Petey Pappas told me that he never used his real name because he didn’t know what his real name was. He was raised in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans by mute parents and a mean spirited older sister. He knew his sister’s name. His sister’s name was Pearl. Whenever Petey asked his sister what his real name was, she would give him a different answer…every time. So, Petey stopped asking and accepted the name his sister gave him at any given time. Because his parents were mute, they could not repudiate his sister’s edicts. His sister’s name was not really Pearl either. It was a name that she had stolen.
She had come across the name ‘Pearl Prentiss’ in a batch of birth certificates that she had lifted from the mute parents doctor; Petey’s parents were named Moe and Marsha. Moe and Marsha McMannis; Mister and Mrs. That was not their real name either; in fact, they were not his real parents.
Pearl was a kleptomaniac that had St. Elmo’s Fire seizures, that’s how she came to be in Moe and Marsha’s doctor’s office. While the doctor and nurse were trying to get information from the mute parents, the young girl was thief enough, even in her starry eyed condition, to glom a fistful of the doctor’s documents and stash them in her book bag. Among the purloined papers were a couple of dozen copies of stillborn birth records. One of the certificates was in the name of ‘Pearl Prentiss’; the rest was her story.
Petey didn’t know when his birthday was either; he could only go by what Pearl told him. Pearl would change his name and his birthday on impulse. One day Petey came home from school and Pearl had a cake for him. The cake said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBERT!” It had an icing drawing on the top of the cake of a cowboy on a rearing black stallion with a lasso that he was twirling right around the name ROBERT. The side of the cake had the sweet white flesh of coconut on it and a spiral trimming of azure blue icing curlicues. The lettering and the drawing of the cowboy, stallion and lasso were on a snow-white background; it smelled like heaven.
As she lit the candles, she explained to Petey that his real name was Robert and that today was his birthday; Petey believed her and wanted to know what the day’s date was so that he could mark it down. Pearl exclaimed (as she always did) “April Fools!” and Petey, now Robert, believed her; the actual date was June 12. At the birthday table a chair had been set for Maureen, a headless Madame Alexander doll. Pearl told Robert that Maureen was his other older sister and that she, pearl, had decapitated her (Maureen), because she refused to obey her (Pearl). Naturally Petey/Robert believed her. Petey would take a long time before he dared to question or disobey Pearl. That’s the roll when Petey was growing up; at least that’s what he told me. He also told me never to believe him about anything.
Mr. and Mrs. McMannis, along with Petey and Pearl, lived in a camel back house on St. Maurice Street. Saint Maurice is the patron saint of infantrymen, armies and oddly enough weavers and dyers. I say oddly enough because the McMannis household was a household of weavers. The adult McMannis’ were weavers of bath mats, you know, the kind that are made from scraps of materials braided together in an oval shape? Pearl wove fabrications and Petey grew up weaving fantasies.
Moe McMannis roamed the streets and alleys gathering rags to bring home to the missus, Marsha cleaned and disinfected them with the vigor of a demon possessed, which she was. Late into the evening the adults would weave the scraps into mats and Pearl would fashion falsehoods into realities. Petey would fantasize about life, the Universe and everything.
Petey also used to fantasize about his other brothers and sisters. Pearl had told him that he had four other brothers and four other sisters and she pointed with pride at the seven cigar boxes by the space heater in her room where she kept their ashes. Each box was labeled with the names of the departed siblings. Pearl often told Petey (at great length) of the tortures that she had inflicted on each one before she killed them and cremated them in the space heater (prior to labeling and boxing them). She told Petey that if he ever looked into one of the cigar boxes that the spirit of the dead sibling would escape in a cloud of ashes and choke him to death. She also told Petey that she wasn’t quite done with Maureen yet and that Maureen was still alive and that if Petey listened closely… in the dead of night (pun intended)… he would be able to hear poor Maureen’s screams as she begged for death. She also showed him two empty cigar boxes that she said were reserved for him and Maureen.
Moe and Marsha often wondered why little whats-his-name slept with pillows covering his head. Moe and Marsha didn’t know Petey from a turkey giblet, and no matter how many times that Pearl had used sign language to explain his presence they remained baffled at his presence. They finally eased their confusion when they decided that he probably came with the house. The condition of miscommunication occurred because Pearl signed in the English language and the McMannis’ only understood a sign language that they made up. It was a language that they had made up because neither of them could get the hang of signing in their native language, which was Macedonian; who could blame them?
Petey had an epiphany on his fifty-fourth birthday when he was sixteen; that is to say that Pearl had given him fifty-four birthday parties, an average of three point five per year. Pearl was a real nut for birthday parties and she bought birthday cakes at McKenzie’s day old bakery counter and fashioned Petey into whatever name was written on the cake. (On occasion she would regress Petey’s age, like when she bought a cake that said “HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY LITTLE RALPH” when Petey was eleven.)
The epiphany was this: ‘if you’re gonna be an April Fool, you might as well have cake.’
Think about it. Shaggy dog.
