Whistling in the Dark

CHAPTER SIX

That tasted like crap,” Hall hollered. He was sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the ash falling onto the nice white plates that Mother had saved S &H Green Stamps for a whole year to buy. Nell had tried to make us supper again, but the tuna noodle casserole with potato chips on top ended up very black and the peas in the can she had cooked on the stove had no water in them and even the applesauce didn’t taste right.

Mother had been in the hospital for over two weeks and she’d always done all the talking to Hall, so the three of us didn’t know what to say to him. Mostly, I just tried not to look at his white T-shirt that didn’t have sleeves so you could see that MOTHER tattoo laying against the muscles in his arm. His wavy Swedish hair looked like it did right when he woke up in the morning. And the sweat in the silky hair under his arms smelled like all the beer he’d been drinking.

Hall had another puff of his cigarette and said to us like we were deaf, “You know, I don’t hafta take care of the three of you. You’re not even mine.”

Nell said, “May I be excused?” and tried to stand up to clear the dishes, but Hall grabbed her arm and grumbled, “Sit your ass back down.” But then he changed his mind and said, “Never mind, go get me a beer,” and he shoved Nell so hard that she fell against the stove and her daisy sundress went up around her waist.

My eyes started to burn and Troo was looking down at the floor and licking her lips hard and fast, like she did when she got nervous. She musta been sneakin’ into Mother’s room because I could see a bit of that cherry red lipstick stuck in the corners of her mouth and I could smell Evening in Paris. Nell’s face looked like she had a fever when she pulled her dress down and then got up and opened the refrigerator. There was nothing much in there so that Pabst Blue Ribbon was easy to find. Hall wasn’t giving Nell hardly any grocery money. “It’s not my fault,” she’d shouted last night. Troo’d been getting so cranky about eating nothing but pigs in a blanket that she’d thrown one at Nell and gotten mustard all over her poodle skirt so it looked like it piddled.

Hall took a long drink from the bottle Nell handed him and then wiped his mouth on the back of his arm and said, “You know, your mother and me”-and then he burped extra loud-“we been havin’ some problems for a while now and on toppa that, things aren’t goin’ so well over at the shoe store.”

“Big surprise,” Troo said in her sassiest voice.

Hall reached across the table so quick I didn’t even see it coming, and neither did Troo. He slapped her on the back of her head. Hard. She just looked at him through her hair that had been knocked around her face and didn’t say a word. So he did it again. Harder. Hall should’ve known that Troo would never cry, if that was what he was waitin’ for. When he hauled his arm back again, he lost his balance and fell off the kitchen chair and just stayed there on the dirty tan linoleum and started crying out, “Helen… Helen… Helen.”

We sisters looked at one another and got up and went out on the front porch and listened to the crickets and didn’t say much. Because there was not much to say about something like that. About a man who you lived with but you hardly even knew, and didn’t want to know, laying down on your kitchen floor crying out your almost dead mother’s name. Later, when the streetlights came on, Troo, who hardly ever could stay quiet for long, said, “What a goddamn dickhead.”

The next morning, Nell poured Wheaties and what little milk was left into our bowls. And then she started scraping last night’s supper dishes under the running sink water because the smell of the crusty tuna was so bad. “Mother has something else wrong with her besides her gallbladder. I wanted to tell you last night, but then…”

Troo looked up from her bowl and said crabby-like, “What’s she got wrong with her now?” and took another bite of cereal. As much as I loved Troo, I had to admit that she could be ornery like Mother if she didn’t like you.

“Dr. Sullivan gave me this.” Nell wiped her hands on her shorts and pulled the chair out next to me. We watched as she took a piece of paper out of her blouse pocket and ironed it down on the table.

Hepatitis.

“Isn’t that when you got really bad breath?” Troo said. “That’s what Willie told me. He said Dr. Sullivan has it and-”

“You nincompoop,” Nell spat out. “That’s called halitosis.” I was impressed with Nell knowing that. Or maybe she’d just made that up to make Troo and me feel stupid, which she could mostly do.

