“Brenda did,” I said, glancing across the street at Maureen’s. Her house was dark, matching the heavy sky. I hoped rain was coming to break up the wall of heat we’d been living in. The air felt like warm soup. “We’re the first ones here?”
“Yep,” Claude said. “I expect the other two’ll be here any minute.”
On the muggy hop-skip over to Claude’s, Junie’d begged to play word hunt instead of TV tag. Word hunt was our cleverest game. We’d suction our heads against people’s doors trying to overhear whatever phrase we’d chosen, like the Oscar Mayer wiener song or McDonald’s “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun.” When we caught the first word, we’d run, giggling, on to the next door, waiting until we overheard the second word, and so on. We rarely collected the whole phrase. We did hear a lot of silence, some mumbled conversations, people arguing, or worse, people loving on each other. Whenever we accidentally heard that, I was grateful that not everyone had their house numbers visible on the tunnel side. I didn’t want to see their faces at church and know what they’d done at night.
That’s how we’d overheard Ant’s dad screaming at him. It happened last January, during a break in the neighborhood Roots-watching party the Pitts were holding. After filling our cakeholes, a bunch of us kids rumbled into the tunnels to let off steam. That’s when I first realized Ant hadn’t been at the party. We headed straight to his door to listen.
Boy did we get an earful of Mr. Dehnke bellering. The way he did it, you could tell it was a regular event. But the funny thing was, even though he was yelling at Ant, he was yelling about Ant’s mom.
Your ma doesn’t want me to be happy, does she, boy? Naw, she wants to nag me all day long. She wants to tell your old man what to do, doesn’t she, Anton?
Claude had jerked away from the door the second he realized what was going on. I could tell by his face he thought we shouldn’t be spying on a friend. I stayed, though, feeling something new, something cold-hot, like shame and pleasure swirled together in a gummy ball. I tried to picture what Ant was doing while his dad was talking to him but not talking to him. Was his mom there, too?
I guess I’m just terrible, Ant. I guess I can’t do anything right. Your ma hates for us to have a good time, that must be it. She thinks I’m not looking hard enough for a job, but she doesn’t know that I’m out there all day, pounding the pavement.
I heard Ant grunt in reply, that’s how close he stood to the basement door. It was enough to push my ear away. Claude and I made our way back to the party together, quiet, not looking at each other, not saying a word until we reached the Pitts’。
The next time I saw Ant, it was like he knew what we’d overheard. He acted all embarrassed and aggressive, shoving Claude on the icy playground, yelling at me when I told him to back off. It was about the same time last winter that he sleep-moaned during the symposium. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to feel bad, that we all had weird stuff going on in our heads and behind our doors, but I didn’t.
Anyhow, Ant sort of faded away from the rest of us shortly after the night Claude and I （me more than Claude） spied outside his door. The few times he traveled in our pack, he acted so flustered, blurting out I don’t know in a small voice anytime we asked him a question, that it was almost a relief when he started hanging with Ricky.
Claude swatted a mosquito that had landed on his neck as we waited for Brenda and Maureen. That was another good thing about the tunnels—no bugs. He punched me lightly on the arm. “What’s the skinny?”
“Mom didn’t come out of her room,” Junie said, answering for me, her voice gloomy.
That surprised me. I’d thought she didn’t notice anymore. I suppose that was unrealistic. Our whole house was attuned to Mom and her moods.
“She’s fine,” I told Claude. “Extra tired is all.”
He nodded. He wasn’t only big for his age, he was smart, too. Heart smart, my mom called it, back when she paid attention to such things. That made me think of the last day of school this year. We’d been doing busywork algebra exercises, those x’s and y’s a pretty code tumbling into place, when the substitute teacher called me out in front of the whole class.
Heather Cash, pull your hair back from your face.
Her words had stapled my chin to my chest as surely as if she’d pushed a button. The motion turned my shoulder-length bob into a protective shield, the opposite of what she’d demanded. It was instinct, not disrespect, but she viewed the top of my head as a direct attack.