· 5 ·
LAST YEAR DURING LUNCHTIME, I always knew where to sit. If I sat at Caldwell’s table, I would have my ass kicked. But I could have a space over by Jerome and eat in peace. Around here, my ass is not likely to get kicked, but at the same time, I’m not sure where it should land. There’s room at Alex Levinson’s table, but Otis’s lunch box is already there.
There’s Alma and Dezzy over by that tree, but why take the opportunity to come to a white school if you’re going to sit at the black table? Might as well sleep in. I could eat with the fifth-graders, but I think they’re scared of me.
I might try to sit beside Charlie Ross, but ever since he told me about his dead brother, I don’t feel right around him. Plus, he didn’t respect me in the reading contest.
So most days I eat alone.
About halfway through lunch, flashes of silver start coming out of everybody else’s bag. Charlie Ross is always pulling out the silver. And the minute he unwraps it, I smell chocolate. Ding Dongs most days, but lately he’s got these smaller treats he calls Ho Hos. Sounds like Santa’s food.
A Ho Ho starts with flat chocolate cake. Then comes a layer of smooth white frosting. The two are rolled up together in a black ’n’ white wheel. And if that’s not tempting enough, the whole scrumdiddlyumptious thing is dipped in more chocolate! Man, what I wouldn’t do to try one!
At the market the other day I told my daddy, “Hey, Daddy, I’d like to try Ho Hos in my lunch.”
“Ho Hos cost seventy-five cents a box. When’s the last time you earned seventy-five cents?”
Maybe I’ll make friends with Charlie Ross and we’ll do a trade. I can guess how that’s going to go.
Say, Ross, you got Ho Hos in your lunch. Trade you for some celery?
Or Hey, Ross, you want me to help you with your math homework? Two Ho Hos for twenty problems.
Or You know, Ross, I was talking to Leslie Maduros about you.
You were?
She says she likes you a lot.
She does?
Only trouble is, she’s worried you’re getting a little chunky.
Well, I have been lifting weights.
Been lifting Ho Hos, too. Tell you what. I think you could get some action with that girl. I will put you on a diet first. Let me hold your Ho Hos, and soon you’ll be holding her hand.
Okey-dokey. Here you go.
He’ll see right through that scheme.
I could just flat-out ask him.
Say, Ross, what are you having for your dessert today?
A Ho Ho.
Never had one of those. Looks pretty good.
Mmmm hmmm, he’ll say. Sure is. Then he’ll lick the last bit of chocolate off that foil.
It says in the Bible “Thou shalt not steal.” But the Bible is the word of God, right? Whoever wrote it down was stealing from the Lord. Making good money off Him too. That’s the best-selling book of all time. Don’t you think it’s worse to be stealing from the Almighty than from chunky Charlie Ross?
On the other hand, if I take what’s not mine, Mr. Khalil will kill me with silence. And my daddy will kill me with words.
On the other other hand, I really want to try a Ho Ho.
The first time there’s no Ho Ho in my lunch, I don’t give it much thought. Lily probably forgot, is all. The second and third times I’m a little annoyed. I figure we ran out.
The fourth time I curse her. I’ve eaten half my tuna sandwich, my barbecue chips, the celery and carrot sticks. I’ve taken the required three bites of my apple. I’m ready for dessert.
But when I reach into the brown paper bag with my name on it, I feel no silver foil. No palm-sized cylinder of joy. What I feel instead is the bottom of the bag, as empty and low as my heart.
That night after dinner, I stand in the kitchen watching Lily make my lunch, like she’s a factory worker and I’m her boss. When she drops a Ho Ho in my bag, I peer a little closer into the sack. She looks at me and says, “Qué pasa, Charlie?”
“You forgot my Ho Ho yesterday.”
“No.”
“Sí. And the day before.”
“No.”
“Sí. You forgot all week.”
She looks at me like she thinks I’m making this up.
“Había una caja entera el domingo. Deberian quedar cinco.”
Lily tips over the box, and sure enough, five Ho Hos tumble out. She thinks for a second.
“Tal vez alguien esta robando.”
“Robando?”
She grabs a Ho Ho and sneaks it under her arm.
“Who would steal a Ho Ho?”
“Quién sabe?”
That’s Spanish for “Who knows?” Well . . . there’s one way to find out.
My plan wouldn’t be possible without Lily. She has weekends off, and when she comes back from Olvera Street on Sunday night, it’s usually with a bag of foods she doesn’t even try to translate for the shopping list. Dried chili peppers, powdered spices, and sauces with dancing flames on their labels. She keeps them in her room on top of her TV so there’s no chance our gringo tongues’ll get burned.
