Banana Split
We didn’t have to ask permission to sleep over at Mike’s place on Saturday nights. His dad never came home on the weekends, and his grandma had been bedridden since anyone could remember. Every weekend we watched the horror shows on cable, The Crypt Keeper cackled through the static of old speakers and Elvira’s cleavage bounced between tight black lace late into the night.
Every so often, no matter what hour, his grandmother would call from her room and Mike would have to run to the liquor store to pick up a fresh bottle of vodka or a can of dog food for the two Maltese that rarely left her bedroom. He’d layer up with a couple sweaters and a light jacket in the winter, and we’d walk a few blocks together to Maria’s on 31ststreet.
“It’s too cold,” I told him one night as he began to put on layers. “Why do I have to come?”
“My dad doesn’t want me leaving anyone here if I’m not around,” he said, sliding a pair of mittens over his stubby fingers.
“It’s like a ten-minute walk,” I told him. “I won’t leave this spot,” I gripped my small fists into the floral couch cushions.
Mike thought it over as he laced up his boots, “Fine,” he said. “But don’t go snooping around. If my dad finds out I left you here alone he’ll kill me. And if my grandma calls just ignore her. I’ll deal with her when I get home.”
I crossed my heart, promising to follow the rules, and he walked out the door, down the steps into the snow and wind. I flipped through a few channels before getting up to go to the bathroom, sliding my toes over cigarette burns in the shag carpet.
“Mikey,” a faint voice called from a bedroom down the hall. Following orders, I ignored Mike’s grandmother, walking straight into the bathroom, making sure to piss directly into the bowl and wiping anything that splashed onto the floor.
I walked back into the hallway, and she began calling again, “Mikey. Mikey.”
“He’s not here,” I finally said. “He’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What?” she said, “Come here, Mikey,” and the dogs began to yip as if they were calling for help.
I walked down the hallway toward a dim light pouring from a crack in the door, the dogs and Mike’s grandmother sounding more urgent with each step. The smell of stale cigarettes and a tinge of something sour wafted down the narrow hallway. I pushed through the bedroom door, the old woman’s frame lying under thin sheets, two white dogs barking and growling, spinning in circles on the queen-size mattress.
Her hair was thin and white, sitting in a mess on top of a frail scalp that looked like it could have been wiped away with a sponge. When I entered the room, she sighed, moved forward, and the sheet fell exposing sagging breasts and wrinkled skin. Her nipples were large and streaked blue with veins.
“Jesus,” I said and covered my eyes. It was the first pair of real-life tits I’d ever seen.
“Hand me the glass,” she said just loud enough so I could hear her over the protests of the Maltese. I took my hands from my face, walking to a table next to the bed, handing her a warm glass of orange juice that reeked of cheap vodka.
She shushed the dogs, bringing a frail finger to her lips. They persisted, now jumping off the bed and pawing at my feet and up to my chest, long nails leaving scratches against my hips. She drank from the glass with her eyes closed, and I noticed brown liver spots trailing from her waist, up her breasts, and to her shoulders.
She pulled hard from the cup and handed it back to me, noticing my wide eyes studying her body. I don’t know if it was because I was looking at her or if she had just noticed I wasn’t Mike, but she began to cackle, thin lips curling, exposing rotten gums lining her jaw. She tilted her head back and let out a howl.
I clasped my hands over my ears. She sounded just like The Crypt Keeper.
Even after we went to different high schools, Mike at the prestigious Whitney Young Magnet High and me at Tilden High on 47th Street, we kept in touch.
I used to come and see him at Scoops, an ice cream shop covered in floor-to-ceiling sparkling white tile where he worked on weeknights. We’d get high in the back alley behind the store and then stumble in to giggle and eat ice cream in the air-conditioning. Mike would stack scoops three high on a waffle cone, and I’d bite the top scoop in one mouthful, crying in pain as the brain freeze pushed through my skull.
“Spit it out, Alex” he’d say with laughter, and I’d upchuck the mouthful into the garbage in the back of the store.
