“Is the pope Catholic?” Mrs. Shaw called back.
It was like speaking a foreign language using words I knew. I heard the clink of ice in glasses and the splash of liquid. “Be right back,” Mr. Shaw said, and left.
A magazine lay open on the black leather ottoman that went with Mr. Shaw’s easy chair. With a jolt I realized that it had to be a Playboy, because there was a photo of a naked woman. How could it be just lying there, out in the open, in the middle of the Shaws’ den?
The magazine was turned away, so the woman was upside down. I wanted to go over and look at her right-side up, but I was afraid that Mr. Shaw would come back and catch me.
Ronnie’s dad returned and gave me a glass with ice and some deep red liquid in it. “Cheers.”
We clinked glasses, and I took a sip. It tasted cold and sweet and strange. A little piece of lemon rind made it tangy. Mr. Shaw settled into his chair and propped the Playboy open on his lap. The cover showed the upper half of a naked woman wearing a tie, her arms crossed over her breasts. “How’s that bomb shelter, Scott?”
“Dad says I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
Mr. Shaw nodded. “Your parents let you drink wine?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Shaw turned a page in the magazine like it was the most natural thing in the world to give your son’s friend wine and look at pictures of naked women while you chatted. “In France, children are offered wine at dinner. By the time they’re teenagers, it’s a natural part of life. You don’t have kids going out on Friday night and getting smashed the way they do here. A much more mature and reasonable approach, don’t you think?”
I took another sip and nodded.
“French women go topless at the beach,” Mr. Shaw continued. “They’re so much more relaxed about the human body. I mean, if a man can go around without a shirt, why can’t a woman?”
I didn’t know how to answer. Women going around without shirts on? Kids drinking wine? You’d think French people were the strange ones, but Mr. Shaw, sitting there thumbing through his Playboy, was implying that we were.
“It’s time this country got past its Puritan roots,” Ronnie’s dad said. “This isn’t the sixteen hundreds anymore; we’ve put men in space and broken the sound barrier. We transmit television wirelessly into people’s homes and have X-rays that see through their bodies. But socially and sexually we’re still back in the Stone Age.”
I was tempted to tell him he was wrong because I’d seen a drawing of a caveman carrying a big club and dragging a woman around by her hair, and nobody did that anymore. By then I’d finished my drink and felt fuzzy and warm, and wished I could be alone in the den and look at the pictures in Playboy. Then Ronnie came in with wet hair and wearing shorts and a different shirt and said dinner was ready.
Mrs. Shaw’s fried chicken came in a tinfoil tray with whipped potatoes and carrots and peas. The chicken was a little soggy, and the carrots and peas were watery, but I didn’t care. They let me feed little bits of chicken to Leader, and almost everything Mr. Shaw said sounded funny and made me giggle. Later I went home, got into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. If Mom or Dad came in to kiss me good night, I didn’t hear them.
We’ve run out of toilet paper, mostly because the women use it even when they pee. And we all pee a lot because water is the only thing we have to relieve the gnawing ache of hunger between our tiny meals.
When the air starts to feel stale and even after a deep breath you feel like you need more, it’s time to use the ventilator. Dad heaves himself up and starts to crank, but after a few moments, he stops to catch his breath.
He starts again, then stops.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Just tired,” he answers. “It’s hard to keep your strength up.”
“Which is exactly why we should eat more,” Mr. McGovern says.
“Which is why it would be helpful if you took a turn,” Dad counters, gesturing at the crank handle.
Mr. McGovern shakes his head. “No, thanks. I’m saving my energy.”
That scares me. Is he saving energy so he can take over and kick Mom and Janet out? And then Dad, Sparky, and me after them? Mrs. Shaw gives her husband a nudge, and he reluctantly gets up. But like Dad, after a few cranks, he seems to grow tired. “Ronnie,” he says.
