Part IV: Spin – God’s Wild Children: #5 (Chapter 74)
She would go off to sleep in Pappa’s double bed.
I was drawn to Pappa’s room; it was cool and dark
like a cave, the blinds always shut against the outside world. I liked sleeping
in Pappa’s bed; when I was four or five, I would often wake up in the middle of
the night from a nightmare and trudge into Pappa’s room.
“Can I sleep with you?”
He would answer with a grunt; I would climb in and
fall into a dead sleep.
But when I was seven, Nana forbade me from going
into Pappa’s room in the middle of the night.
Still, when I was home alone, I would sometimes
crawl into Pappa’s bed and fall asleep, the darkness of the room enfolding me
like a warm blanket on a bitter winter night.
Pappa did not like having to give up his privacy
for overnight guests, especially for the O’Flaherty kids. He would grit his
teeth, grumbling under his breath about intruders.
But he had no choice; Nana decided domestic
policy, and that was that.
At the first sign of O’Flaherty invasion, Pappa
would pack up his golf clubs and head for the greens or, depending on the time
of day, the bar. If an unexpected kid showed up early in the morning, he made a
day of it: in the morning and early afternoon, he would play 18 holes; then at
Rick’s Diner, eat steak and fried potatoes; during late afternoon and early
evening, bartend and book bets from his regulars; grab a loose meat sandwich at
Ye Olde Tavern and run out to Sodrac Park, the dog track across the state line
in North Sioux City, South Dakota, to catch the last six races and hope that
none of his bettors’ long shots came in; then return to the bar where he paid
off his winners (minus 10% commission). About 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., he would come
home and slip into bed next to Nana, always sober because he had gone on the
wagon back in 1935.
Early that Friday morning, while Danny and Aunt
Gwen slid inside the front door, Pappa made his escape out the back.
When Nana turned the channel to the 10 o’clock
news, Pappa was still out.
She stood in front of the TV. “Time for bed.”
In unison: “Aw-www, do we have to?”
“Kids, it’s been a long day, and I’m tired,” she
said in a soft voice, a voice even more potentially dangerous than her shrill
“Samantha Anne!” simply because you didn’t know what to expect if you pushed
her too far – but also the voice most likely to offer a consolation prize.
“Can we talk for a little while?”
She sighed. “I suppose so, though God only knows
why after all that old fighting all day.”
“Can we go swimming tomorrow?” Danny asked.
“Oh, I suppose so.”
Danny and I jumped up and down. “Goody, goody, gum
drop; goody, goody, gum drop; goody, goody gum drop....”
“Now, go on, you two.”
Danny and I took turns going into the bathroom to
get ready for bed. After I changed into my baby doll pajamas, I turned off the
light and climbed into my bed, next to a window, and pulled the sheet up to my
chin, even though the room temperature was well over 80 degrees and muggy.
I waited for Danny to come out of the bathroom. On
the other side of the room on Nana’s bed,
her white chenille bedspread glowed in a beam of moonlight coming through the
window.
If I squinted hard enough, I could almost see the
Blessed Virgin Mary rising up off Nana’s bed and standing next to mine, her
head bowed, eyes closed, hands clutching a Rosary, but the image faded.
The dark
is my friend.
An oscillating fan stood on Nana’s vanity, droning
as the blades swept back and forth, occasionally blowing moist, warm air on my
face and hair.
A shaft of light appeared as Danny opened the
bathroom door, disappearing as he flicked the light switch off.
He skipped out of the bathroom, wearing pinstriped
boxer shorts. Bare chested, his ribs stuck out, almost like a turkey breast
picked clean; I wanted to laugh outright and tell him how silly he looked, but
that would have violated the
never-ever broken unspoken rule: bedtime was truce time.
He ripped the chenille spread off, jumped into
Nana’s bed, and hid underneath the sheet.
Nana came into the bedroom and switched on the
ceiling light. “Okay, you two, not until you say your prayers.”
We dragged ourselves out of bed and kneeled. I
folded my hands together, closed my eyes, and prayed to God, Jesus, and the
Virgin Mary.
I sensed her shadow hovering over me as we recited
our bedtime prayers by heart.
The dark is my friend.
Nana tucked us in and turned out the light; Danny
and I did not speak, almost as if we needed to absorb the activities of the
dark: Mr. MacIntyre’s gray wiry-haired mongrel droning, “woooff, woooff,
woooff,” and then whining halfheartedly; crickets chirping; thunder rumbling in
the distance; occasional echoes of drunks passing by, punctuated by shrill
laughter; glimpses of sheet lightning; smell of ozone; rustle of leaves; plop
of giant raindrops hitting the window and clapboards, then subsiding; whiffs of
tar rising from the streets; ssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeee...” of
cars sloshing by; “woooooooo, wooooooooo, woooooooo, ding, ding, ding, ding,
ding, ding...” from the downtown depot; humidity bearing down, saturating me;
wind stopping abruptly; all sounds suspended; stillness; heaviness in the air,
almost a vacuum, bearing down on my chest; shifting air currents...
THE
DARK IS MY FRIEND!
...Werewolves with sharp green eyes peeking over
the foot of the bed; Frankenstein monster lumbering; room disappearing into The
Twilight Zone; Dracula baring white bloody fangs; the Devil coming for
souls; pneumonia, leukemia, polio (iron lungs; boards on wheels for the
crippled), whooping cough, diphtheria, scarlet fever, cancer...
Didn’t Babe Ruth die of cancer?
Mark Twain was born under Halley’s Comet and died
under Halley’s Comet.
Columbus Day. Born on Columbus Day. In fourteen
hundred and ninety-three, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea! No! No! Johnny
Frank said that last year, and he
flunked history. In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean
blue.
Will I
die on my birthday?
I sat up in bed. “Danny? You awake?”
“Yeah...”
“You hear something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the rain.”
The-dark-is-my-friend.
The leaves rustled again, and wind whipped through
the window.
“Yes, the rain,” I said.
Yes, the
dark is our friend.
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” Danny’s
voice high-pitched like a girl’s, not its usual croak.
“Me? Believe in ghosts?”
“That’s baby stuff, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And we don’t believe in baby stuff, do we?”
“Not us,” I said.
Something heavy in the air dissolved, the world
becoming calm again; we both laughed at the possibility of such foolish fears.
We whispered through the night, telling each other
dirty jokes and exaggerated stories about our escapades at school and on the
streets. Occasionally, one of us would laugh out loud.
Nana would yell from Pappa’s room, “Go to sleep,
or I’ll get the belt.”
We would giggle because we knew she was talking in
her sleep.
As the sky outside lightened, Danny and I yawned.
I drifted off into a twilight sleep, half listening as he told a complicated
story about his troubles with Monsignor Collins and a Hires’ root beer bottle.
I never did hear the end of the tale.
The dark was my friend.
