Brooklyn Story (11 page)

Hours of writing exhausted me, so I went to bed right after dinner, which was just as well the night before the first day of school. I awoke early and fussed more than usual about how I looked before heading into the kitchen to grab something on my way out the door.

Grandma was in her usual place at the stove, but I was surprised to see Mom, more haggard than usual, sitting at the table with her customary cigarette between her lips. A full black plastic ashtray sat beside her empty plate. I hated always smelling like smoke, plus inhaling it.

“Mornin', everyone,” I said. “You're up early, Mom.”

“Never went to bed,” Mom said, surrounded by smoke.

I glanced toward Grandma before responding. “Sorry to hear that. Not feeling well?”

“Since when do I?”

I pointed to the ashtray. “Those don't help.”

“Don't lecture me, Sam,” Mom said before taking another drag.

“No lecture. Fact.”

“Just the same, I don't need to hear it from you.”

Grandma turned to both of us. “Let's not start anything today,” she said. She came over to me, put her arm around my waist, and pulled me close. Grandma looked at me with soft eyes and then faced her daughter. “This is Sammy's first day of junior year. Before we know it, she's gonna graduate high school, Joan.”

Mom pulled on her cigarette, tilted her head back, and blew smoke toward the ceiling before looking at me. “Let's hope she can keep her mind on her books instead of that new boyfriend.”

“She will,” Grandma said, and then she looked at me. “Right, Samelah?”

“Of course,” I said. I gave Grandma a peck on her cheek and turned toward the doorway. “Now I've got to get goin'.”

“But you haven't eaten,” Grandma said. Mom stubbed her cigarette and lit another.

“No time, Gram. Gotta catch the early bus,” I said, and I grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter before leaving the kitchen. “Bye, Mom,” I shouted before the apartment door closed behind me.

There was a bustle of activity outside New Keiser High School as I exited my bus in front of the brick building with iron bars on its large windows. Students gathered in their small cliques and observed everyone who arrived, either by bus or the N train, which was next to the school, or by car, which the most privileged did. I could only imagine what it would be like to get out of a parent's Cadillac as some did, or own a Mustang or other hot car as some other students did.

I wasn't close to any of my classmates and wished that Janice was still in school. I felt sad that she had graduated and I wouldn't have her to lean on. As I made my way across the oval track to the entrance, I felt critical eyes on me. At times like that I feared my thrift store clothes revealed the welfare secret that I labored to conceal. My red three-quarter tight pants and white cotton scooped-neck T-shirt were passable from a distance, but I didn't think they'd stand up to close inspection. I was glad when I got inside and melted into the throng that was ebbing and flowing in the hallway. I squeezed through the crowd to my assigned locker.

“You have something good for me?” Mr. Wainright asked from behind as I opened the narrow, vented metal door.

I turned my head. “You bet,” I said. He smiled and squeezed my shoulder before he moved on and disappeared down the hall. I couldn't wait to turn in the stories I had written over the summer and looked forward to my English teacher's appraisal.

As always on a first day of school, there seemed to be a newness about everything: fresh paint and polished floors, some
faces I'd never seen before, and a different class schedule with an extra free period. Posters announced football and cheerleader tryouts, and clubs and other extracurricular activities looking for participants. I would write for the newspaper as I had since freshman year and forgo everything else, not because I had no interest in them but because I couldn't afford the few dollars it took to participate.

The novelty of a first day made the hours fly by. But as exciting as everything was to me, I missed Tony, especially during lunch and the other free times when I had time to think. The muffled rumblings of the elevated trains nearby reminded me that there was a world outside waiting for me. And Tony was a part of it.

When my last class was over, I packed my bag and reveled in being able to leave. I looked forward to getting a jump on my homework. Every completed assignment would bring me closer to that world across the Brooklyn Bridge I knew. I bolted out the front door and headed for the row of buses along the curb.

A distinctive roar that reverberated under the elevated subway platform stopped me in my tracks and then a motorcycle jumped the curb ten feet from where I stood, frozen. Tony switched the engine off, straddled the bike, crossed his arms, and grinned from ear to ear as he had on my corner two days before. I blushed, sidled over to him, and cradled my book bag.

“You look hot, Samantha Bonti,” he said. “Howz about a lift?”

I looked away for a moment. “I've got to get home, Tone,” I said.

“Sure ya do. But we'll hit Sally's first.” I didn't move. “C'mon, I'll get ya there before the bus would, anyways.”

A bike ride and a snack at Sally's with Tony sounded like the perfect way to celebrate my first day. “Okay,” I said, and hopped on. His cologne filled my nostrils.

Tony started the Harley and turned his head back toward
me. “We're gonna have to do something about you takin' buses,” he said. I had no idea what he meant, but other days didn't matter at that moment. Tony rolled the bike to the street, gunned the engine, and took off for Eighteenth Avenue.

I squeezed his midsection and knew I had made the right decision.

Tony and I repeated our rendezvous after school every day that week. He picked me up with his Harley or his Toyota and it didn't take long for my schoolmates to notice my hot new boyfriend. That didn't change my interaction with them, but it seemed I had gained newfound respect in record time.

Sometimes, Tony would drive me straight home, and other times we'd make a stop at Sally's or a fast-food joint. We parted every time with a lingering kiss. Friday was one of the days when he wanted to take me somewhere. He picked me up in his mother's white Lincoln Continental with a red leather interior and said we were headed for Belmont Park when we jumped into the front seat.

After I closed my door, I looked into the rear, where silk dresses hung along a tension rack that was spread above the seat. “You in the garment trade, too, Tony?” I asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“I know sumbody,” he said. “Pick sumthin' nice out for yaself.”

