In the Country of Queens Page 5

Then without saying another word to the other, both cousins enjoyed generous slices of pineapple upside-down cake, Aunt Claire’s specialty, along with milk in fancy crystal glasses. Shirley often wondered how Anna, having a sister like Aunt Claire, who made everything taste delicious and look so pretty you thought you were eating in a restaurant, could scarcely boil water.

  When dinner was done and all that was left was grown-up talk, the kids, with the exception of Laurel and Ruthie and Esther and Arlene, who were at different stages of teenagerhood and liked to listen to the gossip, all left the table. Shirley slipped outside through the basement door, hoping no one (namely Phillie) would notice.

  She stood in the driveway, pulled the blue ball from her pocket, and started throwing it against the brick wall of Aunt Claire’s attached house. Throw-catch, throw-catch, throw-catch.

  But then Phillie, who had been watching from behind the neighbor’s bushes and trying his best to respect Shirley’s bad mood and her silence for as long as he could, sprang out. Playfully attempting to steal the ball, he shouted, “Boo!”

  Shirley merely said, “Thanks a lot for not telling me that I have no father when you knew all along that I didn’t, traitor.” Then she added, “Some best friend you are.”

  “How do you know I know?” Phillie asked, acting as if he didn’t.

  “You told me Aunt Rosalie thought I was a poor girl,” said Shirley. “Why else would you say that?”

  “The thing is, no one knows I know,” said Phillie, rubbing the wart on his left hand, a thing he did whenever he was uneasy about something. “I overheard Grandma and my mom talking once about how sad it was that your dad died of a broken heart in a taxi. And how your mom didn’t want you to know because you were only a little kid.”

  Shirley said, “I am not your best friend anymore, Phillip Barrett. Best friends tell each other everything. Especially important, life-affecting things like ‘Your father is dead, Shirley Burns. You can stop hoping that he is ever coming back, starting now.’ What was so hard about that? Kindly inform my mother that I have gone home.”

  Before Phillie could answer, Shirley turned on her heels and started walking past Aunt Claire’s down-the-street neighbors: Helen Katz, sitting inside her fancy air-conditioned glass porch amid bags of hand-me-down clothes intended for people like Shirley (and Phillie, who also wore undershirts that said HELEN KATZ even though he was a boy); Freddie Reese, posing like an actor atop the new motorcycle in his driveway; and Mrs. Septimist, whose name Grandma could never pronounce correctly, rocking in one of those metal porch chairs.

  Shirley skillfully bounced her ball on the sidewalk as she made her way back to Sparrowood Gardens, taking care not to let the ball hit a crack or a stone that would cause it to fly out of her reach and into the street.

  Because Anna and Grandma were still at Aunt Claire’s and the Sparrowood Gardens rental office was closed, Shirley had to find Luke to unlock their door with his master key. She was a little afraid that Luke might not be home. Then what would she do? Luke’s apartment was in the basement next to the laundry room.

  “Hey, Luke!” Shirley shouted through the open window. “Hey, Luke! Hey, Luuuuuuke!”

  “What can I do for ye, missy?” Luke finally answered in his familiar, kind voice with the Scottish accent.

  After Shirley explained, Luke accompanied her to her apartment, where he opened the door and waited in the hallway while Shirley switched on the lamp in the living room.

  “Will ye be okay now, missy?” Luke asked. When Shirley said she would, he added, “Good night to ye, then.”

  “Thanks for everything, Luke,” Shirley said. “Good night.”

  * * *

  As she brushed her teeth, Shirley thought about Grandma’s accent, so different from Luke’s. When I grow up, she decided, I will learn more Russian at a school where a perfect teacher like Mrs. Greif will be nice to me if I try hard.

  Shirley settled into bed with Pippi Longstocking and soon heard the click of the key in the lock telling her that Anna and Grandma were home from Aunt Claire’s. Her heavy eyelids closed.

  When Anna came into their bedroom to check on Shirley, she turned off the lamp, pulled the venetian blinds closed, returned Pippi Longstocking to Shirley’s bedside table, and kissed her cheek. “Good night,” Anna whispered. “Iloveyou.”

  I love you, too, Shirley thought, but was too tired to say.

