KooKooLand (27 page)

“Don't set yourself on fire under there,” he said.

“I won't,” she promised.

“And don't tell Nurse Ratched where you got it, OK? Don't get me in trouble like my pain-in-the-ass kid here.”

“My lips are sealed,” she said, pressing her lips together in a pout that made her look like a trout.

A nurse came into the room and Jimmy stepped away from the teen-rager's bed. The nurse told Jimmy visiting hours were done.

He kissed me gently on the forehead and whispered one more thing in my ear.

“Wait till you get home, troublemaker.”

Then he took off, giving the nurse a little wink.

She came over and took my temperature.

“You're a lucky girl to have such a nice daddy, aren't you?”

Fortunately I didn't have to answer 'cause I had a thermometer stuck in my trap.

After the nurse left the room, the numbskull put in her two cents.

“Your dad is sooo cool.”

“You don't look like Sandra Dee one bit,” I snapped, and turned my back on her.

I lay there and tried to figure out what to do. If I didn't die in the hospital I'd have to go back home, where I felt Jimmy would murder me for sure. My only hope was to run away. I closed my eyes and began to dream up my escape—from Jimmy, from the hospital, from my whole stupid life.

This was my plan. I'd wait for the numbskull to fall asleep and then vamoose out the window. I'd hitch a ride with a truckie to Susan's college up north. She'd be thrilled to see me and let me hide out in her dorm room. She'd cure my stomachache with medicine she cooked up in chemistry class. After I was better, we'd have picnics on her bed with my stuffed animals. We'd snatch the stuffed animals from my old bedroom one day when Jimmy was out hunting and Shirley was asleep. Eventually Susan would bring me to her teacher, who'd skip me a bunch of grades and put me in Susan's class. We'd sit next to each other and pass notes back and forth and still get straight As. We'd go to medical school in KooKooLand and find a cure for the Big C. I'd marry Dr. Kildare and she'd marry Dr. Ben Casey and we'd live next door to each other and go surfing in polka-dot bikinis every single day for the rest of our lives.

To make it all happen, I only needed one thing. Dough. I decided to steal some from Shirley's purse the next day when she came to visit and then make my getaway that night.

But my plan never got off the ground. The next morning Dr. Joy came in and told me I was going home.

“I still got that pain,” I groaned, hoping to make him change his mind.

“I'm going to give you something to make your tummy all better. What do you say about that?”

“Yabba dabba doo,” I muttered.

It turned out he had found worms crawling around in my guts. I pictured big, slimy earthworms slithering up my gullet and out of my mouth, nose, and ears like a corpse in an Edgar Allan Poe movie. But he said these were itsy-bitsy worms you could barely see. He asked if I'd been on a farm lately or touched any dead animals.

“Just the ducks my daddy shoots,” I told him. “I find them for him after they fall out of the sky.”

“Well, maybe he can get himself a nice little doggy to do that from now on. I bet you'd like a puppy.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, humoring him, resigned to the fact that I was going home and was as good as dead.

“I'll call your mommy to come get you. I know you can't wait to go home and play with your dolls. And here's a new friend for them.”

He pulled out a Troll doll and gave it to me. I pretended to like it, but those ugly dolls gave me the creeps. After he was gone, I stuffed it under my pillow and suffocated it.

A short while later, Shirley showed up carrying a lollipop as big as my head. She was taking me home in a taxi 'cause Jimmy was out hunting again with Hank. I prayed Jimmy'd get trampled by a moose or eaten by a bear or, better yet, accidentally plugged by Hank. I figured if Hank killed Jimmy he'd feel so bad he might adopt me and then Susan and I could really be sisters. I'd be a millionaire's daughter and move out of the projects.

On the way back home Shirley had the taxi stop at a drugstore. She picked up a big bottle of medicine that the whole family was supposed to take. When we got home, she gave me a tablespoon of the stuff. It was the color of old blood and tasted like vomit.

Shirley, Virginia, and I washed it down with Dr Pepper.

Jimmy refused to take it at all. He said there was nothing wrong with his guts that a couple of good stiff highballs couldn't fix.

