I'm Down: A Memoir (6 page)

While Zwena, Little Lyman, Anora, and I careened down the lawn toward the cement driveway, two kids from next door, Tre and Janella, watched us through the fence for a while, before changing into swimsuits and climbing over to join us. Tre and I instantly hit it off, because he was my age and we both liked candy. While Janella was so pushy that Zwena had to say, “Janella, you’re not the boss of the Slip ’n Slide.”

When the thrill of sliding wore off we all took turns prying the hose from each other and spraying everyone else while they ran screaming. There were so many fun things you could do with water. And when Little Lyman put the hose between his legs and said, “Look, I’m peeing!” I said he should be a comedian.

But when it was my turn with the hose, I sprayed Janella, and she freaked out. “Don’t wet my hair!” she screamed, acting injured.

“But,” I said, shaken, “we are playing with the hose. That’s what you do.”

I guessed that was the wrong thing to say, because Janella raised her voice instead of lowering it. “I just got my hair pressed this morning!” I nodded, but I thought pressing was something you did to a shirt. “So you best keep that hose away from my hair!”

I looked at Zwena, who said, “She did say she just got her hair pressed.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I’ll be more careful.” And dropped the hose, not wanting the awesome responsibility anymore. But the hose just jumped off the ground, spraying Zwena, Little Lyman, and Janella, who screamed like she was dying. I instinctively moved toward the other side of the yard.

“You best walk away, bitch!” Janella screamed.

“Ooooh,” Anora said.

It sounded a lot like a cap. And being flanked by Zwena and Little Lyman emboldened me. I knew what I had to do.

I turned back to Janella and yelled, “You’re so ugly, you saw yourself in the mirror and started barking!” Not very original, but I heard laughter coming from Zwena.

“Oh, burn,” Zwena said, making Janella stomp her foot and pull on her little brother’s arm saying, “Come on, Tre! Let’s get away from this mixed-up, mixed-nuts group of white, black, yellow . . . who knows?” Then she climbed back over the fence to her house. Tre knew that being a little brother meant that he should follow after her, but he very politely came over and said good-bye to everyone and thanked them for the sliding, as though we had just finished a polo match.

That’s when we realized how hungry we all were. Anora was still whining about breakfast even though it was four.

“Okay!” Zwena said. “We’re funna go to the store.”

“Cool,” I said. “But, did you just say ‘funna’?”

“Yeah,” Zwena said. “It’s like we’re fixing to, but we’re gonna. We’re funna.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’re funna go with you.”

Zwena showed us how to look through all the sofa cushions and pants pockets to find loose change, explaining that it wasn’t stealing so much as it was cleaning. We found enough money to hit the corner store and pick up some bologna and a box of Jiffy corn bread mix. Then Zwena amazed me by putting a batch of corn bread in the oven and then going to work frying some bologna. I couldn’t believe she knew how to cook. She was only ten, but she put a pan on the stove, threw down the bologna in the pan, where it would puff up like a balloon. And she knew exactly when to flip it. She was like Julia Child for the food stamp set.

I headed home with Anora. I was full and still thinking
about how great Zwena was, when we turned the corner onto our street and noticed there was something going on in front of our house. A crowd of people had gathered, and orange cones blocked traffic. As I got closer I could see what all the commotion was about. Lyman, Reggie Dee, and Eldridge were watching Dad behind the wheel of the huge orange backhoe tearing our front yard out and putting it in a dump truck parked nearby. The rock garden my mother had worked on, the front steps—it was all being torn off and hauled away. I had no idea what he thought he was doing, but I had to stop him. I ran up to the backhoe and practically threw myself in front of it.

“Dad!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me and just kept dumping dirt in the truck. He brought the claw back around, and that’s when he saw me in front of what was left of the rock garden. He motioned for me to get out of the way, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Finally he cut the engine.

“Get the hell out of the way!” he screamed.

“What are you doing to our house?” I asked.

“Remodeling!” he said, and then realizing I didn’t understand, “I’m making it look better.” There was dirt everywhere and a ten-foot drop from the front door.

“It doesn’t look better!” I said.

“It’s not finished!” he yelled. “Now, get out of the way!”

But I couldn’t let him keep going. It looked like our front yard had been bombed. I sat down in the dirt, not completely unsure he wouldn’t scoop me up with his next clawload.

Dad stood up and cut the engine and said, “Everyone take a little break.” Then he climbed down the backhoe to stand next to me.

“Mishna. You gotta understand there’s a project gonna happen here.”

I folded my arms.

He bent down and explained, “We are building a second floor underneath.” He pointed to the front door. “You see up there is where the deck will be, with stairs down to the street level.” And he pointed to a corner area. “And over there is where your new room will be. It’ll be done by the time you finish third grade.”

“But,” I said, “I liked the way the house looked before.”

“Yes,” Dad said. “But you don’t know how good it’s gonna look. Just wait and see.” Then Dad bent over and dried my eyes.

“Can we have flowers again?” I asked. “Like the ones Mom planted?

“Pfft,” he said, dissing her flowers. “Better flowers. Now, can I finish what I was doing?”

Then I watched him climb up the steps into the backhoe to continue fucking up our house.

The rest of the summer, I spent every day with Zwena, Little Lyman, and Anora. We were inseparable, and we almost never saw Big Lyman, Lordess, or Dad. We’d browse in Chubby and Tubby, the hardware store, till they kicked us out. Or sit on the overpass over Martin Luther King taunting passing motorists with rocks and middle fingers. We ate at Zwena’s step-grandparents and we climbed fences to get everywhere, so I knew what everyone’s backyard looked like and who had a pit bull. And on the days when I came home, our house had the same Fall-of-Berlin look it had the week before, just with new building materials in the yard. Once the cement was poured and Dad built some wooden steps up to the back door, nothing else really happened and all the materials just sat in the yard. And the front door remained where it was, suspended ten feet in the air.

