The neighbor that lived across the street from my childhood home, on Paige Street, kept a vicious monkey, with very large front teeth on a long metal chain in their backyard.
When I tell people this detail about my childhood now, people look at me weirdly, with doubt, and question how this could have been possible. Friends that I shared this with would ask if the law would have allowed this in a residential neighborhood. Would they? It was 1979, in the summer when I first became aware of this creature in our neighborhood. To this day I have never looked it up and I am not aware of the law or any city ordinances about wild animals in backyards. I did know then, at 10 years old, that something was not right about it. On several occasions, either the police or someone in a white truck with little doors on the back, maybe from the humane society or some city animal protection organization would occasionally show up, parked in front of their home. I would see the father in the driveway talking to someone in a uniform and the father’s face would be red and distressed and his eyes scrunched tightly as he talked to the stranger.
Whenever the white truck made an appearance and it was noticed by one of my parents, they would call out to me in our yard and make me come into the house. Keep in mind, these were days when kids actually play outside- all day, all summer. I never found out if the screaming monkey-that is what I called it, ‘the screaming’ monkey- was taken away for a short period only to be eventually returned or left to be.
All that summer, I lay awake in my bed at night, listening to the awful screeching sound. Some rare nights there would be silence and I would think the screaming monkey was gone. That thing across the street, that haunted me in my own neighborhood would be gone forever. I wish! The screams always came back and I did not sleep well when we lived on Paige Street.
I have never been sure if my parents insisted I come inside because they were the ones who called the city or if it was out of neighborly courtesy to mind our own business when their business involved the law. We never talked about the screaming monkey other than the strict instructions from both my parents that I stay away from ‘that’ house and never, NEVER go in their backyard.
I did anyway.
That boy that lived across the street, in that house, never interested me but his monkey sure did. I hated that noise. In my bed, as I listened to it every night, I desperately wanted it to shut up. I also wanted to know what it looked like and my mind was consumed with questions and filled with horror monster pictures as I eventually drifted off to sleep in the late hours. How could it be living in our city, in our neighborhood? Where did it come from? These questions ran through my mind as I lay in bed trying to form a picture of the monkey. In my ten-year-old experience, I came to think of him as King Kong from the movie I had seen with my parents at the drive-in two summers before, when our neighborhood was still quiet. I imagined Jessica Lange standing barefoot in her white dress and huge beaded shell necklace, in the neighbor’s backyard, and screaming at a giant gorilla towering over her and all of our houses. I wishfully thought of being her and rescuing the neighborhood. I would coo the monkey into submission and silence.
Sometimes the screaming monkey was so loud, that I thought it might have escaped and was outside my open window. Not even the Cicada could drown out its screams on those nights.
One random day, the boy that lived in that house, came into my yard and said I could see ‘his?’ monkey. It was the best day of that whole summer. Even now, rolling the memory of it around in my mind reminds me of how I felt on Christmas morning as a kid.
The neighbors with the monkey spoke a language I did not understand, except for the boy that lived there, he spoke better English than me. I was 10 years old so my ability to articulate my thoughts was rudimentary. My speech often involved long pauses to find the right words or sometimes talking fast to cover up my lack of verbal communication. He also spoke another language, only to his parents. He was a few years older than me. Maybe 14? He was an only child. A lonely child.
I was not a lonely girl, although, I hated socializing or playing with the other girls at school. I had plenty of friends in our neighborhood. Conversation was not my strong skill, not that being a practiced social butterfly ever is at the age of ten, for any kid. I just knew, even then, that other girls my age were naturally better at it. I preferred to get lost in my own doodle world on paper with crayons or a nice sharp pencil. I often withdrew to my own world and swirled white butterflies and bright white suns on my driveway in chalk, of no other color than white, because that is the only color I had. Throughout that summer, the boy, from the screaming monkey house would cross the street and smudge my chalk masterpieces into blurry smears with his ugly flip-flops that were too small for his blackened feet and his fat toes.
Sometimes, as I played outside in my yard, the boy would sneak up on me from behind one of our six green apple trees that grew in a perfect row and shaded our house along the west side. We lived on the corner of a busy street, the main artery, that led into our neighborhood. I never knew if the trees were planted there for privacy or for the purpose of harvesting the fruit. Every summer, they spat out green balls onto the ground where they rotted and stunk up the whole yard until my father forced either my brother or myself to pick them up, before he mowed the grass beneath the trees.
If I happen to be near the apple trees playing or blowing bubbles from a bright yellow bottle, my translucent floating bubbles often caught his attention and he would slink around the trees until he found the source of the bubbles- me. Entranced, I would not notice him, blowing into my white plastic wand, preoccupied watching the bubbles float up into the tree branches. He would dramatically make his appearance with a shout “BOO!” and swat my entire bottle out of my hand, where it fell to the ground. A soapy bubble river spilled out into the dandelions and ran downhill to the curb. Never to be blown to the wind. He always did irritating things like that. Things that never amounted to bully tactics. Just annoyed me enough to make me stomp off and wish he would die.
The boy that lived with the screaming monkey was tall, yet pudgy around his belly, not fat, just odd-shaped. He reminded me of a stringy piece of Silly Putty- stretched at each end, with a ball in the middle. He was probably in that teenage growth spurt that parents always talk about, but for him, the growth stopped in the middle of his gut. Sometimes, I would stare at his unusually shaped eyes, without caring if he noticed me looking closely through the blinding summer sunlight. I would even shield my eyes from the sun to get a better view of the way the very high corners of his eyes touched his long black straight bangs that hung down unevenly on the side of his face.
