Once for Me and Once for Chuckie

Now that Chuckie and me are five we’re allowed to go to Grove Park by ourselves because it’s so close our mom can see us if she stands on our porch. And guess what? The park is right by the train tracks! If a train comes while we’re on the swings, we jump off and run across the field and climb the fence to pump our arms at the engineer. Sometimes he waves or even blows the whistle!

The train wind blows our hair back and makes us laugh and laugh. We’re never never allowed to climb over the fence because we could fall down and a train could come and smash us flat as a pancake. Thinking about that as the train blows by makes me shiver.

Sometimes, Chuckie and me play alone at the park, and sometimes Lindsay and Kenny from up the street come. They’re boy/girl twins, just like us. Only they’re a month older and they have blonde hair and they both take medicine for ‘hyperactivity,’ which mostly means that it’s not totally their fault when they do things like riding pieces of cardboard down the steps or eating peanut butter straight from the jar.

On days that there are soccer or baseball games in the field, we play with the kids whose parents are watching the game. Mostly the kids are nice, but this one time we met this kid who was a mean little butthead!! His name was Richie and I’ve never met anyone as mean as him, and if I ever see him again I’m gonna kick him as hard as I can twice, once for me and once for Chuckie.

I never saw Richie before one day when Chuckie and me went to the park to play after lunch. It was a bath night; we always take baths after America’s Funniest Home Videos. I hate bath nights except for on pretty days when we go to the park because then I can climb and swing and play in the sand without worrying about getting dirt or sand in my hair. And that day was a pretty day.

The air felt good on my skin and the sky was blue blue blue. Blue is my favorite color, but I tell everyone it’s pink. Chuckie always says his favorite color is clear, which I think is stupid but I guess it’s because his favorite super heroes can go invisible.

Anyway, when we dumped our bikes on the blacktop and got into the slide and jungle gym area, we saw this little kid sitting there on a log all by himself. Right away I could see he was too babyish to play with, but Chuckie stopped walking when the kid started talking to us.

“How old are you?” the babyish kid asked, squinching his eyes up. His voice was whiny.

“We’re six,” I lied, stepping in front of Chuckie. I didn’t like the kid’s face or his stupid baby overalls. He looked like a mean little doll.

“Oh,” the kid said, like big whoop. “My name’s Richie and I’m seven.”

“Yeah right,” I said, and my heart was pumping ’cause I can’t stand liars. “You look like a preschool baby.”

“I’m NOT!” the kid jumped up off the log and jammed his fists in his stupid pockets. “YOU’re a baby.”

“That would mean I’m a baby, too,” Chuckie said, stepping closer to me. “We’re twins. And we’re not babies.”

“Stupid,” I said, and spit in the sand. We’re going into kindergarten when school starts, so no one should be able to call us babies anymore. “Come on, Chuckie. I don’t want to play with this stupid baby.”

So Chuckie and me were swinging for a while, going so high that our toes almost poked the bellies of the clouds. There was a tee ball game going on in the sand diamond and there were moms with coolers and folding chairs sitting in little groups. Probably that kid’s mom was out there watching his older brother play.

The blue air smelled fresh and I was learning to swing better and higher. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the breeze rush through my hair and whoosh past my ears like it was getting ready to tell me a secret. Every once in a while there was the cling! of a batter smacking the ball off the tee, and a ripple of moms’ cheers. The players’ feet kicked up clouds of tan dust just like Road Runner. Then there was a whistle in the distance.

“TRAIN!” Chuckie shouted to me, his face looking the way mine felt.

“One…two….three!” I counted and we leaped off the swings and took off running for the fence across the field.

Richie jumped up and started yelling after us as we ran by. We skidded to a stop.

“Where are you guys going?” he asked, like it was his business.

“To watch the train. You can come,” Chuckie said. He was always too nice. I elbowed him, but he didn’t elbow me back, he just kept looking at the kid waiting for his answer.

“Uh,” the kid looked down and kicked his sneaker into the sand. “My mom,” he said, and pointed over to a woman sitting on the top bleacher. “My mom says I’m not allowed to leave the play area.”

“Too bad!” I yelled, happy to shove it in his face, and I grabbed Chuckie’s hand and we ran to watch the train go by.

After it was gone, we got some water from the fountain. It tasted like dirt and metal but it was cold. Walking back to the play area, I saw that Richie was standing in the grass below the bleachers with his stupid face turned up, talking to his mom. As we walked past him, he snapped his head over to us real quick and started running ahead of us. Right away I knew what he was going to do.

