Eggplant Alley (9781593731410) (12 page)

Jackie flipped the ball to Mikey Loughran. Jackie blew air out through his lips.

“Cool your jets, sports fan. I'm going. I don't need your stupid damn game.”

Jackie jammed his hands in his pockets and strolled away casually, as if he would simply move on to something else on that sweet April morning. He bobbed out through the playground gate and onto Groton. There was a loud, metallic twang. The sound of a fist banging against a
NO PARKING
sign.

“Listen to him, breaking things, as usual,” Icky said.

Mikey mumbled, “Maybe we shoulda just let him play.”

“Yuh,” Icky snapped. “And maybe we oughta let him take your sister to the prom.”

“Drop dead,” Mikey said.

“Maybe you want the beating?” Icky said.

Roy said, “Cut it out. We wasted enough time. Let's get started.”

They played, and Icky must have been dying to hit something, because he walloped the first pitch as hard as anyone can hit a Spaldeen. He swung and grunted, “HA!” The ball sailed high
over the chain-link fence. It became a pink speck in the blue sky. It looked like something hit by Mickey Mantle.

The ball dropped into the middle of Groton Avenue. It bounced once, high enough to be seen from the schoolyard, then squirreled away on the other side of the street.

Icky started his home run trot and snapped, “Go get it, batboy.”

“Get what?” Nicky said.

“The ball, brainless. That's what bat boys do. Hurry. We only got two.”

“I dunno where it went,” Nicky said with a shrug.

“LOOK for it.”

From center field, Roy shouted, “Hey, numbskull. Get the ball before it goes down the sewer.”

Nicky looked both ways and scampered across Groton. He looked up at the tenements. Nicky's eyes were drawn to the dusty windows. He imagined black faces watching, stalking, ready to pounce on him, a helpless white morsel. The sweet sounds of the stickball game seemed far off, miles away, in another land.

“Whatcha looking for?” a voice said close behind him. Nicky jumped as if an ice cube had dribbled down his shirt.

It was Jackie. The kid who wanted to play stickball. The kid that Icky had shoved and pushed and humiliated. Now it was just Jackie and Nicky, alone on the sidewalk. Jackie stood between Nicky and the street. He had Nicky blocked.

“Well, hello there!” Nicky chirped, as if seeing a long-lost pal.

“Looking for this?” Jackie said, not at all chirpy. He showed the ball.

Nicky said, “Hey! Great!” He reached for the ball.

Jackie stashed the ball behind his back. “Not so fast, sports fan,” he said. “Now it's mine. Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

Jackie had Nicky there. As far as Nicky was concerned, that was that. Case closed. He turned and started to walk away.

Jackie pulled him back by his sleeve.

“Whoa. Hold on. Don't you want the ball?”

Nicky once watched a cat toy with a cockroach in the bread aisle at Popop's variety. The cockroach ran. The cat calmly reached out a claw and dragged back the jittering bug. The cockroach skittered away. The cat scraped him back. Now Nicky knew what it was like to be the cockroach.

“You want it, it'll cost you a nickel.”

“I ain't got a nickel,” Nicky said.

“Then you ain't got a ball.”

Nicky shrugged. Case closed again.

Nicky took a step. Jackie reached for his sleeve.

Nicky darted past him, toward the street.

Jackie barked, “Don't run.” His fingers fluttered off Nicky's shirt.

Nicky leapt off the curb, and felt his stomach rocket into his throat as his right foot plunged between the grates of the sewer. He heard a crack like a broomstick snapping, and the roadway flew up and smacked him in the face and he felt sick in his stomach.

Roy, Icky, and the rest of the gang swarmed out the playground and around the parked cars on the other side of the street. Here is what they saw:

1. Nicky wailing in the gutter, his right foot flopped at a new angle, blood making a spiderweb pattern down his face. The dripping blood showed brilliantly on his white T-shirt.

2. Jackie standing over Nicky's bloody body, tugging on Nicky's stretched-out shirt collar.

Maybe Jackie was trying to help Nicky up, maybe he wasn't. No one would never know.

Nicky felt Jackie release his grip. He heard huffs, puffs, and curses. A herd of sneakers slapped on the sidewalk. Nicky saw a redheaded blur—Icky leading the chase down Groton.

