Teen Angel (2 page)

Sonny spelled her name, carefully pronouncing each letter. Mary looked up momentarily from the notebook as if trying to decide whether she was being made fun of.

“Addreth?”

“Six eighty-nine West 161st Street.”

“Wow! That’s right across the street from where I live!” Dot exclaimed, her blue eyes crossing at the bridge of her nose. Sonny groaned to herself. The one retard in the gang would have to live across the street from her. Dot wore orthopedic shoes and plastered her pimples with flesh-colored paste called Erase. And she had unbelievable BO. The only reason she was a Teen Angel was because she owned every record on the chart for the last three years.

“Age?”

“Fifteen.” Sonny hesitated. “Well, almost.”

“When are you going to be fifteen?”

“August.”

“What class are you in?”

Sonny wanted to lie but she knew they’d find out. “9SP1,” she said softly.

“What did you say?”

“9SP1,” she repeated a little bit louder.

“How come you’re not doing your homo-work?” the Gooch jeered.

“Thpecial progressth!” Mary hooted. “Thpecial people. Why you must be
fairy
smart.”

“A study wart,” D.B. said.

“NO! I’M NOT!” Sonny cried out. “I don’t study at all. I swear!”

“She probably thinks she’s real smart,” Marilyn added.

“No, I don’t. SP stands for stupid people,” Sonny protested. “You wouldn’t believe some of the bozos in my class. They might get good grades but they’re so dumb they think a blowjob is something you do to a flat tire.”

Some of the girls laughed. Sonny grinned hopefully.

“Thilence!” Mary interrupted.

“No one told you that you could speak,” D.B. said sternly. “Now we’ll open the floor to questions. Only speak when you are spoken to. And just answer the questions.”

“No bullshit, Palovsky,” the Gooch said, continuing to stare at her.

“Why do you want to be a Teen Angel?” Crystal Gonzales asked. She was pretty, even if she was a Rican. She wore a St. Francis of Assisi uniform which consisted of a navy blazer and skirt with a white blouse. And she had the meanest ankle boots with needle toes.

“Cause you’re the bossest girls around.”

“What would you do to be a Teen Angel?” Hansy asked. She was so dumb she got left back in the CRMD, which was a class for retards. She failed in Potholders.

“Anything!” Sonny exclaimed passionately.

“Anything?” the Gooch asked, staring so hard that Sonny felt like she had cigarette holes all over her face.

“Anything.”

“Would you thteal a car?”

Sonny paused. “Where’s it parked?”

“Hubcaps? Aerials?” Hansy asked.

“Sure, how many do you want?”

“Do you have a JD card?” Marilyn asked, having recently earned one herself when she was caught with five Dion albums in her looseleaf at Klein’s.

“No,” Sonny said, “but I’ll get one.”

“Can you fight?” D.B. asked.

“Sure.”

“Do you have brass knuckles?” Crystal asked.

She didn’t know what they were but nodded anyway.

“A chain?”

“Of course.” Hers had a Jewish star on it but it
was
buried under her sweater.

“When did you get your period?” D.B. asked.

Sonny gulped. “Oh, when I was eleven and a half.”

“Bra size?”

“32A,” Sonny said matter-of-factly.

“She’s bullshitting us,” the Gooch hissed. “You’re wearing an undershirt.”

“No, I’m not,” Sonny cried out.
Yes, she was. Damn it
.

“How far have you gone?” D.B. asked. She wore a black stretch top which showed every curve and swell of her
bosoms
, a tie clip on her collar and a virgin pin on the left side just in case there was any question.

“All the way and back.”

“How many times?”

“Enough?”

“Yeah?” Dot asked impressed.

“Yeah.”
Will someone get this creep off my case
.

“Describe one of your-er-many experiences,” D.B. said doubtfully.

“Well, let’s see which one would be the best one to tell you guys … There are so many …” Sonny said, stalling for time and trying desperately to recall something she’d heard. “Oh yeah.
Okay. There was this guy I used to know. Named Ruben–”

“Ruben who?” the Gooch interrupted. She used to go around with Ruben Ortega and still had the hots for him.

“Uh,” Sonny thought quickly, regretting her slip. No one, of course, knew about her crush. “Ruben Fettucini …”

The Gooch continued to look suspicious.

“Anyway, we had a thing. Ruben Fettucini and me. So one day he was fingering me …” She paused momentarily for effect.
Here goes
.

