Cardboard Ocean Page 4

“Don’t know,” said the girl. “I think it’s where people in the country live.”

  “Is your name Dorothy?” I asked.

  She looked like that was a dumb question.

  “Go stand over there and I’ll tell you.”

  I stood where she said. Then she came flying at me and hit me with two hands on my chest and knocked me backwards and all I thought was “I’m two stories up and I’m going to fall on the sidewalk and get killed, and I was not sure she was Dorothy . . . ”

  Then I hit the boxes.

  “Owww.”

  My head, my back, I thought I was being beaten. I fell backwards onto the boxes and the boxes had sharp points.

  “Yes, it’s Dorothy,” she shouted down to me.

  That is a good way to remember.

  I tried to stand in the cardboard, but each time I got up I fell down. The boxes moved like boxes thrown on top of other boxes. Everyone was laughing. Okay, I made it funny for them. I hurt but I would not tell them.

  “Mickey, come back out of the ocean. This is our beach, and we all push each other in the water.”

  Dorothy was talking to me and there were almost a dozen kids up there, three of them small, like eight years old. They were playing by themselves, but the rest were bigger kids like us.

  I looked at Dorothy. It seemed like I looked at her for an hour or two.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Almost eleven,” she said, and my world collapsed. I was almost ten.

  “How old is Joey?” I asked.

  She looked at Joey who was with Jimmy Lee and Tommy stretched out on the black tar roof using the metal edge of the roof as a pillow.

  “He’s almost twelve,” she said.

  The rest of my world and my eternity and everything I had ever hoped to achieve blew apart like an atom bomb hitting it, and we knew all about atom bombs.

  We were the kids of the real atomic age, when death was only a flash away, but losing a girl because of a year was something that could really upset your day.

  Staying Alive

  We had practised duck and cover in class almost every day.

  “Children, if you see a bright flash through the windows, what do you do?”

  “Duck and cover,” we all said.

  “Right. Cover the backs of your necks,” said Miss Johnson. “The Russians will try to kill us but we will beat them.”

  Miss Johnson said we lived in a great country where we could have meat three times a day.

  “In Russia they only have it once a year.”

  We did not want to be Russians.

  But I might as well be because Dorothy was almost eleven. And I was almost ten.

  “Let’s go down on the street,” said Joey one day while we were standing on the factory roof. There are days when the surf is calm and you don’t feel like swimming. “Maybe we can play some stickball.”

  So everyone followed and slid over the edge of the roof and grabbed hold of the fence and climbed down. They all did it like they knew every hand-hold. I followed them but I gripped tight. It was high when you are up there looking down.

  “Who are those kids?” I asked Dorothy who was climbing just below me.

  She looked down the street.

  “There’s going to be trouble,” she said.

  There were about seven boys coming toward us, weaving their way through the parked ice cream trucks.

  Joey jumped from the fence before he got to the bottom. He did not wait for anyone to catch up. He started walking straight at the newcomers. The other ones on the fence dropped to the ground and ran to him.

  There were only a handful of big boys on our side and three little ones. I didn’t count Dorothy and me. I did not know what was going to happen, but I could guess. And my guess was not good.

  “That’s Rocky,” said Dorothy. She said nothing else.

  Joey, Jimmy Lee and Tommy stopped in front of the other gang. The little kids on our side ran up behind him.

  “Hit him, Joey,” one of them shouted.

  Jimmy Lee turned around. “Shut up.”

  Dorothy was off the fence now and running to join Joey. I walked up to them. I was too new to be running like I knew what was going on, but I knew I should be there.

  “We want your swimming pool and we’re going to take it,” said the guy in the front of the new gang.

  “Over my dead body,” said Joey.

  “That can be arranged,” said Rocky.

  “You try it and I’ll smack you,” said Joey.

  Then Joey stepped toward Rocky. He was not afraid. I watched. My heart was racing.

