Read Online Before My Life Began by Jay Neugeboren - Free Book Online

she called back. “You’re not too old for that yet, are you?”
    â€œOh come on, Ma,” Sheila said. “He’s just a baby.”
    I pressed my back to the wall and didn’t look into Sheila’s face. Sheila was fifteen years old and until about two years ago she baby-sat for me whenever my parents went out. At night sometimes now, if I was allowed out after supper, I’d see her hanging around in the doorways of the stores on Rogers Avenue with her girlfriends, or with some of the older guys from the neighborhood.
    â€œWanna kiss me?” she asked.
    She smelled like soap and when I peeked upwards I could see that she was wearing bright orange-red lipstick. I kept quiet. She laughed at me the way her mother did and walked off. I didn’t feel well. I’d forgotten that Abe wasn’t coming by himself.
    â€œHello Davey.”
    I looked up into Abe’s face then. He was looking down at me with a smile that seemed half happy and half sad. He touched my hair gently and when he did I felt that he knew exactly what I was feeling.
    â€œHi,” I said, and I looked down again.
    â€œIt’s okay to give me a kiss—or we can just shake. Whatever you want.”
    I put my hand into his and shook it, trying to give him my best grip, and then he was carrying me into the apartment and lifting me up toward the ceiling so that my head nearly scraped the light fixture. I looked down into his face and laughed with him. His eyes were shining.
    â€œAre you still my boy?” he asked. “Answer me that—are you still my favorite little guy?”
    â€œI hope so.”
    â€œSure you are.” He let me down a little so that my face was level with his. He held me in front of him for a second, staring at me—his eyes didn’t blink or move sideways—and then he pressed me to him so that our cheeks touched. His skin was smooth and warm.
    â€œCome on, you two guys,” my mother said, pulling us apart. She put her arms around Abe’s neck but warned him not to kiss her on the mouth. They walked to the living room, their arms around each other’s waists. My mother looked back at me. “So come on already. What are you waiting for—a royal invitation?”
    After supper we sat in the living room and I was scared Abe might leave without asking to see my drawings. My father stayed close to Abe, patting him on the back a lot and telling him how terrific he looked, and I just stared at my uncle and tried to imagine what he was thinking. I wondered about what he’d thought of on all those dark nights when he was out on patrol and his life could have ended in the next instant. I wondered how he felt to have to be living with Lillian and Sheila again. I wondered if he was worried about Fasalino’s men crossing over borders and ambushing Avie or Benny or Spanish Louie or my father, forcing them to betray him.
    Abe hardly said a word, and this made me feel that he could tell how two-faced my father was—how quickly my father would change his opinion just so he could get Abe or my mother to like him. I stood with my back against the door to my bedroom, feeling very small, and what I wanted to do was to tear my father’s fingers from Abe’s shoulder—to shove him up against a wall and force him to tell Abe the truth of how he felt.
    But there was nothing I could do, I knew, except to wait and hope. I was almost happy when Sheila interrupted to say she needed to leave to do her homework. Lillian told her that her homework could wait—since when was she such a perfect student?—and then she said that if we were boring her so much she should go into my room with me and we should play something together.
    â€œOh Ma, he’s just a baby,” she said, but even while she said it she walked past me, opened the door to my room, and went in. “Come on,” she said. “As long as we got to.”
    I followed her, and