KooKooLand (21 page)

I just wanted it the hell off me.

O
ur first day back we went to pick up Squirmy. YaYa couldn't wait to get rid of him. Virginia wiggled her finger in Squirmy's cage, but Squirmy didn't nuzzle her like he usually did. He bit her. Virginia screamed and yanked her bleeding finger out of the cage.

YaYa went flippy. She yelled at Jimmy that hamsters were vicious rodents and shouldn't be kept as pets and said it would be all his fault if Virginia got rabies and died.

Then she spit on Virginia.

Virginia looked like she was gonna faint. We'd both been terrified of rabies ever since Jimmy'd told us about a hunter who'd gotten chomped by a raccoon and then had to get a bunch of needles stuck in his breadbasket.

Jimmy yelled at YaYa that it was all
her
fault, that she'd taken lousy care of Squirmy, that she never liked animals, never let him have a dog 'cause they made too much of a mess and that there was something wrong, really wrong, with anybody who didn't like furry little animals.

Then he grabbed Squirmy's cage and we beat it.

In the car, Virginia kept squeezing her knuckle, trying to get out any rabies poison. I scrunched away from her, not wanting to catch anything. I asked her if she felt weird, like the Wolfman before a full moon. She told me to shut my trap and then Jimmy told us both to shut our traps, told us we were a couple of dummkopfs for thinking we could get rabies from a hamster.

When we got home, Jimmy deposited Squirmy's cage in our bedroom and Squirmy began running around in circles like he had really gone off the deep end.

“Don't stick your schnozzolas in there,” Jimmy warned us before leaving to settle up with the loan shark. He said the bloodsucking loan shark was charging an arm and a leg and would chop off an arm or a leg if he didn't hurry up and pay up.

I asked if I could go with him to see the bloodsucker. I asked if we could stop at Hank's on the way back.

“Some of us gotta work for a living,” he replied. “You're a lucky kid. You're
still on vacation. I gotta go mow some rich lard-asses' lawns. I gotta climb back on the hamster wheel to put Twinkies in your breadbasket and support a dippy rodent.”

I did my best to look sorry for being a lucky kid with a dippy rodent.

As soon as he drove away, Shirley kissed us and went off to bed 'cause she had to go back to making sunglasses that night.

Virginia and I watched Squirmy run around in circles.

“Squirmy, calm down. It's me,” Virginia cooed. “Remember I fed you feta cheese from my mouth?”

Squirmy looked like he wanted to tear her lips off.

“Maybe he ate some radioactive bugs in the basement and now he's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” I offered. “Or maybe he smacked his head against the cage and got amnesia.”

“He loved us and now he hates us,” moaned Virginia.

“No, he's just mad. He's mad and he'll get over it. Like Daddy.”

To take Virginia's mind off of the whole Squirmy situation, I suggested we play Life.

Life was my second-favorite board game after Candy Land. It had a wheel you could spin and dough you could win and you got to drive a car even if you were a girl. You drove through the ups and downs of life, collecting a husband and adding pink or blue kids to your car. You either ended up a Millionaire or went to the Poor Farm.

Virginia hated Life. Besides which, she was too old for toys. That's what she'd informed me, anyway, when she turned fourteen. I knew she still secretly played with her tiger puppet, but rather than use that to convince her I simply said that someday . . . someday . . . we would be old and shriveled up and maybe crippled and she would be sorry she hadn't played one last game of Life with me, her only sister.

“Quit it,” she said. “You sound just like Miserable Daddy.” She yanked a
True Confessions
magazine out from under her mattress, then tossed it aside. “OK, one lousy game.”

“Yabba dabba doo!” I cried.

Now all I had to do was win. Had to. It was a matter of Life and death.

In the past, I didn't hesitate to cheat. I'd sneak my playing piece onto a different square or steal money from the bank or add another kid to my car. But now that I was aiming to be a good Catholic, cheating was outta the question.

So I played it straight. And Virginia clobbered me. Her family got big and rich and mine stayed puny and poor.

“Your face is so long, it's dragging on the board,” Virginia said.

“This is a stupid game,” I choked. “I like Candy Land better.”