And my plan wouldn’t be possible without Andy. When the allergy doctor wanted to put him on weekly shots and charge five dollars a poke in the office, my dad thought that was an “excessive” fee. He ordered a year’s supply of syringes from a pharmaceutical catalog, and Mom gave Andy the shots at home. I used to watch as she’d take a syringe, poke its needle into the jar with the medicine, and pull back the plunger, filling the syringe halfway with a clear liquid. Then I’d watch Mom give Andy the shot.
The bad thing about ordering a year’s supply of something is, if the person you ordered it for dies, you’re stuck with a lot of leftovers.
The good thing is, leftover syringes can come in handy.
Friday morning I’m up and out of bed before my clock radio goes off. I’ve got this nervous, giddy feeling, like revenge is just a few bites away. In class five minutes before the bell, I take the brown bag with my name on it and set it on the shelf inside our coat closet. As I turn away, I can feel Armstrong’s Ho Ho–hungry eyes on me, but I don’t return the look. I wouldn’t want to make him suspicious.
To look at it—to touch it, even—you won’t notice anything different about the Ho Ho in my bag. It’s the familiar foil-wrapped chocolate cake and white frosting rolled up into one treat. You might even unwrap it and sniff around. You’ll smell chocolate and sweet cream and nothing more.
But take a bite, and your mouth is in for a surprise.
INCIDENT REPORT
Submitted by: Edwina Gaines, Yard Supervisor at Wonderland Avenue School
Date of Incident: Friday, November 1, 1974
Time: 12:25 p.m.
Location: the upper yard
I was on yard duty at lunchtime today, and the children seemed to be eating their lunch just fine with no incidents to report. But all of a sudden I heard a cry rise up from the crowd, and it sounded like “HOT, HOT! THPITHEY! HELP! WATUH!” I looked over and saw that a crowd of people had formed around a boy whose mouth evidently had made contact with some spicy food. Now, I know there’s a packet of hot sauce served with the burritos in the lunch program, but I have had that sauce and there’s nothing to it. So clearly this was something that had arrived in a bag or box of one of the students. I could not see who that boy was on account of the crowd, but I could hear his desperate cry. And pretty soon I saw what I can only describe as a fire brigade of students in a line between the boy whose mouth seemed afire and the water fountain, where all three spigots were filling Dixie Cups that were then being passed up the line to the boy. I debated whether or not to blow my whistle and decided to leave it hanging because I did not want to interrupt the relief that was under way. I did, however, make my way along that brigade to the front, where I discovered a boy with one hand flapping like a wing in front of his mouth and the other gratefully receiving cups of water from the line.
That boy was Alex Levinson.
I asked him what happened. His speech was hindered by the swelling of his tongue.
“Thpithey. Thometing thpithey,” he said.
“What did you eat today, Alex?”
He answered in two brief grunts of equal duration. I did not understand the words. Then he held up a foil wrapper that anyone here will recognize as the mark of a Hostess product, either Ding Dong or Ho Ho. Judging by the size and shape of the wrapper, I determined it was a Ho Ho.“Was there something wrong with the Ho Ho in your lunch?” I asked.
“Thometing wong, yeth,” he said, “but not my lunth.”
“Well, then, how did you get this Ho Ho?”
“I . . . I tayded for it.”
“Traded whom?”
“Armthong.”
“Armstrong,” I said, “did you give this boy a Ho Ho?”
“Yes, Mrs. Gaines, I did. But I don’t know how come it lit his tongue on fire.”
“Well, where did you get it from?”
And he said, “I cannot tell a lie, Mrs. Gaines. I stole that Ho Ho from somebody else’s lunch. But before I unwrapped it, I looked across the table and saw Alex there about to eat some Space Food Sticks. I never tried those. Always wondered about them, too. Seen the ads on TV with the astronauts in space. And so I asked Alex if he’d like to trade. One Ho Ho for all the Space Food Sticks. He said he was tired of Space Food Sticks and would be happy to trade.”
“Well,” I said, “whose lunch did you take the Ho Ho from?”
And then Armstrong put up his finger like he was testing the direction of the wind. And down came that finger pointing directly at Charlie Ross.
Whereupon I escorted one boy to the nurse’s office and two to the principal.
The principal’s office is the scariest place on the planet. Before you go in, there’s the smell of tardy slips and typewriter ink and the secretary’s hair spray. Not to mention the rubbing alcohol from the nurse’s office next door. Makes you run a fever even if you’re not sick. Meanwhile, you have to wait in those tiny plastic chairs against the wall. The whole world knows why you’re there. Then the secretary says in a really loud voice, “The principal will see you now.”
