tribute to days long gone but never forgotten . . .

Skipping with Helena

Ray Timmins

“Dude, your parents are outta town, huh?” Ethan said to me, excited and obviously holding back on some great idea that had just popped into his head.

“Yeah, for a few days.”

Then he unleashed the idea: “Let’s skip school tomorrow man, it’ll be great!”

I hadn’t skipped much school before that and the other times had been with him. “Yeah, I guess we could do that.”

“And I could sleep over tonight.”

“Yeah! That’d work.”

“Cool, dude, gimme about an hour—Grey Time, of course.” Grey Time, taken from his last name, meant that he’d be 20 to 30 minutes late; this adjustment was taken into account any time Ethan promised to meet me within a certain time frame.

I hung up the phone and sat and thought for a moment. I decided to call Troy, to see what he was up to. The three of us had known each other since junior high. For high school, we went to three separate schools. Ethan attended the local high school; Troy, an art school downtown; and I attended a dual enrollment program at the local community college.

Troy. He was studying drama. One day, back when he had first started art school, I saw him practicing lines from a Tennessee Williams play—rather good, he seemed serious about it and the performance was believable. May have even shook me a little. I especially liked to watch him argue with his mom—he did it with such passion, waving his arms and bugging his eyes at odd times, reaching for words with his fingers grasping the sky. It called for applause. His mom—a psychologist by profession—would stare at him, wait until he finished and say, quiet and collected, “Now, Troy . . .” and just pause. That would really get him going.

Anyway, I called him up to see how he was and to see if he wanted to hang out with Ethan and me, maybe skip with us the next day. His older brother answered. Once, his brother had convinced me to rent some videos posing as the brother of one of his friends, who had an account at the video store. Said it was a joke on his friend. I told the clerk that I didn’t have a card, but gave him the phone number and address, which Troy’s brother had briefed me on. It actually worked. I got away with like five movies. In return, he stole a computer game for me. Pool of Radiance. Come to think of it, I never even got into the game. oh well. His mom eventually found the videos and made him return them. I kept my game. He was a clever though, and strangely a nice guy—I liked him for those reasons.

He handed the phone to Troy: “Hello?”

“Hey Troy, it’s Dell.”

“Hey man.” He sounded glum. “Arguing with my mom again. I hate this shit! I’m moving out!”

“My parents are outta town man, just come over here. Ethan’ll be here in an hour or so and we can all do something.”

“Really? Cool shit, man!”

“C’mon over, dude.”

“Shit, the busses aren’t running this late. Ah, fuck it—I’ll find a way! See you tonight, alright?”

“Cool. Later.”

About an hour later, I stood outside looking at the stars, my dog Chili scampering around idiotically chasing bugs in the dull suburban night, when Ethan and his twelve speed came clicking down the street. He had his hands in the air and just said, “Hey, dude,” and jumped off the bike. He locked it against our avocado tree.

“I can’t believe your parents are gone for three days. Dude, that’s cool!”

“Yeah, I know. Hey, I called Troy. He says he’s coming, but I don’t know when or how he’s gonna get here.”

“Shit, he lives all the way on County Line Road!”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be like twenty miles. And the bus doesn’t run this late. But he said he’ll be here.”

We went inside and Ethan got a glass of ice water. The phone rang. It was Helena, another friend from junior high. She and I had been talking for a couple weeks now. After junior high, she had moved to another school district. Neither Ethan nor I had seen her since then. Every time she called, I would beam; she had a way of capturing my complete attention with just the sound of her voice. I think I did the same thing to her. Talking on the phone was our shared addiction.

Ethan got on the other line and we all joked around. Helena hit a sore spot when she asked Ethan about his girlfriend, whom he had just broken up with. He’d been skipping school a lot lately and it had a lot to do with her. Helena had also confided in me that she had been skipping school lately. We asked her if she wanted to skip with us tomorrow and she said that she would love to, her voice singing. She made me promise that I wouldn’t tell Katie, a friend of hers who went to school with me because “she just wouldn’t understand.”

