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23: “An Eventful Year”
It was a long, hot summer and without any air conditioning in their apartment, tempers were flaring. No one slept well and increasingly Ali and her brother were fighting. Caroline would come in to their bedroom to tell them to stop everything, “or else”.
“What is the or else?” said Reynolds.
“Keep it up and you’ll find out,” replied his mother standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
“Ali, you stay on your side and get to sleep, both of you.”
“I can’t sleep mother, I’ve got mosquito bites and Reynolds is being mean.”
“OK, Ali----- out here with me and Reynolds you stay there.”
The sofa bed was open and Caroline had the television on. She was watching a movie on the Late Show. The music to the Late Show sounded like a clock ticking which Ali had heard before when she stayed up late with her mother on weekends.
“I like that music.”
“Me, too, honey.”
“Hey, why can’t I stay up and watch television, too?” said Reynolds as he appeared from around the corner.
“Do you think you and Ali can refrain from fighting?” asked their mother.
“I guess,” said Reynolds with a shrug. Before long he was on one side of the sofa bed and Ali on the other with their mother in between to referee if necessary.
The television was still on an hour later as everyone was sound asleep with the music of the ticking clock on the Late Late Show. The television flickered in the darkened room.
In July, Caroline came home with some brochures about a private boy’s school called St. Andrew’s Choir School located just a few blocks away. She took Reynolds to the school one day where he was asked to sing. He opened his mouth and sang beautifully, somewhat to the surprise of his mother. He passed all the tests and was scheduled to start at St. Andrews in September. George assured Caroline in a letter that he would somehow come up with the tuition. Reynolds was now 12 and needed more oversight. The school would be good for him and it wasn’t too far away.
That same summer, Ali was given the responsibility of taking care of little Babette, Madame Fifi’s French poodle. She was going to make a little spending money and just had to provide fresh food and water for Babette and give the little dog two walks a day. She was given the key to Madame Fifi’s apartment in order to get Babette out of her dog carrier. The first day went fine, but on Sunday, when Ali opened the dog carrier, Babette flew out of the carrier and into the air and bit Ali on her face. Ali stumbled backwards into Madame Fifi’s dresser, while Babette held on to her mouth. The pain was terrible!. When the dog finally let go, Ali was dazed, but ran to the bathroom and grabbed a towel to press against her mouth and lip that was oozing blood. Ali then ran from Madame Fifi’s apartment, sobbing loudly and shutting the door behind her with a bang. Thank goodness her mother was at home as she pounded on their door, still sobbing and holding the towel, now full of blood, to her face.
“Oh, my God,” said her mother “what happened?”
“Babette bit me,” she said with the towel still pressed to her face as she cried uncontrollably.
“Quick, come to the bathroom so I can see better,” said her mother fearful of what she was going to see.
Upon examination, Ali had a large gash on above her mouth, which quickly swelled to three times its usual size. Caroline hurriedly put some cold water on another towel and grabbed Ali by the hand to take her to the hospital. The elevator man helped pick up Ali and put her in the taxi, which rushed through traffic to Roosevelt Hospital. Even though there were lots of people in the emergency room, they took Ali to the operating room right away and placed her on a table, rinsing the blood from her face and placing a small napkin-size cloth with a hole over her face. Ali was in so much pain! She hadn’t stopped crying since Babette bounded out of her carrier so unexpectedly and bit her. Her eyes and face were pink and puffy from crying, and she was scared lying on the operating table. Her mother was nearby in the room with her.
“Needle,” said one doctor. The needle went into the gash.
“OWWWWWWWWWWWW,” wailed Ali.
“It’s going to hurt a little more, my dear, but the doctor needs to put in a few stitches,” said a nurse who placed her hand on Ali’s shoulder to calm her down and keep her still for the doctor. Even under the little covering on her face, Ali could see a long silver instrument with a little hook on the end that the doctor used for stitching her wound. She was being sewn up like a torn pair of pants she thought, all the while sniffling, with her chest heaving up and down.
“There we go,” the doctor said as he finished sewing up her wound. He placed a small dressing over the stitches.
“Mrs. Spain, that was a pretty serious bite. Thirteen stitches just above her lip. She was lucky it wasn’t a little higher near her eye.”
Ali heard him and thought that “lucky” was the last thing she was feeling.
In the days that followed, Ali felt very self-conscious about the ugly stitches on her face. It was hard to eat and brush her teeth. Thank goodness it was summer and she didn’t have to go to school yet. Reynolds was sympathetic at first, but after the bandage came off he started calling her Frankenstein. She liked it best when she was alone and could collect her stuffed animals around her on her bed. Smokey Bear was the leader of the pack, which now included a monkey in a red suit; a seal like the one at the park in the zoo; a tiger who was lying down, and a dalmation dog.
Ali would read for many hours while her mother was at work, but after awhile she would go out and take a walk in the park. She didn’t want her friends at The Drug Store to see how awful she looked with her lip still swollen with little x’s on the stitched area above her lip. She began walking with her head down, and her hand often times held up to her face. Actually, the good thing about walking down the street was that hardly anybody ever looked at anybody else. It was kind of nice to be invisible, especially right now thought Ali. She remembered how mad Madame Fifi was when she came home and found out that Babette had to be examined for rabies.
