the summer of pear apples

“She’s that way because her mother broke her legs when she was little. And Loretta’s mom said she—mfph!”

Pam covered Maryann’s mouth, which was still moving, with her palm. “Shut ... up ... Maryann! You don't know anything.” Pam blinked twice real fast and cocked her head sideways, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath to prepare for the lecture. “My mom was talking to her next door neighbor and she said the old bat had polio. She should know. Also, Terry Quigley saw her at the Pony Store one day, and the witch scared her so bad Terry started getting a third set of teeth. Just from looking at her!”

Cindy and I watched and listened, faking belief so Pam wouldn’t slug us. Cindy looked at me and raised her eyebrows. Her face said: “This is Maryann’s house, Pam, be nice,” but her mouth said: “Gawd! I didn’t know that. We should be more careful of people.” The three girls nodded together at this remark. Pam crossed her arms and looked at me. “Whaddaya say, Soupbone?”

“My name is Lori, not soupbone” I said quietly. "Soupbones are for soup, you moron. Didn't your mother ever—"

“Hey!” It was Maryann’s dad, who had just yanked the side door of the garage open. I was amazed he wasn’t asleep on the couch, what with it being only the early afternoon. I was thinking he was probably out of beer when Pam plucked my sleeve—the group was already moving, but Maryann’s dad continued to bellow. “I just fertilized that lawn, so ya’ shouldn’t ought to stand on it right now. Them chemicals, they ain’t safe ... .” His voice trailed off as we moved down the street, but he continued to wave goodbye to us and announce to the neighborhood he had actually done something with the yard that summer. He was a nice enough guy, but a little lacking in what adults called “interpersonal and professional skills.” Mom said that meant he drank too much, laughed too loud, had no job, and had too much fun with his life without caring what others thought of him. I envied him in a way. Maryann looked back adoringly and waved at her dad.

We walked on slowly, but quickly enough so people wouldn’t think we were idle. We were always being told, especially by old people: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, busy hands are happy hands,” and all that crap. They always shook their right index fingers exactly the same way, which made me think they probably went to the same class to learn all the nuance of scolding the young. But it was a summer day, and the smell of freshly cut grass and milkweed yanked me out of any sourness I could have conjured up out of my resentment at being jammed soul first into adult-manufactured molds. Today, mixed with the scents of spicy creek plants and sweet lawn clippings was a familiar scent that I loved—rain on the way. I was sure I could smell the sun, too, and it smelled yellow to me; yellow, warm, lazy, just like summer.

The slight outward curve on our street allowed us to see which cars were in driveways or carports, and which bikes were on which porches. "Who was where" was always a subject of gossip, and if gossip were pudding, Maryann, Pam and Cindy would be as fat as my fifth grade teacher was last year; which was to say, elephant fat. Because of the curve, I could also tell which lilacs were heavy with blossoms so I could either pick them in the late evenings or avoid the bees in the daytime. I had never been stung and didn’t want to start a new trend. Perhaps I could go my whole life without being stung. Pam always said it was impossible, that if you get near flowers you’ll be stung someday. And who could stay away from flowers? Only someone too afraid of being stung.

We could see as we walked the curve in the road that David Delmonico was home. His parents never minded us much, so we stood in front of their small gray house on the corner. David threw open the drapes, then hid behind one of them. He peeked out, then snapped his head back when we caught him spying on us. He rarely came outside. His mother didn’t trust him on his own in the yard even though he was about eight, but it was because he was about as bright as a flashlight that was ready to blow its batteries. The poor kid thought everyone was nice and liked him, and claimed cars would stop when he crossed the street because he was a good boy. David’s parents didn’t come outside much, either. We were doubtful their IQs were any higher than David’s. In fact, Mr Delmonico actually said: “Derrrr,” before a lot of his sentences. But they were nice folks.

We all turned back to the inside of the little circle we made. I waved to David. Pam put her middle finger on the side of her face. David wouldn’t even catch it, let alone understand. For once I was relieved that he wasn’t very smart.