But, I guess the medicine must've worked anyway 'cause my stomachache went away.

And luckily Jimmy didn't make good on his threat to kill me. Instead, he just iced me out.

“Stay outta my sight,” he snarled the first day I was back, and after that he didn't say another word to me.

Then he proceeded to butter Virginia up by telling her how pretty she was and how she was his favorite daughter and how he had been crazy in love with her mother, Jacqueline, more than my mother Shirley.

“Don't worry,” Virginia said when we were lying in bed one night. “He won't stay mad at you forever.”

“I don't care,” I snapped.

“C'mon, don't rock the boat, dummkopf. He's in a good mood and Christmas is coming.”

“He hates Christmas. He'd kill Santa if Santa was alive.”

“He's not so bad when he's winning at the track. He gave me five bucks and told me I could play hooky.”

“He's just trying to get you on his side.”

“Well, you have Mom and I have him.”

“Mom loves you too. Just as much as me.”

Virginia didn't look convinced. And, truthfully, I wasn't sure Shirley did love her as much.

I felt bad for Virginia, that she couldn't even remember her own mother. She didn't even have one lousy picture of her. Jimmy had torn up every last one after Jacqueline took off. Before she left, Jimmy'd told her if she hauled her ass out of there she wouldn't be taking his goddamn kid with her. Shirley said Jacqueline tried to get Virginia back, but Jimmy told the judge she was a lousy mother for abandoning her baby girl. He said she drank like a fish when she shoulda been on her knees washing out diapers. He even got one of his buddies to say she cheated on Jimmy with him. The judge decided Virginia would be better off with YaYa until Jimmy could find another wife. Which, of course, he did in no time flat. And Virginia never saw her mother again. Jacqueline tried to see her a few times, but YaYa turned her away and threatened to call the cops if she showed up again.

“Mom loves you more and always will,” Virginia insisted. “That's what Daddy says.”

“He's a big fat liar,” I shot back.

“Maybe you're just jealous 'cause he likes me better. Maybe you just don't like how things are around here now 'cause you're spoiled rotten.”

I couldn't believe my ears. While I'd been in the hospital Jimmy had turned my own sister—scratch that, my half sister—against me.

I felt more determined than ever to run away and be with Susan, the sister I was meant to have.

I turned my face to the wall and said one last thing to Virginia.

“You'll miss me when I'm gone.”

“W
e heard you were a goner,” said Billy from the Projects when I returned to school.

“I was just playing hooky, numbskull. I got better things to do than hang around this stupid joint.”

“We heard you were in the hospital throwing up green pus.”

“I was just faking. I got to watch cartoons all day with my best friend, Susan. Her old man's a millionaire.”

Billy from the Projects threw an eraser at me. It hit me on the noggin.

“I'll kill you dead!” he yelled.

“My father's gonna kill
you
dead when I tell him what you did!” I yelled back.

“If he touches one hair on my chinny chin chin, my mother'll call the office. And the cops'll come and they'll throw him in the Valley Street jail where he belongs. He's nothing but a lousy crook who's riding the gravy train.”

“Oh yeah? And your mother's a big fat snitch,” I shot back, figuring I now knew who the snitch was. “And you know what happens to snitches.” I hung my tongue out of the side of my mouth like a corpse. “They get plugged by dagos from Revere.”

Billy from the Projects turned as white as the chalk on that eraser.

“Nobody in my family's a snitch.”

“My old man's got friends at the office. He knows who the snitches are.”

Billy from the Projects looked like he was about to pee his pants.

“We won't say nothing. We won't say nothing. We won't say nothing.”

He kept repeating the words like my broken Chatty Cathy.

“Good,” I said. “You and your old lady better clam up from now on.”

When I got home from school, Jimmy was standing in the kitchen ripping open a piece of mail addressed to Shirley. It was a Christmas card from Grammy in Nova Scotia and there was a present for Shirley—a double sawbuck—inside. Jimmy slipped the cash into his wallet and stuffed the empty card back in the envelope.

“Don't you snitch on me,” he warned. “I'm gonna use this dough to buy
your mother a Christmas present. You want her to have a nice Christmas, don't you? You don't want her to be left out in the cold while you and your sister are tearing into your presents like greedy little pigs?”

