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by Frances Schenkkan
My second week at St. Jerome's, the coach announces over the intercom that the first twenty students to sign up can go on Friday's service project to the nursing home. Ugh, singing, the boys say. I go along when they ask, Please, can't we play balloon volleyball with them instead? Coach, who's way cool, says sure. We don't have to call him Father because he's not one.
Mother's pleased. It's things like going to a nursing home, what she calls learning to share with others, that she expects from my new school. Still, she asks, "You're sure it won't bother you?" So soon after Gran died, is what she means. It's money from selling his house that's sending me to St. Jerome's. I say I'll be OK.
"The old dears," she sighs. She tells me to be sure to wear a clean shirt under my blazer. My dad works nights so he doesn't say anything.
St. Jerome's, I learn, is big on service, a project almost every week. The boys joke about the service part. "Get it?" asks one of the eighth graders when we're finishing at the urinal. He's grinning so I grin back. Mark, who's in seventh, too, and is already almost my friend, writes in my biology notebook, like it's a definition we have to learn, Service -- what male animals do to females.
Service is OK by me. The teachers like kids who sign up, Mark says, so a lot of girls will be there. I'll get to skip the study hall I go to until Mother gets off work.
Maybe because I'm new, Coach lets me ride out there with him. We sing I Heard It Through the Grapevine to the radio, and he says I should go out for choir if I'm positive about sitting out football. The rest of the kids follow us with mothers in Suburbans. We're all late 'cause Coach can't remember exactly what the cross street is. We kind of bust through the front door. Mark's warned me about the smell, that it's like that lemon stuff they use in the boys' bathroom, but I know that already from the place Gran was in. I just breathe through my mouth until I get used to it.
Coach leads us down a bright hall. There's a metal rail on both sides, and some of the guys try to straddle. My arms are long enough, but it doesn't seem right to do something like that where people are dying. We come to a big room, and a bunch of old people, ladies mostly, are milling about in wheelchairs or using walkers. At the back of the room, there's a glass door and a few old folks are sitting and standing under this bright red EXIT sign. Their heads are bent a little, like our dog when he has to go out. I can see a walkway with a patch of bright green on either side.
The girls go up to some of the old people and start talking and letting them touch their hair and skirts. This lady with bright red lips and a lot of black hair rushes toward Coach and us.
She's wearing a plastic badge that says Karen Anne, Activity Director. She's got on a ton of perfume -- roses -- and that makes me breathe through my mouth again. Coach gives her a kind of sleepy hello. She thanks him over and over for bringing the children.
With us, though, she's all business. She hands Mark a yellow balloon. A couple of the guys make fun of him behind her back -- blow job, can't get it up. As soon as he's got the balloon tied off, some guys grab it. "Don't let it touch the floor! Man, you couldn't hit the Goodyear blimp!" The girls roll their eyes.
"Some of you big boys," the lady says, "get the net." She's got on all this blue eye shadow and blue high heels that go with her dress. I drag a K- Mart bag out of a closet and then these big coffee cans. They've got cement in them with a hole in the center for the poles. We hang the net, which sags in the middle. The girls and the ladies are on one side, and we're on the other with a few old guys.
"Try to hit it toward them," the activity lady says in a stage whisper. We do, but it doesn't seem to matter. The balloon lands on one lady's head and bobs up and down like, Knock, Knock, anyone there? It makes little strands of her yellow white hair stand up. She's too busy rubbing at a spot on her robe to notice.
This one old guy, though, he's pretty good. He's wearing a red corduroy cap, which dips up and down as he checks out the girls jumping up for the balloon. Just when I think he's not paying any attention to the game, all of a sudden his hand will fly up off the arm of his wheelchair and whap it hard. The net bulges a second, and sometimes he even gets it over. Our side starts calling him Mr. Slam Dunk.
Not everybody's in a wheelchair or a walker. A guy who's so stooped he can barely walk goes and gets this lady and puts her chair right on the front row of the girls' side. He checks to be sure her brake is set and shuffles off.
"You can't do that!" shouts one of the ladies on our side. She's this little bitty thing, hasn't said boo before. "Get your girlfriend out of here!" The girlfriend, or whatever she is, stares straight ahead. She doesn't seem to hear. The girls get quiet and look at each other and at us across the net.
