All-Bright Court (12 page)

“But Daddy, he got to come from someplace, like the chicken. If the chicken come first, it didn't come from a egg. If a egg come first, it didn't come from a chicken . . . Where God come from?”

“I done told you, and don't be asking so many questions. You always be asking so many questions. Where you get all of 'em?”

Mikey wanted to tell him that Cheryl had asked him the chicken-and-egg question. But if he told his father, it would only be proof for him, and he could hear his father saying, Your mama done told you, that child trash.

The whole family was trash, and not one month after they blew into All-Bright Court like scraps of paper caught up in a sudden upswirl of wind, they proved it.

It was not even warm yet, but the mother and father were sitting out on the cold stone front porch, drinking Genesee beer right out of quart bottles. One of the living room windows was open, and sitting in it was a Philco radio tuned to a country-and-western station. The twang of the music from the tinny radio bounced off of the low ceiling of clouds, treating their neighbors to what seemed like an interminable night at the Grand Ole Opry.

Venita had been walking over to Mary Kate's house to take her a jar of strawberry preserves. That's the excuse she gave Moses. She really wanted to know where the music was coming from. As she walked past the Zakrezewski house, she nodded and spoke. “Good evening,” she said.

They both just stared at her, the skinny husband, the fat wife. Then the husband told the wife, “Angela, get that goddamn Indian boy of yours to go over to the store and get some more beer.”

That was how it was discovered that the Chug-a-lugs were not a wholly white family. Cheryl confirmed it. She seemed to be the self-appointed messenger of all the trashy goings-on in her family's life. Whatever was not evident enough by her parents' living their lives on the front porch, she made clear.

She was the one who told Mikey about her older brother. “Paulie isn't my whole brother, he's half my brother and half Indian. His daddy was a stupid Indian, a whole Indian that got drunk and drowneded himself in the lake one fall. He walked right into it and drowneded. They didn't find him until spring. The lake turned him up, and he was swole up like a balloon and half ate up by fish.”

Cheryl told Mikey this, but she did not tell him that this boy was a ghost in their family. She was too young to notice that he existed only in the periphery of their vision. He haunted the shadows of their consciousness.

Paulie watched the children while Jake and Angela were at work. He sat inside, looking through the window while they played outside. Even when he was not watching them, he rarely ventured from the dimness of the house.

Isaac had heard that this boy was half Indian, and sometimes when he was over that way, he would stroll past the house and tease him. “How!” he would yell at the boy, or give him a whoop. “Woo-woo-woo-woo. Woo-woo-woo-woo.” The boy would just continue staring blankly. Isaac was becoming a ghost himself. He was moving into the shadows of life, and he was going on the haunt.

The other parents did not stop their children from playing with the Chug-a-lugs. They might be trash, but they were only children. But the other parents would have stopped them from playing with the Chug-a-lugs if they had known about Chris and his dancing.

He had done his dance only three times, while his parents were at work. Each time, a group of children had gathered around one of the back windows. Cheryl stood outside with them. Paulie sat staring out the other kitchen window. Chris turned the radio on, whipped the knob down the dial to a rock station, hopped on top of the metal kitchen table, and pulled his shorts and underpants down.

Chris made sure he had the attention of all the faces gathered around, faces ash-purple like unwashed plums, all except Cheryl's. Her face was round and peachy. Then Chris began dancing, jumping up and down, twisting, spinning. It was a short, spastic dance, not even a minute. To conclude the dance, Chris would grab hold of his penis and shake it at the audience.

Mikey had been there for all three performances. When Chris would finish his dance, all the children would run to the field and release their laughter in the tangle of weeds.

It was a miracle that the mothers never found out. It was a testament to the secret lives of children.

Jake Zakrezewski paid as little attention to the twins as he could. From his day shift at Capital, he headed straight for his mistress. Chris and Cheryl could be blowing through All-Bright Court like a two-sex, non-look-alike twin tornado, and Jake would not have left his mistress's side.

