Tim's Boosters

                                                                                                

                                                                                       by Patrick Rowlee

The first Tuesday of summer vacation in 1966, I headed aimlessly down Maureen Street. Since my new best friend was nowhere to be found, I was bored beyond words. A third of the way to the corner I saw a five-foot-tall figure on the porch of a house three doors away I hadn’t noticed before. To try and identify the form I squinted my eyes so hard my head hurt. The arrival of twilight and layers of fabric covering up the mass kept me from knowing what it was. I first mistook it for a much-too-early Halloween decoration that resembled a scarecrow or a Grim Reaper without his scythe.

The sun had set behind Linda and Evelyn Clark’s house, and the figure standing on the concrete platform continued facing Palmdale Boulevard. Despite those challenges and because I drew closer, I suspected the ‘it’ might be a ‘she’ – not due to shape but attitude and posture. I sensed both serenity and readiness in the pose, a combination I had yet to witness in a man, so I guessed it was female. Layers of different fabric covered its form top to bottom. Despite the hour, the mercury stood tall at 98 degrees, so I began doubting the mass’s humanity. After all, who in their right mind would wear all that on a hot Mojave Desert night?

As I went from seventy to sixty feet away, the assembly of fabrics crystallized in my sight. Starting from the cement floor, I noticed white tennies resembling the type my mother had purchased from Shopping Bag for her housecleaning and other chores. Covering the tops of the canvas shoes was a pair of white pants I call “old-lady slacks” because of the zipper in back. A white cardigan hid the slacks’ waistband, covering most of the matching white t-shirt with what I had heard women call a scooped collar. On the top sat a pointed, cone-shaped straw hat secured by a string, like the ones I’d seen nightly on the news or in another context I couldn’t put my finger on. I later asked my expert on practically anything - Mr. Murphy, our next-door neighbor - what it was called. After hearing my description, he declared it a “coolie hat,” the kind Chinese laborers wore when building our transcontinental railroad and the type Vietnamese farmers wore for protection from the sun as they labored in fields I learned last  year are called ‘rice paddies.’

When I reached the gutter in front of the house, I called out my customary and courteous “Good evening!” After a bit of a lull, the figure’s top half swiveled slowly, followed by the large straw cone. “It” now faced my general direction supported by shoes twice the size of my mother’s only inches from the edge of the grayish-white slab. I still didn’t see a face, but I noticed angles I figured were shoulders and elbows poking beneath the all-white casual outfit. I then saw an older woman with a formless face whose clothes seemed to slide off her slight shoulders. As she tilted her head back enough for the coolie hat to not shade her face, I saw she was a woman of color. Instead of a mask or veil blocking her face, dark skin flattened her features, mostly masking them. As we exchanged pleasantries, I realized the woman appeared older than I first thought – perhaps by fifty years. Her voice is what gave the impression of age. She didn’t sound sick from a cold or laryngitis but spoke in a gruff, gravelly growl.

“Good evening, young man. And how are you this fine Tuesday night?”

As I responded with one of my stock answers, she crooked an index finger signaling me to step into her yard so we could speak more easily. “Wherever you wish to stand or sit, young man, is certainly fine with me.” As she spoke in a deliberate, measured cadence, I heard a refined woman; refined by what I had no idea, but she did command my attention. So mannered and polite was she, I assumed she had been well educated.

“I am well, ma’am. Thank you for asking. My name is Timothy Roslee and I deliver both local newspapers – the morning Antelope Valley Press and the evening Lancaster Ledger-Gazette.”

Instead of responding to my sales pitch, she replied sweetly, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mister Timothy Roslee. May I call you ‘Timothy’?”

“Ma’am, you may call me Timothy, Tim, Roslee, or ‘Hey, Kid’ if you like.”