One night, the weed was particularly potent. After we came back into the store, Mike could barely walk. He fell into a red bench at a booth.
“I want my triple cone,” I told him.
“Make whatever you want,” he said through bloodshot eyes.
I searched behind the counter, looking for the scooper.
“What’s this?” I asked him, pointing to a large metal device with three wands sticking downward from the top.
“It’s for milkshakes.”
“You never made me a milkshake before.”
“You never asked,” he said and plopped his head down on the table, his cheek smacking the particleboard surface.
It was about an hour before the store closed. I grabbed a metal mixing cup and started rummaging through the ice cream case. I filled the cup about three-quarters of the way with cherry, cookie dough, rocky road, and the rest with whole milk and chocolate syrup. Before I mixed it, I peeled a banana and shoved it into the cup, bits of chocolate and milk spilling over the side.
“Banana split,” I said over my shoulder with a grin, and turned the machine on full blast.
Mike didn’t tell me the wand needed to be submerged in the cup before it was turned on, and when it entered, the concoction flew, the cup shaking in my hand, metal rattling the sides against the wand. It splattered every inch of the white tile behind the counter, the ice cream case, the remainder spilling across the floor as it fell from my hands.
Mike bolted to the counter, “What the fuck?” he said, his eyes still bloodshot but large and frightened. He looked at me, at the mess.
“I’ve never used one of these before,” I told him, wiping ice cream from my eyes. I was covered in the sticky, sweet-smelling liquid.
“A whole fucking banana?” Mike said, looking at bits of the mushed fruit covering the counter.
I ran my finger across my shirt, sucking the mixture from my nails.
“It’s delicious,” I told him.
He ran one of his long fingers across the counter, licking the shake from his fingertips.
“That’s really fucking good,” he said through laughter.
“Should we clean it?”
“Fuck that,” he said, taking off his red apron and tossing it to the ground among the mess. “I’m not even on the payroll here. The owner just lets me work these night shifts because he can’t find enough help to work for minimum wage. He already paid me in cash before the shift started.”
We just locked the door and went to a park a few blocks away to finish the weed and take turns pushing each other on the swings.
The owner must have really had a hard-on for Mike, or at least a soft spot for his grandma, because when he called Mike’s house the next day, Mike just started giving him some sob story about how his grandma had gone to the ER the night before. The next weekend we were back rolling White Owl wraps at a booth.
“I can’t believe the owner didn’t fire you,” I said, and Mike sliced a straight line down the blunt with a knife used to cut fruit toppings. He emptied the tobacco in a pile on the table.
“He grew up in the neighborhood, knows what my grandma is like. I think he went to school with my dad, too,” Mike patted the brown paper against his tongue. “I also need the job.”
“What for? It’s not like it pays well.”
“Yeah, but I’m starting to fill out college applications and this counts as ‘life experience,’” he said, rolling the buds between his fingers and spreading it evenly inside the wrap.
“Right,” I said, blushing a bit. I’d failed all my classes the year before, and I decided not to go back to Tilden High because I’d have to repeat the eleventh grade. I hadn’t told Mike yet.
“Are you thinking City College?” Mike asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I might just get a job and start making some money instead. You know, take a year off.”
The White Owl wrap slipped from Mike’s fingers and fell to the table.
“You suck at this,” I said, picking up the blunt and rerolling it. “All those brains and no practical skills.”
After it was rolled, I ran the outside paper across my tongue, flicked a lighter, and moved the flame across the blunt so the heat would tighten the wrap, my saliva sizzling above the flame.
Not long after Mike left for college, my mother threw me out of the house when she got a new boyfriend. Daniel was Polish and lived in a bungalow in Avondale that he inherited after his parents died, before “all the fucking yuppies moved in.”
He sat at our kitchen table all day drinking and listening to Polski on a small AM radio, laughing a deep croak from thick lips when he heard bad news from Warsaw. His face was bulbous and the red flush from drinking ran from his neck to the top of his horseshoe bald spot.
