The Ambassador's Brother (2008)

“I got it! I got it! I got it!” Scotty was waving the brown envelope over his head, sprinting up the stairs. He sat down on the top step and ripped the envelope open, panting.

“Oh my Gosh! She did it, I can’t believe she did it. Creatures of the Night! She sent it!”

Kiss’ latest album was released earlier that month in the states but we could not find it in Italy yet. Not that there was much of a demand for it there. By 1982, KISS was already starting to become a joke to most of the kids that we hung out with. The face paint that had seemed so cool and so scary a couple of years before seemed childish now.
My older brother, however, still adored them. During our monthly phone call to our grandparents from the Naval Base my brother had begged our grandmother to mail him the new KISS album. She had feigned ignorance, much to my brother’s frustration.

“You know Mimaw, KISS!” Scotty whined. “Remember, Papaw said that only sissies wore make up and you thought that they looked like they worshipped the devil. You have to remember. Please, Please Mimaw.” He finally handed the phone back to my father, tears of frustration welling up in his eyes.

Of course, she knew KISS. Anyone that spent anytime at all talking to Scotty knew all about them- their real names, their alter goes, where they were born. She sent him the album as an early birthday present. He ran into his room and threw the cover to his record player open, put the record on and grabbed his headphones. I rolled my eyes and leaned against the doorframe.

“You know they’re totally gay right?” I said, too softly to be heard above the noise in the headphones. He was standing with his back to me, headphones on, playing air guitar. I rolled my eyes and left the room shouting “Gaywad!” loud enough to be heard over KISS as I left.

It was Halloween and I was still trying to decide if trick-or-treating was for babies or not. I was going to be outside all night, but was not sure if I would get the chance to trick-or-treat. The lure of the candy was strong enough that I decided to go out with the babies, if only for one more year. I would be eight the next year and there is no way that I would be caught dead out with the babies then. My mother was in her closet looking for something that I could wear as a costume.

“You know Christy this is such a pain in the ass. I would have gotten you a costume but you said that you weren’t going this year,” she pulled out a bright yellow gown that she had worn to a wedding in the summer. Holding the dress under my chin she smiled and said, “You could be a princess.”

I wrinkled my nose and pushed the dress away. I was the Ambassador. The Ambassador could not walk around on Halloween dressed as a princess.

“Gross” I stuck my tongue out. “I need to be something scary. Can I be a dead princess?”

“You are not getting ketchup all over my dress. Your father almost lost it when you ruined his uniform last year. A dead sailor! Honestly, why can’t you just be a princess? A live princess?” She threw the dress on her bed, exasperated.

“Forget it, I don’t need to go out.” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

“Yes you do, your brother is going and I have to stay here for the trick-or-treaters. I need you guys to go out as a team” She turned back to her closet.

I blamed Adam Walsh. My brother and I had always been allowed to go in and out as we pleased. We were out after dark, taking candy from strangers, running around with older kids. In the summer my mother would send us out after breakfast and we would not see her again until late that night when, exhausted, we climbed the stairs to our apartment. Then this Adam Walsh kid was kidnapped and they found his head in a canal. Everything was different after that. My mother made us check in every hour and we had to be in before dark. None of that was as bad as the team concept. We were supposed to stay together, we were “Team Morris.” I had a very difficult time getting people to take me, the Ambassador, seriously with my older brother tagging along all the time crying about everything. I told my mother that it was probably smarter for us to split up, at least then they would only lose one kid. What if we were both kidnapped and both of our heads ended up in a canal? Then she would have to start all over having kids. She did not see my logic. We were going trick-or-treating as “Team Morris.”

I compromised by wearing the yellow dress with the Frankenstein mask that my father had worn the year before. My brother, after much deliberation, was Ace Frehley, or “Spaceman” as Scotty liked to call him. He spent all afternoon staring at the new album cover trying to decide which member of KISS to be. He went with Ace because he liked his make-up the most. The silver stars around the eyes and black puckered mouth looked horrifyingly feminine to me. They were probably tougher on Frehley, but with my brother’s small nose, full lips and dark eyelashes they made him look even girlier than normal. He took my mother’s black wig from her Cher costume and cut it to shoulder length for the outfit. My father was home on leave the year before for Halloween and they were supposed to go out dressed as Sonny and Cher, but my father had decided against dressing like a “damn hippy” and went as Frankenstein. My mother was irate. They went to their friends costume party as Cher and Frankenstein.

“What do you think?” Scotty was posing in front of my mom’s mirror.

“I think you are completely weird, Spaceman, Ouch!” I jumped. My mother stuck me in the leg with the pin that she was using to pin up her dress.

“Sorry Princess,” she murmured with several straight pins between her teeth.

