Cinnamon Girl Read online

  “But at least you’re trying,” I said. “That’s more than I could do.”

  Just then, the doorbell rang. In my stoned condition, it took me a moment to comprehend what the sound was.

  “Who could that be?” Claire asked Tony.

  “Who else? Kolvacik. He must have had to take Mina home early tonight—probably to avoid getting his legs broken by her old man.”

  Tony went to the window, leaned out, and called down, “Kolvacik, you thoughtless slob, go away. We’re in bed.”

  “So what?” Kolvacik called back. “We’ll just make it a threesome, like always.”

  Claire smiled at me and took a sip of beer.

  “In your dreams, Kolvacik,” Tony shot back.

  “Come on, Russo, let me in. I promise to keep my hands off Claire, okay?”

  Claire laughed.

  “Come on, Tony,” she said, “let him in before he wakes up Mrs. Rosetti. She’ll call the landlord again.”

  Tony turned back to us.

  “Ah, she’s deaf as a post,” he said. “She only calls if she sees something she doesn’t like. But I’ll let him in.”

  He put his head out the window again.

  “Sit tight, Kolvacik. I’ll be right down.”

  He went out the door to the stairwell, leaving it open behind him.

  “Tim’s an old friend of Tony’s,” said Claire. “They’ve known each other since they were kids—and that’s just about how old they act, sometimes. Tim is fun, though. You’ll like him.”

  “Holy shit,” Tony exclaimed from the bottom of the stairs. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “It’s a conga drum, dipshit,” said Kolvacik. “Imported from Darkest Africa.”

  “What do you plan to do with it?”

  “Eat breakfast off of it, what else? Come on, Tony, take the chain off, will ya. You’re stoned, aren’t you?”

  “Me? Nah.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ve got an even better surprise for you.”

  Kolvacik’s voice dropped to such a quiet level we couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  Then Tony said, “Well, why didn’t you say so? You can throw that ugly drum into the dumpster next door, but bring that shit up here.”

  “No way,” said Kolvacik, as they started up the stairs. “Love my hash, love my drum. This stuff’s going to help us make beautiful music together.”

  My first impression of Kolvacik as he came through the door was that he wasn’t much taller than the drum he carried in front of him, chest high. Thin, short legs in jeans appeared below it, and a small head with wild, frizzy black hair and dark, beady eyes peered over the top. The drum was made of dark wood carved with African figures and had an animal skin with the fur still on it stretched over the top. Kolvacik plopped it down on the carpet and gave it a few loud, quick raps.

  “Remember, kemosabe,” he intoned, “I’m leaving the safari at Nairobi.”

  Then he looked at me.

  “Who the hell are you? Whoever you are, if you’re thinking about getting into Claire’s pants, forget it. She’s already promised if she ever has an affair, it’ll be with me. Right Claire-bear?”

  I blushed, but Claire just laughed. “Right, Tim,” she said.

  Tony closed the door and shook a finger at Kolvacik.

  “You touch my woman and I’ll cut you up in little pieces and bury you inside that ugly drum, you hear me, boy?”

  Kolvacik put on a look of horrified innocence.

  “But, Tony, baby, I thought we were friends. Friends share and share alike, right? Come on …”

  “You ‘come on’ enough for both of us,” said Tony, then turned to me. “John, this is Tim Kolvacik—a certified maniac, in case you haven’t noticed. Tim, John Meyer. We met at the demonstration tonight.

  “Oh, man,” said Kolvacik, “don’t tell me you actually fought the cops over that dippy little park? What a waste of time. I, on the other hand—” He reached into his pocket and extracted a small foil package. “—was using my time wisely, scoring a gram of pure Indian hash.”

  He set the foil on the drumhead and pulled it open.

  “Look at how dark this shit is.”

  We gathered around to admire the hash. As much as I was put off by Kolvacik’s big mouth, I had to admit he wasn’t exaggerating about this stuff. It was dark and rich, smelling of wild flowers and earth.

