Whistling for the Elephants Read online

  ‘Miss America is an image that oppresses women.

  They all threw bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs and other things they called ‘women’s garbage’ into a Freedom Trash Can and outside the theatre a sheep was crowned Miss America. I wondered if sheep were tame, which would make them third on my Chinese order. Looking at the sheep with the crown on its head, that seemed quite high. I didn’t really understand any of it but that was the first time I ever heard of women’s liberation.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning I was sitting in my usual place on the dock with my Sears, Roebuck catalogue. I had taken my sandals off and was wondering whether Mother could be persuaded to get me some quieter shoes. I had just decided to test myself by putting my feet in the water and not worrying that a horseshoe crab might get me when I heard the wailing. It started quite low, from Sweetheart’s house, and then it kind of grew. I got up and went round the side of the house. Sweetheart was standing in her front yard, crying and crying. Across the street Judith was screaming and running in demented circles around her lawn. I knew Rocco had only been dead a few days but I still thought it was excessive.

  Aunt Bonnie was trying to stop her. Joey had run out of his house and he ran straight at Judith and put out his arms to grab her. She kind of fell into them and was standing with him clinging on to her when Harry and Uncle Eddie came skidding round the corner in the fire engine. All the time the tears were just pouring down Sweetheart’s face and she never moved.

  ‘Oh god, Harry, Harry,’ she called to her son, but Harry didn’t stop. He ran across the lawn, grabbed his wife. Joey was still holding her so without a beat Harry punched Joey to the ground. It seemed to be something they did to each other. Aunt Bonnie pulled Judith away and Uncle Eddie ran up between all of them. I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying but I knew it was terrible. After a while Aunt Bonnie came and took Sweetheart home and Harry and Judith went in the house. Uncle Eddie helped Joey up and walked back to the fire truck. As he got up into the driving seat he saw me.

  ‘Hey, kid. Okay?’ I nodded. ‘Bad news.’ He nodded back to the Schlicks’ house. ‘Harry’s kid, Pearl? She’s dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Kids today.’

  Uncle Eddie backed the fire truck out of the street and took off I could still hear Sweetheart crying through her screen door and now Harry had started yelling in his house. That wasn’t right. People shouldn’t yell when other people are dead. I felt scared. Death seemed to be in the neighbourhood. I ran into our house and down the corridor to Mother’s room. The door was closed so I raised my hand to knock but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  I went over to the Dapolitos’ to see if I could get something to eat. The house was in the usual uproar. Donna Marie was listening to some records in her room. She had this really fussy room. Her bed had a lace canopy over it and everything was very pink. She was trying on make-up and wanted me to put false eyelashes on. I went downstairs. Eddie Jr was flipping baseball cards in the den but he wouldn’t let me have any. Aunt Bonnie had come home and was watching the TV. It was on real loud.

  The news broadcast pounding out in colour. There had been an anti-war demonstration in one of the Midwest cities. The National Guard had opened fire and Pearl was dead. I had never met her but I had seen enough pictures. Now they had a picture of her on TV. A smiling picture, but she was dead. I kept thinking about Judith screaming and Harry getting so mad. I didn’t know what people did after their little girl died. It wasn’t what I thought.

  ‘God damn, God damn.’ Aunt Bonnie kept saying the same thing over and over, lighting one Virginia Slim from another. A kind of personal smog zone was developing around her as she watched. Then she went in the kitchen to make Sloppy Joes for everyone. I went and watched her. I sat on one of the high stools by the corner bar. Uncle Eddie had made the bar in the kitchen to look like a little Hawaiian drinking place. It was made of bamboo and had a plastic pineapple on top to keep ice in. Cocktail cabinets, full bars, drinks cupboards with ice dispensers, every house had something in those days to dispense alcohol. The Dapolitos’ bar had a little refrigerator for Aunt Bonnie’s beer and she was in and out of there that afternoon.