I don’t remember his name but I recall that he liked Star Wars. It was a valuable bit of information that I would keep in my little brain as a defense. My Star Wars arsenal was not so much of a knife-in-the-pocket weapon. It was more of a change-the-subject type of defense so he would talk about Luke Skywalker and I could figure out a way to run to my front door while he was distracted.
If I was alone in the driveway when he would make his way toward me, I could usually make it to the front door, but only if I saw him coming from across the street and I could put some distance between us. If I failed to make my perfectly timed dodge to the porch, I would have to endure his presence, which would seem like an eternity. In this case, I would usually do a random set of kart-wheels around him, as he talked about the Rebel Alliance and he pulled out his miniature Star Wars figures from his pocket. I would fake like I was going in all directions when in reality, I was kart-wheeling in the direction of my front porch to get closer to my escape route.
Other times, if I had my red tartan uniform on, during the school year, I would spin in circles until my skirt spread out flat like a wheel and revealed my ugly lime green shorts underneath. I would spin and spin and spin out away from him pretending to practice my ballet. I would spin until I was dizzy and my first steps were a drunken stumble until I righted myself and leaped onto the single step of our oversized porch that was almost the size of our double driveway. He never came on the porch. Once I made it there, I was safe. Safe on my roller skate rink- that is oddly how big our porch was on Paige Street. I would still run directly to the metal door that housed an ornate cursive letter “D” in the center and let it slam with a metal vibration behind me. Our old screen door featured a heavy silver scroll design around the initial of our family’s last name. Our last name was so ordinary but the fancy design and scroll letter of the screen falsely implied the prominence of our name, of our place in society, as did the Catholic uniform that I wore in grade school. My parents could barely afford the private Catholic school I attended but the uniform was free. Well, free in my home since it was my sister’s previous uniform from years ago that she outgrew.
Some days, the boy approached me on the corner of the cross streets of Paige and Zimmerly. This was the far northwest corner of our yard, where I often wrapped and spun my body and legs around the hot metal pole that displayed our street name. If I happen to be paying attention and not daydreaming, I would see him coming. It didn’t matter though because from that point in the yard, I could never get away from him. He walked quickly- for a big boy - he was fast. He was always right there in front of me before I could think to get a head start. In our early encounters, he would grab me with his dirty fingers. Those nubs of his would encompass the entire diameter of my skinny upper arm. They would fit perfectly around my arm and he knew just where to snatch me to keep me still. I hated when he touched me.
I never screamed when he grabbed my arm. Screaming would have been useless. I thought my screams would have blended into the normal joyful yelling from the other neighborhood children playing outside. These distant clamorous voices would echo into the back of the house to be lost in the kitchen where my mother spent most days, on the telephone with her girlfriends. After all, we were loud and we screamed daily from across the street on our bikes or skateboards and belted out jump rope songs. I was sure it would have sounded like normal kids out front playing, and so I never bothered to scream. Besides, screaming was for sissies - or so my brother told me.
My brother was never home, or I would have yelled to him for help when those holding sessions occurred. He was not my big protective brother, not my Han Solo. Hell, not even Chewbacca. He was stoned, most days. Either up in his tree-house looking at girly nude magazines or closed up in his room with giant round headphones blasting Led Zepplin or Blue Oyster Cult into his ears. He was never there, never to protect me. Except for when he was in the driveway with parts of his Camaro on the pavement and his head stuck down under the hood. It was only on those few occasions, that my brother’s mere presence held the boy at distance and he would not dare come near our yard. My brother hated him. He never bothered to mask this loathing for that family and their son. At some point, there must have been an exchange or some encounter between my brother and that boy- or his parents, that I am unaware of during our time on Paige street. There was no mention of it but I had always noticed that the boy avoided coming near our yard when my brother was visible in the driveway.
I never felt unsafe, when the boy held my arm and squeezed tighter. On most hot days, eventually, I got away. I wiggled and wrenched my sweaty arm out of his grasp. Or maybe it was his hands that were sweaty? This was probably truly why I never screamed. In fact, in a gross way, I think he actually liked me. I say, “gross” because, from my 10-year-old perspective, all boys were gross. I was not interested in boys and he was repulsive to me anyway. He never hurt me. I just hated him holding me against my will. Forced to spend time with him. Forced to smell him. He smelled like B.O. and weird food. Eek!
As I mentioned, there was only one time I had any interest in that boy across the street and that was the evening he found me in the yard playing by myself and told me his dad said I could come to see his monkey.
No big production, just a matter-of-fact statement on a random summer night. I must have been numb or had a dumb look on my face that conveyed my lack of understanding. I stared up at him, longer than usual. He repeated, “My daaaad saaaaaiiiid, you CAN come-see-my-monkey!” Still, nothing from me for a moment. My brain was trying to determine if this was a trick or a real invitation.
As if it was up to his dad, anyway? It was up to me. Actually, it wasn’t. I had already been given strict instructions about the terms of any visitation to those very specific neighbors and their backyard. My dad would have looked at me like I had lost my mind and said, “NO, absolutely NOT!” firmly, if I had bothered to go inside my house and asked his permission. I had not asked. Not my father and I did not ask the boy if I could see the screaming monkey, he simply offered it out of the blue on that summer night. I did want to see that monkey. That monstrous mystery that I heard every night, through my window, above the hum of the cicada. Oh, how I wanted to see that monkey a-a-all summer long.
. . . To be continued.