A Chance in the World Page 3

  No matter how many cars came down Chancery Street or up Arnold Street, I knew the sound of Willie’s station wagon. It had a loud rattle, like a giant who was gargling bowling balls. When I heard it, my throat got tight and my heart raced. There were times when I prayed that I was wrong, that it was just another car going by. Wishful thinking. His car would pull to the curb, and if he misjudged it, which he did from time to time, the rubber from the wheels would screech against the granite.

  Sometimes he wouldn’t get out of the car right away but would sit there listening to Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye. During the summers, I could hear Sam singing about the chain gang or Marvin asking what was goin’ on. Their voices soothed me, and for a moment I forgot how afraid I was. Keep singing, I would think. But eventually Sam or Marvin would stop singing, and Willie would exit. The car door would slam, and I would hear the tink, tink, tink of the car’s engine settling.

  Thirty seconds usually passed between the car door slamming and the screen door opening. I know it was thirty seconds because I counted every single one of them. And then I hung on the sound of the slow closing of the white screen door, the rusty hinges screaming in protest. My fate for that day hung on the time it took for the swinging door to rejoin its metal frame. If Willie called for me after the screen door closed, all was well. If he called before the screen door closed, a beating was coming.

  Willie’s inability to read and write bothered him a great deal. On several occasions he demanded that I teach him how to read. I was all too eager to do so because I believed that if I taught him how to read, he would feel greater empathy for me. But I was not a teacher nor was I able to explain how to do something that had come rather easily to me. He would grow frustrated, cursing and yelling that I wasn’t teaching him properly and then, without warning, one of his bear-sized hands would thunder across my face, knocking me from the chair.

  Not that I was the only object of Willie’s wrath. The man was quick to pull a knife or gun on anyone he believed had offended him. Although I was only a child, I judged him as the type of person who lived for confrontation, constantly looking for a fight to show just how much of a man he was. More often than not, I would see his belligerence on display when I went with him on errands. A slow driver or someone who failed to move when the traffic light turned green or, worse yet, a driver who cut him off in traffic would incur his wrath. Never was this more evident than one summer day when I was eleven years old.

  We were out on an errand and found ourselves on a one-way street in New Bedford’s West End. Ahead of us was a taxi, and the cabdriver was helping an elderly woman out of the vehicle. The driver returned to the taxi several times to get the woman’s groceries while she waited on the front porch. Willie was becoming impatient, but he also could see that the cabdriver was genuinely helping the woman. There was nowhere for us to go. Willie put the car in park and we waited. Finally, the cabdriver returned to his vehicle, and that’s when the fireworks began.

  Rather than pulling away, the cabdriver lingered even longer. Ten minutes or more passed, and Willie’s patience had worn thin. He beeped the horn, but the cabdriver ignored him. So Willie rolled down his window and asked the man to move his car out of the way. The man stuck his head out the window, peered over his left shoulder, and yelled back, “Can’t you see I just helped an old lady into the house? You’ll sit there and wait you big . . . black . . . monkey!” He said those last three words slowly to make absolutely certain his audience did not miss their meaning. He then rolled up his window but not before hurling the most profane of racial epithets for closing measure.

  Uh-oh.

  Willie put two hands on the steering wheel and pulled himself closer to the front window, almost as if he were doing a pull-up. He stared out the window at the cabdriver and then back at me, as if to ask if he had really heard what he thought he’d heard.

  “Did you . . . did he . . . aww . . . no!” Those last words came out more like a guttural roar, and for a brief moment it seemed as if he were asking my opinion. In a single, swift motion, he reached under his seat, pulled out a twelve-inch-long machete, and was out the car door.

  The cabdriver, a thickly bearded mountain of a man, stepped from his vehicle just as quickly, intending to meet Willie halfway. For a moment, I had a vision of two adult rams gathering themselves for a head-butting collision. The cabdriver was a bigger man, but Willie was not impressed. The driver seemed to sense this, too, because as soon as Willie advanced toward him, he paused midstride and then took a step back. And if the driver needed any further convincing, the machete— no longer concealed behind Willie’s back and glistening in the midday summer heat—certainly did it. The moment the cabbie saw the machete, all the bravado drained from his face.

