Chopin Park
by Steven Dolbek
June 30, 2009
My earliest memory of my father was when he taught me how to ride a bike. I probably have earlier memories, but they’re all fragments, or memories of memories that other people have told me. I remember him first and best in Chopin Park, when he tried to teach me how to ride a bike after months and months of failure. It was late spring, just when the school year was about over, so it must’ve been in the mid-afternoon, even though I’m not sure why my father could’ve gotten out there at the time. Maybe he had taken a day off, or had gotten laid off, or something I can’t remember. The park is still one of my favorites, or at least it’s my kind of favorite, where the smell of grass and dirt mixes with the smell of lingering garbage, and where packs of teens walk around sharing a single bottle of Fanta and everyone knows what they’re up to.
A small fountain stands at the entrance to the park, as a memorial to World War I soldiers. A poem about fields sits on a plaque to the left of it, and an American Legion plaque stands to the right. From that spot, you can still hear the sound of distant traffic, but what you hear first are screaming children, squeaking and ancient and dangerous playground equipment, and the bellowing taunts of people trying to beat each other in random competition. It was just starting to get hot outside, at the point where you didn’t want to move and you didn’t want to stand still either. I had to ride a bike, and I really didn’t want to that day.
I was a little fat and a little short, and I still am, so that as I stood there, refusing to cooperate, my legs straddling the bike frame and my feet solidly on the ground, I looked spoiled. I tried to look resolute, like a soldier politely declining to follow unjust orders, but instead I looked soft, fat, sad, and inevitably unfulfilled. Off in the distance, blunt heavy whaps echoed across the park every thirty seconds or so. A few guys in their teens and twenties were playing softball, but it had just rained, the four diamonds were too wet and they’d gone to the tennis courts instead. The hard surface of the court gave authority to every crack of the bat, as if they had invented an intricate new game and weren’t just swinging wildly and swearing at each other for kicks. I’ve always liked that park.
“Put your foot on the fucking pedal.”
I did. Chopin Park was embedded in the side streets a block east of Central and a few blocks north of Belmont. It was just big enough for the soaked baseball diamonds, a tennis court, a fieldhouse, a volleyball pit, a playground, and a horseshoe pit covered in anthills, but you could still clearly see from one end to the other. Deliberately winding paths always led you back to the regular sidewalks surrounding the park. As it got warmer, ice cream vendors parked their bicycle carts on the outskirts of the playground, where a few parents stood guard as one too many children ran in frenzied circles until they hit something. Every now and then, the vendors rang the bells on their handlebars, trying to get the children’s attention. As my father pushed me from behind a little harder than I cared for, I heard the bell ringing, as if it were announcing my failure.
“You’ve got to push on the pedal, you stupid shit.”
Maybe if he had yelled more or threatened more, I would’ve had a reason to try, but he kept his voice down. The way I saw it at the time, he knew that there were enough people around who would hear him if his voice carried, so he kept quiet (like a coward, I thought) to keep people from staring or trying to intervene on my behalf. Every word pushed out with a great suppressed pressure. It didn’t sound like he was yelling at me, which felt like an insult somehow, so I barely pushed on the pedal at all. Instead I let the bike wobble harmlessly until it couldn’t stand on its own anymore. I put my feet down and came to a clumsy stop. I looked away from my father.
Three little girls, about my age, stood on the fieldhouse steps. Two were Hispanic. One was white. They talked like women do, in a way I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now. So many important social niceties hung on every word it was more like they were competing than talking. I heard the whap of the softball from the tennis court, followed by spontaneous yelling. I understood that better, even if I wasn’t any good at it.
“Yknow your sister has been riding her bike for a year now.”
He said that to embarrass me in front of the girls, but I wasn’t far enough along to really care. Even if I did, I already knew there wouldn’t be any way to redeem myself. I’d been trying on and off to ride a bike ever since the previous autumn. All the other kids had bikes and could ride them just well enough to make me want to try it out myself. I wasn’t really jealous so much as angry. I hated them, and somehow I could get revenge by doing the same things that they did. This strange reverse psychology works well on me. Many of my most successful and generous achievements were done out of spite. I hate the places I work at, so I work like the devil and wind up getting promoted. I work like I’m beating the shit out of a homeless man, but the results would be the same if I loved the place. I first seriously pursued a girl because I’d gotten the impression she thought she was better than me. I married her because I didn’t like her father. We later had kids after a cousin of mine made a snide remark about childless couples. I give to charities because they act like they’re fucking saints and I want them on my level. I volunteer at my church to be one step above the listless, fearful congregation. And I wanted to ride a bike because I hated the other children and didn’t want them to have an advantage over me. The sweetest revenge of all is that when I die, no one will be able to distinguish between what I did and love.