"Fuck! You heard me, get her out of here!" the loudmouth says. Most of the girls slide away in little groups. The hunchback who brought the silent lady up there in the first place isn't around anymore so I lift up the net and wheel her over to the mothers. They bend down to introduce themselves, but she just keeps staring straight ahead. At least it quiets the midget lady down.
Without the girls, we divide up, five guys to a side. We leave Mr. Slam Dunk and the other old people where they are. We aren't as noisy cheering and high-fiving each other when we score after that, but Mark still keeps up the announcer bit: "That's 13 to 12, folks!"
"Will you just shut up!" shouts the eighth grader from the urinal.
A lady across the net from me says, "What's that boy up to?" She's better dressed than most of them, in a shiny jogging suit. Her fingernails are the same purple. Girls can't wear nail polish at St. Jerome's, but Mark tells me they do other times.
"He's keeping score," I say. My side's ahead, mainly 'cause me and Mr. Slam Dunk are taking the game seriously. The other kids are losing interest.
The lady squints at me and asks like she hasn't just said it, "What's he up to?" She pulls at her silky pants. "Help me, my bag's full." I don't see any bag and I don't want to. I look for the activity director. She's back near the nurse's station whispering something in Coach's ear.
When I look back, the purple lady's twisting her head around trying to catch somebody's eye. When she can't, she brings her face right up to the net and says in a loud whisper, "It's my period, you know." She winks white eyelashes at me. A girl standing next to her pulls in her breath and brings her hand up to her mouth.
Mark, who's right in the middle of giving the score, starts to giggle. The other guys are poking each other and saying, What's that, Granny? Your period? She's smiling like she's pleased at the attention. I don't want any part of it and back away. The little group of hang dogs are still waiting by the glass door. I start pushing the chairs this way and that, getting around the walkers, excuse me, excuse me. By the time I'm to the door, I practically throw myself against the aluminum bar. The hot air smells like nothing, and I fill my mouth with it. The air conditioning compressor banging away at the end of the walk, and the five o'clock traffic doesn't slow down. I calm down. It's OK out here. When I look back, the old folks are all sort of leaning toward me, like they're expecting something. I say the first thing that comes into my head: "Would you like to go outside?" Like, You can if you want to. No one says anything, but they make little squirming movements in their walkers and a couple touch the buttons on their chairs. They edge toward me.
Mr. Slam Dunk's gotten himself over there in a hurry. In fact, he's at the front, closest to me. I keep the door open with my back and begin to pull his chair through. I have to lean over him to sort of lift his chair, and he says something like, That's the way, that's right. He's almost out when the activity lady starts calling from across the room, Son, son, you can't do that. She rushes over and begins squeezing between chairs and walkers, all the time half shouting, the alarm should have gone off, they can't go outside, only when a family member comes. Her roses, smell gets stronger and stronger. I try to breathe through my mouth but it's too late. Gran's on his knees by a rose bush, showing me how you make a little mulch trench around it so it'll stay moist. He's got on a big sun hat and overalls, and I'm in my swimming trunks glad to be out of school and free to play in the sprinkler all afternoon if I want to. As he works, Gran sings bits of things, and I sing, too, like we're bees and that's just part of what you do.
I wipe my eyes and look up. The lady's almost to me. The yellow balloon shuffling toward us, too, close to the floor. Somebody at the back of the little group leans down and swats it. The balloon rises and several batting hands try to hit it. Someone finally connects and it floats toward Mr. Slam Dunk and me. Then it's just above him. He's facing out, but he must sense 'cause his red cap twitches, his hand's up and he lets fly. He's smiling, and I want to be happy that the balloon gets free but I'm watching it hover above the walk then drift down and to the side. It teases the bright grass around the compressor. It's going to bust, I know it will, so I help the activity lady get Mr. Slam Dunk back in fast. With the door closed, the pop makes only a dull slapping sound, like a shovelful of dirt hitting something deep in a hole.
Mark gets to go with Coach on the trip back. Mother's waiting for me and asks a lot of questions, but I cut her off.
"They really seemed to like it," I say.
"I thought they would," she smiles. "It probably did you some good, too." She adds the old dears to our evening prayers. Afterwards, I try servicing myself but it's no use so I sing a little to the radio instead.
