Whistling in the Dark

the riffraff said.

Troo laughed and pulled on a pair of short white gloves she found in the drawer. So I walked to the living room by myself and stuck my head out the window. I could smell pink peonies mixed in with the chocolate chip cookie smell coming from the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory. Mother was small up on the corner of North Avenue. I was sure that would be the last time I’d ever see her again because look what happened to Daddy when he was in the same hospital. So I started to yell to her to please come back! But then she turned the corner and was gone. And she didn’t come home in a week or so like she said.

CHAPTER FIVE

We were on our way to meet Mary Lane the next morning at one of our usual summer hangouts. Washington Park was 1,747 steps away from our front door and had everything a person could ever want or need. There was that lagoon that we skated on in the winter and fished in during the summer and where they’d found Junie. There was also a band shell that looked like a giant clam where we could go hear Music Under the Stars and a swimming pool that had a high dive. And best of all, on the far side of the park, there was my absolute favorite. The zoo!

We were almost to the park, right in front of Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore, when Troo bent down to tie her shoe and said out of the blue, “I’m thinkin’ about running away to France,” and didn’t say anything else.

I looked into the drugstore and wished I had a dime for a soda because even though it was still early morning, it was already so hot that my eyeballs were sweating. “France?”

I had no idea where she got this idea of France from. Probably out of a book at the Finney Library, where they were giving away these passes to the Uptown to the kid who read the most books. The librarian kept track of our names and how many books we’d read on this worm body that was called Billy the Bookworm and hung outside the boys’ bathroom. Troo’s most favorite thing was going to the movies, so she moved her name up the bookworm’s body when the librarian, Mrs. Esther Kambowski (Polish-a real break for Troo) wasn’t looking. Troo didn’t give a damn if she cheated. I didn’t feel that same way, but I almost never disagreed with her because of that promise I’d made to Daddy in the hospital. I still hadn’t told Troo what he’d said about the car crash not being her fault, because she always got so mad when I brought it up and Troo, you didn’t like to get her mad. Her mad was tall. And deep. Like a volcano, she could blow when you least expected it.

Mary Lane knew Troo was cheating on that bookworm ladder and had threatened to tell Mrs. Kambowski. Thank God it was Mary Lane because nobody woulda believed her anyway, because everybody knew that she told the biggest and fattest lies around.

One time she told us that her father’s weenie did not look like a weenie at all but more like a bratwurst. Mary Lane said she knew that because she saw her mother and father having some of the sex on the bathroom floor, probably right after they had their baths. So not only was she a huge liar, Mary Lane was a peeper, which was a person who really, really, really liked to spy on people in their houses. She liked to light fires, too. Not because she liked fires but because she was just nuts about the fire trucks that showed up after she lit the fires. She was my and Troo’s best friend. (We always called her Mary Lane because almost every family on the block had a kid named Mary so you had to find a way to tell them apart.) Mary Lane was also the skinniest person alive. I mean, you have never seen a person who was not a pagan baby living in Africa who was this skinny. Troo and me figured that’s because she had six brothers who probably ate all the food in the house when her father went to work and her mother did the wash.

And even though Troo thought Mrs. Kambowski wouldn’t believe lying Mary Lane if she really did rat her out about cheating on the Bookworm, Troo still came up with one of her famous plans. Just in case.

“We are having what is known as a rendezvous. That’s the French word for meeting up with someone,” Troo said. We’d climbed up onto different branches in our favorite zoo tree across from Sampson the gorilla’s pit and were watching Mary Lane coming down that zoo path. Her wrinkled white shorts and dirty red- checkered shirt waving off her body made her look kinda like a flagpole. “I’m just gonna push her into Sampson’s pit.” Troo wiggled to the end of the branch. “I gotta win those movie passes.”

I was pretty sure she was just talkin’ big and wouldn’t really push Mary Lane in. Pretty sure. Ever since Daddy’s car crash I couldn’t always tell what Troo would do. Sometimes I even thought my sister got a little brain damaged in that accident just like Uncle Paulie.