  “Care to sample it?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Tony. “That weak weed we’ve been smoking is already wearing off.”

  “Then, let’s party!” cried Kolvacik. “But, hey, where’s the music? What is this, a morgue? We need sounds. Russo, I want Santana full blast, or you aren’t touching this stuff. I’m not sharing it with a bunch of nuns. I came here to break in this drum and, by God, I’m going to break it in!”

  We snorted a few small pieces of the hash by sticking them on a pin and lighting them. It was exhilarating stuff—not too hard on the head, but plenty of body rushes. Before long, we were following Santana’s beat, Kolvacik on his conga, me on Tony’s bongos, and Tony on an end table. We beat our hands raw while Claire danced around and around the room, hypnotized by dope and sound.

  Why the neighbors didn’t call the police, I’ll never know. I’d have thought even deaf Mrs. Rosetti could have heard us. And we kept it up well past midnight. It was Jonah who finally stopped us. We paused between albums and heard him crying pitifully from his bedroom. Claire went to him immediately. Tony decided it was a good time to cut the music and go help her, and even Kolvacik had the good sense not to protest.

  “The natives are restless, man,” he said to me after they’d left the room, a small-toothed grin splitting his hairy face.

  I smiled weakly. He began tapping his conga lightly with two fingers, glancing up at me occasionally, though he avoided eye contact. I sensed that he was studying me.

  “These are good people, don’t you think?” he finally said.

  “They seem to be.”

  “They are—you can take that from me. You plan to be friends with them?”

  “Maybe. How the hell do I know? I just met them tonight.”

  “You know. It’s bullshit to say you don’t know. Do you or don’t you?”

  I reached for Claire’s cigarettes and fumbled the pack as I tried to pull one out. The hash and the drumming had made me speedy, and Kolvacik’s questioning wasn’t helping any.

  “What do you want from me, man? Sure, I’d like to be friends with them. Is that okay with you?”

  He drummed all ten fingers on the conga, making a sound like the drum roll before a firing squad execution. He looked right through me with those beady black eyes. I had to look away. He ended the drum roll with one good thump of his palm.

  “Just don’t fuck with them, you hear? They’re the best people I know.”

  I still hadn’t succeeded in freeing a cigarette. I stood up, the cigarette pack still in my hand, then threw it down.

  “Hey, man, get off my case, will you? I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t like being threatened. You take care of your business, and I’ll take care of mine.”

  I was trembling a little. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water and found Claire walking Jonah back and forth along its narrow length. Only the dim light on the stove was on. If possible, she looked even more beautiful in that light. Tony was nowhere in sight.

  “Is Jonah okay?” I asked quietly.

  “Fine. I like to walk him in here when the refrigerator is humming. It seems to calm him down.”

  Jonah was a fine-boned, brown-haired doll in baby blue Dr. Denton’s. I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to take him in my arms.

  “May I hold him?”

  Claire looked a little surprised, and then pleased.

  “Sure.”

  She handed Jonah to me carefully. His big brown eyes fluttered open for a few seconds, but he stayed asleep. He felt warm and vulnerable against me. He smelled of milk and baby shampoo.
It was so cool, holding a baby. The whole damn person, right there, practically in the palm of my hand. I knew I’d been held like that, too, but who can remember that far back? For a minute I spaced out on how big a person would have to be in order to hold me like I was holding Jonah. Seems like that was what I needed most, to be held. Then I flashed on holding my little brother, Steven, who’d been born when I was a freshman in high school. Steven always smelled that way, too.

  Mingled with those familiar baby smells were others. Maybe I was hallucinating, but I thought I could identify my own sweaty odor, the green smell of the underbrush Tony and I had run through, the sandy smell of the beach, and all of them overlaid with the pungent perfume of the hashish. But there was another, far more exhilarating one. It took me a few minutes to figure out that it was the musky scent of the body that had given birth to the baby in my arms, the smell of a woman, Claire’s smell. I took a deep breath, savoring it.

