Sandy crossed through the lot of the CVS and headed to the gas station at the end of the block. There, she spotted a familiar form in the shadows of the overhang.
"Squirrel!" she called out, amazed when the figure waved back. She jogged up to him. "Damn. I haven't seen you in ages."
"Been gone."
"Nearly a year."
"Nearly."
"I got a nose pierce," she beamed, pointed to the silver ring in her right nostril. "A tongue pierce too." She held out her tongue.
Squirrel opened his mouth and finessed the metal sphere around his teeth. "Had it six months."
"The parentals say I gotta take all the silver out before summer, but screw them. Whatcha been doin'?"
He held up the squeegee in his right hand, then dropped it back to his side. Watery muck dripped like fresh oil on the concrete. "Stayin' out of the sun."
A Ford Escort rolled into the station and idled before Squirrel's pump. As though curving with the back swing of a pendulum, the entire bulk of the automobile tilted when the mass of the woman inside pushed open her door and leaned herself forward in a low sway. Squirrel was already over her, armed with the squeegee and a crooked grin.
"No thanks," she wheezed, trying to wave him off as she grabbed the door rest with fingers that billowed around the joints. When she bent over for balance, her gray sweatpants spread tight over her legs like balloons.
"Need a hand?" He laid his arm on her side door.
She scowled and pressed all her weight on the handle. "I'm fine."
"You know," he commented, "you can't have your front windows tinted in this state."
The woman took her eyes off the ground and scanned the boy's sharp little face. "I ain't from Ohio."
Sandy and Squirrel found a new spot where the roof dropped a crooked shadow on the drive. "No school today, Squirrel?"
"Doc says it's bad for my constitution."
"Think I need to talk to your doctor."
"Speaking," he flashed a grin and leaned on the pump, crossing his arms against his chest.
" I didn't know if I'd ever see you again."
"Here I am."
"Still climbing trees?"
"Buildings mostly. Been squatting with this crew of taggers from Philly. They've already sprayed pieces over the whole joint. When they get sick of one, they spray over it. It's pretty dope. People come from all over to check it out. We could charge money if we wanted. One guy, called Deck, he says he'll teach me the cans when I get back -- already got my name down pretty good, but those guys can do dragons and guns and shit."
Squirrel rocked on the balls of his feet as he spoke, as though to catch himself from falling too deep in a moment invested with hope. He had been fending for himself so long, always looking over his shoulder. In the shadow of life he circled, it was hard to make friends, even harder to trust them. Right at that moment, he forgot about all that. "I'm gonna go back, soon as I scrap cash together, start doing pieces with them."
"Cool, Squirrel. Wanna cigarette?"
"Sure." He waited for her to hand him one. Nothing happened.
She gave a devilish grin. "Was hoping you had some."
"Up to the same old schemes, huh Sandy?" Squirrel took out a crumpled pack of Camel Lights and tossed her a cigarette. "How come you ain't in school?"
"Maybe I got this feeling you were around."
"Sure." Squirrel looked back toward the service station. A middle eastern fellow, wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a pen in his pocket, pushed open the glass doors of the Quick Mart and bee-lined toward the pumps. Squirrel spotted him first.
"Punjab's coming," Squirrel whispered and squatted on the curb.
"I see him," Sandy answered back, tucking her legs beneath her. "He's gonna tell us to split."
"Or what?"
"Or he'll throw us off the lot."
"I heard that camel jockey's got something wrong with his hand."
"Then he'll drag us off with the other one."
"I wanna see it first." Squirrel peered around the pump-turned-barricade. The manager had been stopped by a station wagon, luggage -bungie corded to the roof.
Sandy tugged Squirrel's sleeve. "Let's bail!"
Squirrels nostrils contracted. "Not yet."
"You've been back five minutes and already you're getting into trouble." She tugged on his jacket. He stayed planted on that curb.
"What's the big deal about sitting on a curb?"
"On account that I ditched school, and you aren't even in school."
The station wagon gurgled away and the manager continued his warpath toward the pumps.
They gazed up at the silhouette blocking their view of the sky. The man's mouth cracked at the corners. He kept his left hand tucked at his side. "You cannot smoke here."
"Sorry, Sir," Sandy smashed her butt against the curb.
Squirrel took another drag. "That all?"
"I do not want you disrupting my customers." The manager spoke in an educated English accent.
"Hey, man," Squirrel replied. "I'm just trying to make a few cents to catch the bus back to school."
"The school is right around the corner. Not more than three blocks away. You can walk."
