Chapter 1: New Jersey Chapter 1: New Jersey
Ronny Faber vs The Tooth Faerie
by bkMarcus
Ronny could taste the blood in his mouth. It was salty and warm against the tip of his tongue. If he pulled the loose tooth back, then quickly slipped the tip of his tongue into the gap between his gum and the sharp underside of his tooth, he could probe down into the open hole of salty flesh. At the bottom of the hole, he could feel a hard spot peeking out of the surrounding softness. That was his grown-up tooth, already coming in before the baby tooth was all-the-way gone. One last strand of flesh held his baby tooth in his mouth. It seemed so small and thin to be so strong and stubborn.
Today was his birthday. He was 6 years old. America was 200 years old. He and America had the same birthday. His mom had taken him to New Jersey to watch the sail boats parading down the Hudson River. From the balcony of her friends' apartment, he could see New York City across the water. It looked small. His mom told him that was because it was so far away. She told him the Hudson River was a mile wide. The farther away something was, the smaller it seemed to be, but it wasn't really any smaller: it just looked that way. If there was a kid, say on top of the Riverside Church over there, looking back at him, that kid would think that the big New Jersey building Ronny was standing in was very small. But it was really huge. It had hundreds of these balconies facing the river and each one had a party going on. Everyone was leaning over their railings with binoculars and telescopes. Everyone was cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on little grills. New Jersey smelled of cooking flesh and cigarette smoke. And a little bit of gunpowder. Down in the courtyard, some bigger kids were setting off firecrackers. An hour ago, some other kids had been setting off little rockets, but the building security had chased them away. Ronny's mom said the rockets could go off course and hit someone on one of the balconies.
"Could it hit me, mommy?"
"I think we're too high up," she said.
#
If Ronny stuffed the tip of his tongue into the hole beneath his tooth, then pulled it out quickly, he could hear a little sucking POP inside his head. He thought it was really loud, but his mom and her friends, Don and Lanie, didn't seem to hear it.
For his birthday, Don and Lanie had given Ronny a kid-sized pair of binoculars. His mom said "Don, you shouldn't have gotten something so expensive!" but Ronny disagreed. He liked having his very own pair of binoculars. "He's only six," his mother said. "He doesn't know how to take care of delicate things." But his mom was wrong.
Last year, when his dad was moving out, he gave Ronny an old Bible. The cover was black leather, and the pages were very thin and delicate. "This was your Granny's Bible, Ronny. It's fragile. I need you to take very good care of it. When you learn how to read we can go through it together." Ronny put the Bible in a big plastic sandwich bag and put it at the bottom of his sock drawer, where nothing hard could touch it. His dad had also made him promise to say his prayers every night.
For a while, after his dad moved out, his mom was patient. She would watch as he put on his pee-jays and brushed his teeth, then wait while he knelt beside his bed and prayed to God, then she'd tuck him in and turn out the light. But after a few weeks of bedtime prayers, she changed. "That's enough, Ronny. You need to get in bed now." Eventually, Ronny stopped saying prayers in front of his mom. He'd wait until he was tucked in and the room was dark, then he could take his time to talk to God in private.
#
His mom was talking about his dad right now.
"He claims to be pro-family, but he doesn't even pay his child support. I've given up on the courts. It's exhausting. Every time we talk -- to make plans for visitation with Ronny -- he criticizes my parenting. When I tell him I don't have enough money to raise his son properly, he says he shouldn't have to provide for a family over which his authority isn't recognized."
Ronny wasn't tall enough to see over the balcony railing, but he thought maybe he could point the binoculars through the bars and look at the sailboats. The binoculars were wider than the gap between bars, so a big blurry black stripe marred his view of the Hudson. At first he tried turning the binoculars sideways to see through the gap. This made the boats look like they were sailing down a big waterfall, but the longer he looked at everything sideways, the less sideways it looked. But by the time his mind had adjusted to the angle, allowing the water to sit beneath the boats, allowing the boats to sail across the river rather than down a giant wall of water, his neck started to hurt. His mind could adjust to the sideways perspective, but his body wasn't as flexible.
"His authority?" asked Lanie.
"Uh-oh," said Don.
His mom said "Love, honor and obey, Lanie. Most of all obey."
"Please," said Don. "Don't get Lanie started."
Now Lanie was talking about something called The E.R.A. and some kind of pigs. Show-something pigs? His mom said that his dad hated Women's Lib. Now Lanie was talking even louder. Ronny thought grown-up talk was too often too loud. When his mom and dad talked too loud, he'd sit down on the floor and cover his ears. Sometimes this made them talk quieter. Sometimes it didn't.