  2

  KOLVACIK LEFT SHORTLY AFTER our little confrontation—eyeing me suspiciously for staying, it seemed to me, but not offering to give me a ride home. The buses to Whitefish Bay had stopped running long before and Tony was too tired to take me, so he offered me the couch. I didn’t sleep well. I rarely do the first night in a new place. The old apartment and the street below were full of unfamiliar sounds, and I was still buzzed from all the dope. I finally nodded off, just before dawn.

  When I woke up, sun was streaming in the window. Keeping my eyes closed against it, I turned toward the back of the couch, hoping to go back to sleep. Then I heard a strange mewling sound. My eyes snapped open, and I looked over my shoulder. There, in an overstuffed red chair on the other side of the room, sat Claire in a thin summer nightgown unbuttoned to the waist. Jonah sucked at her breast. She was attending to him and didn’t see me watching her. She pulled him off her breast, exposing a large, wet nipple, covered it, then exposed her other breast and moved Jonah onto it. I felt a stirring between my legs.

  Claire looked up and saw me staring, but she seemed unabashed.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Did we wake you?”

  I yawned deeply and rolled over onto my back, being careful to keep my knees up.

  “No, I think the sun did.”

  “This is the brightest room in the apartment. That’s why I like to feed Jonah in here.”

  “Tony up, yet?”

  “He’s been down at the docks since five-thirty.”

  “You’re kidding! After last night, he’s going to work at the docks all day?”

  “He does it all the time. If he doesn’t show up, he loses his number. He’s working toward joining the union.”

  “Does he like the job that much?”

  “He likes the pay.”

  “I wish I could do that, bust my butt and make a lot of money. My brother does it every summer. Then he doesn’t have to work during the school year and he can concentrate on studying. I work part-time, year-round. I can only stand shit jobs in small doses.”

  “Me, too.”

  She shifted Jonah back to the other breast. I couldn’t help watching. Her breasts were white as vanilla ice cream, her nipples reddened from Jonah’s sucking.

  “Hey,” I said, “what’s the story with this Kolvacik guy? He got all serious on me last night, while you and Tony were in the other room. He asked me if I thought I was going to be friends with you guys, then warned me to be nice to you because you’re the best people he knows.”

  “Tim said that?”

  “It was pretty strange.”

  “He’s a strange guy. Most of the time, he acts like a flake, but all of a sudden he’ll get serious like that. It always surprises me, too. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t. I was just curious. What’s his story?”

  “He’s from Mequon, and I guess he always felt out of place up there— like a blue-collar guy in a white-collar suburb is what he told me. He moved down to the East Side right after high school, and now he works at the Harley-Davidson plant in Wauwatosa. He goes to school nights, like Tony does. He’s got his own Harley, and he treats it better than he treats Mina, his fiancé. I like Mina a lot. She’s a little Italian girl who grew up here on the East Side.

  “Nasty to women, huh? I don’t like that.”

  “Actually, that’s not fair to Tim. Mina gives as good as she gets. She’s quite a flirt. Tim pretends not to care, but he does.”

  She began to shift Jonah again. This time I glanced away, out the window. The sky was deep blue, with little puffy clouds scattered about. It looked to be a perfect summer day.

  “Tim just doesn’t want anybody to get too close to him. Tony’s a bit like that.”

  I looked back at Claire.

  “Tony? I can’t believe that. He seems so open and friendly.”

  “I don’t mean he gets nasty, the way Tim can, but he’ll only open up so far. Then he starts making jokes and you can’t get anything out of him. Believe me, I know.”

  “I believe you. I’m just surprised.”

  “So was I …”

  She pulled Jonah off her breast and put him over her shoulder to burp him.

  “The little guy looks pretty tired,” I said.

  “He always wants to crawl right back into bed in the morning—just like your mother, right Jonah?”

  He let out a resonant belch, and Claire and I laughed. She laid him down on her lap, buttoned up her nightgown, then took him in her arms again and stood up.

