Now and then we had a hope
that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates.
—from Life on the Mississippi
by Mark Twain (1835–1910),
American writer and humorist
For Neil
Part 1
Quietly turning the back door key,
Stepping outside, she is free.
—from “She’s Leaving Home”
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
I wake up every morning
to Janis Joplin.
My sister, Denise, has a life-size poster of Janis—
mouth open in a scream around the microphone,
arms raised, hair frizzed out wildly,
an anguished, contorted look on her face—
thumbtacked right above her desk,
which is directly across the hall from my bed
and one hundred percent dead ahead
in my direct line of sight.
Janis is the first thing I see when I return from sleep
and reenter reality.
In a normal house, the simple answer to this would be:
close the door. But I do not live
in a normal house. I live in a tumble-
down, three-story, clapboard Victorian
where the rooms get smaller as you climb the stairs,
mine being barely larger than a closet and having—
like all the other rooms on the third floor—
no door (Dad says the former owners, who went broke,
used them for firewood before they moved),
across the hall from my sister, who’s nineteen
and who believes anyway
that walls and doors “interrupt the flow” of her karma,
and so of course this leaves me no choice
in the matter of Janis.
When I pointed out to Denise
that my future mental health was probably in jeopardy
because of it, she just sneered and said:
“Get over it, Lyza—you’re already a Bradley,
so mental health
is out of the question for you anyway.”
Whoever said “the baby of the family
gets all the sympathy”
was clearly not
the baby.
It’s been almost two years since that day,
when our family began to unravel
like a tightly wound ball of string
that some invisible tomcat
took to pawing and flicking across the floor,
pouncing upon it again and again,
so those strands just kept loosening
and breaking apart
until all we had left was a bunch of frayed,
chewed-up bits
scattered all over the house.
Mom had left twice before,
after she and Dad had a fight
over money. She stayed away overnight,
but both times she came back, acting like
nothing had happened. This time, the three of us thought,
would be the same … it just might take
a little longer.
Days became weeks. I finished sixth grade.
Dad, who already taught math full-time
at Glassboro State, started to teach at night.
We almost never saw him.
Denise tore up her college applications,
got hired as a waitress at the Willowbank Diner,
started sneaking around with Harry Keating
and his hippie crowd.
Still, we hoped Mom would come back.
For the entire summer,
Dad left the porch light on
and the garage door unlocked every evening
around the same time
Mom used to come home
from her art-gallery job in Pleasantville.
I’d lie awake until real late,
wondering where she could be,
if she was OK, if she might be
hurt, lost, or sick.
Denise sent letters through Mom’s best friend,
Mrs. Corman, the only one who knew
where Mom had gone.
Mom answered them at first, but she never
gave a return address. Then, for no reason,
her letters to Denise and to Mrs. Corman
stopped.
Even so, I had hope.
Every evening, I set her place
at the dinner table and bought candy
on her birthday, just in case.
When September came, I started seventh grade.
I kept my report cards and vaccination records
in the family scrapbook
so that when she came back, she could pick up
mothering
right where she’d left off.
Long after Dad and Denise
had made their peace
with the reality of our broken family, I still believed
Mom would come home.
I believed the way I had once believed
in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Then one day last year, I was
walking home from Willowbank Junior High
when I noticed the library flag
flying at half-mast,
so I asked
Mrs. Leinberger, our town librarian,
why.
“Charley Prichett, Guy Smith, and Edward Cullinan
were killed in Vietnam,” she said.
I knew them all—
their families lived on our end of town.
Charley, Eddie, and Guy
had graduated from Willowbank High
with Denise.
Mrs. Leinberger put her hand
on my shoulder. “They’re not coming back
to Willowbank, Lyza—I’m sorry….”
Not coming back…. Not coming back….
Her words thrummed against the inside
of my head
like the machine guns I’d seen and heard
on the evening news.
Not coming back…. Not coming back….
Like the blades of choppers
lifting half-dead men
from the swamps and jungles,
the phrase sliced through any shred
of hope I had left.
That night, I threw the scrapbook
in the trash,
set the dinner table for three,
and gave Denise
a large heart-shaped box of chocolates,
which she took down to the record store
to share with Harry
and the rest of their hippie friends.
Some nights, before I go to sleep,
I look through the lens of the
one Mom gave me.
for my tenth birthday, just to see how, when I
turn the tube slowly around,
every fractured pattern that bends and splits
into a million little pieces
always comes back together, to make a picture
more beautiful than the one before.
He’s thirteen
—like me.
He lives in a three-story clapboard Victorian
on Gary Street
—like me.
He’s an eighth grader
at Willowbank Junior High
—like me.
He’s in Mrs. Smithson’s homeroom,
Mr. Bellamy’s Earth Science,
and Mr. Hogan’s Math
—like me.
He roots for the Phillies
—like me.
He’s the younger of two kids
in his family (but his brother, Dixon, is
> a LOT nicer than Denise)
—like me.
You see, Malcolm and me,
we’ve been friends since we were little,
since the day I finally got tired of trying to tag along
with Denise and her girlfriends.
That afternoon, according to Dad, I looked out
the window and saw Malcolm playing in the street.
I went outside, told him my name, then rode
my tricycle down the block to his house,
where we played every outdoor kids’ game
we could think of:
Cops and Robbers
Red Light, Green Light
Jump rope
Hide-and-Seek
Dodgeball Hopscotch
until it was time for supper and my father
came to take me home.
“You’d never thrown a tantrum,
but that night you and Malcolm hid
under the Duprees’ front porch,
where none of us could squeeze in
and reach you. You refused to come out unless we promised
you could play again the whole next day, just the same.
Of course we promised … and ever since,
you two have gotten along
like peas in a pod.”
You’d think
with a beginning like that,
and with all those things in common,
that Malcolm and me would spend a lot of time together
at school.