Cindy crossed her legs at the shins and pounded her toe into the concrete hard enough to scuff her shoe. She always wore stupid looking girlie shoes with lace anklets. Cindy was like a thick-lipped, blonde version of Maryann, who was a brunette. They were both thin and and graceful looking as long as they were standing still; as soon as they took a step they turned into clods. When the bell bottom craze started that year, Maryann looked like a draft horse walking upright. Cindy fell over the wide-legged pants enough that her parents took them away. They both wore pinkish metal framed glasses with pointy corners, and both had large brown eyes that reminded me of chocolate candy. I was fond of Maryann and Cindy, but Pam always managed to do an emergency personality transplant on them whenever she was around, so I was never sure if they really liked me in return.

“So. Listen,” Cindy said in her most authoritative voice. “My mom said she was just crazy.”

I kicked the sole of Cindy’s crossed shoe. “Yeah. My mom said she’s crazy, too, but that’s why she walks that way. See, she was in the state hospital and they all come out walkin’ weird. My mom should know. She’s a nurse.”

Pam grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me into Cindy. “Yeah, in the children’s ward, she said in her snootiest voice. "What does she know from crazy?”  If I had been another head taller, which would make me as tall as Pam, I’d might have pushed her back—but, Cindy and Maryann were both taller than her, and even together they never took her on when she got belligerent. So maybe pushing her back wouldn’t be such a good idea.

David pounded on the window, then shook his head at Pam. Pam shoved her middle finger into the air without bothering to disguise it. When Mrs Delmonico looked out the window, Pam withdrew it quickly and waved at David, smiling her evil I’m going to eat you one small bite at a time smile, all teeth showing. David’s mom drew her head back. It disappeared like a fox in the fog.

“Look,” I said, nodding toward a stooped figure making her slow way down the street. “You think I lie, go ask her!”

Pam laughed and pushed me again. “You always think you know more than we do. We’re older—you have to do what we say.” The others nodded, and Pam crossed her arms. “You go ask her. If you don’t, you’re a chicken shit.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me for a few steps, then gave me a mighty shove when we were within about ten feet of old Mrs Sheffield.

I was so close I couldn’t get out of it without really being a coward. It was bad enough I looked like one. I looked like what a lot of people called a pencil-necked geek—too small, too skinny, too blonde—although fortunately without the personality of a PNG. I was not clumsy in any way, had the distinction of being the fastest runner within blocks (which kept Pam from killing me many times), and I did have a few  friends. I was just overly streamlined, with a huge sway in my back that made Pam tell everybody I looked like a hotdog from the side. So, Hot Dog I was, maybe Soupbone, but never a coward.

Mrs Sheffield stopped in front of me. I looked back at Pam, but she was back with Maryann and Cindy again. They were pretending to talk about other things. Their lips were moving but their eyes were darting over to me. I knew no sound was coming out of their mouths. They made silly motions with their bodies like their moms did when they talked at the back fence. Pam put two fingers to her cheek as she “talked,” Maryann put her hand on her hip and swung it out dramatically, Cindy crossed her feet again and nodded. We used that technique all the time when we wanted to pretend to ignore someone but still keep an eye on them without being distracted by actual conversation. Maryann winked at me. Pam made a small, quick circular motion with her hand that told me to get on with it.

I turned back to Mrs Sheffield, who was now staring at me. She was pretty scary, I had to admit. One of her eyes was bigger than the other, and bugged out of her head like it was on a short spring. They were blue, but the buggy one looked like it had milk spilled on it and didn’t move much. It reminded me of the marble I lost yesterday (it was my favorite shooter, dammit). Her face was round and sort of splotched with red patches here and there, but her small round nose was kind of cute, like Santa Clause’s. She had lots of small puckers around her lips, like someone had tried to darn them and pulled the thread too tight, and had a small white scar over her upper lip.

Suddenly her head came forward on her neck. She squinted the eye that worked, pursed her lips, and thrust out her chin. Her head rotated back and forth; her eye scanned my face. I imagined a little sailor in her neck yelling: “Up periscope!” I could see why Terry got a third set of teeth.

“Well, then, good afternoon,” she said. Her voice was unexpectedly light and airy, although a little shaky like old people’s voices often are. After all the other surprises I had encountered in the last sixty seconds, though, this one made me want to throw up. No! I was not going to puke and have the whole neighborhood call me Yellow Soupbone for the next ten years. I fought it back by thinking of the scent of the coming storm, imagining myself talking through a curtain of rain.

“Uh, hi, Mrs Sheffield.” My voice was a lot higher than I remembered it.

She pulled her head back and stood a little straighter. Down periscope. “So you know me. You’re from this street, aren’t you?”