And one thing led to another.

Nicky got the story later. Icky and the gang caught up with Jackie three blocks over on Poplar Street. Jackie clung to the post of a parking meter while Icky, Skipper, and Rocco Doyle kicked him, punched him, and pulled on his legs. Icky and the gang stretched Jackie like a Gumby doll.

Three black kids from Groton Avenue happened to be walking by. Two of them pushed and swung on Skipper and Rocco. The third found a garbage can lid and clanged Icky on the head.

Two police cars rolled up, red lights rotating, and the four cops broke it up. The police pushed the white brawlers in one direction. They shoved the black brawlers in another direction. The cops shouted and held their nightsticks in the air and told everyone to beat it, get lost, scram before they pinched the lot of them.

Nicky spent the summer with a broken ankle encased in a sweaty, itchy, smelly cast. The residents of Eggplant Alley saw him hobbling
through the courtyard with the cast and shook their heads. What was the neighborhood coming to?

And one thing led to another. A permanent gloom settled over the neighborhood. Fun, play, lightness, and joy were replaced by tension, suspicion, fear, and anger.

The battle lines were drawn. Us against Them.

Mr. Cabrini from the first floor was pushed to the pavement late one July night. Mr. Cabrini did not see his assailants, but there was no doubt who did it.

Them.

On a sweltering August day, the black kids from Groton Avenue opened up the hydrant and danced under the cool spout of water. The police came and shut down the hydrant and there was no doubt who had phoned the cops.

Us.

Dad began to carry a baseball bat when he walked Checkers at night.

Because of Them.

On Labor Day, five cars parked in front of the tenements had their tires slashed. The black people who owned the cars stood on the sidewalk near the tattered tires and squinted at Eggplant Alley.

Angry at Us.

The great exodus picked up steam. A cloud of panic set into Eggplant Alley. No one wanted to live there anymore, just as nobody wanted to stay on the
Titanic
after the iceberg. That fall, the DiGiulios, the Sullivans, and the Cabrinis found new homes to the north.

“Last one out, turn off the lights,” Roy said as the overloaded Sullivan station wagon rolled away down Groton.

One crispy Saturday afternoon in November, Dad and Mom took the Yum-E-Cakes van up to Westchester. They were on a scouting mission, to look at houses. For three sweet hours Nicky imagined clean safe streets and wide-open yards and tire swings and the Good Humor man and peaceful summer afternoons of stickball.

Mom and Dad returned at dusk, sweaty and tired. Dad said, “Those houses are just too much dough.”

Mom said, “Maybe I should talk to Dominic about doing beadwork.”

“We're not that desperate,” Dad said.

Spring came around and the stickball diamond remained empty. Stickball was finished, once and for all. No one from Eggplant Alley dared to play on the PS 19 schoolyard again. There was no use trying. It was impossible. Stickball cannot be played while looking over your shoulder, while keeping an eye on front doors, while memorizing escape routes.

Roy's Spaldeen went into his glove and the glove went into the back of the closet. The sticks were rolled under a bed, and except for Roy's yellow favorite they were tossed out in a spring cleanup. The white lines faded in the sun, under the snow, and under the sun again, season after season after season.

“Very interesting,” Lester said.

“The end of stickball was the last straw for Eggplant Alley,” Nicky said. He did not mention this was third on the list, in the composition notebook, under his mattress.

Lester got up, stretched, and walked to the wall. He was deep in thought as he gazed out onto Groton Avenue.

“I have much to learn. So all the black people live over there?”

“Yeah, so stay away from there,” said Nicky, standing. “Come here.”

They walked to the Summit Avenue side of the roof, overlooking the small homes, tiny yards, and the swaying greenery of the Only House With Trees.

Nicky said, “And all the white people live down there. The only thing standing between the coloreds on Groton Avenue and the whites on Summit is us—Eggplant Alley. Eggplant Alley is like the Alamo.” On this very same patch of roof, Roy had explained these matters to Nicky. Still quoting Roy, he said, “We're the only thing that stands in their way. We're holding back the tide.”

“Very interesting. No black people live in Eggplant Alley?”

“Noooooo,” Nicky said. He chuckled. “That would be the end of us.”