  Then Anna took her own nonlibrary book to the bathroom, where the bright overhead light allowed her to read without disturbing Grandma or Shirley while they slept.

  Chapter 7

  MINDING EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS

  The sun had barely risen over Sparrowood Gardens when Hurricane Anna began whipping from room to room collecting the past week’s dirty laundry. She wanted to be first in line to nab two working washing machines before it got to be as busy as Grand Central Station down in the laundry room.

  Grandma used to do their laundry on Thursdays, but she’d gotten fired the previous week for turning Anna’s favorite white blouse pink when she forgot to remove her own flowery red underpants from the light-colored wash.

  “Let’s go, Shirley! No time for dawdling,” Anna yelled from the doorway of the bedroom. “Hurry up and get dressed! We have a lot of work to do. Remember, it’s Father’s Day, too. When it rains, it pours.”

  Shirley knew that Anna was referring not to the weather, but to the number of things that had to be accomplished before dinnertime, when her friend Hal would arrive. She wondered if Anna would make her give Hal a Father’s Day card.

  “I’m glad it’s sunny,” said Anna, “so we can hang out.”

  Shirley figured that hanging out had everything to do with laundry and nothing to do with hanging around shooting the breeze in what little breeze there was today, if any.

  Anna stripped the beds and gathered the towels, washcloths, underwear, blouses, socks, pajamas, shorts, and dresses.

  “Can you lend me some quarters?” she asked Shirley. “I don’t have any change.”

  Shirley complied. Then she watched as Anna, in a frenzied fit, looked down at her watch to assure herself that she would be first when Luke unlocked the laundry room door at eight.

  Shirley, still in her pajamas, sighed as she stared out the window at the playground beyond the big crab-apple tree. There were two squeaky green seesaws, four swings (one with a dangerously dangling crooked seat, another that gave you splinters on your rear right through your pants, all with rusty chains), and the long metal slide that burned your thighs if you were dumb enough to slide down in the heat of a late afternoon in shorts.

  Shirley saw Mrs. Goodman and her little boy, Markie, already outside on this stifling early-summer morning, digging in the same sandbox that Shirley had once seen Monica Callahan pee in when she couldn’t be bothered going home to do it.

  Shirley changed into her clothes and wondered why she needed to go with Anna to the laundry room. But not for long.

  When they arrived, they discovered that Mrs. Goodman had actually been there first—Markie’s bedsheets, cloth diapers, and baby clothes were swishing around in the best machine. Apparently, Luke sometimes opened the laundry room early on Sundays without asking Anna’s permission.

  “Watch closely, Shirley,” said Anna as she began to scrub the inside of another machine in an effort to eliminate every germ known to womankind using a holey undershirt that had once belonged to Helen Katz. “Here.” Anna handed Shirley another well-worn Helen Katz undershirt so Shirley could perform the identical scrubbing technique on another washing machine. Once they were done, Anna dumped their whites into one machine, the darks in the other, and said, “I want you to stay down here until the machines stop spinning to make sure no one takes out our clean wash with their dirty hands and puts it on the dirty table.”

  Anna’s chin pointed first to the square Formica table that had a stray blue sock on it, along with a wad of reddish lint and a partially sucked-on purple lollipop, and then to the long, hard woo
den bench, newly painted apartment-green, where Shirley was to sit while she waited.

  Her mother was treating her like a grown-up for once in her life. None of the other kids Shirley’s age ever came near the laundry room except to roller-skate. Or to play spin the bottle.

  “Doing the laundry is not to be taken lightly, you know,” said Anna, continuing to explain the newly assigned Sunday duty to Shirley. “When the machines stop spinning, please put the wet laundry in the basket and carry it to the clothesline. I will meet you there in exactly twenty-eight minutes to show you the right way to hang it. There is just enough time between now and then for me to clean the bathroom for tonight—and to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”

  When Mrs. Goodman and Markie came back into the laundry room, Shirley politely said hi. She liked Mrs. Goodman, and she loved Markie as much as she loved all babies.