“Why don’t you ever bring the girls home from your school?” he asked me one day.
“I don’t go to school anymore,” I told him, and he shrugged and scoffed before pouring another glass.
When the schools let out in the afternoon, before my mother came home from work, he watched out the living room windows, calling me over when groups of elementary school students passed by.
“You know that one?” he asked, pointing to a seventh-grade girl.
“She’s like twelve,” I said to him, and he scoffed and shrugged again before walking back to the table.
When my mother came home from work, scrubs from the nursing home draped over her sagging shoulders. She made Daniel tea and sat her thin frame on his lap as he brushed his large fingers through her knotted, graying hair. They walked back to the bedroom. He smirked and raised his eyebrows as my mother led him to the bed, old wooden floorboards creaking under his girth.
Daniel was into the rough stuff.
I’d hear my mother moaning and screaming from the bedroom late into the night. With nowhere to go in the evenings since Mike left and having dropped out of Tilden, I would turn up the television’s volume to full, drowning out the noise. I did this a few times, until Daniel started coming out in his boxers.
“Turn that shit down,” he’d say, a belt wrapped in his right hand, and I’d lower the volume. “You want your mother to enjoy herself, right?” and he walked back into the bedroom, murmuring in Polish.
One day he said he had business in the suburbs, and he left the house early in the morning. My mother made the two of us breakfast before she went to work.
“What’s that? Did a patient grab you, or did you fall?” I asked, pointing to bruises on her wrists and neck as she set a plate of eggs in front of me.
“It’s nothing. I fell,” and she turned back to the stove.
“Did Daniel do this?”
“Really, Alex?” she sighed. “I think it’s time for us to talk. Since you’re not in school, you really need to get a job and your own place,” she didn’t turn around from the stove. “I’ll give you until the first of the month. Then you’re on your own.”
“That’s three days,” I said. “How am I supposed to get enough money to get my own place in three days?”
“Alex. I don’t want to hear another word about it. We need privacy here now.”
“Oh, I get it. Did he put you up to this?”
“This isn’t a discussion. Three days. That’s it.” she sighed, reaching into her purse and handing me a hundred-dollar bill before walking out to catch her bus to work.
I spent the rest of the morning stewing on it in front of the TV, thinking about how I could get rid of him and stay in the house.
Daniel came back in the early afternoon.
“So,” he said, hanging his jacket in the closet, “what will you be doing after the first of the month?” he chuckled, his breath smelling of lager. “You know, if you go farther south to Englewood, Chatham¾they have cheap rooms for rent. A nice white boy like you will make many friends.” he curled his lips and let out a howl. I could see gold molars lining the back of his jaw.
Before I knew it, before I could think, I was at his throat, squeezing his fat neck with every ounce of strength I could muster. His face turned from flush to beet red as we toppled to the floor. I straddled him, his arms flailing, not quite reaching my face, and I leaned my weight into his neck. I was going to kill him. I was going to watch the life fade from his eyes as he gasped. Within seconds, he threw a heavy fist into my stomach, knocking me back to the floor. He was strong, and surprisingly nimble for such a big man. He was to his feet in no time, raining heels and kicks to my head and body.
Once he grew tired, he walked to the kitchen table and poured a glass of vodka. I lay bloodied on the hardwood.
“Maybe three days is too long. Maybe I tell your mother you found a place to live today,” he drank deeply from the glass. “I think that would be best for you.”
I cleaned myself up in the bathroom, washed the blood from my face and changed my clothes. I had an old backpack from school, and I filled it to the zipper and walked toward the door. It was late in the afternoon when I left, school was getting out, and Daniel was at the window, watching the girls walk by.
The day was warm with a cool breeze, cicadas singing in damp summer air that smelled of summer rain. A cigarette dangled between my lips. The middle bent from breaking in half in my jacket pocket, and I had fixed it together with scotch tape. I was grateful for the weather.
