Caretaker set up a gym for me in the boathouse after he witnessed my first rough-and-tumble schoolyard brawl eight years ago. Unlike Mother Mary, he didn’t have a problem with me fighting, but he did have a problem with me “fighting like a goddamn street urchin.” I’m not sure which of my street-fighting tactics bothered him more—my bashing my opponent in the forehead with a brick or my biting my opponent on the ass when he tried to crawl away.
Caretaker’s a purist. He boxed in the army. Everything I know about boxing I learned from him. He says he won a bunch of titles when he was younger, and I don’t doubt him, ’cause he whips my ass every time we spar.
I remove my ring and rub the thick gold letters. BC. I stuff it in my pocket. Training’s the only time I take it off.
“All right, let’s go, Shirley.”
Caretaker calls me girls’ names when we train. I guess he figures it motivates me, but all it does is make me think of an interview I once saw on TV. A sportscaster asked George Foreman what he thought about all the trash-talking that goes on before a boxing match, and George said, “I don’t care what you call me, just don’t call me late for dinner.” That cracked me up. I completely agree.
Caretaker waves his arms in the air like some mystical swami trying to hypnotize me. He’s wearing training gloves that look like catcher’s mitts. They’re for taking hits, not doling them out, but that doesn’t stop him from hitting me with them. And the edges are hard, so they hurt. Hell, Caretaker’s shots would probably hurt even if he had stuffed animals strapped to his fists.
He starts jabbing half-speed shots at my head. It’s fun to watch Caretaker shuffle and weave when we spar. He’s smooth and graceful and powerful all at the same time. The way he wiggles and waggles makes me think he’s got gummy-worm bones.
He pops me in the forehead with a jab. “Pay attention, Peggy Sue. Remember what we practiced all summer. Deflect my shots with shoulder rolls. Roll right when I throw right, left when I throw left. C’mon, Dorothy, roll. Buster Pitswaller is one big-ass son-of-a-bitch. You can’t take his punches straight on. Make him miss, make him pay.”
Buster “Pitbull” Pitswaller is a football jock who bullies my younger Prison roomies when we’re all at school. I don’t tolerate anyone picking on the Little Ones, so it’s only a matter of time before we come to blows. His only redeeming quality is his angelic girlfriend, Wynona Bidaban. What she sees in him I’ll never know. But she looked at me like I was a mass murderer when I dunked Burke the Jerk’s head in the fish tank this morning, so she must be against his bullying.
Caretaker throws lefts and rights at my head. I twist left and right, trying to catch his punches on my shoulders instead of my chin.
“Pivot your whole body, not just your shoulders. Toes to nose. C’mon, shuffle your feet, Sheila.”
I try to shuffle my feet, but I feel like a giraffe on roller skates compared to how Caretaker moves.
“Jesus, Cricket, you’re so clumsy, you’d trip over a cordless phone.”
I try not to laugh as his glove whizzes past my head.
“Bend from the knees, not the waist. You bend from the waist, what’s gonna happen?” He pops me in the chin with an uppercut. “That’s gonna happen. Slip back and right, then forward and left. Thatta girl. Up and down, not just side to side. You just go side to side, what’s gonna happen?” He pops me in the forehead with a straight right. “That’s gonna happen.”
We spar for half an hour and Caretaker never shuts up. And he never stops throwing. Like I said, he’s in wicked good shape for an old dude.
“All right, that’s enough for today, Lucy.” He smacks me on the side of the head. “Jesus, I’m sweating worse than a whore in church.”
I take my gloves off and rinse my mouthpiece in the sink.
Caretaker unbuckles his overall straps and towels off his upper body. His stomach sticks out but not in a fat way. It looks like he’s hiding a dozen cookie sheets under his chocolate skin.
He throws his stinky towel at me. “I’m going home. See what the ol’ lady whipped up for supper. I’m so hungry, I could eat the ass out of a rag doll.” He pats his tin pan belly and laughs. Caretaker always laughs at his own jokes, even when they’re not funny. He pulls his overall straps on and leaves.
I hang out in the boathouse to kill time until dark. I’m in no rush to see Mother Mary Malice.