  Willie had undergone knee surgery a few months before, and he still walked with a pronounced limp. Yet this did not deter him. He chased the driver around his cab, waving and brandishing the machete, spewing profanity, and threatening to cut the man to pieces. The cabdriver believed him. Circling the taxi just quickly enough to stay out of Willie’s reach, he tried to apologize, but Willie was hearing none of his pleas.

  A few times, Willie reversed direction to try to cut the driver off. Seeing the move coming, the cabbie went back the other way. For what seemed like an eternity, they played this high-stakes game of cat and mouse until Willie, overcome by exhaustion and his throbbing knee, leaned against the taxi, both elbows across the hood, to catch his breath. Realizing that he was not going to catch the man, at least not today, Willie limped back to the car, but not before telling the cabbie, machete pointed at him for emphasis, that he would find him again soon. The cabdriver stood outside his vehicle—chest heaving, hand on the driver’s door handle, waiting to make sure that Willie was fully inside his car. Then the driver jumped into his taxi and shot up the street, leaving the sound of screeching tires and the smell of burning rubber in his wake.

  I had stayed in the car, not daring to get out, my mouth formed in the shape of an O. I knew what Willie was capable of, and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him. Once the dust had settled and Willie was back in the car, I burst out laughing so hard that it hurt. I’m not sure why I did, but I couldn’t stop laughing no matter how much I tried. As we drove back home, Willie yelled about how badly he was going to beat the cabdriver when he saw him again. That only made me laugh harder because I knew there was no way Willie was going to catch that man.

  This was one of the few times at the Robinsons that I expressed genuine emotion without fear of retribution. As we pulled next to the curb of the house, I was still howling with laughter, tears rolling down my cheeks. Willie finally began to laugh along with me, and we sat in the car for several minutes, so overcome with laughter we could barely move. It was the only time I can remember really bonding with the man.

  CHAPTER 9

  All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks . . .

  —RICHARD ADAMS, WATERSHIP DOWN

  I settled into a routine at the house on Arnold Street, to the degree one can ever become comfortable with monsters who disguise themselves as human beings. This is what they were to me: real-life boogeymen whose origins and intentions I could never fathom. Children rarely ask where monsters come from or how they came to be; children simply accept them as a fact of life, something to be dealt with, the way you deal with any other childhood fear.

  One way I dealt with these monsters was to become a thief, and a very good one at that. My devious plots were elaborate, complete with escape routes and explanations if I were ever to get caught. I obsessed over the things I stole, and no matter how much I managed to get, I always tried to steal more. Once I stole something, I would stare at it, wondering how best I could hide it or preserve it. But I didn’t steal just anything. I was fixated on one thing: food. At seven years old, I wei
ghed just forty pounds, a fact the Robinsons explained away by saying I had tapeworms.

  To avoid going hungry, I had to be creative—to outwit them. Nearly every morning of my days with the Robinsons, I would awake and immediately try to determine how I was going to get food to hide in the basement. It took me a while to learn what to steal. My first foray into the art of thievery was a huge block of government-rationed cheese that Willie had hustled. I hid it in the basement and sneaked away one afternoon ready to feast, only to find the mice that roamed the cellar had already beaten me to it. After that, I placed my thieving eye on the unlabeled silver cans of peanut butter Willie brought home; I was confident that the enterprising mice couldn’t chew through the metal.

  I wasn’t usually that picky; I would eat whatever scraps I could get my hands on. If it wasn’t moving, then it was fair game. Whenever they went grocery shopping, I had to unload the bags. I would scan the bags quickly to see what was in them and hide the one with the most goodies underneath the car. When the coast was clear, I would take the bag and dash to the cellar, where I would squirrel it away. From time to time, they would realize that they had come up a bag or two short and would fume at the person who had bagged their groceries. They never figured out it was me. The joy of outsmarting the Robinsons became almost as sweet as the food I stole. Almost.

