Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle (3 page)

“T
AMARA
A
NN
S
IMPSON!
Are you going to sleep all day or are you going to help me with some vacuuming?” Shirley calls from downstairs. “Come on, Tamara, we're burning daylight.”

I jam the note into my back pocket and hurry to the living room, where my mother is dusting in one place. The rest of the furniture is still grimy, but the table in front of the TV is spotless.

“Are we having company?” I ask. Shirley only cleans for a reason.

“Your brother is coming home this weekend,” she says as she throws a dust rag at me.

I catch it with one hand. “When?”

“You know your brother. He never tells us anything. But he said that it might be next Friday, as soon as his final exams are done.”

I try to remember the last time I saw Tim. Maybe it was last Christmas. No wonder Shirley's starting her cleaning frenzy early.

“Hey, Mom, did you hear anything about Kebsie?”

“Who?” Shirley picks up another rag, but her eyes are glued to the TV, where a man dressed in a jumpsuit is counting out jumping jacks. “One and two and three and four.”

I should know better not to begin conversations when Shirley is watching Jack LaLanne.

“What's he doing now?” I ask, knowing full well that she'll have to tell me about her program before she'll answer my question. I nod and pretend to be interested while Shirley explains how Jack can do push-ups using only his fingertips and how he says it's important to stop sitting around on your gluteus maximus.

I gotta hand it to him. Jack LaLanne has muscles.
Real ones
.

As soon as he's finished his deep knee bends, he straddles a wooden chair and faces the camera, looking very serious. “I have a story to tell.”

Shirley motions me to be quiet even though I hadn't said a word.

Jack continues, “You know, I like to think of life as a battlefield. Every morning when we open our eyes and wake up, we have a battle on our hands…”

“Isn't he handsome?” Shirley sighs.

“I guess.” I shrug.

“So many people are unhappy because they have lost the battle of life,” says Jack.

“The battle of life,” says Shirley. “Isn't that clever?”

“I guess.”

“Either life is working for you or you're working for life,” says Jack.

“Working for life.” Shirley repeats his words.

Jack ends his talk with an “Okay, you with me? Good.” And Shirley sighs.

When the show is over, I ask again, “Do you know what happened to Kebsie Grobser? The girl who moved away?”

“I told you about asking those poor children about their background. It's not polite and it's none of your business why they have to live in foster care.” Shirley adjusts the rabbit ears on top of the television set. “You don't question them, do you?”

“Never,” I say through gritted teeth. “But MaryBeth said that Kebsie moved back with her mother.”

“I suppose Mrs. Kutchner would know.”

“She didn't know much the day Kebsie moved away. All she said was that Kebsie didn't live there anymore.” I stare at the commercial on TV. A knight on a white horse is zapping dirty laundry with his lance.

Shirley sprays some lemony wax on the coffee table. “Sometimes when grown-ups speak to you, Tamara, you have a way of turning them off.” She wipes the wax with a rag. “Did you listen to what Mrs. Kutchner said?”

“When she told me about Kebsie?” I say.

Shirley nods.

Of course, I didn't listen. Not one bit. When you go over to your best friend's house expecting to spend the afternoon playing Bobby Sherman records and instead you find out she's moved away for good, you're too busy trying to figure out how to hold back those deep, heavy sobs to listen to the details.

I answer with a shrug.

“Maybe you should ask Mrs. Kutchner again. Maybe she has some more information,” says Shirley.

I'm not sure if she means this very minute, but I run outside before Shirley can protest.

Even though I've knocked on Mrs. Kutchner's door a hundred times before, something about this time feels strange.

Instead of Kebsie, Muscle Man's older brother Greg appears. He grunts hello, and I wonder if he's staring at the
BF
mark.

“Can I speak to Mrs. Kutchner?” I put my hand over my face to hide my cheek.

He grunts again and leaves me outside.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Kutchner comes to the door.

“Hello, Tamara.”

“I want to ask you about Kebsie.”

“Come in.” She leads me to the living room. I work my way around the table full of knickknacks and flop onto the couch. The plastic slipcover squeaks.

In the forty-three days since I've been here, nothing much has changed. I look around for the statue of the old lady holding a small child, the one that Kebsie and I broke during a pillow fight. We glued it together before Mrs. Kutchner found out about it.

I find it, tucked in the back behind a statue of a man riding a horse and a collection of baby elephants. But even from far away, I can see the crack and the dried-up glue. I wonder if Mrs. Kutchner noticed.

“I want to know what happened to Kebsie.”

Mrs. Kutchner shifts in her chair. “Kebsie is back with her mother now. They moved away. I don't know where she is.”

I stare down at the letter I have in my hands. When I look up, Muscle Man's standing in front of me.

“Hiya, Tammy.” He grins.

