth and she sticks her hip out when she croons. It’s very funny.
I’d be singing with her, but of course my arm. And I’m a ballerina now. “Granma, how much are dance lessons?” I say when Abigail finally plops in the chair to drink her Coca-Cola.
Granma is reading her stories. Abigail May and I are not allowed to touch her paperbacks or her magazines. But sometimes, well one time I spied, of course, and we took a couple of them to the bomb shelter to check out. They were pretty grown-up. Every lady had her dress hanging off one shoulder or the other and lots of necking and lovey-dove. One had a pair of black stockings with holes and she had her dress up enough to see her garter and she wore high heels. I don’t know what Granma is up to with those stories of hers. “That Troy Donahue can’t act,” she says flipping the page then she goes on reading like I’m a little buzzing bug or something.
“Granma could you answer a person’s question please?” I say.
She lowers her story a little and peeks at me.
“Kilroy,” Abigail says and we both laugh and Granma squints like she’s not wearing her glasses.
“Just get it out of your head, honey.”
“Why?” I say. Granma knows I’m a perfectly good dancer. Cha-cha, twist, waltz. I got those three down-pat.
“I’ve taught you all the dances you need to know to have a good time,” she says.
“Ballerina,” Abigail says, then she grins at me when my mouth drops open. She better not tell Granma.
“You don’t need to be a ballerina. For heaven sakes you have a broken arm.” She goes right back to reading.
I get up then cause Miss Abigail May has a big gigantic mouth. And I can see kids are on their bikes and meeting at the fire hydrant. I grab my flashlight and Abigail gets hers. I can’t ride a bike, skate, hula-hoop, nothing. But still, I’m pretty good.
I let Abigail May have it about telling Granma ‘ballerina.’
“I didn’t say it,” she says. “She don’t care about anything but her old stories anyway.”
Now we stop. “What’s that mean?”
She gulps cause she knows when she goes too far. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t say it then. Don’t say something you don’t know anything about,” I say cause Abigail May can make me see red, my favorite color, sometimes.
“Well so, so, so sorry,” she says with a stinky attitude and her hands on her hips just like Aunt May does her.
“I’m gonna march right over there and tell your Aunt May,” I say.
“Tell her what?” Abigail says showing those little bright teeth.
He goes whizzing past then, the three of them. Last one past throws a water balloon that splashes near Abigail’s feet. Abigail is already yelling after, “She ain’t supposed to get her cast wet, you know.”
I turn to look and that last, the one who threw the balloon was Joe Hardy. I think he tried to hit Abigail.
Frank is standing on the pedals going faster and faster, then he puts his foot down and fishtails around. No wonder their bikes look all rattle trap, just stripped down to nothing but frame and wheels and banana seats and handle bars. Frank peddles back to us and I close my mouth so quickly my teeth clack.
He skids to a sideways stop right in front of me and his tennis shoes are so beat up and no wonder using them like Fred Flints
tone would. But up close, even sweaty, grimy, and tattered, he has that boy smell they get which is ew on some and hum on others. Or just a couple.
“Got a pen?” he says looking at my cast like he’s fixing to sign it.
Why would I have a pen in the middle of the street? I’m shaking my head no, cradling my broken arm like usual.
“I’ll get one,” Abigail says. She runs right off and leaves me alone with him. Joe and Ricky are circling back.
I hear Abigail’s screen-door slam and all I can do is look at Frank, who is lighting a cigarette right where Granma can see but she’s probably so deep in her story she don’t notice. He lights that smoke right there and I swallow so loud I’m sure he can hear.
“Why’d you call me ballerina?” I say, but I don’t plan to say it or anything, it just comes right out.
He shakes out the match and pitches that and takes a drag and he lets it out and I’m just so patiently watching. He’s looking at me and he says, “You’re pretty.”
Ricky and Joe go whizzing past and they call to him, “C’mon leave that kid alone,” Ricky says.
That kid?
He takes off then after them like I ain’t even standing here. Abigail is getting back with the pen and she calls to him but he doesn’t even look he rides off into the twilight and leaves us side by side.
“What’d he say?” she says.
I come to life then. “Why’d you leave me? I was all alone with him.”
“He likes you.”
“He said I was pretty,” I say like it’s the biggest mystery of all.
“He did?” she’s both excited and worried.
“Yes. That’s all. I asked why he called me ballerina and he said I was pretty.”
“Well…he must like you,” Abigail says. “But he’s a heathen.”
I know he ain’t a Catholic and he goes to public and he lives on Scutter Road. I know.
But I don’t care very much.
Darnay Road 7