"You'd be talking about North Druid. We go to the Catholic joint across town."
"Do you now?" The manager stared at Sandy's gym shirt, emblazoned with the North Druid High logo. The manager pitched forward. "I don't want any trouble."
"We aren't causing trouble, Sir," Sandy spoke up. "We're just sitting." She tightened her posture. A horsefly with bulging green eyes landed on her right calf. She tried to ignore it. The fly lit off and circled back, drawing figure-eights in the space between her and the manager.
"You can find someplace else to sit."
"You got no right telling us where to sit," Squirrel blurted out.
The manager jerked his head back, checking the path of the fly as it collided with his ear. "It is very dangerous to have any sort of flame near a gasoline pump. Does that not seem obvious to you?"
"If it's so dangerous, then why's the gas station the main place folks buy their cigarettes?"
"People buy cigarettes here. They do not smoke them. You must go now, please."
"We ain't bothering your customers."
"Where I come from, children work if they are not in school."
"That's what I've been tryin' to do." Squirrel pulled up the squeegee.
"That does not belong to you!" The manager lunged to grab the instrument, thrusting his hand from behind his back. It was gnarled by burn marks that had healed into misaligned skin folded over three fingers that twisted like a crow's claw. There was no thumb, just a shiny knob and a cicatrized edge across the wrist.
Sandy's eyes widened. Squirrel did not react at all. "I ain't stealin' it. I'm just borrowing it a while. I won't even takin' it off the lot."
"I did not give you permission to solicit services on my property."
"Come on. I'm doing you any harm. I just need a few bucks."
"Give that back or I will call the authorities."
"Why you gotta be like that?"
Sandy pinched him. "Hush up!"
"I do not have to be anything. I want you to return my stolen property and to leave."
Squirrel stood. "Ain't that the story of my life."
"I do not know about your life." The manager curled his left arm behind his back from habit as he stepped toward the boy.
Squirrel let his voice loosen. "Let me just make a few bucks and I'll be gone."
"No."
"Then I'll go on the street and bring it back later."
"No."
"Then how you suppose I wash windows?"
"Buy your own tools."
Squirrel waved the squeegee in the air like a mallet. "Buy this?" The manager did not flinch when his left cheek was sprayed by flecks of greasy water. "How you figure I buy one if I got no money? I need this in the first place to---"
"---You'll steal it. I know your type, always sneaking gum and cigarette packs. You won't bring it back. Why would you."
"Give it back, Squirrel."
As Squirrel passed it to the manager, he let the squeegee fall to the concrete. With apprehension, the manager reached for it. Squirrel sidestepped beside him, menacingly close. The manager recoiled with a firm grip on the squeegee and stood to a safe distance. Squirrel knew he had scared him.
"Yeah, right," Squirrel sneered and turned around. "Thought I would hit you? I wouldn't waste my time."
Sandy grabbed Squirrel by the arm and dragged him away. "Let's go."
A few yards on the main road, Squirrel slowed his pace. He yanked the tired pack of Camel Lights from the cargo pocket of his pants and stuffed one in his mouth. "It's so whack."
"What is?"
"The whole deal." He spoke with the cigarette in his hand for punctuation. "You need one thing to get another, cuz you can't do a third. But if you could do that third, some one else woulda already hooked you up on the first to begin with." The smoke bobbed up and down with his animated gestures. "You turn around and you're still facing the same fucking way."
"I understand."
"No you don't. How could you? Some people got that first thing, some people don't, and that sets it all up for the rest of their lives. You already got that first thing, and nothing'll ever take that away. I don't. I don't have nothing. So I'm screwed."
"What are you talking about? The manager kicked me off the lot too. We've hung out so many times when---"
Squirrel interrupted. "---So what if we hung out? So what? We smoked up a few times, we watched some flicks at your parent's house? You got nothing in common with me."
"That's not true."
"You got a nice house, nice clothes, family vacations. That's cool. But I don't got that."
Sandy did not know what to say. He didn't have that.
"There are cracks all over this life and I fell through one."
"It's no Martha Stewart at my house. I'm not sure having my dad is much better than having none at all."
"You wouldn't know 'til you tried it."
They shuffled down the sidewalk. A ratty dog scratched at the barber shop window. An old woman sang to herself as she waited for the bus. Sandy peeled a piece of gum off her shoe that stuck to the pavement each time she stepped.
At the end of the block, Squirrel stopped. "I probably got more in common with that manager then I wanna admit."
"What do you mean?"