  Shirley blew Markie’s pinwheel around, making him laugh, while Mrs. Goodman transferred her wet laundry to the dryer. Shirley guessed Mrs. Goodman wasn’t hanging her wash outside because it was too hard to keep an eye on Markie at the same time. Shirley knew her mother didn’t approve of her babysitting (“We don’t do those kinds of things, Shirley”), so Shirley didn’t offer to watch Markie now, even though she would have loved to chase him around the playground.

  “Anytime you are ready to babysit,” Mrs. Goodman told her again, “I would gladly pay you the going rate. You are a very responsible girl, Shirley—and Markie adores you.”

  What is my problem? Shirley asked herself. Why can’t I just tell Anna that I am going to babysit? She can call Mrs. Goodman’s house whenever she wants to see that I am still alive.

  Grandma’s friend Augusta came into the laundry room and dumped her wash into the last empty machine. “Say hiya to your grandma for me, okay?” she said as she was leaving.

  “I will,” said Shirley.

  When Mrs. Goodman took Markie outside to play on the swings, Shirley sat on the bench and listened to a washing machine rinsing, leaking water from its rusty bottom out onto the floor—drip, drip, drip—and to the metal buttons of Markie’s overalls clinking against the sides of the dryer—clink, clink, clink.

  The belowground laundry room, usually the best place to be on a humid summer day, felt unbearably hot all of a sudden: hot water, hot pipes, hot motors, hot dryer drums, hot air wafting in from outside. It was so hard-to-breathe hot that Shirley had to fan away the sweat on her face with her hand.

  Shirley’s eyes landed on the purple lollipop. She got up and threw it into the trash can, thinking Markie might try to suck on it. She sat back down and nervously played with a cuticle on her thumb until it bled. Then she licked it. Gross, she thought. She swung her Keds back and forth underneath the bench, wishing she’d brought a book, and checked her watch to find that barely two minutes had gone by, then three minutes when she heard someone shout.

  “Hey, Shirley! Grandma told me you’d be down here. Look what I have!” The kickstand of Phillie’s bike scraped the cement floor as he swung his leg around and splashed his black high-top Converse sneakers into a puddle of suds.

  Shirley’s heart thumped. Not because she was startled at the interruption, but because she was actually happy to see Phillie. In spite of herself.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, trying to sound mad, because she still was. But she was also interested to see what Phillie had. She noticed he was wearing a blue polo shirt with all the Barrett kids’ names printed in a continuing unbroken line across the front:

  LAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTTLAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTTLAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTTLAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTTLAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTT

  Of course, there was no SHIRLEY, even though she always pictured her name there in the age-appropriate spot—after the STEVE and before the PHILLIE. Uncle Rod had made the shirts at his printing job.

  Phillie reached into the left pocket of his shorts and pulled out some bubble-gum cigars—one pink, one yellow, and one mint green—that Shirley knew he’d received as part of his pay from working at Red’s Variety Store that morning, compiling sections of weekend newspapers: the New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, and the Mirror.

  “Ta-da!” Phillie said with a flourish, holding the gum in front of Shirley’s nose so she could smell the enticing, artificially delicious flavors right through the wrappers. Then, sensing a slight change in his cousin and best friend’s attitude, Phillie pulled out a thick wad of dollar bills from his back pocket. “My stash of cash,” he told her.

  Phillie was a saver, too.

  Phillie and I are so much alike, Shirley thought. The difference between them was their mothers: Anna, who wouldn’t let Shirley make any money babysitting, and Aunt Rosalie, who had so many kids that she couldn’t keep track of each one every second. So many that Phillie could go around his neighborhood asking people if he could paint their houses, shovel their snow, rake their leaves, or even trim their trees because Phillie wasn’t afraid of climbing high up on a ladder. All at the ripe old age of eleven—just three months younger than Shirley, to be exact—without anyone ever telling him that he needed to be safe at home. Phillie even had a business. It was called Barrett Enterprises.

  “I’m saving for an Aurora Road Race set, and I’m almost there,” Phillie announced. “You can help me pick it out.”

  Shirley made herself look away.

  But Phillie didn’t give up so easily. “I made a table for it in the basement right near Harry’s fishbowl so he can watch the cars go around the track. I want to buy it before we go to Lake Winnipesaukee. Hey, Shirley, are you listening?”

  Shirley didn’t answer.

