Whistling for the Elephants (7 page)

‘This,’
he announced proudly, ‘is Resussa-Annie, and she is going to teach you
mouth-to-mouth.’ The boys snickered. Resussa—Annie was clearly what they went
to Boat Safety for. Not only was she shaped like a full-grown woman, she was
naked and actually pretty good-looking for rubber. She had long blond hair
which spread down over quite realistic breasts.

‘What
do you know about Annie here?’ bellowed Harry in a voice which had carried him
to victory on the football field.

‘She’s
naked,’ chortled Nathan Crystal, who lived over on Edgemont. Nathan went to
remedial summer school and was into leather at a surprisingly early age.

‘Don’t
be a wise ass, Crystal,’ warned Harry. ‘Your father can’t pass a ball worth a
nickel. Yeah, so she’s naked. She is naked for a reason, okay?’ Harry held the
doll up by the neck so that she sagged from his grip. ‘This woman is going to
drown and you are going to save her. She does not have a top on…’ There was a
great wave of snickering. ‘Thank you … she does not have a top on as we are
supposed to be able to see her chest moving when one of you wisenheimers has
successfully expelled air into her lungs. Who wants to be first?’ The answer
was no one, but Harry had dealt with reluctant recruits before. ‘Come on, Donna
Marie, let’s go, hup two.’

Donna
had no choice but to shuffle up to the front. She looked at naked Annie. Harry
clipped on.

‘Okay,
let’s get the head in the right position. Here, give me your hands.’ He took
Donna Marie’s hands and moved them toward Annie’s head. Suddenly he stopped.

‘What
the hell is this?’ he demanded, holding up her wrist. Donna Marie looked at her
wrist as if for the first time. I think it took her a minute to know what he
was talking about.

‘It’s
my PoW bracelet.’ There was a terrible silence. The fate of Lt Hutton aside, I
knew I was glad I wasn’t wearing mine. Harry looked at Donna Marie.

‘How
old are you?’ he demanded.

‘Twelve.’

‘Twelve,
huh. You go out with boys?’

The
boys snickered but one look from Harry and they stopped instantly.

‘No,’
said Donna, blushing.

Harry
looked at her in disgust. ‘Not a goddamn idea in your head.’ He grabbed her
wrist and pulled at the offending chain. ‘Do you know where this kind of thing
can lead, huh? Do you have any idea? Give me the bracelet.’ Donna Marie took it
off and handed it to him. ‘Sit down, I’ll talk to your father.’ Harry cleared
his throat. ‘Anybody else want to be a smartass?’

I don’t
know why I put my hand up. It wasn’t like me to push myself forward. I
certainly didn’t want to be a smartass. It was pathetic but I had a terrible
longing to breathe life into the sleeping creature, Resussa-Annie. Harry looked
at me strangely. I don’t think he knew what to make of me. I was a girl but I
looked like a boy. My hands stuck firmly in my pockets, the hair under my cap,
neither one thing nor the other. A gender-non-specific. I could see that he had
no idea whether I needed the hail-fellow-well-met slap on the back of a lad or
the pinched cheek of a princess. Harry did neither but waved in the general
direction of Annie and let me approach.

He had
laid her out on two chairs covered by an altar-cloth. There was something
religious and yet pagan about it all. Annie had a very big but quite realistic
mouth which was permanently open to allow easy passage down into her big bags of
lung. I wasn’t sure what to do. I never touched anybody. I wanted to stroke her
hair. I mean, if she had been drowning I thought that would be nice but I knew
all the boys and Donna Marie and Eddie Jr were watching. Maybe stroking was not
cool. Harry became businesslike.

‘So the
person needs your help. She can’t breathe. Whatcha gonna do? First tip her head
back and make sure her airways are free of obstruction.’ He tipped Annie’s head
back and her glazed eyes stared up into mine. ‘You put your hand on her chest
like so, then take a deep breath and blow, one, two, three.’ Harry blew into
Annie and her chest rose like a swelling wave. ‘Head to the side, blow out,
one, two, three. Okay, kid, you’re on.’

