Chapter 2: Dark Faerie Chapter 2: Dark Faerie
Ronny Faber vs The Tooth Faerie
by bkMarcus
Sometimes his mom had to work on Mondays, but because the 4th of July was on a Sunday, her office was closed on the 5th. She worked part-time as a secretary at Teacher's College, where she was also getting her "M. E. D." -- Ronny couldn't read or write yet, so he didn't know what that spelled.
He watched TV for a while as his mom vacuumed. He couldn't hear what the cartoon characters were saying over the sound of her machine, so he made up a plot and a dialog for them.
Ronny's favorite cartoon was Felix The Cat, because Felix had a bag of tricks that always got him out of trouble. Sometimes Felix would pull things out of his bag of tricks that didn't look like they should be able to fit inside.
But Felix wasn't on this morning. All he could find was Yogi Bear. In Ronny's version of the story, The Ranger had decided that Yogi had been making trouble long enough -- so now The Ranger was going to kill him. Ronny kept expecting Yogi to pull a big long sword out of his little picnic basket and kill The Ranger in self-defense, but it never happened. Also, in Ronny's version of the story, Boo-boo, Yogi's little bear buddy, talked just like Ronny's best friend Floyd.
When she was done cleaning, his mom made Oscar Mayer bologna sandwiches and took Ronny down to Riverside Park.
Floyd lived over in Harlem, but his brother, T, sometimes brought him to Riverside to play. Ronny had been looking for him in the park since kindergarten had ended, but he hadn't seen him yet.
His mom held his hand as they crossed Riverside Drive. While they were still only halfway across, Ronny spotted a little black boy playing in the sandbox who looked like he could be Floyd. He pulled his mom the rest of the way across the street, pulled free of her hand as soon as his sneaker touched the curb and ran over to the sandbox.
"Hey, Floyd! Look what the Tooth Angel left me!" Ronny held the shiny, bicentennial quarter up for Floyd to see.
"Tooth Angel?!"
"Yeah, my mom says that an angel takes baby teeth and leaves quarters."
"Well ain't no angels come to my house," said Floyd, burying his knees in the dirty sand. "Tooth Fairy give us nickels. And she don't even give T nothing no more. Momma say he too big."
"T has all his grown-up teeth already?" T was almost 9 years old, and the coolest kid in the world. He was cool like Fonzy on TV, but T was black and Fonzy was white. Ronny was white, too, but he was just a little kid. He figured he'd have to become a grown-up like Fonzy before he could be cool like T.
"No, T still got a couple baby teeth left, but the Tooth Fairy only give her nickels to me and Shondra. Momma says T just too old, that's all."
"But that's not fair," said Ronny.
Floyd shrugged. "What's more not fair is that Reggie Axton next door to me gets a dime for his baby teeth. Momma says it's cause Reggie's momma is white."
Ronny put his bicentennial quarter into the front pocket of his shorts. He needed time to think this through. Something wasn't right about this whole baby-tooth setup.
"Hey hey, it's Renaldo!" said T, striding up to Ronny and Floyd.
"No, T, it's just Ronny, not Renaldo," Ronny explained.
"I know, man. I'm just playin' wit'you!"
"Oh." Ronny grinned. He blushed.
"I see you got a brand new hole in your face," said T.
"Ronny say an angel come to his house and give him a quarter for that tooth," said Floyd.
"Yeah," said T. "I can see that. I bet that tooth was worth a quarter."
"Is it because I'm white?"
T started laughing. His little brother joined him. Ronny tried to laugh too, but he was feeling confused.
"Nah," said T. "I'm just saying you look like you got good teeth."
"How come he got a angel come to his house when we got a tooth fairy come to ours?"
"Floyd, you so dumb!"
"Shut up, T! I am not!"
"Angel. Fairy. Same thing. A lady with wings."
"Have you seen her?" asked Ronny.
"No," said T. "Not as such. But you kids know what she looks like!"
"Oh, yeah," said Floyd, nodding.
Ronny didn't know, but he didn't want to say so.
#
Ronny watched TV while his mom made dinner. A Brady Bunch episode was on, one he'd seen three times already. He turned the volume down so he could think.
Why was the Tooth Fairy -- at this point, he figured his mom was simply wrong about the Tooth Angel -- giving less money to Floyd than to Ronny? Were black kids' baby teeth worth less to her than white kids' teeth? T said it wasn't because Ronny was white, but Floyd said his next-door neighbor was half-white and got twice as much for his teeth as Floyd got.
