Communion
The tree calls to me, its bark pockmarked from pecking birds, unripe cherries clinging from branches luring me to climb though I know I’ll get sick if I eat any, but I still climb, my uncle yelling at me from the porch to get down, me telling him that I’m only trying to get some cherries before the birds get them all, my uncle telling me he’s told me a thousand times not to climb, telling me I’ll kill the tree when we both know I won’t.
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
Communion
The tree calls to me, its bark pockmarked from pecking birds, unripe cherries clinging from branches luring me to climb though I know I’ll get sick if I eat any, but I still climb, my uncle yelling at me from the porch to get down, me telling him that I’m only trying to get some cherries before the birds get them all, my uncle telling me he’s told me a thousand times not to climb, telling me I’ll kill the tree when we both know I won’t.
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
Communion
The tree calls to me, its bark pockmarked from pecking birds, unripe cherries clinging from branches luring me to climb though I know I’ll get sick if I eat any, but I still climb, my uncle yelling at me from the porch to get down, me telling him that I’m only trying to get some cherries before the birds get them all, my uncle telling me he’s told me a thousand times not to climb, telling me I’ll kill the tree when we both know I won’t.
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
Main Menu
email to Al Sullivan 
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
Communion
The tree calls to me, its bark pockmarked from pecking birds, unripe cherries clinging from branches luring me to climb though I know I’ll get sick if I eat any, but I still climb, my uncle yelling at me from the porch to get down, me telling him that I’m only trying to get some cherries before the birds get them all, my uncle telling me he’s told me a thousand times not to climb, telling me I’ll kill the tree when we both know I won’t.
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
Communion
The tree calls to me, its bark pockmarked from pecking birds, unripe cherries clinging from branches luring me to climb though I know I’ll get sick if I eat any, but I still climb, my uncle yelling at me from the porch to get down, me telling him that I’m only trying to get some cherries before the birds get them all, my uncle telling me he’s told me a thousand times not to climb, telling me I’ll kill the tree when we both know I won’t.
“You’re mother’s looking for you,” he tells me, knowing that will divert me from the limb I am hanging from by my knees, the house, porch and uncle, upside down to me, as my mother’s voice calls from somewhere in the upper floors of the house, forcing me to drop down, my feet hitting the muddy soil below, me and tree, unharmed by my encounter, my disgusted uncle stomping down the steps of the porch for his long march to the garage my grandfather converted long ago into a boat store, boats filling the whole side yard as if a cemetery, and the store doors an open casket filled boat paraphernalia, my grandfather himself, standing outside beside a big metal tank into which an outboard motors has been dipped, running it, filling the whole world with fumes I carry with me each day to and from school or the park, branded by this life I cannot escape.
My mother appears, stepping out onto the back porch where my uncle had been, her voice frail and desperate, saying she’s been calling and calling, with me telling her I could not hear on account of the outboard motor running, the smoke spreading between us like a shroud, my mother moving down the steps and through it towards me, her face filled with a frustrated frown, her wounded eyes studying me and my condition, from my muddy sneakers to my cherry-stained hands, disapproving of every inch, and saddened by it, recalling how less than an hour ago she had dressed me, telling me then to remain neat, “We have somewhere to go,” telling me now, “to go get cleaned up and hurry,” because we have a bus to catch.
Bus where? She wouldn’t say, with me staring back at the tree and the dangling fruit, and then down at my hands still thick with sap, she saying only, “hurry up, now,” after which we walked to the corner, passed the still smoking test tank and the broad shoulders of my grandfather and uncle, passed the open doors of the garage that was no longer a garage, to where the bus stopped, not going to downtown Paterson as we sometimes did, but the other way, towards Passaic, my uncle calling after us as to where we were going, but not offering a ride for us to get there, my mother only saying she needed to get me something to wear for church, my grandfather grumbling that I already have Sunday clothes, “but not all white,” my mother saying, “this has to be all white for communion,” a communion the nuns have been preparing us for for months, and will soon mean the long walk up the church aisle, “he must be dressed all in white,” my mother repeating as the bus comes, stopping in front of us with a squeal of brakes, and fumes different from the fumes I carry with me from my grandfather’s tank.
“Up,” my mother says, giving my back a push until I navigate the first tall step, my mother following, slowly, bent over as if she carries a burden on her back, dumping a pile of change into the glass box before the driver before moving me down the aisle to find two vacant seats, people moving their elbows and feet to let us pass, dirty workmen, greasy haired kids from high school, all lost in their own thoughts, staring out the windows at nothing.