A sound sourced from the woman’s midriff projected decibels sharp as quills. I recognized the projection as a laugh embedded inside a cackle. Sounding like no human, my closest comparison is the famous cartoon woodpecker, but without the staccato. After repeating my “Timothy, Tim, Roslee, or ‘Hey, Kid’ if you like,” she brightened the dark around us. “My my, young man, you are as fun as a barrelful of monkeys.” A pearly smile shone forth and could probably be seen at the corner six doors away. Seeing her straighten and extend her right arm, I stepped to the lawn’s edge and extended my tanned and freckled right hand in return. After an awkward silence, she exclaimed: “Oh, no child. Please climb the stairs, so we get a better idea of each other. Don’t you agree, Mister Tim?”

I had no idea what the lady meant exactly, but in 1966 kids did what adults told them to do. As I climbed the three steps, I looked over and began studying the woman’s movement. While she continued sweeping her hand sideways back and forth, I realized something odd or amiss about her. Her timing wasn’t just off, but double off: like the slow motion I had recently seen in sports replays.

Reaching the top, I pivoted and approached her as though stepping down a set of stairs. Staying put, she extended both hands in my direction. Assuming she wanted to join hands, I gave her both of mine. “Tim Roslee, I am so honored and glad to finally meet you. And now, young man - if I may - I have a proposal for you.”

After gazing upon her dark, elegant hands, I answered, “Oh, yes ma’am, I’d like to hear your proposal. Fire away; uh - please.”

Tipping her head back completely, my acquaintance unloosed a laugh huge in every category but one – sound. Not a single peep proceeded from her mouth while the rest of her - from the top of her forehead to the soles of her ‘mom shoes’ - shook, rattled, and rolled… not once, but many times. After her medley of shakes, rattles, and rolls gave way to an occasional twitch here or hand gesture there, she inhaled as gustily as a sailor at the start of a voyage. Finishing her dance, she straightened as stiff as a board. “Okay, Tim. I will gladly tell you my name……… but only on condition you guess it correctly.”

“But, ma’am.” I looked around. “The sun has set, and we don’t have enough daylight left for me to guess it.”

Giving up her proposal, she relented. “Okay, Timothy. I will let you off easy. You only have to guess my middle name.”

Without thinking, I blurted out my second choice, dismissing the first for racial reasons. “Mae”.

The lady opened her lips wide and laughed. “Correct! ‘Mae’ is correct!” And then, her face fell. “How did you ever guess a name I never use and so lickety-split, Tim?”

“Well,” I felt myself relax and loosen up, “I could tell you, but then—”

“But then you’d have to kill me?” An unspellable sound burst forth. But instead of a single sound, it was a symphony - of inhales, exhales, sighs, giggles, snorts, and even a gargle in the middle. “Is that what you were about to say, Tim?”

“No ma’am. I was about to say, ‘I could tell you, but you might not like it.’”

Silence followed for half a minute while my companion’s arched black eyebrows reminded me of Gloria Swanson’s pointing to the darkening sky. The break in conversation, coupled with a lack of movement and sound, became my chance to study up close a blind person’s movements and demeanor without being caught or thought rude. The tableaux was as artful and intriguing as any painting hanging in the Louvre Museum.

My discovery of the lady’s blindness did not deter us from communicating. Laughing lightly this time without a single contortion, she declared: “Well, since you so quickly learned my middle name and have already noticed my blindness, I will tell my proper name. You Mr. Timothy Roslee - my new acquaintance and hopefully friend - may call me ‘Effie,’ but my complete name is Effa Mae Seraph.”

And that is how I met Effie, who later allowed me to call her by the nickname I created for her, “Effie Mae.” She soon insisted I call her only that, roaring with delight every time I did.

Although Effie-Mae bought two two-year subscriptions, she refused to accept delivery of either paper. She insisted both subscriptions be given to whomever I believed could benefit from reading them. Someone not able to afford even a single subscription but would be “greatly blessed” by them – especially the thick Sunday edition of the VP with its stack of store coupons.

My only scheduled time spent with Ms. Seraph was the time I collected on the two subscriptions, but she was always on her porch when I looked down the street to see if I could speak with her. In the months I knew her, I never had to knock on her door nor did I ever see her anywhere but on that porch. But none of that registered in my twelve-year-old brain then. However, whenever I felt a shade lonely, a bit restless, or the heavy burden of depression, I found myself walking four doors north to Effie Mae’s.                               