When I brought Zwena and Little Lyman over, Zwena
said, “How do you get into your house?” And when I showed Zwena the back steps she laughed, “Dang, your daddy ain’t never gonna finish your house!”

“That’s not true!” I said defensively. “He’s making a new room for me that will be done by next year. He’s probably working on it right now!”

Then I led them into the house where Dad and Big Lyman were sitting at the dining room table in front of three bottles of hot sauce. They each had a beer and Big Lyman was laughing hysterically as Dad cried and blew his nose.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked.

But Dad couldn’t answer. He was bent over and his face was flushed red as tears rolled down his cheeks. Lyman said excitedly, “We’re doing a hot sauce tasting. Went to Chinatown today and bought some crazy shit.”

I looked at the cryptic Asian labels on the jars and bottles sitting in front of them. My father was still blowing his nose as Lyman prepared a little hot bomb for himself.

“Is that stuff hot?” Anora asked.

Lyman said, “Let me put it this way . . . When was the last time you saw your daddy cry?”

Dad regained his composure and his breath and said, “What are you girls doing inside anyway?”

“I just wanted to show Zwena where my new room is gonna be,” I said.

“Nah, nah . . . It’s not safe.” This was from the guy that had introduced me to bottle rockets. But I needed him to show Zwena that the house was gonna be good.

“Can you just show us?” I pleaded. “We won’t go in, we’ll just look.”

“Not right now,” Dad said. “We’re busy.”

He didn’t look busy. He looked like he was giving himself diarrhea.

“Why don’t you go to Zwena’s and Slip ’n stuff . . . Slide or whatever,” he said.

I never should have gotten out of the way of that backhoe.

I was feeling bummed until Zwena suggested grits and hunger took over. She led the way back to her house, walking ahead while I lagged behind looking for lucky money on the sidewalk. Coming up the rear were Anora and Little Lyman—ten feet back holding hands. I looked up from what I thought might be a dime but turned out to be a wadded-up gum wrapper, and spied Janella in front of her house with two other girls. And the way the three of them looked at me gave me a bad feeling. But I passed them without incident and wrote off my bad feeling. Until they started whispering to each other, and that’s when I got a
really
bad feeling. You know, the feeling you get when you realize you should have listened to that bad feeling. And I followed their stares to Tre running toward me from the side of their house at full speed.

He pushed me down and then darted a few feet away, taking a fighting stance. Janella and her friends surrounded Tre and me chanting, “Fight! Fight!” And I got excited, still not fully realizing I
was
the fight.

“Tre . . . I thought we were friends?” I said as he hit me in the ribs—not in a friendly way. But he didn’t respond. Instead, he looked blankly ahead determined to avoid eye contact while he blindly swung at me. Anora and Lyman approached the small crowd while Tre continued punching me in my chest and head with more force than I would have expected. I was still bigger than boys my age, but judging by the pain in my ribs, I sure as hell wasn’t stronger. The fighting finally made Anora cry, so on top of getting beat up, I was worried I wasn’t earning my allowance. When I saw Zwena approach, I felt reassured.

But rather than defend me, Zwena coached me. “Hit him!”
she screamed. I made a lame attempt to swing at his head. “No, stomach!” she corrected me. Unfortunately I was already on the ground just trying to block as his fists rained down on my face. I squirmed out of his way and managed to wiggle back onto my feet. Then I took a swing at his face that actually connected. It hurt my hand and I was so stunned by the pain in my wrist that Tre got a square shot at my nose, sending me onto the ground. The fight was over.

The small crowd dispersed, leaving me alone and crying on the sidewalk. I watched Tre wipe his nose and march past his older sister and up into their house. My cheek was stinging and Anora was saying something to me, but all I could think was,
The sidewalk feels so nice and cool on my face
.

I rolled over onto my back and could feel the aching in my ribs. The white, white sky was quiet and peaceful, and I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep right there on the street. Maybe because the blood rushed in my ears:
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
—like
a womb. Maybe I had a concussion. Either way, I liked the way I felt. I felt the serenity that comes when things can’t get any worse.

Zwena walked up from where she had been standing a few yards away. She looked over me and said five words that made it worse: “That’s a lot of blood.”

I touched my nose. Sure enough—a lotta blood. Which meant Dad was gonna know I got my ass kicked.

When I got home, the blood had dried under my nose and my cheek was starting to bruise. I walked into the house and Dad looked excited. “Looks like you got into a disagreement.”

I nodded.

“Did you let her know?” he asked.

I shook my head no and his smile faded. I corrected him, “It was a boy, and he won.”

I watched Dad’s face light up again. “My girl!” he said, picking me up in his arms. He was glad to see I was taking on boys and said that it would prepare me for dating. And for the next twenty minutes, he insisted on having me hit his fists and giving me fighting pointers like, “Move!”

Or, “Just keep moving and never stop.”

Or, “You be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” And when he was done showing me his stance, we watched
Enter the Dragon
together—like grown-ups who get into fights.

As Bruce Lee coached a young student in the philosophy of fighting I asked, “Dad . . . when do you think the house will be done?”

“When I have the time and the money to finish it,” Dad said.

“Oh,” I said. “But it’ll get done, right?”

“Of course it will,” Dad said. “You just can’t do it all at once.
I had to pay the lights this month . . . Watch and see what Bruce does to these six brothers with that stick!”

“Dad . . . ,” I said, wanting to talk about the house more, but there was a knock at the door. And I went to get it.

When I opened the door, Tre was standing in the doorway. It was getting dark and I was worried that it was an ambush, but I figured, if he tried a sucker punch now, Dad would introduce him to the Vulcan neck grab.