The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (26 page)

It was a stifling August evening when I looked out our front window and saw Mr Kane out on his side steps, his head in his hands. I went across and sat silently beside him, wondering what could be wrong. After a few minutes, he said in a fatigued monotone, “The Russians. They've signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. You know what that means?”

I didn't.

“It means there's nothing to stop Hitler from taking Poland,” he explained.

“Doesn't Poland have an army?”

“Yes, but Czechoslovakia had a better, more modern army than Poland's, and where did it get them?” His voice had a tone of leaden inevitability. Then I remembered that he had told me that both England and France had promised to attack Germany, if she attacked Poland. I reminded him of this.

“England and France guaranteed Czechoslovakia too.”

“...Oh.”

Mr Kane frowned at a patch of ground near his feet, and his jaw muscles worked as though he were chewing something tough. I understood that something vast and ominous was happening out there in the world, but there was nothing I could do about it, so after sitting in silence for a while, I got up and said I'd better be getting home. He nodded without looking at me, and I left. That night I sat on the edge of my bed, looking out onto the empty street, feeling that something terrible was on its way. I was confused and afraid, but I was also young and male, so I felt a prickle of excitement. War!

I awoke the next morning to the chilling realization that summer vacation was almost over and, what with trying to earn extra money and spending time up at the McGivneys', I hadn't gotten enough good out of it... sort of like a Popsicle that melts while you're obliged to talk politely to a nun, and you don't get to suck it white before it falls off the stick. Next year I would be ten, and I felt that advancing to a double-digit age signified the end of childhood, because, let's face it, once you get into two digits, you're there for the rest of your life. Everything was changing on me! I was growing up before I was finished with being a kid! And now a war was looming on the horizon. This would be my last summer before I had to give up my story games and start in earnest doing what I could to get my family off Pearl Street. And the summer was almost used up.

All right, I accepted that bringing my mother's damned ship into port was my job. But I couldn't take care of Mrs McGivney, too. I intended to play as hard as I could for the two weeks until school started, and this meant that I would need all my time for myself, for my games, for listening to the radio, for wandering the streets in search of mysteries and adventures. There just wouldn't be any time to sit around with the McGivneys.

I avoided the back alley for a week, during which I revisited one by one all the story games I had played since we came to North Pearl Street to imprint them upon my memory so I would never forget the exhilarating fun of them. That week I fought off Richelieu's swordsmen, ran cattle rustlers off the streets of Albany once and for all, blew up the planes of the Condor Legion to save Spain from the Fascists, and led an expedition to the Elephant Graveyard, where we almost lost Reggie and Kato to native black magic that sucked out their will to live so they could only be kept breathing by my passionate exhortations to fight, fight, fight. On Sunday, I changed into play clothes right after six o'clock mass and went off to spend the morning playing one of the best story games of all: Foreign Legion, in preparation for which I hadn't drunk anything after supper the night before. So I was good and thirsty by the time I had crossed Broadway towards the river, passed through Blacktown's tangle of still-sleeping streets, and scrambled over the high wooden fence of an abandoned brickyard where there were huge piles of sand and gravel. For the next two hours I staggered up and down the endless dunes, blinded by the glaring sun, suffering horribly from thirst made worse by the fact that I was weakened by half a dozen spear wounds inflicted by perfidious Arabs whom I had always treated well, unlike some of my brother Legionnaires. My throat parched, I muttered to myself that the pools of icy water I saw all around me were only mirages. Mustn't be fooled! Must... keep... going. I wanted nothing more than to give up the struggle and just lie down and let sweet death overwhelm me—but no! Must... keep... going! At the most distant corner of the brickyard, there was a stand pipe with a spigot by a watchman's hut, and it was part of the game to hold the vision of that cool, clear water in my mind as I crawled on my hands and knees over the piles of sand and gravel, dragging my wounded leg behind me (sometimes both wounded legs) but determined to carry the message from what was left of my decimated company besieged in our fly-blown outpost of Sidi-bel-Abbès to the colonel of the regiment stationed at our headquarters in the noisy, bustling city of Sidi-bel-Abbès. (All right, so I knew the name of only one desert city! Is that a crime? Jeez!) By taking the least direct path possible and weaving my painful, dazed way over the great central sand pile again and again, I managed to drag the game out to well past noon, by which time my lips were crusty and my tongue thick with thirst. When at last I arrived at the stand pipe, I put my head under it, ready for the blissful shock of its cool dousing gush, my fingers almost too weak to turn the rusty spigot. In a hoarse voice I cried out to Allah to give me strength. Give me strength! And I gave the spigot a desperate twist with the last of my fading energy—