 Part 2

            During the fall of 1966, my life took off like a rocket at NASA’s Edwards Air Force Base. After my launch, the missile of my young life accelerated exponentially and soon achieved maximum thrust, heading higher than ever before, collecting enough momentum for me to reach my personal-record altitude when I wondered what might happen next. I reminded myself that what will happen depended on three factors: my trajectory, how smoothly I enter the next phase of the mission and attaining a perfect attitude for landing on my dream destination with hardly a splash. I hoped the mixture of teamwork and coaching would fuel my mission that would pave the rest of my life’s mission. I was that hopeful of reaching the star of success on which I had always hoped to land.

            I looked backward seven months to pinpoint when my life’s promise began to resemble the U.S. space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s third-most vital installation – the rocket facility at Edwards – sat just forty miles northeast of Palmdale. I could brag that the reason for my life’s sharp trajectory up was my rapid maturation, but I’d be lying. No, my new success had little to do with me and everything to do with certain people I met in 1966, beginning with a kid named Larry Jackson.

            On Monday morning, Valentine’s Day, after morning announcements, Mrs. Schwitzer summoned me to her desk. Looking through me as she always had, my plump, always stern seventh-grade core teacher raised her fleshy club of an arm and shook a green square of paper I recognized as a pass to the office. “Timothy Roslee, the office requests your presence.” Leaning toward me, she continued: “Take care of your business, sir, and return to Room 19 without delay, detour, or ditching school.” (She made that speech to every boy in our class who ever received a pass.) She either thought herself clever or distrusted boys altogether. (I bet my savings on the latter possibility, although she did consider herself clever and never missed a chance to demonstrate her wit to anyone within the sound of her brassy voice.)

            Fighting the compelling desire to dive over her desk and see how much damage I could inflict on Mrs. S’s turkey-waddled neck with my twelve-year-old hands, I managed a smile instead. I wished not to deprive the old bag of her life, but I hoped against hope that if I did throttle her neck, she’d take my attack as a sign to retire from the career she clearly hated. Instead, I smiled my usual compliant grin and thanked ‘Schwitzy’ for the pass before exiting Room 19 without displaying the slightest hint of glee or joy. Not until I turned the brick wing’s corner and passed by both restrooms did I celebrate by taking in a huge breath. My inner parent reminded me: “Don’t get sloppy. You could be in some sort of trouble. Behave yourself or miss today’s tryout.”

After leaving the junior high portion of Sage School and crossing the blacktopped primary grade playground, I hopped through three hopscotch courts before giving the lone tetherball the best whack of my school career, dodging its approach that nearly grazed me.

I felt so good about the universe right then I balled my right hand into a fist and raised it triumphantly the way Rafer Johnson had when winning the Olympic gold decathlon medal for the U.S. in Tokyo. It was my way of pumping myself up for tryouts for next year’s eighth-grade flag-football squad. I thought my best chance was to make second-string quarterback for the fall because Randal Kaiser, last season’s backup to me, had added fifteen pounds of muscle and three inches of height since Thanksgiving. However, I replayed in my mind the contests Randy and I had throwing footballs at targets from varying distances the past three months. The montage of memories provided an extra surge of confidence that injected a spring in my step and improved the chance of Mrs. Schwitzer nagging me when I returned to her classroom, the one always smelling of talcum powder and Vick’s VapoRub.

The only nice office worker besides our nurse sat at the student check-in station when I arrived. “Oh, good, Tim is here. Thank you for being so prompt. I would like you to meet our newest student to Sage School.” She (Mrs. Sayles or maybe Shales?) did something no other adult besides my mother ever had: She walked up to me, cupped a hand to her pink lips, and whispered in my ear, “Timothy, hon. I- uh – thought you would be perfect for guiding this boy around campus, plus he’s scheduled in all your classes, including Mrs. Schwitzer’s homeroom.”

