Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (16 page)

The doorbell rang several short minutes after the finale of tonight’s Poole Family Failures Recap. With Mother ensconced in the bedroom, I took a deep breath to shake off the massive disappointment I had caused and ran to answer the door. Billy was standing there in a “Keep on Truckin’ ” T-shirt and jeans, the bright blue of the iron-on matching his bright blue eyes. He held a giant box of Jarts. I yanked him off the front porch as Mrs. Foster waved good-bye from their paneled nine-seater station wagon.

“What do you wanna play first,” I said excitedly, “Ping-Pong or pool?”

“I was thinking Jarts,” Billy replied, “before it gets too dark.” He opened the box to reveal gleaming metal darts large enough to fell Bigfoot.

“Oh, sorry,” I said hurriedly, eager to get him to the safety of the basement, “we’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Dad just watered the lawn, and Mother said if we slip and kill ourselves she’s not driving us to the mortuary.”

I pushed Billy through the family room, passing Val, who was on her way out for an evening of trolling the neighborhood with her friend Vicki. She was wearing purple hot pants and wedgies, and as she passed, she held her finger to her lips to shush us, knowing that Mother and Dad would have a fit if they saw her outfit.

“You owe me,” I whispered.

Billy turned to watch her leave the room. “Man, your sister’s pretty.”

My eyes rolled into the back of my head. “Gross!” I pushed him nervously toward the stairs.

“What’s the big rush?” he asked.

This night is not about my stupid teenage sister, I wanted to say. Or about your witnessing Mother doing her impression of Bag Lady Macbeth. This night is about a healing that has to happen. God has commanded it.

“Oh, I’m just excited,” I replied as I bum-rushed him down the stairs. “The basement’s where all the fun is. I hang out there a lot.”

We descended the stairs into the rathskeller and I picked up the Ping-Pong paddles and handed one to Billy. “So where are the other guys?” Billy asked.

“What other guys?”

“You said this was a party. So who else is coming?” The blood began to drain from my face. “Umm, nobody. I thought it would be fun if it was just, you know . . .”

“Oh, that’s cool,” he said, bouncing one of the eggshell balls on the paddle as he surveyed the surroundings. “Man,” he whistled, “nine couches?”

I beamed. He wanted to be alone with me! My face flushed with pride and confidence. Tonight, we would do God’s work.

TWO HOURS PASSED as we alternated between furiously competitive games of Ping-Pong and pool. For some odd reason, although I had played hundreds of times and he had never played before, Billy was beating me.

“You think you’re so hot?” I said challengingly as I laid my cue stick on the pool table. “Bet I’m a better wrestler!”

“Oh, yeah?” he barked.

Billy grabbed me and threw me to the ground. We began to roll around, getting rug burns from the cheap industrial carpeting as we both struggled for dominance. Fortunately, I was bigger than Billy and was able to straddle him fairly quickly, pinning his arms and legs down. He tried to throw me off, to no avail. I sat on his torso, holding him down, lingering in the moment. It was important for me to establish control so that the demon inside Billy would know who was boss.

“All right, I give!” he hollered.

I leaned over, my face mere inches from his. “Who’s Dick the Bruiser?” I demanded, referring to a pro wrestler whose matches I had spent hours watching with my grandmother.

“You are!”

“Say it like you mean it!” I barked.

“You are! You’re Dick the Bruiser!” he yelled. “Now let me up!”

I remained atop him, refusing to move, focusing my mind’s eye on the exorcism to come.

“What are you doing? Let! Me! Up!” Billy bellowed, annoyed. He pushed as hard as he could, finally throwing me off with a heave. I tumbled backward as he jumped to his feet, brushing himself off with an odd measure of anger and disgust.

Before I was able to formulate an excuse for holding him down, we were startled by a voice.

“Soup’s on.” We turned to find Dad standing at the foot of the stairs holding a pizza box and a pitcher of Tang, staring at us curiously. I ran to grab the food.

