Revenge of a Not-So-Pretty Girl (6 page)

“Sorry!” I yell as his black hat goes blowing down the street.

But there’s no bus to be found, and I have all this karma crap floating around in my head, and I know there’s something I have to do or I’ll just burst, so I take to running past the main library and alongside the gated-off Botanic Garden. I glimpse the Ebbets Field apartments as I get to Empire Boulevard, where Flatbush and Ocean Avenues intersect. The smell of cheese and garlic and sauce bursts from Antonio’s Pizzeria as someone opens the door to go in. I decide to go down Ocean Avenue, where I take turns fast-walking
and running through Prospect Park. A guy strolls toward me holding a giant, mailbox-sized boom box on his shoulder. It’s covered with a black plastic garbage bag, to protect it from the weather, I guess. The thing must weigh at least a hundred pounds. I don’t know how he doesn’t get a cramp in his arm. And I really don’t know how he hasn’t blown out his eardrums. Or maybe he has, which would explain why the way too loud, way too distorted sound of the Soulsonic Force’s “Planet Rock” doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. A couple minutes after passing him, I can still hear the music.

It’s not until I get to Parkside Avenue that I finally stop to breathe and to watch as the number 16 bus passes me by. Right at the entrance to the park, there’s this guy sporting a Run-DMC-looking red tracksuit and fat gold chain under his puffy black parka. He’s standing behind a garbage can that has a thick piece of cardboard laid out across it. And on top of the cardboard are these three playing cards. A small group of people, mostly kids my age or a little older, are gathered around. He picks up one card and holds it out so everyone can see what it is—a three of clubs. Then he shows the other two cards. They are not threes of clubs. He turns them back over, puts them down, and shows the three of clubs again. As he turns it back over, he tells everyone to keep their eyes on that card. Then he moves the three cards around, lightning fast. He stops and tells this one little kid to point to which card he thinks is the three of clubs. The kid picks the right card, and everybody else gasps and claps.

“Damn, shorty. You lucky. You need to put some of that
luck to work and double your money. Inflation too high in ’eighty-four, wages too low. All of you need to put some green down. What you got?”

I’m figuring these people know how much of a scam this is. I’m figuring they’re just going to turn and walk away. But they don’t. Of the seven or so people gathered, at least five put their money down. And all five of them lose their cash.

“Damn, guess luck’s gotta run out eventually,” the guy says. “But the great thing about luck is, ya never know when it’s gonna come back. And y’all look like some lucky people. You think ya got what it takes to make back your money?”

I shake my head and move away from those stupid people. But the farther I move along Parkside, the crazier I begin to feel. I suddenly start sweating. This bad feeling comes over me the closer I get to the familiar beige brick building near the corner of Parkside and Parade Place. I climb the few stairs that lead to the outer door of the lobby, but I don’t go inside the vestibule at first. I just peep through it. I can see down the first-floor hallway. The old lady’s door is far enough away that I can’t really tell whether it’s open or closed from where I stand. And I most definitely can’t tell whether it’s locked or unlocked. I can’t tell whether she’s still in there, lying dead on the floor. Or whether she woke up and made it to the phone to call a doctor. Or whether somebody from her family came over and found her there and called the cops. Or whether the cops are in there right now.

I have to step away and stand to the side of the doors. I lean against the bricks and take a few deep breaths. Then I close my eyes. Even though it’s overcast, a bit of sun sneaks
through the clouds and warms my face a little. I decide that I’m just going to have to do this quick. Before I lose my courage. Before I lose my mind. So I enter through the first set of lobby doors and stand there in front of the intercom, waiting for someone to enter or exit; waiting for someone to let me through the second, locked set of doors. Only, the universe is just not cooperating with me, and I have to wait twenty more minutes for someone to leave the building.