I
shuffled to Annie’s side and looked down at her. She was dying. I had to save
her. In fact, only I could save her. Gently I tipped her head back and looked
down her mouth. Her pink rubber passageway was very free of obstruction. So
free that on a clear day and with her legs at the right angle to the window, you
could have seen our house.

‘Come
on, kid, she’s dying for Christ’s sake.’

I took
a deep breath, leaned down and blew so forcefully that her lungs popped up and
shot my hand off her chest. I’d save her, I would. I got into the rhythm of it.
Breathing in, one, two, three, blowing out, one, two, three. Annie’s chest
rising and falling. It was the most incredible feeling, breathing life into
something. I had an overwhelming sensation of usefulness, of purpose. It was as
close to a religious feeling as I had ever had. At which point I fainted.

When I
came round I was lying on Annie’s chairs and she was looking decidedly deflated
in a corner. All the kids had gone. Harry was looking down at me with disgust.

‘Listen,
kid, you’re new, right?’ I nodded vigorously. ‘Don’t rush the plate. Girls oughtta
take their time. That’s what girls do. Let the boys rush the plate.’ Harry
nodded, pleased with his own statement on life. He really was trying to be
helpful. I thought I ought to comment on this unexpected piece of advice but I
didn’t quite know what it meant. He drove me home in silence. As we pulled up
to our yard he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. Not looking at me but
talking quite intently to the steering wheel.

‘Be
smart, kid. Don’t wear the tie. Don’t be so… different, right? Kids’ll tease
you. You know, give you a hard time in school and like that. Don’t be so…
different.’

I knew
he was trying to tell me something important but I didn’t really get it. I
still hadn’t gotten used to the idea of conversation with adults whose first
names you knew. I nodded again.

‘Thank
you.’ I got out of the car and carefully shut the door. ‘Sorry I was such
trouble,’ I mumbled into his exhaust.

I didn’t
go to Boat Safety again. Partly because Father didn’t let me and partly because
of what happened with the zoo and everything. Most of the other kids got their
certificates but I don’t think Harry had his mind on the course that summer. He
didn’t really pay attention ‘cause for a while the boys were happy just
breathing on Resussa-Annie. Then Harry got caught up in the election and
stopped taking the classes. The minister took over but he never noticed what
was going on. Unsupervised, Nathan discovered he could jerk off in Annie’s wide
mouth. I learned so many things that summer. Pretty soon all the boys wanted a
go. After a couple of months she was full up with semen and went a strange colour.
A kind of black pallor developed all over her, as if it were the plague she
needed rescuing from, not drowning. Not surprisingly, none of the girls wanted
to save her and there was an almost entirely male pass rate for Boat Safety in
town. Not that it mattered at the certificate ceremony. Reverend Harlon was
supposed to call out the successful students, but no one could understand a word
he said so in the end a lot more kids got a certificate than should have.

That
was my first outing with the Dapolitos. Then there was the time I went to
dinner.

‘Hey,
kid,’ Aunt Bonnie yelled as I cycled past for the twentieth time one afternoon.
‘You want a meatball wedge?’

I had
no idea whether I did or not but I nodded. I just wanted to come inside their
house.

‘The
kids are watching TV … in the den.’ Aunt Bonnie nodded into the dark
interior.

I knew
it. What a great place. They didn’t have a lounge. They had a den. A dark, snuggly
place for baby lions. That was the first time I ever saw a colour TV. It was a
huge wooden box with a panel of three lights at the front — green, blue and
red. We sat on their endless sofa (dark wood with quilt-pattern cushions from
the Pioneer collection — Sears, Roebuck Catalog 1961) and watched
Gilligan’s
Island
followed by
I Dream of Jeannie.
Aunt Bonnie was unpacking
things from a large brown cardboard box.

‘Donna
Marie,’ she would call and toss cellophane packages at her daughter. ‘Eddie J.’
More packages rained down on the sofa. Clothes, endless clothes. Donna Marie
opened her packets. Shorts. Shorts in bright colours, and really soft. Not
tailored at all. Shorts with pockets. And T-shirts, striped T-shirts to match the
shorts. Maybe six or more sets in different colours. It was the most fantastic
box of clothes I had ever seen.

‘Excuse
me, Mrs Dapolito,’ I said quietly.