I’d spent the first couple days at Corner Stone, a shelter in Uptown. The mattresses were plastic, and I woke up with large bug bites covering my inner thighs. We weren’t allowed to spend much time in the shelter. We had to be out from nine to five every day, spending our time looking for jobs or meeting with social workers.
There were two beds in every room. My roommate couldn’t have been taller than five-two. He wore a baseball hat perched on his head. He didn’t even look at me when he came in, and when he took the hat off, fluorescent light reflected from his bald spot.
“I’m Alex,” I said, walking over to shake his hand.
“Rodney,” he said, and his fingernails scratched my palm as he gave me a limp shake. “When you get in?”
“It’s my first night.”
“Out with the old, in with the new,” Rodney said with a smile. “That bed’s probably still warm, huh? They just hauled Kent off this morning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Old Kent had been cheeking his methadone for a week. Took a handful last night. When I woke up this morning, he was so blue he looked like he’d been sleeping in the snow.”
“Fuck,” I said, looking at the bed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rodney said, slapping my shoulder. “I’m sure they changed the sheets.” He walked out as quickly as he came.
I didn’t want to carry my bag around all day, so I tucked it under the bed and walked out into the neighborhood. The North Side was busy, more congested than Bridgeport. There were young white kids everywhere. I spent the entire day walking, from the lake to Loyola, through Devon and Little India, down to the rich folks in North Center and over to Lincoln Park. By the time five came around and I made it back to Corner Stone, I was exhausted. I ate dinner and went back to my room to go to bed. I pushed through the door and flopped on the mattress. I reached under the frame for my bag. My flat palm met carpet.
When I poked my head underneath, the bag was gone. I looked in the dresser, under Rodney’s bed, all over the room. Nothing. I went to the entrance to see if the woman at reception had seen it.
“You should know better than to leave your belongings unattended,” the woman said, a gold crucifix slung around her neck. “We can call the police and make a report, but. . . .” she shrugged.
“What about Rodney? I haven’t seen him since this morning.”
“He checked out this afternoon. Went to work in Indiana.”
I sighed, turning to walk toward the exit, fishing through my pockets. I had about fifty dollars from the hundred my mother gave me and just enough change to make a phone call.
There were people all over the corner of Lawrence and Broadway, in and out of huge concert halls and old speakeasies turned into jazz lounges. I dialed the last number I knew for Mike at a pay phone on the corner. My heart jumped when he answered.
“Fuck, man,” he said after I told him about the last couple of days. “That’s some bad luck.”
“Yeah, I know. Any chance you have room at your place?” and he was silent for a moment.
“I have to check with Noah, my boyfriend, you two will like each other, but I should really run it by him first. Call me back tomorrow.”
“This call is the last of my money,” I lied.
He sighed through the static of the receiver, “All right. Get a bus ticket to Iowa as soon as you can. I’ll talk to him before you get here. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”
I bought a one-way Greyhound ticket for thirty dollars that left Chicago at 11:30 p.m. I wouldn’t get to Iowa until five in the morning. I watched out of the window as the lights and buildings and cars became more and more sparse, until all I could see was the dark bulk of corn in the fields and a thousand stars twinkling down on top of the stalks.
I thought about my father singing Hank Williams when I was a kid, before he left us for a new life in California, a fresh beer between his legs as joints cracked and his girth sunk into the leather of his chair. I thought I finally understood what the song was about, the southern drawl twanging through the speakers, Dad’s gravelly throat rumbling alongside the lyrics. I was excited and nervous, terrified and joyous, a smile etching across my face as tears streamed down my cheeks. I’m so lonesome I could cry.
When we pulled into the Iowa bus station the sun poked orange and purple from behind a shelf of gray clouds. Birds chirped on tree branches above sidewalks. There were bearded men who carried books instead of lunch pails, draped in sweaters and cardigans, no cop or firefighter uniforms.
