Moose Street
For Andy —A. M.
Jefferson Square Park
It was Lena’s morning to baby-sit. She put Deedee in the old big-wheeled black carriage with the creaky hood that stuck when you opened or shut it.
Lena covered the baby with a faded yellow blanket. Her sister’s light brown hair curled around her neck and ears. Her eyes were shut, her rosy mouth slightly open, and her plump hand clutched a green toothbrush. She was already asleep.
“Be back for lunch!” Lena’s mother called. “Stay in the park, and don’t leave Deedee alone for a minute!”
“Don’t worry, Mom.” Lena tucked a bottle into one corner of the carriage. Three dimes jingled in her pocket.
“And no candy!”
“No candy,” Lena echoed.
The big creaky carriage was hard to push. Lena made her way slowly down Moose Street humming a tune.
The August day was hot but not sticky. Lena turned the corner past Nancy’s house and stopped in front of Catalano’s candy store. She parked the carriage on the grass and ran up the stairs.
“One grape Popsicle, please.”
“Five cents,” said Mr. Catalano, who reminded Lena of a marshmallow bunny, all round and soft, with little red-rimmed eyes.
Lena put a dime on the wooden counter. She loved the sweet-tasting liquid in tiny wax bottles, the sticks of red and black licorice, the banana-flavored necklaces that you could both wear and eat. Every time that Lena had some money she spent it here.
Mr. Catalano dropped the dime into the cash register and slid a nickel across the counter to Lena.
“And a bag of M&M’s,” said Lena. She slid the nickel back across the counter and put the candy into her pocket.
On the stairs she peeled the translucent white paper with orange letters off the Popsicle and took the first careful lick.
She skipped down to the carriage.
“Mama?”
“Sshhhh … Go back to sleep.” Lena hooked her elbows around the carriage handle so she could walk and eat her Popsicle at the same time and headed for the park. She hoped Nancy would be there. Sometimes her friend had to spend the day with her grandmother.
“Hello, dear.” It was a nun from St. Mary’s with a big wooden cross hanging from her neck.
“Hello,” Lena mumbled. Should she have said, “Hello, Sister,” as Nancy did? It seemed rude not to say more. But the nun was not her sister.
Nancy made the sign of the cross whenever she met a priest or a nun on the street, and she showed Lena how to do it too. But Lena could never bring herself to make the sign of the cross, even to see what it would feel like.
Did the nun know she was Jewish? Would she still have said hello if she knew? Would she have tried to convert her? Did it bother her that Lena didn’t make the sign of the cross?
And was she really bald under that black and white headpiece?
“Lena!” The twins, Mary Catherine and Catherine Mary, dressed in spotless matching outfits of yellow and pink, skipped out of the park.
“We just won the hopscotch tournament,” announced Mary Catherine, the pink twin.
“This is what we got,” said Catherine Mary, the yellow twin, holding up a box of colored chalk.
The twins skipped up the street. Lena took another lick from the Popsicle and turned the carriage into Jefferson Square Park.
Three boys were throwing sand at one another, a couple of girls wobbled on stilts, and some kids were sitting at a table making cabins out of Popsicle sticks. A group of teenage boys sat by the stone fountain with its trough of stagnant green water that you could smell clear across the park.
It should really be called Jefferson Round Park, thought Lena as she wheeled the carriage toward the swings. The park was a circle bounded by a street—an island of kids in a sea of painted two-family wooden houses. It was the hub, the center of the neighborhood. Everyone met there. In the winter there were snow forts and ice-skating; in the summer, hopscotch, Hula-Hoop, and roller-skating contests and crafts with high school kids hired as counselors by the city.
In the summer Lena went almost every day.
The first person she saw was Esther Brown, clutching a small paper bag to her chest.
“Hi,” said Lena.
“Hey,” muttered Esther. She wouldn’t meet Lena’s eyes.
Why did Esther slouch when she could skip or run? Lena wondered. Why did she keep her eyes on the ground when the sky was clear and fresh, and boys and girls shouted from one end of the park to another?
“See you later?” Lena called after her. Though she couldn’t remember ever seeing Esther in the park for more than five minutes.
Esther didn’t answer.