But we don’t.
We sure didn’t make the rules
about who can be friends with whom,
and we don’t like the rules the way they are …
but we are also not fools.
There are three hundred other kids in our school
and as far as I can tell, not one of them has
a best friend
who’s a different color.
And so—
in the halls, at lunch, and in class,
Malcolm stays with the other black kids
and I stay with the other white kids
and most of the time
it isn’t until we leave the building at 3:05
that we even say hi.
there’s my other best friend, Carolann Mott,
who lives across the street
with her mother, father, and younger twin brothers—
Scott and Pete—
whom I still can’t tell apart
even after five years of trying.
Anyway … aside from the color of their skin
and the fact that Malcolm’s a guy
and Carolann’s a girl,
my two best friends could not possibly be
more different.
Malcolm is the quiet, thoughtful type … careful
about everything he does. If he were a bird,
he’d be one of those great blue herons
that we often see at the edge of the river,
wading cautiously on long, skinny legs,
planning his every step.
Carolann, on the other hand,
is more like those sandpipers
you see at the beach:
small and quick, always on the move,
checking out the surf, then scampering back.
Carolann hardly ever sits still—unless
she’s snacking or reading one of her mystery books:
The Scarlet Slipper Mystery
The Phantom of Pine Hill
The Secret of the Golden Pavilion
Someday, she wants to be a private investigator.
After Carolann’s family moved here six years ago,
it took a while for her and Malcolm
to trust each other.
Malcolm said she was nosy (she does love to gossip);
Carolann said Malcolm was a snob.
“He’s just quiet around kids
he doesn’t know,” I told her. But they stayed
apart.
Then one night when our family was
at the movies in Williamstown, there was a bad
storm. Two big trees and some electrical wires came
down on top of the Motts’ roof. Malcolm’s dad
was the first one on their doorstep,
offering to help. The Motts had to get out,
but they didn’t want to
split up their family.
Mr. Dupree, who’s the pastor at Willowbank A.M.E.,
asked his parishioners to set up
blankets and cots on the second floor,
and he let Carolann’s family live there
in the church for two weeks. Mrs. Dupree brought them food.
After school, Malcolm and Dixon entertained the twins
so Carolann’s parents could meet with the insurance men
and supervise repairs.
Ever since then,
Malcolm and Carolann have been
almost as good friends as Malcolm and me.
Especially in the summer, when we don’t have to worry
about school or who
sits with whom at lunch or in class,
the three of us are often together.
And whenever I’m with Carolann and Malcolm
at the same time, I become
the monkey in the middle between
a tall, shy black guy and a small, hyperactive white girl
and that’s when I feel
almost normal.
So far,
this year’s not been so great.
In January,
the North Vietnamese came by the thousands
out of the jungles
and into the cities
and attacked our embassy.
In February,
Walter Cronkite went on TV
and told everyone
that what was actually happening in Vietnam
and what our government
was telling us was happening in Vietnam
were two entirely different things.
In March,
at a Tennessee rally for peace and civil rights,
sixty people got hurt,
lots more got arrested,
and one sixteen-year-old boy
was killed.
In April,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered
by a hidden assassin
at a hotel in Memphis.
Malcolm’s mom cried for two days straight.
Malcolm stayed locked in his room
and didn’t come out
till after the funeral (they showed it on TV)
was over.
In May,
in Paris, France,
students took to the streets
to protest their government,
and nine million French workers
went on strike.
Soon it will be June,
and as we close the textbooks, take out the lawn mowers
and wicker chairs,
everyone here in Willowbank, New Jersey,
is desperate
for signs of improvement.
“Like ants to a picnic,” Dad loves to say.
And that really is how it looks
every summer Saturday
as families in cars on their way to the beach
form an endless stream—the entire length of Main Street—
smack through the center of town.
When Mom was still here, when Denise and I
were little, we used to go to the beach
almost every weekend …
stay to swim and play for the whole day,
buy tomatoes and fresh peaches at the farm stands
on the way home,
be back in Willowbank by dark. But the last time
we went as a family,
Mom and Dad had a big fight.
We left the beach early, didn’t stop for peaches
or tomatoes or even ice cream.
We w
ere home by midafternoon.
Wildwood, my favorite beach, is less than an hour away
from Willowbank …
but I haven’t been there since that day.
Instead, starting on weekends in late May,
I’ve taken to sitting on the bench
before Miller’s grocery store,
watching those same cars going home. I stare into each
and every backseat
until I see a face that looks sad or angry or both,
till I get my proof
that having a regular family and time to spend with them
doesn’t necessarily make you
happy.
Denise is scribbling this word
on her calendar
in the box for July twenty-second.
I don’t know what it means.
It sounds like the name
of some Greek or Roman queen,
or like one of those countries in Asia
that I can never remember on my geography tests.
I ask Denise, but she pretends she doesn’t hear me
and sings loudly along with “People Got to Be Free,”
which is playing on WABC,
while she gets dressed
in the layers of gauze she calls a shirt,
a too-long macramé belt, and a skirt
that’s so short
you could mistake it for a headband.
Tonight she’s meeting Harry Keating
and a bunch of his friends
so they can plan
a peace rally with the students in Princeton.
(That I’d like to see … the young geniuses of America
taking orders from Denise
and a bunch of amateur disk jockeys.)
When she leaves, I find Mom’s old dictionary
and look up euphoria.
It says: “rapture,” “ecstasy,” “joy,”
which can only mean one of two things:
a. Denise plans to leave us that day and join some flower-child commune.
b. Blues goddess Janis is performing somewhere near us.
Sadly, my money’s on Janis.
Part 2
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’
left to lose.
—from “Me and Bobby McGee”
music and lyrics by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster
sung by Janis Joplin