I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to get away from Scotty once we got out of the house. There was going to be a lot of action between the Dirty Italians and us that night. The war that began between the Italian kids and us that summer had been escalating and the tension before school that day was crazy. They were definitely planning something big. My mother said that if I got into any more fights then we were going to have to live on the base. I couldn’t let that happen. There were too many rules on the base, too many people watching all the time. My father had found this awesome apartment in Naples with several American military families and pools and a playground and, most importantly, no one watching. It was painful to stay out of the fights and just send my gang out to do the work. Tonight it was obvious that we were going to be on the defensive. They were planning something big.

Most of the time the local kids would know to leave the American kids alone. There was a birthday party for one of them outside on the playground earlier that summer. We sat in the bushes watching as the birthday girl opened her presents. She was beautiful with her long dark hair and olive skin. She wore a dress that had bells sewn into the hem so it made a pretty tinkling sound whenever she moved. I hated her. We waited until the party was distracted by the birthday girl’s squeals when she opened a present- a gold necklace. We moved in and grabbed as many plates of food as we could and ran back to the garage under our apartment building. We heard screaming in Italian, some of which I understood. My mom always made a big show of trying to learn the language wherever we were stationed; my brother and I learned the cuss words. That was enough to get our point across in most situations with the locals.

We were sitting in the garage eating and laughing when my father found us. Some of the Italians must have recognized us because they had gone to my apartment looking for me. My father was home then.
“Christy,” he called. We froze.
“Christina Pamela Morris!” My heart jumped. Stupid! I knew better than to pull anything like this when my father was home.
“Over here sir” I stood up, facing the firing squad.

Surprisingly, he didn’t lay a hand on me. He made my friends and I sit through a 15-minute lecture about how we all were American Ambassadors.

“You are an Ambassador Christy, do you understand that? You may be the only Americans that these kids ever meet. Do you want them thinking that all Americans are sneaky thieves?”

I had no idea what an Ambassador was and I certainly did not care what the dirty Italians thought of the Americans. But I loved the word Ambassador. It sounded very important. I was “the Ambassador” from then on out, refusing to answer to Christy with my friends. He made us go and apologize to the Dirty Italians. That was horrible. He stood back talking and laughing with some of the parents while I went to talk to the birthday girl.

“Sorry” I said.
She blinked. Silent.
“I said sorry.”
Nothing.
I smiled “You don’t speak English do you?”
The girl shifted her weight slightly and the bells in her hem made a noise. I looked over my shoulder at my father to make sure he wasn’t listening and leaned forward.
“What I meant was I hate you,” I whispered. “You are a Dirty Stinking Italian and I am glad I busted up your stupid party.” The light hit her necklace and caught my attention. I leaned in even closer. “I am going to steal this. You are going to be out here alone one day and I am gonna take it.”
“You’re gonna what?” a voice behind me. I spun around and saw a teenage boy. His coffee colored eyes and thick wavy hair were just like his younger sister, the birthday girl.
“Oh, you speak English? Must be smarter than your dumb little sister,” I said motioning to the smiling birthday girl.
“You look like someone threw up all over your face,” he smiled.

The damn freckles. They were grotesque everywhere we went. None of the kids in Japan had freckles. Or in Italy. One kid in Germany did, but he wore coke-bottle glasses and suspenders. I was positive that the freckles were the only thing standing between me and being a real ambassador, whatever that was.

“At least I don’t smell like a Dirty Italian.” I said pinching my nose.
I was relieved that my father called me before he could return the insult.

This boy, I later learned that his name was Joey, and I would battle for the rest of the summer. We did little things mostly, throwing rocks or stealing clothes at the swimming pool. The fights reached a new height on the first day back at the American school. We were standing outside our apartment complex, waiting for the bus when I heard them. Joey and a bunch of his friends were laughing and pointing at Scotty and me as they walked past. Scotty seemed oblivious when they yelled “Faggot!” and turned around the corner. I chased after them and was ambushed. One boy put his hand over my mouth and dragged me into the hedges where the others were waiting. A boy sat on my legs, another held down my hands and Joey kept his hand over my mouth. I heard the bus pull up and waited for Scotty to notice that I had gone missing. He didn’t. “Team Morris” had abandoned me. When the bus pulled away, I started thrashing and bit Joey’s hand. He laughed and pulled his hand away. I used every Italian bad word that I knew, cussing him in Italian and then in Japanese, in German, in English. The boys just laughed as Joey pulled out a permanent marker and started to draw on my face.
“You have played Connect-the-Dots before, haven’t you?” he asked.
I spit and thrashed and screamed while the boys drew on my face, taking turns and laughing. Joey finally stood up and threw the marker on the ground next to me.
“Give my sister her necklace back you little bitch,” he said and then walked away with his friends.

