“Which one do you like best?” Cowboy said.
“That’s a dumb question,” I said. “I just went to a movie with him.”
“Half a movie,” said Cowboy.
“He probably doesn’t ever want to see me again. If you were him and you were going to a movie with me and my father rushed down and carried me off caveman style and told him there was a taxi stand across the street, would you ever want to see me again?”
“I’d rise to the challenge,” said Cowboy. “I’d think of something dramatic to do. I’d wait until your birthday was underway and then I’d come dancing in under my shell, with my music playing ‘La Cu-ca-ra-cha’”—she did a little dance step in her panty hose—“‘la cu-ca-ra-cha,’ and crash your party in a burst of glory. Would that impress you?”
“ROACH! ROACH! ROACH!” I chanted the way the crowds had at the game, and Cowboy and I chased each other around the room, laughing.
“Well, it could happen,” Cowboy said. Off the floor of her closet, she fished a blue skirt that was always balled up there next to her hockey skates. She began brushing off the dustballs on it. “It’s your birthday. Anything can happen.”
“Cowboy?” I said. “Do you really like Little Lion?”
She was saved from answering by my mother’s voice calling out, “Where’s my birthday girl?” as she came up the stairs. Cowboy made a dive for the ashtray, emptying it into one of her Nike sneakers, whirling around, and raising the window. I grabbed the Johnson Wax Glade powder air freshener and aimed it at the ceiling where the smoke collected.
My mother sang out, “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you—”
“Don’t let her in here!” Cowboy said.
“How’m I going to keep her out?”
Cowboy gave me a shove. “Pretend you’re on your way to the bathroom!”
My mother opened the door and said, “Whew! Whew! Girls! Someone’s got on too much perfume.”
Cowboy said, “After God took his paintbrush to the leaves, he took his powder puff to our bedroom.”
“Cowboy,” said my mother, “I call that sassy.”
“I call it good,” I said. “Imaginative. Poetic.”
Cowboy took a bow. “I wrote it in a day,” she said.
19: Sydney Cinnamon
DIGGER LOOKED UP AT the dark morning sky and said, “It’s gonna rain buckets in about two seconds. Hurry, Roach!”
I was practically leaping to catch up with him, both of us sweating in our good suits from the ride up to Lake Road and back in the muggy heat.
There was a banner strung across the front of the church reading:
WELCOME LITTLE LION!
WELCOME TADS, TADPOLES, AND PODS!
The street was lined with traffic and policemen trying to control it.
“We’re probably too late to make it inside,” said Digger.
But we got in, during the choir’s singing of “Over There Where the Heathens Are Dying.”
Digger had to stand up in the back with other standees, but an usher led me down front and squeezed me in beside some TADs and TADpoles.
“Little Lion’s on next,” he whispered at me, smiling.
In addition to all the people packing the church, an overflow crowd was contained in the basement, where loudspeakers were set up.
The first thing I saw after I got seated was an enormous white ladder set up beside the pulpit. It was strung with white roses, and under each rung there was a sign, so it looked like this:
100%—I DID!
90%—I WILL!
80%—I CAN!
70%—I THINK I CAN!
60%—I MIGHT!
50%—I THINK I MIGHT!
40%—WHAT IS IT?
30%—I WISH I COULD!
20%—I DON’T KNOW HOW!
10%—I CAN’T!
0%—I WON’T!
While the choir sang, Reverend La Belle sat in a throne chair behind the pulpit. In the front of the pulpit there was a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in a brass urn. A white ribbon was pinned to the flowers, and across it in gold was LITTLE LION.
The dwarf beside me was balancing a ten-gallon hat on his knees.
He turned to me while the choir was singing and whispered, “I’m Gus Gregory,” holding out his hand, “Little’s better, less is more.”
I shook his hand. “Sydney Cinnamon,” I said. “What’s better?”
“Little’s better, less is more. Aren’t you a TAD or a TADpole?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“That’s our slogan,” he said.
I was wiggling around in my seat, craning my neck to try and find Little Little in the crowd.
“Little Lion won’t come from the back,” said Gus Gregory. “He’ll come from behind the curtains up front.”
Then, as though that was his cue, the choir began “Just As I Am,” there was movement behind the purple curtains, and Little Lion stepped out.
“Just as I am, tho’ tossed about,” the choir continued bravely, drowned out by the applause, “With many a conflict, many a doubt.”
Gus Gregory was standing on the red cushions of the pew, swinging his sky piece, and others in our aisle stood on their seats, too.
“Fightings and fears within, without,” the choir persisted, “O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
Little Lion was resplendent in white from top to bottom, complete with a white rosebud boutonniere.
As he walked toward the white ladder, he held up his hands to try and stop the applause, but there was no way. There were even whistles.
The choir was relentless:
“Just as I am, and waiting not,
To rid my soul of one dark blot.”
I stood on my seat in the excitement and finally spotted Little Little, sitting on something that elevated her, between her mother and father. She was wearing pink, a white rose pinned to the collar of her dress. She was in a middle row, clapping and smiling while I did hypnosis on her: Look my way, and flopped. She continued looking straight ahead at Little Lion.
Little Lion was climbing the ladder.
The crowd was calming down; the choir was coming through again:
“O Lamb of God, I come! I come!”
When Little Lion reached the top of the ladder, Reverend La Belle stepped forward.
He said, “Little Lion is at the top of the Ladder of Achievement, ready to share his thoughts with you. Having him with us this Sunday morning is a great
