Just like I adored being at the lagoon, I used to adore being here. Nowadays I leave the house feeling brave, but by the time I get over here my tummy is letting me know it woulda rather stayed right where it was. It’s the counselors’ shed that Bobby grabbed me out of that’s causing all the problems. That shed is like Hound of the Baskervilles quicksand to me now. Smooth on the surface, but if you aren’t paying attention to the details, if you make one false step, it will suck you under and it only makes it worse if you struggle, so what are you supposed to do?
Thank Jesus, Mary and Joseph that the playground counselors this summer are both girls who aren’t murderers and molesters. Barb Kircher is back for more. I’m glad. Barb makes me feel a little less dumb. Like me, she didn’t notice last year that Bobby was a bad egg. I think she had a crush on him for a while the same way I did. She is also an expert lanyard maker and I just love those things. The silky colors and the slippery feel of them gliding through my fingers. I’ve made over fifty of them. I give them to people on their birthdays or any time I think they could use a little pick-me-up.
The other counselor, the new one who is taking Bobby’s place, is a girl named Debbie Weatherly, who is a friend of Barb’s from their college cheerleading team. Debbie must be the captain because she keeps telling us how she is so, so, so happy to be here! She reminds Mary Lane of that guy on The Mickey Mouse Club and I would have to agree with her. Mousketeer Roy, that was his name. (He got me so jumpy that I had to stop watching on Wednesdays, which was Anything Can Happen Day.) The new counselor lurks around in the background the same way he did. She isn’t going bald, though. Debbie’s got a sleek brunette do that she keeps out of her eyes with a colored headband that she changes every day, so she is very fashionable, but just like Roy, she is on the chunky side and has somewhat of a slack jaw.
The whole Vliet Street gang is here. Troo and me, Willie O’Hara, Mary Lane, Artie Latour and his sister, Wendy Latour, who is the only one of us who is not waiting in line to play tetherball. Wendy is swinging, which is her most favorite thing to do besides wandering off and turning up in the most unexpected places. Once she got found over at the zoo feeding the elephants peanuts way too close for comfort. She showed up in our own bathroom eating a stick of butter when Mother was in the tub. Another time, they found Wendy all the way downtown. This morning, she’s swinging, practically naked from the waist up, which she always tries to do because I don’t think clothes feel good on her skin. She does have on her training bra. She needs it now because her bosoms are growing up even if she isn’t. She is the strongest kid. When we play Red Rover, she can break through our closed-up arms like we’re a paper chain and she’s a pair of scissors right outta the box. She’s also a great hugger and a lot smarter than people give her credit for. She likes me better than she likes Troo and I am just nuts for her, too.
I call over to her, “Hi, Wendy.”
She yells back the same way she always does in her voice that sounds a lot like Froggy the Gremlin on the Andy’s Gang television show, “Thally O’Malley, hi… hi… hi!”
Wendy isn’t a regular kid, she is something called a Mongoloid. With her shiny black hair that is ruler straight, she looks like one of the waitresses over at the Peking Palace where you can get good chop suey on special occasions. Mother told Troo and me that the Chinese are an inscrutable people, which means they’re hard to understand, which fits Wendy Latour to a T.
“That’s good swingin’, Wendy, but maybe you should slow down a little.” I point to her head. “Your tiara’s slippin’.”
It’s actually my tiara. Troo calls me a chump, but I don’t regret what I did for one second. I knew I was gonna win. The counselors wanted to give me a prize for not getting murdered and molested last summer, but when Barb Kircher was about to announce me as Queen of the Playground at the biggest party we have in the neighborhood at the end of the summer, I looked down at Wendy in a pink party dress, smiling up from the crowd with shiny lips and her Cracker Jack ring on her wedding finger, and I grabbed the microphone and announced, “The Queen this year is… Wendy Latour!” The reason I did that is because someday I will grow up and get married to a pale pharmacist, but Wendy… one of the worst things about Mongoloids is that they don’t live very long, which I try never to think about.
“Hey,” I tell Artie Latour, who is her brother and one of the other twelve Latour kids, “Wendy’s goin’ too high and she’s got her blouse off again.”
He looks over fast, but he’s in the middle of a tetherball game with Willie O’Hara so he doesn’t want to stop and take his sister home to their mother so that she can get dressed.
Artie asks outta the side of his mouth, “Could ya do it for me, Sally?”
I say, “Yeah… okay,” because I’m just waiting to get back in the game, but even if I wasn’t, I would help Artie out. I like him. I also feel sorry for him. He is not the best-looking kid. His Adam’s apple goes out of whack when he gets jittery, which is a lot because he is really high-strung. He walks with his knees bent and pigeon toes and he’s got a harelip and is hard of hearing, too, because his oldest and meanest brother, Reese, who is in the Army now, smacked Artie so hard that his ear swelled up to the size of a fist. That’s why he’s a half-deaf mess.
Thinking I might not have to go all the way over to the swings because I’m already so sweaty, I stay where I am and shout at Wendy, “Artie says you gotta stop swingin’.”
“Flyin’,” she hollers back. She is pretending to be the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz. This movie made a HUGE impression on her. Ever since she saw it on TV, it has become her favorite. She likes Dorothy and Glenda and the Scarecrow okay, but it’s the witch she really loves. “Come. Wish laugh.” (I can do a pretty good Wicked Witch imitation. I taught myself how because I knew Wendy’d get a kick out of it.)
By the time I get over there, she is ripping even higher, bouncing in the swing with her head stretched back as far as it’ll go. She is a very good pumper for a girl with such stubby legs.
I yell at Wendy, “Slow down. You’re gonna go over the top bar like you did last month. Remember what a bad boo-boo ya got on your knees, my pretty?” I rub my hands together and throw my head back the way the green witch does. “Aha… hahahaha.”
Troo leaves the line and comes panting up to my side. “You’re up next.”
“Thally O’Malley… me high!”
“Artie,” I call to him when I can’t get Wendy to listen to me. “Artiiieee!” He lost his tetherball game to Willie, and now he’s just standing off to the side of the group looking like someone let the air outta him. “Get over here.”
He trudges over, leans against one of the swing poles, but doesn’t tell his sister, “If you don’t stop, you won’t get any tapioca tonight,” the way he always does to get her to listen. Instead, he tells me and Troo in a barely there voice, “Did you guys hear about Charlie Fitch?”
The O’Malley sisters say louder than we would for a kid who hears real good, “What about him?”