A pacific force in the turbulent school yard. A smiling dunce who
took the swish and smack of the blackboard pointer even on his knuckles
with a placid smile. Because I had often committed the unforgivable sin
of using big words in public, I was picked on a lot. Sometimes a term I had
used in passionate argument, “contingent” for instance, would cause such
widespread ire even the altar boys who were already practising saintliness
found ways to make me pay.
We used to play a game called boxball. It was set up like the infield
of a baseball diamond, but, of course, smaller, and you had to hit the pink
rubber ball on one bounce with your hand. A good pitcher could make it
skid and jump and go any way but how you expected it to. A fly out of the
infield was an out, so you had to cuff it with enough topspin to keep it low,
and get it by the fielders. For some reason known only to God and maybe
Sister Violeta, I was a serious hitter. This, along with my adult vocabulary,
provoked a gang of eighth-graders to stand around behind me as I came
up to the home plate we had drawn with stolen blackboard chalk on the
concrete. (It was exactly the same size as the plate on the diamond in No.
5 Park where the triple A teams played on weekends and passed around
the hat.) As the ball hit the ground and bounced, they would grab my arm
then let it go, and everyone would laugh when I missed.
After three humiliating at bats, I figured out a way to fox them.
There was no rule that said which hand you had to hit with, so I cocked
my right, but let them take it, then slapped up with my left, backhanded,
catching the ball with my stiffened knuckles and blasting it, on one bounce,
through the hole between third and short. But when I took off toward first
base, one of the boys stuck out his foot, and I fell, scraping my knees and
elbows on the concrete. I got up and kicked him in the crotch. Further
developments were curtailed by the recess bell, but they caught me after
school, and Louis, the one I had kicked, was burning my eyelashes with
the tip of his cigarette when Danny Amoroso ambled across the school
yard, smiling that mild, empty smile as he slapped and chopped and kicked
them away from me.
When he’d beat them off, he looked at me with such a look, I could
hardly understand it. It scared me. But it made me feel good too.
“Pawsy,” he said, “You have to be my best friend now.”
He always called me that, and he always smiled when he said it. I
could never figure out why, so one day I asked him and he said he liked…
adolesence
Small Change
excerpt
the janitor’s pail into Balestieri’s galoshes. And once, when she discovered
that Zaccardi had been drawing beautiful pencil sketches of birds instead
of recording her awkward homilies, she tore the page from his notebook,
ripped it into small pieces, and made him eat them in front of the class. I
knew I could outsmart her, she wasn’t that bright; but I had to make my
case completely irrefutable. Her capacity for humiliating retribution was
so fiendishly inventive I feared it might provoke my Sant’Arsenese temper,
and how could I prosper in life if it became known that I’d stabbed a pudgy
nun through the gut with a blackboard pointer?
After a few weeks of excruciating pretense I went to see Mother
Superior about my condition. She was very kind and sent me to the
school nurse, a nervous, myopic woman who kept looking over my head as
though she were waiting for a bus. When she asked me to read the chart,
I squinched up my eyes and tilted my head and pretended I couldn’t see
the third line while I memorized it so I could say it right off while partially
blinded by the first set of lenses she made me try on.
And so I was given a pair of spectacles, ugly things with wire frames
buried in transparent orange plastic. They made me dizzy, but after a while
I got so I could wear them most of the day without throwing up, though
the world they showed me looked like it was ten feet under water. I was
ecstatic. Phase one of my plan had gone off without a hitch, if you don’t
count the fact that the boys in the schoolyard at recess called me foureyes
and celebrated my new status by knocking my glasses off then tossing
them around while I pretended to be half blind, clawing the air wildly and
whining pitifully till my shameless pleading disgusted them and they gave
up.
Because I had practised at home, I read the Italian book now like
an angel, though I could only see blurred smudges on the page. Those silly
little paragraphs about Coniglio and Orso and other animals rolled off my
tongue. But I could honestly say I had some trouble reading the blackboard.