We made arrangements to meet in front of the mall at eight. We were bullshitting for a bit more and teasing Ethan about his girlfriend when I heard a knock at the door. I knew it had to be Troy. We all hung up. Ethan and I ran to the door from different rooms; I opened it. A cool night breeze blew in. Troy stood there, his hair in his eyes, covered in sweat. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder. Chucks doused with a multitude of colorful paints.

“I walked,” was all he said as he stepped through the door, threw his backpack on the couch and went to the kitchen to get something to drink. See, we all had this unwritten agreement: whenever we were in one another’s houses, we had free reign on the kitchen. I liked going over Troy’s house because they always had yogurt in the fridge. Troy and his brother hated yogurt. His mother kept buying it because she thought that they were eating it when it had actually been me. And then there was always a rapid loss of peanut butter in each of our houses. It is the food of the gods.

We sat down in the living room and talked about the old times. Times at the beach and about all the people who hated us in junior high because they thought we were weird; when Nay-Nay, as he was called, had taken Troy’s skateboard and tried to ride it on the basketball court; the time Ethan got into a fight with Nay-Nay. We continued to reminisce, sure not to exclude the times Ethan had gotten jumped by like four or five guys or the time he went ape-shit and sprayed the halls with a fire extinguisher.

Then there had been Trish. Trish was this extremely persistent girl who had liked Troy back then. She wasn’t the most attractive girl; but more offensive was the fact that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—take a hint. Despite much obvious intimation that he was not interested, one time Trish snuck up behind him in the hall and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek. Troy proceeded to scream and slam his head repeatedly into a locker. She then said, “You’re so immature!” and walked away with her nose in the air. Troy began scrawling, “Trish is trash” wherever he could around the school: desks, walls, lockers, cafeteria tables. He encouraged us to look for them when we were around school and to feel free to add a few ourselves here and there.

We told Troy about us skipping the next day but he couldn’t miss school; he asked me to set the alarm for him so he could catch the bus in the morning. I did. He lay down on the couch and put a huge pair of white underwear on his head—he said they helped him sleep and that he wore them every night. He looked like a somnolent Smurf snuggling up to the pillow. It must have been an exhausting walk—he was out instantly.

Ethan and I raided the fridge then called Helena back. She was always up late. We told her Troy was asleep on the couch; we began conspiring ways to torture him in his sleep. Ethan got shaving cream from the bathroom, tip-toed over to the couch where Troy was passed out and sprayed it down the side of his face. With ninja timing, Troy leaped up with a shrieking yell that I’m sure everyone on my block could hear and did this fantastic flying jump-kick at Ethan, missing by an inch. Then, as quickly as he had leapt off the couch, he threw himself back down and fell asleep. I stared, wide-eyed, keeping Helena abreast of the action. Ethan stood for a moment in shock, his jaw dropped, the can of shaving cream dead still in his foamy hand.

“What the fuck?!” he laughed.

Ethan got back on the phone and we all talked for a few minutes before bidding Helena farewell till morning. My sister was staying at a friend’s so Ethan slept in her bed. I went to bed, listening to talk radio. Some lady was asking advice to deal with her daughter who kept skipping school. I chuckled myself to sleep.

The alarm went off and I went into the living room to wake Troy. He got right up, threw on his shirt, said good-bye and told me to have fun skipping. I followed him outside and watched him walk away. The sun was not up yet.

I had inclinations toward the arts, but hadn’t really dedicated myself to anything yet. In some ways, he was a role model. He was zealous in his ideals and deliberate in his actions; he was bold and confident in everything he did, no matter what anybody told him. He didn’t care if he made a mistake or wrinkled any fabric. His passion was the stuff of legend.

I went to the door of my sister’s room and told Ethan it was time to get up. He looked up from the pink pillows and pink sheets with a groggy, confused look—probably trying to orient himself having awoken in that strange, girlish terrain. He said OK. He put his head back down.

“Dude, time to get up!”

“I heard you! OK!”

He wasn’t a morning person, apparently. He still lay there.

Ethan was a cool guy. Everything seemed to go his way. Well, besides the multiple times he’d been jumped in junior high. I guess I envied him sometimes; he seemed cleverer than I, more aware; or, at least, more prone to action than passivity. I had never hesitated in going along with whatever scheme he’d come up with—it was something to do; it was always interesting. Fear and reluctance always melted away around him. It almost seemed as though the angels were on his side.