Ronnie helps his dad crank. Together they manage to go long enough to fill the shelter with fresh air. But I feel bad. How come Dad didn’t ask me to help him?
“We’re like animals in a cage,” Mrs. Shaw mutters. “I can’t stand it.”
“If you think we’re like animals now,” says Mr. McGovern, “just wait.”
Mrs. Shaw pushes herself to her feet. “I have to wash. I want some water.”
“It’s for drinking,” Dad says.
“I have to wash!” Mrs. Shaw yells. Everyone starts and stiffens. “I can’t bear it,” she goes on. “I feel like I’m in a dog kennel covered with filth. I’d rather die.”
I glance at Mr. Shaw, expecting him to say, “Don’t say that,” but he just gazes at the water tank.
Mrs. Shaw’s balled hands rest on her hips. “Well, Richard?”
Dad pours water into a bowl and hands her a bar of Ivory Snow. Mrs. Shaw stands over the drain in the middle of the floor and takes off her robe and nightgown.
“Don’t look,” Dad says. But it’s impossible not to. Ronnie’s mother is naked. She tears some fabric from the bottom of her robe, then dips it in the bowl of water at her feet and starts to scrub her face, neck, arms, breasts, stomach, and legs. Water and lather drip down her body, and she moans with relief as she wipes off the suds, her damp skin glistening in the dim light. Nobody says a word. Of all the eyes watching her, Ronnie’s are the widest, and it makes me wonder if he ever did sneak in on her like he said he did.
By the time she finishes, she’s shivering, her pale skin rubbed pink and covered with goose bumps. She considers the filmy nightgown, then tosses it aside and pulls on what’s left of her robe. “I can’t begin to tell you how good that felt,” she says. “I feel almost human again. Anyone else want to try?”
I’m not surprised when Sparky jumps up. Shedding his blanket, he rubs the soapy rag over his front and lets Janet do his back. Like a dog being scratched, he closes his eyes as she scrubs and rinses him off, before scampering back to the blanket and huddling beside me, teeth chattering.
After that, one by one the rest of us wash. I used to hate being told to bathe; now, even with cold water, it feels like the best thing in the world.
Finally Dad and Janet lead Mom to the toilet bucket, where she seems to know what to do. Janet whispers something in Dad’s ear, and he turns to us. “Don’t watch.”
This time I don’t. Water splashes on the floor. When Janet washes her, Mom lets out a little moan like Mrs. Shaw made.
Maybe she’ll be okay after all.
We were playing fungo in the street in front of Ronnie’s house when Puddin’ Belly hit a pop-up. In right field (Ronnie’s front yard), Freak O’ Nature raised his mitt and backed up to catch it. Then he stopped. The ball bounced six feet to his right, but Freak O’ Nature was still staring at the sky. Way, way up, three tiny silver jets were streaking across the blue, leaving white contrails. They were so high, we couldn’t even hear them. I’d never seen planes that high in the sky before.
“Air force jets,” said Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny?
“How do you know?” asked Ronnie.
“Commercial flights don’t fly that high or close together.”
“Think it’s war?” Freak O’ Nature asked nervously.
“Wouldn’t there be sirens?” I asked.
Everyone listened; there were no sirens.
“Should we get in your bomb shelter just in case?” Ronnie said.
Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? turned to Freak O’ Nature. “Try your radio.”
We listened. Stations were playing music or people were talking.
“Sounds
pretty normal,” I said.
But we kept listening, as if at any second, the sirens would start or a voice would come on the radio and tell everyone to seek shelter. Finally, Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? suggested we keep playing and check the radio again in a little while. I went back to first base (the storm drain). Johnny was playing second (chalked on the asphalt). Puddin’ Belly was in left field (Old Lady Lester’s front yard).
Ronnie went to home plate and was about to hit when Paula came by pushing her twin brother, Teddy, in his wheelchair. Teddy had to be strapped in and couldn’t talk. His head would roll around, and he’d make strange faces and stick his fingers in his ears. Sometimes Paula would talk to him, but it was hard to tell if he understood. Sparky was afraid of Teddy, and the rest of us felt uncomfortable when he was around.