He was having an affair with a '57 Pontiac. The Star Chief. She was a two-door yellow convertible. White interior. One-hundred-twenty-two-inch wheelbase. Two hundred seventy horsepower. A black racing stripe ran along each side and flared out once it passed the door. Four chrome stars shone in the blackness of each broad stripe. Chrome rockets finished off the stripes, extending back to the taillights.

Jake would make love to her for hours, washing and polishing, shining her chrome, conditioning her seats. He would lie under her jacked-up body, bend over her open hood, listening to her purr. He spent more time attending to her needs than to anyone else's in his family. Despite all the time he spent on her while she was standing still, he took her out only once a week.

On Fridays the whole family would pile into the beloved Sky Chief and go to Mexico. That was where Cheryl said they went, to Mexico by car on Friday evening. They returned the next night. This was surely a lie.

That boat of a car, that land yacht, which eased out of All-Bright Court every Friday evening and floated up Hanna, down Wilmuth, onto Holbrook, and then onto the pike, looked as if it could take them to Mexico, as if it could go out on the open sea and sail around the whole world. But these people, these Chug-a-lugs, these Zakrezewskis, could never get to Mexico in a day. Even in a Sky Chief.

“What they do in that car?” Mary Kate asked Venita one evening as they sat on Mary Kate's front porch.

“They must fly,” Venita said. “That car must be a rocket ship.”

“No, they drive,” Mikey said, a little pitcher. He was standing inside the screen door.

“Go to bed,” his mother said.

Mikey went up to bed and wished he'd had a book to look up where Mexico was. He knew it was far. He remembered seeing it on a globe in school, but he couldn't remember where it was.

Cheryl had told him that they didn't just
go
to Mexico, they
were
Mexican.

“We speak Mexican too,” Chris had said.

“Speak Mexican,” Mikey demanded.

“I don't have to speak Mexican to prove it to you,” Cheryl said.

“Ya'll ain't no Mexicans. Ya'll Polacks,” Mikey said.

“No we aren't,” Cheryl said. “And I'll speak Mexican to you just to show you. Adiós!” It came out “Ay-dee-oos.”

“That means goodbye, smarty. Look it up.”

Mikey suspected she might be pulling his leg, but it made no difference. He had no way of looking up what “ay-dee-oos” was, and if Cheryl was lying, she would slip out of it. But Mikey liked this peachy, one-lipped pregnant girl.

Cheryl wasn't really lying. Her family did go to Mexico for a day every weekend. Mexico, New York, where they had lived. Jake drove, cruising down the thruway with the top down, doing seventy all the way. Angela sat next to him, an upper lip painted on for the trip. The kids sat in the back, the wind whipping through their hair. They had to lie down for most of the ride to keep from drowning in the stream of air.

When they came back on Saturday night, the car would be packed with beer and groceries, and Jake would have an attitude. He would be looped on Genesee. The children and Angela made trips back and forth to the car to unload it. Jake spent his time going over the car, letting up her top, shaking out her mats, ducking under her hood.

Arguing on the front porch was part of the ritual after the return from Mexico. The radio would be cranked up, and the twangy music would begin bouncing off of the buildings. Things stayed pretty quiet until Jake had had his fifth or sixth quart. This was when the yelling began.

All summer Jake had been grumbling about their moving. It had been Angela's idea for them to live in All-Bright Court, to save money until they found a house. They had left Mexico so he could take a welding job at Capital. He had commuted for nearly a year, just he and his mistress out on the open road. Jake spent the week in Buffalo and drove home on weekends, but Angela couldn't see how they were saving money that way. So they all moved, and Angela found a job at a dye plant in Buffalo. She could see the money adding up.

It wasn't her fault they hadn't moved out of All-Bright Court. Jake was too lazy to look for a house. There were all kinds of houses for sale right in the neighborhood. They could
walk
and look at them.

He didn't want a house within walking distance of
this
place.

What did he expect, a house to come driving up looking for them?

No, what he did expect was some peace and quiet. And those kids. She couldn't control them, the twins. That was
her
job.

Didn't
he
think she worked? Didn't he ever think she might be tired?