“Well, I’m creaming all over the place like I’m a vanilla sundae and having a terrific time. All of a sudden, he pulls his finger out and says, ‘Hey baby, I think I dropped my ring in your twat.’ So I says to him, ‘Well loverboy, go back in and look for it.’ I’m enjoying it anyhow. So he sticks his finger in all the way but he still can’t reach it. He puts in another finger and then still another one. ‘Hey, what’s happening down there?’ He says, ‘I still can’t find my ring in your pussy. My momma gave it to me for graduation and if I come home without it, she gonna kill me.’ So I says, ‘Don’t give up, dollface.’ So he sticks his whole hand in and I feel him rummaging inside of me like I’m a Macy’s shopping bag. But still no ring.” Sonny stopped again and looked around. Everyone seemed to be into her story. She silently thanked St. John, patron saint of the third-floor girls’ room, where it had been delivered to her.

“So this goes on for a while, as you might imagine. Meanwhile I’ve come so many times I’m wet as a slush pond. So he pushes his whole arm in but the ring is still out of reach. Then he sticks in his other arm and you might not believe this, but before I know what’s happening, he sticks his head in and
this dude is crawling inside of me!
Well girls, we all like them big and hard but I must say, this is a little bit much. ‘I’m still looking,’ he calls out to me. I bend down over myself and yell, ‘HURRY UP ALREADY! I HAVE TO GO HOME FOR DINNER!’ He just strolls around
in there until he sees something shiny and bright ahead of him. ‘Hey, Sonny! I think I see it!’ he yells out to me. ‘Come on, already!’ I scream back. What does he think I have all day to be diddled?”

“Stop it! I’m going to pee in my pants!” Hansy howled.

“Where was I? Oh yes. So Ruben starts running ahead and would you believe, there’s Tony Alfredo, my ex-old man, standing next to his red Camaro shining his brights. ‘How’d you get here?’ Ruben asks him. Tony looks him up and down. Then he says, ‘Never mind that. If you help me find my car keys, we can drive out of this dump.’ ‘Hey man,’ Ruben interrupts him, ‘that’s my girl’s vagina you talking about.’”

“Holy shit!” Marilyn squealed in delight.

“But that doesn’t sound possible,” Dot said. “Did that really happen to you?”

“She’s totally serious,” D.B. said, shaking her head.

“That was so bad.” Crystal was laughing so hard that her eyeliner dissolved into black pitiful tears.

“I don’t think Rube ever found his ring,” Sonny said sorrowfully.

“Can’t you just see that guy walking around down there. I mean, weird,” Mary said.

“This is an emergency,” Hansy cried. “I gotta take a leak or I’m going to pee right here.”

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” The Gooch stood up. “The last time I heard that one, it was a black guy with a Cadillac.”

“Then she was jiving us?” Dot asked, her eyeballs darting in all directions, unable to focus.

“No, Dot. It was for real,” D.B. said sarcastically.

“Teen Angel conference,” the Gooch announced. She walked out shaking her ample ass, followed by D.B., whose skirt hem was dropping out in the back. Mary, Hansy, Crystal, and Marilyn filed
out behind them. Dot winked at Sonny, closing the door behind her.

Sonny could hear their voices outside but was unable to make out the words. She knew she blew it. The Gooch hated her on sight.
Why did she have to tell that nerd story?

The door opened. The Teen Angels marched in, taking their former seats.

The Gooch began. “We have decided on an initiation task for you, Sonny Palovsky. If you perform it well, you’re in. If you don’t, forget it. And there better be no more bullshit from you.”

“You have to get a thcumbag, you know, a rubber–,” Mary said.

The Gooch interrupted her. “Am I the Warlord or not around here? Palovsky, a prophylactic, and you have to bring it back full of semen. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Sonny said, groaning to herself. Where would she ever get a scumbag?
Scumbag?
She had never even seen one of those things. As for semen, they might as well want Jackie Kennedy’s stool. But she said, “Sure.”

“Tomorrow. Same time, same place,” D.B. said.

“Can’t I have a few extra days? Danny’s out of town. And Ron’s gonna be busy tomorrow. Stan’s sick …”

“Couldn’t we give her a couple extra days?” Dot asked meekly.

“Tomorrow,” the Gooch concluded.

Oh, feces
.

Sonny thought of all the guys she knew, had ever known, talked to a few times, once, and that came to a fat zero. Doughnut hole. Except for Tommy Ligorry, a neighborhood goon, who she wasn’t speaking to anyway since he grossed her out. Gross was gross but he farted in her face. And lit it. She hated his filthy guts but if it meant becoming a Teen Angel, she’d make up to him.