Lester returned to the side of the roof that overlooked PS 19, the playground, the tenements of Groton Avenue.

“Hey,” Nicky said. “How come black kids can't play in the sandbox?”

“They can't?”

“Dummy, it's a joke. Black kids can't play in the sandbox because cats will come along and try to cover them up.”

Lester didn't say anything.

“Get it? Because they look like turds.”

“Okay,” Lester said. Then, “We should do something about this.”

“About what?”

“The decline of this neighborhood.”

“Oh, sure,” Nicky scoffed. Then, “What did you have in mind?”

“Bring back stickball. When we have time. Maybe when school is out.”

Nicky said, “Nooooo.”

“Yes. Why not?”

“Nah.”

“Yes.”

“I don't think so.”

“I think so,” said Lester.

“If you wanna. I really don't care,” Nicky said, shrugging, caring.

“
T
his is a really stupid idea,” Nicky said, talking to himself as he rode the elevator down to the second floor. “Sure hope it works.”

It was morning on the first day of summer vacation—a great moment in time, the farthest calendar point from the next day of school. Nicky carried Roy's Spaldeen, Roy's baseball mitt, and a roll of black electrical tape.

Lester answered the door. His eyes bugged out behind his glasses.

“I thought I was going to meet you downstairs,” Lester said.

“So sue me. I thought I'd come by on my way down. You got the broomstick?”

Lester stepped barefoot out onto the hallway tile and closed the door to 2-C behind him. Nicky thought this was curious, this barefoot walk onto the filthy hallway tile.

“What are you doing? Where's the broomstick?” Nicky said. He took a step toward the closed door, reached toward the knob. “Come on. I'll show you how to tape the stick.”

“I'll get the stick and meet you downstairs,” Lester said.

“Let's go get it now. We can tape it in your apartment.”

“We can't.”

Lester paused. He said, “My mama isn't home. She says I'm not allowed to let anyone enter the apartment when she isn't home. Her rule. No exceptions.”

Nicky shrugged. Mrs. Allnuts, new tenant from upstate, was scared spitless by the big, bad urban jungle. Nicky found this pleasing and said, “Have it your way.”

Lester said, “I'll be down in a moment.”

Then Lester did something else peculiar. He didn't move. He stood and watched Nicky walk toward the stairway. He acted like a cop who tells someone to move along, then stands and watches, to make sure the person actually moves along. Not until Nicky was out of sight, partway down the stairs, was there the sound of Lester's feet on the tile, and the door to 2-C opening and abruptly closing.

“I guess everybody in Eggplant Alley is out of their tree,” Nicky said out loud, with a shrug.

Lester arrived in the lobby in no time. He held out a black broomstick, freshly sawed from the broom.

“Perfect,” Nicky said.

“My mama cut it for me just now.”

“You said your mom wasn't home.”

“She just got home.”

Nicky and Lester stepped out of the cool darkness of the lobby and into the warm sunshine of the courtyard. Spread along the stairs on Summit Avenue was a generous sample of the old gang: Icky, Fishbone, Mumbles, Little Sam, Skippy, and Skipper. Nicky
had seen them from his window. He breathlessly telephoned Lester with the report, and told Lester they must hurry, because these older boys, these potential stickball players, might wander off.

Nicky and Lester arrived on the scene just in time. The older boys were still draped along the steps, but there were signs of flight. The older boys were restless. They were not the sunbathing type. They could not stay draped for long. They tossed pebbles. They smoked cigarettes. They stood up, sat down. They sighed. They swore. They belched. Skippy was telling a long story about a short skirt on a woman riding the No. 6 bus three days ago.

“I swear, she wasn't. I could see,” Skippy said.

“Get out,” Skipper said.

“I'm telling you, she wasn't.”

As a way of joining the crowd and showing Lester his close association with the older boys, Nicky said, “She wasn't what?”

Skippy blew smoke rings and said, “Never you mind, kid. We'll tell you when you're older.” And the older boys all laughed.

Nicky shrugged, and he and Lester sat on the stairs. They did this casually, as if the stairs merely happened to be the nearest place to plop down. Nicky placed the stick across his thighs and unraveled a length of electrical tape. He began to spiral the tape onto the stick.