Boom, You’re Next
Rebecca Minnich
The assignment was how do you feel when you watch a parade? Carla’s teacher had spread her arms out wide like she was hugging the whole class. Does it make your heart beat faster? Do you want to join in and march along? Patty wrote that parades are all usually pretty much the same what would be the point of marching along when they’re all probably going to end up in a garage somewhere, taking off the fancy hats and uniforms. The drum majorette’s baton goes in some dusty box along with the bright red jackets and banners. Everybody with tired feet and jostling each other. The teacher gave her a C and wrote: Didn’t you understand the assignment?
And now she couldn’t even go in the front yard because that mean kid, Monty Rittenhouse had followed her brother home, and there he was.
“Faggot.”
“Fatass.”
“Faggot.”
“Fatass.”
Eric’s three-speed bike was upside down, Eric crouching next to it, under the Japanese maple as he tried to get the chain back on.
“Why dontcha get a haircut, pussy?” Monty’s eyes squinted, piglike. He had moist, pink cheeks. His clothes were probably from last year. He seemed to be stuffed into them, like sausage in a casing.
“Don’t you have some place to go, Monty? Like some kinda all-you-can eat buffet?” Eric inquired.
“Only a faggot thinks of a word like buffet.”
Things had been better on the East Side. The way Eric and Carla dressed hadn’t been a problem. The way they talked had been okay. But somehow, out here it was different. The kids could tell there was something weird about them. After just exchanging a few words, you could see their eyes narrow, their noses twitch like they’d caught a new, suspicious scent. Carla wished she knew what was different, of what crime they were suspected. The only thing she knew for sure was that they didn’t belong. The kids in the neighborhood let them hang out in the park across the street, but didn’t talk to them. The boys would play basketball and football and Eric would watch from the sidelines, never for very long. Carla knew he was waiting to be asked to play, but that he would never in a million years invite himself into their game. She also knew the longer he waited, the worse it would be for him. She was glad she wasn’t a boy, that nobody expected her to play sports after school.
Monty’s perma-press Wrangler jeans hung an inch too short at the ankle, and he had sweat rings under his arms. One of his sneakers was untied. There were half a dozen things to insult him about, but Eric only concentrated on his bike, examining the action of the derailleur, flipping the chain from one gear to the other.
“Your bike sucks, faggot. You got a faggot bike.”
“Maybe I should shove it up your fat ass. But that would pollute it.”
Monty had been waiting for this. He stepped forward and with one huge, sunburned arm, threw Eric against the trunk of the Japanese maple. Flakes of bark fell into Eric’s hair and he stumbled to his knees. Before he could find his feet again, Monty had the bike hoisted high in the air and sent it crashing down on top of him. Eric tried to protect his face with his arms. One spoke of the back wheel snapped around his elbow and tore a bleeding gouge. There was no time to think. There was, however, a baseball bat lying in the grass a few feet from Carla’s feet. She grabbed it and came running.
“Get away from my brother, you stupid, fat asshole!”
The words were out of her mouth before she knew it. She swung as hard as she could, the bat whizzing just inches from Monty’s face. He teetered backward, his eyes uncomprehending. Carla was short and scrawny, even for a sixth grader, and to Monty, she seemed to have come out of nowhere.
Eric got to his feet and took the bat from Carla. His arms trickling streams of blood, he swung it at Monty, aiming low, so it clipped his left shin. Monty howled in pain. Eric, completely abandoned now to rage, swung again, aiming higher. Tangled in the mess of the bike around his feet, he lurched forward, losing his balance and the bat swung wide, missing Monty by inches. Monty limped away, tears streaming, cursing, swearing revenge. Their mother’s voice called down from the front door.
“What the hell are you doing hitting that boy with a baseball bat?”
“He tried to kill me!”
“Get your butts in here! Both of you!”
The living room was big and echoey since Dad had come back for the rest of his stuff. Dust balls still sat in the corner where the desk had been. With half the furniture gone, you could now see the places where the broom couldn’t reach – patches of gray dust on the baseboards. Carla felt sick and dizzy, suddenly. The floor blurred in front of her eyes and she swayed a little on her feet, her arms still tingling from the strange feeling of holding the bat. How close she had been to really hurting somebody for the first time.
“That kid was trying to kill him, mom. You should have seen it--”
“Enough! I’ve had enough from both of you. For the love of God--”
Their mother collapsed on the one remaining chair in the room and removed her glasses so she could put her face in her hands. “Please, I just can’t take it. Look at this place – will you look?” She waved her arm around the room, tears trickling from her eyes. “Your father is gone. Do you realize what that means?”