Clearing her throat, Mrs. Sayles-or-Shales called out to someone behind me. “Oh, young man! Hi. I have Timothy Roslee here who can give you a tour around campus, help get you a lunch card, and then find and help you open your hall locker. Tim, I’d like you to meet Larry; Larry Jackson.” Turning around I saw a strapping, manly guy standing there as though about to press his weight - 175 pounds - over his head. I realized not only might I be acquiring a new friend, but he would likely need one at Sage since he would be the first black student to attend the twelve-year-old school.                                                           

As you can imagine, Larry Jackson and I drew lots of looks, some good and some not, from others that day. (Okay, I lied about us getting any good looks.) In fact, in the two and a half years spent as friends, we never received a single approving glance from anyone … not another kid in our neighborhood or around town, not a single classmate, and nary an adult. This time period taught me about racism, sort of first-hand. By ‘sort of,’ I mean I was present whenever racism was slung Larry’s way like so much dog excrement. And, yes, I witnessed incidents of other Palmdale people being hated and discriminated against because of the shade of their skin or another factor. We never overtly discussed the matter, but had a tacit agreement that haters are in all groups regardless of their color, religion, or ethnicity. Haters in our town hailed from all races, with plenty of tension between not just black and white folks, but a wide variety of people of different shades consciously embroiled themselves in the practice of racism.

Notice, I did not say skin color. Why not? Because humans are not different colors. All humans have different gradations of the colorless hues of black and white. All humans have white and black pigment in them. It is just a matter of which % of dark or light you or I have that supposedly defined us then. I dislike wording something so mean-spirited and harshly, but here’s the clearest way I know to address the subject: “Who the hell gives a flying f*^k how much of this or that color each of us has?” At the end of the day, human beings know that every one of us – royalty or serf, rich or poor, black or white – are mixed breeds. And to keep it 100% real, I will divulge that those of us in the species of homo sapiens are all mutts. None of us is a purebred. No, not one.

Back to Larry and me. Whenever we were by ourselves, we had a great time of fellowship along with plenty of shenanigans and hijinks. (What self-respecting boys do not?) But, the negative attitudes and angry actions of so many people around us in public caused us to refrain eventually from being seen together in public. We were as big of friends as ever, but we knew how to avoid confrontation and possible victimization, so we only hung out at school or in Larry’s yard and, when we were lucky, inside Larry’s house.

But Larry’s home soon became a problem, too. Larry’s foster mother Mrs. Deets became more and more overbearing toward Larry and more distant from me so hanging out together there became less and less desirable. And then, he went missing.

Larry disappeared for half the summer until one August night. I had almost fallen asleep in my room when I heard a light tap on the window near my fold-out couch. Shaking with fear and excitement, I stared out my window till I saw Larry. Placing an index finger to my lips, I motioned we should meet outside. After throwing on a bathrobe and pair of slippers, I tiptoed to the kitchen and out the back door. Motioning for us to hide around the corner, I met my friend behind a row of bushes.

Larry’s news tumbled out of his mouth so matter-of-factly I found myself nodding in agreement even though his situation seemed dire. The day school ended, Mrs. Deets threatened to cut Larry with a kitchen knife - why, I had no idea. He saw no viable option but to run away from the situation. Proving his resourcefulness, my friend found a small, abandoned cabin a hundred yards from our neighborhood.

His new residence had remained unoccupied since the restaurant in front had closed. Luckily, the fridge in the kitchenette had some items and canned goods lined an entire shelf. Larry had hidden for six weeks there and had cleaned it thoroughly. How my friend occupied himself during that time we never discussed, but I assumed he had stayed there continuously. As we sat on my back lawn and caught up, I felt extreme sadness for Larry. Of all my friends, he was the nicest, most decent, and most upstanding. The thought of a twelve-year-old kid forced to run away and fend for himself in an abandoned, rundown cabin bothered me beyond words.