“Well, lots of us are. Those girls over there—”

“Yes, those girls over there.” She poked her finger in the direction of the Terrible Trio. “That one with the blue eyes, the stupid one who looks like a commercial for anything made in Hong Kong. Always tells people I’m a witch but comes to my house twice on halloween. Acts like I don’t know. What’s her name?”

“Pam. She goes to everyone’s house twice.”

“Mmm-hmm. Brainless little bird was shoving you over here for something. What does she want to know now that she won’t come ask me herself?”

I had to think of something to say fast, a way to lie. I couldn’t hurt her feelings. Mom always said to be kind to the crippled, and don’t stare or ask them questions. It might make them feel bad about themselves. It suddenly occurred to me that out of the entire collection of people out in the yards, I was probably the most crippled because I couldn’t move or speak. I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do to stay in the class of people my friends considered “normal,” but I was too paralyzed to run away. That must be how Mrs Sheffield feels all the time. I felt like I had somebody else’s brain for a second. In my spaz attack, I looked down at her legs.

It was like throwing a rock in the creek. Her mouth opened into a small “o” shape, like the beginning of the tiny, circular waves, and the rest of her face changed around it as recognition rippled across her face. She didn’t say anything, just stood there with the “o” on her mouth and her head thrust forward again.

I was horrified at myself. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, then prattled on at ninety miles an hour. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything, it’s just that I know Pam’s going to beat me to a pulp if I don’t find out something, and she’s lots bigger than I am, you know, and the others—”

She belted out a witch laugh that scared me straight up in the air. I shut up immediately, suddenly knowing no one was going to like me when all this was over.

“So,” she said: “the little snip sent you to see what’s wrong with me. That the deal? Now, you listen here, she’s not much bigger than you, just meaner. She’s quite small, really, when you think about it.” She looked over my shoulder and mumbled something that sounded like: “Like father like daughter ... bastard ... but none of your business, yes?”

I nodded, then checked over my shoulder for the reaction. They were gone.

“They left you to rot as soon as you looked at my legs. Left you to deal with the crippled witch. Oh, yes, I know what they say so don’t play games. Did you know I cast a spell on the little boy in this house to turn him into a cretin, and his folks, too? No? Did you know I’m the one who makes the wind blow around the corner here to knock out all the smudge pots? No? Oh, yes. That’s what happened the night when Old Rawhide hit the stop sign, you know. His old lady said so—gotta be true.”

I shook my head, hoping to ease the rising irritation she was beginning to show. “Everyone knows he was drunk, Mrs Sheffield. That wasn’t your fault. And David, he was born like that. He’s a real nice kid, though, and—”

She laughed again, but not as sharply. “Look, don’t be an idiot like the rest of those silly fillies. Let them spend their days gossiping while their nail polish dries. They want more stories about me? They can have them. We’ll keep them busy all summer, you and I.”

I frowned. The sun was beginning to get in my eyes. “So you’re going to tell me what happened to you? You never told anyone else.”

“Sure I did!” She cough hard. It sounded like bone breaking. She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder. “Go play baseball with Rick Hickman and his sister. In fact, why don’t you tell them you can use my yard to play your neighborhood games? And,” she said, periscope up: “you can eat all the pear apples you want. Take some home to your mothers, too. This year is going to be very good for them, little Lori.” She turned and faced the sidewalk again, eyes suddenly focused on a distant point as if the grocery store had called her name and reminded her that she was on a mission. She tottered along as if she had never spoken to me. “Juicy and ripe,” she sang quietly to no one in particular.

Pear apples. The coveted fruit of the neighborhood. I never understood, but the tree was said to be one-of-a-kind, a hybrid of a pear and an apple. The fruit was hard, and snapped when you bit into it, just like an apple. They tasted like pears, though, and in certain years the autumn production was so juicy that consuming them was as much drinking as eating, and you could actually splash someone if you were close enough. Mrs Sheffield always knew when she had caught someone stealing the things—the thieves would never make it out of the yard with their ill-gotten booty, and the wet chins and faces always gave them away. This happened all summer, because the fruit was constant from late June through September, usually in two cycles. Some kids who had been caught said she put curses on them, but Rick, my best friend, told me the truth—she usually sent them home with a basket full of fruit, with extra if they had brothers and sisters.