I jump rope and imagine Wynona Bidaban sitting cross-legged on Caretaker’s workbench, twisting her black hair around her finger like she does in math class. She’s ogling me with a quizzical expression like I’m an unsolvable trigonometry equation. I drop the rope, pull her in to my sweaty body, and answer her question with a kiss.
CHAPTER 2
I wait until ten p.m. before sneaking down the fire escape. The nuns are always zonked by then. I pull my hood on and walk downtown to my friend Grubs’s apartment. Grubs and I met at school three years ago when I was a freshman and he was a junior. He dropped out his senior year to work full-time as a mechanic. Well, that’s what he told people. He actually dropped out to commit more time to his real career—dealing drugs. Grubs recruited me to help him collect money from his younger customers after he watched me pound the piss out of a football jock who had harassed one of the Little Ones. We’ve been hanging out ever since.
He lives in a one-room attic over the garage where he works. His front door is at the top of a rickety staircase attached to the side of the building. When I walk in (sans knock and sans lock), he’s watching The Three Stooges on his tiny tabletop TV. He doesn’t say anything, just nods. The place smells like a potpourri of oil, exhaust, and dirty socks. I grab a lukewarm Budweiser from the mini-fridge and flop onto his grandma-print sofa.
He yanks his shirt sleeve up. “Check out my latest ink.” On his upper bicep is a tattoo of an orange and black tiger. The tiger’s head is surrounded by red and purple flames that spell the name Toni.
“That’s awesome. She must be happy,” I say.
“She ain’t seen it yet. I was gonna show her tonight, but she’s being a bitch, so I blew her off.”
“What’s her problem?”
“She’s raggin’ my ass about having dinner with her parents. She’s pissed ’cause I ain’t never met ’em and we’ve been dating for like a year.”
“That bitch,” I say, grinning.
“I know, right? And if it ain’t that, she’s naggin’ me about buying her a fucking engagement ring. Like we’re supposed to get married or something. You believe that shit?”
“So why’d you get a tat with her name on it?”
“I thought it’d shut her up about the ring.”
We both laugh.
“I can’t believe she wants you to meet her parents.”
“Seriously. I’m the kind of guy you sneak out of the house to hook up with after your parents are asleep, for Christ’s sake.”
“I ain’t even met Toni. You guys should buy me dinner before her parents.”
“I hear ya, bro.”
I grab a half-smoked doob from his ashtray and fire it up. I take a long hit and pass it to him.
“You should get a tat,” Grubs says.
“Yeah, the nuns would love that.”
“You could get a religious one, like boxers do. A giant cross on your back or a portrait of Jesus on your chest.”
“Or an altar boy on my ass.”
Grubs laughs. He takes a hit and points his beer bottle at my face. “You should have my man Angel ink up your scar. He could do each slice a different color—one red and one black, like two serpents battling it out for facial domination.”
“You’re fucked in the head, dude.”
Grubs shrugs and chugs his beer.
I wonder what Wynona would think if I got a tattoo of her name. Would she be flattered or offended? Not like I’ll ever know.
Grubs snags a paper bag from beside the couch and drops it onto my lap. Inside are a bunch of videotapes, some weed, and a bottle of vodka. It’s my “paycheck??
? for helping him with collections.
Grubs could rough up his customers himself if he wanted to, ’cause he’s a badass. But some of his clients are underage, and even though he has no beef about selling ’em stems and powder, he has this thing about roughing up a kid. Personally, I think he hauls me around more for show than dough. Makes him feel big-time in this small-time shithole.
“Thanks, man.” I check out the most recent acquisitions from Naskeag Video courtesy of Grubs’s five-finger discount. Monty Python. Rebel Without a Cause. The Hustler. Easy Rider. The Public Enemy. Citizen Kane. I watch movies on a contraband twelve-inch TV and 1980s yard- sale VCR I’ve got stashed in my closet at the Prison.
“Them crappy old ones are a cinch to pinch.” Grubs drags his sleeve across his mouth. “There ain’t nobody ever lurking around that dusty corner.”
“Good for me.”
“What the frig is Monty Python?”
“You ain’t never seen it?”
“Nah,” Grubs says, pushing himself off the couch. “Pop it in and I’ll roll us a fresh one.”
I eject the Stooges and slip in Monty Python.