Mike lived just north of downtown, a brick-laid street shrouded in a thick canopy of elm and oak trees. I knocked on the door for five minutes before the deadbolt clunked, and a guy in his mid-thirties opened the door.
“Who the fuck are you?” his voice was tight, gray hairs mixed with black in his beard. He wore black-framed glasses that were a few years out of style.
“I’m Alex, Mike’s friend from Chicago. My bus just got in.”
“Jesus. What time is it?”
“About 5:30 a.m. Can I come in?” I said in my most empathetic tone. I presumed this was Noah, who was doing me a favor, and I wanted to stay on his good side.
He turned and thumped his bare feet across the floor to a small wooden table in the kitchen, pouring a glass of vodka and drinking it before heading back to bed.
I grabbed a pack of cigarettes and the bottle off the table, moved an ashtray and some Proust and Petrarch books, which I knew had to be Mike’s class reading. I sat on the stained beige carpet in the living room, leaning against the cement wall, dust particles floating through sunlight pushing between venetian blinds. Birds chirped in the tree outside. It was familiar: the apartment, Noah, even though it was a couple hundred miles away from Chicago and we had just met. And I knew, for a little while at least, I was home.
I woke up to something scratching across my cheek. When I opened my eyes, Mike was dangling a shoelace above me, grinning gap teeth under bright blue eyes and curly hair. We both laughed and he crouched down and hugged me.
“Looks like you made yourself at home,” he said, walking toward the kitchen.
At first, I thought he meant finishing the bottle of vodka and smoking the half pack of cigarettes I’d taken from the table the night before, but when I looked down I noticed the crotch of my jeans was soaked and the couch cushion was damp.
“Shit,” I said, “I’m so sorry, man.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not the first piss that couch has seen,” he called from the kitchen.
“What time is it?” I called back.
“Almost one. Time to get out and seize the day!” he said, coming back into the living room holding two mugs of coffee. “I have to go to class soon, if you want to walk with me and see the town a little. You’re a long way from Bridgeport.”
I sipped the coffee and got up to head to the bathroom. I let the water wash over me in the shower, helping myself to some shampoo and soap, scrubbing the irritated skin of my inner thighs. I didn’t have another pair of pants, or any other clothes, so I rummaged through the closet in the bathroom, found a bottle of Febreze and sunk five shots into the denim.
Mike was right, we were a long way from Bridgeport. The town was full of kids in their early twenties. Tall, short, fat, skinny, backpacks hugging their shoulders and books clenched to their sides.
“Jesus,” I muttered, turning my head to a group of blond girls strolling by, their perfectly manicured teeth shining in the sun.
“Don’t get too excited,” Mike said with a chuckle. “You’re going to have to get at least one new change of clothes before even thinking about it. And maybe some actual cologne. You went pretty heavy on the Febreze.”
“Better than piss, I guess.”
We walked to a building on campus where Mike said he had class.
“What time do you get out? I’ll come back and meet you.”
“I’m out at five, but why don’t you head to the Wood, have a couple drinks and I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m broke, man. I’ll just walk around or something.”
“Noah’s the bartender. He’s off at three and I’ll just meet both of you there. I think he’ll be okay giving you a couple on the house.”
The Wood wasn’t so much forest themed as decorated with taxidermy animals. The centerpiece was a stuffed brown bear standing on its hind legs, greeting the patrons as they pushed through the metal door. At two o’clock on a Monday afternoon, the clientele was nothing but career drinkers. I sat at the bar next to a guy with his arm in a sling.
Noah set a whiskey in front of me, “I’ll put it on your tab,” he said with a smile. “You already owe me a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes.”
After a couple hours and four whiskeys, Noah finally came out from behind the bar.
“Coffee,” was all he said, and we walked back into the sun.
We walked a couple blocks to a ’50s themed diner, where all the waitresses wore short skirts with poodles embroidered in the fabric and sweat poured from pointy, paper hats atop greasy short order cooks.
Noah ordered two coffees, and we sat at a counter in front of a large window. After a couple of drinks from the mug, Noah pulled a pint of whiskey from his pocket and filled both cups.
