Her dreamy mood abruptly shifted to instructor, as she gave me a lesson in shoplifting. She said there were two rules: (1) wear a loose skirt or pants, not a dress; (2) get fat. When you shoplift something, you stick it in your underwear (easier and quicker to do going down pants than up a dress). The fatter you are, the bigger your underwear, and hence the more stuff your underwear can hold—and the less likely anyone will notice a few extra pounds on you.
She grabbed a roll of herself in each hand. “Where you think I got all this?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She crowed: “Scooper Dooper!”
Scooper Dooper was on West Marshall Street. It was the best ice cream place in the world. “Really?” I said.
She jiggled the fat rolls in front of my face. She seemed to be inviting me to take a bite. “Sundaes…cones…triple dip!…Black-and-white milkshakes…But you know what I like the most?”
“What?”
She released her belly rolls. She took a deep breath. “Banana. Splits.” She said it like other people said “Amen.” “If I ate one of them things, I ate five hundred.” She jabbed a glamorous fingertip at me. “And every one the same. All three scoops chocolate—nunna this chocolate and vanilla and strawberry stuff. And wet walnuts. Wet. And extra whip cream. And hot fudge. And no pineapple.” She poked my knee. “And”—she held up four fingers—“four cherries. One for each scoop plus one.”
“Wow,” I said. She had a way of talking about food. I was getting hungry.
She regrabbed her belly rolls, looked down at them. “Scooper Dooper. Banana splits.” She looked at me. She took my arm, squeezed it. “Gimme two years—maybe three—you, me, Scooper Dooper…girl, I’ll get two hundred more pounds on you, and you and me’ll be walking out of that Woolworth with enough stuff to start our own store!”
We were both laughing so hard that at first we didn’t hear the whistle. Then we did: the long, breathy toot from Scheidt’s Brewery, squatting massively on the eastern slope of Stony Creek. Wherever you were—hanging wash in the East End, removing an appendix at Sacred Heart Hospital, fishing at Rohm’s Quarry in the far west, counting the days and years in Hancock County Prison—if you were alive and awake, you heard it. Grown-ups set their watches by it. At precisely noon every day, the brewery whistle cried out to all of Two Mills: Lunchtime!
Boo Boo and I said goodbye and she joined the rest of the women heading inside. I paused in the empty yard before heading back out. I felt myself smiling as I recalled their shock and delight when they saw I was coming in to join them. Such a difference it had made, being on the same side of the fence. I entered my backyard. I locked the gate behind me and climbed the stairs to the apartment. In my mind I rewrote a certain headline from the Corrections journal:
WARDENS’ DAUGHTERS:
BETTER THAN PETS?
19
I did not return to the yard next day. I was preoccupied with thoughts of Eloda and what I’d heard from Boo Boo.
I watched Eloda as I ate my breakfast. I watched her empty the wastebaskets and Hoover the rugs. I tried to fit the word “firebug” on her. The more I watched her, the more mysterious she became.
Pretty soon I couldn’t take it any longer.
She was in the laundry room. She was at the ironing board, pressing one of my father’s dress shirts. A heap of wrinkled clothes sat on the washing machine. I pushed them to one side and hoisted myself up. I didn’t waste words.
“So,” I said, “I hear you’re a firebug.”
I was disappointed. Her face did not show a trace of the shock I’d hoped for. But her hand did come to a standstill, the iron poised above a snow-white sleeve. For the first time I noticed her fingernails. They were short and plain as a man’s, nothing like Boo Boo’s. There was not a hint of glamour about Eloda Pupko. Eventually the iron came down and resumed pressing the sleeve.
“You’re not speaking?” I said.
Her eyes never left the sleeve. “What is there to speak of?”
“I asked you a question.”
“You made a statement.”
I groaned. “Okay…is it true? Are you a firebug? Is that why you’re in here? Did you try to burn the town down?”
She gave an indifferent shrug. “If you say so.”
