Whistling in the Dark

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I knew Troo would be sitting on the backyard bench folding those tissues back and forth and back and forth into one chubby line and then she’d slip a bobby pin over it in the middle and slowly separate the layers of Kleenex until they looked exactly like a carnation, which was an excellent funeral flower my mother always said.

When I walked past our landlords’ kitchen window, I remembered what Mr. Goldman was complaining about yesterday to Mrs. Goldman when I’d been diggin’ for worms. His raised voice came through the window screen, saying Hall was betrunkenes and he hadn’t paid the rent and if he didn’t soon we would be… kaput. Mrs. Goldman said quietly back to her husband, “But, Otto, what will happen to the children?”

“Trooooo…,” I yelled out, so when I came around the house I wouldn’t scare her. If there was anything Troo hated, it was to be snuck up on. She’d gotten really jumpy about that since the crash.

“Troooo…”

No answer. I got scared then. Maybe Rasmussen had changed his mind about coming after me. Maybe he’d decided to go after Troo. I ran down the path next to the pink peonies that had lost their smell and had started to fall apart. I stopped at the edge of the house and peeked my head around. Troo was surrounded by at least twenty white Kleenex flowers, like a girl on a parade float. She just hadn’t heard me because she could get deaf when she was working on something. The tip of her tongue stuck out of her pouty mouth.

I watched my little sister for a minute and then because our yard butted up next to the Kenfields’, one story up, I looked up at Dottie’s bedroom and just for a second I could swear she was standing in the window. That even made me worry about my imagination.

“Whatcha doin’ over there?” Troo laughed. “Seein’ if Dottie wants to come out and play?”

“Very funny.” I waved the bag of food at my sister. “Got you something.” I slipped off my shoes and walked across the grass toward her.

“Is that you, Liebchin?” Mrs. Goldman popped her head out the gardening lean-to next to the garage. That’s what she called me. Liebchin meant sweetheart in the German language.

Mrs. Goldman was a largish woman and when she was working in the garden, she sometimes wore a pair of Mr. Goldman’s brown shiny trousers that were the same color as her curly hair. In Germany, she had been a teacher, but now she was just a landlady. She had on a yellow ironed shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, and the first thing I noticed like always were those numbers on her arm.

I’d asked Mrs. Goldman about that tattoo the first time I helped her water the garden last summer. I asked her if she’d been a sailor like Hall. She set her hose down and asked why I thought that. When I pointed at her arm, she gave me a rusty smile, like she hadn’t used it for a while, and told me that back in Germany she and Mr. Goldman had been captured by some bad people who put them in a place called a concentration camp. Then they branded them like cattle. And those bad people were called Nazis. This was something like the Frankenstein monster for Mrs. Goldman because she shivered when she said Nazis. Like these were people that you would not want to tangle with at any time who I bet had German shepherds, which everyone knew were dogs you could never trust. (Except, of course, for Rin Tin Tin, who was the exception to the rule.)

“Do you need any help, Mrs. Goldman?” I asked, because I knew that Troo was thinking uncharitable thoughts and maybe by me being charitable it would somehow cancel them out. Troo didn’t like our landlords because our lease said we couldn’t have pets so her dog, Butchy, had had to stay out in the country with peeing Jerry Amberson. Troo held that against the Goldmans.

“Come to the garden. I want to show you,” Mrs. Goldman said, stepping all the way out of the shed.

Troo crossed her eyes at me and went back to her Kleenex flowers when I walked past her.

“See?” Mrs. Goldman pointed, kneeling down in the dirt. “It is the fruit of our labor. The first of the tomatoes.”

I said what I always said when something sprouted up like that. “That is such a miracle.”

To plant those little tan seeds and then after a while something good to eat or smell would grow. It amazed me, every time. And it made me remember how out on the farm Daddy would plant in the muddy spring and by summer there would be tall corn waving around in the field that at night I could hear rustling through our bedroom window, saying shush… shush… shush.

“Yes, you are right,” Mrs. Goldman said, kneeling down and gently rolling the little green balls between her fingers like they were emeralds. “It is a kind of miracle.”

“Marta, come here,” Mr. Goldman called to her out the back door and then went right back in. Mr. Goldman wasn’t much for talking. His English was not so good.

I helped her up and my fingers wrapped around her tattooed arm and I hoped that didn’t hurt. She said, “A garden is also a way to be prepared. You never know what can happen. But no matter what, it is nice to know you will have the fresh vegetables.” Mrs. Goldman and Daddy, they woulda gotten along just great. She brushed the dirt off her pants and then took my chin in her hand and said in her school-teacher voice, “You must be careful, Liebchin. Life, it is not simple like a garden, where flowers are always flowers and weeds are always weeds.” And then she walked slowly toward the house, saying to Troo as she passed her, “Beautiful.”

