suggestions? it's due in five days!
When it was real hot in early July and the heat was coming off the street, blurring the air, Eddie and I both got rashes on our stomachs from lying face down in the City Park’s kiddy pool. The pool itself was only half the size of a basketball court and just a foot deep so that the kids who came without their parents wouldn’t drown. That summer was the last one we’d be able to lie in it, since kids over eleven weren’t allowed and Eddie’s birthday was in a month. I was still ten and a half, and even though Eddie was older than me, the lifeguard that would walk around the pool, looking down at the kids, held me back. He told me I couldn’t go in and let Eddie go on ahead. It happened other times before, and I had gotten used to stuff like that since I was kind of big and people said I look older than I really am. The lifeguard didn’t believe me when I told him, so Eddie had to explain by how many months he was older than me. He liked older. The lifeguard let me in but said I couldn’t go in with my shirt.
After a few hours of lying face down, my back got a little red and my stomach was scratched up by the pool’s blue tiles. Same with Eddie. Running back home barefoot on the hot sidewalk that glittered a little under the sun, Eddie said we needed a pool of our own. He had his towel wrapped around his waist and I had mine covering my back and stomach since I wasn’t able to cover it before. When we got home neither of us left our houses for almost two weeks because of the heat and because our rashes itched too much. During those two weeks when I’d try to fit myself into the refrigerator and press my stomach against the frozen meats, Eddie called me again and talked about buying a pool.
Eddie thought we could get a real good discount at the pool and spa store that was at the end of our block, by the 405 exit. Tony’s dad, who didn’t really live with Tony and his mom, sometimes worked there, and since we were Tony’s only friends Eddie said we could get a good price.
By the time our rashes cleared Eddie had everyone come to his house for a water party on his driveway. I came over a little early and helped him wash out the trash can and filled it with hose water so we could dip ourselves into it. Christina, who lived next door to me, still had one of those drugstore plastic kid pools, so we had her drag that over. We filled that with hose water too. Tony and Giovanni soon came over. We left the hose running while we played and sometimes sprayed Christina with it and made her scream. When Giovanni soaked Christina enough he sprayed me. I tried to get out of the way, but I stepped on my own foot and fell on the kid pool and broke the wall. I’m always falling and breaking things with my body. The water spilled out and flowed down the driveway and into Eddie’s new neighbor’s yard. A woman in a dark dress with long sleeves came out of that house. She was brown and didn’t speak English very well. She started yelling at us, moving her hands like whips, telling us to kill the water, that it was in her house.
Eddie turned off the hose and we all stood there, not saying anything until she went back inside muttering something.
“We’re buying a pool,” Eddie said with his hands at his waist. No one said anything, so he kept going. He told us that if we all saved our money for the rest of the summer and put it all together, we could probably make like two hundred dollars and buy one of the cheapest pools at the store, and not one that was like the one I had just broken. We all thought about it and then told him yes. Eddie could always do these sorts of things.
The money was going to be kept by Eddie, in a safe place in the room he shared with his brother and mom, in jars that Christina found in her garage when she ran back home. The next day, after the decision, Giovanni and Christina had already placed some nickels and quarters they had saved, and Tony put in some bills that his mother had given him from her tips at the bowling ally bar the night before. Eddie hadn’t put anything in yet, but he said it would be easy for him to get some, since he had a godfather that would put in a hundred dollars each or every other month into his savings account that he had gotten after his first communion. I put in the fifteen dollars my grandmother from my real-dad’s side sent me for my birthday last year. My mother made me save it the only way I could save it: I gave it to her and she kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, in a mustard colored envelope where she kept stuff that she didn’t want me to know about, like my money or my dad’s last address on the beach.
The jars started filling up after only a few days. Eddie lined them up on his desk to show me when I went over to his house. The pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters were all separated into different jars. There was only one window in that room and a little bit of light slipped through the blinds and hit the jars. The bronze and silver coins, all clustered together, seemed to glow. Eddie said we only had about sixteen dollars, plus the ten dollars he got for washing his mom’s old Cadillac.
On days that we didn’t worry about making money for our pool, all of us would play in the apartment houses across the street where Tony and Giovanni lived. We’d break into the apartments that haven’t been rented and run around in them and maybe use the bathroom and not flush. Other times we would wear our Halloween masks and play hide and seek. But what grabbed our attention was the wall at the end of the apartment complex that divided us from a big, one-story building that we believed to be a mental hospital. Eddie went over the wall one day on a dare and said that on the other side someone had written his name in blood. We went around the block to look at the mental hospital from the front side. A solid metal gate painted black with a sign that said no trespassing was all that we found.
And then sometimes, on slow days when no one could play, Eddie and I would just stay at my house. Together, in the TV room, when my mother was still at work and the housekeeper was cleaning some other part of my house, Eddie and watched channel forty-eight on the black box my father connected to the TV. And even though we only saw the swirls of reds and browns and heard the whining huffs of the girl, if we played around with the back of the box, moving some of the wires, we could almost see it.