“How’s it going?” she asked casually.

He lay flat on his stomach in the middle of 161st Street playing skullies. “Shut your face,” he said, not looking up. “I’m concentrating.”

Tommy always played skullies, usually by himself, and when it got dark he played by the light of the streetlamp. Squinting his eyes, he flicked the bottle cap from the chalked diamond in the center of the street into a box marked 7 on the other side of the street.

“I just wanted to say hello,” Sonny said, following after him as
he prepared for his next shot from number 7. He melted wax into his bottlecaps. That made the difference. As for cars that turned up 161st Street, they had to watch out for him. If he blew his shot, Tommy cut tires.

“I thought you wasn’t talking to me,” he said, “which was okay.”

“Well, I just wanted to give you a break.”

“Do me a favor and don’t do me no favors. Okay?”

They went a long way back. Tommy shot her with his water gun the time she was trying to reach one thousand with her yellow hula hoop. She bombed him with water balloons from her fire escape when he played stickball. He blasted her potsy game with caps. She left bubble gum where he sat. He pelted her
der-rear
with a peashooter. Each had shown each other
theirs
but nowadays, just because he was going to George Washington High School, Tommy acted like she was just some tag-along kid.

“I’ve got another joke you haven’t heard,” Sonny said.

“Oh no. Another Palovsky.”

“Okay, if you don’t want to hear it, forget it.”

“Go on. Lay it on me. What the hell.”

She always knew how to get to him. “Well, let’s see. Did you hear the one about the Jewish woman who went to the funeral home where her husband’s body was being placed in a casket. Anyways, she says to the guy there, ‘I have an unusual request …’ ‘Yes?’ he says. ‘I want you should do me a favor and give me my Hymie’s penis so I can take it home with me.’ The man is shocked. ‘What? We’ve heard of people wanting to donate their beloveds’ organs for medical research, but this?’ This woman pleads with him, ‘Sir, please. Do this for me.’ She breaks down in tears.”

“Come on already,” Tommy interrupted. “Get to the punch line.”

“Don’t rush me,” Sonny said. “Or maybe I should just forget about it.”

“Sonny, I’ll strangle you …”

“So the man cuts her husband’s pecker off and wraps it in newspaper like fish so she can take it home with her. Anyway, that evening while she’s making supper, a neighbor comes in. Well, this woman’s chopping onions and puts them into a pan with oil. Then she unwraps her husband’s penis and puts it on a cutting board and begins to slice it. Neatly, like a cucumber.”

Tommy’s face fell. “This is disgusting.”

“Well, the neighbor sees this and shrieks, ‘How can you! That’s Hymie’s prick.’ So she answers, ‘Prick, shmick. For years I ate it the way he wanted. Now I’m going to eat it the way I want-with fried onions!’”

Tommy just shook his head. Even if he thought something was a scream, he never laughed. That’s because he was cool, which meant he acted like Marlon Brando. He even wore a torn T-shirt and never could speak English anyway. But Sonny could tell he was amused so she decided to ask him.

“Tommy, I have a tiny little favor to ask you. Kind of, if you’d do something for me …”

“Nothing doing,” he mumbled, resuming his game.

“You don’t even know what I want you to do. Maybe you’ll even like it …”

“I don’t do no favors for nobody, especially a pain like you, Palovsky. The last time I did you a favor, you had to go to the hospital and I got in trouble.”

“Yeah, but that was ages ago.” He had helped her stuff a tiny bottle of lilac eau de cologne with the cap off up her nose because she liked the smell so much. They had to operate through her throat.

“No way,” Tommy said, flicking the cap across the street.

Sonny tagged after him. “Do you have a scumbag?” she whispered.

“What?” he said, slowly standing up. Even though he was two
and a half years older, he came up to Sonny’s ear. Tommy slipped a comb out of his black chino pockets and combed his hair.

“A scumbag,” Sonny repeated. “Rubber. A
pro-phy-natic
. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Why the hell do you wanna know?”

“I need one.”

“You?” Tommy began to laugh until he was kicking the lamppost, howling so his tonsils wagged. “I don’t believe it. Stringbean Palovsky wants a bag. Old Beanpole herself. That’s rich. You gonna do it with a hat rack? The only thing anyone would want to come near a walking plate of spaghetti like you is a toilet plunger and then they better use some Drano and–”