The other picture, the graduation one, didn’t make me sad. It made me feel good because I knew a lot of the people in it. There was Mrs. Callahan and Mrs. Latour and Mr. Kenfield and Mr. Fitzpatrick from the drugstore. And then I noticed two other people. A homely-looking boy whose ears kinda stuck out, but I couldn’t really tell who it was cuz he had turned his face away from the camera. Who was that? I knew I’d seen him before, but it wasn’t exactly him. And then way up on the top of this graduation picture, I noticed somebody who was tall. And had light hair. It was Rasmussen! I was shocked that I hadn’t paid attention to that detail before. He hadn’t changed very much. I would take this picture over to Granny’s the next time I visited and ask if she could’ve told right off that Rasmussen was gonna be a murderer and molester. Some of the boys on Vliet Street I knew would grow up to go to jail. Like Greasy Al Molinari, whose brother Coochie got taken away not too long ago for stealing the Cadillac car that old man Holz hauer kept in his garage but didn’t drive anymore. Reese Latour would go to jail, too. You could just tell by how mean they were that nothing good would ever happen to these boys. It shouldn’t anyway.
When I heard footsteps coming down the back stairs, I quickly stuffed everything back into the box.
“Who is down here?”
“It’s just me, Mrs. Goldman.”
“What are you doing in that dark basement, Liebchin?”
“Nothing.”
She was quiet. Then she said, “I understand.”
She went back up the steps, stopping on the landing. “When you are done with your nothing, please to come to the back door. I have made you a little something.”
Her doin’ that… I don’t know what the heck came over me. I just really used those tear ducts of mine. When I was all cried out, I wiped my face off on a dirty white blouse that was laying on top of the washer and stuck the shoe box back into the hidey-hole. And then I walked up the back steps and found a green glass plate outside Mrs. Goldman’s door. Six brown sugar cookies and a glass of cold, fresh milk in a jelly glass, just like Mother used to do for me, were on the floor outside Mrs. Goldman’s back door.
I took the cookies and milk out to the backyard bench and looked over at Troo’s Fourth of July bike and thought about Mother’s happy, smiling picture down in the hidey-hole and how nice Mrs. Goldman was even though she didn’t have to be, especially since those Nazis had been so unnice to her when they took away her little daughter for a shower and never brought her back. And even though things really hadn’t been going so hot for me lately, that fancy bike and that old picture and my sweet landlady made me feel so grateful that I brought my hands together and bowed my head and did what Daddy had always said to do when I was feeling this way. I thanked the Lord God Almighty for his blessings, especially for those luscious, luscious brown sugar cookies that I stuffed into my mouth faster than you can say Jackie Robinson. I didn’t save even a crumb for Troo.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Troo liked Willie O’Hara even though he collected stamps and was always asking everybody to bring him used-up envelopes. I thought that was sort of a dumb hobby, but it wasn’t his fault. His mother was an artist and that’s what made Willie weird. Mrs. O’Hara made things out of clay. Busts, Willie called them. I was sure that was a lie because busts was another word for bosoms. Willie probably just made that up to make Troo laugh, and I couldn’t blame him. My sister, she had a laugh that sounded kinda like that “Chopsticks” song she played on the piano. It made you feel great just to hear it.
Willie was blubbery, but he called it big-boned, and had a funny way of talking. It was called a Brooklyn accent, Troo told me. He’d moved from New York onto the block last summer because his father had run away with his hubba hubba secretary and his mother had relatives around here who were helping Mrs. O’Hara out until she could get on her feet again. Which it looked like she had, because she was going out to supper clubs with Officer Riordan, and Fast Susie said they might get hitched.
The streetlights had gone on so we were all sitting out on the O’Haras’ front steps, getting ready to start playing red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight. I didn’t know then that it was the last time we’d play for a while.
Willie announced, “They found Sara Heinemann’s body at the red rowboats today and my ma is so glad that I’m not a little girl because she doesn’t think she could stand to live without me.”
We were all quiet until Troo licked her lips and asked, “Was she murdered and molested like Junie?”
“Yeah.” Willie bent over and tied his shoes with two knots. Willie was not very coordinated, and last week he had tripped and fallen down these very steps and gotten a nasty cut on his arm that he kept showing to everybody every five minutes. “That’s what Officer Riordan told Ma anyway.”
Artie Latour was sitting next to me and Wendy next to him. Fast Susie had stopped playing red light, green light, because she was getting too old she said. She was across the street at the playground, sitting on one of the green benches, bouncing one of the red rubber balls while she talked to Bobby and Barb.
“Sara was going to make her First Holy Communion this year,” Artie said. “I bet they’ll bury her in her white dress. That’s what they did with Junie.”
That was so sad that none of us could even look at each other.
“My ma says not to worry,” Willie said. “That they’ll catch the guy soon because we have excellent policemen in Officer Rasmussen and Officer Riordan.”
Oh, poor Willie. I guessed mothers who were artists were not all that smart because I thought if everybody would just take a breather and think about it for a minute, they would see clear as day that Rasmussen was not what he pretended to be. Everyone was judging that book by its cover, was what Granny would say.
I looked over at Wendy and she threw me a kiss with a big smacking sound like Dinah Shore on her “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” show.
“How’s your ma doin’?” Mary Lane asked, from the step above me. I knew she was talking to me and Troo because somebody asked us that at least once a day.
Troo said, “She’s a lot better,” even though she had no idea how Mother was doing, because Nell had stopped talking to us for a couple of days because she and Eddie were having a bad fight. I’d heard her yelling at him. Heck, the whole neighborhood heard Nell yelling at Eddie last night since she was chasing him down Vliet Street waving a bra and screaming at the top of her lungs, “Melinda? Melinda? You went to second base with that outer-space skank Melinda?”
It wasn’t beer at all that Aunt Nancy had seen in the trunk of Eddie’s car. (Told you his eye twitched when he lied.) Nell had taken Eddie’s car keys out of his jeans pocket when he was taking a nap after they had done their daily exercises in her room. She was planning to empty out those beer cans for him as a charitable thing to do so Eddie wouldn’t get in trouble with his ma. Nell found the bra under the spare tire. She’d been in her room crying since Tuesday, so she hadn’t gone up to St. Joe’s to check on Mother. And I knew that Hall hadn’t because he was too busy gettin’ some from Rosie up at Jerbak’s, and everybody knew about that now because there were no secrets in this neighborhood. Everyone had started to look at me and Troo with even bigger pity eyes and stopped talking when we came up to them.
Troo and me didn’t care about Hall gettin’ some with Rosie since it would be fine with us if we never saw him again. We agreed that we absolutely did not want Rosie Ruggins to be our new mother because she had these twin boys that were the worst. Rickey and Ronney not only picked their noses but did practical jokes like putting whoopee cushions on your desk seat or pulling out the chair just when you were going to sit down. What freams.