Of course, I had taken the necklace. I told her I would. The week after the party she was out on the swings by herself, singing some stupid Italian song to herself. She smiled when I walked up to her. I just reached out like I was admiring it and then yanked it off her neck and ran away. The necklace was in a shoebox in my closet along with all the other junk that I had taken from the stupid Italian kids. There was no way I was giving that necklace back. I was certain of that even as I stood up on shaky legs and walked back to my apartment building. I left my lunchbox where it had fallen in front of the hedges and tried to stop the tears. How long had I been crying? Did those stupid Italian boys see me cry? I became enraged, my hands balling up in fists and teeth clenched. I was the Ambassador! And they were going to be sorry.

“What in the hell happened to you? Where is Scotty?” My mother looked behind me frantically.
“On his way to school I guess,” I shrugged.
She cupped my face in her hands and bent down. “Who did this to you Christy? Did they hurt you?” her voice was shaking.
“No, I’m fine, it was just a stupid joke.” I lied. The smell of the permanent marker burned my nostrils.
“Who?”
”Nobody.”
“Who would draw penises all over a little girl’s face?” she demanded.
“I am not a little girl- what? They drew what?” I ran to the bathroom and slammed the door before she could answer.
My cheeks were red, which made the freckles stand out even more. They had drawn blue penises all over face. My tears had smeared some of the ink under my eyes, but even there, you could still see the outline of Joey’s drawing. I turned the hot water on and grabbed the Dial soap.
“Honey, open the door, I need to talk to you.” My mother’s voice seemed calmer now.
I ignored her as I scrubbed my face. She was waiting in the hallway when I emerged. There was still a faint outline of the drawings on my face, but from a distance it looked like bruises. We drove out to the base to see my father and he had to stand so close that I could feel his breath on my face to make out what the pictures were supposed to be. He exhaled, his breath smelled like coffee.
“Who did this Christy?”
“I don’t know, just some stupid Italian kids.”
“Have you ever seen them before?”
“No,” I lied.
He put a hand on my mom’s shoulder as he walked us to the door of his office.
”Don’t worry Rose, she seems fine.”
“Really? Look at her face, I wouldn’t say that.”
He punched me lightly on the shoulder.
“She is a tough kid, she’s fine.”
And they never brought it up again.

My friends paid the price when they got off the bus that afternoon. I waited at the bus stop and kicked or pinched or spit on them as they walked past.
“What the hell is wrong Ambassador?” Robert asked, wiping my spit off of his cheek.
“You left me you assholes! You left me and they got me!” I screamed. The group was silent. Staring at the faint blue lines on my face.
We decided to wait until my father was gone again to do anything. Going after Joey and his friends would be too risky. Some of those boys were huge and had mustaches already. His sister was the obvious target. She was always alone and he adored her. I could not be involved in the action this time. If I got even a mark on me, then my mom would freak and we would be moving to the base. The plan was simple. Robert and his sister Angela jumped her early one morning while Joey was at the swimming pool. I told them not to use any rocks or sticks or anything, just hit her a couple of times. They were supposed to scare her so she would go running to her brother. He would know that I had done it and it was his fault. I had to yell for them to stop, they were getting a little out of hand. The girl was curled up in a ball crying. Her dress was torn and she was covered in dirt. Her nose was bleeding a little but not too bad.

“Go run to Joey. Go on Princess!” I kicked some dirt in her hair.

She seemed to wake up at the sound of her brother’s name. She jumped up and ran- not towards the pool as we had expected, but towards her apartment building.

Several weeks passed and nothing happened. “Team Morris” extended to include all of my friends. No one went out alone. We started to relax a little. Joey did not seem to behave any differently. His sister did not come outside anymore. By Halloween, we had all but forgotten the incident.
The morning of Halloween, we were waiting for the bus when Joey called out from behind the apartment gate.
“You going out tonight Am-bass-a-dor?” he mocked

I did not turn around.

“We will be waiting for you.” He and his friends stood there until the bus pulled up to the curb. I could still feel his eyes on me as I climbed the stairs to the bus and took my seat in the back. They knew what we had done after all. I shivered. This was going to move from petty battles to an all out war. And I would be ready.


“Where did you get that?” my mom asked, admiring Joey’s sister’s necklace.

“I found it on the playground,” I lied, my voice muffled by the Frankenstein mask.

“It looks very pretty with the dress, but you should probably put it back. Someone might be looking for that,” she let go of the necklace and turned to Scotty.

“WOW! You look awesome. Let me guess-Paul Stanley? Star Child?”

“No Mom, I am Ace Frehley, the Space Man,” Scotty rolled his eyes.