  ‘God, Harry loved that kid. He gave her everything he never had.’ Aunt Bonnie threw ground beef in a hot frying pan and steam erupted from the cooker. ‘Nice house, family. That’s what it’s about, right, kid? Family. Sixteen she leaves home. Sixteen. I thought Harry was going to die.’ She threw tomatoes in the pan and poured a pack of Sloppy Joe mix in from a great height. Red sauce splashed out on the cooker as she stirred. It was lusty cooking such as my mother could never imagine.

  ‘Is that why he’s so mad?’ I asked.

  ‘Harry’s been mad since Billie Blake died.’ Aunt Bonnie served up and didn’t talk any more. She just shut down into a beer can. I knew I wasn’t going to get any more from her for a while but I had a hundred questions. What had Harry to do with Billie Blake? He didn’t even like the zoo. How come Pearl left? Could you leave home at sixteen? That was sooner than I thought.

  After lunch I was hanging around the front yard when Harry came out and got in his car. I didn’t know what to say to him. His daughter was dead. I didn’t know about dead. Rocco was the only deceased thing I had ever seen and I really didn’t feel that had gone all that well. I wanted to say something but Harry was such a, well, grown-up. It was hard to imagine he had ever had a little girl. I was terribly worried that if I said the wrong thing he would start crying. Grown-ups crying was terrible. Aunt Bonnie was just bringing me a soda when she saw him. She had been drinking a lot so she kind of tripped as she ran over.

  ‘Harry, Harry, geez, Harry.’

  Harry looked like his jaw hurt him. ‘I have to open the store.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Come and have a beer.’

  ‘Listen, I went to war and it didn’t stop me getting on with my life. Just because … because there’s Commies causing trouble…’ He drove off, leaving Aunt Bonnie standing in the street. It was all very strange. Judith had arranged to take Mother to the Corset Store that day to be fitted with one of the Playtex wonders and no one said anything about cancelling.

  ‘Do you know about Pearl, Mother?’ I asked as she smoothed her hair for the hundredth time in the hall mirror.

  ‘Go and wash your hands, Dorothy. We’re going out to … it’s arranged, et cetera,’ she replied.

  Everything was unreal. I remember it seemed completely silent. More silent outside than in my house. There was no wind and even the harbour gave off no sound. I felt like I was drowning. I wanted to run away but I was only ten. Mother stood with her gloves and coat waiting by the front door. Judith honked outside in her Oldsmobile and Mother and I got in as if everything was normal. Nobody really said anything. Since lunch Judith had completely rebuilt her face and her hair. She looked as she always did — taut with make-up — yet possibly a little pale. She didn’t say anything but I knew that look. It was the same one Mother got from her pills.

  Harry’s corset and brassière store was double-fronted, with a door between two bowed plate-glass windows. It had the curious effect of making the display itself appear to have been lifted and separated. Inside was a world of synthetic elastic, the corselette and, to my mind, pain. Harry stood waiting for us with a tape measure round his neck. I didn’t know what we were all doing. Judith settled herself on the edge of a leather chair while Harry worked with Mother. Half-mannequins of women’s bodies squeezed into a variety of torture garments loomed over me. I suddenly realized why Judith never relaxed when she sat down. She couldn’t. Behind the fitting-room curtain Harry worked with his tape measure. Mother was wearing only her stockings and panties but no one seemed to mind.

  ‘You have a fine figure,’ said Harry tonelessly while he measured the depth of Mother’s breasts. ‘Hard to believe you have had children.’

  I looked at Mother stripped down to basics.

  ‘Two. Charles and…’ She waved in my direction. Harry was right. It
was hard to believe that Charles and I were anything to do with her.

  ‘I am so glad you came in.’ Harry eyed her chest professionally. ‘So many women make the mistake of not having a proper fitting.’ Harry swept off into professional patter, his voice on automatic pilot, while his wife sat immobile a few feet away. Mother tried various restraining garments and finally emerged with the beloved eighteen-hour model below her dress. She did look different. Her body seemed more sculpted. Less real. Even more unapproachable.