“CHUCKIE!” I yelled, “He’s gonna take our swings!”

I started running as fast as I could. Anger was hot in my face and running strong through my body, like a wave trying to knock me off my feet. I had to slow down because my legs felt shaky and tickly, like they were disappearing under me.

When we reached the swings, what we saw was just what I was afraid of: Richie, the chains of both swings clutched between his fat, grubby hands.

“That’s not fair!” I yelled, looking over my shoulder to see if maybe his mom could see what he was doing. But her back was to us; she was watching the game and fanning herself with a magazine.

Richie shrugged his shoulders, and it looked like the silver buttons on his stupid baby overalls were winking at us. The rubber seats of the swings wobbled under his hands as he laughed. The anger swelled up in me so big that I was shaking. It wasn’t fair! He couldn’t just do that! He wasn’t even using the swings, he just didn’t want us to be able to use them! I felt like if I didn’t jump up and down or scream or something to get the anger out, then I would explode and maybe die.

“AAAAAAAGGHHH!” I yelled so loud it felt like the scream was cutting itself out of my throat.

I stopped myself before I could hit him. I was close enough to him to smell his breath. Tomato soup. Gross. But as mad as I was, I was still scared of getting scolded, of the tears that came to my eyes when a grown-up pointed her finger or raised her voice at me, telling me I'm not a good girl, which is somehow worse than boys not being good boys.

Taking a deep breath, I drew back my foot and kicked up a big cloud of sand and pebbles, hoping it would get all over him, maybe even in his mean shiny doll eyes. Then Chuckie and me took off running.

I didn’t look behind us until we got over the curb into the parking lot and we had our bikes up. Richie stood on the very edge of the sandy play area. For a second I thought maybe I should go back and apologize because his face looked sad. But then he was bending down and burying his hands in the sand. He stood there, letting the sand leak through his fingers. It made a whispery sound as it fell.

“My mom said I can go out of the sand now because I’m older than I was when she made that rule.” He said it in a quiet way that made my stomach sick. He opened his palms then, and I could see that there were pebbles in there. And then real quick he whipped his hands back and threw them at us. One hit me on the shin, burning sharp like a bee sting. Another one whizzed past my face.

“GO!” I yelled at Chuckie, and then I was panicked and my legs were wobbly again. I tried once, twice, and finally got the kick-stand up and jumped on my bike. Chuckie was already on, wobbling as he tried to line his legs up with the pedals. My feet kept slipping and the spinning pedals scraped my ankles. I looked back over my shoulder as I was getting out of the parking lot, and my skin went hot but my insides went cold as I saw Richie crouching to pick up those big old egg shaped rocks that were spread around the bushes.

I was so scared that I was laughing hard and couldn’t breathe. I was wobbling on my bike, too, but I stayed close to Chuckie. It felt like my legs were pumping fast but the bike was suddenly too heavy and couldn’t go fast enough. I felt a thud as a rock hit my bike tire. I looked behind me again, and saw that Richie was actually running down the street after us, his hands full of rocks.

He had one arm back ready to launch another one.

We’re going to die, we’re going to die, he’s going to kill us! I was panicking, and I felt like I was such a big target because I could feel myself and my brother. I could feel the wind on both of our skin, especially the backs of our necks and the skin under our hair. It felt all of a sudden like Chuckie and me were one kid with two heads, and I was trying to prepare for us to get hit. We hadn’t had time to put our helmets on, and I knew any second I’d feel a sting and a crack and then warm blood down the back of our heads.

Inside my head I was going, Please please please and I couldn’t even look away from Chuckie to keep my eyes on the street.

I saw a movie once where a bull chases people through the streets, stabbing some with its horns, tossing them aside like used-up paper dolls. I can almost feel it now, the bull’s hoof-thunder and nostril-steam, knowing if I turn to look I’ll die. It was such a short way home, but it felt like miles and miles and miles.

At last we were turning the bend, and I looked behind me now, saw Richie’s mom yanking him back toward the park. His yelling was faint now, it barely reached our ears.

Rounding the corner, bikes thrown to the grass, Chuckie and I faced each other and I felt that blurry warm feeling between us. We’d had the oneness again on the street back there, like we used to, before we spoke in words, before we learned our separate names.

We stood checking each other at the bottom of the steps before going inside, answering “Are you okay?” with, “Are you?”