Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi

back.
    â€œPapa will hear us,” they told me.
    â€œAnd then he’ll find us.”
    Since the shoulder straps were too long, they helped each other hold the accordion up and sang, “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say: I ta-ke the bananas and I run-a away…,” while air squeezed in and out of the bellows, causing dreadful sounds.
    â€œPapa will find us.”
    In the meantime, though, the twins kept finding me.
    Since Kevin’s sister had the croup, I was not allowed in his apartment, and Mrs. Hudak had just bought a television and didn’t let me talk while it was on. James had helped her move her furniture so she could see the television from any part of her living room. She used to sit across from me at her table, or she’d watch our street from her window, observing more interesting things than on television while also making our neighborhood safer; but now I could only see her back and that television. Both Mrs. Hudak and I loved lady mud-wrestlers because they fought dirty, but I didn’t tell my mother because she didn’t allow anything violent on our television.
    I didn’t visit Mrs. Hudak when James was around, and he’d been there a lot since he’d graduated from high school. For a while he’d worked at Sutter’s, selling French confections, then at Mario’s on Arthur Avenue. So far James hadn’t found a new job. He didn’t like me—not since I’d asked him why he got tomato-red when he saw my mother.

    The last day of school before Christmas vacation, I ran home to Creston Avenue and locked myself in our bathroom before my cousins could get home. Ralph was hunched beneath the sink pipes, and I lifted him up. With my free hand, I cast shadows of snarling dogs against the wall opposite the lamp, dogs that snap at my cousins’ legs, bite off their heads, but when I remembered how dogs attacked rabbits, I stopped because I felt sorry for Ralph. Then I felt sorry for myself, because all I had were shadow animals. I wanted real animals. With fur and with eyes. Live animals. “You’re not filthy,” I told Ralph and kissed the sleek fur on his face.
    â€œHurry up and flush, Anthony.” Aunt Floria was knocking on the door.
    Nobody told her to hurry up when she took her long showers, singing in Italian as if—so my mother said—someone were stabbing her ever so slowly.
    I darted past Aunt Floria and out of our apartment. On the front stoop in our courtyard, Kevin sat playing with his cars. “Here,” he said and handed me his yellow friction car. For himself, he kept the red one, and we lifted our cars, chafed their wheels against the concrete steps, again, faster, and again, till their racing sound became a loud buzz and we let them speed away from us.
    Mrs. Hudak banged against her window. “You’re making too much noise. Go back to where you belong.”
    We scooped up our cars and ran across the street.
    â€œSupposed to check both directions,” she called after us.
    â€œLet’s spy on her,” Kevin said.
    The stairway in his building was freezing, and the tar bubbles in the roof had hardened and cracked.
    â€œMy Uncle Malcolm can fix that.”
    Kevin dropped to his belly and elbows. “Duck and cover.”
    â€œDuck and cover.” I was Burt the Turtle, crawling behind Kevin along the flat roof, past metal frames with washlines, past vents. His corduroys were tight on his ass though his mom bought him husky sizes at Fordham Boys Shop. We crawled toward the television antennas at the edge, where kids were not allowed, and took positions for our spying game.
    â€œUuuughhh…uuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…” we howled. “We’re going to get you, Mrs. Hudak.”
    But Mrs. Hudak was hiding from us.
    â€œUuuughhh…Mrs. Hudak…uuuughhh…”
    Kevin had Nik-L-Nips, and we bit off the waxy tops and drank the syrup while we scanned