Heads or Tails Read Free Page A

a stick of chalk in each hand. I drew a blackboard covered with lines, and between the lines I wrote, in my new handwriting, “I won. I won. I won.”

I T WAS SATURDAY. I was standing outside our house looking down at a large brown patch on our dying front lawn. I was thinking of the two ladies I had overheard at the grocery store talking about the new “renters” who had just moved onto their street. One lady said that “renters” ruined the neighborhood because they never took good care of their lawns, never kept their houses properly painted, and always had ugly dogs. They weren’t talking about us, but we were the new “renters” in my neighborhood. We had never owned our own home. Probably never would. Since I was born, we had already lived in nine different houses. I hated that word “renter.” It made me feel that I didn’t really belong anywhere, like we had to pay people to put up with us.
    I needed some chinch-bug spray and was wondering how to get it. I looked at the house. It needed fresh paint all over. The roof was moldy with Spanish moss and the split gutters were sagging. Everywhere I looked I saw something that needed to be fixed. The driveway asphalt was cracked and breaking up into large chunks. The grass along our section of the sidewalk had grown over the concrete. Beneath every palm tree was a scattered pile of dead palm fronds and coconuts, and all the flower beds needed reshaping and weeding. Maybe those ladies were right. We were a mess.
    Dad came out of the house and waved to me. He had his binoculars around his neck.
    “What are you doing today?” he asked. This was a trick question. If I didn’t sound busy enough, he might think up new chores for me.
    “I want to kill some bugs,” I replied. “We have chinch bugs and if we don’t spray them now they’ll spread to the neighbor’s lawn, then all of Fort Lauderdale, and then the whole state of Florida.” I wanted him to fund the bug massacre. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and focused on the brown patch of lawn as if he could see the minuscule bugs singing happy little songs as they chewed the roots off the grass. For five dollars I could change their tune.
    “If we owned this property, I’d rip out the grass and lay down a slab of green concrete,” he said, kicking at the dead spot.
    Or gravel, I thought. He was always saying that it was so much easier to take care of concrete or gravel.
    “But since we don’t own it,” he chirped, “we’ll just have to keep it as best we can.” I knew what was coming next as I watched his eyes scan the yard. “You’d better cut up the palm fronds and trim the shrubs around the property line and against the house. And if you mowed the lawn it would look better. Also, you can take the hand shears and trim along the sidewalk. That much we can do,” he said, “we” meaning me. “And I’ll give the landlord a call and tell him we have chinch bugs and have him spend his own damn money to get rid of ‘em. After all, it is his yard.”
    “Okay,” I said with a groan, knowing my chance for a big bug massacre was ruined. I started singing, “I’ve been working on the railll-road, all my live-long days …”
    He looked at his watch. “Got to go,” he announced, as if he were on his way to an important business meeting. But it was chore day and he was sneaking away. I couldn’t wait until I grew up so I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. I’d get married, have a bunch of kids, and make everyone work like dogs while I played golf or watched airplanes.
    Before I was born, Dad owned a Piper Cub single-engine plane and used to perform his own stunts. He was known for his flying pranks. Once he landed on a baseball field during a game. Another time, he dropped water balloons on people coming out of church. After he buzzed my grandmother’s house and sent her hiding in the basement, Mom made him sell the plane.
    But he hadn’t lost interest in flying, and each