When Virginia finally realized I wasn't going to cheat, she took pity on me and cheated herself. She snuck her car backwards and miscounted and ended up on bad squares. My mood lifted. I acted like she'd just had a sudden turn of bad luck. Norris Luck. Hell, that happened all the time. You thought you were a winner and then you got robbed. As long as I wasn't the one cheating, I figured I was OK with God. If Virginia wanted to go to hell, that was her business.

We heard Jimmy's car pulling up to the curb—the worst sound in the world.

“Hitler's back,” said Virginia.

“Oh no,” I moaned, the joy of my near victory evaporating.

I peeked out the window to see Jimmy and Uncle Barney unloading some TVs from the Pontiac. They lugged the first one inside and up the stairs and into our bedroom.

“Hey, little girls,” Uncle Barney grunted as he entered, struggling with the TV.

He gave a cockeyed glance around the room, looking for a spot to drop his heavy load.

“Move that game,” grunted Jimmy. “Make it snappy.”

We grabbed Life and threw it into its box.

They dropped the hot TV in its place with a thud.

“How're my good little Greek girls?” asked Uncle Barney. “Bet you can't wait to get back in that winner's circle.”

“Cut the crap and help me move this bureau,” said Jimmy. They shoved the bureau back against the closet, creating space for another couple of TVs.

Jimmy turned to us. “You kids have too many toys. There's no room for anything else in here.”

“Ah, leave 'em alone, Jimmy. We got enough room. We'll pile 'em on top of each other.”

“Oh yeah? You want to scratch the finish? You think customers wanna buy a scratched-up set? I'm talkin' regular people, Joe Frickin' Blow, not a bum like you.”

“We can stuff rags between 'em,” suggested Barney.

“And while we're at it, you can stuff two in my ears so I don't have to listen to your bright ideas anymore.”

“Your old man's a comedian,” said Uncle Barney. “A regular Jack Benny.”

“Jack Benny's a moron,” countered Jimmy as he studied the room, figuring out where the other TVs would go. Finally, he looked over at me.

“OK, Dracula,” he said. “You win. Tomorrow you get your goddamn bunk beds.”

“Ohboyohboyohboyohboy!” I squealed.

I felt like kissing those hot TVs.

Lying in bed that night, I tried to picture what the new bunk beds would look like and how much fun it would be to climb the little ladder from one to the other. I lobbied Virginia to let me have the top bunk, but she said she didn't care, I could take my pick.

The next day I planned to go bunk bed shopping with Jimmy, but he had already left the house by the time I got up. I kept listening for the sound of some truckie in his big rig—some guy who owed Jimmy a favor—driving up to deliver our bunk beds so Jimmy wouldn't have to pay the store to do it.

But no truckie appeared. I waited in my bedroom for hours, staring out the window. Finally, Jimmy's car drove up. Bruce, the hopped-up groom and part-time lobster poacher, stumbled out of the passenger seat. He had a drill, which he dropped on the ground.

I figured the bunk beds would be following along any minute.

But still, no truck appeared. Jimmy and Bruce tromped up the stairs and came into my bedroom. When Bruce saw me, his yellowish eyes seemed to brighten.

“Hey, it's the lobster lover and future bunk bed owner.”

“Are you putting together the bunk beds?” I asked, getting right to the point.

“Yeah, he is,” said Jimmy. “So gangway.”

Bruce plugged his drill in and began to drill a hole in the bedpost of Virginia's bed and I knew right then and there I wasn't getting any bunk beds. I was getting our twin beds stacked on top of each other, engineered by a guy who could barely see straight.

Right away I saw the complications.

“How am I gonna get onto the top without a little ladder?”

“You'll hoist yourself up, for crying out loud,” said Jimmy. “We did it all the time in the merchant marine. It'll build up those jigaboo arms of yours.”

I watched Bruce drill the holes. They didn't look very straight.

Squirmy chattered and rammed his head against the bars. I figured he didn't like the sound of the drill.

“Take Psycho outta here,” Jimmy ordered me.

I gingerly grabbed the handle on Squirmy's cage and brought him downstairs. I set him on the kitchen table.

Squirmy wouldn't stop chattering. Virginia got some feta cheese and dropped it through the top of the cage, hoping to jog his memory of happier times. He got up on his hind legs and tried to bite her finger again.

