Tattoo


Billy’s dad, Jack, had a tattoo on his arm in a time and place when people’s fathers didn’t have tattoos. I never saw it myself,


swimming pool in


but Billy’s parents had their


a backyard in


Mission Hills and some of the other kids told me they’d seen it when they’d been out there swimming and Jack was maybe cleaning leaves from the pool or stoking up the barbeque.


Billy’s parents were the best parents I knew. I called them by their first names – Renate and Jack – and they let Billy decorate his bedroom by letting him paint psychedelic patterns on the wall. Renate bought him the paint and tiny brushes so he could be precise. They also bought him the best sound system that money could buy, with the biggest speakers any of us had ever seen – and we listened to Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin and every other band of the time. Billy taught me about music while we painted intricate circular patterns in purples, orange, pink and sky blue on creamy walls.


Now that I think of it Billy’s dad may have been more careful in front of me, for though I swam in that pool many


times, I I never


remember seeing his arms or the tattoo. He thought I was Billy’s girlfriend and there was a shyness about him.


stayed at the


Zimmerman house even though it was a time when girls didn’t stay at boys’ houses.


23


Things were so bad in my own home – the two-bedroom apartment my parents moved to when they lost our house in an economic decline. Not a depression – my dad used to say – a recession.


All I knew was that he


didn’t have a job and my mother used to throw things at him: ornaments they’d had as wedding presents; bills envelopes; knives and


ketchup. I would hear her loud, high-pitched hysterical abuse of him and, whether I stayed in the apartment with them or not, my ears rang with her bitterness. So I used to hide at Billy’s, letting his music and the kindness of his parents drown out the ugly words, the horrible sounds.


I went there for lunch and stayed for dinner. Most of the time, Renate drove me home at night. The food smelled different from the food in the apartment. It was European and Yiddish: chopped liver; kugel, latkes and knisnishs.


Kasha and chicken soup with


rice. It was good, so good. Renate tried to teach me to cook, while Billy went back into his room and painted more swirls on the wall and listened to obscure music imported from England. I never wanted to go home and so some nights, sensing my reluctance, she made up a spare bed for me – in the opposite end of the house to where Billy was sleeping.


in thick, brown forks; bottles of


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