Chapter 9C

Easter Sunday, 1956.

I knew the paper that day would be no larger than a regular daily. I told my stepdad I could handle the load with my Schwinn.

The Easter edition was so slim that the entire load fit into my front basket, and I pedaled up the big hill on Given Avenue at a brisk pace with nominal effort.

As I rounded the hill and turned to roll into the long downgrade that led to my route, a thin snow flurry began. Spare, tiny flakes floated lazily down to white-frosted lawns and rooftops. I felt rather heroic. I had become attached to the hill I'd conquered over the past six months and to the bloated carrier bags that I now slung around my back and shoulders with routine nonchalance. I had not grown taller, but from the way I was climbing that hill every day and the way I handled multiple deliveries on the big hill at the top of Exchange Street on Saturdays, I had grown in strength and endurance. I felt I had learned the message behind Pogo's little joke, which I had seen not long ago in the Sunday comics: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" My physical limitations were my major enemy. I felt that if I could not overcome them, then I must develop effective workarounds.

Adults were, if not inimical, untrustworthy at best. My peers and those who were slightly older had gone Brando, all in upturned collars or black motorcycle jackets and t-shirts. Boys my own age, nearly fourteen, began outpacing me physically; I watched them grow taller, while I stayed where I was. I had been tall at twelve or thirteen; but I could see that at fourteen I would be below average in size. Even in the winter cold I would sweat bullets when delivering the heavy orders on Saturdays in the project, while bullnecked Charlie performed the same feat without even breathing hard.

As the Easter flurry advanced slowly into light snowfall, I sat on a customer's front porch away from the chilly wind and rubber-banded my goods. After a long winter, mornings were breaking earlier. In the early hush, the sky slowly brightened into a warm greyish glow. The Easter edition would be an easy throw; people would be waking later than usual. I could afford, for once, to relax. Unrushed, I lapsed into one of my most dangerous habits: thinking. I recalled the day a few weeks earlier when Tony mentioned that I'd saved up enough to buy a small motorcycle, for which I could legally obtain a license on my fourteenth birthday. But I preferred to stay with my Schwinn. Besides, the money saved by not buying a motorbike would be more useful when I could finally visit New York.

Keeping busy, making my own breakfast seven days a week, spending Sundays at the Tremont and several evenings each month making door-todoor subscription collections on my route -- all of it left me more isolated from my parents and sister, and from acquaintances. I was only dimly aware of Mom's next pregnancy, which produced a baby half brother they called Tony Number 2 a few weeks before Easter. Naturally, everyone's attention shifted to him.

Keeping two jobs had cost my participation in plays at school. It was physically impossible for me to do it all, considering how much harder my relatively small frame had to work to accomplish the same thing that others seemed to manage with less effort. But if I kept working and building myself up, I thought, then a later day might find me doing plays again as well as everything else.

The fact that I was now wearing eyeglasses had been a major setback, leading me to believe I was somehow defective. An eye test at St. Michael's in February revealed that my vision was far from perfect. A few weeks later, Mom took me to an optometrist.

The following week, we returned from his office with my new eyeglasses.

"How long will I have to wear these things?" I asked Mom petulantly as we were riding home with the plastic framed monstrosity on my face.

"If you're like most men on your side of the family," my Mom replied, unaffected, "you'll probably have to wear them the rest of your life. At least when you read, anyway."

This depressing thought sent a chill up my spine. For days I would stop at every reflective surface I passed and readjust the frames, to no avail. They hurt my nose. They burned behind my ears. They never seemed to sit neatly on my face. My mother's lack of concern didn't help. Nor did the kids at school, who started calling me "four-eyes" and "spec". Kids who wore glasses on tv and in movies were always portrayed as anemic, brainy misfits. The glasses made me feel ugly and deformed. I hated them.

That Easter morning I carried, safely hidden in a zippered pocket inside my quilted carcoat, the latest of three letters from Martha. I kept her mail in a folder with my schoolbooks, not because they contained intimate material, but because I never wanted them to be considered part of the garbage my parents would force me to discard. Sitting on a customer's front porch after preparing my papers, I leaned back against the stuffed bag and gently opened the white envelope from New York. She used plain unlined paper. I marveled at the way she wrote in almost perfectly straight lines.