  Another very important way of coping was to immerse myself in books. When, precisely, I began reading, I cannot say. There was no signature moment, at least early on, but I imagine I discovered books as part of going to school. Books for me were what the ocean is to the fearless explorer—deep and mysterious, boundless and soothing. I loved the smell of books, the feel of their weight in my hands, the rustle of the pages as I turned them, the magnificent illustrations on the covers that promised hidden treasures within.

  Like food, books were hard for me to come by. The Robinsons never bought me any (Robinson Rule #10) and thwarted every attempt I made to get more. When I did bring home a book from the school library, I had to ask if I could read (Robinson Rule #11). If I were caught reading without permission, a merciless beating would follow (Robinson Rule #12). When permission was granted, it was granted begrudgingly and only under the condition that I read in the cellar. I was never allowed to keep books upstairs (Robinson Rule #13), nor could I read in their presence (Robinson Rule #14).

  The cellar was cold, musty, and dank. Its walls tossed off long shadows in the dim light offered by a single swaying bulb. I frequently heard the mice clawing and scratching in the walls. The cellar was storage space for many of the home’s utilities—washing machine, dryer, hot water and oil furnaces—but also for many of the things the Robinsons had no further use for, like broken furniture that didn’t stand, ancient preserves no longer fit to be eaten, old clothes that had gone out of style. These abandoned items had served their purpose, but the Robinsons held on to them, believing that someday someone foolish enough to value them would come along and take them off their hands. To the Robinsons, the cellar was precisely where I belonged.

  Amid all the clutter, I fashioned a makeshift reading space composed of mildewy clothes, torn pillows, and old box springs. I positioned this space directly under the stairs because, that way, I would be able to hear anyone coming down. And my hearing was finely tuned. I knew the stride pattern of each member of the family: Betty shuffled, Reggie had longer steps, and Willie’s plodding was the easiest to detect, for he often walked with his oak cane. When they approached the cellar door, I would scramble to hide my book and stash of food. I kept a jug of water to wash away the peanut butter smell on my breath, a lesson I learned when Willie nearly caught me. If I had ever been caught reading down there with my moldy stash of hoarded food, I would have paid a dear price.

  I loved the cellar, finding it a welcome refuge from the Robinson Rules. Yet it was not my favorite place to read—at least not during the warmer months. Across from the Robinsons’ house, right next to Fuller’s paint store, was Mrs. Blake’s house. Alongside her yard was a small retaining wall. A large oak tree hung over the area, so large that it kept half the block in shade. The wall itself was no more than a few feet high and craggy, as if hewn from the side of a mountain, except for a single, smooth, square piece of rock at the wall’s northern end. Once my chores were done and I had received permission, I would take my favorite book, go to that shaded haven, and lose myself in my latest mystery, none of which seemed as great as the mystery of where I had come from.

  Nearly every summer day, you would find me sitting on that wall, accompanied by squirrels playing in the trees, as well as the occasional ant that tried to make my sneaker its home. I was never more at peace during my childhood than when I sat there. I loved the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves of the large oak, the smell of freshly cut grass brought on by neighborhood lawn mowers, the cacophony of birds that twittered as they flew by, the bumblebees that hovered by my head before moving on to more interesting things. This was my sanctuary, the place where I felt the most alive—and the safest.

  One summer afternoon when I was about eight years old, I looked up from my perch atop my reading wall to see a woman strolling down Chancery Street toward me. It was a neighbor, Mrs. Levin. I had seen her on many occasions walking to Sunnybrook Farms, the neighborhood grocery store. She was a small woman with dark hair pulled away from her face, although now, looking at her up close for the first time, I noticed the first signs of gray. Mrs. Levin was plainly dressed as always and moved at a casual pace, thoroughly enjoying her walk.

