Peru. Gordon Lish

cannot tell you what 1 thought about the other people, about almost all of the other people. 1 cannot even tell you who most of the people were, except to give you certain highlights of them when I think of them. But I don’t think there is going to be anything which I can tell you about either one of Andy Lieblich’s parents, or anything about what it was like inside of their place once you were actually inside of it, aside from the fact that there was a maid who always lived inside of it—not that I myself ever actually saw her other than through a screen door, or other than through a storm door, and that we ourselves, that my particular parents, that our house never had either one of those kinds of doors, that we never had a screen door or had a storm door for any door, that the only kind of special door which our house had was the door which you went down to get into the cellar of it.

      There is nothing which I will not tell you if I can think of it—Steven Adinoff is not even the half of it, Steven Adinoff is not even a smidgen of it. For instance, for instance—speaking of the cellar, for instance—I once, or maybe twice, went down to our cellar with their dog once—I once went down into our cellar with Iris Lieblich and with her dog once—I went down there with her and with Sir once.

      I wanted to be different things.

      I wanted to be something nice.

      I wanted to be just like the way he was—have hair which had the smell which his hair had, have hair which had the smell which Andy Lieblich’s had, not have hair which had the smell of Kreml or of Wildroot. Or be a girl who had a place like Iris Lieblich’s. Or be a lady-in-waiting and have one like a lady-in-waiting did. I mean, have a place which they could look at through gossamer, not one where you had to get off your underpants for them to see what it was.

      I wanted to be Miss Donnelly’s hankie, Miss Donnelly’s lilac, Miss Donnelly’s bodice—or just be gossamer or just be Miss Donnelly or just be Miss Donnelly when she came to a page with a picture on it.

      I wanted to be able to sit on the toilet and really do something. I wanted to never have to get down off of the toilet and go downstairs and have to talk to Mrs. Adinoff when she came over to my house to make my mother make me get down off of the toilet and go downstairs and have a good talk with her and let her get a good look at me and ask me the question of what kind of a boy I think it took for him to go ahead and kill a person.

      Here is a good question for us—namely, which room of our house was it, the living room or the kitchen? And another thing—did I or didn’t I have my shoes and socks off—and if I did, then did I go get them and put them back on again, or did I just pick them up and carry them back home with me—or maybe did I do neither one of those two things but just instead just left them where they were, left them there where Steven Adinoff was, plus Andy Lieblich and the nanny?

      That is, if my shoes and socks had ever been actually off of me to begin with.

      I was dead wrong about the colored man. The colored man didn’t really have anything to do with any of it—the colored man didn’t actually have the first thing to do with anything which had to do with the sandbox. It was only in my way as a child that I thought he did. I thought it was the colored man and the nanny together, that there was some way in which the pair of them were in charge of it together. However, in all reality, the colored man really didn’t have anything to do with anything at the Lieblichs’, except for looking out for the Lieblichs’ Buick, except for whisk brooming out the Lieblichs’ Buick and for washing it and for waxing it. But in my mind it was all of it different. In my mind, the colored man was a big part of everything which went on in the sandbox—in my mind, he was just as big a part of it as the nanny herself was, even though I really knew he actually wasn’t, even though I really knew I was just making all of this up.

      But I don’t know where the thought came to me from, or why I wanted it to. The colored man was just a colored man who went around and washed the cars which people had in their garages and who sometimes kept on going and gave them Simonize jobs. He was just the colored man that you told the maid to make come over if you had the money for it and actually had a car for him to work for you on.

      It was just the nanny. When it came to who had the say about the sandbox, I don’t think there was anybody who had as much of it as the nanny all by herself had, not probably even any of the Lieblichs.

      The nanny made up all of the rules. All of the rules which went for the sandbox the nanny said were all of her own doing. Even as to the question of who was going to be allowed to come over and play in it, the nanny was the only one who had the say even about any of this, either.

      The nanny said it didn’t matter what anybody else said—that it didn’t matter to her what Mr. Lieblich said, or Mrs. Lieblich, or what Andy Lieblich said, or what Iris Lieblich did. The nanny said it wasn’t any of them who had anything to say about who was going to get to play in the sandbox and who wasn’t, or about how you were supposed to play in it if you were the one who was going to be allowed to come over and play in it. The nanny said it was all of it up to her, that the whole question of anything which had to do with the sandbox was all of it up to her, that the whole thing of the sandbox was nobody’s but her own personal private business—and that if anybody didn’t like it like that, then that they could go lump it, then that they could go whistle a merry tune, go fly a kite, jump in the lake, mind their own Ps and Qs, tend to their own knitting.

      It wasn’t the colored man at all—it was all all of it all the nanny all by herself. She was the only one who could tell you if you could come over and what time you could and when you had to clean everything up and put everything away, plus whether or not if you were playing nicely enough for you not to have to go home right away, plus even which were the games you could play—namely, the one of Gardener or of Farmer or of Builder, and then once you picked one, once you picked the game, the nanny always gave you a pail and said “Shovel, hoe, or rake?”

      I really can’t begin to remember about some of the other things. About what the nanny looked like, for instance—I can’t think of it. But I can think of the rubber bands, her wrist, of the nanny’s wrist, of the wristwatch.

      I was a child.

      As such, I was a child in and of myself.

      I tell you, when you live next door to someone richer, there is no end to what will enter your thoughts.

      It made me crazy, I admit it.

      The colored man, for instance, I had the feeling that when I was in the sandbox that it was my job to be in it in a certain way which made me in it in place of him. However, in all actuality, I don’t need for anyone to tell me that the colored man did not really know anything about me, or think anything about me, or that he probably did not even know where I actually lived, that it was just next door to the Lieblichs and that we had to have a landlord and that I was six just like Andy Lieblich was.

      The colored man, he only came there for the Buick.

      If it wasn’t rainy or wasn’t snowy or wasn’t blowy, that is. But in my memory of what it was like before we had to move away from next door to the Lieblichs, it was always weather in general like summer, like August in particular, back before the particular August when I used a toy hoe to kill a boy whose name was Steven Adinoff back in Woodmere when I was six.

      IT WAS ALWAYS OKAY WITH MY MOTHER. I didn’t ever have to have any permission from her—I didn’t have to go get any permission from my mother to ever go play over at Andy Lieblich’s or to go over there to watch the colored man wash the car. I didn’t have to have her permission for anything, I don’t think, except for the thing of going across the street or of going on past where the Aaronsons’ property came to a stop on the other side of the Lieblichs’. Not that either one of those were things that I myself would ever have asked my mother for her permission for, since I just took it for granted that if you went out there to those particular places, you were out there where the Christians were.

      But as to the question of whether you could go out or not go, it was always okay with my mother for you always to go out. I think she thought it was good for your health—or else that she just did not have the time to think about the question at all. Whereas the nanny had a whole different approach to the