Wednesday, November 14, 2007

At 5


1976


I’m five years old and climbing. Pulling my little body higher and higher. Straining and grunting. I see myself not as a kid in a poor neighborhood scaling a crumbling wall, but as a boy scout climbing a majestic mounting on the cover of a fancy kids’ adventure magazine. Exhilarated, blood pumping, sweating, looking up, smile on my face, digging in. I can do this. It seems like an endless climb, as if I’m pulling myself up to the clouds on a decrepit beanstalk. But it’s just a poorly-maintained cinder-block wall. A wall that has silently taunted me for weeks. I’d pass by every day and stare at the big kids atop the wall. Wanting to be up there myself. Wanting to conquer that maroon monstrosity. Today, I decided that I was going to go for it. Join the other kids.

Several older black kids sit atop the wall, looking down at me, egging me on. I want to impress them, because in the small kid universe you only get one chance to prove that you’re not a wimp. It’s not about black or white—I’m too young to worry about all that; it’s about respect. So I climb. Beneath my fingertips, small bits of wall break free. It’s a piece of shit wall. It is my enemy. Soon to be my bitch.

I think I’m gonna own this fucker.

"Come on, runt, you can do it," a smiling kid says to me.

"Climb, climb, climb," a fat kid chants. If he can make it up to the top, I sure can. I’m skinny, wiry, and light.

A third kid, all teeth, says, "You can do it, white boy!"

I might just be the palest person in all of Camden. There are, at most, five or six white families left. My family holds out not because of some deep sense of loyalty, not because we love Camden, but because we simply don’t have enough money to move to a nicer neighborhood. All of the truly respectable Caucasians have moved on to Pennsauken or Cherry Hill. My family is far from respectable. We eat too much glow-in-the-dark yellow Government Cheese to garner any respect. But we do eat. My mother is a lunch lady at the local elementary school, and she’s allowed to bring home some leftover food, so we do get our proper nutrients. Plenty of cold tater tots and warm chocolate milk. We will always eat as long as Mom is around. She’d sacrifice anything for her kids. She gives up everything so we can have something. She takes on extra jobs during the holidays so we can have presents under the tree come Christmas Day. I’m a white kid growing up in a black neighborhood, but I have at least one parent who cares, and that’s more than a lot of kids I know. Many of those I share my slice of Government Cheese with have no one at all.

My father is already out of my life. He hung around just long enough for me to barely know him. I picture my father as a loveable silent film tramp. Jerky movements. Bad facial hair. Always on the run. Up to his nose in minor comical misadventures. Running from my mother as she pushes the baby carriage his way. Running from Mom’s first and only husband, Big Ron, a convict who chased after my father during his always-brief excursions from prison. I’m told Big Erv (my dad) and Big Ron (Ron, Dave, and Sheri’s dad) had an honest-to-goodness car chase through the streets of Camden. (The French Connection had just opened, and I guess everyone was chasing each other with cars.) Big Ron with his foot on the gas, waving his fist in the air, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Dad sweating and swerving. Trying not to die. That’s how I see my father. Always running. In black and white. Silent. Comically pathetic.

"You almost here, kid!" the toothy boy shouts. "You almost with the big boys!"

I’m sweating and panting, but focused. My muscles, and I’m assuming that I have muscles despite visual evidence to the contrary, burn. The sun beats down on my hot cheeks. Higher and higher I rise, and I’m feeling like I can do anything, like I’m Spider-Man, like I am unstoppable, until I fall and instantly realize that I am not Spider-Man. Beneath my fingers a brick comes loose. A whole brick. I fall and the brick falls with me. I’m flailing, trying to grab hold of something, anything, but there is nothing. I’m falling in slow-motion, a cinder block just above my head, waiting to land on my skull, waiting to crush my little brain. If I’d had a life to this point it would’ve flashed before me, but I’m five and haven’t done shit. I twist and flop in the air, like a high diver who’s lost his footing, and then hit the ground. For a second, I’m relieved. I’ve landed and I don’t think I’ve broken anything. Then the brick drops. The cinder block lands on my left hand and that’s when I hear the crunch, the sound not unlike a boot coming down on a bag of fresh light bulbs. I know immediately that my hand is broken. No, much more than simply broken. Shattered into tiny bits. The wait for pain is worse than the pain itself. I just go numb, numb with a growing throb, as if my hand was attached to a bicycle pump and some jokester was filling it up with air. I’m silent as a great wail rises inside me. I know my pain will soon be a siren.