  One of the little kids ran up to one of the other gang and kicked him in the shin then ran away. The kid who got kicked yelled, grabbed his shin and then grabbed another little kid from our side and hit him.

  Joey moved in and grabbed hold of the intruding kid and picked him off the ground. I had never seen anyone so strong. No wonder Dorothy hung around him.

  The leader of the other gang hit Joey and all hell broke loose. Everyone was pounding on everyone, even Dorothy, who was hitting as fast as she could swing her fists. I wasn’t going to stand in the background, even though I had never been in a fight before. But a fist came out of nowhere and hit me in the nose.

  “Owww!” That was all I was saying. It stung like stink.

  It was Tommy.

  “I’m on your side,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  Tommy turned around and hit someone from the other side.

  One of the little kids was hitting and punching and kicking even though he was not doing any damage.

  “Stop fighting.”

  The voice was loud. I looked up with my tear-filled eyes and saw a huge man with a thick, white winter parka and hair all over his face standing over us.

  “Stop,” he said again.

  His eyebrows went down to his moustache and his moustache went down to his chin.

  “Stop, or I’ll kill you all.”

  He raised a curved ice pick like an axe.

  Most stopped fighting.

  “Stop!”

  Everyone stopped.

  “Go on, get out of here. If you kids can’t play nice I don’t want you here,” he said. He talked funny, the words not sounding like normal people’s words.

  “It’s our street,” said the leader of the other guys.

  “No, it’s ours,” said Joey.

  The giant snowman waved his ice hook between them.

  “It’s neither of your street. Now get out of here.”

  “No,” said the other kids.

  The snowman turned his ice pick until the point was pointing at the kid’s face.

  “Go.”

  The kid looked at the point, then turned and started walking away.

  “We’ll be back.”

  The snowman turned to us.

  “I know you kids play here, but there can’t be fighting, so go away now.”

  We turned around and started leaving.

  “You good kids, I know. But no fighting,” he shouted at us.

  We walked around the corner with the little kids laughing and pushing each other.

  “I got them good,” said one of them. “I just about knocked out one of them.”

  Joey and Dorothy and Jimmy Lee and Tommy were walking ahead. I was way behind. Queens, I thought, was a lot tougher than Brooklyn.

  “Where’s your brother?” Dorothy asked Joey.

  “Home. Sick today.”

  Then she came back and walked with me and told me that Joey’s little brother had cerebral palsy and Joey usually carried him everywhere. That’s why he was so strong. Then she told me Jimmy Lee’s little brother also had cerebral palsy, but he never came outside. That’s a lot of cerebral palsy, I thought, whatever that was.

  Later that night when my mother got home from work, she looked at my face.

  “Were you in a fight?”

  “No,” I said. “I just banged into some boxes.”

&
nbsp; She did not ask me to explain.

  “Do you like your new neighbourhood?” she asked.

  “It’s okay.”

  “What’d you do today?”

  “Nothing much. Just hung around.”

  Later I lay in bed listening to the elevated train, and then the commuter train. I could see the lights of its cars outside my window, and then I listened to the elevated train and then watched the commuter train and then it was morning and I opened my eyes and could see a train racing by outside my window.

  This was a very exciting place.

  Gone Fishing

  “Buster got a fish.”

  I had been on 132nd Street for a week and learned that no one had a pet.

  “You’re not having a dog,” said Tommy’s mother. “If we can’t afford meat for us, how are we going to feed a dog?”

  Can’t argue with that.

  But Buster got a fish.

  We ran in a pack to Buster’s door.

  “Can we see your fish?” we shouted through the wood while we beat on it.

  “What do you think it looks like?” Tommy asked.

  “Don’t know,” said Vinnie. “We had fish last night. The pope said we got to eat fish on Fridays, like Jesus. But it always looks like a piece of white with onions on it.”

  “I don’t like fish,” said Tommy. “It stinks.”

