In Persuasion Nation (19 page)

"Never
wish harm on yourself or others," Mrs. H. said. "You are a
lovely child." Her English was flat and clear, almost like ours.

"Raccoon,
you mean," Raccoon said. "A lovely raccoon."

"A
lovely child of God," Mrs. H. said.

"Yeah,
right," Raccoon said. "Tell again about the prince."

So
Mrs. H. told again how she'd stood rapt in her yard watching an
actual prince powder his birthmark to invisibility. She remembered
the smell of burning compost from the fields, and men in colorful
leggings dragging a gutted boar across a wooden bridge. This was
before she was forced to become a human pack animal in the
Carpathians, carrying the personal belongings of cruel officers. At
night, they chained her to a tree. Sometimes they burned her calves
with a machine-gun barrel for fun. Which was why she always wore
kneesocks. After three years, she'd come home to find her babies in
tiny graves. They were, she would say, short-lived but wonderful
gifts. She did not now begrudge God for taking them. A falling star
is brief, but isn't one nonetheless glad to have seen it? Her grace
made us hate Mrs. Poltoi all the more. What was eating a sixth of a
potato every day compared to being chained to a tree? What was being
crammed in with a bunch of your cousins compared to having your kids
killed?

The
summer I was ten, Raccoon and I, already borderline rejects due to
our mutually unravelling households, were joined by Art Siminiak, who
had recently made the mistake of inviting the Kletzes in for
lemonade. There was no lemonade. Instead, there was Art's mom and a
sailor from Great Lakes passed out naked across the paper-drive
stacks on the Siminiaks' sunporch.

This
new, three-way friendship consisted of slumping in gangways, playing
gloveless catch with a Wiffle, trailing hopefully behind kids whose
homes could be entered without fear of fiasco.

Over
on Mozart lived Eddie the Vacant. Eddie was seventeen, huge and
simple. He could crush a walnut in his bare hand, but first you had
to put it there and tell him to do it. Once he'd pinned a "Vacant"
sign to his shirt and walked around the neighborhood that way, and
the name had stuck. Eddie claimed to see birds. Different birds
appeared on different days of the week. Also, there was a Halloween
bird and a Christmas bird.

One
day, as Eddie hobbled by, we asked what kind of birds he was seeing.

"Party
birds," he said. "They got big streamers coming out they
butts."

"You
having a party?" said Art. "You having a homo party?"

"I
gone have a birthday party," said Eddie, blinking shyly.

"Your
dad know?" Raccoon said.

"No,
he don't yet," said Eddie.

His
plans for the party were private and illogical. We peppered him with
questions, hoping to get him to further embarrass himself. The party
would be held in his garage. As far as the junk car in there, he
would push it out by hand. As far as the oil on the floor, he would
soak it up using Handi Wipes. As far as music, he would play a
trumpet.

"What
are you going to play the trumpet with?" said Art. "Your
asshole?"

"No,
I not gone play it with that," Eddie said. "I just gone use
my lips, O.K.?"

As
far as girls, there would be girls; he knew many girls, from his job
managing the Drake Hotel, he said. As far as food, there would be
food, including pudding dumplings.

"You're
the manager of the Drake Hotel," Raccoon said.

"Hey,
I know how to get the money for pudding dumplings!" Eddie said.

Then
he rang Poltoi's bell and asked for a contribution. She said for
what. He said for him. She said to what end. He looked at her blankly
and asked for a contribution. She asked him to leave the porch. He
asked for a contribution. Somewhere, he'd got the idea that, when
asking for a contribution, one angled to sit on the couch. He started
in, and she pushed him back with a thick forearm. Down the front
steps he went, ringing the iron bannister with his massive head.

He
got up and staggered away, a little blood on his scalp.

"Learn
to leave people be!" Poltoi shouted after him.

Ten
minutes later, Eddie, Sr. stood on Poltoi's porch, a hulking
effeminate tailor too cowed to use his bulk for anything but butting
open the jamming door at his shop.

"Since
when has it become the sport to knock unfortunates down stairs?"
he asked.

"He
was not listen," she said. "I tell him no. He try to come
inside."

"With
all respect," he said, "it is in my son's nature to perhaps
be not so responsive."

"Someone
so unresponse, keep him indoors," she said. "He is big as a
man. And I am old lady."