Martha. She had an address in Manhattan on East 87th Street. "It's the East Side," she wrote, "but definitely not a ritzy block. The building is a hundred years old. It's a walkup, which to you tourists means no elevator. It's an old building with very small apartments. Over the years the newer buildings just grew up around this block. It's so old, the shower is a stall in the kitchen, because the building was here before indoor plumbing was common. Has hot water, though--at least it's not a cold water flat, like the building next door to mine. The apartment even has nicks in the walls that hold the old fashioned oil burning lamps that were in here before electricity was installed. It has a small living room, and a really tiny fireplace that actually works.

"I have been teaching kids your age who are just about the most brilliant boys and girls I ever met. Of course, you're just as smart as most of them. What many of them lack, though, is your sensitivity, and your creativity. Some of them are not bright at all, but just problem children whom it seems I can't help much. I hope I can learn to work with them, they've led such hard, often cruel lives. Some conditions in the neighborhoods where these children live can be described only as real life nightmares.

"Which reminds me: I hope you are not having that same old dream. I wish I knew what it meant. If it happens again, please try to describe exactly what it is that happens in your dream, how you feel and what you're thinking. But I hope the dream hasn't come back. I hope you are well, and happy, and growing, and learning. Please don't wear yourself out with all that work; your school is the most important thing, and your well being."

Although I had read the letter a thousand times, I could read no further that morning. I wiped my eyes dry, replaced and aligned my specs, and hid the letter inside my coat. Standing, I slung the heavy bag over my shoulder and started on my way.

I had written her several times. I had not told her much about myself, except for the jobs. I hadn't told her that the reason I was working so hard was because I wanted to come to New York and see her, and I wanted to do so more than once. I didn't tell her about my dream, my parents, my loneliness, or anything else about my inner life. I didn't want her to worry. Above all, I didn't want her to see my failings. Therefore, I didn't tell her about the glasses. I didn't tell her that I had not grown taller.

Someday, soon, I knew I'd have to ask her if I could see her in New York. I wondered if she would refuse. She was in a truly different world now. Had she fallen in love with someone? Surely, with her looks and her charm, she must have met someone in a big place like New York City. Each time I read her letters, I wondered how much she didn't reveal. I wondered, as I walked through the waxing snowfall that Easter, if, when I asked her about going to see her, she would then be forced to tell me that she had someone and that it wouldn't be a good idea for me to show up. Or if she had met someone and I did visit, what would I do when she introduced her boyfriend? And if she indeed had a boyfriend, why was I breaking my back for the money to visit her? What would be the point?

Martha, I thought as I walked along with my carrier bag slapping my hip. Snowflakes smashed silently into my new lenses. Martha Jane.

Just after Easter I woke up one morning with a burning pain in my side and tummy, and a heavy twinge of nausea. Luckily the paper load was light that day and the weather mild, but as I finished and was on my way home I still sensed a creepy nausea. Except for a bout with the 'flu, I had never been so sick.

When Mom saw that I was still in bed at breakfast time she asked what was wrong. I told her I didn't feel I could handle the ride on the school bus without throwing up. She shoved a thermometer in my mouth and read my temperature.

Tony stopped in my doorway and asked, "What's goin' on?"

Mom sighed. "Well, he doesn't have much of a temperature. It's just under one hundred."

Tony grunted, "C'mon, Speedy, you're not that sick. Get up and get ready for school. You'll feel better when you start movin' around."

Mom, in her bathrobe and slippers, followed him into the living room as he donned his carcoat and got ready for work. "Well," she said, "he does have a little fever, not much. Do you think it might get worse?"

"Damn. People go to work and school all the time when they're a little sick. I go to work when I feel like shit, myself. Hell, he ain't sick. Get him dressed and get him to school."

My brief nap did leave me feeling improved, and I supposed Tony was right. Besides, I didn't want to admit that anything could floor me that easily, and I did have to keep up with my work. So I dressed and boarded the bus as usual. But during the long ride to school the pain and nausea increased. I began perspiring. Repressing the desire to throw up was becoming an effort.