Zha Zha

Zha Zha was fat Georgy’s and Monaca’s mother. Zha Zha was not her real name, but I don’t remember her being called anything else.

“Here comes Zha Zha,” my uncle Paul would announce with a smile and a leer that sometimes got him in trouble with my aunt Lor. You couldn’t blame him. She was a statuesque, brick shithouse Polish blonde; poured into whatever she was wearing, stretch pants and flats with a button down top. She carried a snooty, aristocratic air out of place for the gritty, industrial neighborhood.

She was always calling the fire department for locking her self out of her flat on the second story above the butchers.

“Looks like Zha Zha locked herself out again,” uncle Paul said, commenting about the fire truck in front of the butcher’s and a ladder leaned up against a second story window. Her husband was a fat balding man it a suit. The firemen were lean and muscular. Zha Zha locked her self out a lot. I could hear the innuendo in my uncle’s voice, the speculation of possibilities, wistfulness when he announced, “Here comes Zha Zha.”

Playing at Fat Georgy’s, her presence filled their modest, neat apartment, Her musky perfume mixing with the sauerkraut smell of all my friends’ homes. She had a heavy earthiness about her and I was always aware of where she was in the flat, aware of the swell of her breast, the curve of her generous hips, the solidity of her stance. She often touched when she talked to me, tousled my hair, leaning down to touch my shoulder, asking me in her Polish accent if I wanted to say for lunch. She was hypnotic, mesmerizing.

She worried about her son and the streets he played in. She fed him too much and made him a momma’s boy in his neat to clean short pant and shirts.

“I’m not supposed to get dirty. I’m not supposed to play in the truck lots. I’m not supposed to leave the block.”

He chafed under her perpetual watching and leaning out of her window and calling when she didn’t know where he was. I dreamed of her calling me, of being a fireman when I grew up.

I watched her daughter, nine-year-old Monica, out of the corner of eight-year-old eyes. Unlike fat Georgy, Monica, with her red cheeks, pale skin and blond pixie-cut hair, took after her mother. I blushed and deigned vehemently liking her when the other kid sang,

“Mikey and Monica sitting in a tree,
K I S S I N G.
First came love, then came marriage,
Then came Monica with a baby carriage.

Secretly, when I grew up, I planed to marry both of them.

Hellions

After Pete turned mean he used to come after us kid. One time he got hold of Monica, Fat Georgy’s sister. He grabbed her by the shoulders and started shaking her, yelling in her face with his rotten breath. My uncle Paul chased him off with a two by four. So the first one who saw him coming would yell, “Pete. He’s coming.” We would all scatter hiding until he passed.

He must have come out of his shack at the bottom of the cinder pile in the truck lot across Huron, but we didn’t see him until he was in front of JP Schmitt’s. Somebody gave the alarm and Frankie and me ran to the empty apartments in the white frame building standing up against Pumpilio’s where he lived on the second floor. The second floor had a wrap around, wooden porch on the Peoria street and truck lot side of the building. On the ground floor on the truck lot side in the center was a small closed in porch with and two screen and storm doors, one facing Peoria street and one facing the back of the lot and the Soo Line. From Peoria street you could see right through. It gave access to the front and back apartment. There were dark cold sheds under the house we weren’t supposed to play in. You could see down there from the street where a railing kept you from falling in. On the truck lot side there was no porch and the cinders came to the wall.

When we saw Pete and Trixie we ran in the little closed it porch and I got the back door latch and was fumbling with the latch on the street side when Pete saw me.

“He saw me.”

Frankie had run to the front apartment and was already hiding under the bed. It was a bare, pee-stained mattress, the kind with the pattern of dimples with two short strings coming from each dimple. It was on one of the bed frames with the rectangular steel grating held to the frame by short oblong springs around the parameter.

We lay beneath the bed on the worn linoleum floor holding our breaths. “Maybe he’s not coming,” Frankie whispered.

We heard the door rattle and shake, rattle and shake. I started praying seven-year-old-Catholic-boy prayers, promising Jesus I’d never be bad again. A last rattle and then, silence.

“He’s gone,” I said

“Go see.”

I scrunched up my face for courage. I started to side a way from Frankie. There was another rattle. I shot back over the linoleum. The door screeched open. Trixe’s over grown toenails clattered across the floor. The screen door slammed closed.

“I seen you come in here, you little bastards,” Pete said, his voice ragged and mean, not at al like when I used to bring him leftovers. “Find’em, girl. Git’em.