“Okay, well you two stay together tonight,” she patted Scotty’s head.

I held my skirt up so I could run down the stairs ahead of Scotty. Robert and Angela were waiting downstairs. They were dressed as Ghosts.

“Scotty…. is…. with me,” I said, catching my breath.

“What? Does he know?” Angela asked. My brother was in the dark about most of our operations. He would not approve.

“No, we are going to have to lose him,” I said just as Scotty came bursting through the doors.

“Why are you in such a hurry Christy?” he asked. He was starting to sweat and the white and black face paint was beginning to smudge.

Robert started laughing. “Oh my God, which KissAss are you supposed to be? Ace Gay-ly?”
I kicked Robert in the shin and he winced. Ignoring Robert’s insult, Scotty pointed to the pillowcases that Robert and Angela were carrying. They were weighed down with the rocks that I had told them to bring for the war.

“Hey, have you guys already started? Where did you get all that candy?”

“Um, Scotty, I…” I was struggling to come up with a lie. Lying usually came easy to me, but I had to lose Scotty without hurting his feelings. I didn’t want him to start crying and run home to mom and it was way too dangerous for him to be with us when we had no idea what was going to happen.

“There is no way that a KISS loser is hanging out with us all night,” Angela said looking at the group of friends walking towards us with their own arsenals hidden in pillowcases.
Scotty looked at me suspiciously.
“What are you guys up to tonight? Can I come, I won’t get in the way. I promise,” he begged.
I shook my head.
“No way!”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell mom.”
”I’ll kick your ass.”
Scotty scratched his head under the wig. “Why do you always have to be such a bitch Christy?”
“Get lost fag” I spat out.
Scotty stood there stunned until his eyes started to tear up. He turned to run before we could see him cry. I felt a pang of regret at hurting him like that but it really was for his own good.

I turned to face my gang. There were eleven of us. Well ten and a half really, Danny was only six and he usually froze up in a fight. We walked in a close group, with the biggest kids standing one at the front, one in the back, and one on either side. We went door-to-door, dropping the candy on top of the rocks in the bottom of the pillowcases. My Frankenstein Princess costume got a lot of attention. We had been out for about an hour, still anticipating an attack when we went to Joey’s apartment. Knocking on his door, wearing his sister’s necklace- I wanted him to know that I was not afraid of him.

His mother answered the door. She smiled and held out a bowl of tootsie rolls. We never included our parents in these battles. She had no idea who I was. Joey’s sister was standing behind her mother, peeking out from behind her skirt. She stared at the necklace. I glared at her from behind my Frankenstein mask. The gang thanked the mother and I waved at the little girl as she was shutting the door. We were very careful as we left Joey’s apartment building. Robert slowly opened the door and checked it out. No one was waiting for us. I felt like we had won another battle.

We had hit every building in our apartment complex by ten o’clock that night. We assumed that Joey and his friends had been scared off by the size of our gang, but were walking in formation just in case they surprised us. We walked everyone back to their buildings and said our good-byes as they dumped out their rocks and went inside with their loot. Angela and Robert and I lived in the same building. They stood as lookouts while I went around the corner to dump out our rocks. In the darkness, one of the rocks made a strange thud noise as it hit the ground. I leaned forward and saw that the rock had hit a Nike shoe sticking out from under the bush. The shoe twitched and I jumped back. I grabbed the shoe and pulled Scotty out from under the bushes. His lifeless head rolled to the side. I gasped.

“What’s taking so long?” Robert came around the corner looking for me.
“Oh shit, is he dead?”
I stood there, unable to move.
Angela came up behind us and started screaming when she saw him. His eyelids fluttered a little and I realized he wasn’t dead.
“Go get my mom! Hurry!” I shouted.
Angela ran inside. I leaned over Scotty and turned his head towards me. A flap of skin behind his ear was torn off and his ear hung awkwardly. He moaned and I moved his head back on its side. He was covered in bruises and his face was smeared in blood and what little black and white face paint was still there. Of course, they had decided to attack at our weakest point- the Ambassador’s brother.

He had a broken arm, three broken ribs, and a concussion. They were able to reattach his ear, but it left a jagged scar that, even as an adult, turned bright red when he was embarrassed or met a man that he thought was attractive. He did not remember much from the attack, he was jumped coming out of the building next to ours alone after trick-or-treating. Joey and his friends punched and kicked him until he was unconscious and dragged him down the sidewalk where they dumped him in the bushes. No one in the family realized that I had anything to do with the attack, not even Scotty. We moved back to the states the next month. The good thing about moving so often was that I got to reinvent myself with every new school. In San Diego I was just Christy, I wore a dress on the first day of school that had bells sewn into the hem. I was glad to leave “the Ambassador” behind.



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