  “I’m going to change him, then have some coffee. You want some?”

  “Sure. But why don’t you let me change him. I’ve got lots of experience.”

  “From where?”

  “I’m the second oldest in a family of seven. I was fourteen when my brother Steven was born. I took care of him all the time. We had a good time together.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “That’s just the way it was. I didn’t do anything special.”

  “But it sounds like you enjoyed taking care of a baby. Not every boy would feel that way.”

  “I suppose not. Anyway, can I take him off your hands?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She held Jonah out to me.

  “Uh, why don’t you set him down on the carpet, for now. I’ve got to get some clothes on. I’m nekid under here.”

  She laid him on the floor on his belly. He immediately turned himself over onto his back.

  “Hey,” I said, “neat trick.”

  “He just started doing that a few days ago. But that’s as far as he can go, so don’t worry about him getting away.”

  She left the room and I lay there watching Jonah flail around on his back. The sun had made a puddle of light on the rug beside him, and he kept reaching his hand into it, watching the hand light up. He had big, round, dark-brown eyes—definitely Tony’s—that glowed with wonder each time he did this. Occasionally, he would look up at me and smile. I could have watched him all day.

  Before I knew it, Claire was at the kitchen door, telling me that the coffee was ready. She seemed amused and pleased I was so fascinated with Jonah but reminded me that he still needed to be changed.

  I slipped into my jeans and shirt and took Jonah into his room. The changing table consisted of a piece of foam rubber on top of a low black dresser. The only other furniture in the room was a beat-up red crib with a worn teddy bear decal on the headboard and a nice old wooden rocking chair. The room was so small it looked as if there was barely room to rock.

  Having shot off my mouth about my expertise, I was surprised at how awkward I felt changing a baby again. But the little tricks came back to me as I did it, and Jonah seemed content with my technique. When I was done, I took him out to Claire in the kitchen.

  “Thanks. Why don’t you pour yourself some coffee while I put him down to sleep. With any luck, I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Is it all right if I use your phone. I should call my folks and tell them where I am.”

  She pointed to the wa
ll phone, beside the living room door. I dialed and got my mother on the first ring.

  “Mom, this is John.”

  “Where have you been all night, young man?”

  “With some friends over on the East Side. Tony and Claire. You don’t know them. They have a six-month-old baby named Jonah.”

  “Jonah? That’s an unusual name. Why didn’t you call us last night?”

  “I didn’t decide to stay until real late. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

  “How many times have we told you, we’d rather be woken up at night and know where you are than wake up in the morning and wonder.”

  “Why do you have to know where I am all the time? I’m nineteen years old, for Christ’s sake! If I was living on my own, you’d never know where I was, so what’s the difference?”

  “The difference is, you’re not living on your own, and as long as you live in this house, you’ll follow our rules. And don’t swear at me, young man! I don’t appreciate your filthy mouth!”

  “Filthy mouth? Jesus …”

  “There you go again!”

  “If that’s the story, maybe it’s time for me to get out of your house. You don’t seem to like anything I do.”

  “You do whatever you want, but as long as you live in this house, you’ll—”

  “Follow your rules. You already said that, okay?”

  “Don’t ‘okay’ me, young man. I’m your mother. Now, will you be home for supper tonight, or not?”

  “No. I have to work.”

  “Will you be home afterward?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know, yet. Probably.”

  “Well, don’t forget to call us if you’re not coming home. I lay awake wondering if you’re alive or dead.”

  “Okay. I’ll call.”

  I hung up, poured some of the coffee Claire had made and returned to the living room couch. I was agitated, as always after that kind of conversation with my mother. And they were getting more frequent. I knew I would have to move out before long. Between her dissatisfaction with my personal habits, Dad’s dissatisfaction with my politics, and their mutual dissatisfaction with my religious beliefs—or lack thereof—things were getting ugly. And, yet, I was afraid of going off on my own for the first time. I wasn’t confident about my ability to deal with the real world of paying rent and utility bills and tuition and buying food.