One day the housekeeper did catch us. Eddie ran home and the housekeeper told my dad who came home before my mom did, which hardly ever happened. He yelled at me and since then I began working with my dad for the rest of the summer in his shop for seven dollars a day, in the City of Orange, CA. It was okay at first because all I did was sit in his cramped office and answer the phone while listening to the radio on a low volume, because my dad doesn’t like music. Or he’d have me organize the papers stained with car oil that were scattered on his desk. And it was okay because my dad would get me McDonald’s for lunch sometimes, but he’d yell at me for not sounding like a man on the phone when his friends or clients called. And we were real far from home, so when there was traffic on the freeway going back home we’d never talk, and I could never listen to the radio. He’d talk about cars and I’d lean my head on the window, looking into the next car and the people in them.
(still not done).
After a few hours of lying face down, my back got a little red and my stomach was scratched up by the pool’s blue tiles. Same with Eddie. Running back home barefoot on the hot sidewalk that glittered a little under the sun, Eddie said we needed a pool of our own. He had his towel wrapped around his waist and I had mine covering my back and stomach since I wasn’t able to cover it before. When we got home neither of us left our houses for almost two weeks because of the heat and because our rashes itched too much. During those two weeks when I’d try to fit myself into the refrigerator and press my stomach against the frozen meats, Eddie called me again and talked about buying a pool.
Eddie thought we could get a real good discount at the pool and spa store that was at the end of our block, by the 405 exit. Tony’s dad, who didn’t really live with Tony and his mom, sometimes worked there, and since we were Tony’s only friends Eddie said we could get a good price.
By the time our rashes cleared Eddie had everyone come to his house for a water party on his driveway. I came over a little early and helped him wash out the trash can and filled it with hose water so we could dip ourselves into it. Christina, who lived next door to me, still had one of those drugstore plastic kid pools, so we had her drag that over. We filled that with hose water too. Tony and Giovanni soon came over. We left the hose running while we played and sometimes sprayed Christina with it and made her scream. When Giovanni soaked Christina enough he sprayed me. I tried to get out of the way, but I stepped on my own foot and fell on the kid pool and broke the wall. I’m always falling and breaking things with my body. The water spilled out and flowed down the driveway and into Eddie’s new neighbor’s yard. A woman in a dark dress with long sleeves came out of that house. She was brown and didn’t speak English very well. She started yelling at us, moving her hands like whips, telling us to kill the water, that it was in her house.
Eddie turned off the hose and we all stood there, not saying anything until she went back inside muttering something.
“We’re buying a pool,” Eddie said with his hands at his waist. No one said anything, so he kept going. He told us that if we all saved our money for the rest of the summer and put it all together, we could probably make like two hundred dollars and buy one of the cheapest pools at the store, and not one that was like the one I had just broken. We all thought about it and then told him yes. Eddie could always do these sorts of things.
The money was going to be kept by Eddie, in a safe place in the room he shared with his brother and mom, in jars that Christina found in her garage when she ran back home. The next day, after the decision, Giovanni and Christina had already placed some nickels and quarters they had saved, and Tony put in some bills that his mother had given him from her tips at the bowling ally bar the night before. Eddie hadn’t put anything in yet, but he said it would be easy for him to get some, since he had a godfather that would put in a hundred dollars each or every other month into his savings account that he had gotten after his first communion. I put in the fifteen dollars my grandmother from my real-dad’s side sent me for my birthday last year. My mother made me save it the only way I could save it: I gave it to her and she kept it hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, in a mustard colored envelope where she kept stuff that she didn’t want me to know about, like my money or my dad’s last address on the beach.
The jars started filling up after only a few days. Eddie lined them up on his desk to show me when I went over to his house. The pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters were all separated into different jars. There was only one window in that room and a little bit of light slipped through the blinds and hit the jars. The bronze and silver coins, all clustered together, seemed to glow. Eddie said we only had about sixteen dollars, plus the ten dollars he got for washing his mom’s old Cadillac.
On days that we didn’t worry about making money for our pool, all of us would play in the apartment houses across the street where Tony and Giovanni lived. We’d break into the apartments that haven’t been rented and run around in them and maybe use the bathroom and not flush. Other times we would wear our Halloween masks and play hide and seek. But what grabbed our attention was the wall at the end of the apartment complex that divided us from a big, one-story building that we believed to be a mental hospital. Eddie went over the wall one day on a dare and said that on the other side someone had written his name in blood. We went around the block to look at the mental hospital from the front side. A solid metal gate painted black with a sign that said no trespassing was all that we found.
And then sometimes, on slow days when no one could play, Eddie and I would just stay at my house. Together, in the TV room, when my mother was still at work and the housekeeper was cleaning some other part of my house, Eddie and watched channel forty-eight on the black box my father connected to the TV. And even though we only saw the swirls of reds and browns and heard the whining huffs of the girl, if we played around with the back of the box, moving some of the wires, we could almost see it.
One day the housekeeper did catch us. Eddie ran home and the housekeeper told my dad who came home before my mom did, which hardly ever happened. He yelled at me and since then I began working with my dad for the rest of the summer in his shop for seven dollars a day, in the City of Orange, CA. It was okay at first because all I did was sit in his cramped office and answer the phone while listening to the radio on a low volume, because my dad doesn’t like music. Or he’d have me organize the papers stained with car oil that were scattered on his desk. And it was okay because my dad would get me McDonald’s for lunch sometimes, but he’d yell at me for not sounding like a man on the phone when his friends or clients called. And we were real far from home, so when there was traffic on the freeway going back home we’d never talk, and I could never listen to the radio. He’d talk about cars and I’d lean my head on the window, looking into the next car and the people in them.
(still not done).