  ‘Be your turn before you know it,’ Harry said to me. Judith didn’t move but tears silently began to run down her face. No one could look at her.

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ said Mother. ‘I think we will walk home. You know it’s…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harry.

  We left him with his silent wife. It was warm out on the sidewalk and Mother seemed a little short of breath. I wasn’t surprised. She never really walked anywhere and now she was being suffocated by eighteen-hour rubber. We had to walk past Abe’s Ice Cream Parlour to get back so I asked if we could have a sundae. Abe was opening a new barrel of Rocky Road when we came in. There were quite a few people in the store sitting at the small marble tables. I went to order. Beside the list of flavours Abe had put up one of the Close the Zoo posters. It was the second one I had seen. I couldn’t think why everyone was getting so worked up. I got myself a coffee cone with sprinkles and Mother some rum and raisin in a cup and went to sit down. Mother picked at the ice cream with a small spoon. Even eating dessert she was elegant. The spoon barely touched her lips and there was never any suggestion that her tongue was even remotely involved. The girdle had made her even more upright. She looked fabulous and I was so proud. For a brief moment I thought maybe I could be like her. Maybe it was okay. Suddenly the place went like a Western movie. It was a hot day when any reasonable person might want an ice cream. The swing shutters at the front door parted and Miss Strange walked in. She didn’t have Mr Paton with her but instantly the place went completely silent. Everyone stared at her. Abe looked up from cleaning his silver scoop and then made himself busy again.

  ‘Hello, Abe,’ she said.

  ‘Miss Strange.’

  It was as if she hadn’t noticed. ‘Vanilla please, no sprinkles.’ Abe set about getting her the ice cream while she looked at the poster behind his head. After she’d paid she turned and glanced at everyone in the store. She looked at me and nodded. I knew I should introduce her to Mother. It was the right thing to do. To my eternal shame I looked away and waited till she had gone. We ate our ice cream and went home. Even though the girdle was good for another seventeen hours, Mother went to bed. I felt terrible.

  That evening Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Eddie took Donna Marie and Eddie Jr to summer camp. The neighbourhood emptied of children. There was just me left and I shouldn’t have been there. Pearl never came home. The funeral was held out of town in something approaching national hysteria. The Schlicks’ daughter had become a symbol for the anti-war movement and the oppression of government. On the news lots of people were getting very upset and they didn’t even know Pearl. I still wasn’t really sure what the war was about but I knew you just had to say ‘Vietnam’ and people got heated on one side or the other. Judith wouldn’t talk about Pearl because Harry wouldn’t. Sweetheart talked about her but only to Jesus. She was in and out of the impossibly white Methodist church all the time. I guessed it was because Jesus was her friend. She even stopped working as a candy-striper at the hospital.

  Then Perry came and she stopped going to church too.

  Perry was three and he was Pearl’s son. Well, he was, but Sweetheart seemed to be the only person who knew it.

  After the funeral he arrived at La Guardia Airport with a big label on the front of his coat that said Perry Schlick, 2 Cherry Blossom Gardens, Sassaspaneck.

  He was a seriously cute kid with huge eyes and a great smile. You would think Harry and Judith would have welcomed him with open arms, but there was a problem. Perry was black. He was illegitimate too, and I don’t know which was the bigger problem. Pearl had told them about him but as they hadn’t seen their daughter for four years they had never met their grandson. She had told them the father was a Negro but Harry had said, ‘That’s just another thing she’s saying to deliberately upset us.’

  Perry came at a bad time. It was the summer of the election and for the first time Harry was being challenged in his re-election for mayor. I couldn’t see how it would make a difference but, apparently, what he didn’t need was some black bastard turning up, claiming to be a relation.