And baseball with Rick was exactly what I would have been doing if he hadn’t been gone on a long vacation. These goofs were the only ones around. So I figured I’d either have to act like a girl for a while or be eating pear apples by myself. But then it occurred to me Mrs Sheffield knew my name without asking. Maybe she already knew me somehow.

I could almost taste the pear apples a block and a half away.

Pam grabbed the muscles in my neck. I couldn’t move, and felt like passing out. No one would ever see me die in her back yard. The walnut trees blocked me from her eastern neighbors, her shed would keep the Quigleys to the south from witnessing my gory end, and Mrs Rose, on the west side, couldn’t see anything at all. She needed real strong glasses, but she seemed to think denial would work just as well as a couple of good lenses.

“Lookit here, you little twerp,” Pam said through her teeth, eyes scanning the adjoining yards. Then she looked straight at me. All I could see were her eyes. They were exactly the same color as the sky. For a moment they looked like holes. It was like seeing through her head to heaven. This was good, because I was sure she would kill me, and I appreciated the direct route. It also confirmed she had no brains, which I would report to the rest of the neighborhood as quickly as possible if I lived. I was ready to tell her this when she took a sharp breath through her nose. “You are going to tell me about the witch. You hear? Right now. Right here.”

“I ... let go! I can hardly talk, damn it!” It felt like lightning had struck my neck and wouldn’t go back up into the sky where it belonged. I squirmed.

“Fine, now tell me.” She let go but grabbed my shirt where my tits would be someday. I deserved all of this. I had fallen for her invitation to come over and play ball in her yard. Pam never played ball, just with girl stuff and her fists.

“The old lady didn’t say anything. I told you. She just said I should come over for pear apples soon, and she’d tell me her story then.” I rubbed my neck.

“Oh, pigeon!” That’s what she said when she would rather say “shit” and someone’s folks were around. I figured her mom was home. She twisted my shirt, then let go. I had just yelled “damn” in her yard (my language would certainly get worse), and I would probably be kicked out. I didn’t care—it would save my life. Her mother could smell swearing, as Pam proved once when she just thought a bad word and her mother came outside and yanked her indoors by one of her newly pierced ears.

“I swear, on the Bible!” I held my left hand up, palm facing her.

“Ha! You don’t even go to church. You can’t believe in God if you don’t go to church, and especially if you ain’t Catholic like us. So you can’t swear on the Bible or you’ll go to hell. You’re going to hell anyways, so—”

“Bullshit!” I screamed. “I don’t care anyhow. The old lady didn’t tell me anything. You can ask her. If you think I’m lying, prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove anything,” she said through her teeth, grabbing my shirt again. A button popped off and shot into the grass. “All I have to do is kick the living snot—.”

Pam’s mother opened the screen door and just stood there. Pam let go of my shirt. “I was just coming in. But I was just telling her a button popped off,” Pam said sweetly. She gently grabbed the collar. “See? Do we have an extra—”

 “You! You go home,” the dowdy woman said, pointing at me. She came outside, but not very far, looked into the other back yards carefully, then sharply back at me. “I don’t want your dirty talk around my house. Go on. Now! And Pam, you get in here. We’re talking.” She spread her hands out and wiped them on her skirt. The fabric was almost worn through in spots, which I didn’t understand because her husband made a lot of money. Her nails were ripped to the quick. I had often seen her tearing at them (and the surrounding skin) as she talked on the phone—I wondered if she had any room for dinner, with the way she ate herself. Her light brown hair was short and well combed, but thin. It blew in the breeze like dirty feathers, just like Pam’s. A crucifix hung into the neckline of her dress, and it looked like Jesus was desperately clinging to her collarbone for fear of falling into her bra. The pendant was clear plastic with Jesus painted in gold. The gold had flaked off in places, and I wondered if she ate that, too. I pictured her nibbling reverently on Jesus as she gossiped long distance and stifled a laugh by snorting into my sleeve and pretending to sneeze.

Pam thrust out her tongue at me as I walked toward the gap between the carport and the yard. Her mother was already inside. “Tomorrow, you little twerp. Go over there before tomorrow.” She shooed me through the carport with the backs of her hands and went inside.

As I crossed her front lawn, I heard a smacking sound and Pam crying. I wasn’t unhappy she’d gotten in trouble, but it bothered me a little bit that she got smacked. Then I heard her mother yell: “Don’t you bring that little heathen back in this yard again. I don’t want God to send us to hell—Hades, Hades—for inviting the devil into our house!”

