“Your mom likes James, too.” I didn’t want to continue the conversation. I was numb with the sudden realization that ever since my mother had left, I’d had suspicions about the sanatorium story, which had been the easiest thing to tell me and Liz, but I’d bought it willingly, not wanting to think otherwise. Since James was colored, I knew my mother couldn’t like him too much, like a boyfriend. Could she? Maybe it was just one of the outrageous things Max often told us, like when he said that my sister was being sent to Holton-Arms because she was trying to “mate with boys,” or that he thought he’d seen Elena making out with Dawn Allgood’s boyfriend. Max wasn’t trying to be mean; it was his way of cluing Ivan and me in to adult things, even if he didn’t know if they were true. It couldn’t be! I felt like a chump. Needing to change the subject, I said, “Let’s get a jar for lightning bugs.”
“Okay,” Max said, punching my arm affectionately.
“I wish you guys wouldn’t mash them,” Ivan said with a sigh.
The sun was just about down, the very last of it dimming in the trees. The cooling air and descending dark flushed the lightning bugs from the lawns, and they rose, becoming blinking stars against the early-night sky. Unfortunately for some of them, Max and I would crush them on our bike tires so their iridescence would look cool as we rode up and down Connors Lane, a bat or two swooping overhead, until we were called in for the evening. Ivan would keep his lightning bugs in the jar by his bed, like a lantern, and let them go in the morning.
6
“We’ve done all the poster stuff,” said Max, “Maria’s going to make the cake, and Beatriz is doing the decorations, so we don’t really have anything to do until the day of the party but look for spiders, right?”
“But we haven’t figured out what the entertainment is going to be,” Ivan said.
“I know what it’s not going to be,” Max said. “That’s for sure.”
“Beatriz will figure it out,” I said.
We were outside, hunting and investigating—throwing worms and roly-polies into webs and watching the spiders scurry out to mummify and eat them. With Ivan’s knife we dissected some egg sacs—lots of them were starting to appear. Max found an orange-and-black calico spider that looked like a ballerina in its web, and I snapped a picture with my Brownie camera. We had worked our way down to the Allgoods’ house, where a yew was so covered with webs that, with its puffy red berries, it looked like a Christmas tree sprayed with canned flocking. We were so completely absorbed we didn’t notice a bike approaching until it screeched to a halt in front of us, startling us.
“What do you morons think you’re doing?” Slutcheon said.
“Nothing,” Max said, covering the Big Chief tablet listing our spider inventory.
Holding my camera behind my back, I said, “We’re just looking at spiders.” Ivan scooched over behind me.
“Oh, yeah?” he said. “What kind? Oooh, daddy longlegs? How ’bout this spider?” He reached out and snapped his middle finger at my arm, delivering a powerful sting.
“Ow,” I said, afraid to say anything else.
“I saw you guys are having a party,” Slutcheon said with a smirk.
Max said, “It’s just for people on our street.”
“But we’re buddies, right? I just might have to come.” He laughed, his mouth reminding me of Foggy, the Andersens’ dog.
Then Slutcheon pulled a cellophane cigarette-pack wrapper from his pocket. “I bet you don’t have one of these spiders,” he said. “I just caught it down at the park.” In the wrapper we could see a black spider with a red marking on its stomach.
“A black widow!” Max cried. “How did you catch it?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He thrust the thing at us and we jumped back. Ivan let out a squeak.
“What are you gonna do with it?” I asked.
“Oh, let it bite somebody I don’t like.” He grinned threateningly and put the black widow back in his pocket. “Maybe I’ll bring it to your party. Hey, bend your arm,” he said to Max. “I got a new trick for you.” Slutcheon licked his palm, coating it with his disgusting saliva, and grabbed Max’s arm, knocking the Big Chief tablet to the ground. Max bent his arm obediently, knowing it was better to submit and get it over with. Slutcheon began rubbing the crook of Max’s elbow round and round, really fast, with his slobbery hand. After a minute, he stopped. The hairs on Max’s elbow were knotted into tiny balls. “Now stretch out your arm.”
“Yikes!” said Max, as the knots tugged painfully at his skin.
Slutcheon laughed. Having successfully tortured two of us, he turned his attention to Ivan. “Where’s your sex-bomb aunt, Rusky?” He leered. “Isn’t she usually babysitting you? You ever see her naked?” He sucked in some drool.
We said nothing.
“Her tits are huge, right?” he said. “She better stop bringing Commie refugees into my neighborhood, like that idiot Gellert. My dad’s going to get rid of them. He’s a big shot in the Immigration Service.” He reached out to me. “Let me see that camera.”
What could I do? I handed over my Brownie.
Slutcheon popped open my camera and yanked out the film, exposing every photo. Then he chucked the ruined film into the bushes. “This thing is a piece of shit. I just got a Polaroid.” He handed the Brownie back, fumbling like he was going to drop it on the street. Which he did.
I couldn’t speak. I could tell Brickie, who would call Slutcheon’s parents, but then the next time we saw him, he would just do something worse to us.
Just then a ’53 black Oldsmobile 88 convertible came down the street and pulled up at the Allgoods’, its radio blasting “Ooby Dooby.” Leonardo, Dawn Allgood’s older hood boyfriend, didn’t usually have much to do with us, but he hopped out of his car without even opening the door and strode over. “What’s going on here, squirts?” he said, really addressing Slutcheon. Leonardo picked up my Brownie and the Big Chief pad and gave them back to us.
“We’re…uh…talking about spiders,” Slutcheon mumbled.
“Really?” said Leonardo. “This doesn’t look like a cheerful conversation to me.” He stepped closer to Slutcheon and grabbed a fist full of his T-shirt. “Just in case you’re messing with these guys,” Leonardo growled, “don’t do it again, punk.” He let Slutcheon go with a shove, and our nemesis pedaled off furiously on his fancy Schwinn. At a safe distance, he yelled, his voice higher, like a girl’s, “You’ll all be sorry!”
“That kid’s a loser,” Leonardo said, and spit into the street. We agreed enthusiastically, and thanked him. “Where’s your aunt?” he asked Ivan. Naturally he had a crush on Elena; they sometimes talked when Dawn wasn’t around, and then there was Max’s report that he’d seen them making out one night. We were shocked and skeptical when he’d described what sounded to us as if Elena had been nursing Leonardo, like Mary and baby Jesus, but Max had retorted, “That’s not nursing, you dopes. Gah!” Maybe Dawn had gotten wind of it, and that might be why she hated Elena, and why I’d heard her yell at Leonardo, “That spy slut needs to go back to Russia, where she belongs.” I didn’t know what a slut was, but Max asked his older sister, who told him it was a “bad girl.” But we were intrigued with Leonardo, “our local rebel without a cause,” as Brickie referred to him, and we admired his cool car, dungarees, and greased-back ducktail with sideburns. He had a rockabilly band, Terry and the Pirates, who’d recently had a hit record.