Whistling in the Dark

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“How I Spent My Charitable Summer” by Sally Elizabeth O’Malley

Almost every Wednesday this summer, me and Troo, which is short for Trooper and not for Trudy, which everybody thinks, go to Mrs. Galecki’s. Troo’s real name is Margaret. Our daddy, before he died, gave her that name, Real Trooper, because she didn’t cry when she stepped on that rusty nail in the Am bersons’ backyard and had to have that shot. Then the whole family started calling her Trooper and when that took too much time to say, Troo. I also call her Troo genius, because she is really, really smart and knew all the state capitols by the time she was seven years old. So Troo and me almost every Wednesday go to Mrs. Galecki’s to help Ethel take care of her. I read books to her once Ethel gets her into her wheelchair out on her back screened-in porch where Mrs. Galecki likes to stare at that crab-apple tree. Her head is wobbly but her mind is still smart and not like the other grandmother of ours, who had hardening in her arteries and for a while made us call her Gramma Marie Antoinette. That was my daddy’s mother. She’s dead now. Both our grampas are dead. Our mother is dying. Troo and me go visit our other granny up on Fifty-ninth Street, who is not dead yet but is getting closer by the minute. She is eighty-four years old and can’t bend down anymore or go to the grocery store, and she has arthritis and palpitations so we have to pick things up off the floor for her and wring out her underwear and Uncle Paulie’s socks. Uncle Paulie is not exactly right in the head because of his brain being damaged, so he has to live with Granny where she can keep an eye on him. Here is another charitable thing

I did. I wrote a letter to my mother. They don’t let kids in the hospital unless someone is pounding down heaven’s door so I have to send it in the mail and I don’t have any money for a stamp, but as soon as I can find one I am going to send it.

DEAR MOTHER,

HOW ARE YOU FEELING? A LOT OF THINGS HAvE BEEN GOING ON AROUND HERE. DADDY TOLD ME TO TELL YOU HE FORGIvES YOU. I MISS YOU. PLEASE COME HOME.

YOURS IN CHRIST,

YOUR DAUGHTER,

SALLY O’MALLEY

That’s what I wrote that night before Troo came back from the bathroom and Nell came in smelling like the brewery over near County Stadium, where before the baseball games Daddy and I used to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” that ended with: The laaand of the free and the home… of the… Braves.

Nell was leaning on the door to our bedroom. “Where you two been all day? I just ran into Hall comin’ up the block and he’s mad as a hornet and drunk as a skunk.” Nell talked in the croaky voice she must’ve inherited from her father.

Troo pulled the sheet over her head and yelled, “Aw, shut up, Nell. Can’t you see we’re trying to get our beauty sleep here?”

Nell tripped on her way over to the bed, then kicked at it and tried to grab for Troo, whose side was closest to the wall. “Damn your smart mouth, Troo O’Malley.”

“Fuck you,” Troo said from under the sheet. “Just fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you.” Fast Susie had recently taught her that word and she absolutely adored it because Troo had always been in love with all words that started with the letter f.

Nell kept hitting at the sheet and Troo kept laughing harder and louder, and then Nell just gave up and smacked me because I was closer. “That’s a little present for your sister. Give it to her for me, won’t you, Sally dear? And by the way, you numbskull”-she stuck her pointy red nails into my shoulder-“it’s not Earl Flynn, it’s Errol Flynn.” And then Nell stumbled out and slammed the door to her bedroom hard enough to make the crucifix above our bed rattle like a train.

“What a pill,” Troo said, still laughing under the sheet.

I put my hand over where I thought her mouth was and said, “Shhh.”

Hall was coming up the front steps. He was singing. And falling down. And getting back up. I got under the sheet with Troo. For a minute it was all quiet and I thought that maybe he’d passed out so I took my hand off Troo’s mouth, but then he crashed through the front door at the top of the landing and smashed into the piano and hollered, “Fer Chrissakes!” when he slammed his hands down onto the deep end of the keys and a horrible ear-aching sound echoed down the hall.

He was coming through the living room. The floor creaked in the dining room. I could hear muttering and singing and things skittering across the wood floor. And then it all stopped. He was just there. Leaning in our bedroom doorway the way Nell had. I could smell the beer. Troo grabbed my hand and squeezed it with everything she had.

“Where the hell you two been?” he yelled. I put my fingers back up to her lips, letting Troo know not to answer.

And then he started singing again. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall… ninety-nine bottles of beer. If one of those bottles should happen to fall… well, well, well. Who do we have here?” Hall ripped the sheet off us. All we had on was our underpants.

He was breathing in the dark like somebody had been chasing him and we didn’t dare move or open our eyes, but then Troo finally said, “We’re sleeping, Hall. Get out and leave us be.”

Hall reached over me and pulled Troo out of bed with one hand.

He threw his beer bottle down and it spun round and round on the bare floor. He had Troo up against the bedroom wall, holding her there like he was trying to hang her like a picture. “What did you just say?” he snarled.

Troo stuck her tongue out and Hall yelled, “Don’t you dare…,” and then he lifted her off the wall and smacked her against it again.

I knew if I didn’t stop him, he would hurt her bad. I’d seen Hall in this mood before when he was drunk and gave Mr. Hopkins, who used to live next door, a fat lip and kicked him when he was down.

“Hall?” I said softly, swinging my feet out of bed.

He didn’t say anything. His breathing was comin’ faster and faster, and Troo’s arms were turning redder and redder.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall…,” I sang.

Hall went way in close to Troo’s face and yelled, “Your mother ain’t here to protect you now. You ever talk to me like that again, I’ll beat you so bad you won’t walk for a week, you little-”

“Let go of me, you fu-”

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” I screamed out so Hall wouldn’t hear what Troo was about to say. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer. If one of those bottles should happen to fall, there’d be how many bottles of beer on the wall?” Keeping my eye on him, I grabbed for a nightie that was balled up next to the bed. “Hall?”

He let Troo slide down the wall like he’d forgotten all about her and sang out, “Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”

I took his hand and led him into the living room. We sang together until we got down to eighty-eight bottles and he passed out on our red-and-brown couch.

When I finally looked up, Troo was sitting on the piano bench, one of Mother’s long knives in her hand.