Troo pretended she hadn’t heard her.

I’d forgotten all about the burgers and fries and shakes. I walked back to the bench and dropped the glassy-looking bag down next to Troo.

“Where’d you get this?” she asked.

“Nell and Eddie took me to The Milky Way. We gotta go there sometime. It’s very modern.” Troo absolutely adored modern stuff. “They got a girl on roller skates up there named Melinda who is called a carhop and skates the food out to you when it’s ready.”

“Really?” Troo opened the bag and took out the fries. “That’s what I’m gonna do when I grow up. Work in a modern drive-in like that and make money and go get Butchy from peeing Jerry Amberson.” She looked back when Mrs. Goldman let the screen door slam shut and gave it a raspberry. “Whatta ya think?” She pointed at her bike.

“Looks good.” She’d wound red, white and blue crepe paper through the spokes. And more around the handlebars. It was a blue Schwinn that used to be Nell’s. Mother had given it to Troo after hers disappeared. I didn’t have a bike and I wasn’t sure why. I guess everyone figured Troo would share hers with me, but whoever figured that didn’t know Troo all that well.

She dug our Galaxy burgers out of the bag and handed me mine. “Did you see Mother?”

“Uh-uh.” Suddenly, I wished I had. I was feeling real bad about not telling her that Daddy forgave her, and soon it might be too late. “But I did see Rasmussen, who gave me this.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the card he had handed me and told her all about what had happened when Rasmussen had stopped us up on North Avenue.

“So he got it out of you, huh?” She gave me the do-you-smell-dog-poop look that was exactly like Mother’s because Troo never would have told Rasmussen. You’d have to stick bamboo under her fingernails to get her to tell something like that. “You sure you told him you pulled the fire alarm?”

I picked up one of her Kleenex flowers and put it in her hair. “I had to. He ambushed me.”

“What else did he say?” Troo asked, sticking a fry in her mouth.

“He said he had a garden and that he’d heard I liked to garden.”

Troo opened her mouth real big and laughed and some of the fry flew out. “How’d he know that? I bet you about shit a brick.” She wiped her mouth off on her hand and then on her blouse. She smelled like the inside of a tennis shoe right when you took it off. I wondered if I did, too. Maybe we should have listened to Nell and taken a couple of baths. I didn’t think either one of us had changed our clothes in about a week and you could kinda see all over Troo’s shorts how we’d been spending our time. There was Coke dribble and some of the Latours’ slumgoodie stuck to the front and a small piece of Dubble Bubble holding on to her pocket. “Just shit a brick.”

“Shut up, Troo, or I’ll make you shut up.”

“You and what army?” Troo crunched up the bag and threw it at me. “Help me tape these flowers on, will ya?”

I didn’t tell Troo about Junie’s and my picture being in Rasmussen’s wallet because I was getting a little sick of nobody believing me. And she’d probably just laugh at me and maybe even call me a fruitcake.

We spent the next half hour not talking much, just taping the carnation flowers to streamers that we stuck all over her bike.

“Do you think if Mother dies we’ll have to look at her in her coffin like they made us do to Mr. Callahan?” I asked. Troo was standing back, admiring her Schwinn.

“Probably. Maybe we’d even have to kiss her.” She made this mushy noise with her lips. “They made Eddie kiss his dad right on the lips. Remember that?”

My daddy had a closed casket because Mother said she thought open casket funerals were gruesome. But if I’d had the chance to give Daddy one more Eskimo kiss, I would have. Gladly.

There was the smack of a ball against a bat and fun yelling. Those sounds comin’ off the playground always reminded me of that story about temptation that Sister Imelda told us about in catechism class. Those Sirens luring sailors to their island.

“I’m gonna go over, you comin’?” Troo asked, tipping her head.

“Can’t. I told Wendy I’d come by.” I really hadn’t told Wendy that, but I wanted to go down in the basement of our house where it was cool and maybe write another letter to Mother or get my charitable works story out from under the bed and work on it some more. The basement was where I went when I wanted to be alone.

Troo looked at me funny. Usually if Troo wanted to do something, I went along with it. But I was a little sick and tired of Troo that day. (Sorry, Daddy.)

She glanced over at her bike, smiled one more time and took off at a dead run, her ponytail swishing back and forth.

I followed after her to make sure she went all the way over because sometimes Troo could be tricky like that. Sneakin’ back up on me. I waited until she got in a talk with Bobby the counselor, who was watching the tetherball game, and then I walked toward the back door.

“Hi, hi, hi, Thally O’Malley.”

I jumped and looked around but didn’t see her.

“Thally O’Malley.”

Maybe I was starting to hear voices like Virginia Cunningham. But then I turned around and there she was, Wendy Latour, sitting in the swing over on the Kenfields’ front porch like she had heard me fib to Troo and showed up so I wouldn’t have a lying sin this week.

