Before My Life Began Read Online Free

raid warden’s stuff?”
    I nodded. I figured he knew that I sometimes took the stuff out of his closet when my friends and I played war—the helmet and arm band and silver whistle and flashlight and gas mask.
    â€œSo listen,” he said, smiling. “Maybe if I don’t have to turn the stuff back in, I’ll let you have it. Okay? Would you like that?”
    â€œWould I!” I exclaimed, and I couldn’t keep from lunging toward him, from hugging him around the waist as tightly as I could. “Oh Poppa!”
    â€œWell, I ain’t promising,” he said. “It depends on if they make you pay or not—that gas mask must of cost a few good bucks. But if I don’t gotta pay, maybe I can let you have it.”
    He patted the top of my head and I let go of him.
    â€œOkay? It’s a deal?”
    â€œIt’s a deal.”
    We went outside and started toward the corner. “I’ll tell you something else. Listen. Sure I’m happy the war’s over, but you know the one thing I’m sorry about?”
    I thought of saying something about Uncle Abe coming home, but I didn’t.
    â€œWhat?”
    He looked at me in a very serious way, shaking his head up and down. His good eye was moist.
    â€œI’m only sorry F.D.R. didn’t live to see this day. He was a wonderful man, President Roosevelt. He…” He stopped. “Come. Momma’s waiting.”
    At the corner, we found my mother right away. Her lipstick was on straight and she gave my father a big hug and kiss.
    â€œSo look who’s here finally!”
    Before my father could say anything about what I’d said to him to get him there, I tugged on her dress and showed her the bag with the confetti.
    â€œWhere’d you get it?”
    â€œI made it,” I said. “I cut it all up myself. It took me a long time.”
    â€œAin’t he something?” she said to my father. “Ain’t this little one something?”
    â€œYou want some?” I asked.
    â€œAnd why not?”
    She reached in and took a big handful. Then I pushed the bag toward my father and he took a big handful too. Between them they’d taken more than half.
    â€œHey Sol—” she yelled at my father. “Guess what?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe war’s over!” she yelled, and she threw her confetti into his face.
    My father tried to laugh, but when some of the pieces of paper got stuck in his mouth, he gagged. He coughed and spat and my mother turned him around and pounded him on the back with the flat of her hand.
    â€œRaise up your hands over your head—”
    My father looked at me, his hands in the air as if he were being robbed, and I saw that his eye was tearing badly. He stopped gagging.
    â€œSo what are you waiting for?” he asked me. “Throw already.”
    I wanted to get a really good effect, so I tore my bag down from the top on two sides to expose the rest of the confetti, balanced the bag on my hands from underneath and gave as hard a toss as I could, upwards. All the confetti went up in a kind of clump, though, and as the clump fell only a few pieces detached themselves and fluttered. My mother was leaning on my father’s shoulder, laughing at him, picking pieces of paper from his face and hair. I looked at the empty paper bag and I felt embarrassed.
    People were cheering and pointing towards Rogers Avenue, where I saw a silver-gray DeSoto come along, men on both running boards—five of them—and they had guns in their hands and were shooting them into the air as if they were cowboys riding a stagecoach. Little Benny was in the front seat, wearing a brown felt hat pulled down on one side, shading his eyes. He was grinning from ear to ear, as if he’d just won the war himself. When my father saw who they were, he spit on the ground, three times.
    â€œThey should rot in hell,” he said.
    â€œShh,” my mother said.