From what? She didn't clean. The house was dirty.

She didn't care about
this
place. She wanted a house.
She
was saving money.

She was saving money, all right. She was starving him. Just look at him. He was wasting away.

He was skinny when she met him. How was that her fault? He was naturally skinny.

That was true, Jake was naturally skinny. In fact, he looked like a skinny Elvis. This did not endear him to the people of All-Bright Court.

Rumor had it that Elvis had said, “Ain't nothing a nigger can do for me 'cept buy my records and shine my shoes.” No one knew when or where Elvis had said it, and if you asked anyone how he knew this, he would say, “Everybody know. Ain't no secret.” If Jake had listened to Elvis instead of country and western, or if he had an upper lip to curl up at them, he might have been run out.

The arguments were enough to make people want to run him out. Every Saturday night, back and forth, back and forth, the family's dirty laundry waving in the wind, raggedy drawers, soiled bras, bloodstained sheets. They aired it all. Angela remained cool throughout these exchanges, but on the weekend after the Fourth, she lost it.

Jake was popping the top off his eighth quart when he started in on a different tack.

She was fucking around on him.

What? With who? She laughed.

That guy. She knew the one, the Italian guy at the factory. She knew the one.

There's tons of Italian guys at the factory.

She knew the one, the one that brought her home last week.

Him?

Him! She was sick.
He
wouldn't come get her.

What did she expect? He was working on his car.

That figured.

She was changing the subject. Why was she fucking around on him? She knew how Italian men were, liking fat women.

He was crazy.

No he wasn't.

She knew Italians were animals, pigs.

His mother was Italian.

What was she trying to say about his mother? What was she trying to say about him?

He had said Italians were pigs. He could figure it out.

Then he jumped her. He rode her down off the porch and onto the front lawn, holding on to her like a rodeo rider who had grabbed hold of a steer too big for him to wrestle.

Angela shook him off and he rolled a few times. She ran to the porch, grabbed a beer bottle, and broke it against the building. Jake was too dazed and drunk to even stand up. Angela jumped on top of him. He fought her as hard as he could, all the while shouting for help.

But not one of the neighbors came. It was just the trash blowing up again, and besides, it was none of their business.

Angela slashed Jake's face with the bottle. The half-Indian ghost of a boy with the whole-Indian stupid drunk dead father saved Jake. He jumped on his mother's back, and though he wasn't strong enough to pull her off, his presence brought her back to her senses. She rolled off Jake and lay on the ground, weeping.

There were sirens coming, wailing closer and closer, and Jake's blood was dripping on the ground. Two white officers came on the scene, clubs drawn.

What a sight they saw. A skinny Caucasian man dripping blood all over, and he had pissed on himself. A nasty, bloody rag was pressed against his face. The cut was only a scratch, but a deep scratch, less than an inch from his left eye. He was crying, and she was crying, this pregnant white woman with a big smudge of orange lipstick on her chin.

Their kids were standing around them, wearing dirty underwear. Even in the darkness the stains on their drawers could be seen. A true mother's nightmare. The kids weren't crying. They looked stunned, and they were quiet, their hair standing up like oily feathers.

A crowd of Negroes, colored people, black people, had gathered. What were they calling themselves now? They were keeping their distance. Good. No trouble. Their eyes were glowing as they watched from the darkness.

No charges. No one wanted to press charges. But what was to be expected?
These
people living down here with
them
. What could you expect?

Things settled down after the fight. Jake and Angela were ashamed, and well they should have been. They had seen the way the cops had looked at them. They weren't
that
drunk. They could see that the cops were amused, giving each other sly looks from the corners of their eyes and smiling. Those bastards were smiling, and Jake knew, he just knew, they must have been Italians. Pigs. Treated them just like they were a bunch of niggers. They had to move.

Jake started taking the Star Chief out on weekdays. It hurt him to do it to her, to make her move. But after Angela came home, after she'd worked a ten-hour shift, taken two buses, cooked dinner, and washed the dishes, he and she would go sailing out of All-Bright Court. They never took the children.