He sat down now and put his bare legs through the railing. If he scrunched up close, so that the bar pressed against the crotch of his shorts and came up to the tip of his nose, he could press the binoculars against the bar so that the two lenses straddled the obstruction. Now one eye saw to the left of the bar and one eye saw to the right. He could feel the bar pressing against him, but by pressing his binoculars up close to it, he didn't need to look at it.
When the boats got boring, Ronny aimed his binoculars at the grownups. The binoculars made everything so big that he couldn't fit them all in. He couldn't even fit any one of them in. When he moved the lenses from grown-up to grown-up, everything in view rushed by so fast it gave him a headache. He stopped on his mother's mouth. The binoculars made it so big that it made her lipstick look all sloppy, not quite following the line of the edge of her lips. She even had a dab of red on one of her front teeth. He couldn't hold the binoculars steady enough. The little dot of lipstick shook and jumped around inside his vision and it made his head hurt even more.
So Ronny tried turning the binoculars around. He wanted to see what would happen if he looked into the big end and aimed the small end at the conversation. Now he could see all of them at once, though they were really small. Not like they'd shrunk, but like they were small from being so far away, like the way Ronny's neighborhood looked so small all the way across the river. He could hear them just as loud and close, but they looked like they were at the end of a long tunnel. This view didn't hurt his head. Everything held more steady.
"I don't know why I married him. He didn't want to, really, but he felt it would be dishonorable not to. Sinful. And I thought I was getting what I wanted."
Ronny was thirsty. Don had set out a big, ice-filled cooler with big cans of Budweiser and Coke, and little cans of grape juice. He put down the binoculars and carried a juice can over to his mom. But she ignored him.
Lanie was talking less loud now. She said, "Do you think he wants to come back?"
"I know he does," said his mom. "Of course. But I don't trust him anymore. He really started to go overboard with his Jesus stuff. He was always religious, you know, but nothing like he's turned into."
Ronny had trouble pulling the tab off drink cans. Either he wasn't strong enough to pull the tabs off, or the ring would break, leaving the tab in place. His mom told him the cans were dangerous for little kids and that he should always ask grown-ups or bigger kids to open them for him, but today, no matter how many times he said "Mom? Mommy? Maaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhm!?" he couldn't get her to stop talking and help him out.
He was 6 years old today. Maybe that made him a big kid. When he first met Floyd's big brother, T was 7 years old, and very definitely a big kid. Maybe 6 was big, too.
Don was asking, "Does Randal get to see much of Ronny?"
Ronny got his finger under the ring and pulled back slowly. He heard the can gasp quietly as the beginning of the tab pulled free.
"Randal moved back to California," his mom said. "Ronny will be spending August with him there."
Ronny pulled the tab away from the can top, but his other hand got in the way. He felt a hot pain in the webbing between his left thumb and index finger. He looked down at his hand. Blood was pouring down onto the top of the can. He looked up for his mommy. She was still talking.
"Mommy?" He tried not to cry. He was a big boy now.
Catherine Macdonald Faber looked up from her story and met her son's eyes. Her eyebrows wrinkled and shifted up on her face. Her mouth turned down. She looked scared. Ronny felt a big spray of tears run hot down his face. His mom looked so scared.
"I'm sorry, mommy, I'm sorry I'm sorry ---" The can of juice fell to the balcony carpeting.
His mom closed the distance and was scooping him up into her arms. "It's OK, Ronny. It's OK. It's just a cut. I know it hurts, but it's just a little cut."
He pulled his hand away from her blouse. He left a big smear of blood on the material. He saw the dark circle of grape juice soaking bigger into the carpeting.
"I'm sorry, Don."
"Oh, Jesus," said Don, "This is gonna stain!"
#
But Don poured seltzer into the big purple circle and Lanie spread salt over it. "This will vacuum right out," she said. Everyone smiled harder at Ronny.
"Here's a hamburger, Ronald McDonald!"
"No, my name isn't Ronald Macdonald," Ronny explained to Don. He took the paper plate with both hands and some hamburger juice spilled onto his bandages. "I'm Ronald Faber. Why does everyone get my name wrong? Zack downstairs keeps calling me Ronny Favor, and I tell him it's Fa-BER not Fa-VOR. Sheesh!" Ronny's shoulders were up by his ears and he was shaking his head. All three grown-ups were laughing at him now. He looked at each of them. He could feel his cheeks turning hot.
"He's so dramatic!" said Lanie.
"Yes," his mother agreed. "Everything for Ronny is a big drama."
#
Ronny should have been suspicious when his mom bought the plastic sleeping bags at the Woolworth's on 110th before they drove to New Jersey. He hated sleeping away from his own bed.