One day after school, I explained to Sister Miranda that I suffered from farsightedness,
and asked her again if I could have the empty seat beside Rita
McCrae. She looked at me with a shrewd expression and her small eyes
seemed to glitter. She said that since I was doomed to carry the outward
sign of my spiritual imperfection around on my nose for the rest of my
life, it would be uncharitable not to grant such a modest request, though
she warned me that I should expect no special privileges because of my …
Small Change
I had to climb up on a stool, and shout at Gioffo, who looked busy and irritated to see me there at this time of the night and it took him a while to come around to where I was and he squinted down at me and he said, for the others, “’ey, the kid’s buyin!” Some of them thought it was funny but most of them didn’t even pay attention and he looked down at me like he couldn’t figure what the hell, and I said, in a high, squeaky voice, Pasquale wants four cans of Ballantine’s and I put the crinkled bill on the wet bartop. Gioffo scratched his beard. He looked confused.
“You sure, kid? Pasquale don’t like Ballantine’s. Look, I’ll give you a draft, you can bring back the pail tomorrow.”
It made perfect sense, but it set me off in a panic.
“No, no. Everybody’s there. He wants Ballantine’s. For the guys, ya know?”
Gioffo nodded. “O. K., boyo. Now I’m gonna put an opener in the bag, but take care you don’t drink one on the way.” And he winked at me, and I felt my stomach sink and a few of the men laughed half-heartedly and I took the paper bag and slipped down off the stool and scuffed out through the sawdust into the summer night.
The first thing I wished was that I had another Spud menthol. I tucked the bag under my arm and felt the cold cans through the brown paper numbing my skin.
Part of me knew that Pasquale had nothing to do with this. But suppose he did? I was making movies in my head when Joey came up to me. I hadn’t seen where he came from. He was friends with my older cousins, maybe he had been inside. Maybe he was having drinks with my nonno, how did I know? So what was all that winking and yelling about?
I was on the right track and would have understood eventually, but my fantasy of riding for Wells Fargo took over. I imagined that the loud talking was just bragging about my legendary skill as a rider over dangerous terrain. Or, to put it another way, Joey was letting everyone know that I was the best beer delivery boy on the block.
By the time I straightened this out, I was very near home. I pushed the front gate open and walked carefully toward the glowing windows.
I stood in the dark vestibule and the sweat on my face turned cold. Should I knock? Should I get the hell out of there and go to the park?
I opened the door and barged in like I always did. After a while they noticed me.
Small Change
He took a left hook on the ear and grabbed the rope of holy
beads around her waist, ripping them apart and kicking her feet out from
under her. As she fell, the Giant fell with her, driving his knee into where
her private parts would be if nuns had such things. And I guess they do,
because she let out a yelp, and clapped her palms against his large, doughy
ears. It stunned him, but he kept pushing his body against hers.
Most of us were convinced that she had already vanquished the
Giant and reduced him to a helpless twitching heap even though he was
still on top of her. But Sammy couldn’t stand it any more. He started a left
uppercut from his ankles and snapped the Giant’s head back, rolling him
off of Sister Margaret and onto his back in the sun. We all cheered.
Sister Margaret looked a little the worse for wear as she pulled
her ironed pleats from under the Giant and regained her feet. She dusted
herself off, then started to say something to Sammy. I figured she was
going to tell him she had it covered and didn’t need his help, but she rearranged
what was left of her broken rosaries, then looked up again. Her
lips were tight for a moment then they relaxed into that lopsided grin. All
she said was, “I owe you one.”
It was different between them after that. Sometimes she had to ask
him to stay after school to clean the blackboards or empty the wastepaper
baskets. And sometimes there was a look that passed between them, a
smile of the eyes, an acknowledgement of their new equality. But Sammy
won the spelling bee that year, and even though he was no longer delirious
about Sister M, if you tried to get him on your side about some of her
bitchy behaviour, he’d bristle and warn you off with those black eyes.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 