“I’m not saying so. I’m asking you.”
“Who said?”
“Boo Boo.”
“Must be true, then.”
“Eloda, will you please look at me?”
She lifted the iron. She looked at me. For two seconds. And went back to work.
Infuriating woman. “Why are you being such a poop?”
She stopped again. Spoke to the iron: “I’m a poop.” Went back to work.
I corked a laugh ball. “I’m trying to have a conversation.”
She hung up the finished shirt. “Congratulations.” She started in on another, first squirting it with the mister.
I wasn’t giving up. “Boo Boo says you’re snooty.”
No reaction. Iron, iron.
“She says you think you’re special because you’re up here all day. You think you’re better than the other inmates.”
She shrugged. “I’m snooty.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You forget you’re just a jailbird.”
She nodded. “That’s me.”
Would it kill her to take me seriously?
I slammed my heels into the washer. Reckless words were coming and I could not stop them. “You think you live here. You think you’re part of the family.”
No movement except two raised eyebrows. “Do I?”
“Yeah.” I jabbed my finger at her; I couldn’t stop myself. “Who do you think you are? My mother?”
The reaction didn’t come at once. While my words hung in the air, she continued to iron for another ten full seconds. Then she set the iron on its end and looked up, into my eyes. “Don’t worry,” she answered with devastating assurance. “I’m not your mother.” And returned to the iron. And added: “And never will be.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. When they did, I screamed at her: “Well, good!” I jumped down from the washer. I swatted the misting bottle. It smashed against the wall. Glass and water all over. “Great!” I yelled. “I’m glad we got that straightened out! And you wanna know what else? Huh? I’ll tell you what else! I’m telling my father to send you back down where you belong! You’ll be making rugs and stringballs with everybody else!”
Unfazed as ever—except for a flinch when the mister hit the wall—she stood amid the water and pieces of glass and said, “That so?”
My fury leaped off the charts. “Yeah, that’s so!” I yelled. “You can kiss the high life goodbye!”
She lifted the iron from the shirt and gave me her eyes. But that was all. I found no emotion, no satisfying response in her face. Who knows how long the stalemate of eyes might have gone on. As it was, a sudden commotion came from outside the jail. I seized the chance to escape a showdown I didn’t really want. I ran to the front window. Below me a mob was surging over the sidewalk and into the street.
Even before I spotted the murderer Marvin Edward Baker, I knew what was happening. The prisoner was returning from his arraignment.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America says an accused person has the right to be told exactly why he or she has been arrested. Not only that, but it needs to happen fast, so the prisoner isn’t left sitting in a cell for months, wondering what’s going on. That’s why the arraignment happens within forty-eight hours after the arrest. The accused is informed of the charges and offered the chance to plead guilty or not guilty.
Wanting to avoid another mob scene, my father had sneaked Marvin Edward Baker out a side door and down the short block to the courthouse at four-thirty in the morning. But he couldn’t control the whole course of events. By the time the judge said the words “willfully and with premeditation did cause the death of one Annamarie Grace Pinto,” a river of people w
as flowing from the courthouse to the county prison. The citizens of Two Mills knew their Sixth Amendment.
The multitude parted reluctantly as the flashing squad cars inched down Airy Street. This time it was not silence that greeted Marvin Edward Baker when he emerged from the car. A storm of the ugliest words I had ever heard flew through the screen of the apartment’s open window. This time the celebrity felon was visible for only a few seconds before vanishing into the ironclad maw beneath my living room.
For minutes afterward howls of damnation raged against our dark fortress, drowning out the rushing footsteps that on an ordinary day I would have heard. Sudden thumps on the apartment door along with cries of “Cammie! Open up!” announced the arrival of Reggie Weinstein. The wide-eyed wonderment, the excitement bursting from her every perfect pore, told me that she had just made up for missing the murderer’s perp walk the first time around.
I was wrong.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me like a pom-pom and screamed into my face: “I’m going to Bandstand!”