"Never
has Eddie presented a danger to anyone," Eddie, Sr., said.

"I
know my rights," she said. "Next time, I call police."

But,
having been pushed down the stairs, Eddie the Vacant couldn't seem to
stay away.

"Off
this porch," Poltoi said through the screen when he showed up
the next day, offering her an empty cold-cream jar for three dollars.

"We
gone have so many snacks," he said. "And if I drink a
alcohol drink, then watch out. Because I ain't allowed. I dance too
fast."

He
was trying the doorknob now, showing how fast he would dance if
alcohol was served.

"Please,
off this porch!" she shouted.

"Please,
off this porch!" he shouted back, doubling at the waist in wacky
laughter.

Poltoi
called the cops. Normally, Lieutenant Brusci would have asked Eddie
what bird was in effect that day and given him a ride home in his
squad. But this was during the OneCity fiasco. To cut graft, cops
were being yanked off their regular beats and replaced by cops from
other parts of town. A couple of Armenians from South Shore showed up
and dragged Eddie off the porch in a club lock so tight he claimed
the birds he was seeing were beakless.

"I'll
give you a beak, Frankenstein," said one of the Armenians,
tightening the choke hold.

Eddie
entered the squad with all the fluidity of a hatrack. Art and Raccoon
and I ran over to Eddie, Sr.'s tailor shop, above the Marquee, which
had sunk to porn. When Eddie, Sr. saw us, he stopped his Singer by
kicking out the plug. From downstairs came a series of erotic moans.

Eddie,
Sr. rushed to the hospital with his Purple Heart and some photos of
Eddie as a grinning, wet-chinned kid on a pony. He found Eddie
handcuffed to a bed, with an I.V. drip and a smashed face.
Apparently, he'd bitten one of the Armenians. Bail was set at three
hundred. The tailor shop made zilch. Eddie, Sr.'s fabrics were a
lexicon of yesteryear. Dust coated a bright-yellow sign that read
"Zippers Repaired in Jiffy."

"Jail
for that kid, I admit, don't make total sense," the judge said.
"Three months in the Anston. Best I can do."

The
Anston Center for Youth was a red brick former forge now yarded in
barbed wire. After their shifts, the guards held loud, hooting orgies
kitty-corner at Zem's Lamplighter. Skinny immigrant women arrived at
Zem's in station wagons and emerged hours later adjusting their
stockings. From all over Chicago kids were sent to the Anston, kids
who'd only ever been praised for the level of beatings they gave and
received and their willingness to carve themselves up. One Anston kid
had famously hired another kid to run over his foot. Another had
killed his mother's lover with a can opener. A third had sliced open
his own eyelid with a pop-top on a dare.

Eddie
the Vacant disappeared into the Anston in January and came out in
March.

To
welcome him home, Eddie, Sr., had the neighborhood kids over. Eddie
the Vacant looked so bad even the Kletzes didn't joke about how bad
he looked. His nose was off center and a scald mark ran from ear to
chin. When you got too close, his hands shot up. When the cake was
served, he dropped his plate, shouting, "Leave a guy alone!"

Our
natural meanness now found a purpose. Led by the Kletzes, we cut
through Poltoi's hose, bashed out her basement windows with
ball-peens, pushed her little shopping cart over the edge of the
quarry and watched it end-over-end into the former Slag Ravine.

Then
it was spring and the quarry got busy. When the noon blast went off,
our windows rattled. The three-o'clock blast was even bigger. Raccoon
and Art and I made a fort from the cardboard shipping containers the
Cline frames came in. One day, while pretending the three-o'clock
blast was atomic, we saw Eddie the Vacant bounding toward our fort
through the weeds, like some lover in a commercial, only fatter and
falling occasionally.

His
trauma had made us kinder toward him.

"Eddie,"
Art said. "You tell your dad where you're at?"

"It
no big problem," Eddie said. "I was gone leave my dad a
note."

"But
did you?" said Art.

"I'll
leave him a note when I get back," said Eddie. "I gone come
in with you now."

"No
room," said Raccoon. "You're too huge."

"That
a good one!" said Eddie, crowding in.

Down
in the quarry were the sad cats, the slumping watchman's shack, the
piles of reddish, discarded dynamite wrappings that occasionally rose
erratically up the hillside like startled birds.