“That’s a famous bookstore,” he said, slipping the whiskey back into his jacket and motioning toward a blank faced storefront across the street. “It’s Mike’s favorite place. We’ll watch for him. He comes every day after class.”
We sat in silence, sun shining through green leaves and thick branches, the young and normal and privileged strolling by without a care in their beautiful heads.
It was a beautiful few months. Mike majored in English, but he couldn’t afford to buy all the books for class, and if they were particularly esoteric, the library didn’t carry them either. Mike got into a habit of requesting class material from the blank-faced bookstore near campus, and when they came in, he would ask to browse the pages before his purchase. We sat in the café upstairs, sipping tea and black coffee, and he skimmed weeks of his class readings in advance while I flipped through National Geographic. When he was finished, he returned the book to the cashier, telling them it wasn’t what he asked for, and he’d request the assigned reading due in a few weeks.
After dark, when Noah was tending the bar at the Wood, we’d drink cheap vodka and cans of beer. Mike would turn up the radio to full blast, and we’d dance in the living room late into the night, until the downstairs neighbors banged on the ceiling.
On Sundays, the Wood was closed. I’d cook frozen pizzas or pour a jar of cheap tomato sauce on top of overcooked noodles, or brown fatty ground beef in a pan for chili. The three of us would stuff ourselves and watch old sci-fi or horror movies. After dinner, Noah would drive us out into the country in the middle of the night, and we perched on the hood of his old Dodge Neon, smoking cigarettes and staring up at the sky.
“I never knew how many stars there were,” I’d say, a Camel hanging from my lips.
“There’s another one,” Noah said, pointing to the endless map of satellites and comets. And Mike would drape his arms around both of our shoulders.
We’d stop by the liquor store on the way home from stargazing. Noah always wanted to drink light beer and Jägermeister; and we’d take shots that tasted like black licorice and molasses, washing it down with the watery, low carb lager. Sometimes, after the two staggered back to the bedroom, Mike would come out and lay with me on the couch, letting me place my head on his chest while we slept.
Mike came home from class one night without any beer or liquor.
“Did you stop by the Wood?” I asked, flipping through channels, assuming he had a few drinks before coming home.
“I got a call from my dad today.”
I shut off the TV. Neither of us had spoken about our families since I came into town.
“He got a job in New York; some construction work at a university in Rochester or Albany or some other place upstate. He wants me back home to take care of my grandma while he’s away.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Six months, at least,” he sat down on the couch, long legs spread out in front of him. “What am I supposed to do? Leave Noah, drop out of school, or let her die?”
“Maybe if you told him you won’t come, he’ll stay in Chicago.”
“He already has the ticket to New York,” Mike leaned forward, placing his head in his hands. “He’s leaving in a few days.”
“Let’s sleep on it,” I said. “Maybe we can think of something in the morning.”
By the time Mike woke up the next morning, I already had coffee made. I was wearing a T-shirt from the Wood and an old pair of Mike’s jeans.
“I’d say my bags are packed, but I don’t have any,” I said.
“What?” Mike sat down at the kitchen table, and I set a steaming mug in front of him.
“I’ll go,” I said, taking a seat. “I’ll go back to Chicago and take care of your grandma while your dad’s away.”
Mike squinted, “I don’t know.”
“She’s so old she’s just going to think I’m you anyway.”
Mike sighed, “Even if you do. You know my dad isn’t the most reliable person. If he doesn’t need to come back to Chicago, he won’t.”
I shrugged, “What am I doing here I can’t do back in the city?”
We walked around campus, had a few farewell drinks at the Wood. Mike borrowed Noah’s car for the trip. We hit Interstate 80 in the early evening, windows down, warm air blowing across our faces, sun setting on the horizon, trees so tall I thought they’d tear a hole in the sky.
Anthony is a MFA Candidate in Fiction. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Arkansan Review, The Magnolia Review and elsewhere.