W: The Jerry Lewis Telethon

Chapter: Kid, the Jerry Lewis Telethon

My little sister and I are getting dressed in our nicest clothes. All
morning we have been watching a man on the television named Jerry
Lewis, who is asking people to donate money for a disease I can't
pronounce. I've seen his face and name on jars at the U-Totem, a cap on
the jar with a small slit cut into the top so people can put in their
change. I think it's funny that he has the same first name as my
father. He even has the same slick black hair. On the television, Jerry
Lewis tells stories and talks to twitching people who are rolled onto
the stage in wheelchairs. Sometimes he sings, which makes me want to
leave the room. I think he looks drunk.

My mother has talked about Jerry Lewis before, telling us he comes to
the hospital where she works. He has operations. My mother doesn't tell
us what the operations are for, except that they have something to do
with his heart. She knows this because she takes the tape cassettes
from the doctors and types them up into reports. The reports go into a
room that is nothing but shelves and long rows of files, each one for a
different patient. I've seen my mother type these reports, so fast that
her fingers are just a blur. She's typed about other famous people,
too, like the man on the news who yells and wears bright clothes.
There's something wrong with his heart, too.

Our television makes the people on the screen look green. Jerry Lewis
walks around the stage, standing over the people behind him who answer
the phones. There's a board behind Jerry Lewis with numbers that roll
and roll, showing the thousands of dollars he has raised. The numbers
don't look real to me. They keep changing and getting bigger. I'm not
sure how much Jerry Lewis is trying to get, but watching all that money
gave me the idea.

My little sister has put on her dress that looks like overalls but has
a skirt attached to it. It's blue, and she's wearing a white turtleneck
underneath it. The turtleneck is dirty, so I tell her to roll it back
at the top and at the sleeves. She's also wearing socks that come up to
her knees, and her brown hush puppy shoes. The shoes have little holes
on the top in the shape of a heart. They're too small for her, but
they're the nicest she has.

I'm wearing my white pants and the only long sleeve shirt I own. Both
my pants and shirt stop short of my ankles and wrists. I also have a
blue tie with a clip on the back, but when I button the top of the
shirt it feels like I'm being choked. I throw the tie back in the
closet. Once we brush our hair and teeth, we'll look fine.

We don't have any jars in the kitchen, but I do find a can of coffee
that's half full. I dump it outside the door, into the bushes, and then
take a knife and cut a crooked hole into the plastic lid. I make the
hole big enough so that paper money will fit. My little sister watches
while I work on the can. I consider making her her own can, but think
it would be better if we stuck together.

"Say 'telethon,'" I tell her. She holds the can in front of her.

"Telthon," she says.

"Tel-e-thon," I say, "You need to get it right if you want to make any
money." I tell her this even though I think she looks perfect.

"Tell-a-thon," she says.

I push her out of our apartment. My plan is start collecting at the
houses down the street from us, because the people who live where we
live don't have any money. I've heard these people when they sit on
their front steps, griping that the government is late with their
checks or didn't give them enough last time. Sometimes they don't get
checks at all, and then they talk louder. They say "government" with
what my mother calls an ugly look on their faces. They yell at their
kids who are doing something wrong or maybe nothing at all.

I haven't seen my mother sine the night before, a Friday, when she left
to go out with her boyfriend. She wasn't home when I woke up, either,
my little sister taking up all of the couch and me on my bed on the
living room floor. I know my mother will tell us she came home when we
were sleeping, and left before we got up, but I'm starting to wonder if
she ever comes home. So far I haven't been able to stay up late enough
to find out. On school nights, when my mother is home, she gets up
before us and goes to work, so maybe she's telling the truth. I don't
know.

I won't tell my mother what we're doing today, or my big sister, who
disappears all the time now. Sometimes my big sister comes back to our
apartment with her loud friends and sometimes she comes by herself.
When she's alone she goes into her bedroom and locks her door, playing
music I can't understand while a burning smell comes out from her door.
She barely talks to me.

I think about what we will do with our money as we walk to the houses
down the street. I need to go to the grocery store, and I want to eat
the Mexican restaurant that knows me because we eat there all the time.
My little sister only eats beans and rice there. I always have their
tacos, which are so good they leave me hungry afterwards. Also I need a
new folder for school, one of the big ones with pockets. I want one
that has college-ruled paper. Now that I'm in the sixth grade, and at
the junior high, this is something I need.

At the first house we knock and a woman answers the door. She gives us
a dollar. I can hear Jerry Lewis in the background as she says, "Aren't
you two the sweetest things. I wish I had more to give you." When she
shuts the door, my little sister turns to me, smiling, and holds up the
can. She shakes it, but there's only paper money and it doesn't
rattle.