I pictured her snacking on the savior again, and laughed out loud. Then there was silence, followed by a door slamming. “She’s my friend,” Pam screamed back. “God can punish me!”

What the hell is that all about? I heard some fairly bitter sobbing, some foot stomping, and a crashing sound. It could have only been her Little Lucy plastic vanity table. I hoped she broke it to splinters. That vanity was the stupidest plaything I had ever seen in my life, about as dumb as a doll.

I was still trying to figure out Pam’s defense of a friendship I didn’t think we had, when I noticed Mrs Sheffield walking home. She was a little straighter, and had her periscope down. Maybe I could get my mission accomplished that afternoon.

“Mrs Sheffield, wait up!” She waited in front of my house. I caught up with her quickly—I might have had real skinny legs, but I was fast. “Hi. Can I pull your basket?” She handed me a wire basket with wheels like all the old people had (at least the ones who didn’t have cars) and we walked to her house.

“Did you ask your mother?” she asked as we turned up her walk.

“Well, she said I can come over when I want. I don’t have to ask her every time.” It was true in a way. Permission to go somewhere in the summer meant whenever I was invited as long as I called to check in with her, but I never asked about Mrs Sheffield’s. Mom would never know I was here, so a lie never discovered isn’t really a lie. Right?

“Looks like you forgot to lock it,” I said, pushing Mrs Sheffield’s front door open.

“Oh, I never lock it. What good is a lock when a burglar probably has plenty of stuff with him to break a window? Then I’d have to pay for broken glass, too, and clean up the mess. Being afraid is good in the right circumstances, but expensive in others.”

The dusties flickered around in the sunbeams that came into her living room. There was a surprising amount of light, but then I realized she didn’t shut the drapes like my mother did in the late afternoon. I remembered back to when I was just a little kid and used to chase the dusties around my house, in our sunbeams. Back then I wondered if the rays coming in one day were the same ones that came the day before, and if the sunbeams belonged to us because they came into our house. I was so dorky when I was little. I had changed a lot.

“Here, you run out back—take this basket—and pick some of the pear apples. The best ones are closest to the house right now.” She reached into a closet and pulled out a thick-handled basket. The closet was full of them. “Go on. I’ll look up some recipes for them and you can copy them. We’ll talk about my legs when you get back.”

As I picked the fruit I could reach, I thought about just setting the basket down and running home so I wouldn’t get in trouble. I was probably late again. I could make some excuse to Mrs Sheffield later. I pictured myself meeting her on the street the next day. Oh, Mrs Sheffield, I’m sorry I just left without saying goodbye, but I remembered my mom had to take my sister to the doctor and thought I should just run home quick because I was way late ... no that won’t do ... I forgot my dad was coming home early from work and we were supposed to go to the grocery store ... no, to the meat market ... no. The brewery. No, I can’t tell her that. Even so, I could make excuses to her but not to Pam.

When I returned she had laid out some index cards and several of her recipes on the table, and I forgot about my misgivings. “Copy the ones you think you’ll like,” she said, opening the refrigerator. “Milk?” I nodded. “Good. I have some fresh.”

As she set two glasses of milk on the table, she plopped her rear end in a chair. The seat cushion complained a little and I had to snort a laugh in my sleeve. “Bless you. Well, where should I begin?” She took a sip of milk and smacked her lips. A thin milk mustache crossed the scar and made her look almost monstrous. It made me want to cry for some reason. I never cried much, but I put the pencil down just in case I had to wipe a tear off quick before she noticed.

“My mother was a kind woman and never hit me, so those rumors are ridiculous. I never had polio. I didn’t ride horses like Rawhide thinks,” she gazed out the back screen door. “So, what do you think is wrong with me?” she asked abruptly, suddenly turning to face me.

I felt my eyes get a little too big, and knew my mouth was hanging open, but I froze in that position. Again, I was crippled.

“What rumor do you believe?” She wasn’t going to let me off easy.

I could not think of anything else to say but what I had heard from others. “Well, someone told my mom you were in State Hospital and she said everyone comes out of there shuffling, so it sounded logical to her. It sounded logical to me at first. But you don’t really shuffle. I think you kind of rock when you walk. I dunno.”