Along
the quarryside trail came Mrs. Poltoi, dragging a new shopping cart.

"Look
at that pig," said Raccoon. "Eddie, that's the pig that put
you away."

"What
did they do to you in there, Ed?" said Art. "Did they mess
with you?"

"No,
they didn't," said Eddie. "I just a say to them, ‘Leave
a guy alone!' I mean, sometime they did, O.K.? Sometime that one guy
say, ‘Hey, Eddie, pull your thing! We gone watch you.' "

"O.K.,
O.K.," said Art.

At
dusk, the three of us would go to Mrs. H.'s porch. She'd bring out
cookies and urge forgiveness. It wasn't Poltoi's fault her heart was
small, she told us. She, Mrs. H., had seen a great number of things,
and seeing so many things had enlarged her heart. Once, she had seen
Göring. Once, she had seen Einstein. Once, during the war, she
had seen a whole city block, formerly thick with furriers, bombed
black overnight. In the morning, charred bodies had crawled along the
street, begging for mercy. One such body had grabbed her by the
ankle, and she recognized it as Bergen, a friend of her father's.

"What
did you do?" said Raccoon.

"Not
important now," said Mrs. H., gulping back tears, looking off
into the quarry.

Then
disaster. Dad got a check for shoulder pads for all six district
football teams and, trying to work things out with Mom, decided to
take her on a cruise to Jamaica. Nobody in our neighborhood had ever
been on a cruise. Nobody had even been to Wisconsin. The disaster
was, I was staying with Poltoi. Ours was a liquor household, where
you could ask a question over and over in utter sincerity and never
get a straight answer. I asked and asked, "Why her?" And
was told and told, "It will be an adventure."

I
asked, "Why not Grammy?"

I
was told, "Grammy don't feel well."

I
asked, "Why not Hopanlitski?"

Dad
did this like snort.

"Like
that's gonna happen," said Mom.

"Why
not, why not?" I kept asking.

"Because
shut up," they kept answering.

Just
after Easter, over I went, with my little green suitcase.

I
was a night panicker and occasional bed-wetter. I'd wake drenched and
panting. Had they told her? I doubted it. Then I knew they hadn't,
from the look on her face the first night, when I peed myself and
woke up screaming.

"What's
this?" she said.

"Pee,"
I said, humiliated beyond any ability to lie.

"Ach,
well," she said. "Who don't? This also used to be me. Pee
pee pee. I used to dream of a fish who cursed me."

She
changed the sheets gently, with no petulance—a new one on me.
Often Ma, still half asleep, popped me with the wet sheet, saying
when at last I had a wife, she herself could finally get some
freaking sleep.

Then
the bed was ready, and Poltoi made a sweeping gesture, like, Please.

I
got in.

She
stayed standing there.

"You
know," she said. "I know they say things. About me, what I
done to that boy. But I had a bad time in the past with a big stupid
boy. You don't gotta know. But I did like I did that day for good
reason. I was scared at him, due to something what happened for real
to me."

She
stood in the half-light, looking down at her feet.

"Do
you get?" she said. "Do you? Can you get it, what I am
saying?"

"I
think so," I said.

"Tell
to him," she said. "Tell to him sorry, explain about it,
tell your friends also. If you please. You have a good brain. That is
why I am saying to you."

Something
in me rose to this. I'd never heard it before but I believed it: I
had a good brain. I could be trusted to effect a change.

Next
day was Saturday. She made soup. We played a game using three slivers
of soap. We made placemats out of colored strips of paper, and she
let me teach her my spelling words.

Around
noon, the doorbell rang. At the door stood Mrs. H.

"Everything
O.K.?" she said, poking her head in.

"Yes,
fine," said Poltoi. "I did not eat him yet."

"Is
everything really fine?" Mrs. H. said to me. "You can say."

"It's
fine," I said.

"You
can say," she said fiercely.

Then
she gave Poltoi a look that seemed to say, Hurt him and you will deal
with me.

"You
silly woman," said Poltoi. "You are going now."

Mrs.
H. went.

We
resumed our spelling. It was tense in a quiet-house way. Things
ticked. When Poltoi missed a word, she pinched her own hand, but not
hard. It was like symbolic pinching. Once when she pinched, she
looked at me looking at her, and we laughed.