A Song for Mary Read Online Free Page A

too dirty to pick up? No, I am thinking. I don’t want it because it’s now dirty like the devil’s ashes. Shalleski did that, and someday I will make him pay for it.
    Both my ears hurt, and I feel the blood at my nose. I put my fingers to the top of my lip. It’s not dripping too much, and so I throw my head back as I walk down 52nd Street.
    Archie is standing at the top of the stairs at Kips. He is always there if he isn’t playing dodgeball in the lower gym.
    “Where’s your club card?” Archie asks.
    “Come on, Archie,” I say, “you know me.”
    “Doesn’t matter if I’m your brother or something, you have to have the card.”
    I have the black “midgets’ card,” the youngest age group. Midgets can just go to the lower gym to play school yard games, but the intermediates, like Billy, can use their gray card to play full-court basketball on the third floor.
    I know that Billy will be in the upper gym. He’s always playing basketball, or baseball, or reading. Mommy goes to the library every week to get the books, and Billy always reads them.
    I have lived with Billy all my lifetime, and when you live with someone, you don’t think a lot about them. They are just there like the kitchen sink. But, recently, I’ve been thinking that Billy has been pretty good with me, making sure I learn things that he has found out, like how to play rummy.
    A few weeks ago he took me to Kips to teach me how to play Ping-Pong. We were hanging around 56th Street, doing nothing, and he just grabbed me by the neck, and like that we walked to Kips. All the while he was telling me that to get good at any sport where there is a ball, you just have to keep your eye on it, maybe just a little bit of your eye, but never take your eye off the ball completely for even half a second because someone was sure to do something just right then that you don’t expect.
    Since he took me to Kips for that Ping-Pong game, I have been playing as much as I can, and now I am getting pretty good at it.
    Maybe, I am thinking now, he can do the same for boxing.
    There is a lot of noise in the locker room because some of the boys are having a towel fight, snapping the towels at their crotches. I run past them to the gym and see Billy taking a foul shot.
    “What are you doing after the game?” I call to him.
    “I don’t know,” he yells back. “Going home?”
    “Could you take a little bit of time with me?”
    “What do you want? Ping-Pong?”
    “To learn how to fight.”
    Billy looks at me like I am asking him for a loan of twenty dollars. He stops shooting the ball and comes over to me.
    “You don’t learn how to fight,” he says at the sideline. “You just do it.”
    “No,” I answer, “I gotta learn, ‘cause I fell outta the stroller and lost my thumbnail, and I have to beat the brains outta Peter Shalleski. I have to plan it.”
    “What?” my brother says, a little confused. “Meet me in the weight room after the game.”
    The weight room is below the swimming pool and has a punching bag hanging by a chain from the ceiling and a few pairs of old boxing gloves around the room. There is also a pair of black punching bag gloves on the floor, three sizes too big for me, but I put them on and begin to punch the bag.
    As I punch away I am beginning to remember the dancing lessons in the church basement, just before the Christmas Pageant. They made me dance with Peggy Sheehy. Or, maybe they made Peggy Sheehy dance with me. I remember the rules of dancing that the nuns taught us. Keep your head up straight, your chin out. Don’t stiffen your knees, keep them buckled just a bit. Bring your shoulders back. Control the change of your weight from one foot to the other.
    Maybe these rules are connected to boxing, I think. Maybe a good fight is like a good dance.
    I am now bouncing around, jabbing at the punching bag, keeping my head straight and my knees buckled a little, and I am making it swing with each jab. Then I weave and bob, up