“Sort of like a toddler.”

“Yeah! Like one leg is shorter than the other. Or like you can’t stand straight up, almost as if a rubber band keeps snapping your ribs down over your stomach. It’s hard to walk that way. Sometimes we kids walk around bent over slightly just playing around, to see how long we can do it, and it’s hard.”

“Yes, I see some of them pretending they are me,” she said quietly. “It is hard, you’re right.” She drank more milk. I wrote another line of the recipe. My usual impatience must have been out shopping. I wasn’t in a rush to know any more of the story.

“Well, that’s exactly what the problem is.” She seemed almost proud to have it out. “I had surgery a few years ago, just before my son helped me move to this neighborhood. It left scars inside that they call adhesions, and more surgery didn’t help. It’s very painful, you know.”

I knew something about it. Mom had told me a bit here an there about surgeries on the children in her care. “Well, more surgery means more scars, so I don’t see how it could help." She was quiet. I shrugged.

She chuckled. “Yes, I’ve come to see it that way, too. They said sometimes it helps, but I gave up on doctors. Now I just bend over a little sometimes when I walk. I like my solution a lot better.”

I realized then that she only bent over some of the time. So why did we all think she walked that way all the time? The day before she stood up straight once, and today she was walking straighter. So why did Pam bend almost to the point of falling over when she mocked the woman? An even better question: Why did we all laugh at Pam when she did it?

“So why did you have surgery?”

She smiled. “She wants it all, doesn’t she?”

“No, this is me asking.”

She looked down at her glass of milk, which she was holding with both hands. “Your friend, the dark haired one.”

“Maryann?”

“Yes. She asked the same thing. Cindy didn’t—she just said thank you for the pear apples and left as soon as I told her about the surgery. But Maryann wanted to know why, just like you. I told her and she ran out of the house.” Mrs Sheffield looked down and traced the white ring her milk glass left on the table. She put a couple of little round ears on it, then placed two dots for eyes and a half-circle smile. Teddy bear. Mouse maybe.

I was suddenly aware of the air being a little crackly. The sun had decided to take an afternoon nap. The smell of rain was a bit stronger, and I felt a pressing need to go home again.

“Well, you don’t seem like you’re afraid of much, so I’ll tell you,” she said. I put my pencil to the card again and continued writing, but it was mindless. I wrote a word slowly, then another, all the time keeping my mind on the woman and my sights on the door.

The words came out in a sigh, almost as if the problem had no significance in her life until after it was gone. “I had cancer.”

A cancer diagnosis was usually a death certificate before one even died. Her survival was like a miracle to me, but not many people understood the disease well enough to share a sense of victory with the survivors. I was lucky. My mother told me the truth about things, and if she didn’t know the answers to my questions she would at least look for them. If she couldn’t she admitted that she didn’t know, and that I would perhaps find out some day. She didn’t make up stupid assumptions based on the gossip of midwives, or on the stories from fourth-hand friends. I knew something about it because of Mom, and a shadow of guilt washed over me for an instant. It was gone like a feather on the breeze. I chased Guilt for a moment in my mind, but it was already out the door. I hoped it was going to Pam’s house. In my mind I followed it down the street, then mentally stopped at Maryann’s house. Guilt ran on without me. I looked at Maryann’s front door in the movie in my mind. The door opened and Maryann’s mother stood there shooing me away. My mental camera dissolved the scene back into the present.

“Mrs Sheffield, please forgive Maryann,” said in a sudden giddy moment of enlightenment. I felt like a ten-year-old Jesus Christ. “Her mother taught her cancer is contagious.”

The “o” from the previous day formed on her mouth again, then turned to an “ah,” as she smiled open-mouthed. “So being afraid was of absolutely no use to her, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t,” I said, writing more of the recipe. “In fact, it was expensive. Just like you said”

“How so?”

“Well, she doesn’t believe me when I tell her you can’t catch cancer, and I’m smart. Her mother calls me stupid, though, for thinking that. She says I’m so dumb she doesn’t want her daughter around me, although her dad doesn’t mind me much. So it cost friendships. Maryann can’t be friends with you, and I can’t be real good friends with her, even if her mom would let us. And Cindy, well, she probably just doesn’t understand much of anything.”

“And what about Pam?”

“Oh, they’re Catholic.”

“So?”

