TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 33

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 19, 200000000006


Dear citizenry of the tree,

	You know of course that on moving day, I fell backwards off a 
counter top and bruised or broke my tail bone.  Did I tell you that? 
So I sit here at my computer, crowded into my mother's office, and I 
try not to sit straight on my tail.  In the meantime, I cannot send 
mail out, but I am receiving it.  I decided to type up another life 
story every day anyway.  The problem will get corrected on Friday the 
20th when my computer expert hooks us all up to the DSL and gets us 
off my mother's cable connection.  So many details of the move.  I 
have yet to open some boxes and I have my fingers crossed as to 
what's in it.  I need those checks from the joint account.  I need 
that binder from the writing class I'm taking every Wednesday.  I 
need my beeper.

	Beep this.



 
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Bird's Nest

	Petey Marshall was Susie Marshall's big brother.  There was 
Michael Marshall, then Petey, then Susie, in birth order.  Theirs was 
a Catholic family, so either they weren't that religious, or they 
just weren't that busy.  Only three kids.  What a scandal!  Michael 
Marshall was too big for  me to fathom, but Petey was just a bunch of 
years older than Susie, so he was visible to me.  He was a bad kid. 
He defied his parents.  He swore.  He got into trouble.  He was the 
kind of kid who would tie tin cans to a dog's tail, or soap some 
neighbor's windows on Halloween.  In my mind, Petey was someone to 
stay away from, someone not to get involved with, someone that would 
ruin my safety.  But he was also a big kid (probably all of ten years 
old) and endowed with the power and majesty that a person of those 
years had earned.  He was dangerous.  I didn't know him well.  All I 
knew were his legends, his bad behaviour, his stunts.  He once took 
his flexi onto the ice on Colston Drive and sledded down the middle 
of the street when a car was coming the other way.  He sledded right 
under the car without getting hurt.  A miracle!  A bad miracle.  Did 
he get in trouble?  I have no idea.

	One day, he was leading Susie and me around outside, 
organizing an adventure that only he knew could exist.  He saw a 
bird's nest up in a tree, one of the trees that stood between the 
buildings in the apartment complex across Colston Drive from us.  It 
was a young tree, having been planted when the apartment buildings 
were planted, but it looked huge, tall, formidable to me.  Petey said 
he saw a bird's nest in the tree and he was going to throw a rock at 
it and knock it down.  I had no concept of the damage that would 
cause the bird family.  I didn't quite comprehend the idea of a 
bird's nest.  But I heard the squeak and chirping of the baby birds 
waiting for their mother to land on the edge of their house and bring 
them something delectable to eat.

	Petey looked at all us useless human beings and he searched 
for a proper rock.  I was five years old, too young for this wicked 
activity.  To prove that I was old enough to witness this, big enough 
to matter, I stepped forward and volunteered to hold the tree for 
him.  Was I keeping it from scuttling away?  I still find it a 
mystery.  But that's what I did.  One hand on one side of the tree, 
and the other on the other side, I steadied the tree.  Petey wound up 
and threw his rock with a great grunt into the air.  I watched the 
rock on its trajectory speed up into the air, higher, higher, then 
slow down to a stop, momentarily motionless at the zenith of its arc, 
then begin to come back down.  As I watched the rock descend, it got 
bigger and bigger.  It was aiming straight for me.  The rock hit me 
just at the side of my right eye, and my whole field of vision was 
filled with blood.  I reached up to cover my eye, and when I removed 
my hand, blood was all over it.  I started to cry.  And I made my way 
back to my house while Petey ran off in another direction.  Susie 
came with me as I walked carefully home.

	My mother took me to the doctor, and the doctor cleaned the 
wound, and placed a big important band-aid over it.  I was taken home 
to convalesce, an invalid, a statistic, a victim of the unsuccessful 
war against the bird's nest.  Later that day, Petey Marshall came 
over to visit me.  He proffered a bag of cookies that his mother had 
made.  He apologized stiffly.

	I still have the scar to the right of my right eye, a little 
crescent.  In kindergarten, I painted a picture of myself with a huge 
wiry mess of swirling lines scribbled over my right eye.  I was 
commemorating the injury.  I don't remember eating any of the cookies.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net