"Walking around with that fucked up hand, trying to hide it all the time. I can understand having something you wanna hide."
She stared back at him. He still had the face of a little boy. She draped her arms around his neck, having to stretch on her toes to reach him. "You've gotten so tall."
"Yeah."
"Watcha doing tonight?"
"Why?"
"There's a party in the meat district at the Peabody warehouse."
"Who's on the decks?"
"DJ Greed and Digital Sonic."
He dropped his head. "How much?"
"Twenty five. But I got this friend, Mike. He covers my tab as long as I carry for him. I stuff them in my bra."
Squirrel felt his flat chest. "I don't got a bra."
"No shit, silly. Sometimes I tip security a couple rolls and they leave me alone. Maybe Mike'll hook you up."
"Last time I did that I got bounced by guys that knew I was holding. They jacked me up and stole my stash. I don't wanna do that again."
"This is Ohio, not Philadelphia. Will you come?"
"Maybe."
"Got a place to stay in the meantime?"
"Just hopping floors. My cousin lives out by the highway."
"Tom's away at college. You can stay in his room."
"That'd be nice," he mumbled.
The manager locked the register, closed the pumps, and chained the glass doors. Mr. Ambikar rubbed his forehead as he lumbered to his navy Toyota Corolla. He scratched his burned hand. The itching was exacerbated by fatigue, especially when he worked all day, exposing his skin to gas fumes.
His wife, Maya Ambikar, brewed the tea and took the nan from the oven. Rice and yogurt had already been laid on the table. His son, Sadhir, burrowed himself in the den, playing a football video game. The artificial sounds of tackles and crowds drifted into the kitchen while Mr. Ambikar sat to read the paper.
"Call him in," Maya nudged her husband's shoulder as she took the pot of green curry from the flame and ladled the potatoes into a white bowl. She and her husband spoke in Hindi. They discussed her day at the school, her dealings with the students, the chronic sore in her knee, the Brahms quartet that would play Friday at the library recital, the price of the tickets, the broken sprinkler, the dog getting into her closet again and tearing through one of her new shoes.
Mr. Ambikar nodded and listened, but the visage of the gaunt boy with the nose ring and the dirty hair would not leave his mind. The boy had such desperate eyes, leopard eyes, he thought. He had only seen a wild leopard once, when he had been a boy in Jaipur. The leopard was starved, and his coat was tattered as he prowled for days through the alleys of the town. Everyone knew that it had wandered in from the jungle, looking for food from the drought. Talk spread that the leopard might get a child.
He had seen it one night, when he took out his family's trash. The leopard crouched behind a green bin. The beast growled, showing a rack of teeth, but he had not run away. Instead, he felt great sorrow for the animal. Why had it wandered were it did not belong? It crouched there, behind the green bin, until the men of the town found it the next morning and shot it dead.
The boy today had the same eyes as the wild leopard, the eyes of something outcast and hunted.
Maya called her son to supper. Reluctantly, Sadhir removed himself from the video game and rolled to the table, listening to his parents discuss the evening news and uncle Hasim's new job in Atlanta. His father did not conceal his mangled arm with his family. He embraced it as a signifier of his triumph over adversity. He placed it comfortably by his plate as he ate with his other hand.
Mr. Ambikar asked Sadhir about school, whereupon Sadhir answered each question in English, giving the shortest replies possible without confining himself to monosyllables. The conversation changed as his mother stood to get more rice.
"Why do you never speak Mirati to your mother and I?"
"Why should I?"
"As the first generation born outside of India, we want you to appreciate your culture."
"My people, my people."
Maya rejoined the table with the dish of rice. She was caught off guard by the complacence of her son.
"Can't we have lasagna or hot dogs or even forks every once and a while? Like normal people?"
His mother blushed. "Like normal people?"
"I like chickpeas and spinach and yogurt, but why every night?"
"It takes your mother a very long time to prepare such---"
"I can make hot dogs and spaghetti if you'd prefer."
"Forget it." Sadhir dropped his hands to his napkin.
"What is it?"
"Nothing."
His mother touched his shoulder. "Why do you think your father and I go out of our way to eat the traditional meals, and wear the clothing, and speak Mirati to one another in the house?"
"Habit." His head stayed down.
"Not only habit. It's so that you know who you are. When you are in this house, you have time to understand that you're Indian."
Sadhir took a breath. "To me, that sounds funny. Cuz the way I view it, it's the other way around."
"What do you mean, Son?"
