The neighborhood I grew up in, Normain Heights, is World War II-themed. This is an odd way to say it. Along with the neighborhood itself, all the streets that comprise the subdivision— Guam, Normandy, Ardennes, St. Lowe, Palau, Bastogne and Leyte –are named after WW2 battles. My family lived on Bastogne, which was consistently the most mystifying for outsiders (followed, usually, by Palau, which I was actually never sure if any of us who even lived in the neighborhood were pronouncing correctly). Apart from mispronunciations, I regularly received mail with the street name misspelled, which seemed less understandable than the mispronunciations. The most common misspellings were either Bastone, seemingly spelling the word phonetically according to what it sounds like to a native English-speaker, and Bastonge, which I always took as a simple typo or, alternatively, reflective of the person being aware that there’s a ‘g’ in there but being unsure what to do with it. Occasionally, there was a more bold interpretation, like Bagstone or my personal favorite, Bustogus (I saved the envelope with that one, actually).

None of this is important.

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There was this kid, Andy, who lived on our street. His grandparents lived on it, actually, but he was often there, and he sometimes went to the same school as us. My parents were always telling me that I needed to be careful hanging around with Andy, that his parents were white trash and he was no good. I always thought they took him too seriously. (Plus, my mom seemed to believe that everyone is no-good white trash, which hurt her credibility in this area.) He was an idiot and a magnet for trouble, but he was harmless. I think my parents, honestly, recognized this, as they never intervened and kept my brother and I from hanging around with him. I think they felt sorry for him, actually. Andy’s older cousin, Robbie, who used to live with their grandparents, was rarely around anymore, as he had already started on a full-time career as a juvenile delinquent, while his other cousin, Danielle, still lived with their grandparents, and I remember my mom making a few cryptic comments, starting when she was around thirteen, indicating that she believed that every day Danielle remained not pregnant was a minor miracle.

Along with our other neighborhood friends, Matt and Stevie and Jeremy and Chris (all, according to my mom, varying degrees of white trash), we did stuff. We played wiffle ball a lot, and we were relatively serious about our shit. We carefully wrapped our bats in electrical tape to give them weight, the better to hit the ball for distance. It was an art, because you didn’t want it to be too heavy, as that might feel better to swing, but the ball wouldn’t pop off the bat in the same way. In the winter, we lowered the basketball hoops and purposely didn’t shovel the back half of our driveways (the driveways of most of the houses in Normain Heights were long enough to accommodate at least five cars parked in a single straight line) and played tackle basketball. Jeremy occasionally supplied us with pornography stolen from his uncle, who was paralyzed and had one of those wheelchairs that move in response to the user’s breath, and I was never totally sure why that dude needed so much porn, though I was grateful for the overflow. Matt and I briefly, furiously, collected baseball and basketball cards. We all had bikes, and we rode them. One time, while we watched the MLB All-Star Game, Andy set Matt’s living room carpet on fire. I don’t think he was trying to accomplish anything; he just set the carpet on fire. We called each other ‘faggot’ a lot.

We spent the night at each other’s house occasionally. A particular time, Matt, my brother and I spent the night at Andy’s grandparents’ house. We were probably around twelve, so it was around 1989. Since it was 1989, when we stayed up late we played original Nintendo games, mostly Contra. I liked staying at Andy’s, because his grandparents’ house was two stories and his bedroom was upstairs, so you always knew if someone was coming to check on you. But the reason you knew someone was coming was the reason I didn’t like staying at Andy’s; his grandparents’ house was one of those old houses where every move anyone made, in any part of the house, was audible in every other part of the house. In particular, if you even took a deep breath upstairs it would sound like the world was coming to an end downstairs, like the house itself was taking a deep breath.

They had a cat, and the litter box was in Andy’s room. It was rarely seen when I happened to be there, and I was never sure if it was because it was scared of strangers or if it was wary of Andy. Both explanations seemed equally plausible. What I did know for sure was that they never seemed to scoop the litter, and Andy was taking advantage of that fact to pelt the rest of us with cat turds while we tried to blast these faggots in Contra. Eventually, we all gave in and just had a big cat turd fight. Then we had to clean up all the cat turds, which was less fun. When I say ‘we,’ I mean Matt, my brother and I, because Andy just kept throwing cat shit at us. Matt got pissed and went home, which was a really reasonable response.