—but no water came out. They'd cut off the water since last summer! Anything to spoil a guy's game!

By the time I got back to my block, I was really thirsty, so I cut through the back alley to get to my apartment as quickly as I could.

Three sharp clicks of a coin against the window above me—Oh no! And there she was, gesturing for me to come up. Nuts! Nuts! Double nuts!

But this time it would be different. As I trudged glumly up the dark stairs of 232 I decided on a plan to free myself of this lonely old lady and her loony husband once and for all: I would mope and be rude, so she wouldn't want my company any longer. But first—

“Could I please have a glass of water, Mrs McGivney?”

“Why, of course, John-Luke!”

I gulped it down, rather than sipping it slowly and savoring the life-saving sweetness of it, as I would have done in the dramatic last scene of the Foreign Legion game... if those idiots hadn't shut off the water!

“My goodness, you were thirsty. Want some more?”

“No, thank you.” It was hard to remember to be rude.

“You're sure?”

Mrs McGivney sat across from me at the little table set for two. “Here, before I forget it.” She placed a nickel beside my napkin.

“No, I don't want it,” I said, pushing it back to her.

She cocked her head. “Don't try to tell me that a little boy can't find something to do with a nickel.”

“No, my mother said I wasn't to take money from you unless I did an errand or something in return.”

“Oh, I see. Well... I know what! You just put the nickel in your pocket.” She pushed the nickel over to me.

“I don't want it.” I pushed it back to her.

“No, you keep it until I think of something you can do for me.” She pushed the nickel back to me.

I didn't touch it.

She held out the plate of cookies to me, and I lowered my head and stared at the table top. Finally she put one on my plate. I didn't look at it. “Would you like to wash up, John-Luke?” she asked.

“Only my mother calls me that.”

“What?”

“Only my mother calls me Jean-Luc!”

“Oh... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...” She looked at me closely.

“Would you like to wash up? You look a little... dusty.” She smiled sweetly.

I touched my forehead and felt the grit of the sand through which I had crawled all the way from Sidi-bel-Abbès to... Sidi-bel-Abbès. Having someone who wasn't my mother tell me my face was dirty was humiliating: something left over from the time two young, syrup-voiced social workers swooped down on our apartment to see if my mother was taking proper care of us. They asked Anne-Marie if any men had been sleeping at our house, and one of them made me stand in front of her while she checked my hair for nits. I was so outraged that I pulled my head away from her and told her to go to hell, and the two do-gooders made little popping sounds of surprise and indignation and said they'd never seen such a badly brought up child. After they left, Mother told me that I had to be polite to social workers or they'd write up a bad report, and the three of us would have to run away to avoid their taking us kids away from her. Oh sure! It was all right for her to lose her temper and give social workers hell, and get her way by ranting and raving, but I couldn't do it. Was that it?

I got up and went over to the McGivneys' kitchen sink. In the little mirror over it, I could see that my dirty face was streaked with rivulets of sweat. I was embarrassed, so I twisted the faucet on angrily, and the water came squirting out of a little flexible thing at the end of the spigot and splashed onto my pants, making it look as though I had pissed myself, then I was really embarrassed. To cover my discomfiture I quickly soaped up my hands and scrubbed my face hard, then I splashed water into my face, but I couldn't find anything to wipe it on, so I just stood there at the sink, dripping, the soap stinging my eyes, like some helpless thing. Like her husband, for crying out loud!