And that's when I noticed the little white marking on his belly.

“Squirmy never had a white spot like that!” I cried out, like Nancy Drew cracking a case.

“Oh, my God! It's not Squirmy!” Virginia screamed.

The jig was up.

Jimmy heard us shrieking and stomped down the stairs. We told him our discovery.

He glared at the fake Squirmy and then came clean about what had happened.

Squirmy had run away. He had escaped his cage right after we left for Maine. YaYa couldn't find him until a few days passed and she smelled something rotten coming from behind the washing machine.

Virginia started to bawl when she heard about the rotten smell. I started bawling too. And Shirley came running downstairs in her nightgown.

“See what you did, Olive Oyl?” Jimmy snarled.

It turned out it had been Shirley's idea to pull a bait and switch. She had raced down to Woolworth's the morning after we got back and bought another hamster. She thought if they pretended nothing was wrong we wouldn't notice.

“I meant well,” she moaned. “I guess I did the wrong thing.”

“You sure as hell did!” yelled Jimmy. “The Grim Reaper ain't no Santy Claus. He's real. And they might as well get used to it.”

“It's OK,” Virginia croaked, forcing a smile.

“We'll get used to the new Squirmy,” I piped up. “I'm sure he'll stop trying to bite us.”

“He's just scared,” Virginia managed to say. “It's only natural.”

“He's awfully cute,” insisted Shirley. “He's just a little nervous.”

“He must be a goddamn she,” snapped Jimmy. “I told you to get a male, but you screwed up as usual.”

“They thought it was a boy. It's hard to tell.”

“No it isn't. It's loco, so it's a goddamn female.”

Squirmy chattered at Jimmy.

“I'm gonna drown that little—”

“No, Daddy, don't!” I wailed. “I love him—her—already!”

“All right, all right, quit your moaning and groaning. Just get it out of my goddamn sight before I wring its furry neck,” he said. “And go try out those new bunk beds. You wanted 'em and now you got 'em. No other kids in the projects are lucky enough to have bunk beds, right?”

“Right,” answered Virginia.

“Right,” I chimed in.

We took the imposter Squirmy's cage back up to our bedroom. Our twin beds were now stacked on top of each other. Bruce was sniffing the tube of glue that he had used to put them together.

He quickly screwed the cap back on the glue and flashed his goofy smile.

“Don't squeal on me to your old man, OK?” He turned to Virginia. “And I won't tell him about those magazines hidden under your mattress. Deal?”

He stuck out his pinkie.

We nodded and hooked pinkies with him.

“Cool,” he said. “You two are cool c-c-customers.”

We stood there in silence for a moment. I watched Bruce's head bob around like a jack-in-the-box. I could hear Jimmy and Shirley downstairs, still arguing about whether Squirmy was a boy or girl.

Bruce cocked his thumb in the general direction of the bunk beds.

“They
should
more or less hold together. Just don't jump on 'em too hard.”

“Oh,” I said, starting to get worried.

“I mean you can jump on them, just not too h-h-harm.”

“Not too
hard,
” I corrected him.

“Right-o, kiddo,” he mumbled, attempting to light the filter end of his cancer stick. I pointed out the problem and he snorted with laughter.

“Don't tell your old man,” he said again.

“We won't,” I assured him again.

“Lemme demonstrate how to get up there,” he said.

“No, that's OK,” I replied, picturing him cracking open his coconut.

But Bruce insisted. After slipping a half-dozen times he managed to climb onto the footboard of the bottom bed and shimmy his body onto the top. The beds swayed and creaked but didn't fall apart.

“See? Great, huh?”

“Great,” I said, wishing I'd never brought up bunk beds in the first place.

Bruce finally left and Virginia and I lay on the beds and tried to come up with a name for the new hamster. Nothing seemed right, so we ended up calling her Squirmy Two.

She was just like Squirmy, only different. Like the bunk beds were like bunk beds, only different.

A
nother shipment of TVs came in the next day. The guys who'd knocked off the TV store had hit the very same store again. They'd gone back for what wouldn't fit in their truck the first night. Nobody in their right mind would hit the same store two nights in a row, but Uncle Barney said these guys weren't in their right minds. They were a couple of wackos from Revere.