Ronny counted on his fingers and then counted again to make sure his numbers were right. If each penny was counted on one finger, then Floyd got one hand's worth of pennies, Reggie Axton got two hands and Ronny got FIVE hands. Floyd would have to lose five baby teeth to have the same amount of money as Ronny just got for losing only one.
Ronny and Floyd's kindergarten teacher was a white woman named Mimi. She had a big bushy head of hair and wore lots of beads that clicked against each other when she moved. Mimi was always saying, that We Are All The Same Under The Skin. There were these two kids in kindergarten -- the two Johns. John Smith was white and John Brown was black. They were called White John and Brown John to tell them apart, but Mimi got angry when she heard kids using those names. White John and Brown John kept getting into fights with each other. White John once called Brown John a little black booger. What he said was "My daddy says you're just a little black booger!" and Brown John tackled him to the ground and punched his head. Mimi pulled White John up and screamed at him "Black is beautiful! Black is beautiful!"
Ronny had grinned at Floyd and said "White is wonderful!"
"Says you," said Floyd.
When Brown John got up, Ronny saw that his knee was skinned open. His blood was the same color as Ronny's, but the flesh underneath was darker. And his skin was getting all puffy around the cut. Ronny noticed once that Floyd's cuts got all puffy, too. So Mimi was wrong: black and white kids weren't the same under the skin because Ronny's cuts just bled and bled and then scabbed over.
Something was different and Mimi didn't want the kids to know about it. Grown-ups were always trying to make sure little kids didn't know things that were true.
If the Tooth Fairy thought black was beautiful, she'd give Floyd more money for his baby teeth, wouldn't she?
At dinner, Ronny asked his mom, "Why does Floyd only get five cents for his baby teeth when I get twenty-five cents for mine? Is it because Floyd's black?"
His mom looked angry at him, like he'd said a bad word. "No," she said. "It's not because he's black. He's just poor."
"But we're poor, too," said Ronny. "You always say so."
"I don't always say so, Ronny. We're just having some money trouble at the moment. And Floyd's family has even more money troubles than we do."
Ronny argued with himself for a while, then asked "Would you like my quarter, mommy?"
His mom looked very sad. "No, sweetheart. That quarter is for you."
What Ronny didn't say was, "So why did you try to steal it from me while it was still under my pillow?"
They finished their dinners in silence and Ronny asked to be excused.
In bed that night, Ronny said a quick prayer to God, then turned his thoughts to this new information. Somehow poor people's teeth were worth less money to the Tooth Fairy, which seemed really backwards. Shouldn't poor kids get more money for their teeth? Didn't they need the money more than kids who were having fewer money problems at the moment?
Ronny knew he didn't yet know enough to understand what was going on, but it was clear to him that the Tooth Fairy was helping to keep poor kids poor. He was glad he'd decided she wasn't an angel, because he was starting to get really mad at her.
#
"Mom, I'm going downstairs to play with Zack!"
His mom didn't answer. He walked down the hall and found her in the living room, smoking a cigarette on the couch. There was an empty beer bottle on the floor. A Simon & Garfunkle record was playing on her stereo.
"Mom?" She looked up, but didn't say anything. "I'm going downstairs to play with Zack, OK?"
"I guess that's OK if there's a grown-up there."
"His dad is probably there." Zack's dad was a retired professor from Barnard College, which was just across the street.
"I wish there were some kids in this building your own age, Ronny."
"Zack's my friend."
"Yeah, OK. Be back in time for dinner."
#
Professor Epstein answered the door. He was a tall thin man, with wrinkled, hollow cheeks and hair that always looked dirty.
"Hi," said Ronny. "Can I play with Zack?"
"Certainly," said Professor Epstein. "He's down the hall in his room. Make sure to knock, first. He's taken to booby-trapping his bedroom door."
Ronny walked down the hall and stood outside Zack's door for a minute. He couldn't read everything Zack had written on the signs he put up outside his door, but he recognized Zack's drawing of a skull and cross-bones, and crayoned pictures of fire and explosions.
Zack was 8 years old. Ronny had been playing with him ever since he and his mom had moved into this building. Zack's mom had died of Leukemia when Zack was 7 and Professor Epstein retired early to raise his son.