Lena shrugged and pushed the carriage farther into the park.
At one of the picnic tables, Roseanne, who lived across the street from Lena, was painting her nails bright red.
Roseanne was sixteen. She was short and had long black hair. Two years ago she used to baby-sit when Lena’s parents went out. She always brought her curlers and her hair dryer—a pink plastic bonnet with a white hose—and set her hair and Lena’s with lots of shiny pink gel. Lena loved touching the tight round curls of hair just after the curlers had been taken out. The curls felt sticky and firm until Roseanne brushed them. Then Lena’s hair fell in soft graceful waves over her neck and shoulders.
“Hi, Roseanne!” she called.
“Hey, Lena.” Roseanne waved her wet nails in the air.
“Lena! Lena!” From under an elm tree Nancy waved a stick at her. “Over here!”
The heavy black carriage creaked and muttered as Lena pushed it over the grass. She parked it in the shade and plopped down next to her friend.
“Got the kid again, huh?” Nancy peeled off a piece of red licorice and began to chew on it. “Want one?”
“I’ve got my Popsicle.”
“It’s dripping.”
Lena gulped down the Popsicle in a few large bites and flung the two sticks into the trash can.
“Let’s go over to my house,” said Nancy. She lived on the top floor—the attic, really—of a red house two blocks away.
“I can’t. I have Deedee. I bought some M&M’s. Want some?” Lena pulled the package out of her pocket.
Nancy held out her hand and Lena poured the tiny colored candies over her palm.
The Pine brothers were riding their bikes through the park. Sam, the older one, zoomed toward the girls on stilts. One girl tottered and fell. The other girl jumped off and tried to jam one of her stilts into Sam’s bike. Sam swerved away, laughing wildly.
Stewart, who was in Lena’s grade, rode behind, watching his older brother. Stewart wore faded jeans and a red paisley cap, under which his face was thin and white, even at the end of summer. As he pedaled past Lena and Nancy, Lena pulled the carriage back from the sidewalk.
He passed without a threat or a word and disappeared under the elm trees, the sun and leaves making patterns of shadow and light on his back.
“Wouldn’t you like to punch Sam Pine right in the nose?” Nancy said.
“What if he punched back?”
“Hit him again!”
“If he won, he’d brag to everyone.”
“He wouldn’t win. I’d make sure of that.” Nancy dropped the last of the M&M’s into her mouth and pulled another stick of licorice out of her pocket. “And when I finished with him, I’d flatten that Stewart.”
“He never bothers anyone,” said Lena. “It’s always Sam.”
“You like him?” Nancy asked slyly. “You’ve got a crush on Stewart Pine?”
“No!” Lena felt her face go hot. “Why would I like him, anyway? He gets all D’s in school.”
“The trouble with you Jewish people is that you’re all brains and no muscles,” Nancy said. “My mother said so.”
Lena stared at her friend. Nancy was sitting in a patch of dirty grass, her strong arms and legs tanned and dusty. The licorice had stained her lips a purplish red. “You’re crazy,” Lena said.
“It’s the truth.” Nancy made the sign of the cross over her chest with a half-chewed piece of licorice. “I swear by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
“Your mother’s crazy, too,” Lena added.
“But don’t worry,” Nancy continued. “At least you don’t look Jewish. Not too much, anyway.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Lena. If her mother had overheard them, she would retort, “What are Jewish people supposed to look like?”
Nancy studied her for a moment. “You could almost be Italian. But not your father. Your father looks Irish.”
Lena was slim, with blue eyes and straight black hair that she sometimes wore in braids; her father was tall and thin with curly red hair.
“Yeah,” said Lena. “We’re the only Irish-Italian-Jewish family on Moose Street.”
“Hey, look at me!” Danette streaked past them on a pair of new white roller skates. “I’m the fastest skater on Moose Street!”
“There goes someone who could teach Sam Pine a lesson,” said Nancy. “One that he’d never forget.”
Danette had strong arms, a hard head, and she loved to fight. She had beaten up girls, boys, even a teenager once.
Lena tried to stay away from her. You didn’t want to get on Danette’s bad side.
The carriage creaked and stirred. “Mama?”
“Your kid is up,” said Nancy.