Grubs hits Play on his stereo and “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” by Brownsville Station starts up. He air-strums when the guitar riff twangs in. Grubs dresses like a seventies heavy metal rocker. He looks a little like Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, but maybe I just think that on account of his long stringy hair.
I plunk my boots on the shipping crate coffee table and look around while the video rewinds. The faint glow from a lamppost outside illuminates the shadowy space. There are magazine photos of hot rods and hot babes taped to the plywood walls, and the particleboard ceiling has a giant stain in the center. The sofa smells mildewy, like the inside of a tent. The room reminds me of a place I have no interest in remembering.
I lean forward to click Play on the VCR and catch a glimpse of my face in Grubs’s coke mirror. My scar looks flat and black. It changes color under different light, like it’s alive. Like a chameleon. In direct sunlight, it’s puffy and pink. Under the school fluorescents, it’s deep and red. It’s shaped like a tall, skinny X and runs down the right side of my face from my eyebrow to my chin. The crevices are deep and round, as if someone scooped out slivers of skin with a tiny spoon. Maybe Grubs is right and I should get it inked. At least that would disguise it.
Grubs plunks down on the sofa and fires up the joint he just rolled. It crackles and snaps and wafts wispy swirls of sweet escape in my direction.
He passes it to me and I take a long suck on the freedom stick.
“So what’s this Mountain Python thing anyway?” he asks. “A fucking documentary or something?”
“Monty Python. It’s a comedy group from the seventies. Right up your alley, era-wise.” The skit starts and I parrot the lines word for word in my best British accent.
“Don’t come here with that posh talk, you nasty, stuck-up twit.”
“‘Oh, thank you,’ says the great queen like a la-di-dah poofta.”
Grubs is laughing like crazy. Not at Monty Python—at me. “That’s friggin’ awesome, dude. Where’d you learn to talk that shit?”
“From dee telly, mate.”
Grubs slaps his knee and chugs his beer.
“Me crack-whore mumsy plunked me young arse in front of dee telly fer hours and hours whiles she strutted ’er ax-wound up and down Keelumbus Avenue, looking to cream dudes’ knickers for a block of rock.”
Grubs stumbles to the refrigerator for another beer.
“Yuse sure gots dee wanky, wanky giggle fits, ya divvy dog,” I say as he falls onto the sofa, laughing.
We watch some more skits, and Grubs cracks up at my Cockney gibberish.
After Python, I throw in Rebel Without a Cause, but Grubs falls asleep before James Dean is even arrested. I grab my bag and head for the door. As it squeaks open, Grubs wakes up.
“Don’t forget, we’ve got collecting tomorrow night,” he growls.
I nod and pull the door closed behind me.
I get home from Grubs’s around one A.M. and sneak up the fire escape to my room. I’m the only kid at the Prison with his own room. Of course, I’m the only seventeen-year-old at the Prison too.
Two years ago, Mother Mary liberated the attic for me as my own personal nomad pad. It used to be packed to the rafters with a million cardboard boxes stuffed with tragic tales of the ugly and unwanted. But the newly appointed fire marshal—who looked about nineteen—was doing annual inspections and told her she had to clear out all the boxes on account of they were a fire hazard.
The timing was perfect, because Mother Mary Makeamends was in the middle of pumping her skull muscle for a primo punishment for my pummeling of a brown-toothed redneck who had pushed Bernie, a chubby Little One, down a flight of stairs. The tumble bruised Bernie’s face up and busted his glasses. Seeing his busted eyeglasses bothered me more than seeing busted Bernie, though. Ain’t that an itchy pair of husky irregulars? There was just something about Bernie’s hand-me-down spectacles getting twisted and smashed that made me lose it. I popped the greasy douchebag in the head a few times and hurled his unshowered ass down the same staircase. Asked him if he still thought it was funny to push a helpless kid down a flight of stairs. He didn’t answer.
Mother Mary made me empty the attic as penance. After my millionth trip to the basement with my millionth box, I was staring at the old wood beams and tree- trunk columns and saying to Mother Mary how cool it must have been to be a builder back before there was electricity on account of how rewarding it must feel to look at something you built with nothing but muscle and mind. I guess something about me being enamored by the workmanship pinpricked in her the notion of letting me hang my hat up here. She was scratching her chin, going Hmm-hmm-hmmmm, and after about the hundredth Hmmmm she said I could move in once she got it renovated all modern and white and plasticized and blaaaahhhh, and I said aaaahhhh what a shame it would be to cover up all this nifty knobby craftsmanship, and so she let me move in as soon as I slaughtered all the dust bunnies that had taken up residence.