I decided to take a shower while Ethan woke up. I thought about meeting Helena at the mall; it had been over a year since I’d seen her last. She was pretty cute in junior high. I remembered the last day of school. She had signed my yearbook several times and it seemed as if we were getting closer up until the last day and we had to say good-bye. She told me that if I ever saw her in public to not acknowledge her. I laughed. Then, as she walked down the stairs, out of the school, I thought, I never noticed how pretty she was and how much fun she is to be around. And I had not known until that point that I might have been strangely in love with her. Then she was gone.

We had been talking a lot lately; I thought about her often and enjoyed talking to her. But this would be the first time since that last day in junior high that I would see her. I was anxious.

When I got out of the shower Ethan was watching TV in the living room. He was still bleary from sleep. He hopped in and out of the shower and it seemed to wake him right up. We grabbed some food from the fridge and started the walk to the mall. It was just a couple of miles.

We got to the mall and waited for Helena. We looked around and were amazed: “I’ve never seen the mall so dead,” I said. “There’s not a soul here, not even a car.”

“Yeah, you’re right. How weird, dude.”

We waited a few minutes and still Helena did not show.

“Dude, man, she shoulda been here by now. Where the fuck is she? The cops are gonna come by and bust us, dude.”

“I dunno. She’ll be here. She promised.”

We waited about five more minutes and I saw someone walking toward us.

“Is that her, dude?”

“I think so,” I said, squinting my eyes.

As she got closer, my heart raced. I was intensely curious to see what she looked liked after all this time. She got closer. She was beautiful. Petite, well dressed and with a beaming smile that made my head spin. I wondered how I should greet her, what to say, would she like me?

She hugged both of us. “Haven’t been waiting long, have ya?” she said, coyly—in a certain tone which drove me crazy for some reason. Without even trying, she drew me in closer and closer.

“Not too long,” I said, smiling, looking at her up and down, capturing the dreamy visage in my mind.

“Wasn’t too easy getting off campus once my mom dropped me off. Sorry.”

“Oh no. No problem. It’s good to see you again; I almost forgot what you looked like.”

“We better get going!” Ethan said, taking charge.

We walked toward the bus stop.

Usually quite the talker over the phone, Helena was now rather quiet. She just walked with us, smiled and answered our questions succinctly; occasionally she would make a short comment or giggle—her eyes and her gestures did most of the talking. I kept looking over at her and would suddenly look away; but our eyes did meet several times and it was both uncomfortable and magnetic. Her voice, as much as it had drawn me in on the phone, paled in comparison to being in her proximity. Now her voice was the counterpoint to the intoxicating melody of her image that sang out to my heart with every flutter of her lashes, every step, every smile that came to her face as we walked and talked.

We came to the bus stop and waited. Helena leaned on my shoulder. Naturally, I had no complaints. My body tingled and my heart continued to race.

“Any bus should take us to the beach,” I said.

“Cool,” Ethan said.

A bus finally came; we got on and sat in the back. Helena managed to pay the student rate; Ethan and I, not wanting to procure any unnecessary attention, paid the adult fare. I bought transfers for when we got bored with the beach and wanted to leave.

“This is my first time on a public bus,” Helena said.

Having grown up using public transportation, I was shocked. “Oh, a virgin,” I smiled.

“Yeah,” she teased back, raising an eyebrow.

We got off the bus at the beach and walked along the sand with the sun still low and pink in the chilly Miami winter morning. Ethan was wearing one of my sweaters but was still shivering. I had on a sweater and jeans. Helena told me I looked good which immediately sent my pulse soaring. I thought that she looked great, but was too embarrassed to tell her, so I just smiled and thanked her.

Ethan and I reflected on the times that we’d had on that beach over the years: talking into the night while the black water crashed into the rocks; getting drunk and stranded and sleeping on beach chairs; my slipping on the rocks and tearing my leg up; tripping and hitting my knee, drunk, and having to get stitches; sitting in the lifeguard stand at night and talking about girls. Helena sat back listening, smiling, taking it all in. I looked over every now and then just to check if she was as beautiful as my last glance, which she was.