Cat Faber unpacked his pajamas from her overnight bag.
"No, mommy. I don't wanna sleep here!"
"Stop whining, Ronny."
Ronny didn't think he was whining. Grown-ups just called it whining when a kid sounded upset. He had heard his mom talk the exact same way to his dad when they still all lived together.
"But I wanna sleep in my own be-ed!"
"Ronny!"
"No, I don't like it here!"
"You love it here!"
"No I don't! I hate it here!"
"Ronny!" his mother hissed. "Don and Lanie will hear you. You're being rude!"
Ronny stopped talking, but tears poured down his face -- you weren't supposed to cry twice on your own birthday. His hand hurt, his tongue hurt, and he wanted to sleep in his own bed, but he tried to keep quiet.
He remembered his tears when his daddy left, how his mother had gotten angry at Ronny for crying so much. Big boys don't cry, she said. We have to be strong, she said. And when he couldn't stop, she said the thing that was like a spank on the bottom: Don't Be A Sissy.
Ronny still cried too much, sometimes loud and sometimes quiet, but everyday there was a reason for tears. And each time he cried, something inside settled in deeper, something dark and weak and shameful.
#
Don and Lanie's apartment was even smaller than the one at home, and Don had the one spare bedroom set up as a study.
His mom pulled the leather rolling chair away from the big wood desk and unrolled the two sleeping bags on the carpet in-between.
There was a small bathroom -- just a toilet and a sink -- off the study, so Ronny didn't have to let Don or Lanie see him while his face was still red and his eyes were all puffy. He brushed his teeth while his mom watched.
"Say goodnight to Lanie and Don and I'll tuck you in."
"When are you coming to bed?"
"The grown-ups are going to stay up a bit longer."
"Can you stay with me for a while."
"No, Ronny. I'll be in soon."
"But I'll be scared!"
"Stop it, Ronny! I'm going to lose my patience." It seemed to Ronny that his mom had already lost her patience. "Say goodnight to Lanie and Don and don't sulk!"
Ronny tried not to sulk.
Lanie said, "Oh, you've had a rough day, kiddo. I'll make pancakes in the morning, OK?"
"OK." Ronny kissed Lanie on the cheek.
"What about me, champ?" Don leaned in and put his cheek near Ronny's mouth. It was all rough and stubbly like his dad's face, but it smelled like aftershave and cigarettes. His dad's face just smelled like soap. Randal Faber did not smoke. He disapproved. Cat Faber took up the habit after he moved out. Ronny agreed with his dad.
#
His mom turned out all the lights in the study before closing him in, but it was still dusk outside the window and the room was filled with shadows.
Ronny tried to talk to God, but his thoughts kept taking him back to the parts of the room he couldn't see. He wanted to turn on the bathroom light, but he'd have to get out of his sleeping bag and walk across the room to do it. His mom had not packed his favorite pajamas -- the old tattered red ones with the covered feet. They had been fighting a lot before bedtime recently because she wanted him to wear a new set of more grown-up pee-jays that left his feet bare. He didn't like the new ones because they were scratchy and stiff and let his feet get cold. So of course, those were the ones his mom had packed.
He felt safer crossing the floor at night in covered feet. He knew that if something reached out from beneath the bed or bureau, it wouldn't matter if his feet were bare or not, but bare feet felt more vulnerable.
Even in his old pee-jays, he'd jump out of bed, trying to put distance between his feet and the dark underside of the bed frame, but here in Don's study, he was already down on the floor, where the shadows lived.
At home, he knew by heart how to steer a path from bed to bathroom that maximized the distance between his feet and the furniture. His mom left the bathroom light on at home, so he could find it without bothering her in the middle of the night, but she had not left the light on here.
He had to make his way slowly across the carpet in order not to stub his toes, or trip and fall into the darkness. It helped that he could hear the grown-ups talking in the next room, and it helped that the sky through the big windows was a luminous dark blue and not yet black, but his heart still throbbed as he navigated to the toilet.
Even though his dad had taught him to pee standing up, Ronny would climb up onto the toilet at night because sitting offered two clear advantages over standing: (1) he did not have his feet on the cold tile floor; and (2) his back wasn't to the door or the darkness.
When he reached his sleeping bag after the slow trek back across the dark carpet, he noticed something move at the corner of the window. Somehow the night had gotten suddenly dark while he was in the bathroom and the shadows had taken over the room. That thing -- in the window -- that thing that barely moved -- it wasn't there before, he was sure. Ronny froze, still standing, at the foot of his sleeping bag.