I shook my head. The picture of my mother with no presents to open on Christmas morning was too much to bear.

“What do you think we oughta get her?” he asked.

“Can we get her a new washing machine?” I said. The one she had with the wringer was always leaking and flooding the kitchen.

“A washing machine? She doesn't need that, dummkopf. She already has one. It just needs a screw tightened or something.”

I nodded like I agreed with him even though I knew he'd never ever tighten that screw.

“Hey, I know just what to get her,” said Jimmy. “Barney just got a shipment of Chanel No. 5. Broads go wild for perfume.”

I felt certain Uncle Barney's Chanel No. 5 would not be at the top of Shirley's Christmas list. Jimmy had gotten her some perfume from Barney once before and she said it smelled like toilet water from a toilet.

“Well, I've got homework to do,” I said, starting to edge out of the room.

He blocked my way.

“Only a brownnoser does homework as soon as she gets home. The other pip-squeaks in your class must think you're a real ass-kisser.”

“No they don't.”

“Sure they do. And you're not even sharp enough to see it. You know it's not enough to be smart in life. You gotta be clever too. You gotta know how to work your points.”

“I know.”

“Nobody's gonna like you if you're a brownnoser.”

“Susan likes me. She doesn't think I'm a brownnoser. She told me to study hard.”

“Susan doesn't know you like I do. If I told her what you're really like, she wouldn't like you at all. She'd find another poor little pip-squeak from the projects to fawn all over.”

I started to panic.

But before I could defend myself, he began to laugh and bopped me on the head.

“Take it easy, brownnoser. I'm just riding you. C'mon, let's go get you a stupid Christmas tree.”

Somehow, without doing anything, I was back on his good side.

We took off in the Pontiac and headed over to a plant nursery where Jimmy sometimes bought landscaping supplies. He knew a guy who worked there and the guy had agreed to trade a Christmas tree for a few pancakes. The only thing was, the guy's boss couldn't know about it. So we had to wait around back until the guy finally ran out and tossed a tree over the fence to us. Jimmy tossed a couple of pancakes back over to him and they were square.

When we got home and put the tree in its stand, even Jimmy, who didn't give a goddamn about Christmas trees, had to admit it was a scrawny-looking thing and that the guy had stiffed him.

“That no-good weasel thinks he pulled a fast one on me, but I've got news for him. Nobody pulls a fast one on this Greek. I knew he was a chiseler all along. The pancakes I gave him stank. They weren't the good stuff. So who came out ahead, kiddo? Who's the Top Cat?”

“You are,” I admitted, impressed that he had stiffed the guy before knowing he was gonna get stiffed himself.

“Anyway, that runty little tree gave up its miserable life for you, so you better ho ho ho enjoy it,” Jimmy said before he got changed into some sharp clothes, splashed on enough Old Spice to choke a horse, and took off.

I woke up Shirley early that Friday night so we could trim the scrawny tree before she left for work. Shirley, Virginia, and I piled a bunch of lights on the tree and a ton of tinsel and some crappy ornaments Shirley had bought at Woolworth's to replace the antique ones Jimmy had pawned. I kept picturing our beautiful ornaments on some other kid's tree and it made me wanna plug somebody—the kid, Jimmy, Santa. But plugging anybody was out of the question. So instead I took one of the candy canes I was supposed to be hanging on the tree and made believe it was a .22. The straight part was the barrel, the hooked part the trigger. I blew away those Woolworth ornaments, the stuffed mallard above the TV, and the highball in Shirley's shaky hand.

Around ten thirty, Shirley left for work and I went upstairs to bed sucking on my candy cane gun.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

I awoke to Shirley wailing and leapt out of bed like I'd been zapped by a string of Christmas lights with a bum plug. It was the next morning. Shirley was home from work and I figured Jimmy was already wound up about something. I stumbled over to the bedroom door and cracked it open. Jimmy's transistor radio on his bedside table was blaring. Jimmy often turned the radio on as he was getting dressed to go hunting, not caring how goddamn loud it was or who he might be waking up.