Once I’m inside, I walk through the large lobby and past the elevator, but my feet seem to stop moving. I guess they don’t want to get me any closer to apartment 1H. It’s like I’m in one of those scary movies and my feet are trying to warn me to stay away. So I’m just standing there in the hall, looking like I don’t belong, and I have to use every ounce of what little willpower I have to move myself along.

Once I get to the old lady’s apartment, I just stand in front of her door, staring. I put my ear to it, hoping I’ll hear some noise—maybe the television or the radio. Maybe she’s listening to Lawrence Welk records or Frank Sinatra or whatever old white people sit around listening to. I don’t really know. I’ll take a toilet flush or a blender. Anything. But there’s only silence.

I try to look through the peephole, but I can’t see anything, just a small stream of light. I take a couple of deep breaths. The brass doorknob is just staring up at me. It’s telling me to turn it. We didn’t lock the door behind us when we left, so if the knob gives, then I’ll know no one has been in or out of the apartment since we were there yesterday. But my hand is shaking so much, I can hardly get it around
that doorknob. I swear, it takes like fifteen minutes for me to concentrate long enough to grab hold of it. It’s smooth and cold against my palm. And suddenly, I realize I’m having a problem breathing. It’s like my breath is being held hostage in my throat and not making it all the way down to my lungs. Thank God I have my inhaler. And my knees are trembling like crazy. I don’t really have a remedy for that. Maybe if there was more fat on them, they’d be more stable.

Okay, just turn it a little to the left, I say to myself. Maybe it won’t turn at all. But I only apply enough force to make it turn a smidgeon; then it clicks back to its normal place. I remove my hand, shake it out, then put it back on the knob. I take one more deep breath and crank the thing as far as it will go, expecting it to not turn very far. But it does. It goes like in a full circle, and the next thing I know, the door opens a few inches. But I don’t have much time to be freaked out, because I hear footsteps on the stairs.

I try to let go of the knob, but now I can’t seem to. It’s like that guy on those commercials whose hard hat is Krazy Glued to that beam. I can’t move my hand. And so I just stand there frozen, like an icicle. My heartbeat is coming as if it’s in stereo, making it hard for me to hear anything else. And suddenly, I see these two kids land on the first floor. And there’s an older man behind them—their father, maybe. But thank God, they never turn around.

I watch as they walk through the front doors and turn left once they reach the sidewalk. I’m sweating bullets. That door shouldn’t have opened. It shouldn’t have. That means she’s still in there. Probably where we left her. Oh man. I’m
just going to have to hypnotize myself into forgetting about this. It’s out of my control now, and there’s no way I’ll be able to eat, sleep, or function if I dwell on it. If I turn on Eyewitness News and see Bill Beutel or Roger Grimsby reporting about the murder of some old lady on Parkside Avenue, I’m just going to have to do the best acting job ever. Give an Oscar-worthy performance.

I yank the door shut and my hand away from the doorknob and take off running. It must be forty-five degrees outside, but I’m sweating and panting like a thirsty little puppy on a hot summer day. I pass the shady card dealer surrounded by a new batch of suckers, and I yell out:

“Are you people stupid? It’s a scam. A scam! You can’t win.” And I keep running down Parkside Avenue like I’ve lost my mind.

The running continues
once I reach my block. I shoot straight past my building, past the next couple of buildings, and past the tiny houses wedged between them. I keep going until I get to the six-story brown brick building near the other end of the street. My hands are shaking so badly I hit the wrong intercom button at first. But I tell myself to breathe, and I focus really hard and manage to press 4B. There’s a crackle, then Caroline’s voice.

“It’s me, Faye!” I yell. “The knob wasn’t supposed to turn. The door wasn’t supposed to open. She’s dead! She’s dead! I know she is!”

The intercom buzzes immediately, and I run through the lobby and to the stairs, taking them two at a time as I make it up to Caroline’s fourth-floor apartment. The door opens without me even pressing the bell, and Caroline’s big fat mitt of a hand comes forward, grabs me by the collar of my coat, and yanks me in.