We hopped down from the tree and were leaning over the black iron railing just staring at Sampson, acting like we didn’t know Mary Lane had arrived even though we knew she did because she always smelled like stale potato chips.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Mary Lane asked, coming up next to us.

Sampson. I adored Sampson. Really adored him. Daddy used to bring me and Troo to this zoo after we’d drive in from the farm to pay a Sunday afternoon visit to Granny. Daddy adored Sampson as well and would sit and watch him and laugh right along. So I’d known Sampson practically since I was born. And now I always came to Sampson when I was feelin’ out of sorts. I would imagine Daddy sitting next to me on my park bench and putting his arm around me and saying in his deep voice, “Sal, my gal, a lot of people say that the lion is the King of the Jungle. But I would have to disagree with those people.” Then Daddy’d point at the gorilla and beat his chest and his voice would come out all stuttery. “I would have to say that Sampson is the King. Just look at him. He is magnificent!” I would look back at Sampson and nod my head like I was agreeing with him, but I was secretly thinking to myself that it was my daddy who was the King. Of the sky and the land. And he was magnificent!

Troo said loudly to Mary Lane, “Sampson’s got something he wants to show you, but you gotta get closer. He’s hidin’ it behind his back. Just climb over the railing and lean over and you’ll see it perfectly clearly.”

Always ready for any kind of peeping, Mary Lane hopped right over and walked to the edge of the grass next to the pit. Troo turned and grinned at me and then climbed over the railing to join her. I didn’t think that gorillas ate people, but the fall alone woulda killed skinny Mary Lane. Break her in half like a piece of cold gum.

Sampson was watching us carefully, foot tapping. I always thought he was singing to himself “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” That was one of Ethel Jenkins’s favorite songs and she taught it to me. Ethel lived over on Fifty-second Street with Mrs. Galecki and was my and Troo’s other best friend.

“Hey, Mary Lane, you know about that Bookworm ladder? You really aren’t gonna tell Kambowski that I cheated, are you?” Troo asked this real sweetly, like she can when she wants something real bad. Granny calls it her dolly voice.

Mary Lane turned toward Troo. “Yeah, I am.”

The lion roared and a couple of flamingos ran for cover.

Troo said, “Are you sure you want to do that? I’d feel real bad if you accidentally fell into the pit and they didn’t find you until feeding time. Or if Sampson was hungry right this minute”-she lowered her voice-“they might never find anything but your bones.”

So I guess gorillas did eat people but Sampson would be pretty disappointed if he ate Mary Lane, who had as much meat on her as a coat hanger.

Troo nudged Mary Lane a little closer until the tips of her half-undone high-top black tennis shoes, the ones she always had on, were half over the pit and half on the grass.

“You ain’t gonna push me in, are you?” she asked. Troo was up close behind her so she couldn’t escape.

“Thinkin’ about it,” Troo said, spitting her gum down toward the pit so Mary Lane would completely understand exactly how far she would fall. (I wouldn’t have let Troo push her in, just so you know that about me.)

“Go ahead,” Mary Lane said, and squished her eyes closed.

“Are you tellin’ me you don’t care if I push you in this pit and you’d probably die and go to purgatory for all eternity for the millions of lies you told?” Troo asked, amazed.

“I never been to a movie theater and I want them passes and the popcorn and soda.” Mary Lane took a big breath and held it. “I’ll die to defend them. And I never told a lie in my life, Troo O’Malley.”

“That’s your biggest lie ever,” Troo said, and she looked at me and I looked at her and we both turned our heads back to Mary Lane, who was beginning to remind me very much of St. Joan of Arc.

“Okay, okay, I was just kiddin’ around.” Troo laughed and pulled Mary Lane away from the edge. “Go ahead, tell Kambowski.” Right away, because of the mental telepathy, I knew that Troo was workin’ on another one of her