I turned around on my knees and riffled through the row of dresses. “Jeez, Tone,” I gurgled, “I'll take this lavender number, if you're sure it's okay.”

“Take whatever ya want.” Tony beamed.

I rolled the dress and put it in my bag after I turned around, and thought about all the new things I was experiencing with Tony. The Harley, Platinum, an expensive dress. Not to mention the kisses, I thought as we sped along the Belt Parkway. We were on our way to another place I'd never been and I was sure there would be many others with Tony.

Although the racetrack was on the border of Queens—one of the outer boroughs of New York—and the suburbs that were almost as densely packed as Brooklyn was, it seemed like the country to me when we pulled off the highway. A couple of miles to Coney Island, on Brooklyn's southern edge, a few times during summers was the farthest I'd ever gone from home. Tony swung the car up to the unpaved curb in front of the clubhouse and tossed the keys to a valet who ran toward him. Tony took my hand and whisked me inside.

The concourse reminded me of Grand Central Station. People—almost entirely men—hustled to and from the betting windows or pored over forms and newspapers at counters and high tables. TVs hung all along the ceiling, and a race announcer boomed from loudspeakers. Tony led me through the crisscrossing bettors to a Plexiglas window that was nearly opaque from grime and smudges. He peeled off a few hundred-dollar bills from a wad he took from his jeans pocket, handed them to the clerk, and turned to me. “Ya gotta fav'rite number?” he asked. “I like three and seven,” I said, wide-eyed. Tony leaned toward the small holes that had been drilled into the thick plastic that separated him from the clerk. “Box the one and two and give me a quiniela on the number three and five, twenty times, and put a yard on the fifty-to-one,” he said. He took his slips and put them into his other jeans pocket and then grabbed my hand again. “I'll take ya outside,” he said, and led me to the grandstand.

“Geez, Tone,” I started as we sat down and looked at the race taking place on the far side of the track. “That's a lot of
money you laid down, isn't it?” He craned his head toward the galloping horses. “I never put the milk money unda the window,” he said without looking at me. “It's jus' entertainment dough.” He leapt to his feet, as did the rest of the sizable crowd. I stood and followed everyone's eyes, which were focused on the finish line. A few people cheered raucously at the race's end and the rest tossed slips of paper away in disgust. Some walked up the aisles while others returned to their seats.

Tony and I sat down. His face was expressionless. “Did you lose?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said as he slipped an arm behind me. “I wuzn't in that race. The next one.”

“Oh,” I said. “You come here often?”

“Here'n there.”

“How do you do?”

“I'm up, usually.”

“It seems like fun, but I don't know the first thing about it.”

“You'll catch on. And ya know what else?” Tony said as he breathed into my ear. “I'll take ya ta AC someday, too. Then you'll see what real fun is all about.” I wondered how thrilling it would be to go to Atlantic City, and who Tony knew to get me into the casino to gamble with him. And then I wondered how I'd ever get Mom to agree to let me go. I don't think I'll ask her, I said to myself.

We did make it to the movies Saturday night, even if it wasn't what I wanted to see. Bruce Lee's bone-crunching blows and kicks were not my idea of a good movie. I liked lighter fare like
American Graffiti
or
Bananas
.

“Why does he keep doing the same stuff all through the movie?” I asked Tony. “Doesn't he ever talk?”

“Shhhhh!” came a voice from the seat behind me.

Tony turned around. “Shut the fuck up!” he growled. Great date, I thought. Tony's cursing and I have to share him
with other couples again. I couldn't wait to get out of there. At least I had told my mother the truth that time, I thought; we
had
actually gone to the movies. I cringed and looked down the row at Vin, Dara, Richie, and Janice. Despite her mother's objections, she had forgiven Richie after he gave her a gold rope necklace. I guessed it was a perverted sort of war medal, a Purple Heart that was supposed to take the sting out of the damage. It wouldn't have worked with me, I was sure of that, but Janice seemed content.

I felt guilty that I hadn't told Janice about Gloria, Richie's “cousin,” but what good would that have done, anyway? They were back together and I would only have gotten in trouble with Tony for spilling the beans. I supposed that Janice had been right when she told me to forget about ratting on Richie to Tony. The guys stuck together no matter what.

When we left the theater, Tony and the guys tapped fists with each other, their customary neighborhood handshake. “Later,” Tony said as he and I headed in a different direction.

They were always meeting up somewhere “later” and I'd heard from Janice enough times that they never told their women exactly where that was. The girls knew it would be someplace like Scoundrels or Spades, nightclubs where they could drink and talk business. A lot of the girls worried that their guys did other things there, too, with other women. But not me; I knew Tony wanted to be with only me.

Tony led me down the street to the Rainbow Ice Cream Parlor. We sat in a booth with a pink plastic tablecloth and he ordered a hot fudge sundae with extra fudge. I recalled all the times when I could only look into the parlor's windows and watch couples sharing triple scoops with whipped cream and wafer cookies. I was one of them at last.

When the sundae arrived, I dipped my spoon into the white ice cream and fudge and savored the treat. It was really something, I thought. I dipped in again but hesitated before
bringing the spoon to my mouth. Even though it seemed Tony didn't mind, I was not acting very ladylike. Maybe I should slow down, I thought.

“What's the matter?” Tony asked. “Don't you like pistachio?” The truth was that it wasn't my favorite and I wished Tony would ask me what I liked
before
he ordered. “I like it okay,” I fibbed. “I just thought they were pecans and I was surprised.”