The Word Cloud

The ice cart guy comes round the corner of the street. It’s hot, and the lull in the afternoon has been waiting for him. Heads pop up from their refuges in the shade, and there is a flurry of activity as kids run in to beg for quarters. Those with enough foresight to be prepared, clutched coins in hot fists and start to gather on the sidewalk.

            ‘Lemon ice,’ the shout goes up. ‘Lemon ice, cherry lemon ice, I got lemon ice.’

On another day, Gregory might have done the same. He looks up and watches the man make his entrance into the street, but he’s not getting up today. The arrives of the iceman, makes him stiffen and tense on his stoop. Next to him, his friend Petrov stiffens also, giving himself away as his foot jiggles nervously on the step.

            Gregory is too old to show his desire for ice so freely, but it’s not just that which makes him grit his teeth, rather than run down. Two days ago, he fought Michael Savo for the right to walk Mary O’Toole home from school, and he’d won. The Italian boys all loved her, because she was Catholic but fair, with her cascade of red curls and the freckles across the bridge of her nose. Gregory wasn’t a Catholic; his mother was Jewish and his father drank, but that didn’t stop him wanting to walk Mary home and carry her books. When he did, had been king for a day.

            Michael had older brothers, as did Gregory, but Michaels older brothers were going to be told of the insult. Michael and his older brothers, Paul and Andrew, could now be seen, entering the street behind the lemon iceman.

            Petrov wasn’t going to be much help. He was younger than Gregory, he only tolerated him because he was another Russian boy in the block; and his older brothers were off on their own concerns. He looked grimly down at Petrvo, thinner, lighter and fair as an alter boy. Petrov tried to give him a reassuring grimace in return, but his face was bleached with fear.

            ‘Yo’, you there?’ Paul Savo shouted as they passed the ice seller and came closer to Gregory’s stoop. ‘Yo’, red, you up there?’ Gregory looked at Petrov again, and, clasping his firsts to his sides, stoop up to face them.

Gregory had begun to grow at an alarming rate since the start of the year, his mother was always telling him how shocked she was at his increasing height. He was taller than Michael Savo, and looking down on the three of them, he tried to imagine that he was as tall as his oldest brother, Demitre, who was not there.

            ‘You – you knocked my kid brother down.’ Paul stated; his thin, adolescent arms crossed across his chest, in the manner of a man much older. He was wearing a red shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, and his thick, black hair was collar length at the back.

            ‘So?’ Gregory said, hoping that his monosyllabic response would indicate confidence, not the fear he felt inside.

            ‘He’s just a little kid, what, you some kind of animal, you commie bastard?’ Gregory was momentarily impressed to hear Paul use such an adult word. Bizzarely, he drew strength from it.

            ‘So what? I knock you down too.’ Paul’s voice was lyrically Italian, in comparison; Gregory thought his voice sounded stilting and guttural. He could speak English pretty well, better than his parents, but still he couldn’t understand most of what was said by his teachers at school. Still, he sat at the back, and looked out of the window, unless Mary was reading to the class.

            ‘You come down here and say that!’ Paul demanded. Drawn by the noise, some of the neighbourhood kids were starting to wander over, some with ices in hand. Gregory folded his arms now, to mimic Paul, and stated as boldly as he could.

            ‘I hit you, wop.’ He uses the word his father had used, and he could see Paul and his brother’s flinch at it. He expects them to rush him now, drag him from the stoop and start to beat him. He braces himself  - but their upturned faces go from outrage, to submission.

            In the same second that Paul un-crossed his arms and, flapping the air with is hand, turned away from Gregory; in the same second Gregory felt a rush of exhilaration at his assumed victory; a great hand closes on his shoulder.

            Petrov jumps up, and half trips himself down the stoop with the scramble to get away, and Gregory turns to see his father behind him.

            ‘Get in here boy!’ His father snarls, and, knowing that it’s too late to run, Gregory gives the stoop, the street and the watching chorus of kids a final glance, before submitting to his fate.

            His father drags him from the asphalt heat, into the dim, stuffy hallway, which smells of wood polish and paint. He can’t see much in the gloom, his eyes have been sun washed half blind by the stand off; but as he stumbles up the stairs, his vision returns.

            His father is wearing check pants and a white vest, and Gregory knows he has been drinking. He always drinks, what matters now is how much. It’s three o’clock, so things were either going to be good, or they weren’t. Any later in the day, and he would have been doomed, but there is still hope.

            His father shoves him into their apartment, and Gregory sees his mother’s pale, concerned face for an instant, before he’s in the lounge.

            ‘Have you been doing it again?’ His Father demands, speaking in Russian as he always does.

            ‘Doing what, papa?’

            ‘That old Irish bitch upstairs, she said that Russian boys have been knocking at her door again. Russian boys she said, like we were niggers!’

            ‘No papa.’

            ‘No?’ His father jabs his finger in Gregory’s face.

            ‘Sasha, Sasha he’s said.’ Gregory’s mother puts her hand on her husbands arm. She’s wearing a blue dress with a white collar and she looks tired. ‘He said it was not him.’

            ‘Who was it boy? Was it your brothers?’

            ‘Yes papa, it was them.’ Gregory knows it was them. They should be too old for such childish stunts, but they had done it anyway. His father starts unbuckling his belt. All the bravado of the stoop leaves Greogory, his face is like Petrovs.

            ‘No papa, please, it was them, it was!’ He cries.

            ‘Sasha please!’ His mother tried again, but his father pulls away from her and shouts,

            ‘That old Irish bitch thinks we are no better than niggers; she thinks I have no control in my house.’ Now he’s pointing at himself, ‘I come here, to be called a Polack and a nigger by these peasants?’

            ‘But it wasn’t him!’ His mother says again.

            ‘No,’ his father pushes her, so she staggers back a few steps, ‘but he is here.’

            ‘Don’t you lay hand to me!’ his mother pushes her husband back, though the impact hardly moves him.

            ‘Go to the shop!’ Sasha retorts, ‘and let me be man in my house!’

His mother looks at Greogory, and then she fetches her purse from the side table, and leaves. The apartment door slams shut behind her. Turning back to his son, Sasha lowers his voice and says.

            ‘Listen to me, boy. You never forget, we are Russian. We never betray our brothers, and we never run from a beating.’ He takes his belt out of his trousers, and wraps the buckle end round his fist. ‘In this country, we are guilty.’ He says, ‘but if you are a man and take a beating, then the blows will always be less, than the ones your brothers give you, for betraying them.’

            Gregory turns his back on his father, and balls his fists to his sides again. He bites down as hard, as the belt sings through the air and cuts across his back.

            ‘Remember boy,’ his father’s effort makes the words catch in his chest. ‘The informer,’ Slap, ‘always,’ Slap, ‘gets whipped,’ Slap, ‘first.’

            After it’s over, his father gets him a soda from the icebox, and gives him a quarter to get a lemon ice. But the iceman has gone, when he gets back to the stoop.