“Well, you’re a witch, aren’t you?” This time I was ready for the loud cackle.

So Cindy and Maryann knew and they didn’t have the guts to stand up to Pam. They made up things to gossip about, and never told Pam the truth. All they told her was stuff that would feed her meanness so it wouldn’t be turned on them. That realization made me want to cry, but I was determined not to. I was no sissy.

Mrs Sheffield sighed. “So, what else would you like to know?’

“Um, I think I know all I need to keep from getting killed.” She sent me to get more pear apples for the recipe I copied down for Mom—the five wouldn’t be enough—and we talked about more important things, like last year’s World Series, my stupid school, and growing up without dolls (which she thought was a good idea), and the possibility of my coming back often. But my future meeting with Maryann, Pam, and Cindy colored everything, and made the afternoon feel like it looked; sort of dark grey with a sickening tint of olive green in it.

I was pretty tired and didn’t feel much like running, but I ran home anyway—it looked like a bad storm coming.

The rain was not as bad that night as I thought it would be, and stopped the next afternoon. As soon as the sun broke and the steam started rising from the lawns, the Terrible Trio was pounding on my front door. I stood near a window and listened to them talk between knocks. It wasn’t really talking, but more like yapping. With the porch partly enclosed, the sound reminded me of my aunt’s three chihuahuas the day they got locked in the bathroom (I hadn’t done it on purpose, though).

It was clear the girls had been playing with whatever was left of Pam’s vanity. They had makeup and beads on, as usual, and their nails were painted. Cindy held a broken hair clip, probably one of the casualties of the Tempest with the Tea Set. Pam had stolen her mother’s only pair of good shoes, which were so big the heels dragged as she walked. The three looked like retards.

It was time to make a quartet. They’d wait all day, pounding on the door every five minutes until Mom yelled at me, so I figured I’d better get it over with. I opened the inside door and peered at them through the screen. “What are you guys doing today?” As if I didn’t know.

Pam looked at me sweetly. “We were hoping to go down to the church steps and tell stories. You know, stories?” She batted her eyes and threw her head sideways. I caught a nauseating whiff of several different kinds of cheap perfume.

In my mind I made my excuses. Okay, today I need to sort the garbage, wash the house, and I really do have to slam my head in the patio door sometime before dinner. Sorry guys, I can’t go with you. “It’s a protestant church. Are you guys allowed?”

“We won’t tell if you won’t,” Cindy said. “And you won’t, right?”

I laughed a little too loud. It sounded like a bark. I realized I was as bad as Mom in taking opportunities to go against the establishment (Dad called it ball-breaking when he thought I wasn’t around). I could probably wait to slam my head in the patio door, but I needed a quick way out of this group if it became necessary. I put my finger in the air as if I had just thought of something. Pam didn’t notice it was my middle finger.

“Hold on, though, I need to call a friend first. I promised. So don’t go taking off and ditching me like you usually do, Pam, ‘cause I’ve got a story you will love. You’ll tell this one for years.” Maryann and Cindy looked at each other, and Pam got a look in her eyes that was beyond hungry. It was lion-like, and not like zoo lions, either—more like the kind in movies you watched in school about wildlife. Real lions.

“Be right back.” I shut the door and paced the hallway. What to do? Pam was looking in the window, so I went to the telephone. I picked it up, pretended to dial, but talked to the dial tone. I said: “What do you think I should do?” The dial tone didn’t answer, but my brain did. I hung up and dialed again.

It was a small church at the end of the next block, across the street from the Delmonico’s. We waited at the corner, at the edge of Delmonico’s lawn, for the small stream of cars to pass. “So, you’re going to tell us, right?” Pam said as she reached out for my forearm. I took a step back, then another. For good measure, I edged back one more small step. She stepped forward and closed about twelve inches between us, but I was still safe.

It was supposed to happen at the church, not here! It was too soon. But I had to go with it now and hope I could stall a minute, give David time to check the situation. Given his intelligence, I knew I was in trouble.

I put on a confused look. “Tell you what? The stories about Mrs Sheffield? Sure.” I looked at the three. They were a rapt audience. Time for Plan B, which needed to exist starting now. “Well,” I said: “Maryann and Cindy already know the story about her legs, don’t you guys? So I don’t need to tell you. You should have heard it from them already. So, anything else you want to know?” Maryann and Cindy looked at me like I was about to eat them whole, then turned the same gaze on Pam. “I mean, jeeze, how do you know you can believe me anyway? Maryann and Cindy both lied to you, didn’t they? I might, too. I know what they know, but you don't. So, if you want to know something for sure, you should go find out yourself. Otherwise, it’s just gossip. Right?”