“Dr. Sullivan says hepatitis is a sickness in Mother’s liver.” Nell’s voice suddenly got all wobbly. “It’s not good.” She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door. Nell had her own room and didn’t have to share like me and Troo. If I had to list the order of like around here, I would say Nell was in first place, Troo a very close second and me-well, there was something about me that always made a sad look come onto Mother’s face when I caught her staring at me. I had no idea what it was about me that made her look at me like that. Probably my imagination.

After that hepatitis talk, maybe a week later, Nell told us that things were getting even worse. Now Mother had something called a staph infection, which was a very bad sickness. Much worse than anybody could’ve ever imagined. Even me. Nell cried and cried until Troo went into her bedroom and slapped her and told her to shut the hell up.

Mother was at St. Joe’s Hospital almost the whole month of June. And it looked like she might miss the Fourth of July, which was a darn shame because once I heard her tell her best friend, Mrs. Betty Callahan, that she should’ve named Troo Bottle Rocket-that’s how much Mother loved the Fourth.

By then, Hall had pretty much stopped coming home for supper. He would wake us up later when he crashed into the living room furniture and started cursing a blue streak, sometimes in another language, which I took to be Swedish. And Nell had begun to get on Troo’s nerves so much that Troo could barely look at Nell in her white blouse and saddle shoes, going on about Elvis… Elvis… Elvis. I thought Nell was okay. Not great. I always tried to keep in mind what Daddy had said about her being only the third worst big sister in the world. But Troo, who never liked Nell much in the first place, started getting so fed up with her that she would chase Nell around the house and hold a toothbrush up to her lips and sing “You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog” over and over real loud until Nell had had it up to here and smacked her a good one. Then I’d have to settle Troo down and give her something of mine, like my favorite steely marble, so she’d promise not to try and smother Nell in her sleep.

After Nell told us about that staph infection, I thought it would be a good idea to head up to church and do a little praying that morning, even though I thought God had some kind of deafness and wasn’t listening to one darn thing I was tellin’ Him. Nell didn’t want to come with us because she was gonna go walk up to Fillard’s Service Station and see her boyfriend, Eddie Callahan, who worked up there and was Mrs. Callahan’s son. That was how Nell was spending her days. Going gaga over Eddie Callahan. When Mother came home, Nell would be in big trouble for minding Eddie Callahan instead of Troo and me, the way Mother had told her to. Troo already had her tattletale list with a capital T all figured out. She even wrote it down.

1. Nell says you didn’t tell her she had to do me and Sally’s wash so she isn’t.

2. Nell broke the turn-on knob off the television and now Sally can’t watch Sky King and that made her cry more than once. (I told her to take that crying part out, because Mother would only get mad at me.)

3. Nell will not give us money to go to the Uptown so we had to miss a Sandra Dee and Troy Dona hue movie.

And so on. The tattletale list was longer than Troo’s Christmas list. And every day she grew more excited about showing it to Mother when she came home.

I mostly liked Mother of Good Hope church and school because they were only six blocks away and the O’Malley sisters could walk to them. The part I didn’t care for was that we had to pass Greasy Al Molinari’s house to get there. One of Troo’s most favorite things to do in the whole world was to stand in front of the Molinaris’ gray house and holler very loudly, “Greasy Al is such a little shit.” She also called him other names like wophead and spaghetti for brains, and sometimes, when she was really out of sorts, she would sing that Harry Belafonte song “Day-O,” but instead she would say, “Dago… da da daaago.”

Troo was sure Greasy Al was the one that had stolen her bike last summer, and that’s what she was so mad about. I could never stop her, even though God and Daddy know I tried, so we always ended up getting chased halfway to school by Greasy Al, who threatened to bronze our butts if he ever caught us, which he wouldn’t, because his right leg was sort of withered up from polio. Greasy Al couldn’t run exactly, but he could walk very fast in a hunched-up limpy kind of way if he wanted to go after you. I always said to Troo, “What are you gonna do if he ever catches you? He’s got that switchblade, you know?”

Troo would laugh and laugh and this wild look would come into her eyes, like she didn’t care if Greasy Al caught her. That bothered me. Almost every day I wished Daddy was here to calm her down because I didn’t think Troo would be long for this world if she kept this sort of wild thing up.