Ronny was about to knock when he decided he wanted to ask Professor Epstein something first. He walked back down the hall and tapped on the glass doors to the professor's study.
The professor looked up from a big, floppy book he had in his lap.
"Zack not letting you in?"
"Um, no. I haven't knocked yet. Can I ask you something?"
The professor put his book onto a wrought-iron reading stand. "Is it something your mother won't tell you? Something about boys and girls?"
"No," said Ronny. He wondered what Professor Epstein was imagining. "It's about teeth."
"Teeth?"
"Zack told me you know everything and so I wanted to ask you if rich kids have better teeth."
"I think Zack has probably changed his mind about me by now, but I can certainly tell you that socio-economic status has an impact on health care and nutrition, which in turn correlate with differences in relative health."
Ronny didn't know all the words. "So rich kids do have better teeth?"
"In general, yes. Why do you ask?"
"Just something I'm trying to figure out."
"Well, feel free to ask me more questions, Ronny, but you should know that I specialized in Folklore, not Sociology."
"What's that mean?"
"Folklore is about the stories we tell each other."
"Oh, OK. I'm not so interested in stories right now, but thanks."
Professor Epstein had his book back in his lap before Ronny was out of the room.
#
Ronny heard Zack dismantling something on the other side of his door before he opened up. "Hey! It's Favor!"
Ronny didn't argue about his name.
"Whatcha doin', Zack?"
"Reading comics. You wanna come in?"
"Yeah, what comics you got?"
"I got this new Batman." Zack showed Ronny a page from the comic book. A grim-faced Batman was walking the streets of Gotham City.
"He doesn't look very friendly," said Ronny.
"Do you watch the TV show?" asked Zack.
"Sure," said Ronny. "It's one of my favorite shows."
"Well, that TV show is crap!"
Ronny didn't mind. Zack was always saying stuff like that. "The show makes him seem all goofy and smiley, but the real Batman breaks bad guys' arms and people are really scared of him!" Zack showed Ronny a picture of Batman breaking someone's arm. The comic book didn't have the ZAP! and the POW! frames that the TV show had. Just a picture of the bad guy's face, pale and pained, eyes wide and lips pulled back.
"What else you got?"
"Well, I have these underground comics."
"What's that mean?" Ronny pictured the comic books buried, like pirate's treasure.
"That just means they're comic books for grown-ups. See, Krazy Kat is sitting on the toilet!" Zack giggled. "And this one's a little weird -- I just started it. It's called Dark Faerie."
"Dark Fairy, like the Tooth Fairy?"
"Well, it's spelled different, for one thing. And also, the Faerie in grown-up stories don't have wings and they're not small like Tinkerbell. They're regular size, but they look a little different. This one's the hero. He has pointy ears like an elf, but otherwise he looks more like a rock star than a fairy godmother!" Zack giggled again. Ronny didn't like it when Zack giggled.
"So a faerie can be a boy?"
"Yeah, there's lots of different kinds of faerie creatures. Elves, gnomes, goblins ..." Zack flipped through the comic pages. "I wanna show you something." He found a full-page picture of an ugly, hairy creature with sharp teeth and fiery, pointed eyes. "That's a goblin," said Zack. "It's called The Pookha. Goblins are a kind of evil faerie. The characters call them dark faerie, but I'm pretty sure the title Dark Faerie refers to the hero. He dresses all in long, black clothes."
"He kinda looks like Batman," Ronny observed.
"Yeah," said Zack. "Maybe. Hm. That's pretty cool! Hey, you wanna go play in the park? I got some firecrackers left over from the 4th of July!"
"My mom said I could only play with you if there was a grown-up around."
"That's OK. If my dad says we can go out, then we have a grown-up's permission, right?
#
Ronny asked Zack to hold his hand while they crossed Riverside Drive. Zack said "Yeah, OK" but he let go before they were all the way across.
Zack had a green Bic lighter and a brown paper bag full of small firecrackers wrapped in red-checked paper.
Zack had Ronny stand behind a tree, holding the paper bag while Zack buried a single firecracker in the sand, lit the fuse with the Bic and ran over to Ronny's tree while the firecracker sent the sand pile flying in all directions. Zack kept missing the actual explosions because he wouldn't reach the tree in time. He'd hear the BANG and turn around to see the cloud of dust blow into Riverside Drive.