  Buster opened the door.

  “Shhhhh,” he said. Then he pointed to a soup bowl on the kitchen table. “There it is, but be quiet.”

  We sneaked up on it.

  “Is it alive?” asked Vanessa. “It’s not moving.”

  “Of course it’s alive. Do you think my mother would bring home a dead fish? It’s just sleeping.”

  “It’s not sleeping,” said Tommy. “Its eyes are open.”

  “I know, but it sleeps with its eyes open,” said Buster.

  We looked down in the soup bowl at one goldfish going glob, glob, glob. Or at least that’s what we thought it was doing. It wasn’t swimming. We expected to see a fish swimming, but really, it had nowhere to swim to. It just stayed in the middle of the bowl going glob, glob, glob.

  “How’d you get it?” someone asked.

  “My mother won it at bingo,” said Buster.

  “What do you do with a goldfish?” asked Tommy.

  “Don’t know,” said Buster. “I guess you just look at it.”

  So we leaned further over the bowl and looked.

  “You think it’s hungry?” asked Dorothy.

  “What do you feed a fish?” asked Tommy.

  “Probably lettuce,” said Vanessa. “That looks like seaweed.”

  So Buster opened the refrigerator and found a couple of lettuce leaves. He tore off a few pieces and we broke them into tiny bits and dropped them onto the water.

  The fish still went glob, glob, glob.

  “Maybe it needs some fresh air,” said Vanessa.

  Vanessa was prettier than Dorothy, and she had bumps on her chest.

  Buster picked up the bowl and carefully slid one foot in front of the other, not lifting them off the floor as he carried the bowl to the front door. We opened it for him and he went outside.

  “Careful you don’t trip,” we said.

  “My mother would kill me,” said Buster.

  He got to the sidewalk, holding the bowl and we all looked down. The fish was still going glob, glob. It waved its little fins faster but it did not move.

  “I hope it doesn’t die,” said Buster. “My mother would blame me for killing it. I think she thinks I killed my little brother, but I didn’t. He just died in his crib and I found him that way.”

  “Don’t worry, Buster,” said Dorothy. “We know you didn’t kill your brother. And the fish will be okay. Let me see.”

  She leaned over and stared. “I think I saw it eat something,” she said.

  “What you got there?”

  The voice of Rocky again.

  “What are you doing on this block? This is our block,” Tommy said.

  We had been concentrating so much on the fish we did not see Rocky and his gang coming down the block.

  “We want to finish that fight.”

  Rocky stepped up to Tommy. Rocky was bigger than Tommy.

  “This is our block,” said Dorothy.

  It was one of those rules – you did not go on a block that was not yours. You could pass by another gang’s block on the way to school, but you did not walk on the block.

  This continued into teenage years. A week after I graduated from high school, which I did in February because I was slow, I was out clearing my lungs in the cold air. I had been painting the old apartment next to the railroad tracks that my mother and I still lived in. We used oil-based paint then and my throat was raw.

  I had gone out onto the grey snowy street to have a cigarette and walked several blocks from home. I hardly realized I walked into another neighbourhood. I passed under the railroad tracks that went over the street – there was a new gang there, which was the remains of Rocky’s gang.

  It had now been taken over by Sanchez. The ethnics had changed, but not the gang. I turned to go the other way but faced more gang members coming at me from that direction. I ran across the street but they caught and surrounded me.

  “We owe you,” said Sanchez.

  “For what?” I was getting pretty old for this.

  “One of our guys got beat up by your guys.”

  “I don’t even see my guys anymore,” I said. “I go to work every day.”

  I had been working in the taxi cab garage, pumping gas into a fleet of cabs, and had hardly seen anyone on my street for more than a year. I had just gotten a new job at the Daily News, in the mail room and was supposed to start work in two days.

  “Don’t care,” said Sanchez. “We owe you.”