  She often waved and smiled at the Robinsons but nothing more than that. From time to time, her husband joined her. He was slightly taller, a balding man who wore red suspenders over a white T-shirt. They were Jewish, and the only reason I knew that was because as soon as they were out of earshot, Betty or Willie would fling anti-Semitic remarks at their backs. For quite some time I thought they said “jewels” instead of “Jews.” For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why the Robinsons thought something as precious as jewels would be such bad people.

  Now I looked down, careful not to make any eye contact that would initiate a conversation (Robinson Rule #15). The walkway alongside the Blake home was not paved, and I could hear the crunching of Mrs. Levin’s footsteps on the gravel as she neared. As I so often did with strangers, I hoped that she would walk on by and pay me no attention. But that’s not what happened. Her white tennis shoes, scuffed ever so lightly around the toe, stopped right in front of me. And though I was not afraid, I still swallowed hard. “What are you reading there?” she asked.

  I looked up from the pages and showed her the cover of my Encyclopedia Brown mystery. Leroy Brown, “Encyclopedia” to his friends, was a boy detective who often sat at the dinner table helping his dad, the chief of police in the fictional town of Idaville, solve cases that had baffled the department.

  “You like mysteries?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” I said, making the conversation far longer than the Robinson Rules dictated. “I really like how you get a chance to figure out the clues for yourself.”

  “Now, if I remember, weren’t you reading this book last week?”

  It puzzled me how she could have known that. “Yes, ma’am. But when I finish a book, I go back to the beginning and start all over again.”

  “I see.” She said nothing more and ambled on toward the store, but I still remember the long look she sent in the direction of my house on Arnold Street.

  Later that evening, there was a knock at the door. I was in the pantry washing dishes when Betty answered. A voice I immediately recognized asked, “Is Steve here? I have something I would like to give him.” It was Mrs. Levin.

  I grabbed for the dishrag, began drying my hands, and heard Betty say, “I can give them to him.” But Mrs. Levin was insistent: “If it’s okay, I would like to give him these myself.”

  There was a pause. “Stevie!” Betty said, the sweet, melodic voice, and use of a nickname, telling me that she was �
�onstage.” I came around the corner much faster than I should have, but my eavesdropping was either missed or ignored.

  “You remember me?” Mrs. Levin asked. I nodded my head yes.

  “Well, I thought you might like these.” In her arms was a brown, open-ended box, but I could not see what was in it. She lowered it, and I could barely believe my eyes. Inside the box were stacks of books, of different thicknesses and colors, their covers bright and promising.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “These,” she said, “are for the boy who likes to read.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, barely able to take my eyes off the box.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, smiling; and with that, she left.

  She was barely out of earshot before Betty’s voice boomed, “Take those books downstairs! I better never see them up here.”

  “Yes, ma’am, right now, ma’am,” I stammered. I feared that she would make me throw them away.

  Nothing I write can accurately capture the power and timeliness of the gift Mrs. Levin gave me that day. Though I did not know it at the time, several years earlier, when I was one and a half years old, a babysitter had written: “Dropped Steve off at the latest family his mother is boarding him out to . . . he cried his heart out . . . this little boy doesn’t have a chance in the world.” Others believed this as well, especially those to whose care I was entrusted. I sensed it in their sidelong glances and empathetic shakes of the head, their eyes saying what their tongue would not. You are beyond repair.

  I had beaten my fists against this fate as long as I could. Now, frequently starved and beaten almost daily, failed and abandoned by the institutions tasked with my care, and waiting for a family that was never going to come for me, I was beginning to lose my desperate battle with the Robinsons. Caseworkers at the time described me as tense, nervous, and anxious. What was really unfolding was something far more damaging, something they never looked hard enough to see: I had begun to resign myself to this fate, to accept I was to be the Robinsons’ prisoner and that their world would be the only one I would ever know.