“Come, Thally O’Malley,” she sang louder. Wendy mostly sang everything she said, which was proof once again that when God took something away, he gave you something else, because Wendy was almost always real happy.

I was gonna just ignore her and get down to the basement to my hiding place, but then I remembered to be charitable to people who are not as lucky as me, even though lately I’d been feeling not quite as lucky as an Irish girl should.

I climbed the Kenfields’ front steps. Wendy was swinging hard so I knew something was bothering her. Whenever she got worked up, swinging calmed her down.

“Thally O’Malley, my ath hurts,” she yelled, although I was only about a foot away from her.

I looked back over at Troo on the playground, where she was beating the ever-lovin’ tetherball snot out of Bobby. Barb, the other counselor, and Willie and Artie were watching and laughing real hard.

“Wendy,” I said, “stop doing that swinging or you’re gonna fall out and then your ass really will hurt.” She stopped almost instantly. Troo always teased me about how Wendy liked me. I think she might’ve been a little jealous because mostly everybody liked Troo better than me because of her outgoingness. Troo said Wendy only liked me better because my name rhymed.

I sat down on the wooden swing next to her. Wendy was always pretty clean because Mrs. Latour paid some extra attention to her. And she had the shiniest shoe-polish black hair. “Wendy, where are your shoes and socks?”

“Nith to meet you.” She reached over and gave me one of those bear hugs.

“Okay, Wendy, that’s good now,” I said after I’d counted to ten. She hugged me tighter. “I can’t breathe.”

She let go and set her head down on my shoulder. I could smell her Prell hair. “My ath hurts.”

“That’s okay. My ass hurts too.” I’d figured out a long time ago that if I repeated back to Wendy what she just said to me, she would sometimes stop saying whatever she was saying over and over.

She lifted her head. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Troo? Mad?” She pointed across the street at her.

“She sure is.”

My sister was yelling something at Bobby, the playground counselor. I couldn’t hear what it was, but she was stomping her foot like she did when something didn’t go her way. Bobby was teasing her, waving the tetherball above her head so she couldn’t reach it. She was getting madder and madder by the second, almost ready to blow. I felt sort of bad because it was making me feel gladder and gladder by the second to see Troo not get her way, which was not a charitable way to feel at all.

“Wendy, you need to put your thinking cap on. I gotta ask you some questions.” I needed to know what’d happened over at the Spencers’ root cellar when she fell down. What Rasmussen had done to her. Even though she was a Mongoloid, she was a pretty smart one. Mother said Wendy was just a little Mongoloidish, not as bad as some of them. “You ready for the first question?”

She bobbed her head up and down.

“How’d you get that?” I pointed at the Band-Aid above her eyebrow.

She started rocking the swing slowly at first and then quicker and quicker. I stomped my feet down so it’d stop. “Wendy?”

“My ath-”

“I know.” It always took a couple of tries to get Wendy to listen to you. “How’d you get that boo-boo?” She looked at me with her head to the side like the way that RCA dog did. I pointed to her bandage again. “Did a man do that to you?”

“Fell.”

“Fell?” I yelled because I just wanted her to say Rasmussen hurt her so bad and then there would be two of us and maybe somebody would believe us. “You better not be lyin’ to me.”

Wendy started to cry because she cried real easy, especially if you raised your voice to her. “My ath-”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… oh, don’t cry.” I picked up her stubby hand. Someone had painted her fingernails watermelon pink and there was that plastic Cracker Jack ring that she always wore on her wedding finger.

“Was it Officer Rasmussen, Wendy? Did he push you and that’s why you fell?”

“Weeeeennnndy.”

Wendy perked up. It was her ma calling her. If you had to call thirteen kids for supper every day, that would give anybody the lungs of an opera singer, Mother said, and you could tell that even though Mrs. Latour and Mother were in choir together up at church, Mother thought that anybody who had thirteen kids, even if they were Catholic, was dumb as a curb.

“Weeeeeendy.”

She got up and started toward the Kenfields’ steps. “Going to Ma, Thally O’Malley.”

“Okay,” I said, giving up, but then I thought I better try one more time. “Was Rasmussen down in the cellar with you?”

She nodded her head yes and then she shook her head no so I didn’t know which she meant, but it was too late to ask her again cuz she’d already hopped down the steps.

She stopped at the bottom and said, “Rathmuthen,” and then cut across the Kenfields’ grass toward home.

“There’s a bad man out there. Keep your eyes open, Wendy,” I called after her.

She turned and opened her eyes really big and then took off again in that crazy-legged way of running she had. I sat there for a while and rocked and felt pretty good because now at least I had Wendy Latour on my side, even if she was a Mongoloid. After all, she’d pretty much just told me that Rasmussen had tried to murder and molest her.