On the sidewalk, Paula locked the wheelchair’s brakes and sat down on the edge of Old Lady Lester’s lawn, right in the middle of left field.
“You can’t sit there!” Ronnie called from home plate.
“You don’t own the sidewalk!” Paula yelled back.
“Can’t you find someplace else?”
“No.”
We couldn’t risk hitting Teddy with the ball. Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? left second base and sat down on Ronnie’s lawn, and the rest of us followed. We stared across the street at Paula and Teddy. Paula stared back.
“Want to throw rocks at her?” suggested Puddin’ Belly. That was his standard solution to almost any problem.
Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? shook his head. “Just wait.”
“You think if we don’t play, she’ll get bored and go?” asked Freak O’ Nature.
“Don’t bet on it,” grumbled Ronnie. He and Paula had a strange relationship. They acted like they hated each other but at the same time couldn’t stay away from one another.
So we looked at Paula, and she looked at us. Finally Why Can’t You Be Like Johnny? went home. Then Freak O’ Nature and Puddin’ Belly decided to go, too. That left Ronnie and me. I didn’t want to go home. Lately Mom was acting really moody, and I never knew what to expect. One minute, she’d yell at you for the littlest thing, and the next, she’d act like she didn’t care what you did.
“Sneak into your mom’s room yet?” Ronnie asked in a low voice.
“No.”
“What about your father’s Playboys?”
“What do you care?”
Ronnie glanced across the street at Paula, then whispered, “Just hate to think of you dying without ever seeing —”
“I’m not gonna die, remember? I’m the one with the bomb shelter, and I’ll be in there for weeks with my mom and get to see everything.”
“You might not,” Ronnie said. “Might be pretty dark. It’s not like you’ll have electricity.”
Like a dog on the other end of a stick, he wouldn’t let go.
“And moms don’t really count because you can’t do anything with them,” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to see some you could do something with?”
“Do what?”
“You don’t know?” Ronnie asked in that tone that always made me feel like I was stupid.
“Go to hell.”
“Keep it down,” Ronnie mumbled, and glanced across the street again. “If you could see any pair of breasts in the whole world, whose would you want to see?”
“How would I know?”
“Paula’s, right?” he whispered.
The thought had never occurred to me. Paula might have had breasts, but she was also our neighbor and the annoying teacher’s pet who always raised her hand in class.
“No,” I said.
“Yes, you do.”
“No . . . I . . . don’t.”
Ronnie studied me. “You a homo?”
“A what?”
“A homo. A queer.”
“No.”
“Sure you are. Any guy who doesn’t care about breasts has to be queer.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “What do breasts have to do with it?”
Across the street, Paula got up and started to push Teddy back home. Maybe she’d decided there was no point in being there if we weren’t going to pay attention to her. “You don’t even know what queer is,” Ronnie sneered.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Do, too.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s you know, when you’re, you know, kind of strange and different.”
Ronnie’s grin grew broader. “You don’t know what queer means,” he sang, like it was a line from a song.
“That’s what it means,” I insisted.
“No, it doesn’t,” Ronnie said. “It means you like other guys.”
I studied him uncertainly. I liked my friends — most of the time, at least — and they were guys. What was queer about that?
Ronnie saw the confusion on my face. “Queers are guys who have sex with other guys. They’re called homos because they’re homosexuals.”
I smiled. There was no way Ronnie was going to get away with this one. “Guys can’t have sex with guys. It’s not even possible, stupid.”
But Ronnie smiled back. “What rock have you been hiding under?”
It didn’t make sense. Men and women had body parts that fit together. Men couldn’t have sex with men because they had the same body parts and therefore wouldn’t fit.
“So how do they do it?” I asked.
Ronnie shook his head like he knew the answer and didn’t want to tell.