  To be fair, Harry did give it a try. He collected Perry from the airport. I mean the kid was three, you couldn’t leave him there. I think when Harry went to meet him, he was still hoping that somehow the strong white genes of the Schlick family would have overridden anything black. I don’t think Father had helped.

  ‘Theoretically, Harry, if you look at this chart, it is possible that the child could be china white.’

  But he wasn’t. Whatever light you looked at the kid in, he was black all right. Now, in the world of nature, if any creature is going to show compassion then it is most likely to show it to a member of its own species. But not with Harry. Harry did not regard Perry as his own because Perry didn’t look right. Judith didn’t get a say. Harry tried to send the kid back to the Midwest but there was no one there who could take him and the airline refused. So Harry brought him to Cherry Blossom Gardens. He arrived back banging doors and left the three-year-old in the car. There was a lot more shouting.

  ‘He is not coming in the house, Judith. Do you have any idea what this could do to me?’

  ‘She didn’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Pearl.’

  Then Sweetheart got the kid out of the back seat and took him to her house. Harry never said anything about it. He just launched himself into his campaign with terrifying vengeance. Looking back, I think he thought Perry was his daughter’s final Democratic ploy. Anyway, I guess it pushed him over the edge.

  It seems incredible now that Harry thought what he did was okay, that he could get away with it, but that was then. Things were changing right across the US but the tide was only just lapping at the feet of Sassaspaneck. Since the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, forcing the desegregation of the public schools, there had been a lot more talk about black rights. In Sassaspaneck it was all theory because we only had Hubert, a few Poles and some Italians down by the railway station.

  After Perry came, Sweetheart didn’t open the door to anyone and no one ever saw Judith. Things were getting worse at home. Mother spent all her time in bed eating pecans out of a bowl. I did try to sit with her sometimes but then Father would bring home something from the drugstore for her and she would send me out.

  ‘Go on, darling, you’re getting fat. Go and run outside, play some.., thing.’

  And they would fight.

  ‘I am not staying in this hellhole for another moment,’ Mother would begin.

  ‘There isn’t any more money,’ Father would whisper.

  ‘I’m telling you, Charles, I will leave.’

  I ran a lot. Round and round the house. Sometimes I ran all afternoon and was still running when Father got home from work. He would go straight in and sit at the dining-room table. He had a large wood-and-crystal drinks tantalus which his father had given him, and he would put that in front of him. He kept the key in his pocket and if I heard it in the tantalus lock then I knew there would be no speaking to him. We had stopped even pretending to have dinner. Mother had gone mad in the A&P one day. Alfonso had persuaded her to try Italian food and she had bought the fixings for spaghetti. When Father got home it was on the table.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ he whispered.

  ‘It’s spaghetti,’ said Mother. ‘Charles, I wanted to.

  Father looked at the meal. I thought he would be pleased. I couldn’t remember the last time Mother had made an effort. Instead he said, ‘I d
on’t want any foreign food,’ and then did something quite extraordinary. He picked the spaghetti up and threw the plate at the ceiling. Italian food and china came raining down. No one said anything. Father didn’t like change. He didn’t want anything different. He would rather not have anything at all. Mother went to her room. She didn’t bother after that. Father just sat in his chair under a great red stain and drank his whiskey.

  I didn’t really mind. I developed my own routine. Lunch I sometimes got at the Dapolitos’ or made myself, and I had dinner every night at Walchinsky’s Hot Dog Stand. I took a dollar from Mother’s purse and went on my bike. The stand was across the street from the school. It had been there for ever. It wasn’t some temporary thing. It was a regular building but with a pagoda roof. Green Chinese tiles which curved up into the back of a dragon. Not exactly hot-dog-like but I thought it was impressive. Frank Walchinsky Jr was the second Frank in charge. He had left school at sixteen when his father had had a heart attack while bowling what would have been a perfect game. Frank Jr just left his homeroom, walked across the street from school and put an apron on. I liked him. He was a big bratwurst of a man with a brilliantly red face. He made my dog for me himself every night.