Two kids my age were riding bikes as fast as they could through the winding paths and across the scraggly grass. One of them tried to cut through the baseball diamond, forgetting it had just rained. The bike twisted and stuck in the mud, sending the kid flying through the air. He landed clear of the bike but fell into a full, dirty puddle. As he pulled himself out of the muck and dragged his bike to the grass, his friend laughed hysterically. “You stupid shit! You look like you’re covered in shit!” They were probably a year younger than me, but already they could swear better than I could. And the one had been able to fall off his bike and get back up like nothing had happened.
I remembered that the second time I’d tried to ride a bike, I’d turned the handlebar wrong or something. It was like the bike had fallen out from under me. Instead of landing gracefully in a mud puddle like this kid had, I’d fallen directly on top of the bike, badly hurting my ribs when my torso hit the bike frame.
When the other was done laughing, the two of them yelled at each other amiably, then they told each other to go fuck themselves, then they got back on their bikes and continued riding together as recklessly as before. I decided not to like them, and I didn’t like the park either, and the little girls and the assholes playing softball on a tennis court. And my father, whose cursing had become so quiet it was almost intimate, like a man making love to a woman he actually loves.
“You’re gonna ride the fucking bike,” he whispered. “You’re riding it clear around this fucking park. If I have to sit on top of you and push your little faggot feet onto the pedals until you know what it feels like to ride a goddamn bike, I’m gonna do it. I don’t need this shit. No father should have to put up with a pansy piece of crap like you. It’s not right. You’re not right. And you won’t be able to get there until you stop looking at the mud and put your feet back on the fucking pedals and ride.”
I put my right foot on a pedal, pushed off with the other, and got going for a good thirty feet or so. My father became excited and he started yelling. “All right, son! Keep going! Keep going!” It sounded too encouraging, so I veered off into the grass and fell. He quieted down. “What the fuck, are you doing this on purpose, what the fuck is the matter with you.” He walked over like he was about to hit me, but he was too modern for that and wouldn’t dare. He started another quiet, passionate tirade, but a high-pitched voice from the tennis courts cancelled out whatever he was saying.
“Do you wanna be with that whore!” The first real heat of the year must’ve been getting to people. “Fuck that whore!” And, as if she needed to reiterate her point, “Daniella’s a whore!” She kept it up, yelling at someone I couldn’t see, until even the ten year old girls were screaming across the park for her to shut up. But she continued to yell until someone agreed to drive her home. “Go live with her in her mansion! I’m going to JAIL tomorrow!” She said it like it entitled her to something, but I wasn’t even sure if she was telling the truth or using a metaphor or doing something I couldn’t imagine at the moment. My father was still cursing me out, but I took more encouragement from the angry little girls, the angry young woman, the two little bastards riding around the park, and the heat which was starting to get to me too. I conjured up what little spite I had and pushed off.
As I took off the little white girl started yelling too. It looked like her two Hispanic friends were making fun of her in a subtle, female way that I hadn’t caught before. “I’m SORRY! I’m SORRY I’m not you! I’m SORRY I can’t speak Spanish!” She was trying to sound ironic, like a proper white girl should, but she couldn’t help but mean what she said. It was the last thing I heard before I finally put everything into the pedals and shot down the first available path. “That’s it!” my father yelled, and I slowed down. “It’s about fucking time!” And I sped up again, not exactly having the proper balance but not caring anymore. The bike wobbled violently back and forth, enough so that I probably should’ve stopped, but I hated the bike and wasn’t about to let it beat me. I took the path out to the sidewalk, then made a sharp turn to get onto the sidewalk, then made another sharp turn at the corner, and another sharp turn to get back onto another park path. At every turn, I nearly hit a fence, or veered into the grass, but I was afraid that when I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to get started again. So I kept on going, making an imperfect circle towards the spot where my father tried to keep from grinning. I aimed right for him, sometimes drifting left or right, sometimes losing my balance or sense of self but staying on the bike all the same. My father had to jump to get out of way. “You little fucker,” he said, and I loved it.
Someone from the fieldhouse had heard the little girl yelling and was trying to resolve the situation, but she wouldn’t stop. “I’m a NERD!” she said. “I’m a NERD and a LOSER!” I rode right on past. The young woman was being hustled into a car, and she was talking about her kids. I rode on past, and the softball game picked up again, letting out its cathartic whaps across the park. I stopped at a spot far away from my father to watch the two kids who were still tearing across the park on their bikes. They might’ve been racing, but if they were, it was an informal racing that had no beginning or end. Narrowly dodging other children, mothers with strollers, and some of the larger cracks in the pavement, the two of them giggled wickedly at the sheer assholery of what they were doing. As I tried to start riding again, they careened happily into the playground where, in-between the toddlers being pushed in swings, the older children going up and down the same slides, and the oldest children climbing across the equipment in all the wrong ways, in-between the screeching, squealing, the sweat and the pent-up wrath, the heat and the anger and the dirt, those bikes were bound to hit something and come to a terrifying stop, breaking the equipment and damn near killing somebody. Maybe even the boys themselves. It looked like so much fun. I kept on riding, as fast and as hard as I could.