Carla and Eric looked at each other. There was a right and a wrong answer here. There had to be. They said nothing.
“It means I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bills. I don’t know how I’m going to replace the furniture. And you kids are out there fighting – I’m saying, for the love of God, we have to be a family. ” She wiped her nose and lit a cigarette.
Carla looked at Eric. Eric looked at the floor.
“Eric, are you bleeding? Come here.”
On the East side, all their friends thought they’d totally lucked out. Like they’d won the Best Mom lottery or something. She told everyone to call her Rhonda. She talked to kids like they were older than they were -- made grown up jokes and cracked everyone up. She taught them how to do old-fashioned dances from the 60’s, like The Twist. Taught them how to make guacamole.
Rhonda examined the ugly, bleeding scratches on Eric’s elbows, went to the bathroom and came back with disinfectant, a wet washcloth, and a box of Bandaids.
“I mean it, both of you. You have to find a way to get along with the kids in this neighborhood. If that boy’s mother calls me, that’s just one more thing I have to deal with, and I’m serious when I tell you, I can’t take much more.”
“Sorry, Mom,” said Eric, wincing as she dabbed the cuts with rubbing alcohol.
“Mom, that kid picked up the bicycle and threw it on Eric’s head. It’s lucky Eric didn’t get his whole head smashed open.”
“He what?” Rhonda was taping on band-aids now. She looked at Eric. Eric nodded.
“Why, that little piece of shit. What’s his last name?”
“Rittenhouse.”
“Fine - you know what? Let his mother call. I’ll give that bitch a piece of my mind.”
Rhonda was always ready to give some bitch a piece of her mind.
About the only exception to this was the new girlfriend – the whole reason their dad had moved out in the first place. Instead of giving her a piece of her mind, Rhonda just asked Carla a lot of questions. What did her apartment look like? Did she cook for you guys? What did she make? Is he buying her things?
Rhonda didn’t have to ask what the girlfriend looked like. She already knew.
After dinner, they sat together on the staircase while Rhonda a drank gin and tonic in her bathrobe. The stairwell was pink on one side and white on the other, because Dad hadn’t gotten around to buying another can of paint and finishing it before everything went to hell and he started packing his things.
“I saw them together today.” The ice tinkled in the glass as she set it down. “Him and Lorraine. Having lunch at Jim’s Diner. This damn town isn’t big enough, I swear to God. Here, let me fix your hair.”
Rhonda took out Carla’s ponytail and swept her hair back into a new one. A big chunk from the front fell out again. Carla was trying to grow the bangs out and it was taking forever. Rhonda pulled a bobby pin out of her own hair and fixed it to the side of Carla’s head.
“There. You know, we worked together on the last mayoral campaign. I don’t know if you remember. She organized the door-to-door canvassing for the neighborhood. She was over here a few times.”
Carla didn’t really remember Lorraine from then. There were so many people in and out of the house last year. Carla had practically lived in the campaign headquarters, stuffing envelopes, counting stacks of leaflets, running around, sneaking cups of sugary coffee from the endless pot in the corner. It was where she had learned how to understand grown-up speech. It was how she learned that your guy doesn’t always win the election. In fact, sometimes he gets totally creamed.
“Her husband left her, not even two months after the election. Mind-blowing. You get up from one kick in the teeth and along comes another. But that’s how life is.” Rhonda leaned against the wall, the step creaking under her butt. “So we reached out to her. We made sure to invite her to everything, because that’s what you do, you know, after everything we’d all been through together. And then to think, that whole time, she was--”
Rhonda cut herself off, biting down on the last word. She went into her bedroom and came back with a lit cigarette and an ashtray.
“That woman pretended to be my friend. All so she could get into his pants.”
Carla turned her head and rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to think about her dad’s pants. But she had to say something. It was supposed to be a conversation, right?
“Yeah, that’s pretty horrible. I mean, considering that she was your friend.”
“Yes, sweetie. It is. I can only hope to God you don’t ever go through something like this.”
All Carla wanted was to go to her room and shut the door. But her mother was confiding in her now, and that meant Carla had to do her best to try to act as grown up as possible. Rhonda didn’t confide in Eric – Carla knew that. Even though she was the younger one, she must have had some kind of special ability or something, or at least her mom thought she did. She didn’t want to screw it up by saying something stupid or babyish.
After all, there was no need to be a baby about it. Divorce was a totally normal thing. Lots of kids’ parents were getting them, more all the time. It was spreading that year like the bubonic plague or something. Carla knew all about bubonic plague now, from a book that Eric was reading and telling her about every night. How this one disease killed almost half of Europe six centuries ago. There was no cure and nobody could stop it. Boom, you’re next. Carla had been checking in the mirror every morning for bulges under the armpit, the first symptom.