“Hi, Mr. Poole,” Billy called out, his voice still reflecting his annoyance.

“Hi, Billy.” He turned to me. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure, why?” I replied in a rush of words. “No problems here. Boy, are we hungry. Is this sausage? I hope so. Thanks for the Tang.”

“Spread these out on the floor,” Dad whispered to me, handing me a roll of paper towels. “You get any crumbs on that carpet and your mother will have a stroke.” I nodded with tacit understanding. Must not poke the bear.

“Have fun.” Dad ambled up the stairs, glancing back at us.

We took a break to stuff our faces and watch
Sanford and Son
, a show that might as well have been a nature special with a laugh track, since, living as we did in a virtually all-white suburb, it provided our only exposure to people of color. As Fred Sanford feigned another heart attack, I nearly had one of my own. Mother appeared, canister vacuum and an eight-foot length of hose in hand.

“Hi, Billy,” she said cheerily, as she made her way across the basement and began Hoovering off the pool table. “Don’t mind me!”

Nothing was allowed to be left on the surface, including the balls, pool cues or chalk, but that hadn’t stopped her from vacuuming it so many times that there were permanent brush marks in the green felt. Her cheerful demeanor scared me almost as much as the fact that she had surely noticed the pizza lying on the carpeting. At this moment, I couldn’t be sure which was more dangerous.

She flipped off the vacuum and headed for the stairs. “Have a good time, you two!” she chirped, and disappeared upstairs.

Seconds later, an altogether different voice pierced the air from above.

“God in Heavennnn!!” she screamed at Dad. “If there are tomato sauce stains on that carpeting, you better start looking for a new family!”

Billy’s eyes widened. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” I said airily, chuckling as though cries to the Holy Father were the most natural thing in the world. “She’s rehearsing for a play.” I glanced over casually to see if he had bought it. Fortunately, Billy was not always the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

“Ohhhhh,” he replied, obviously relieved. “She’s pretty good. Is she playing a crazy woman?”

I reached behind the faux-fur rocker to grab my coveted bedspread. “Oh, shoot, I forgot to have my mother throw this in the wash. Be right back.”

I crossed into the laundry room, closing the door behind me, and knelt on the floor, burying my face in the bedspread as the high-volume shriekfest continued upstairs. “Dear Jesus,” I began, “let the miracle of magic flow through me.”

I visualized a calm descending over the house, a calm that kept Mother upstairs, quiet and hysteria-free, and a calm that allowed Billy to open his mind and heart so that the evil within could be purged. This night was proving to be more of a challenge than I had hoped, yet the moment of truth was coming. I knew it.

After a long and competitive game of Mousetrap, during which Mother mercifully calmed down and I silently thanked Jesus for his assistance with my magic, we turned on
The Midnight Special
, with host Little Richard and special guests Aerosmith and Kool and the Gang. Dad padded downstairs with a bag of potato chips, some snack cakes and another roll of paper towels. He surveyed the carpeting as he spread out a four-by-six-foot layer of paper towels.

“Your mother’s gone to bed,” he whispered. “Don’t tell her I brought you this stuff or I’ll wake up dead.”

As Helen Reddy wailed “Delta Dawn,” I casually snuck sidelong glances at Billy as he gorged on Ding Dongs. Bits of processed chocolate and chemical cream filling covered his face, yet even eating like a pig, he was handsome.

It was time.

As the fans screamed for “I Am Woman,” I yawned loudly, stretching my arms, and rose to grab the two sleeping bags I had set in a corner. I unzipped them and spread one out on the floor.

“I’m beat.”

I flipped off the TV, lay down on the pallet and pulled the other sleeping bag over me as a blanket. Billy surveyed the situation.

“Why don’t we just each use a sleeping bag?”

“’ Cause there’s more room this way,” I lied, certain that God would forgive me.

“Oh, gotcha.” He climbed under the blanket. “It was a fun night.”