20
Screaming filled the next twenty minutes. Mostly Reggie. (“I can’t believe it!” “I’m really going!” “Pinch me!”) Though I did my share, as I really was happy for her. (“Wow!” “Oh my God!” “Cool!”)
When actual conversation became possible, I learned that Reggie’s father had finally caved in. She had been begging him for the past year. His big objection was that she was too young. Bandstand age range was fourteen to eighteen. Reggie argued that you didn’t have to prove your age: you just lied and they believed you, especially if you looked old enough.
The big moment had come that morning. Her father was in the bathroom, shaving. Reggie was planted outside, whining and begging. Suddenly the door flew open and her father was standing there with a face full of shaving cream, raging: “Okay—go! Go! I hope you get arrested!”
As for Reggie’s mother, she had never been a problem. One look at her and you knew where Reggie got her looks and style. Reggie’s mom called her daughter’s friends “hon” and jitterbugged with Reggie to Bandstand in their living room.
“So,” I said, “are you gonna dance?” This might seem like a dumb question, but the Bandstand dance floor was small and usually monopolized by the regulars from South Philly. Just watching them, either in-studio or on TV, was practically a national sport. They had their own fan clubs.
She sneered. “Does a bear poop in the woods?”
“So what about Tommy D?” I said.
Ah. Tommy D.
That was all the name you needed. Tommy DeBennedetto was the cutest guy on the show. Black hair curling over his forehead. Midnight killer eyes. Every girl in the Delaware Valley was in love with him, including Reggie. Including Tommy’s girlfriend and co-Bandstand regular, Arlene Holtz.
“What about him?” said Reggie.
I hadn’t thought this through. “I don’t know….I never saw him dance with anybody but Arlene.”
“So?” she snipped. “Who needs Tommy D?”
And I thought: Bandstand—look out.
Reggie had brought the Bandstand tote that held her records. Shapewise it looked like either a large coffee can or a small hat box. It had a picture of Dick Clark, the host of Bandstand. We sang while we danced:
You cheated
You lied
You said that you love me
Despite Reggie’s endless labors to girly me up, when we danced, the boy was always me.
Splish splash, I was takin’ a bath
’Long about a Saturday night
We did slow. We did fast. We did the jitterbug (with the new push step), the hand jive and the stroll and the birdland and the cha-cha and the chalypso.
We only stopped dancing to sing—more shout, really—our personal national anthem, by the Cookies:
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about my baby
(Don’t you know)
Don’t say nothin’
Bad about my baby
He’s true
He’s true to me
We jabbed our fingers into each other’s face and snarled the last line over and over:
So, girl, you better shut yer mouth!
Eloda made the mistake of appearing in the dining room. “Eloda!” Reggie cried. “I’m going to Bandstand!”
Eloda looked up from her dustrag long enough to flatly reply, “You don’t say.”
If Eloda had been smart, she’d have run downstairs and locked herself in her cell. Reggie birdlanded over to her, flung the dustrag away and danced her around the dining room table. She even let Eloda be the girl.
Eloda tried to be a good sport, but she couldn’t disguise the pain on her face. I felt bad that she had to endure my friend’s exuberance—and felt all the worse for having made her endure me in the laundry room. I had to rescue her. I called out the first thing that came to mind: “Eloda, my room smells. Would you please open the window and air it out?”
Eloda broke from Reggie and fled.
Reggie raided the fridge for a black cherry, her favorite soda. We always kept bottles on hand for her.
“Must be great,” she said, flopping onto the sofa, “having a maid.”
Reggie had always called my Cammie-keepers that. It had never bothered me before.
“She’s not a maid,” I said. “She’s a trustee. This is her job.”
“You must trust her a lot. What if she steals stuff?”
I shushed her. “Quiet. She’ll hear. And she doesn’t steal.”
“But what if?”
“She doesn’t.”