I redoubled my prayer efforts. I promised not to ever miss church. Trixie came into the room we were in. She was a squat, little, spotted brown mutt. She was either pregnant or like she was now. From under the bed I could she her bruised, swollen tits dragging on the floor. I told God I’d go to church every day before school and I wouldn’t tell that dirty joke we told each other over and over and laughed until our sides hurt.

A cowboy out on the range comes into town on his motorcycle. He parks it in front of the local saloon and goes inside. When he comes out there’s a drunken Indian standing outside where his motorcycle used to be. The cowboy asks the Indian where his motorcycle is. The Indian says, “Me no know, me no tell. Me push button, run like hell.”

My sister gasped in shock when she heard me tell it. “You’re going to hell,” she said. “I’m telling.” I guess I figured it was a good bargaining chip.

Pete came in. We could see his work boots, worn to a frayed sole, and the greasy cuff of his soiled pants. “Find’em, Trix,”

She trotted out of the room. With our ears we followed her taping nails to the other apartment. Pete followed mumbling to himself about the dammed kid having no respect. We heard him moving around and Trixe’s toenails and after a while the screen door slam.

We thanked God up and down for saving us from Pete and his dog and eventually snuck cautiously out from under the bed and out of the apartment. Of course we forgot about our prayers almost as fast as we made them and soon we were ruing around the neighborhood getting into more trouble like the little hellions everybody said we were.

Why I Wanted To Get Bigger

My hillbilly opponent was a little smaller than me, but not as skinny, and probably had two names. I know he had red buzz cut hair with a scab on top of his head were somebody nicked him with the clippers. He was grinning and he had huge ears sticking out like Alfred E Newman from Mad Magazine.

“No kicking, scratching or biting, or hair pullin like you all’s a girl," Claude said.

“And no gouging the eyes,” Wayne said. The group had formed a circle, my opponent in the center. Wayne gave me a shove toward him. “First one that gives, looses.”

Our fists raised, we circled each other. He didn’t have any shoes on and kept grinning except just before he threw a punch when he dropped the grin and through out a fist. I kept what I hope was seen as a determined scowl on my face so no one could see how scared I was, bobbing away from his punches.

“You all gonna dance or fight?”

“Hit em,” Wayne said.

We exchanged punches and went back to circling. He hit me hard in the shoulder. I hit him in the stomach. It felt like my punch couldn’t knock over a fly. We went at each other again.

“Now they’re wrestling. I thought you was tough?” Wayne sounded like he was disgusted. We were rolling around in the dirt. Every body was yelling for us to hit each other.

I saw this movie once. A James Bond movie maybe, where one of the bad guys would scissor the guy he was fighting with his legs until the guy passed out. It didn’t work that way when I tried it. The little hillbilly got his arms under my knees and folded my legs over me, pinning me to the ground, but, with my ankles locked, I was squeezing his head and smashing his ears between my knees. We stayed like that a while and then they called it a draw.

“What was that?” Wayne said as we walked back. “He kicked your ass, you know. I thought you was tougher than that,” He had said that before. He was disapointed in me.

“It was a draw.”

“He kicked your ass. And you know it, too.”

One time me a Frankie saw Yudoc coming from Laginza’s. It was after Yudoc had whacked me in the side with the mop handle for taking his tire. He had to come up the stairs to street level. I hid behind the fence separating the sunken yard for the sidewalk while Frankie coaxed him to come up and out the gate so I could jump him. And that’s what happened.

I knew I could beat him up and he was afraid of me. He came out the gate and I jumped up and started punching him and he laughed at me. When I got tired he broke free and ran home. He was always a faster runner than I was. For years after that the only reason I wanted to get bigger was so I could hit people harder.

The Arangment

The hillbillies lived in the brown, brick, eight flat above the butcher’s. You could tell who they were because of there Appalachian accent and they didn’t where shoes. For a nickel they would walk on glass.

One year out trick-or-treating, I went in there building, They lived upstairs from Fat Georgie, who mother was the famous Zsa Zsa. Anyway, one of the hillbilly’s mothers invited me into their cabbage-smelling apartment and there was a retarded boy chained to the iron headboard of his bed. The mattress was bare and pea stained. He made loud grunting sounds at me and strained against the chain cuffed to his wrist like a dog. They gave me some kind of unwrapped, homemade sticky candy. I threw it away once I got outside. I wasn’t aloud to take anything that didn’t come in a wrapper.