You feel like Dorothy walking up to Oz for the first time. Then you step through The Door of Doom.
That’s where Armstrong and I are now, on the other side of that door.
“Sit down, boys,” Mrs. Wilson says.
We sit in the hard wooden chairs in front of her desk.
Mrs. Wilson looks up from the Incident Report. She lowers her reading glasses and lets them dangle by a chain around her neck. The chain looks strong enough to hang a kid.
“Charlie Ross, do you know what a vigilante is?”
I shake my head because I don’t.
“It’s someone who takes justice into his own hands,” Armstrong says. “Someone who tries to catch a thief by setting a trap.”
Armstrong grins at me. Not because he knows the word, but because he knows which one of us it fits.
“That’s right, Armstrong,” Mrs. Wilson says. Her head turns back toward me. “This isn’t the Old West, Charlie. If you think someone’s stealing from you, you tell a teacher. You tell Mrs. Gaines. You tell me. Understand?”
I nod. It’s Armstrong’s turn. It better be Armstrong’s turn.
“Armstrong Le Rois, is it ever okay to steal?”
“No, ma’am.”
Now I get to grin at him.
“Unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Suppose your uncle is talking about shooting himself on account of he lost his job and his wife ran off with another man. You go and steal his gun and hide it someplace he’ll never find. That’s stealing in order to save a life.”
Mrs. Wilson has a rubber-band smile too, just like Mom. She sighs and says, “An exception.”
“Or you steal the getaway car from a bank robber. That makes you a hero.”
“Another exception.”
“Or your mama’s been smoking and you don’t want to be an orphan, so you steal her cigarettes and flush ’em down the toilet—to save her life.”
Andy and I used to flush Mom’s cigarettes all the time.
“Cigarettes are a far cry from Ho Hos, Armstrong Le Rois, and you know it. I know you know it.”
Mrs. Wilson brings her glasses to her mouth and thinks. The school clock on the wall does its backwards tick and then its forward tock.
“Armstrong, the punishment for stealing is suspension for a day. Along with a letter of apology to Charlie on why what you did was wrong. Charlie, the punishment for being a vigilante is also suspension for a day. Along with a letter to Alex on why what you did was wrong.”
“Just Alex?” Armstrong says.
“Just Alex. You’re both not welcome back in school until you show me those letters. Signed by your parents.”
I take back what I said earlier. There’s one thing scarier than the principal’s office: my dad’s face when he finds out what I did. He tells me he’s appalled at my behavior. He can’t believe his son could be so negligent, thoughtless, irresponsible, and just plain dumb.
Each word is a slap in the face. But what he says next is the knockout blow. “What if Alex had been like Andy, a highly allergic child? Do you realize you could have killed him?”
I never thought of that. My father’s right. I’m all those things he said I was.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt Alex,” I say. “I was trying to hurt Armstrong.”
“It’s just as wrong.”
Dad takes a pen and adds “Ho Hos, 4 boxes,” to the shopping list. He then announces that Mrs. Wilson’s punishment didn’t go far enough. A more valuable lesson will be learned if I bring to school, as a “dual token of remorse and compassion,” four boxes of Ho Hos—two for Alex and two for Armstrong—which I have to pay for with a day of hard labor at Ross Rents.
“Four for Alex,” I say. “None for Armstrong. He’s the one who stole.”
“And it wouldn’t kill you to wonder why.”
“It’s Monday, Armstrong. Why are you not in school?”
Up on my shoulder sits a fifty-pound sack of Quikcrete, which my daddy made me carry half a mile from the hardware store. He said I’d be spending all of Suspension Day helping Mr. Khalil repair his front porch. “Hard physical labor,” he said. “That’s what you’ll do because you stole.”
Hard physical labor is easy compared to what I’ve got to do now—tell old Mr. Khalil why I’m here.
I try to come up with a holiday he might believe. But Halloween passed and it’s a week before Veterans Day. I don’t know when else you get a random Monday off, unless you’re Jewish like Charlie Ross.
No, the calendar will not get me out of this. I’ll give it to Mr. Khalil quick, the way I run in and out of the shower after my sisters use up all the hot water.
“I got s—”
“What?”
“I got sss—”
“Strep throat?”
“Worse than that.”
“Staph infection?”
“Worse than that.”
“Salmonella?”
“I don’t even know what that is. But what I got is worse.”
“What, then?”
“Suspended.”
“Suspended?!”
“It’s contagious. Charlie Ross got it too.”
“Why in the world did you get suspended?”
“It’s Ho Hos, Mr. Khalil. I’ve got a weakness for them.”