Pam reached out for my shirt, and the other two yelled at her to get me. This time I was far enough away that she missed. I let them chase me into Delmonico’s side yard, which was full of land mines, little piles of what folks politely called fertilizer—otherwise known as chicken shit—that hadn’t been totally spread yet. Cindy and Maryann wouldn’t even chance it, which made two more piles of chicken shit, in my opinion.

I ran toward the front yard, hopping or skimming the little brown moguls. Pam ran out of the shoe-boats and had to go get them. I ran in the Delmonico’s front door, as I had planned with David on the phone, then through their kitchen and laundry room and toward the back door. As I figured, Mrs Delmonico paused from stuffing the washer to watch me fly past. I knew she would continue as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on.

Then I heard pounding feet behind me—Pam was in the house! Where the hell was David? He was supposed to shut the front door behind me and lock it, and I was suppose to sneak out the back gate while the three girls pounded on the front door and tried to sweet talk him into letting them through (which he wouldn’t have done for any one of them). I also had a fiver for him.

I ran out the back door, dashed through the sandbox, an empty wading pool, and through the gate—and stopped, leaning over my toes, arms waving for balance. I had run back into the side yard into a semicircle of “fertilizer” and couldn’t get enough run space to jump it. Dammit!

Pam came barrelling through the gate like a bull moose in heat, grabbed me by the shirt in the usual place, and slammed me against the wooden fence. Thanks to her, I would not go home smelling like the ass-end of a farm animal. She was breathing like the aforementioned bull moose, trying to drill holes in me with her eyes. Those eyes said: “You’re going to tell me. I will make you bleed if you don’t. I’ll kill you with my eyes if I have to, but you will tell me the story before I let you die.”

Her freckles gave her a false air of innocence, and she looked like a sweet farm girl gone berserk from too much milking. Her hand was a claw on my shoulder, and her thumb dug deep into the dip under my collar bone. It hurt like hell, but I was not going to give in to the torture. Even though I tried to think back to the day before and scare up some sympathy for her, it didn’t happen. Her mother’s slap, her rebuke, it all seemed like shiny, white justice. Looking for sympathy for the bully was me trying to justify my own cowardice, as I always did in a fight. Not this time.

Her anger smelled like the swamp off the Maumee River. Her whole body seemed to take part in the attack, her eyes becoming harder, her free hand moving to pinch the muscles in my neck again. Her bony body looked more like a weapon than an eleven-year-old girl. The more she looked like a dagger, the more resolve I had not to tell her anything, and the more she looked like a dagger.

Being afraid is good in the right circumstances, but expensive in others.

As her nose sharpened into a lethal point, I used my new lethal weapon, the new and improved atomic bomb; Plan B; the one that came into being as spontaneously as last winter’s explosion with my chemistry set; the one that would get her every time from then on.

I laughed at her.

Sure it was a fake laugh, but the cackling sound carried across the yard, down the block, through the city, the countryside, the good old U S of A, and finally into outer space and the entire universe. The aliens on the furthest planet from Earth heard it and knew I was laughing at Pam. Her shock hung in the air like a huge apostrophe.

Then I became the only living human to witness a nuclear explosion at ground zero. She got so mad her face blossomed into a red rose. Her hands shook, her body trembled, and she screamed in my face: “I’m not your best friend anymore!” That was really funny. Pam never was my best friend. I was just the one she beat up the most. I laughed again, and this time it was real laugh, from the gut, the kind Mom called a horse laugh.

She screeched like a zoo monkey and let go, shaking her fists next to her head, eyes shut tight. Momentarily freed, I turned quickly into the back yard, slammed the gate, and shoved the hasp closed. She would either have to figure out how to climb a rough, wooden fence in her stolen hose and high heels, or walk through the manure in her mother’s good shoes or hose. She would probably end up walking through the manure. I would give David the five bucks to let me through the house and then lock the back door. This time I had a moment to find him. Either way, Pam with the blue holes in her head was in deep shit and I was free.

I was going for pear apples, and I was taking David with me. My mom, too, if she’d go.

The End