No Mention of the Lonely

No Mention of the Lonely

    Don Donald Reimerez

               What to do if you get lonely,

                  What to do if you get cold

                  What to say when you are only

                  Fifteen years and none too old

Wichita in the fifties lay before its future like a brick under a broken window. Motorcars crowded unpaved dirt streets, brick factories, all without glass, stared derelict out over vasts of city sprawl, lonely men in lonely windows smoking lonely pipes watched cats slink through garbage piled in paper bags behind smelly cafés. Smog pooled along sidewalks green with age and filth. Fish of indeterminate species lay inert and barely alive in ditches and canals that ran through this abandonment. Women had no water with which to bathe. Men looked for scraps to eat along the riverbank. Dogs did not chase cats or each other. In this casualness, Ronnie Ramirez lived with his grandmother, his mother, his father and brother, as well as his sisters, Tina and Maria.

         “If only I had a true friend,” he said at breakfast one day. His mother, in a red coat and wearing a black hat over her black hair, spoke reedily for him to explain himself. She did not turn to him. She held a pot in one hand and a baby in the other. She set the infant on the stove and placed porridge before her son. She smelled of sleep. Ronnie ate and brought his dishes to the washtub.

         “You go visit Ruthie,” his mother spoke to him from the other room. “Ask her if she would like to play with Maria.” The wash water was dirty and his hands hesitated to go into it. “When she was here last time she left her pinafore in my room and she could come back for it.” The baby kicked against the crib once or twice and Ronnie walked in to tickle her. He sniffed her and then went out into the field behind the apartments. He used his yoyo for a while and eventually looked up at Ruthie’s windows. She stood there and waved and then came down carrying a load of wash. She spoke over her shoulder to her mother inside the door out of which she had come.

         “Let’s go for a walk after you are done your chores?” Ronnie said. He handed her two clothes pins and then a pair of slacks. A blouse, two towels, three corners, a set of washcloths, two pairs of pink underwear, a corset, and a few handkerchiefs he reached up to her where she stood on the ladder. Dust swirled about the damp wash from Droniez’s horse and buggy. It came slowly down the ally from out of the sun and disappeared behind the poolroom across Windsor Blvd. Horse turds lined the grass where they’d been kicked aside once they were no longer fresh. The strong odor of a new one mingled with the scent of wet laundry.

         “Come inside, Ruthie!” his mother called from the back room. She appeared with the baby under her arm, which she handed to the fifteen year old who smiled and chucked. “Would you like some lemonade?” The wind rattled the window over the sink and airborne dirt outside swept past. “I’ll make a bunch of toast!” she added. Ruthie handed out the cards and Ronnie rolled the dice.

         “Sorry!” she said.

         “Sorry!” he said.

         They laughed.

         “My father used to have my mother stay out all night at Aunty Martinez’s when he wanted to catch up on sleep,” Ruthie said. She sipped the lemonade and made a face. Soda biscuits in her plate stayed untouched, but the other food slowly disappeared. Her breath came through her nose audibly. Ronnie counted it and found it to come more often than his. 
        “Cause we live in the Rivers we can’t have a cat.”

        Ruthie said, “Sorry,” and then got up.“Come over tonight for a while and help me put my Christmas decorations up with my mother?” Ronnie nodded and walked her to her door. He tapped her shoulder with his fist and she smiled at him and pulled his ear a little.

         “Good,” she said.

         “Nice,” he added.

         “When do you have to sleep?” she said and he did not know because he couldn’t remember ever looking at the time to see. He would now, though, and he would tell her next time. It was good to have a friend, Ronnie thought, even if it was a girl.