"The only time I really feel American is when I'm inside this house. When I'm outside, I'm reminded that I'm Indian every damn minute of the day."
"Watch your language." [Mom or Dad?]
"I don't understand. Explain this to me" But she already knew his answer.
"In my room, I got my Playstation and my Sports Illustrated and my nerf basketball hoop on the closet door and I get on the Internet and I watch the X-files just like any other teenager. But people don't see that. When I'm at school, you can tell by the way people look at you, they don't see me the same. They don't even have to say anything. It's the way they look at me."
"All the time, you feel this way?"
"Not all the time. Sometimes I forget. I was at John's house last weekend, he's in my history class. I was talking to Eugene, he's Chinese-American. And Kim, a Korean-American girl. John came up to the three of us, I think he was wasted. He took me by the shoulder and asked if we were the foreign-exchange program. I laughed at the joke, you know, and let it slide. We all hung out for a while and had a beer, and then after ten minutes John said, 'Man, I feel like a dumb American hangin' out with you guys,' as though he was the foreign-exchange student. But all four of us had been going to school together our whole lives."
"You were having beer?"
"Mom, that's not the point! I'm saying stuff like that happens all the time. And I'm sure you two get it worse than me."
"Why would you say that?"
"At least I don't have the accent. But I don't want to be reminded I'm different. So why should I speak Hindi or wear the clothes or eat with my hands? I just want to be normal."
No one spoke for some time. There was nothing to say. They had had this conversation before, with different friends and family members in different years. It was common to them all. Talking it over only salted the wound. He would learn the middle ground, just as the rest had before him.
Mr. Ambikar turned his thoughts to the vagrant boy at the pump. "A boy and girl from your school were at the station today."
"Who?"
"She called him Squirrel, I believe."
"Like the rodent?" Maya asked.
"I believe so."
"Squirrel? He's been gone since last year."
"You know this boy?"
"Kinda."
"Did he run away from home?"
"I don't think there was much of a home to run away from."
"Really?"
"What I heard, his mom and his grandma used him for school subsidies. They kept enrolling him in two different districts so he never went to either school much."
"That's just awful." Maya leaned in. "Did you know this boy?"
"He was always climbing things. That's how he got the nick name squirrel."
"For climbing things."
"In first grade, he'd be on the roofs all day. They couldn't yell him down. Had to get the janitor to climb up there and get him. Next day, he'd go right back. After a while, they let him stay up there so he'd be out of trouble."
"How odd."
"Squirrel used to play soccer with us on Sundays, crack jokes at the referees until even they couldn't keep a strait face. I'm glad he's all right, though. No one's heard from him for a while. So why was he at the station?"
"He wanted to wash windows."
"Did you let him?" Maya asked.
"Of course not. I thought he was a thief. And he was bothering the customers."
"He's had it hard, Dad. You should give him a break."
"He was with this girl, with a nose pierce. They were smoking."
"That must be Sandy. She was in my Algebra class last year."
"You know her as well?"
"We know who each other are."
"But you say you do know both the children who were at my store today?"
"Yeah. Why, Dad? What'd you do to them?"
"Nothing. I made them return the wiper and leave. He said he needed money. I thought they were street kids. So I kicked them off."
"Dad---"
"---They looked like thieves."
"They're not."
"I didn't know."
Sadhir became defensive. "They're not, okay?"
"All right."
"Do you ever see this Sandy at school?" his mother asked.
"From a distance."
"You should go to her tomorrow and tell her that her friend can come back to the store, if he wants. We will allow him to wash windows." Maya looked sternly at her husband.
"We will?"
"Maybe he can do more than that. Pump gas perhaps."
Mr. Ambikar nodded.
"Seriously?" Sadhir put down his nan and looked at his father.
Mr. Ambikar nodded again. "If he comes back tomorrow, I will help him."
Sandy hopped on the wall beside the track. She had painted dark makeup around her eyes two days before and had not bothered to take it off.
"Sandy?" Sadhir asked sheepishly.
She took a drag of her cigarette for emphasis. "Maybe."
"I'm Sadhir. We had math class together last year."
"And?"
Sadhir placed his backpack on the wall. "And I didn't know if you remembered me."
"Not really."
"You and your friend were at my father's gas station a few days ago."
Her body stiffened. "What of it?"
"I, he, wants to apologize."
The hunch in her back eased up as she shifted the weight of her shoulders onto her palms. "Oh."
"Can I sit down?"
"It's a free country."
Sadhir had trouble climbing up. His shirt came untucked from his pants and the soft of his belly fell on the cement wall.