“So you went and stole one.”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“I stole five. But the last one I traded for Space Food Sticks. That’s the Ho Ho Charlie Ross hid the hot sauce in. And that’s how we both caught the same disease.”
“Armstrong,” Mr. Khalil says, looking at me. “Armstrong,” he says again. “You took the easy way. The lazy way.”
“Are you disappointed in me?”
“Are you disappointed in yourself?”
Eyes have never been so heavy in a boy’s head.
Ross Rents is on South La Cienega Boulevard, two blocks north of the Santa Monica Freeway, “so the deliverymen don’t lose time on their routes,” Dad always says. The neighborhood is mostly black, and whenever he puts a help-wanted ad in the paper, the people who live nearby line up to answer it. That’s how Nathaniel and Gwynne came into our lives. Gwynne is my dad’s Administrative Assistant, and Nathaniel is the Shop Manager and Transportation Director. Nathaniel is so tall that he has to bend down going through doors.
Most adults greet a boy by messing up his hair or patting his shoulder and saying, “Well, hello there, young man.” Nathaniel greets me by name and with something that makes the height difference between us seem small: a handshake. It’s no ordinary straight-on shake but a kind of secret shake in three steps. First the hands meet at an angle, like they’re about to arm-wrestle. Then they slide into a regular grasp. Then they pull back until the curled fingers of one hand hook onto the curled fingers of the other, like a hinge. One time Nathaniel told me that this is the handshake of black men who think of themselves not just as friends, but brothers.
My job today, Suspension Day, is to polish the wheelchairs, walkers, and commodes that have been returned. Nathaniel’s job is to inspect them for damage and do the necessary repairs. There’s a bench radio in the store, tuned to 1580 KDAY. Nathaniel’s station. No sappy love songs, just ones with a good beat. The music helps me shine six wheelchairs and four walkers by the time noon comes around and Nathaniel says, “Let’s break for lunch, Charlie.”
At the long bench in the back of the store, we open our brown bags and eat. After we finish our sandwiches, I dig a little deeper in my bag and find a Ho Ho. Unwrapping it, I see Nathaniel glance at it like maybe he wants some, so I break it in half.
“Here,” I say. “Split it with me.”
“Thank you, Charlie.”
Half a Ho Ho in Nathaniel’s hand looks no bigger than a crumb. He lifts it to his mouth, then lifts it to his nose. He looks at me and winks.
“My dad told you what I did.”
Nathaniel nods and tosses the rest of the Ho Ho into his mouth. He chews slowly, and I can tell he’s got something on his mind.
“Your father’s a wise man, Charlie. But I’m not sure I agree with him on this one.”
“You wouldn’t make me work today?”
“Oh, I’d make you work. But not to reward a boy for stealing.”
“That’s what I think! If anything, Armstrong should work to buy me a box of Ho Hos.”
“Or his own.”
Nathaniel unscrews the cap on his thermos and pours. The back of the store smells like morning in our kitchen. “Armstrong came on the Opportunity Busing program, didn’t he?”
“You heard about it?”
“I read about it in the paper.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?”
Nathaniel sips his coffee. He looks at me. Then he says, “I’m against it, Charlie.”
“Why?”
“Seems to me, the money they spend to put gas in those buses would be better spent to improve the schools. In all the neighborhoods.”
“Don’t you think black and white students should mix?”
“Maybe if the buses ran both ways. But I don’t see any white students getting up before dawn.”
I try to imagine what that would be like. Not just waking up early, but riding a bus all the way out of Laurel Canyon, down La Cienega, past Ross Rents and onto the Santa Monica Freeway toward downtown. After that the bus would head south on another freeway. How far would it go, I wonder.
“I guess it is a long ride for Armstrong to Wonderland every day,” I say.
“An even longer ride home,” Nathaniel says.
“Because of the traffic?”
“No, Charlie. Because of the way home looks after you’ve been gone.”
Tuesday after Suspension Day, I’m at my lunch table with a peanut butter sandwich.
“How come no jelly?” I asked this morning when my daddy snatched away the jar.
“Jelly is sweet,” he said. “Them Ho Hos you took gave your mouth enough sweet to last a lifetime.”
So now, just when I’m wishing for some dessert, guess what drops from the sky.
Two boxes of Ho Hos!
“Those are for you,” Charlie Ross says.
“What for?”
“It’s my punishment for getting suspended. My father made me earn them.”
Peanut butter and Ho Hos would be a fine mix. Like a Reese’s peanut butter cup, only soft all the way through. And my daddy would never even know.
But peanut butter and Ho Hos and charity from Charlie Ross would leave a bitter taste in my mouth all the way to the grave.
“No thanks,” I say, and walk away.