She took a long swig of black cherry. She leaned forward. “All I’m saying is, she’s behind bars for a reason. Trustee or not.”
Eloda was under attack. My defenses were bristling.
“There’s a reason they’re called trustees,” I countered. “You can trust them.”
“And there’s a reason they’re in jail. They’re criminals.”
“She loves me!” I shot back.
To this day I don’t know who was more surprised at my words, Reggie or myself. Why did I say it? I knew it wasn’t true. But I wanted it to be. Reggie and I just gawked at each other.
Then her face changed, softened. She put down her soda and came to sit on the arm of my easy chair. She smiled. “Cammie, I’m only trying to—”
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. I blurted: “Sometimes I pretend she’s my mother.”
She blinked. She didn’t believe me. And then she did. She glanced around to make sure Eloda wasn’t nearby. She whispered, “She’s in jail.”
Defend. Lie.
“Not for long,” I said.
That slowed her down. “No?” she said. “When does she get out?”
Lie. “Any day now. Her old job is waiting for her.”
“Really?” She looked interested. “And what job is that?”
“It’s a cleaning business. She cleans people’s houses. They give her a key and let her in the house even when they’re not there.” I couldn’t stop myself.
“Really?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“So what was her crime?”
“Shoplifting.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Shoplifting what?”
“A pack of cigarettes.”
“A pack of cigarettes. They threw her in jail for stealing a pack of cigarettes?”
“She didn’t even steal them. She just forgot to pay. And she had a bad lawyer.”
Reggie wagged her head. She smiled down on me. It was a smile of enormous pity, the pity of the righteous for an unfortunate, misguided soul. She hadn’t believed a word I’d said. “Cammie, Cammie…life isn’t a comic book.” She squeezed my hand. “Bad people don’t get good just like that.”
“Tell that to Corrections magazine,” I told her. “And my father.” I thought of the Quiet Room. The forever-empty Quiet Room.
“Most people that get out of
jail, they do something else and come right back in.”
“That’s bullpoop,” I said. “What do you know about prisons?”
She squeezed my hand. “Bad is bad. I know that.”
I was out of arguments. “I don’t care,” I said, hoping she would drop it.
She didn’t.
She came down from the armrest. She knelt on the floor before me. The shock and condescension were gone. She was simply dead serious, as if she were studying the cosmetics rack at Woolworth’s. “Cammie…,” she said. She laid her hand on mine. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
I stared over her head. “What do you care?”
“You’re my best friend.”
“Big deal.”
She squeezed my hand again. “Cammie, she’s in jail. She can’t be your mother. She’s tricking you.”
I snatched my hand away. “Says you.”
She gestured at the apartment. “Cammie—look.” I didn’t. “Just look at this nice place you live in. If you were stuck in a jail cell, wouldn’t you love to have a nice, cushy job up here?” She squeezed my hand for the third time. Suddenly I couldn’t stand her touching me. “Wouldn’t you be all peachy to the warden’s daughter so you could keep this nice, cushy job?”
I heard Boo Boo’s voice: snootin’…high life.
I smacked her hand away. I shouted into her face. “She’s not peachy!” And thought: I wish she was.
“Fine,” she said: calm, reasonable, Reggie the grown-up. “Not peachy. So let her be your maid. Your friend, even. Invite her to your wedding.” Animated now, tossing up her hands. “But for Pete’s sake, just don’t make her your mother! She’s a criminal!”
I shoved her. Hard. She toppled backward. Her head bounced off the floor. I raged down at her: “You don’t know nothin’!”
Shock. Disbelief. Tears. She was so anxious to reach the door she crawled halfway before picking herself up. She struggled with the bar lock, screaming curses, heaving with sobs. Finally the door flew open. She wheeled. Her cheeks were black with eyeliner. She thrust a finger at me and shrieked: “Just because you lost your mother doesn’t mean…doesn’t mean…” She choked on her own sobs and went clattering down the stairs and, I assumed, out of my life forever.