“Come on, if you’re so smart, let’s hear it,” I said.
“I would, but if your parents found out, they’d be really mad.”
“I swear to God I won’t tell them.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”
I held out my right pinkie, and Ronnie stopped smiling. A pinkie swear was the most inviolate swear there was. If you broke a pinkie swear, you were branded for life. No one would ever trust you again.
“Come on.” I beckoned with my outstretched pinkie.
Ronnie didn’t take it.
“See?” I said. “You’re such a liar.”
“I’m hungry.” Sparky crosses his arms over his stomach and bends forward like he’s in agony. Even before this, he was skinny and bony, but now his ribs poke out, especially where the concave curve of his stomach begins.
“There, there.” Janet puts her arm around his shoulders and tries to soothe him. He sits with her almost all the time now.
“Give him something,” Mrs. Shaw says to Dad.
“What about my child?” asks Mr. McGovern.
Hunger has turned my stomach into a knot, too, and my own ribs feel tight against my skin, but I don’t want to say anything that will make it worse for Dad, who goes over to the shelf. “Sardines?”
Sparky shakes his head.
“Tuna?”
“Okay.”
“Why does he get to choose when the rest of us don’t?” Mr. McGovern asks.
“If your child was the youngest here, I’d do the same for her,” Dad answers.
“But not if she’s the second or third youngest?”
“That makes no sense, Richard,” Mrs. Shaw says. I hate the way she and Mr. McGovern gang up on Dad. It’s still our bomb shelter and our food. Like Dad said, they could have built their own shelters.
“I’m hungry, too,” says Ronnie.
“What’s left?” asks Mrs. Shaw.
Mr. Shaw hardly talks anymore. Mostly he just stares at the walls and floor. It makes me uncomfortable. He seems like a different person from the one who sat in his den sipping wine and talking about topless women in France.
Dad tells us what remains on the food shelf. “Three cans of Spam, four of tuna, six of sardines, and some peanut butter and jelly.”
“No bread?” asks Mrs. Shaw.
Dad shakes his head.
“We could make it last longer,” Mr. McGovern says. “For someone hardheaded and l
ogical enough to build this shelter, you’ve become awfully softhearted, Richard.”
Dad glares at him furiously. “You’re talking about my wife and this innocent woman, Herb.”
“I’m talking about our lives and the lives of our children,” Mr. McGovern replies forcefully. “We’ve already lost enough thanks to this goddamn war. The sooner we use up the food, the sooner we’ll be forced to go back up there. And if we go up too soon, we run the risk of radiation sickness. Be rational about it, Richard. It’s not going to get any easier once we’re up there. Like Stephanie said, we’ll be spending every moment trying to survive. There won’t be time for anyone who needs help.”
“How can you say that?” Dad asks. “I mean, think of your own son.”
Mr. McGovern’s face darkens. “That . . . is exactly why I can say it.”
I feel the urge to tug. The spot behind my right ear feels as smooth and hairless as my forehead, but along the edge of the bald spot, I find some hairs to grasp. Mr. McGovern doesn’t think we’ll be able to take care of Mom once we get out, but why does he want Janet to leave? Because she’s a Negro? If he makes her leave, what’s to stop him from saying Sparky should go next? After all, he’s too young and small to take care of himself.
“So?” Mr. McGovern demands.
Dad gathers himself up. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. Over . . . my . . . dead . . . body.”
“It won’t just be your dead body — it will be everyone’s,” Mr. McGovern counters, then turns to the Shaws. “Who gave him the right to make decisions for all of us? Because it’s his bomb shelter? I’m sorry, but I don’t think that matters anymore. We’re all in this together now. Are you really comfortable putting your lives in his hands? Letting him decide how much we eat and drink?”
Mrs. Shaw glances at her husband, who’s staring at a wall as if his thoughts are a million miles away. Then she says in a softer, more reasonable tone, “Let the children eat, Richard.”