Zack wanted Ronny to light one, but Ronny's fingers weren't strong enough to make the Bic work. He'd press his thumb down on the rough metal wheel of the lighter and try to turn it, but it was too hard. He could see little sparks by the flint when he pressed the wheel hard enough, but he couldn't get a flame out of it. His hands were too small.
"OK," said Zack. "I have something for you. Wait here." And he ran back across Riverside drive.
Ronny was alone in the park.
There were kids in the sandbox about a block away, and some mothers on the benches nearby, but he didn't recognize anyone. Some black kids were ambling down the walk, hitting a broken tree branch against the empty benches as they passed. There were three of them, about T's age. Ronny moved around his tree to keep out of their sight.
He stayed between the tree and the curb at the edge of the park, watching the cars head south on Riverside Drive. He saw one car that had fins on the back like The Batmobile on TV. He wondered if there was a Batmobile in Zack's comic book. The page that Zack showed him had Batman walking around the streets of Gotham City. On TV he drove everywhere.
The comics that Ronny's mom sometimes bought for him were for little kids -- Casper The Friendly Ghost and Richey Rich and sometimes Archie. Ronny couldn't read them yet, but he liked to make up stories to go with the pictures. The colors in Zack's comic books were darker and the drawings were very different. More like how people really looked, though he'd never seen real people dress in superhero costumes or battle against dark faerie. The Krazy Kat comics didn't even have any color, just black ink on white paper. Ronny didn't like black-and-white drawings. He liked bright colors. His mom had a color TV, but it was broken. They watched an old black-and-white set with an unbent coat hanger for an antenna. Sometimes his mom bunched up aluminum foil at the end of the coat hanger, but it didn't really make the picture any better.
The page Zack showed him from the Dark Faerie book -- the picture of the goblin -- had almost no color, just red in the creature's eyes, and some pale yellow on his pointy teeth.
Ronny thought about the thing outside Don and Lanie's window. He hadn't seen its eyes or teeth, just a hairy silhouette, but it probably looked like that goblin picture in the book.
Zack said goblins were a kind of faerie. And Ronny's tooth was almost out that night -- did come out an hour or two later ...
"What's in the bag, kid?"
Ronny looked up from his thoughts. A blue and white police car had pulled up a few feet away from him. Ronny put the bag behind his back.
One of the policemen got out of the car. "You got illegal fireworks in that bag?" Ronny shook his head.
The cop took the bag away from Ronny and looked inside. He looked back at the driver and said "Hey Frank, you want some more firecrackers for your boy?"
"Hey, those aren't yours!" cried Ronny.
The policeman turned around and stared him in the face. "You trying to make trouble?"
"They're not yours!"
Both cops laughed. "Feisty kid," said the driver. The cop with Zack's bag of firecrackers got back into the car and closed the door. He grinned and waved to Ronny as the police car drove away.
Ronny jumped up and down, screaming "Those aren't yours! That's not fair!"
He didn't see Zack coming until he was halfway across Riverside Drive. "Zack, they took your bag!"
"I know," said Zack. "I saw them." He took Ronny by the shoulders and shook him. "Hey, you can't yell at the police. They have guns."
"They took all your firecrackers. They're going to give it to Frank's son!"
"Who's Frank?"
"The one driving the police car."
Zack said, "Look, it's OK. I have more upstairs. It's not a big deal."
Ronny didn't know what to say. He was angry and he felt like crying, but not in front of Zack.
"Look," said Zack. "I brought you something." He showed Ronny a flat black lighter that looked different than the Bic. It didn't have a metal wheel, just a button. Zack showed Ronny how to light it. It was much easier to use.
"You wanna go get some more firecrackers?"
"No," said Ronny. "I think I want to go home now."
"OK," said Zack. "You can keep the lighter as a birthday present."
"Oh. You wanna come to my party?"
"I thought your birthday was on the 4th."
"Kids always have other plans on the 4th of July, so my mom gives me a party the next weekend."
"Yeah, OK. I'll bring you another present."
"No, the lighter is good. Just come over at 3 o'clock on Saturday."
"I'll tell my dad. He'll buy you another present because I don't want to tell him about the lighter. I took it from his study."
"Maybe you should put it back."
"No, it's OK because he doesn't smoke anymore."