That morning Troo was dawdling behind me, a little cranky because I’d told her I wasn’t in the mood to get chased by Greasy Al, so like Mother said, she better mind her p’s and q’s. She was kicking a rock the way she liked to do when she was thinking and then she said real quietly, so that I almost didn’t hear her, “She’s gonna get better, right, Sal?”

I didn’t turn around because if I did she’d get real mad. Troo hated it if I caught her being scared because she forgot to whistle in the dark. I figured out what that meant by paying attention to details. Granny wasn’t getting the hardening of the arteries after all. Mother and Troo were two peas in the pod, both of ’em always pretending that things were okay when they weren’t.

“Yeah, she’ll be fine,” I said over my shoulder, but wondered what would happen if she wasn’t. Would Troo and me just go on living with Hall and Nell? Or maybe go stay with Granny and Uncle Paulie? Oh, Troo would just despise that. She avoided Uncle Paulie whenever she could. When I asked her why, she said, “Cooties.” I suspected it was more than that, but never did ask her again since I did not wish to have Troo’s volcano mad erupting all over me. Besides, Granny’s house was too small, and she was in a bad way money-wise. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that.

“If she dies, what’ll we do?” Troo kicked at the rock and it flew past me. “Do you think we’d have to go live at the orphanage?”

Every year around Christmas our Brownie troop would go to the orphanage up on Lisbon Street called St. Jude’s, who was the patron saint of lost causes. That was a very mean thing to call your orphanage and musta made those poor orphans feel really hopeless. We would sing “What Child Is This?” and give them presents like holy cards wrapped in green tissue paper and red ribbons, and I hated it. I just couldn’t stand looking at those kids who didn’t have fathers or mothers or anybody else who gave one hoot about them. And that made me say, “No. We won’t ever have to go live in that orphanage. I promise.”

Troo had stopped in front of the Piaskowskis’. The yard was all weedy and the house looked like it was shedding and a concrete statue of Jesus was laying on its side next to the porch like it was taking a nap. Nobody ever saw much of Mr. or Mrs. Piaskowski after Junie’s funeral.

“That would be just about one of the worst things that could ever happen to you, gettin’ murdered like that,” Troo said. We held our breaths when we walked past and didn’t talk much for the rest of the way, but I was thinking that maybe there were some other things that could be worse.

After mass half the neighborhood was standing out on the church lawn and I heard Mrs. Callahan, who was still Mother’s best friend and had been for a long time, say to Mrs. Latour in a very tired voice, “Helen is resting peacefully.”

Mrs. Latour said back, “I heard that Hall has taken up with Rosie Ruggins.”

And then Mrs. Callahan said back to her, “Helen should never have married him in the first place.” It was rude to eavesdrop, but no one would tell me if Mother was getting better and I had to find out so I could get prepared if she wasn’t. What Mrs. Callahan said, I took that to mean that Mother might be dying since she was Resting in Peace, which was what it said on Daddy’s gravestone. And what Mrs. Latour said about Hall? That probably meant that Hall was gettin’ some of the sex from Rosie Ruggins.

When Mrs. Callahan turned and saw us, she said in a surprised voice, “Well, O’Malley sisters, hello!”

I looked down at Mrs. Callahan’s bare legs in front of that church. She had on a little gold ankle bracelet and she wore blouses sometimes too unbuttoned. Granny told me Mother and Mrs. Callahan were crazy little she-cats when they were young, when they lived in houses next door to each other across from the cookie factory.

Mrs. Callahan bent down and said, “Are you okay, Sally?” I tried not to cry even though my eyes were blurry because Mrs. Callahan smelled so much like Mother and I bet she had made her kids sunny-side-up eggs for breakfast. “We’re fine, Mrs. Callahan,” I said. “Hall and Nell are taking very good care of us. Mother’s gonna get better, isn’t she?”

Mrs. Callahan said, “Well, my pa’s been real sick up at the VA Hospital so I haven’t been by to check up on Helen as much as I woulda liked, but I’m sure she’ll…” Then she started to cry. And I just couldn’t take that and neither could Troo because she pulled on my hand and we got lost in the crowd.