“And… and the horses you rode in on,” I say the way she taught me, and then I loop my arm through hers and we mosey toward the playground gates, and ya know, just for that second, that precious moment in time, everything is coming up roses.
Chapter Eight
Mother called to me from the backyard this morning and told me to run up to the Five and Dime and get her a Snirkle bar. She has a gigantic sweet tooth. It seems like a lot of us in the neighborhood do. I think it’s because those chocolate chip cookies bake night and day over at the Feelin’ Good factory so that smell is part of our every breath and we want more, more, more! That’s why the O’Malley sisters are skipping down the street where we used to live before we moved in with Dave. Vliet Street is the way we always go to North Avenue because a lot of stuff that happened on this block was bad, but some of it was good, so it’s sorta like walking down Memory Lane if it had a bunch of potholes.
Right after we moved here, Mother would play the name game with me and Troo so we could learn about all the different kinds of people who live in the city. “You can know just about all there is about a person when you hear their last name, so be sure to ask it” is what she told us. Wops, who have mostly vowels in their names, are loud but great cooks. And the Polacks have names that end in ski and brains that run on the small side, but noses that run larger than normal. I’m not sure where bohunks come from but they are thick-ankled and wear babushkas. And if someone has man in their last name they are probably a German who loves kielbasa and polka music. (I could never tell Mother that the name game is right some of the times, but not always. I am friends with a Kraut who loves music by a man named Mozart much more than she likes Lawrence Welk.)
The people who live in them might look different, but most of the houses on the block are the same shape and size and made out of wood or brick and always two stories high, maybe three. They’re enough alike anyway that you might head into the wrong front door if you have too much to drink late at night. That happened to Mr. Fred Latour. He accidentally got into bed with Mrs. O’Hara, who lives next door to him. That was a laugh riot. Mrs. O’Hara started calling him Fred Lamour until his wife made her stop. (Lamour is French for love bucket.)
Something like that would never happen to me. Even if I gouged my eyes out of my head the way St. Lucy did, if somebody led me past any of these houses at suppertime, I could tell you who lives there without second-guessing.
The Fazios’ smells like this spice called garlic they use on just about everything and the Latours’ like cheesy casseroles made with condensed milk. The O’Haras’ reeks of cabbage and sometimes liver and onions if they’re celebrating something. If you walk past the Goldmans’ at six o’clock, the aroma of sauerkraut and schnitzel will be drifting out of their kitchen window along with their Germanese and violin music.
Troo’s a little in front of me bouncing a red rubber ball that she “borrowed” from the playground shed. She’s warming up to play that a my name is Annie and I come from Alabama with a carload of Apples game. When she gets to the letter f, her name will be Fifi and she comes from where else but France. I refuse to repeat what she will have a carload of.
When we pass the Osgoods’ house, the flag flying off the front porch reminds me to ask Troo, “What are you gonna do for the Fourth? Are you gettin’ ready to decorate? Is that why you’re comin’ with me? To get some Kleenex to make your flowers?”
If my sister does not end up being a ventriloquist or a drummer in a band like Sal Mineo or the fat lady in a traveling freak show, all ideas that she has from time to time, she could become a Kleenex flower maker. That’s how good she is at folding the tissues, sliding a bobby pin down the middle and separating the layers until they spring alive and look like real carnations, which was Daddy’s favorite that covered his casket.
When Troo keeps bouncing, I keep asking, “Are you gonna wear a costume again?” Last summer, besides covering her bike in flowers, she dressed herself up like the Statue of Liberty because that was a gift to America from France. “Or are ya just gonna do up your bike?” I don’t have a Schwinn. Even if I did, I don’t think I would fancy it up for the Fourth. What if I accidentally won the decorating contest? Having the feeling of that silky blue ribbon sliding across my neck is just not worth Troo tricking me with some of that gum that turns your teeth black or licking my Jell-O when my back’s turned. “What’s your plan?”
“You writin’ a book?” Troo asks snotty.
“No, I’m just tryin’ to-”
“What I’m doin’ is for me to know and for you to find out,” she says with a flip of her ponytail. “But I’ll tell ya one thing, I’m gonna win that decoratin’ prize this year hands down. No ties. And I’m gonna be Queen of the Playground again, the same way I was the first year we moved here.” She starts up the game for real very loudly. “A my name is Annie and I come from…”
“Whatever you’re doin’, you better get busy. Time’s runnin’ out,” I tell her when we come to the front of the Kenfields’ house.
When we first moved into the city, it was into the house next door to them. Late at night horrible sounds would come out of a bedroom that was across from mine and Troo’s. I thought the place was haunted and I guess in a way it was. Mr. Kenfield would moan into his daughter’s pillow that probably still had the smell of his precious girl’s perfume hidden in the seams the same way that Daddy’s blue shirt still has Aqua Velva. After he was cried dry, he would go sit on the front porch of this house and smoke his Pall Malls, rocking until the church bells rang twelve midnight. After Mother went into the hospital, some nights after Troo would fall asleep and I was sure that Hall had passed out, I’d slip outta our bed and go sit with our neighbor. We didn’t talk so much. We held hands and listened to the creaky sound the porch swing made. I’d like to do that again, but I’m not sure Mr. Kenfield would. Sometime between last summer and this one, he got a reputation for being the neighborhood crank.
“C my name is Carol and I come from California with a carload of candy,” Troo sings.
“Wait a sec,” I tell her when she dribbles past our old duplex. There’s a Yellow Taxi parked out front of 5081 Vliet Street, which is something you don’t ever see around here. This is the closest I’ve ever come to one. The trunk is open and there are some suitcases jammed in. “Something’s goin’ on at the Goldmans’.”
Troo doesn’t glance up. She just keeps on singing in her high soprano voice that she inherited from Mother, “D my name is Denise and I come from… come from… damn it all, Sally, look what you made me do? Now I can’t think of a place that starts with D.” She spikes the ball. If you mess up you gotta start over and even hell-with-the-rules Troo O’Malley plays by that one. “Who gives a crap about the Goldmans anyway?”
“I do,” I say, feeling bad again about letting our old landlady down. I promised Mrs. Goldman I would stay her friend even after we moved out of this house, but I haven’t.
She is standing on her front porch in a crisp blue shirt and a pleated black skirt, her special sturdy shoes in size 10 peeking out from beneath the hem. Her dark curls used to be braided and wound around her head but now her hair looks pixie cute. She is instructing a man in a T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves, “Careful vis it. Careful.”