The phone rang and Rhonda went to answer it in her bedroom. The door was open, so Carla could hear everything.
“Yes. Yes, I’m his mother. Who is this?”
Carla felt her scalp prickle. She had almost forgotten about Monty and the bike. Stupid to think it would just go away and be over.
“Oh? Well, let me tell you about what your kid did to my kid. No, you listen to me, lady!”
Carla got up and padded down the hall to Eric’s room.
“Eric? You in there?” The light was on, so she opened the door.
Eric was lying on his back, reading a paperback.
“You ever hear of knocking?” he said.
“Sorry, I just thought--”
“Did you know,” he said, not even turning his face from the book, “that in World War II, the United States bombed a German city so bad the whole thing just exploded into flames?”
Carla relaxed a little, leaning against the bedpost. He wasn’t mad.
“Really? You mean, like in Hiroshima?”
“Yeah, only not an atom bomb. Regular bombs. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Until it made so many fires, they made like, one giant fire. And the fire got so hot, even the bricks in the walls burned. People were boiled alive in their bathtubs.”
Carla swallowed. Her throat felt scratchy. She was still a little hoarse from yelling at Monty. She sat down on the edge of the bed.
“So… what did they do to us? The people in that town? Must have been something really bad.”
Eric rolled over on his stomach, laying the book down on its face.
“They made glassware.”
Carla tried to think of a reply, but all she could think of was people boiling alive in their bathtubs. Rhonda’s voice boomed down the hallway.
“Kids! Come on, get in the car!”
Rhonda wasn’t even really dressed. She’d taken the robe off and put on a pair of pants, thank God, but she was still in her bedroom slippers and her little lacey nightshirt was flapping around her waist. And worse – no bra. Ricky, their beagle-mutt mix ran in excited circles around her legs as she searched for the car keys.
“She’s gonna be sorry she messed with me.”
“Why do we have to go?” Eric protested. Rhonda took his hand and extended his right arm. He winced.
“I want her to see this. I want her to see what her little monster did to you. If I wasn’t already shelling out for a divorce lawyer, I’d drag the bitch to court.”
Ricky barked.
“Yeah, you may as well come, too,” she said to the dog and finished her drink. Ricky leapt with joy.
The sun had just set and the warm night air streamed in through the car windows. Any tiredness Carla might have felt ten minutes ago was wiped away. Eric was holding on to Ricky’s collar to keep him from leaning his head out too far. He’d jumped out a couple of times before.
“How do you know where they live? Did she tell you?” Eric asked.
“Tell me? She hung up on me. But they’re in the phone book. Only Rittenhouse in the neighborhood.”
“You could still be wrong,” Eric leaned back in his seat, quieter. There was no sense putting up a fight at this point.
A car horn honked as they blew past a stop sign. The tires squeaked a little as they took a corner too fast. They finally slowed down when they got to Birch street and Rhonda called out the address and told them all to look for it.
When they pulled up to Monty’s house, Rhonda left the keys in the ignition and Carla and Eric in the car as she got out and marched up the walkway of the house. Carla looked around to see if anyone was watching.
“Dang, couldn’t she at least have put a bra on first?” she said. “They’re bouncing around like…”
“Just shut up, okay?” Eric yanked the dog away from the window.
The lights were on in the house. Carla tried to imagine Monty at home. What was he like when he wasn’t calling boys faggots, spitting gum in girls’ hair, or beating the crap out of somebody? Did he watch the same shows on TV as they did? Did he have any brothers or sisters?
“I can’t believe we’re doing this – it’s so stupid,” Eric said.
Rhonda was yelling now, and another voice – a woman’s voice – was yelling back through the closed front door. Behind that voice was a little dog’s high-pitched barking.
“I’m not asking to come in,” Rhonda was saying. “I have no desire to enter your house, believe me. I want you to come out!”
More muffled shouting from inside the house, then Rhonda pounded on the door. Carla tried to make herself small in the front seat. Finally their door opened a crack and she could see a man’s head peeking out. She couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but after a minute or so, he stepped out onto the front stoop.