“You shut it till we get to my room,” she whispers, which
means she’s actually speaking at normal-person level. “My mom’s in the living room sewing. Just shout hi to her as we walk by.”

Mrs. Johns is wedged behind the Singer sewing machine she has set up in the corner of the room, along with mounds of clothes and bobbins of thread and pincushions shaped like tomatoes and onions.

I hardly get a “Hi, Mrs. Johns” out before I’m being pushed into Caroline’s room, with the door closing behind me.

Gillian’s sitting at a desk near the window, staring at me.

“What fool thing did you do?” Caroline asks.

“I went over there.”

“Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t dead. But the door opened. Don’t you think if she was alive she would have gotten up and locked it?”

But Caroline doesn’t answer that question. Instead, she just comes at me with another one.

“How stupid are you? Seriously. What if somebody saw you messing around at her door? What if somebody had called the cops on your ass?”

“I didn’t think about that. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t dead,” I say as I sit on the edge of Caroline’s bed. “Maybe we should make a call to someone anonymously.”

“To who? If she’s dead, what the hell does it matter?” Caroline asks as she leans against her dresser. “I mean, she was like a thousand. And if she’s not dead now, she will be in no time. No fault of ours, just the natural order of things.
And we got a lot of money from this. So think about that instead.”

“Doesn’t it bother you any?” I ask.

“I mean, I don’t want to be responsible for some dead old person. But there are worse things in life. Besides, I wasn’t the one who pushed her, so it’s not on my conscience any.”

And my jaw just hits the floor. I can’t figure out what to say next. Can’t even unscramble all that’s going on in my brain, so I get quiet instead. I think of turning my back on Caroline right then and there and never seeing her again. But then I think how she and Gillian were the only ones to stick up for me when I first moved to the neighborhood and those roughneck girls were tormenting me. And they do seem to genuinely like having me as part of their crew. I don’t know. I suppose it’s better to be accepted by someone, no matter how contrary they can be sometimes, than to not have any friends in the neighborhood at all.

I glance over at Gillian, who still hasn’t said a word. She just shifts her eyes from Caroline to me and back to Caroline again.

The tension is momentarily interrupted by a knock on the door. Mrs. Johns comes in with a tray of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and three glasses of milk.

“Faye, you flew in here like a little bumblebee,” she says as she puts the tray down and smothers my face in her giant breasts. “How was school?”

“Fine,” I mumble.

She takes a glass of milk and puts it in front of me.

“Um, I can’t drink milk, ma’am. Remember …?”

“Oh, that’s right. I guess I think if I keep giving it to you, that all might change. Just never knew a child who couldn’t drink milk.”

“It hurts my stomach.”

Mrs. Johns shakes her head. “That’s why you’re so itty-bitty. Milk fattens you up.”

I glance over at Caroline and decide that if that’s the case, she should probably never go within ten miles of a cow.

“Well. I’ll bring you some Hi-C,” she says. “I think we have cherry.”

“Cherry’s my favorite,” I say.

Mrs. Johns manages to find what little cheeks I have and squeeze them. Then she walks out of the room with the tray under her left arm and one glass of milk in her right hand. She’s a bit chunky herself, so I guess she had her share of milk back in the day, but this doesn’t seem to cause her any worries. Not a day goes by that she’s not wearing her high heels. Her nails and hair are always done up. And she’s always wearing these great outfits. Since she’s the neighborhood seamstress, maybe she makes them herself. But what I really love is how she fusses over me and makes me feel present. Sometimes I wonder if Caroline wasn’t actually adopted, or spawned from jackals, like Damien in
The Omen
. That would explain how she got a mom as sweet as Mrs. Johns and I got Mama. Then again, I could be Gillian. Gillian’s mom died when she was five, and her dad, who is Mrs. Johns’s brother, didn’t know how to take care of her, so he just gave her away to Mr. and Mrs. Johns.