The car went quiet. Everybody was staring at me. I put my hands up. Like what the hell, guys? What am I supposed to do here?
Then everybody started laughing. The moment passed. The radio came on. A bottle of schnapps got passed around. I declined. Bigmouth kept driving too fast, until I reminded him with my hand on his arm, again and again, to take it easy. We didn’t stop at New Rochelle to take the Ox home. He needed to be with his boys that night, to celebrate until the sun came up.
When we were back in the city, I pointed to the sign for the Hamilton Bridge. They seemed eager to do just about anything for me, so they went ahead and took me over the river and down to 128th Street, let me off across the street from the Chinese restaurant.
“You gotta move to a better neighborhood,” Bigmouth said as I got out of the car.
I had one last card to play that night. I figured what the hell, it might be the only thing I get out of this. I stood there on the sidewalk and pulled out both side pockets.
“Fucking A, why didn’t you say something?” Bigmouth got out his wallet, made everybody else in the car do the same. He collected together about three hundred dollars and gave it to me. That didn’t seem like quite enough to him, so he parked the car and he made everyone march right down to the bank on the corner.
“Whatever your fucking limit is,” he said. “You hear me? Your absolute max. It’s the least we can do for the kid.”
Between the four of them, they were able to withdraw another thousand dollars.
“That’s just an advance, kid. Wait till we unload those diamonds! I’ll be beeping you to pick up your share! I promise! As soon as we have the money, I’ll beep you!”
A few more hugs and handshakes and carrying on. Then they piled back into the car and took off down the street.
When they were out of sight, I crossed the street and went into the restaurant. I paid the family the two hundred dollars I owed them for the month. Then I went upstairs and celebrated New Year’s Eve in my empty room. I couldn’t help but think about my uncle. I wondered what he was doing, back in Michigan. Probably having a busy night, selling champagne.
I thought about Amelia. Of course.
Then I got out my paper and my pencils and I started drawing. I put my whole day on the page, panel by panel, playing the whole thing back for her. Showing her what I had been through. It was the thing I did almost every day, just for my own sanity, and for the small amount of hope it gave me. That maybe someday these pages would find their way to her. That she’d read them and that she’d understand why I had to leave her.
As I finished the last panel, I looked back over the whole thing and it seemed totally comical. The more I thought of it, the more I realized that I’d probably never hear from them again. I mean, they had no reason to contact me with my share of the money, right?
No more amateurs, I told myself. Never, ever again. Even though you did make thirteen hundred bucks today.
I went back to Amelia as I turned off my light, got in my sleeping bag on that cold dusty floor, and closed my eyes. I would have given anything to have her right there with me. For just one hour. I would have given my life for it.
Happy New Year to me.
The yellow pager woke me up the next morning. I went downstairs and used the pay phone. I dialed the number. It was the same number I had used the day before.
“Hey, kid,” Bigmouth said. “Hope I didn’t wake you. Is everything okay?”
I waited for him to realize he wouldn’t get an answer.
“Sorry, I’m kinda hungover. Not thinking straight. Anyway, can you come back to the diner? Soon as you can? We’ve got a little problem.”
Five
Michigan
1991 to 1996
After the robbery, Uncle Lito went out and bought himself a gun. It was a handgun, but it was a lot different from the gun the robber had used. The robber’s revolver, with the shiny bright metal… It looked like a classic six-shooter, the kind you’d see in a Western movie. Uncle Lito’s gun was a semiautomatic. No spinning cylinder. No bright metal. It was dull and black, and somehow it looked twice as deadly.
He hid it behind the register, thinking I’d never see it. That lasted about five minutes. He didn’t talk about the gun. He didn’t talk about anything having to do with the robbery at all. But I could tell he was thinking about it. For the next few weeks, whenever he was quiet, I could tell he was replaying the whole thing in his head. Not just the robbery itself, but the strange way I had reacted to it.
I have to feel a little bad for him now, looking back on it. It’s not like he had anybody else to talk to about me. There was a woman from the state who’d come by and see how I was doing, but she only did that once a month or so, and after the first year, she stopped coming altogether. Even if she had kept up her visits, what the hell was she going to do with me? By all appearances, I was doing okay. Not great, but okay. I was eating, even if half the time it was at the Flame. I was sleeping. And yes, I was finally back at school.
It was this place called the Higgins Institute. It was mostly deaf kids who went to this place. Deaf kids with money, I mean. Besides them, there were a few kids with what they called “communicative disorders,” some kind of defect that prevented them from hearing or talking or both. I was put in that category. I had a “disorder.”
I was nine years old, remember. I hadn’t been to school in a year and a half. Let me tell you, being the new kid in school is bad enough. Try doing it in a school where hardly anybody can talk to you, even if they want to. And you can’t talk back.
That turned out to be the first problem they tried to fix. I needed to learn some way to communicate, some way that would be better than carrying around a pad of paper and a pen for the rest of my life. Which is why I started learning American Sign Language.
It didn’t come easy for me. I didn’t have to use it, for one thing. I never went home and kept on using it. I never practiced it at all unless I was at school. Meanwhile, all of the deaf kids were totally immersed in it. It was their whole culture. It was their own special, private code. So I wasn’t just the “different” kid. I was the foreign invader who barely knew the language.
On top of everything else, there were still plenty of psychologists and counselors poking at me. That never let up. Every day for at least forty-five minutes or so, I’d be sitting in somebody’s office. Some adult with jeans and a sweater. Let’s just kick back, Michael. Let’s just hang out here and get to know each other, eh? If you feel like talking to me… and by talking I mean you can write something for me, or draw me a picture. Whatever you want, Mike.
What I wanted was for them to leave me the hell alone. Because they were all making one big mistake. This business about me being too young to “process” the trauma, that I’d have to bury it in my little mind’s backyard until somebody came along to help me dig it up-I mean, I still get upset to this day just thinking about it. The condescension there. The stunning, absolute ignorance.
I was eight years old when it happened. Not two years old. Not three years old. I was eight, and like any other kid my age, I knew exactly what was happening to me. Every single second, every single moment. I knew what was happening, and when it was all over, I could go back and replay it in my mind. Every single second, every single moment. The next day, I could still do that. A week later, I could do that. A year later. Five years later. Ten years later. I could still go back to that day in June for the simple reason that I had never left it.
It wasn’t repressed. I didn’t have to go digging to find it. It was always there. My constant companion. My right-hand man. Every waking hour, and more than a few of the sleeping hours… I was and am and always will be right back there in that day in June.