We move down the block, knocking on doors. Mostly people give us change
from their pockets. One lady writes us a check, looking at us like we
might be up to something when she hands it to me. The check is for one
dollar, and I remind myself to find it and drop it off in one of the
jars at the U-Totem. I've heard my mother yelling into the phone when
she calls the bank, telling them to wait while she pulls open the
little boxes the bank sends to her. These boxes have check after check
in them, written and signed. Sometimes they do what my mother calls
bounce, so I know there must be a way for people to see if their checks
have gone to the bank. "Be good," the check lady tells us. We say thank
you while she shuts her door.

My little sister and I collect for hours, walking up and down the
streets until the houses start to look the same. We get close to my
school, where I get to by bus, and the money can gets so heavy that I
take it from my sister. I emptied it earlier and put the dollar bills
in my pockets, along with some of the change. It clinks when I walk. I
even found a five dollar bill, which I hid from my sister. But I did
put some dollar bills in the pocket in front of her dress, making her
smile.

I decide we should go home. My sister is limping from wearing her shoes
for so long. She'll have blood on the back of her socks when she takes
them off. I will, too. We are too excited too care, though, the
heaviness in the can and in our pockets worth all the walking. I remind
my little sister to keep quiet about our money, telling her what we'll
do with it and how it could disappear if she lets my big sister know
about it. She crosses her heart and hopes to die.

At home we count the money on the bathroom floor, the door closed and
locked in case my big sister or mother shows up. I pull out the five
dollar bill, not wanting to hide it anymore, and I make dollar-size
stacks fo dimes and nickels so my little sister can compare her own
stacks against them. The pile of paper money is big, the five dollar
bill sitting on top. My sister laughs when we have to scoot backwards
to make room for all the change.

"Fifty-two dollars," I say finally, and my sister claps her hands. It's
more money than my mother has ever given us, though I've seen more when
I've through her purse.

"This is a lot of money," I say, "What should we do with it?" My sister
shrugs, still smiling. She picks up the stack of paper money and weighs
it in her hand, keeping it flat and neat.

It's too late to go anywhere, so we put the money on top of one of my
little sister's baby books. The book is thin and flat and easy to carry
into the living room, where I plan on pushing it under the couch. The
coins cover the faces of the girl and the dog on the book cover. They
stay upright, each stack worth a dollar. All of the change and the book
are heavy, like picking up a bag of sugar.

While I'm pushing the book under the couch, the front door opens and my
big sister walks in. She has her friend with her, Shelley, who always
smells like cigarettes. Shelley doesn't close the door behind
her.

"What are you doing?" my big sister asks me. She and Shelley stare at
me. I'm still crouched down by the edge of the couch.

"Nothing," I answer, pulling myself up and sitting on the couch, "What
are you doing?"

Shelley looks at my big sister and laughs. She laughs like a man, low
and deep. She walks like a man, too, and wears dirty T-shirts and blue
jeans that drag under her heels. If it weren't for her long curly hair
and her chest, which is as big as my sister's, she would be easy to
mistake for a boy.

"Let's go to your room," she says. When my sister's bedroom door
closes, I reach down and push the money further back. I make sure the
flap of cloth that goes around the bottom of the couch hangs like it's
supposed to. My little sister watches me.

"Remember, don't tell anybody," I whisper. She nods.

We stay up late, watching television and waiting for my mother to come
home. I pull out the blankets I se for a bed and lay down. My big
sister and Shelley stay in the bedroom. Or maybe they're gone, because
sometimes my sister climbs out of her window when my mother is here. I
wake up a few times during the night, listening to the television but
forgetting to see if my mother is on the couch with my little sister,
where they both sleep.

In the morning my little sister and I fry baloney and sit eating the
wiggly, pink pieces while watching the Jerry Lewis telethon, which
seems to have never ended. My mother is not home, and my big sister's
door is still shut. Because it is Sunday, there are no cartoons to
watch. I see that Jerry Lewis has made a lot of money.

"We should go to the store," I say to my little sister. She stands up
and gets the metal cart we use to carry our groceries. I figure I can
take twenty dollars of our telethon money to the store. That will buy
spaghetti sauce and the little brown packages of ground meat we like to
eat. But when I reach under the couch to get the money, my hand drags
along the carpet and I can't feel anything. I pull up the cloth flap
around the bottom of the couch and look. It's dark but I can see
there's nothing there, not even the book I used to stack the change
on.

"It's gone," I tell my little sister, who is back in the living room,
the cart in front of her. She looks scared.

I am so mad that I run to my big sister's door and kick it. This is a
dangerous thing to do, because even though I am a match for my big
sister, she and Shelley could easily beat me up. They've done it
before.

When there's no answer or noise, I try the doorknob. It's not locked,
so I push the door open and walk into the room, thinking I'll find my
big sister and Shelley asleep, or at least waking up from all my noise.
But they're not in the room. My sister's window is partly open, the
curtains moving in and out.

I stand in the middle of the room. I don't believe it, that the money
is gone. I want to break my sister's records and hit Shelley, and tell
on them. But there is nothing to tell, and no one to tell it to.