As we prepared to part, Larry answered me about the future. “I have no idea what I’m gonna do but I have a relative who stays in L.A.”

“Oh? Where in L.A.?” When Larry said Watts, I really started worrying about what would happen to him. After all, only a year ago the infamous Watts Riots happened, when most of that historic area’s buildings were either burned or emptied of their contents. Millions of dollars had been lost and there had been no hurry for owners to return and resume their businesses or for new ones to take their places. I could not bring myself to encourage or discourage Larry in this situation. He certainly could not return to his foster home and Larry worried Mrs. Deets would convince the authorities that he rather than she had pulled the knife. This was a situation only an adult could manage, I thought. So, I asked myself, which adult in my life could assist me in helping Larry? I answered myself with the name of the only possibility.

            I told Larry to stay put and wait to hear from me, that I had someone who might help us. “Okay, Tim. I will trust you because, well, you haven’t ever let me down.”

                                   

*           *           *

            The next morning, three hours after Larry left at 2:45, I put on some dark clothes and stole down the street to see if I could talk with Effie Mae. I saw her on the big porch sitting on its edge and facing skyward. As I approached, I saw but could not hear her speak, even though her mouth worked as her body rocked forth and back. Having no clue how to get her attention, I sat on the curb and waited for her to finish whatever she was doing. I began to zero in on her monologue and heard “Timothy” and “Tim” twice. It dawned on me Effie Mae might be praying but not the way I had overheard fellow Catholics pray. She seemed to be conversing about me, but I wasn’t sure. I continued sitting there for maybe fifteen minutes because I did not want to startle or distract her during this quiet, intimate time. After standing and beginning my walk back home, I heard a “psssst!” behind me. Turning, I saw Effie Mae stand and beckon me with both her arms.

            Obeying, I half ran to her and waited for her to address me. Instead, she held out one hand for me to grasp and the other she raised upward while speaking in a language I did not understand. The more I listened to her, the more I decided she was not speaking a human language. Then, Effie rested both hands on my head and said: “King, I lift Tim up to you, to receive Your grace and direction during this trial of his. Amen.”  Having never had someone pray on and for me like that, I took it slow opening my eyes. When I had, she was no longer in my midst.

            Since it was still dark outside, I ran home, got my bike, and pedaled over to Larry’s hideaway. When I arrived, I tapped on a window to hopefully get my friend’s attention. No answer. Where in the heck could he be and why would he leave now?

            I looked around, saw no one in the vicinity, and went around to the only door. After knocking three times and not receiving an answer, I tried the door. It opened and I went inside. What I saw troubled me to no end. Instead of finding the bungalow clean and tidy, I saw practically all its contents had been disrupted in some way. A couple chairs lay on the floor, the shelf once holding all those cans lay flat and face down. I began to get super nervous and wondered if I should report my findings to the police. Mrs. Deets, if she hadn’t already, would file a missing person’s report and then I’d be questioned by a cop and maybe a detective.

            My whole body broke out in goosebumps and feeling faint, I sank into the only still upright chair and mused about what to do. But, being twelve years old, I had no clue what to do. So, I said a prayer almost like the one Effie Mae had said just minutes before. But instead of praying for me, I inserted Larry’s name. When I finished my prayer and opened my eyes, I saw a note setting on the kitchen table just three feet away. Because it had my name printed on the outside, I unfolded it and set it down on the table so my shaking hands wouldn’t prevent me from reading it. This is what it said:

Dear Timmy Tim,

I am sorry I was not here when you came back. A lady knocked on the door and said she would take me to my social worker. I explained that I needed to wait for you, but she said you would be fine. I had no choice but to go with her. She said you would understand. Her name was strange, so I had her spell it for me: Effie Mae Seraph. Here’s my social worker’s number if you want to make sure I am all right. Thank you for all your help, Tim.

Your friend, Larry

*          *          *

That was the last time I saw Larry Jackson, my best friend in seventh grade, and the first time I received help from an angel.

 

                             Copyright Patrick Rowlee - All Rights Reserved