Finally, Andy’s grandpa yelled up at us and told us all to go to bed. Andy was irritated by this, as he was sure it was evidence that Danielle (whose bedroom was across the hall at the top of the stairs) had gone down and complained that we were being too loud. We turned the lights off and didn’t sleep, but we weren’t being too loud. Andy still had a lot of fight left in him, and he insisted that we go over to Danielle’s room, though he was noncommittal about the objective of this excursion. My brother and I weren’t into it, to which he responded by throwing more cat shit at us. He had remarkably good aim in the pitch-blackness, and the turds were, at this point, breaking apart from being thrown around so much, which was making them smell pretty bad again. Finally, my brother and I relented and agreed to go to Danielle’s room. Later, we both acknowledged that we wished that we’d left with Matt, but at that moment we felt trapped.

We tried to walk stealthily over to Danielle’s room, but the sound of the house creaking was deafening. Andy was confident.

“It sounds way louder out here in the hall than anywhere else.”

I was familiar with the house, so I knew that this wasn’t true. As we crept into Danielle’s room, she registered her opinion without pause, no delay in which she might be trying to figure out what was happening:

“Andy, what are you doing? Get the hell out of here!”

Inexplicably, Andy directed us to get under the bed.

Even more inexplicably, we got under the bed.

Danielle hissed at us to get out from under her bed, and, again, it might have just been my imagination, but it really felt like it wasn’t the first time she’d had to say this to Andy. I lay in-between my brother, who had slid under the bed first, and Andy, who went last.

At this point, Andy and Danielle’s grandpa yelled up at us from the bottom of the stairs:

“Get the hell out of there and back in your own room!”

Andy wasn’t bothered by this, telling us “He doesn’t know anything, don’t worry.” I was really wishing I wasn’t in the middle.

“God damn it! I mean it!”

Danielle, exasperated, exclaimed “Andy!” helplessly, sort of under her breath. Andy giggled, and I wondered if this had actually been his endgame.

“I’m going to count to five, and then I’m coming up there!”

I looked at Andy, careful to angle my head to avoid the rusty piece of metal sticking out from the bottom of the mattress. If he was having any doubts, he betrayed none.

“He’s just talking, he’ll go away.”

I started to open my mouth, possibly to ask ‘But what then?,’ but I was interrupted by Andy’s grandpa:

“One!”

“It’s fine, just be quiet.”

“Two!”

“Don’t worry, he ‘aint doing anything.”

I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking at this point. Most likely, I was trying and failing to make sense of the situation by connecting it to a similar experience I’d had in the past. Danielle exhaled audibly, the house responding in kind. I looked over at my brother, hoping to make eye contact and get some kind of confirmation that this was, indeed, a ridiculous situation, but he was staring, expressionless, straight up at the bottom of the mattress.

“Three!”

“Man, he ‘aint coming up here.”

“Four!”

 

“Alright, let’s go.”

Dumbfounded, I followed him as he scooted out from under his cousin’s bed. Danielle kicked at him as he stood waiting for my brother and I, and we all trudged, eyes on the ground, back to his bedroom, while his grandfather glared at us. As I cleared any remaining stray cat turds from my sleeping bag, I tried to make sense of what we’d just done. Another piece of cat shit bounced off of my shoulder, but I was over it by this point. I zipped myself up in the sleeping bag, leaving a small opening for air and hoping that it didn’t occur to Andy to put anything besides air through it.

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The next morning, we all sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast. I hadn’t showered, because I wanted to go home as fast as possible and that seemed like a good excuse to leave as soon as we finished eating. The kitchen was sweltering from the heat of the stove and the sunlight crowding its way in from every direction, and smelled like burnt white toast, because that’s how Andy’s grandpa liked it. As he came into the kitchen, his giant, pale belly spilling over his unzipped and unfastened jeans and his unbuckled belt flapping and clanging as he walked. He poured a cup of coffee and, as he sat down, looked squarely at Andy. Both lenses of his bifocals had clear smudges all over them.

“What the hell were you doing up there last night?”

I wondered about the answer to this question to, actually. Andy looked him square in the eye, and answered without missing a beat:

“What are you talking about?”

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None of this is important.