Read Online The Kingdom of Brooklyn by Merrill Joan Gerber - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Merrill Joan Gerber
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âWell, maybe. Once in a while.â
So easily I have forced her to lift the ban. By a clever trick I have changed the iron rule. Look what they will do in order that I not fly down the street on skates!
When we go in the house, the doors between upstairs and downstairs are unlocked. My mother issues the revised orders. Once in a while, at her convenience, when everything I have to do is done, when I have eaten all my food, when The Screamer doesnât need me to rock her, when my mother doesnât have an urge to do rhymes with me, once in a while, I can go upstairs to the beauty parlor.
âEven now?â
She is backed into a corner.
I run, I fly up the stairs, my first time in months, to the new apartment, to see the new sink, the new stove, the new carpet, the new dishes. Gilda has a new dryer, a green monster helmet that fits over the ladiesâ heads, that dries their hair twice as fast as the old one. It has a clear plastic edge, so the women can see, can move their eyebrows to indicate too hot, not hot enough, just right.
Oh, I have missed this place. I get busy bending hairpins in the crack of the linoleum; I am happy, and I never want to go home, go downstairs, where itâs boring, where The Screamer smells of pee and worse things, where no one cares about me! Where no one cares about me!
Something thumps in my chest as I think that thought. NO ONE CARES ABOUT ME!
âWhatâs wrong?â Gilda asks me. I am clutching my chest, where a hammer has begun to strike. I look down and see my dress shaking with each hammer-blow.
âIssa! Whatâs wrong?â I donât know myself. Something has got into my chest, like a bird or a dog or a baby, and itâs flapping and kicking about. I feel it and see it happening.
The thing wants to get out. It doesnât care if it tears through me. I am amazed, but I want it to get out as fast as it can, I want it to stop hurting me. Maybe I need a pill, like the one my grandmother takes when she has heart pains. I needâ¦I need⦠what I need is roller skates!
But I realize I cannot ask for this now. However, itâs perfectly clear to meâroller skates would fix me. Just as The Tree Trunk gave my mother headaches, not having roller skates has given me this monster in my chest, pounding against the walls of my body to get out.
CHAPTER 9
The war should stop. Why does it go on this long? How annoying it is that they still say, âShush, shush,â to me when the radio is on. Cooking grease will help to win the war if we save it in a tin can. Tinfoil we find on the street must be packed and smoothed into a ball. (Chewing gum wrappers are good, cigarette wrappers are the best, if, with the tip of my fingernail, I can get the foil to separate from the white paper without a tear.) I have an enormous tinfoil ballâbigger than a tennis ball. How this is going to kill the Japs, whoever they are, is a total mystery. When I examine my silver ball, I think that perhaps the good soldiers dangle these in front of the bad soldiers; then, while distracting them, they pull out bayonets and stab their bellies. Thinking this, I want to throw my silver ball in the bushes, or bury it.
Gilda takes me with her around the neighborhood to sell war bonds. She gets me away these days by not asking permission; if she finds me outside, she just grabs me, telling my grandmother on the bench to tell my mother we went for a walk, but only if she asks . Half the time we will be back before my mother notices. Of course I know this is forbidden; I am never supposed to leave the premises without permission. But itâs only Gildaâhow dangerous could she be?
Lately my mother goes too far with her rules; I have to break them, there is no other way to get what I want. Otherwise I think of the trouble I would have to go through: all that asking and begging (all her arguments and finally her refusal) and thenâafter she tells me that
âWell, maybe. Once in a while.â
So easily I have forced her to lift the ban. By a clever trick I have changed the iron rule. Look what they will do in order that I not fly down the street on skates!
When we go in the house, the doors between upstairs and downstairs are unlocked. My mother issues the revised orders. Once in a while, at her convenience, when everything I have to do is done, when I have eaten all my food, when The Screamer doesnât need me to rock her, when my mother doesnât have an urge to do rhymes with me, once in a while, I can go upstairs to the beauty parlor.
âEven now?â
She is backed into a corner.
I run, I fly up the stairs, my first time in months, to the new apartment, to see the new sink, the new stove, the new carpet, the new dishes. Gilda has a new dryer, a green monster helmet that fits over the ladiesâ heads, that dries their hair twice as fast as the old one. It has a clear plastic edge, so the women can see, can move their eyebrows to indicate too hot, not hot enough, just right.
Oh, I have missed this place. I get busy bending hairpins in the crack of the linoleum; I am happy, and I never want to go home, go downstairs, where itâs boring, where The Screamer smells of pee and worse things, where no one cares about me! Where no one cares about me!
Something thumps in my chest as I think that thought. NO ONE CARES ABOUT ME!
âWhatâs wrong?â Gilda asks me. I am clutching my chest, where a hammer has begun to strike. I look down and see my dress shaking with each hammer-blow.
âIssa! Whatâs wrong?â I donât know myself. Something has got into my chest, like a bird or a dog or a baby, and itâs flapping and kicking about. I feel it and see it happening.
The thing wants to get out. It doesnât care if it tears through me. I am amazed, but I want it to get out as fast as it can, I want it to stop hurting me. Maybe I need a pill, like the one my grandmother takes when she has heart pains. I needâ¦I need⦠what I need is roller skates!
But I realize I cannot ask for this now. However, itâs perfectly clear to meâroller skates would fix me. Just as The Tree Trunk gave my mother headaches, not having roller skates has given me this monster in my chest, pounding against the walls of my body to get out.
CHAPTER 9
The war should stop. Why does it go on this long? How annoying it is that they still say, âShush, shush,â to me when the radio is on. Cooking grease will help to win the war if we save it in a tin can. Tinfoil we find on the street must be packed and smoothed into a ball. (Chewing gum wrappers are good, cigarette wrappers are the best, if, with the tip of my fingernail, I can get the foil to separate from the white paper without a tear.) I have an enormous tinfoil ballâbigger than a tennis ball. How this is going to kill the Japs, whoever they are, is a total mystery. When I examine my silver ball, I think that perhaps the good soldiers dangle these in front of the bad soldiers; then, while distracting them, they pull out bayonets and stab their bellies. Thinking this, I want to throw my silver ball in the bushes, or bury it.
Gilda takes me with her around the neighborhood to sell war bonds. She gets me away these days by not asking permission; if she finds me outside, she just grabs me, telling my grandmother on the bench to tell my mother we went for a walk, but only if she asks . Half the time we will be back before my mother notices. Of course I know this is forbidden; I am never supposed to leave the premises without permission. But itâs only Gildaâhow dangerous could she be?
Lately my mother goes too far with her rules; I have to break them, there is no other way to get what I want. Otherwise I think of the trouble I would have to go through: all that asking and begging (all her arguments and finally her refusal) and thenâafter she tells me that
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