“Douglas, would you be a dear and pour Tamara and me a glass of lemonade?” asks Mrs. Kutchner.

“Sure, Grandma,” he says. Grandma. That's another lie. All of the foster kids call her that.

Mrs. Kutchner waits to hear the clinking of the lemonade glasses before she continues. “Tamara, I'm sorry. I don't know where she is. They're starting over. And it's best that we don't know where they are.”

“But I have a letter…”

“Tamara, honey, did Kebsie ever mention her father? And what he did to her?”

Neither parent. Never. I shake my head.

“He hurt them both. They don't want him to find them, so they didn't tell anyone where they were going. That's why we don't know.”

“But I have a letter,” I say again.

Mrs. Kutchner pats my hand. “She might contact you when they both feel safe, honey. I gave her your address.”

“It's been forty-three days.”

Muscle Man returns juggling three glasses of lemonade in his sweaty hands.

The sight of him standing there makes Mrs. Kutchner change her tone. “Thank you, Douglas. Isn't that nice that Douglas is here now?” she asks, as if Kebsie Grobser and Muscle Man were interchangeable. Well, maybe to an old lady like Mrs. Kutchner a slippery, slimy, lying weasel of a boy can replace Kebsie Grobser, but not to me.

I leave without touching the lemonade, but Muscle Man is right behind me.

“Tamara, wait!” he says before I get to the curb. I keep going. There's nothing he can say that would make me turn around.

“I know how to get a letter to Kebsie,” he shouts, and I stop dead in my tracks.

“Mrs. Swanson, who's my caseworker, she was Kebsie's too, I bet.”

“You were listening to my conversation with Mrs. Kutchner?”

“I didn't mean to. But I can help.”

I decide it's worth giving Muscle Man ten seconds of my time. “Can you really get her a letter?”

“Mrs. Swanson and I are good friends. The best. She'll get the letter to Kebsie. Give it to me.” He holds out his grubby hands.

I pull away.

If Jack LaLanne is right about life being a battlefield, then Muscle Man is the enemy. And there is no way I am going to hand over Kebsie's letter to the enemy. I hold the letter tight, close to me.

“Come on, Tammy, there's no other way,” he says. His hands are still outstretched.

I didn't have a choice. Not handing the letter over meant that I'd never hear from Kebsie again.

For Kebsie, I'd do it. Kebsie was worth the trouble.

I shove the letter at him and head for home.

I
CAN NEVER
count on my mother to answer the door when her soap operas are on. Even though Shirley is sitting in the living room, just ten steps away from the front door, I race downstairs from my bedroom as soon as I hear a knock. Kebsie has been gone for forty-five days now, and I wonder if it's her.

Instead, I find John Marcos, Big Danny, and Billy Rattle standing on the stoop. Muscle Man worms his way in between them. “Hiya, Tammy.” He smiles, but the others are much more serious.

MaryBeth Grabowsky is outside too, keeping her distance, pacing up and down on the sidewalk, wringing her hands and looking pouty. Benny Schuster is walking alongside her and so is one of the Donovan twins, although I'm not sure which one.

“You have to come outside,” says John Marcos.

“I'll be right back,” I call to Shirley. She's way too interested in
The Days of Our Lives
to answer.

As soon as we walk over to the Grabowsky's front lawn, I know what's going on. “Does someone have a gripe?” I ask.

When John Marcos answers, “Yes,” I am not surprised. The only time we're allowed on the Grabowsky's lawn is when we are doing quiet activities like talking. And the only reason for talking is when someone has a gripe.

We tiptoe through the grass, taking special care not to dig in with our heels and scuff up the lawn. Mr. Grabowsky hates scuff marks.

I keep a careful eye on Billy Rattle to make sure he's on his toes. Last year Kebsie and I got blamed for some grass getting pulled up when I'm sure it was caused by Billy running over the lawn wearing baseball cleats. “You'd better be careful,” I tell him.

I flop down on the ground, and I have to admit that it does feel nicer than Shirley's dandelion patch. As soon as I catch MaryBeth watching me run my hands over the cushiony tufts of grass, I stop. I wouldn't want MaryBeth Grabowsky to know that I think her lawn looks nice.

Whenever someone has a gripe, the first thing we do is gather on the lawn and form a circle. MaryBeth sits down, like she usually does, with Benny Schuster on one side and the Donovan twin on the other. The moment John Marcos takes his place in the center, MaryBeth gives him a smile. At least he doesn't smile back.

Of all places, Muscle Man flops down next to me, right where Kebsie used to sit. “Is anyone else coming?” he asks.

“We called for everyone. No one else is around,” says John Marcos.

“Not a single Marchetta kid?” asks Billy Rattle. With eleven children in the family, normally there's at least one of them floating around.