We got to the jetty and sat on a rock near the foaming tide washing in and the conversation meandered. We talked on a variety of topics mostly centered around how the authoritarian figures in our lives didn’t understand our plight. A sense of camaraderie was building up between the three of us. At that moment it was us against the world. Ethan thought about swimming, but decided it was too cold. Helena sat in between us and still mostly listened, though she was talking a bit more now. She leaned on Ethan’s shoulder some, then on mine. I felt the warmth from her head rush through my shoulder and spread to my chest and arms.

The beach soon got old and we ran up to the street to catch the bus before our transfers expired.

“Let’s go downtown!” I said.

They agreed.

“We can take this bus to South Beach and transfer to a bus going downtown. Then we can take a bus from downtown that’ll take us a block from my house—the one Troy took this morning, but going the other way.”

“You sure know your way around on the bus, dude.”

“Years of practice, man.”

The bus arrived, we boarded and sat in the back. Eventually we were heading down Washington Avenue—familiar territory to me. I showed Ethan and Helena all the places I used to go. There was the pizza place that had the Popeye videogame, the laundromat with Mario Bros., and the movie theater where I saw The Terminator, Bronx Warriors 1999 and Krull, to name a few. We watched old ladies with big purses and big hats scratch around their change purses for fare. They would all sit up front with bags and bags of groceries, exhausted, most of them staring straight at the road in the front of the bus. I joked that they were scrutinizing the driver’s driving skills—a pack of back seat drivers. We giggled and looked back and forth at one another.

The day felt like a great escape; especially for Helena who felt like she had no friends. Every moment was golden, everything smelled of adventure. Over the phone one time she had told me how well she thought we communicated with each other. I told her I felt that way too. We talked about how nothing we did would ever be noticed; we lamented our seeming invisibility to the rest of the world. While thinking about these things—sitting there looking at her as she stared curiously out the window at the unfamiliar streets—I realized I was falling for her. I observed her every movement, studying every nuance of every gesture. She caught my eyes, smiled and looked away, blushing.

We got off at the corner of 5^th and Washington and waited for the next bus going downtown; there were two of them.

“There should be about a ten minute wait. Look for the C or the K.”

There were sections of newspaper and other pieces of trash blowing across the sidewalk against abandoned storefronts. Men in drab clothing wearing baseball caps with tired eyes walking in and out of the corner store. I could smell the Cuban coffee and the pastries. I began to feel hungry, but stifled it.

“This place is a dump!” Helena said, looking around, disgusted.

I was mildly offended, having grown up a few blocks away. I had been sorry that my parents had moved us away to the suburbs. But, I figured, she had lived in the sterile ‘burbs her whole life and didn’t know much else.

“It’s not really that bad of a place,” I said.

Ethan looked around, soaking it all in. He’d always seemed real comfortable in new places.

I looked around my old neighborhood and sighed, looking at the old sidewalks I used to bike down weaving in between old ladies with groceries (again, with the groceries) screaming at me to ride on the street before I killed someone.

The bus arrived and we headed downtown. It was full and we had to sit apart, though not far apart. We didn’t talk much. Ethan was staring blankly down the aisle of the bus most of the time. I looked over at Helena every once in a while, just to look at her, capture the image in my head.

There were all the freaks on the bus: the ragged woman mumbling to herself; the old Cuban man in a fisherman’s cap smiling yellow-toothed at the woman sitting next to him—she, well-dressed, heavily made-up, waxy red lips, probably going to work at the mall. So many characters on the bus; it had a certain sideshow appeal.

Arriving downtown, we got off the bus and decided to avoid the mall and go directly to Burger King. Ethan and I scraped up enough change to buy a couple burgers, fries and a drink. Helena bought herself a drink. We picked up the conversation again. I frequently looked over to spy Helena’s lovely lips sipping from her straw, her teeth peeking out from an occasional smile. I had to catch myself a couple times from staring too long. This is Helena? I asked myself several times, astonished. We used to make fun of each other in junior high. I had never noticed it, but perhaps our taunts were swathed in some underlying sexual tension.

“Mr. Faltman was such a dork!” Ethan was saying. “Remember the last day of school when we all threw paper balls at him?”

“And he just stood there like an idiot with that big goofy smile of his and took it,” Helena said, laughing hysterically.