Man, I had a severe case of the Christmas jollies for I don’t know how long after plunking my mattress down on this creaky floor. The coolest thing was that I was finally alone. After fifteen years of being held hostage in tiny rooms with screaming adults and screaming orphans, I finally had my own room.
I grab a pen and notebook and climb back out onto the fire escape. The view of the ocean is splendiferous. I spend more time out here than in the room. Sometimes I lie out here for hours, gazing at the stars and the moon and listening to the waves roll at me from God knows where, and sometimes being on this steel magic carpet makes it seem like things could be okay. But something always crashes the carpet—like a rainstorm or the sun rising or Mother Mary yelling, “Cricket, plunger!”—and I remember it’s nothing more than a precarious fire escape attached to a precarious Prison attached to a precarious life.
I figure I might as well get started on my five-hundred-word essay for Mother Mary. Since it’s also going to Sister Elizabeth and Monsignor Dobry, I intend to make it extra juicy. I tap my pen on my chin. I need an ultra-sacred topic to debase. Ahh, I’ve got it. The Virgin Mary. Nothing more sacred than that pristine hoo-ha. I fire up a joint, take a nice long toke, and start scribbling and sniggering.
The Inaccurate Deception
By Cricket Cherpin
There’s more to the Virgin Mary story than meets the vagina eye. I mean, if there is a God, and He created LIFE, and He created PEOPLE, then He created SEX. Check it out—God was the first porn addict. He was peekabooing Adam and Eve snake charming each other’s slippery figs. He gazed upon the sticky canoodle and said, It is GOOD!
So, if God created Paradise Spice, why’d the Bible scribblers flip it into Paradise Vice? How the hell else are these one-God wonders supposed to continue begetting rugrats onto God’s List of Favorites? I mean, why’d the Bible writers say knocking sandals was bad when God said it was good? Why w
ouldn’t God want His precious offspring squeezing through a contaminated wombikins when He was the One Who invented the modus contaminatious in the first place? It doesn’t make sense.
Personally, I think it all happened way different from what the Bible says. You can read all about it in Cricket’s First Letter to the Cynicalians.
Here’s a preview.
It ain’t no secret that Roman soldiers shacked up with Jew broads all the time way back when. Heck, the Jews were hunkering on leased land with a temporary travel visa anyhow. The Romans let them slaughter up a kosher kebab now and then, but it wasn’t like they were free or anything. And they sure as hell weren’t the most popular chosen ones on the block.
Now, I don’t know if these throwdowns were date rape or if the unsatisfied cream churners were taking donkey rides to the cheating side of town, but it doesn’t really matter. It is what it is. All I’m saying is, it’s pretty likely more than a few Jewish ladies filled their days polishing Roman swords, if you catch my meaning. But heck, can you blame them? Power’s a horny-toading aphrodisiac. Always was and always will be.
Besides, compared to their yes-sirring, commandment-following, beanie-wearing boyfriends, those long-scabbarded warmongers had to be some smoking hot love-kebabs.
It’s not that far-fetched when you think about it. Same crap goes on nowadays. The rich rulers screwing the poor servants. I mean, these soldier dudes could make your life a living hell or they could make things comfy-cozy. Why wouldn’t a Jew chick chutzpah a soldier’s knish?
The soldier would be like, Okay, Esther, here’s the deal. I can whip you silly for half an hour or you can invite me in for a tasty bit of love-falafel.
Ummmm, the whip, please, sir.
Gimme a break.
So here’s my angelic theory. Mary had a hot and heavy roll in the manger hay with the rough-and-tumble Roman warrior Stiffus Maximus while she was engaged to doughy Joey. No big thing, right? Joey was probably banging the daughter of some Saddjuicy he was building a DVD cabinet for anyway. But Mary was irresponsible. She didn’t insist on Soldier Boy slipping on the ol’ llama skin before they whoopsadaisied, and: Shazam! An unleavened bun in the oven.