“They're all too busy swimming in their new pool,” explains Big Danny, who lives next door to them.

“Your brother coming?” I ask the Donovan twin.

“He's at the dentist.” He grins.

Benny Schuster gives the twin a light slap on the head. “Quit smiling likes it's a good thing.”

Big Danny spies Tony Mogavero riding down the street on his bicycle. Two punky kids, who are strangers, ride with him. Big Danny waves, but Tony shakes his head and peddles away, his punky friends at his side.

“It's been like that ever since he transferred to Catholic school,” says the Donovan twin. “I guess he thinks he's too good for us.”

I nod. “Yeah, I noticed.”

A few weeks ago, I asked Tony if he wanted to play kickball. And even though he is the best outfielder we've ever had, he shrugged it off as if the game meant nothing to him.

I've had a hard time liking him ever since.

“We're ready,” says John Marcos.

I've never been clear on how John got the job of running the gripe votes, but he's been doing it every summer for as long as I can remember. And except for when I don't agree with him, he does a pretty good job at it.

I look around, wondering whose head is on the chopping block. On Ramble Street, you have to be careful. The slightest misbehavior can get you ousted from a game. And there is no point to summer if you can't play kickball.

“I would like to begin,” says Billy Rattle. Then he jingles the change in his pockets to show he means business.

As soon as he gets the nod from John Marcos, Billy Rattle makes his big announcement. “Big Danny stole money from me.”

Big Danny jumps to his feet. “No way! I found that money over by the railroad tracks.”

John Marcos orders Big Danny to be quiet and lets Billy Rattle tell everyone how he lost fifty cents and how it was an awfully odd coincidence that Big Danny found the exact same amount that very same day.

Big Danny explains over and over again how he found the money by the railroad tracks and asks Billy if the fifty cents that he lost was in quarters, nickels, or dimes.

“Two quarters. Five dimes. Who remembers? I have so much change, I forget,” says Billy Rattle.

Like most kids with money, Billy knows when to flaunt it. When he shakes his pockets again, a bunch of change falls to the ground. The sight of all those nickels, dimes, and quarters scattered on the lawn blocks out anything sensible that Big Danny has to say.

Big Danny looks worried. And who could blame him? To be accused of stealing? That could get you banned from kickball for days.

John Marcos stands up, and I figure he's going to say that it's time to put this money thing to a vote. Instead he nods at Benny Schuster. “Now for the second order of business.”

I look around to see who's next.

Benny grabs at MaryBeth's arm. “Look what Tammy did to MaryBeth,” he says, waving her arm back and forth like a flag.

The Donovan twin leans over. “That looks bad.”

Everyone, even John Marcos, rushes over to take a look.

I spring up to see for myself. On MaryBeth Grabowsky's dainty little arm there is a tiny, faint bruise, one that I have to squint to block out the sun to see.

“When?” I demand.

“Yesterday when we were playing, you pushed her to the ground,” says the Donovan twin, and I wish I could remember which one he is so I know exactly who I'll be carrying a grudge against for the rest of my born days.

“She was standing on the baseline. I was running for third.” I point my finger at MaryBeth. “It's her fault. No fielder is allowed to stand on a baseline. There are rules about being in the way.”

As soon as I see that solemn look on John Marco's face, I realize that we are looking at MaryBeth's arm for a reason. “Wait a minute! You're going to vote? On a little thing like an accidental shove?”

“It didn't seem like an accident to me,” says Billy Rattle. “And it hurt, didn't it, MaryBeth?”

Rubbing her arm for effect, MaryBeth nods. And the boys gather around MaryBeth Grabowsky like they always do.

“
I
should be the one who has a gripe against
her
.
She
was in the way.” I kick my foot into the ground to emphasize my point.

A large chunk of sod comes flying off the lawn. There is a big brown spot where the grass should be. Mr. Grabowsky's perfect lawn is ruined.

“Look what you did!” MaryBeth glances toward her front door and back at the spot in the middle of the grass. The other kids gather around it. The way everyone is staring, you'd think the hole was as big as the Grand Canyon.

I pick up the sod, and I'm surprised at how heavy it is. The chunk in my hands is pretty big.

Muscle Man moves the dirt around. “I'm an expert gardener. Give the sod to me. I'll fix it. No one will ever know.”

“Nice going, Tamara,” says Billy Rattle. “You messed up the lawn.” He jingles the change in his pockets. “Come on everyone, let's get back to the gripes. I'm ready to vote.”

I don't stay around while Billy Rattle, Muscle Man McGinty, and the others on Ramble Street decide my fate. I run away, taking the chunk of sod with me, leaving the others to gape at the big brown spot in the middle of Mr. Grabowsky's lawn.