“Not my little Babette, she should not have to be quarantined,” said Madame Fifi. Ali’s mother insisted Madame come by and see how Ali looked. Madame did come by and brought Ali a stuffed animal. They all remained friends, but Ali was no longer to walk her dog. That was OK with Ali.
One afternoon, Ali found herself walking toward F.A.O. Schwartz, just across from the park. The toy store was the best place in the world to wander around. She would look, but not touch anything in order not to attract any attention. She went upstairs and looked at all the very large stuffed animals and swing sets. She got down on her knees to see the stuffed animal dogs behind the glass counter when a lady walked up to her.
“Hello,” she said to Ali. Ali raised her hand to her face and stood up.
“Do you see anything you want?” the lady asked. Ali knew she wasn’t a clerk because of the way she was dressed.
She wore white gloves, and had a very beautiful light blue suit on. She also wore a small hat and had white pearls around her neck. She had a warm voice and kind eyes. She looked like someone’s rich grandmother.
“Yes,” said Ali still holding her hand to her mouth.
“My dear,” you don’t have to cover your mouth. I’ve seen worse injuries than that. What happened?” she asked gently .
“A dog bit me,” said Ali softly.
“Oh, I bet that hurt a whole lot,” said the lady. “See any of the stuffed animals behind the glass that you’d like. I’m sort of partial to the fluffy dog over there.”
“He looks nice,” said Ali.
“Anything else? There has to be something else that you want. How about a game?” said the lady encouraging Ali to find at least one more item.
“I like “Break the Bank” on television,” said Ali. The lady turned to a clerk and asked her something and in just a few seconds, the clerk was holding both a “Break the Bank” game and the fluffy
dog. She put them in a large bag. The lady with the white gloves signed something and then turned to Ali, handing her the bag.
“I want you to go home and enjoy these little gifts. Be careful with animals, but don’t become afraid of them. They are all wonderful creatures,” she added.
“Thank you,” said Ali as she turned to go back down the escalator. She could hardly wait to tell her mother about the nice lady in the toy store. As soon as she got home, she added “Fluffy” to her collection of animals on her bed. Later that evening, she played “Break the Bank” with her mother.
When Ali started the fourth grade in September, she continued to be self-conscious about the scar just above her lip. She avoided mirrors because she didn’t want to see the lopsided little mark that made her feel different now. But, with time and her mother’s encouragement, Ali finally overcame her embarrassment and her habit of placing her hand over her mouth when she talked to someone. Some of the kids in her class thought being bit by a ferocious dog, and being taken to the emergency room of a hospital during summer vacation was rather exciting and that Ali must have been quite brave. Ali assured them it wasn’t a good thing and had been very, very painful. She also told them that Babette wasn’t so much ferocious, as unhappy about being in a container all day. “Think how you’d feel being put in a box all day,” Ali told her school friends.
Ali’s father was very good about writing letters to her. The first one he wrote right after she was bitten assured her that she was still a beautiful little girl.
The only difference now, her father wrote, was that she now had a little mark on her face like the one he had on his chin when he fell off his bicycle when he was a little boy many years ago. That made Ali feel a little better. She and her father had matching scars. Her father sent letters with air mail stamps from California every month. He was working at Lockheed again, and not singing anymore. He wrote that singing was a “young man’s game.” As soon as Ali received a letter, she would sit at the table in the living room and write a long letter back to her father about all the things going on in her life. She always asked her mother to help her make sure all the words were spelled correctly before she mailed it to her father. One of her longer letters that she wrote while she was in the forth grade read as follows:
May 23, 1956
Dear Daddy,
Thank you for your last letter. Thank you for sending me the news clipping about Disneyland. I watch the Mickey Mouse Show after school and see commercials about all the rides at Disneyland. I am doing long division in school now and don’t like it at all. I love to read. I read a page every day of Little Women (the book you sent me after Babette bit me last year). Some words are hard, but Mother tells me to either skip them or look them up in the dictionary. Usually I skip them. Each week, I go to the school library and check out a book. I checked out Shane two times now. It’s about a cowboy who becomes a friend of a little boy and his family somewhere out West. When I read it, I got a little lonesome for California. I have some good friends that I like. I share my cookies with Annie sometimes, because she usually doesn’t have any. Annie and I were jumping rope and playing hop scotch and having a good time and all of the sudden it got late. When I got home, Mother had two policemen there and she was crying. She told me NEVER to stay out that late again. She hugged me and then shook me. She said she would write to you about it. Did she? I have another friend named Sharon. Sometimes I walk home with her after school. She lives in a really nice apartment across the street from the park. When we get to the front of her building where the awning is, she says “Good Riddance” and runs inside her building. Then, I walk home alone. Mother tells me not to walk with her anymore. My friend Gerald’s father owns a nice restaurant. We play there sometimes after school. Once we got in the freezer and tossed a lobster back and forth. Gerald’s father told us to go home. I wrote you about my friends at The Drug Store, Iris and Joe. They are so nice. Sometimes I go to the Donnell library after school to do my homework. It is pretty close to school. I love all the books they have there. I have my own library card that says Alison Spain. I wish it said Ali Spain instead. If Mother is working late, I meet her at her office and type on her typewriter. I can’t type fast like her, but I’m pretty good. The convention center across from Columbus Circle is done now----remember they were building it when we first got to New York? Don’t forget to write me when you get this letter. I love you. Ali.