'You sound like you've got your act together,' said Marlene.
The woman grinned, showing a flash of gold. 'We just startin' in, sister. They got a community college in Raleigh. I figure I could study X ray technician. That or dietician. Get me a qualification, a AA degree, you know? And then, while I'm working, my husband'll go to school.' She went on in this vein for some time, and Marlene was content to let the chatter wash over her, sitting in the weak sun and smoking and watching the children play. Time drifted by.
The nanny stopped abruptly, and smiled sheepishly at Marlene, as if embarrassed to have blown too loudly on her own horn. 'You could do that too, you know,' she said. 'Go to school. You speak real good English. Them over there'-she motioned to the Latina nannies-'they some kinda Guatemalas. Hell, I don't even think they speak Spanish. So, how long you been here?'
'In Washington?'
'No, the country. The U.S.'
'Um, oh, years and years.'
'Where from?'
'Ah, Palermo?'
'What's that, one of them islands?'
'It's on an island.'
'Well, if you don't want to be watching other folkses' kids all your life, go to a school. Get you some qualification-'
This useful advice was interrupted by a loud shriek from the sandbox. One of the little boys had snatched Lucy's My Little Pony and, sporting the bully's nasty grin, was dangling it by its long acrylic mane. Lucy stood in front of him with her fists clenched. 'That's mine! Give it back!' she yelled. The boy ignored her and started to twirl the toy horse around by its hair. Lucy made a grab for it and the boy pushed her hard in the chest. She staggered back a few paces, and looked over at Marlene, who had tensed but hadn't moved.
Lucy dropped her raincoat, crouched, adopted the boxer's stance she had been taught from infancy, took two steps forward and hit the kid twice in the mouth with straight left jabs. Startled, the boy dropped the pony and threw a roundhouse preschool right. Lucy checked this easily with her left, stepped in close, and crossed a solid right to the nose. And again. Blood spurted and the kid collapsed howling in the sand. Lucy picked up her My Little Pony and began unconcernedly currying the sand from its tresses.
The mother of the wounded child now came racing from her klatch, crying 'Jason! Jason!' and swept up her kid, who was now blue with howling and still pouring with what the sportswriters used to call claret. The woman pulled a wad of tissues from her pocket and held it to the child's nose. After a few minutes, she put the still- sniveling boy on the ground and leaned over Lucy menacingly. 'Did you see what you did!' she shouted, grabbing Lucy by the shoulder and waving a finger. 'You made Jason bleed. You're a very naughty, naughty girl.' Lucy looked at her wide-eyed, and then over at Marlene, who was up and over to Lucy's side in a flash.
'Hands off my kid, lady,' she said flatly.
'Did you see what your kid did?' said the woman. She was a slim aerobic blonde dressed in a style Marlene always thought of as neatsy-keen: a navy blue car coat, red crewneck, a little pin, blue slacks, new Adidas. Under Marlene's baleful one-eyed stare, she released Lucy.
'Yes,' said Marlene matter-of-factly, 'I did. Little Jason here ripped off my daughter's toy, my daughter asked for it back, and when she tried to take it, he pushed her. Then she decked him. You've got blood on your nice coat.'
'Is that what you're teaching her? To hurt people?'
'In self-defense, yes,' said Marlene calmly. 'Little Jason's learned a valuable lesson today, madam, one that might keep him out of prison some day, provided it's reinforced: if you take by force things that don't belong to you, you get your lumps. Good day to you.'
Marlene took Lucy's hand, picked up the raincoat, and strode out of the sandbox with as much dignity as such striding allows. Jason's mother stared openmouthed after her; except that she was not dripping ropes of saliva, she looked much like a fighting bull stupefied by a skillfully brandished muleta.
Marlene steered Lucy back to the bench and put her into her raincoat. 'That, that lady was yelling at me,' Lucy said, her voice uncertain. 'Was I bad?'
'No, baby, you did good. You remembered never hit once when you can get two shots in. Only next time remember to keep your thumbs tucked.' She demonstrated with a fist. 'You keep slugging with your thumbs up, one day you're going to break them off.'
'Then I would have broked-off fingers like you?'
'Yeah, right,' Marlene said, and kissed her.
The nanny, observing this, put in, 'You did right, sugar. Don't let them boys push you around.'
Marlene smiled at her and said, 'Well, I think we'll be going while the going's good. Always leave 'em bleeding is our motto.'
Jason's mother had joined her group over at the other bench. They were talking animatedly and looking daggers at Marlene and Lucy.
'Okay, you take care now,' said the nanny. 'Nice talking to you, and hey-mind what I told you, get yourself some school!'
Marlene waved at her and she and Lucy headed down the path, Lucy pushing the stroller, singing her version of 'One-Trick Pony,' which, when she got to the part about a herky-jerky motion, required her to throw her body into a Dionysiac spasm, giggling madly. Marlene was required to join in this, which she did gladly, feeling better than she had in weeks.
The healing power of justice was what it was, she thought, even playground justice. Maybe especially playground justice, which seemed like the only kind she was likely to see again in this life.
She felt oddly free and she knew why. She was feeling bad, as she had when, as a schoolgirl she had come home to Queens on a Friday night, shucked out of her blue serge Sacred Heart livery, raced competently through her homework, slipped into skintight black toreador pants, a sleeveless blouse with the collar up in back, over a wired bra that transformed her young breasts into hard little conical gun turrets, between which hung the little gold cross; applied scarlet lipstick and blue eye shadow; put on gold hoop earrings; and booked out the back door to meet, waiting at the end of the block, the sideburned and leather-jacketed Rocco in his chopped and channeled 1950 Ford Fairlane.
They would cruise Queens Boulevard, hitting a sequence of drive-ins, pizzerias, and vacant lot hangouts in an order as nearly formalized as the stations of the cross. They would race their engines and lay patches of rubber. They would trade friendly insults and use phony draft cards to buy beer, and after enough beer the insults would turn less friendly and there might be scuffling, clumsy fights. A car might be stolen for a joy ride. This was what was meant by being bad, in Queens, in the early sixties.
That, and parking out by the runways at La Guardia for a bout of similarly formalized sexual groping. Of this activity Marlene was entirely in charge. She had no intention of letting the passionate bad boy go, as the saying then was, all the way, and had discovered, at fourteen, that any importunate demands in this direction could be easily forestalled by direct attention to the actual fount of desire. Marlene's fascination with Rocco's organ, and those of the various Roccos that succeeded him, was (if such a word is not entirely inappropriate) innocent. She regarded penises (how different each one!) much as the air force regarded its X-15 at the time-as experimental instruments, from which much might be learned. A skilled and enthusiastic fellatiste by fifteen, Marlene never heard any complaints about being denied the ultimate liberty from any of the Roccos.
The Church to one side, Marlene simply could not accept that the Creator of the Universe was overly concerned about the odd blow job. That she had finessed the virgin-whore business by becoming both and neither seemed to her a practical application of the Thomistic synthesis she had learned about in Religion 2, in which she had received an A.
Throughout this period, therefore, Marlene remained a regular communicant, both at Sacred Heart and at St. Joseph's in the neighborhood, and a frank and voluble confessor, adding much interest to the lives of several elderly priests. Her reputation did not suffer at all, owing to both the sanctity of the confessional and the convenient fact that she went to school miles from where she hung out on weekends. At Sacred Heart she was a model student, demure, and submitting cheerfully to discipline. The Mesdames could hardly have realized that much of her good humor derived from imagining what they would do if they only knew.