I felt her press a towel into my hand. I scrubbed my face dry and sat back in my chair, hard, very angry.

“You're not going to eat your cookie, John-Luke?”

“I don't want it.”

“Suit yourself. But they're sugar cookies. Your favorites.”

“Oatmeal cookies are my favorites. The kind my mother makes.”

“...Oh.” There was hurt in her voice. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

“My mother feeds us real well.”

“I didn't mean to suggest— I'm sure she does.”

Actually, I was still thirsty enough to down that milk in two glugs, but I sat there in silence, frowning down at the embroidered tablecloth I supposed she had put on just for me.

She made a little sound in the back of her throat, then she said, “Poor boy. You're unhappy, aren't you.”

“No. I'm just... awful busy.” I meant, of course, with my games, trying to get my fill of fun before school started and I became two digits old and had to start looking for work and war broke out all over the world, but she took it a different way.

“Yes, I was talking to Mr Kane, and he told me how you do odd jobs to help your mother out. Shining shoes and all. She must be very proud to have a good boy like you.”

I said nothing.

“I hope you don't mind if I ask, but...” She paused a second for permission, but then pressed on anyway. “Your father, John-Luke. Is he dead?”

I don't know what made me say it. A desire to shock her, I guess. “No, he's not dead. He's in prison.” Not until many years later did I discover that I had unknowingly told her the truth.

She drew a quick breath. “Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry, I was just—oh, that's too bad. You poor boy.” She reached towards me, but I twisted away.

“No, we're proud of him! They put him in prison because he's a spy! They're going to hang him next month, but he doesn't care. He only regrets that he has but one life to give for his country!”

“Wh... what?”

“I'm going home!”

I started to rise, but before I could move, she stood up and hugged me, saying, “No, please don't go!”

I turned my head aside, so as not to have my nose buried in her bosom.

“You poor, poor boy. You've had such a lot of troubles and worries in your young life, haven't you? No wonder you're all worked up. But I know what will calm you and make you feel better.” She opened a drawer and took out the brush that had white hairs trailing from the bristles, her crazy husband's hair, and she started towards me. I jumped up, snatched the door open, and plunged clattering down the stairs, the stair rail squeaking through my gripping hand.

On the first of September, the radio told us that Hitler had invaded Poland, whose courageous but useless cavalry melted before the German Blitzkrieg. Two days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. It had begun, this new war, this Second World War.

By the Labor Day weekend that signaled the beginning of school, I had squeezed the last drops of adventure and danger out of that summer's game of single-handedly defending Pearl Street and, by extension, the world from Nazi invasion. As a sort of farewell tour, I was mopping up the last of the Storm Troopers (I had finally learned their real name) at the end of our back alley, where I had not been since the day I fled down Mrs McGivney's stairs to avoid the touch of that repulsive hair brush, the squeaking handrail rubbing the skin off the web between my thumb and forefinger and leaving a scab that took forever to heal because I kept popping it open by spreading my hand too widely: a child's curious fascination with pain.

Wounded though I was in both legs, one shoulder, and in the web between my thumb and first finger, I managed to crawl from the shelter of one stable doorway to the next, making the sound of ricocheting bullets by following a guttural krookh with a fading cheeooo through my teeth, as a Nazi machine gun kicked up the gravel at my feet and the tap-tap-tap sound of a coin against glass that... what? I almost glanced up, but I converted the glance into a frowning examination of the space around me, searching for snipers, because I didn't want her to know that I had heard her summons. Satisfied that there were no Nazi snipers on the rooftops, I made an intense mime of drawing a map on the ground. Again she tapped her three urgent taps, and I could imagine her looking down on me. I hunched more tightly over my map. She tapped again, but this time there were only two clicks, then she stopped short. That missing click told me she suddenly realized that I could hear her, and I was ignoring her on purpose. I kept my head down, knowing that if I looked up I would see her there, her eyes full of sadness and recrimination.