‘Mrs Dapolito!
For Christ’s sake, Aunt Bonnie.’ Aunt Bonnie dragged on her Salem cigarette. ‘Everyone
calls me Aunt Bonnie.’

‘Where
do you get such a box?’

‘Sears,
Roebuck. Goddamn finest store in the country. Here.’ She tossed a catalogue the
size of a small child at my feet. Then my new-found aunt went into the kitchen.
She returned with great submarines of bread overflowing with Italian spiced
meatballs. Wonderful food that you just couldn’t eat neatly. Food that you ate
with your hands! In the lounge. The den! On the settee. Not at a table. I ate,
I looked at pictures of smiling girls in shorts in my catalogue and on the TV
Barbara Eden came out of a genie’s bottle with a bright green face. I had died
and gone to heaven.

Uncle
Eddie sat silently in a huge reclining chair with a great footrest. He didn’t
really watch but occasionally he would click his fingers to show he wanted the
channel changed. He was definitely in charge of the TV. Looking back, maybe it
was a testosterone thing.

Father
rang the doorbell and Aunt Bonnie went to answer.

‘Good
evening, Mrs Dapolito,’ he whispered. ‘I was wondering if you might have seen
my daughter, Dorothy?’

‘You
got a problem with your voice?’ asked Aunt Bonnie straight out.

‘Yes.’

She
shrugged. ‘Too bad. She’s in here.’ Aunt Bonnie nodded toward the den. Father
was unmoved.

‘Perhaps
you might call her?’ he suggested, it never occurring to him to enter someone
else’s home without prior arrangement.

‘Hey,
kid, your dad’s here,’ Aunt Bonnie yelled with a paint-stripping voice.

‘You
have been most kind.’

Father
was cross. I knew he was. I had eaten between meals. I had red sauce down my
tie.

‘They
have colour TV,’ I said as we walked home.

‘It is
vulgar,’ whispered Father, even less audible than usual.

I didn’t
think so but I didn’t say anything. I thought I’d never seen anything more
exciting in my life, but I knew Father wanted me to stay away. He never banned me,
or anything as straightforward as that. I just knew I wasn’t to go to the Dapolito
family. At home Father sat reading at the dining-room table. Mother’s door was
closed and the air was thick with silence. My tie was ruined. In my room I took
it off and put it in the bin.

Chapter
Four

The dead end that we lived
in had five houses. Ours was next to the stop sign on to Amherst. Next to us,
on the same right-hand side of the street, lived Sweetheart, Harry Schlick’s
mother. Next to her and at the head of the close were the Dapolitos. Next to
them was the drive to the Yacht Club. Then on the left side were Harry and
Judith and next to them Joey Amorato, the dog catcher, who lived alone.

The Schlicks
invited us for a barbecue as part of the Welcome Wagon’s welcome to the neighbourhood.
I guess it was the barbecue which started everything rolling but I didn’t pay
that much attention to the invitation. I was still obsessed with the idea that,
like the spider, Father and Mother might be harbouring a rich, internal
emotional life about which I knew nothing. I hadn’t been up to the Burroughs
House again after that first time. I spent most of my time hanging around our
road, improving on the number of things my bike could be. Whatever the bike was,
a horse, a pioneer wagon, I was mostly alone. Cherry Blossom Drive was not a
great address for activity. Rich people mainly used it to get to the back
entrance to the Yacht Club.

At
weekends Father was home but he spent most of his time sitting at the
dining-room table working on his project. Our family, the Kanes, came
originally from a small village in England called Ickenham. Father had been
researching the town’s history for some time. This was difficult as Ickenham
was pretty much the sort of English town which history had entirely passed by.
It was not mentioned in the Domesday Book and no one of any consequence had
ever thought it was a good place for a battle. It suggested somewhere not worth
fighting over. However, Father had a trump card. While examining the guest register
of the Ickenham Arms he had discovered the signature ‘ER 1598’. He was
convinced that Elizabeth I had once slept there
en route
to whatever it
was she was
en route
to. Consequently he was in endless correspondence
with specialists in the field. Father always meant to be nice. If I came in he
would look up from his work and I always felt I had to stop by the table.
Neither one of us could ever think of a suitable subject for conversation.