“Yeah, then he said, ‘OK, OK, let’s stop now,’ trying to act all cool and shit about it.”

“Then everybody stopped,” I said, “and you stood up, Ethan, and beamed him right between the eyes.”

We laughed and laughed. When we finished we got on the bus that stopped near my house. Along the way we passed through Little Haiti and saw lanky, dark-skinned dudes strolling down battered sidewalks. Many of them wore beige pants and white shirts. There were corner stores with signs in Creole. Ethan told us how his grandparents had owned a sugar plantation in Haiti and he taught us a couple of curse words in Creole that his dad had taught him. I leaned my head against the window and watched the streets rush by and fell half asleep. I closed my eyes and saw an image Helena sipping her drink and smiling at me, her eyes not looking away for a second.

Before we knew it we were at our stop. We walked down my block and came to my house. Once inside, we plopped down on the couch, exhausted. I offered Ethan and Helena milk and cookies. Yes, I actually offered them milk and cookies. I felt like a grandma. Helena took a couple cookies and said that she would like a glass of milk. Ethan stuffed his mouth full of cookies, crumbs tumbling onto his lap and the couch. Watching Ethan eat had always been a sight to behold. I recall a time that he was eating a cheeseburger loaded with supple amounts of ketchup, mustard and mayo. He took a huge bite, giggling like an idiot while he chewed; the toxic mixture of condiments ran from his burger, down his arm, almost to his elbow. He swallowed his bite then licked the length of his arm clean. Then he looked up at me and giggled again.

I poured three tall glasses of milk and set them down on the coffee table.

“Geez,” Helena said, “this is a big glass!”

“These are the glasses we use.”

“No wonder you’re so big!”

The phone rang. I leaped up and answered it: “Hello?”

“Yes, this is Ms. Eastman from Dell’s school.”

“Hi, Ms. Eastman, this is Dell.”

“Oh Dell,” she said, sounding sympathetic, “how are you feeling?”

Just play it off, I told myself. “Oh, OK, I suppose. Just a little cough and a sore throat. My headache and nausea are gone.”

“Alright then, just checking. Hope you feel better.” She said it in such a dear tone. I almost felt bad for lying. Almost.

We finished our milk and cookies and headed back to Helena’s school to drop her off before her mother arrived. We had just enough time to get there.

At her school we sat in the spot where she said she waited every afternoon. Ethan and I blended in easily, as if we were students there as well. Her mom came and Helena said good-bye.

“I’ll call you tonight,” I said.

“OK,” she smiled and turned away; she disappeared into the car and drove away.

Ethan and I started walking back to my place.

Ethan looked at me and said, “Helena got pretty cute, huh?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, staring at the sidewalk.

“Dude, you should ask her out.”

“Ah, she don’t like me like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

There was a brief silence. I thought about Helena in junior high when she was so girlish. We’d insult each other just to see how much the other could take. Push each other’s limits constantly. She was one of the first friends I had made upon transferring to the school in the middle of the seventh grade. And now she was turning into a beautiful young woman. We were now confiding in each other over the phone, like soldiers in a foxhole. She told me how she hated her father and how she thought about killing herself; how she hated the snobs at her school. And she told me about the time she had skipped school and talked to a store clerk all day.

Then I thought about Troy and how much time we used to spend together that summer we took Driver’s Ed—the summer before he went to art school. Now it was just Ethan and me. We did just about everything together: journeyed by bus, bike or foot around the city; drank wine coolers under the moon at the beach at midnight talking about God or love or history or whatever came to mind—just spontaneous free-form discussions that went well into the night till we passed out; skipped school during lunch and walked to the beach where he broke his hackey-sack record; saw bad movies and bitched about them while walking down dark suburban streets with dogs growling behind tall fences. And how long would it all last? I wondered. When would we grow apart and move on to different things and different people. I felt alone for the moment, unable to see past my presumed future and enjoy the present.

I knew that every step forward would bring me further and further away from them both.

“Dude,” Ethan broke the silence, “you should ask her out. Or at least just tell her how you feel.”

“Yeah . . . I will, Ethan. And thanks for always listening and being there for me, man.”

"Not a problem, brother."