Through the window I see our old house fading away, then the cemetery wall across the street from it, then the church, and slowly, the school yard, the supermarket, and then the bridge that goes over a highway whose name I don’t recall, down, down to a part of town I see only from the window of a car or bus, too far for my small legs to walk, bars and gas stations and small stores lining either side, onward to a destination only my mother knows, if not downtown Passaic, then some other place I have no memory of going to before this, my mother sighing as we go, her face as thick with lines as the trucks of the trees we pass along the way. A dry cleaners sign popping up before we pass under a bridge over which another highway runs, down further until I see the door of our doctor’s office, and then that passes, too.
My mother tells me to stop squirming; I tell her I am hot, the interior of the bus filled with still different fumes, from the old man across the aisle coughing into his dirty handkerchief, the old woman scented with heavy perfume, and the teenagers with hair gel. Even my mother looks wilted, beads of sweat over her upper lip, her eyes filled with a worried mist, mumbling about where we need to go, “I hope they have everything your size,” she says, “If Robert Halls doesn’t, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
The bus vibrates over a rough patch of road. A little boy in the back seat drops his soda, brown liquid spreading down the ribs of the rubber mat on the aisle floor.
I remember where I am, the turn we take when my uncle drives me to the park, the summer kiddy pool, the swings, the open fields and sunlight, and I ask my mother if we can get off and go there, and she says, “Not now,” I sulk.
I remember the fighter the city used to have there for kids to play on, prying fingers pushing and pulling its switches until they fall off, and wonder if the plane is still there, thinking I want to see that much more than I need to have communion, need to see it in case it won’t be there the next time I go, convinced it won’t be and may not be there even now.
Not much later, my mother pulls the cord to make the driver stop and rises, pushing me out into the aisle again and through the gauntlet of elbows and knees to the front door, down the steps to the curb, where the fumes of the bus swirl around us as the bus pulls away, leaving us near a bowling alley, a gas station and a handful of stores, none of which say “Robert Hall” on their signs, we walking over the tracks and around the corner where we see the building my mother wants, though we passed a barber shop and tavern before we reach it, pausing first at a store with a window full of shoes, tinted yellow from the window shades that makes the whole place seem old, and inside, it smells old, with cracked red vinal chairs where me and my mother sit.
A hunched man with gray hair greets us and asks my mother what she needs and frowns when he tells her, mumbling he might not have it in my size, saying he might have a pair in black, mother saying, “No, it must be white,” and he vanishes saying, “I’ll see what I can do,” coming back with a box out of which he draws a pair of small white shoes.
“This is the only pair we have,” he says, measuring my size with a stiff stair, “but these should fit,” and he yanks off my mud stained sneakers and shoves my feet into the shoes just a tiny bit too tight, my mother’s pleading as she asks, “how do they feel,” and me afraid to tell her the truth, lying by saying, “They’re all right,” the old man smiling with teeth nearly as yellow as the window shades as he says, “What did I tell you?”
My mother pays in him wrinkled bills, counting them out slowly as if they are more valuable than the numbers they display, his greedy fingers accepting each before bagging the box with my shoes and sending us on to our next stop where a tall man with slick hair greets us and asks how he can be of service, yet frowning the way the old man frowned when mother tells him she wants a white suit for me.
“We don’t get much call for white suits-- let alone in his size,” the salesman says, vanishing the endless aisle of suits TV always says they have, returning with a hanger and a suit that doesn’t quite look white.
“I’m afraid this is all we have and it’s old,” the salesman says, my mother biting her lip as she stares at it to see if it is white enough, saying she doesn’t care how it is as long as it is white, the salesman holding the suit up against my chest saying, “it looks to fit,” my mother saying, “It looks a little small to me, but he’ll only have to wear it once,” making me take off my dirty sneakers before trying on the suit, and like the shoes, it feels too snug.
“It’s too tight,” my mother says.
“Not by much. It wouldn't show if he didn't jump around or anything.”
“Tight is tight,” my mother says, then asks me, “How does it feel?”
"It hurts here and here," I say, pointing to my crotch and arm pits, my mother sighing and saying, “I was afraid it would come down to this.”
“You said he only has to wear it once,” the salesman says.
“But if it hurts him....”
“Then I can’t help you and I don’t know anyone who can,” the salesman says, my mother sighing again and then pulling out her purse to count out still more wrinkled dollars to pay for it with.
We walk back to the bus stop and drag the packages on board with us, my mother staring out the window on one side, while I watch for the turn off to the park on the other, nobody talking, not even the other passengers, as if we have already taken communion, and must stay silent as if in prayer.
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