The hillbilly’s were tough and we fought often. Sometimes they came out three or four at a time trying to catch one of us alone. They almost caught one Sunday, but I climbed up into the rafters of the little closed porch roof over the door to the butcher’s. They looked in the porch, but they didn’t look up.

One Saturday morning my cousin Wayne said he was talking to Claude. Maybe that was his name. Wayne said he bet Claude I could take his little brother. We were about the same age and size.

“The hillbilly’s are pretty tough,” I said.

“I think you can take him. Anyway I made the bet. Come on. It’s all arranged.”

“What’s arranged?”

“The fight,” he said. “Me and Claude got it all figured out. We’re having it by where they’re digging out for the expressway. It’s all fenced in. No body will bother us.”

“They’re pretty tough. I never fought him before.”

“Don’t worry. Your tougher than every other kid your size on the block. Come on they’re waiting. You don’t want them to think you’re chicken, do yeah?”

He took off up the block at a trot. I could just make out the fence a couple long blocks away. Even if I was chicken, he was right. I didn’t want them to think so. I ran after him. We snuck through and opening in the fence. The field of battle was churned up dirt and clay graded some in front of the deep wide trench that would become the Eisenhower Expressway. There was six or seven ragged boy waiting, most about twelve years old. I was eight. I don’t know how old my opponent was.

Learning The Trucklot Boy Trade

There’s a black and white picture of my sister with her long black braids, my squinty-eyed cousin Janis, Cute cousin Linda and me with by black rimed glasses crocked on my face, lined up in our church clothes on Peoria street with a mountain rising in the distance for background. We stood in order of age and height. My sister, at ten, was the oldest. We were a year a part from each other. At seven, in diagonally checked vest, bow tie, and short pants, I was the youngest.

It’s not a mountain. It’s the cinder pile and it’s only at the end of the block just across Huron. Peoria street T’s into Huron and a wide cinder covered dive continued north, across the street, for at least a couple long blocks, wide enough for semis to pass each other and maneuver.

To the west of the drive, starting across from the cinder pile, were the factory buildings that fronted on Sangomon street, with sunken loading bays filled with rain water and dead rats. Beyond old Pete’s shack at the bottom of the ramp, where dump truck drove to the top of the pile to dump their loads, was another truck lot. The deeper into the lot you went, the more decrepit and abandon to rot the parked trailers became.

Way in the back a debris littered viaduct under the Soo line is where my cousin Wayne taught me, Frankie, and Little Georgie how to bust booze and beer bottles to get a long point to use in a fight. He stood under the viaduct near where the rusted superstructure came down in the center into a raised concrete pier dividing the two bays. Wayne was twelve, my idol. Imagine James Dean as a skinny kid running in the streets, just starting to slick back blonde hair.

“You got to grab it by the neck,” he said. “The kind with the long neck is better. Hold it like this, and you got’ a hold it lose in case it breaks wrong so you don’t cut yourself so bad.”

We all had bottles we held. Frankie threw his against the concrete wall holding up the track bed and got one with a better neck.

“Yeah. That’s better,” Wayne said. “So you don’t just whack’em. You got to use a glancing blow, like this.” He skimmed it against the concrete pier with a fast, almost sidearm swing. It left the neck intact, broke most of one side away, and left a long point almost as long as the bottle before he broke it.

My friends and I were tentative at first, scared. Little Georgie dropped his bottle as soon as it struck the concrete. Frankie was afraid to try. My bottle didn’t even break.

“What a bunch a chickens,” Wayne said, looking directly at me.

“Let me try again?”

I whacked it and cut the web between my thumb and finger. I stuck the web in my mouth. Little Georgie tried again and got a long point.

“I did it. Hey. You guys. I did it.” He slashed at the air. “Ha ha. Take that. Take that.”

Wayne grabbed me by the wrist and roughly handled my hand. I winced. There wasn’t much blood. “It’s not so bad.” He through my hand back at me scanned the littered street and picked up another bottle. “Here,” he said. “Try again, glancing this time. Glanceing.”

I approached the concrete pier, steely eyed, like my other hero, Paladin, from Have Gun, Will Travel, right before a gunfight. I scrunched up my face and struck my blow. I didn’t need to say anything. I held the long point hi over my head glinting in the sunlight, a skinny trail of blood running down my arm. After admiring the gift of my new talent, I turned.

“Come on, Frankie,” I said. Don’t be chicken.”