Something small and hairy crouched outside the window. He was a dozen stories up -- he had heard Don say so on the terrace. Still. Something animal like, something in shadow, stared straight at him through the plate glass. He could see its outline. It was breathing.
Ronny's bladder gave out, but there was barely a trickle left inside him, thank God. He tried to call out to his mommy, but something raspy squeaked out of his mouth. His whole body shook.
Only after the thing bounded away, silently into the night, could Ronny finally scream. He fainted as someone turned on the lights.
#
As they drove back across the George Washington Bridge in his mother's navy blue V.W. Bug, Ronny wiggled his loose tooth around in his mouth. The sky was completely dark now and he could see stars over the Hudson as they passed between the lights of New Jersey and the lights of Manhattan.
He was still wearing his scratchy pajamas. Neither he nor his mom said anything, but he felt better as soon as they reached the bridge. To his surprise, his mom wasn't angry anymore. She had apologized to Lanie and Don, who insisted that they understood. Don even carried Ronny down to the car.
The side of his tongue was sore, tired from all the probing, and the tip felt raw, but he couldn't leave the tooth alone. His mom told him to stop playing with it, but he couldn't.
When they were back home, his mom said "I'll show you what my mother would do with a tooth like yours." She tied a string around his tooth and sat him down on his bed. She tied the other end of the string to the knob of his open bedroom door. "Now open wide ..." she said. He did and she slammed the door shut. Ronny felt a yank against his gums, then heard something skitter across the hard wood floor.
His mom picked the tooth up off the floor and blew on it to get the dirt off.
"We'll put this under your pillow tonight and the Tooth Fairy will leave you a quarter."
"Daddy says there's no such thing as fairies."
"I know what Daddy says."
"He says fairies are either figments or demons."
"Well, if you look under your pillow in the morning, I'll bet you find a quarter, and I don't think a demon would leave you any money."
"What's a figment?"
"A figment is something make-believe. I don't think a figment would leave you any money either. Maybe the Tooth Fairy is really an angel."
"Mommy?"
"Yes, Ronny."
"I really did see a monster. Outside the window. It wasn't a figment."
"I think it was probably a bird, sweetie."
"It was hairy."
"Maybe it was a cat."
"I think it was a monster."
"There aren't any monsters, Ronny. You just got worked up."
#
He was back in his own bed, back in his favorite old tattered red pajamas with the feet, and he still couldn't sleep.
First he prayed to God for a while, telling Him about the sail boats and the fireworks and his new binoculars, about why there was a Band-Aid on the part of his hand between his thumb and his pointer finger, about the hairy thing outside the window in New Jersey -- how it wasn't a bird or a cat, he was sure -- and about how he finally lost his first baby tooth, a year later than his friends who were the same age, how his mom had finally gotten it out of his mouth, and how she expected God to send an angel to collect the tooth from under Ronny's pillow.
Then Ronny played with the hole where his tooth used to be. He probed it with his finger for a minute, but that made his mouth taste dry and dirty, so he just explored the gap with his tired tongue.
#
He was dreaming about learning to fly when he felt his mom kissing him on his forehead. He looked around his dream, but didn't find her there, so he opened his eyes back in his bedroom and saw her face looming over him. Then he felt something move beneath his head. He spun around in bed and grabbed beneath his pillow. "What's that?" He grabbed a hold of something. "What's that?" His mom pulled her arm away slowly. Ronny was holding onto her wrist. "What's that?!?" Ronny screamed and shook her hand open.
"Calm down, Ronny. Look. I found a quarter underneath your pillow."
Ronny sat up and pulled his pillow away. "Turn on the light! Turn on the light!"
"Calm down, Ronny. You'll scare us both to death."
His mom turned on the overhead light and showed him the shiny quarter in the palm of her hand. "Look what the Tooth -- Angel left you."
Ronny looked down at the wrinkled sheets where his pillow had been. His baby tooth was gone.
"Why were you taking my quarter?"
"I wasn't taking your quarter, honey. I was just fluffing your pillow. You need to calm down." She put his pillow back on the bed and put her hand to his forehead. You're so excitable! Were you having a bad dream?"
"No," said Ronny. "It was a good dream."
"Well ... OK," she said, turning out the light. "Close your eyes again and maybe you can go back to that dream."
"I want my quarter."
"I'll give it to you in the morning."
Ronny had to think fast. He was sure she'd keep the quarter if he let her take it out of the room with her. "I want to sleep with it under my pillow."
"Oh, alright." She put the coin under his pillow, kissed him on the forehead and said, "Now go back to sleep."
When she was out of his room, Ronny took the quarter from beneath his pillow and held onto it tightly.
It was still in his fist when he awakened the next morning.
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