Carla never really could figure it out, but there was this weird thing that their mother could do. Like when there was no money left for groceries after paying the electric bill, she would get the butcher to let her have a whole chicken on credit. Sometimes he even threw in a pound of bacon for free. She’d smile at him, showing all her teeth, and lean on the counter in a way that if Carla tried it, she’d get yelled at for making smears. Rhonda could make the whole rest of the world disappear except for her and the butcher. And he was just an old guy with a big belly and blood stains on his apron, but you’d think he was Paul Newman the way she talked to him while he was wrapping up that chicken. This was kind of the way she was talking to Monty’s dad now, which was weird because wasn’t she supposed to be mad? As she leaned against the side of the house, Carla noticed a button she’d missed on her blouse. If she could see it from that far away, for sure the whole rest of the world could, too.
Just then, from behind the dad’s leg, a streak of brown and white shot out and the little barking dog was across the lawn. It was some kind of terrier on stiff, springy legs, and it was coming straight for their car, cussing out Ricky in dog language. Ricky lunged forward, practically howling. Eric pulled back as hard as he could on the collar and tried to close the window with the other hand, but Ricky was too much for him. He flew out through the car window and straight for the little terrier who turned tail and ran. The two dogs tore off down the street, their barking setting off every other dog on the block.
“Come on,” said Eric, “We got to go get him. He might get hit by a car or something.”
He grabbed Carla’s arm and pulled her out of the car. They ran down the street after the dogs, their mother calling after them -- something they couldn’t make out with all the barking.
Up at the top of the hill they could see them, still running. The street ended in a kind of cul-de-sac, and when they got to the end of it, the dogs were nowhere in sight.
“I can’t hear them anymore, can you?” asked Carla. Eric stopped, breathing hard, listening.
“They have to be close by. Let’s check the back yards.”
They ran between the houses, cut across driveways, climbed fences. They tried to be as quiet as possible, so nobody would come out of their house and yell. There had been too much yelling already for one day. Carla caught some movement from between a house and a garden shed. She waved her arm for Eric to follow. When they stepped around the shed, there was Ricky, humping the terrier with a kind of quiet, panting determination. He didn’t even notice when Eric came up behind him, so it wasn’t hard to grab his collar and drag him off.
Ricky didn’t struggle too much as they led him down the sidewalk. He seemed a little tired out, actually. Eric said he was pretty sure he knew where they were and if they went two more blocks and turned left, they’d only be six blocks from home. Carla almost asked him why they weren’t going back to the car, but then she realized he was right. The whole thing was just stupid. The last thing she wanted now was to go back to Monty’s house. So she followed him, dragging Ricky along by the collar.
When they got to Juniper Street, a teenage guy called out to them from between two garages –
“Hey kids, where you takin’ that dog?”
A familiar skunky smell emerged, as another guy, a guy with a lot of pimples on his forehead, passed the first guy a pipe. Eric grabbed Carla’s arm and hurried her along, as the two guys burst out laughing like something was hilarious, only Carla couldn’t see what it was.
It was really getting dark now. “You sure you know where we are?” she asked Eric, trying not to sound scared.
“Totally.”
But his voice was quieter and had just a little catch in it. Carla’s arm was getting stiff from pulling Ricky along. Just as she was about to hand the collar over to Eric, their car appeared around the corner. Rhonda stuck her head out the window, her hair blowing, and told them to get in. Carla let out a huge breath and realized she’d been holding it in for a while.
Whatever had happened at Monty’s house, it seemed to all be better now, because when Eric asked if the dad had really called the police, she just laughed and said that boy wouldn’t be bothering him anymore. Then she asked if they’d like to stop at Dairy Queen.
Later that night, Carla was still burping the taste of banana split as she rolled over in bed, feeling under her arm. Buboes. That’s what they were called. The first symptom. Her mother knocked softly on her bedroom door.
“You awake, kiddo?”
“Yeah.”
Rhonda came in and sat on the edge of the bed, ran her fingers through Carla’s hair.
“I saw your light on. Thought you’d be tuckered out by now.”
“I’m scared.”
“Of what, hon?”
Carla rubbed her armpit. “Feel this. You think I got bubonic plague?”
Rhonda let out a snort of laughter as she felt the place Carla pointed out.
“That, my darling, is your arm bone. The ball of your skinny little arm bone rolling around in the socket. Bubonic plague – honestly.” She kissed Carla’s forehead. “You’re a riot. Now get some sleep.”
But she couldn’t - not for a long time. Not until sometime in the middle of the night, when Ricky jumped onto the bed and curled up on top of her feet.
Rebecca Minnich grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and has an MFA from the creative writing program at City College of New York. There she received the Meyer Cohen Award for Excellence in Literature. Her writing, both fiction and nonfiction has been published in Coffin Factory, Promethean, POZ, MAMM and Z magazines, among others. She lives today in Brooklyn and teaches Composition, Creative Writing, and Literature at City College of New York. She is author of the Blog, No Life Without Books.