I couldn’t see his face. Was he staring at me admiringly, as I was him? My heart began to pound wildly. I had never cast out a demon before. Silently, I asked Jesus how this should best be accomplished. I took a deep breath, awaiting the answer, and within moments, it came.

As Billy’s breathing began to become rhythmic, I stealthily inched closer to his body. Carefully, I lifted myself up and eased down on top of him. “Show him the way to Jesus,” I prayed silently. My body was now fully engulfing his, my holy energy overpowering the demon within.

“Hey . . .” Billy awoke groggily. “What are you doing?”

“Jesus has sent me on a mission,” I whispered. “Just go with it.”

“Go with what?” he replied, annoyed. “You’re heavy!”

Slowly, I began to rub my body against Billy’s. “You have a demon,” I said patiently. “It is my duty to squash it.”

“I don’t have any demon,” Billy replied. “I’m an RA!”

The rubbing sensations felt surprisingly good. This is what it must feel like, I thought to myself, to be Jesus.

“Come on,” Billy protested, now a little less vehemently, “knock it off.”

There was a long pause. I continued to rub. “Really.” His voice was softer now. A longer pause. “This . . . isn’t . . . right.”

He fell silent as the rubbing continued.

“I need to press harder,” I whispered, my face near his although I couldn’t see it. “I have to crush it. I have to crush the demon.” My breathing was getting labored. Casting out evil was hard work, but worth it.

“But I don’t have a de . . .” Billy’s voice trailed off. I began to grind into him. A strange feeling began to fill my body, one I had never experienced. As it slowly began to build, an intensity of emotion and rapture I had never experienced began to overwhelm me.

“Dear Jesus,” I wanted to scream, “help me fill him with your love!”

The feelings were washing over me like a tidal wave. I sensed the evil force within Billy getting ready to explode out of him.

Suddenly, he pushed me off with a violent shove. “Stop it!” He sat up and scooted away from me.

“But this is for your own good,” I sputtered.

“It’s weird!” He didn’t sound entirely convinced. There was a moment of labored silence as we stared into the darkness. “
You’re
weird!”

“I’m not
weird
!” I huffed. “I’m a good Baptist!”

“Then why do you want to do that to me?”

“This is for your own good. I’m casting out the—”

“You like it,” he interrupted.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, touching me, or whatever. You like being with a boy, like the guy in that movie.”

“No, I don’t!”

He grabbed the sleeping bag blanket and folded it over into a single, crawling inside and turning his back to me. “I’m going to sleep.”

“So am I!”

As we lay in standoff, my mind raced across an emotional landscape, from rage to denial to fear. I was doing my Christian duty. Wasn’t I? I only wanted to save Billy from himself. Didn’t I? Boys didn’t need to beware of me.

Did they?

 

 

WE BARELY SPOKE in the morning. Although Dad had planned to take us to Dunkin’ Donuts, Billy called his mom to pick him up first thing.

Trying to fill the uncomfortable silence that hung in the air, I grabbed my tennis shoes and began to tie the requisite plastic bags around them.

“C’mon, we can play Jarts!” I offered.

“What are you doing?” he said, as I secured the plastic bags with thick rubber bands.

“Oh, it’s just easier,” I explained. “This way I don’t have to use the scrub brush and Bon Ami after.”

He stared at me with an expression that bordered on disgust.

“No, thanks,” he said flatly, looking down at his shoes as he kicked at imaginary dirt in the shag. “I’m just gonna wait outside.” He walked out the front door and closed it quietly behind him.

Billy began to miss RA meetings.

And suddenly, even at Sunday school, he avoided me, speaking only when others were around. His behavior confused me. Anger I could deal with. Anger I could possibly counter. But he didn’t seem angry; it was simply as though someone had flipped a switch inside him and he no longer cared.

But I cared. About the loss of my friend. About the strange feelings inside me. And about the question of how my magic—for so long now a real and potent part of my life—could have abandoned me when I needed it most. Was Jesus denying me the ability to create miracles? Or had he simply stopped listening?