The three kids who’d been egging me on do not come to my rescue. Instead, they run away, leaving me crying and bloody. I hear one of them say, "Damn, that was some nasty shit!" I push the brick aside with my good hand, then run home, my right hand holding my seemingly-dead left hand at eye-level. If I don’t hold it up it’ll flop about like a dead fish.

"Help me!" I scream. "Oh, God, help me!" I repeat the word "help" over and over. I don’t know what else to say. I’m just a kid. A broken kid.

I’m weeping, bleeding, heading home to show the babysitter what’s happened. My babysitter today happens to be my great grandmother, Mom’s mom’s mom. She will not be happy about this. She’s watching her "stories" and I will interrupt her and ruin her day. Nanny is just going to have to miss "All My Children" today while the doctors either fix or remove the hand I’ve destroyed. I’m not a big fan of staying with Nanny, because she yells a lot and makes me go to bed when it gets dark, but on the plus side, she does make the best iced tea in the world and has a large collection of National Geographic, a magazine overflowing with titties—floppy, unfirm titties yes, but titties nonetheless.

"Jesus, Mary & Joseph!" Nanny says, looking my rapidly-swelling hand. "What did you do, you little asshole? Now I’m going to have to call your mother at work and make her come home for this. You little shit. Goddam it. Oh, no. Why did you do this? What’s wrong with you?"

Nanny is not a bad person—she just doesn’t know how to handle the situation. She’s not good with kids. A few of her own children were molested by her husband, and she was said to have been unaware. I hope she was unaware. We all hope she was unaware. Back in those days, no one spoke about child molestation. It was just a family’s dark secret. Nanny’s husband, my great grandfather, was eventually arrested. But lives were ruined. A child forever damaged eventually committed suicide. Life goes on. A family’s legacy forever tainted.

Nanny lowers my hand into a bucket of cold water. My hand that now looks like a few piranhas have had me for dinner. The clear water in the bucket turns pink, then red, then black. I cry. I don’t want to lose my hand. I don’t want to have a hook for a hand. I want today to be yesterday, when I was too chicken to climb the wall. I just wanted to be cool, but being cool is painful. I’ll stay uncool from now on, especially if I end up with a hook for a hand.

Nanny changes the water in the bucket, a fresh batch of clear water than I will soon darken with my blood. I glance down at my hand and it’s now twice its normal size and still growing. My throat burns and it’s all I can do not to throw up.

"Why are you so stupid?" Nanny asks. "Who told you to be so dumb? Don’t you think, boy? Well, my day is ruined."

My day ain’t looking so hot either, Nanny.

"I just wanted to be cool, like the other kids," I say.

"And look where that got you. Now you went and broke yourself."

My hand looks unfamiliar, like one of those big spongy hands you see at sporting events, and even at five I know it will never be quite the same. I’m left-handed and I’ve just destroyed my left hand. How will I drawn and write? How will I eat? How will they manage to shrink it back down to its normal size? I am so very screwed. I turn away from the hand. I can’t look at it anymore. I won’t. They can’t make me. By the time my vomit does come, Nanny has another bucket waiting.

2 comments:

Carey Baldwin said...

See, now you know though, a hook would have been way cool. Love it.

Ervin A. said...

Hooks are indeed cool. I really wouldn't have wanted to have one instead of my left hand, though. Not much I could've done with a hook-hand except stalk young couples at Lover's Lane. I'm glad I got to keep my real hand. I had to spend three months in the hospital, with my hand in the air the entire time. My left hand still doesn't work properly, but at least it's there. So, yay for that!