Sandy giggled. "Sorry," she said.
"That's okay." Sadhir straitened out his hair. "Anyway, my dad feels pretty bad about the other day."
"Seriously?"
He could almost see her eyes brighten beneath the smeared make- up. She had pretty hazel eyes, with small brown flecks, like freckles, in them.
"He feels bad. He wants to invite Squirrel to come back, if he wants, to clean windows."
"Maybe he would. Dunno."
"Could you ask him?"
"He split."
"Is he coming back?"
"Doubtful. He got in trouble with a couple of guys at this rave. Some tweakers." She fidgeted. "They messed him up pretty bad and took his backpack, which was like the only possession on earth he had anyway." She stopped herself. "You don't want to hear any of this."
"Please. I do."
"I'm the one that convinced him to go to Peabody's in the first place. Smart idea, right? He looked like he hadn't had fun in a long time. So I said I'd pay for him to get in, but he didn't want to be a burden, so he agreed to sling pills."
"Sell drugs?"
"Whatever. For this guy I know. A friend of my brothers. Then this crowd from Cleveland drove in for the party, and word got around that Squirrel sold them bunk E, you know, aspirin or something. So they went looking for him. He tried to tell them that he was selling for this other guy."
"Your brother's friend."
"He never tested it himself, but these Cleveland guys were so jacked on crystal that they wouldn't listen."
"What happened?"
"They took him out back and beat him up and made him drink all this G and when he passed out, they stole his gear." Sandy's eyes watered at the corners.
"What happened to him?"
"I never found him." She looked up at some arbitrary cloud hanging in the sky. "We must sound like degenerates." She tried to smile. "Now he's gone and it's my fault."
Sadhir found it honest, the way she held her face away from him so he would not see her pain. "I've been to one of those warehouse parties. Last November. At Turnmills."
"I was there. With the giant globe above the floor."
"You never found Squirrel?"
"I looked where they said they left him. But he was gone."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
They hung there, each suspended on two different memories. Sandy imagined how tall Squirrel had grown as she flung her arms around him, how she wanted to kiss him in the twisting incandescence of Peabody's warehouse, how when she touched him, it felt like no one had touched him for a long me. The instant she held his hand, he flinched. But the longer she kept it there, the more he got accustomed to it.
Sadhir remembered the scrawny kid in the oversized shorts heckling the referees until he made them laugh. They would buy raspberry yogurt push-ups after the soccer game from the ice cream truck. Squirrel took his push-up and climbed into the poplars around the field to watch other games, getting up as far as the sky would let him, his hide-out revealed only by the dangling cleats and the splotch of powder blue from socks pulled over his shin-guards. When anyone went near the trees, Squirrel banged his shoes together, letting the trapped clumps of grass drop on the unsuspecting below. People looked all around, baffled. Then this little laugh would drift down from the leaves and give him away.
Sandy spoke first. "Maybe if he'd stuck around this time, things could get better for him." She flicked her butt into the bushes and wiped her face with the pocket of her sweatshirt. "Certain people don't get breaks." She took her hand out of her pocket and wiped below her eye.
"My father says you have to make your own breaks."
"Yeah, well, your father," Sandy was about to blurt out something, but she stopped herself. "Squirrel said he thought he might have a lot in common with your father."
"My father."
"Something about knowing what it feels like to be different." She leapt down. Sadhir handed Sandy her pack. "Not that your dad's all that different. But on account of his hand."
"He was in the army in Kashmir. An explosion went off. Acid spilled on it."
"Wow. I wouldn't even know how to deal with something like that"
"I don't think anyone does until it happens."
"Squirrel told me he understand having something that you want to hide. I don't know, he was all alone." Sandy started down the hall. "I better go."
Sadhir watched her make it to the water fountain before he called out. "Hey!"
She turned.
"Would you like a ride home? I have my father's car."
"Um, well," she knocked her feet together.
"It would be my pleasure."
Sandy watched the mass of students circulate the exterior halls. "Why not?" she agreed, waiting for him to catch up to her.
Sadhir took her pack and flung it over his shoulder as he escorted her to the parking lot. "You would have never agreed to ride with me a week ago, would you?"
She held her chin a moment. "Probably not."
They melted into the sea of bodies, swept up in the random
current, much like Squirrel drifting out there in a far deeper and far darker
ocean, only the buoyancy of his own body to keep him afloat.
© 2002 Carolyn Anderson Miller, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
Image Hugging Squirrel created by and © K.L.Storer, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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