Original Publication Information:
Suedomsa the Magazine April 1998 Volume One,
Issue Nine
Fiction by Andy Marx
"Woo to the Ban"
The road we walked on was a major thoroughfare of our small city. Everyone
and their drove up and down Maine Road two or three times a day. It was
the only road that led to the north suburbs and for us, it was a direct
ticket to junior high school. There is one big curve in Maine Road, just
about at the halfway point between the big Lucky's that used to be an
Alpha Beta and Tinman Town Square where they hold the annual square dance
festival every Easter. Nothing in our small town invited danger, except
maybe Mr. Hanlon's monster truck that he drives around the parking lot of
the Farm Basket (they closed it down years ago after the floods) because
he knows there are speed bumps there and He Can't Fee Them. Mr. Hanlon is
a teacher at the elementary school and they invited him to a PTA meeting.
Some parents were worried that he would accidentally run over the small
children that like to play hiden'goseek in the abandoned shopping
center.
Albany and I were walking the curve of Maine Road. This cruve was where
the power lines crossed the road. They had both sides of this part of the
street fenced off from kids who liked to ride their bikes along the dirt
path underneath the power lines. As we turned a blind corner, three
police cars, and an ambulance were taking up three lanes. In the center
of the road, a car had stopped. A woman was sitting on the hood being
coaxed by a police officer. She looked pretty upset. She had her hands
covering her face and was convulsing.
The ambulance pulled away, but the officers were still there. I looked
for a fanny dent in her car but nothing on our side looked broken. Albany
nudged me on towards school.
"It isn't nice to rubberneck," she said. Later, someone told me that
rubberneck meant to stare at a pretty girl even when she was walking
behind you so that you had to turn you head 180 degrees to look. I wasn't
rubbernecking. The girl might have been pretty. I couldn't tell. I
wanted to know why the police officer was talking to her. Maybe she
killed someone.
The same person told me that girls couldn't rubberneck. Something about
their necks prevented them from twisting their heads around and if they
tried it, their necks would snap. I didn't tell Albany anything about
this. She was very sensitive to women's issues and certainly the number
of deaths of women with their neck snapped was something Albany could get
in an uproar about. When she raered, everyone avoided her. She was mean
and her face got all red like a tomato. Then, when she was done being
angry, she'd laugh trilly and poke the nearest person with bruising force.
Her fingernails were honed sharp, although she only drew blood once. The
person moved and his skin tore.
The girl in the car accident had run over a seventh grader named James.
James was in three of my classes and I heard all about his hospital visit
the next day. He was bruised from head to toe and he might never play
sports again. This was of great concern to many of my classmates because
James was an A number one baseball player. We drew funny pictures and
wrote get well messages on a big sheet of butcher paper that the teacher
taped to the chalk board all day for anyone to write on. Just wrote,
"Someday you will play sports again." He drew a picture of a baseball
diamond next to his signature. It turned out that James never did play
any school sports, although once in while he participated in Smear the
Queer until he knees got hurt and he had to limp to the classroom.
He really was bruised all over. It looked like someone had dropped him in
the blender and pushed the light puree switch.
I thought he was set for Halloween. He didn't even need a costume.
Albany said, "That's so wrong. People dress up for Halloween to get away
from themselves. You think he wants to be remembered as the kid who
dressed up as himself for Halloween?" She patted her eyelid to make sure
her mascara was still there. "Oh yeah. And who do you want to be for
Halloween?"
I didn't know. One our way home, she asked me again, as though I had been
thinking about it all day. This is Albany being barney. We turned the
corner on to Maine Road and began our daily ritual of separation. She
lived on side of Maine Road and I lived on the other. Her mother was
concerned that Albany would get run over crossing Maine Road and decided
that she could drive Albany across the street every morning. It worked
for two days before Albany's mother decided that she needed more rest
because she was getting too stressed out providing for all her kids and
going to work. I pointed out to Albany that she was probably as safe as
any kid that crossed Maine Road. This was the truth because no one hardly
ever gave it a second thought. They just walked across and ran if a
particularly fast driver was approaching. Why did Albany's mother think
James got run over in the first place?
Walking to school was something I hated until I started doing it. The
scenery was nothing too different from the rest of the country, mostly
palm trees and ice plants. Residential houses lined Maine Road, but they
were all facing away from the road becaues they were actually built on
side streets. Basically, our view was fences, or in some areas, large
slopes of dirt.
A quick story about Albany. I once tried to call her by a nickname, but
she wasn't too friendly for that idea. I said, "Al, what do you think of
these new shoes I'm wearing?" She ignored me. I said again, same words.
Finally she swung around in a rage.
"My name is not Al. Al is some fat guy with his crack sticking out and a
sumo wrestler stomach."
I backed away. "Fine. I won't call you Al again."
"Thank you."
"What about Ban?"
She glared and started walking real fast in order to get away from me.
That afternoon she had forgotten all about the innocent comment (yeah
right, she was just waiting for some moment to spring retribution on me).
Halloween was fast approaching. I asked my mother if she would mind
if I dressed like a burn victim.
Her answer, "Burn victims across the country rolled over in their graves
when you said that. How could you possibly think that was a good
idea?"
I explained to her that I wanted to go as someone who had gotten run over,
but Albany had told me that would be in poor taste.
"Why don't you go as someone you admire, maybe a role model."
My brother said, "Go as your imaginary friend."
I thought about it some more. In the meantime, Albany was trying to
disguise her blonde hair with an assortment of strange dyes. Each day she
came to be school with a different color, first green, then a fuchsia.
Finally, after a week, her hair turned brown, - the kind of creamy light
chocolate brown. It made her hair look really smooth.
She had a good excuse. She was experimenting for Halloween. I'm pretty
sure she had no intention of going trick-or-treating as a brunette. The
night before Halloween, she was thinking about a black wig and a witch's
hat.
She told me she was going to stop by my house first and we would go
trick-or-treating together. My mother wanted me home by seven o'clock so
we were ready to leave by five in order to maximize our candy intake. It
was sort of dark by that hour.
I was in my bathroom, experimenting with my mother's make up. I smeared
some purple powder near my eyebrow, though it could not stay contained
within the boundaries genetics had set for me. The other eye got dumped
with rouge, which ended up in copious amounts on my right cheek but the
left one was speared with a tan lipstick that kind of made my face look
bruised. The final touch was my lips. I took my mother's deepest red and
smeared it all over my chin. A smudge got on my teeth and I tried to
swallow it. I gagged. I put on my jeans, slipped my white undershirt over
my head and then pulled my mother's maternity dress on top. It fit me
like a football stadium. My train extended back four feet and I had to
keep the front pulled up to keep from tripping on it. It was the only
dress my mother would let me borrow because she swore she would never have
another kid "as though two was not enough!" she screeched while I tugged
at the neckline. It was a blue dress, more like a really large t-shirt
than a forming fitting outfit.
I tied my dad's belt through one sleeve and down underneath and connected
the buckle at the tightest notch. I then repeated this for the other
side. This gave me a glimmer's hope of being able to walk. I marched
into the kitchn and found my wig that I had made myself. It was strings
of yellow construction paper stabled in some parts to a yarmulke taken
from synagogue, pasted in others and barely hanging on the top of my head.
The doorbell. I ran to answer it, grabbing my pumpkin head bag that
would act as a candy carrier.
Albany stood there dressed a construction worker. I could tell what she
was because she was wearing overalls. She wouldn't be caught dead in
anything that showed her legs.
She smiled at me, a innocent expression, and said, "So what are you for
Halloween?"