  Next Phillie said, “Want to go to the park and play tennis? We can chew gum and blow bubbles while we ride our bikes there. See? I brought my tennis racket. I’ll even let you beat me.” Phillie pointed to the space behind the seat of his bike where the racket was wedged in. “And,” he added, rubbing the wart on his left hand, “I should have told you about your father. I’m really sorry. Cross my heart and hope to die.” Phillie made a big X with his pointer finger close to the middle of his LAURELRUTHIESTEVEPHILLIESCOTT shirt.

  “Don’t let it happen again,” said Shirley. She could never stay mad at Phillie for very long.

  Shirley reached for the yellow bubble-gum cigar because it tasted like banana, her favorite. Fortunately, Phillie liked everything green, so there was no argument. He put the pink cigar back in his pocket for later, along with his money. Shirley smiled. She bit off the top of the yellow cigar and savored the taste of fake banana. Phillie, on the other hand, put the entire cigar between his lips as if it were real. Shirley would have none of that real-cigar stuff because of Hal.

  “Thanks,” she told Phillie, “but I can’t go yet because my mother told me that I have to hang out the wash this morning since Grandma is not doing it anymore.”

  The washing machines stopped. Shirley carefully pulled their laundry out and into the waiting plastic basket.

  When Hurricane Anna came whipping around the doorway, Shirley quickly pushed the rest of the banana bubble-gum cigar into her back pocket and swallowed the piece in her mouth. But not quickly enough.

  “Are you eating candy before breakfast?” Anna asked. Then, “Why weren’t you at the clothesline, Shirley?” To Phillie, she said, “Hi, Phillie. You can have breakfast with us after we’re done.”

  “Okay, Aunt Anna,” Phillie said cheerfully. He wheeled his bike up the ramp of the laundry room behind Anna and Shirley, then headed to the playground, where he could watch them.

  Shirley knew he wouldn’t mess with Hurricane Anna for all the bubble gum in Canada, which was where the cigars were made.

  First, Anna wrapped an old washcloth around the clothesline and held on to it as she walked from one end of the metal post to the other; then she walked back again for good measure.

  “Look at this filth,” Anna said, unfurling the washcloth to reveal a black, ropelike impression of dirt. “Now you do
it.”

  Shirley, who could barely reach the top of the clothesline, walked on tiptoes from one end of a different line to the other and back again for good measure. She opened the washcloth to reveal the dirt she’d wiped off.

  “See?” said Anna.

  Shirley beamed. Compliments from her mother, even offhanded ones, were hard to come by.

  Anna continued, “Shake everything out first, Shirley. Don’t let the sheets or towels touch the ground, even for an instant; hang the blouses by their collars, the shorts and Grandma’s underpants by their waists, the socks by their tops so the foot parts are sure to dry; don’t fold the pillowcases over the top of the clothesline, because then you’ll have to put your face on a deep wrinkle which, in turn, will give your cheeks deep wrinkles when you wake up. Dresses get hung by their shoulders.”

  As if the laundry were people, Shirley thought.

  “I don’t iron sheets, pillowcases, or your grandmother’s hankies,” Anna rattled on. “I do iron blouses and dresses, but I won’t have to if you hang them up right the first time.”

  Anna watched while Shirley hung. She made Shirley start again when a pair of shorts wasn’t pinned just right. Anna didn’t use the straight wooden kind of clothespin that could pop off and allow the clean sheets to drag along the ground. She preferred the more reliable plastic kind that came in all colors and had a spring that kept snapping shut on Shirley’s fingers.

  Shirley could see Phillie swinging on one of the good swings in the playground. He was going so high that the chains on either side of the swing lost their tautness and Phillie’s feet almost touched the top of the thick steel bar from which the swings swung. The hanging out couldn’t be over fast enough.

  Finally Anna gave her approval.

  “Phillie, I’m done!” Shirley called.

  But Anna wasn’t. Not quite. “I’m taking the basket home with me, Shirley, so no one will steal it and so it won’t get dusty or soiled by a pigeon before you need it again this afternoon, when you will please take the dry wash off the lines, fold it all neatly, and put each clothespin back in the clothespin bag.” Then she relented a little. “Grandma is making breakfast, so you and Phillie should come inside soon.”