  Some of them grabbed my arms and Sanchez started hammering me in the face with his fist. He was bigger than me, but that did not stop him. I would have punched back but my arms were being held by two other guys who did not let go of them.

  In short, I got smashed.

  “There,” they said, and left.

  I looked down at the snow and it was red. Then I felt a hole in my teeth with my tongue. I went home and went back to painting. When my mother woke up from a nap she called the police.

  “We cannot have this kind of thing go on in our neighbourhood,” the police said.

  Eventually they arrested Sanchez and he pleaded guilty to assault and went to jail for a few months.

  I had to go to the dentist and he put a temporary cap on one tooth. This was in the days when the patient in a dentist office sat up straight and the dentist bent over. The drill was run on pulleys and I watched the thick strings go around and around while I smelled the smoke of my next good tooth getting ground down.

  Two days later, I went to work in my new job in the mail room of the Daily News. I joined a bunch of rejects because to get assigned to the mail room you did not need much education. I brought my lunch in a brown paper bag. I had made a salami sandwich on Levy’s Real Jewish Rye, which was standard eating for most people, both rejects and executives.

  We went to the locker room to eat. I took a bite of my sandwich but Levy’s Real Jewish Rye is very meaty bread. My new temporary cap and adjoining new temporary false tooth got stuck in the bread and separated from my gums.

  I had a mouth full of rye bread and salami with teeth embedded in it inside my mouth. I could not swallow it because my teeth were in it. I could not open my mouth to ask where the bathroom was because now I had a hole in the front of my mouth plus a wad of half-chewed bread and salami with teeth stuck in it inside my mouth. That would have made a bad impression.

  So I sat there, in the locker room, in silence, not eating, holding my sandwich, listening to the others, with a glob of teeth and bread and salami in my mouth until lunch was over. When they finally got up and went back to work, I spit the sandwich out into my hands and pulled out the teeth and stuck the
teeth back into my mouth and went back to work.

  I had to keep my mouth shut the rest of the day because I was afraid my teeth would fall out. So I said nothing, even when they asked me if I knew which mail went where. I nodded, then guessed.

  I think they thought I was strange.

  So when Rocky showed up on our block when we had the fish, I had a feeling that was just the beginning of the troubles.

  Pow. That was Tommy hitting one of Rocky’s gang. Tommy did not wait for something to start. He started it. Then Vinnie punched someone.

  It was time I was part of this gang. I hit the guy closest to me. It was Rocky. I hit him hard. He looked surprised. I was new. He hit back and I hit again and grabbed him around the neck and tried to pull him down but he would not go down.

  Darn.

  This was not a good position to be in. I was holding him around the neck and that takes two arms which leaves his two arms and fists free and he started to pound on me.

  “My fish!” shouted Buster. “My fish is gone. My mother’s going to kill me!”

  Buster was standing over the sewer with the bowl in hand. It was empty. He had been pushed and the bowl tipped and for reasons only known to God, he was standing over the steel grating that covered the hole that went ten feet down into the blackness of sewer water.

  Buster was crying. The fighting stopped.

  “What are you talking about?” said Rocky.

  “My fish,” shouted Buster. “My mother’s fish. You made me lose it.”

  Buster dropped the bowl and ploughed head and fist first into Rocky’s gut. Buster was half his size but his world was over and dying was nothing compared to facing his mother.

  He hit Rocky so hard he knocked him over. He punched and pounded and Rocky was on the ground and Buster was on top and it was a strange scene. The little kid was kicking the stuffing out of the gang leader.

  Some of Rocky’s friends grabbed Buster and dragged him off their leader and that was it for the fight. This was too much to understand. They lost, again. They backed off a few steps.

  “We’ll be back and show you who’s boss,” said Rocky. And then they left.

  “My fish is gone,” said Buster. He was looking down into the blackness of the sewer which was steel grating flush with the asphalt. There were five long slots open and his fish had gone down one of them. Buster fell to his knees.