#
Ronny loved Swanson's TV Dinners. He loved them because the foil trays were separated into 4 sections, keeping the meat away from the vegetables on the upper left and the macaroni on the upper right. He loved them because they guaranteed that his mom couldn't load his plate with greens and force him to finish them before dessert. And he loved them because the dessert was served with everything else, top-center, holding the balance between the veggies and the macaroni. He loved knowing, before he ate anything, what his whole meal would look like, both in portions and in the order of consumption. Because he liked the mixed vegetables the least, he started on the upper left. He ate every green pea, every soft orange cube of steamed carrot and every yellow kernel of corn before he touched anything else. That got the worst of it over and out of the way. His mom used to tell him he could start with the dessert, so long as he ate everything in the tray. She even encouraged it, as if that would be the treat of a TV dinner. Other kids might start with the dessert, but then the worst of it was still ahead of them, and quickly getting worse because cold veggies tasted even yuckier than hot ones. Ronny would get the only bad part out of the way, then move on to the parts he enjoyed -- Salisbury steak in salty brown gravy, then the cheesy macaroni, then the brown cheesy crust around the macaroni's tray section. Ronny liked the overcooked crust even better than the macaroni it surrounded. Finally, the apple pie, cooled, but still warm. He felt about TV dinner desserts the opposite of how he felt about TV dinner macaroni -- to end on the overcooked crust would ruin the whole effect, but to start with the overcooked crust wouldn't feel like eating dessert at all. So Ronny carefully mixed the crust into the sugary syrup and apple chunks in the middle, mashing the fruit and syrup and dough into a coarse mush with his fork. That way every bite of dessert tasted equally good, and he could prolong the final pleasure of the meal.
The other thing Ronny loved about TV dinner was that it had the word 'TV' in it. Ronny wasn't allowed to watch TV during dinner, except on the nights that dinner came served in a partitioned foil tray. His mom had tried to claim that the name didn't dictate the entertainment, but Ronny persisted.
Sometimes, his mom would open two small folding tables in front of the battered old black-and-white and join her son with a foil tray of her own, but that happened less and less. Ronny had noticed, in that part of his mind that took things in even when he wished it wouldn't, that his mom served TV dinner when she wanted to be left alone, and that she wanted to be left alone when she looked like she was feeling sad. Not angry -- angry mom forced Ronny to eat with her at the big dinner table and glowered at him in silence while he struggled with his greens. But sad mom would take a Swanson's out of the oven, seat her son in front of the tube and wander down the hall to be alone.
Ronny had also noticed something about himself. When his mom was sad, he didn't want to watch The Brady Bunch or Batman or late cartoons during dinner. He wanted to watch The 4:30 Movie on Channel 7. The 4:30 Movie was for grown-ups, but Ronny found it more distracting than kids' shows, and his mom had said he probably wouldn't even understand the parts of the movies she'd find objectionable. Not understanding grown-up stuff was often a burden, but once in a while it was a benefit.
Sometimes they did 5 Elvis Presley movies, one for each weeknight. Sometimes they had 5 Gidget movies -- or James Bond or Planet of the Apes or 5 old gangster films. (Ronnie didn't like watching old black-and-white movies, not even on an old black-and-white TV.) This week was superhero movies. Tonight's movie was Wonder Woman, starring Kathy Lee Crosby. Ronny knew Wonder Woman from cartoons and comic books, but in this movie, she didn't have dark hair, and she wore a sort of star-spangled leotard instead of the short costume she had in comics. She didn't look like Wonder Woman at all, but that's what they called her. And she did come from Paradise Island.
The people in these movies wore clothes and had hair styles that didn't look right. They had conversations that Ronny mostly didn't follow, but he liked watching the fights, and sometimes even the kissing, and he understood who the bad guys were and more-or-less what the good guys were up to. Tonight, Wonder Woman had to save the world. In the movies Ronny saw on TV, heroes were always having to save the world.
Batman -- on TV, at least -- just protected Gotham City. Same with Superman and Metropolis. But heroes like Wonder Woman and James Bond had bigger responsibilities. Ronny felt like he should admire the world-savers more than he did, but Batman was still his favorite. He liked him because he was a strong guy (and rich, and really smart) but he didn't have any actual super-powers. When grown-ups asked Ronny what he wanted to be when he grew up, he used to say he wanted to be Batman. They laughed at him when he said that, so now he told them he wanted to be a policeman, but the truth was he still wanted to be Batman. If he were Batman, he could have beat up those policemen who took Zack's firecrackers. He didn't know Zack's dark and mean-looking Batman, but he'd decided he liked him. It would be nice to break that policeman's arm.
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