ok, so newsiegoil1899 tells me that a bunch of people are doing backgrounds for the newsies and asked me if id like to do one. is this a question one seriously has to think about? of course! who? DUTCHY! so yes, this is my version of dutchy's past. all the chapters are from his point of view, in this first one he's 9. and his name is Ivan, cause i couldnt think of anything else

"Hey, wake up, would ya? Gran's bout ready to throw a fit."

"Why? Wha'd I do to her?"

"You didn't do your chores. Now get up before she goes and ships you over seas." He pulled my pillow out from under my head, dropped it on the floor, and left.

"Alright already!" Since my grandmother moved in with us, I was slowly becoming more of a morning person, quite against my will. She came to America this spring from somewhere over in Europe. Holland, or Africa, or something like that, I didn't pay much attention. She was my father's mother. My mother was from Ukraine. They met at some school or something and came to America. Gran hadn't approved of their marriage then and was just starting to now. To show my father that she still had some control over his life, she had somehow taken over our household-without knowing a word of English. She didn't know any and didn't care to learn either. It was really only my mother and me that couldn't understand her. My father had grown up speaking whatever it was, and Ilya had been deemed worthy of being taught by her. She treated my 13 year old brother like he was her pet.

"Ivan! I thought you were getting up!" Ilya had just come back into the room we shared to find me sitting on my bed, dangling my feet over the edge.

"I am, go away." I was normally a pretty polite kid, but it was early.

"Well hurry up." He went back out to the kitchen. I changed into a pair of grey pants and an olive green shirt. When I walked into the kitchen, Gran turned to face me, placed her hands on her hips, and went off yelling in the language I was pretty sure might have been Dutch. Ilya started to translate, but I turned before he could say much. I knew what she was saying, it was the same thing she said every day. "Tuck in the shirt, put the suspenders up, put on the vest, brush the hair. Honestly child, who taught you to dress?" I sulked back to my room, tucking in my shirt. I snapped my suspenders onto my shoulders. I preferred to let them hang down, I just liked the way they looked like that. I put on the grey vest that hung on my bed post. I had started to become a habit to put it on as soon as I got up. I actually had it in my hand some mornings before remembering that it was one of my few ways to defy Gran. I grabbed my brush and watched the mirror-me brush his hair. Gran was so proud of her biggest accomplishment in running my life. My hair. When she arrived, it had been just like Ilya's, nice and short. Five months later, his was still short thanks to regular hair cuts. I, on the other hand, Gran thought looked just like my father and should therefore have hair just like he had when he was nine. Nice blonde hair that ended right below my ears, like all the nice boys in Holland, or Denmark, or Egypt, or wherever she was from. I re-entered the kitchen and immediately a squirrel was shoved into my hands. I just stared at her. Where had my grandmother gotten a squirrel?

"What do I do with it?"

"Just get rid of it before she has a heart attack!" So I was shooed out the door with a tiny squirrel in my hands. Because my parents were immigrants, they had taken the only house they could get. I use the term "house" lightly, but I suppose it was better than what some people had. We lived in an apartment type building. There was an official name for it that started with a T, but I could never remember it. I wasn't crazy about it, but we could see the Brooklyn Bridge from our windows and most of our neighbors were nice. The one I was going to see now lived one floor down in number 24. His name was Mr. Kolenkhov, but I usually didn't say the "mister" part. He was Russian and had a neat accent. I knocked on his door.

"Good morning Ivan." He opened the door and stepped aside so I could enter. After he closed the door, I held up the squirrel. "Vat ees dis?"

"A squirrel. It must have crawled in the window to get out of the rain." He sat down at the kitchen table, leaning his cane against his chair, and gently took the squirrel from my hands. I sat down in the chair across from him. He'd put a pillow on this chair so that I didn't feel so little when I sat there and talked to him. Kolenkhov used to teach ballet before he came to America, but now he was too old. He also broke his right leg and it never healed right, that's why he had the cane. He didn't have very many friends, but he had me. I liked most old people, just not Gran. Gran treated me like I was a kid, which actually I was, but Kolenkhov didn't. He talked to me like I was a grown-up and actually listened when I said stuff

"So, vy do you bring 'im to me?" Kolenkhov asked, petting the squirrel's head.

"I don't know. I was supposed to get rid of him, but I didn't want to put him outside." It was raining a whole lot that day. "So I thought maybe you could hold on to him, at least till it's sunny again."

"Alright, I vill. Now, you'd better get back before your Gran gets mad. I don't vant her coming after me!" I scooted off my chair and left. As I closed the door, I heard him talking to the squirrel and got the feeling he wasn't going to get rid of it when the sun came out. As I walked into our apartment, Gran and Ilya were walking out, probably to go shopping. For some reason, Gran liked to go shopping when it was raining, and Ilya had to go with her to translate. Sometimes I was glad she didn't like me. I saw that although my chores had been taken care of, there were still some things for me to do. There were dishes in the sink from breakfast. I grabbed a roll and considered washing them while I ate. Sitting on the table was the number 3 from our door that had fallen again. I decided to fix that first in case somebody came looking for number 36. I pulled off some of the sticky stuff that held one of our table legs in place and spread it on the back of the 3. Then I went outside and placed it bak in front of the 6. It was a bit crooked, but in looked alright. I went back in and started on the dishes. While I washed, I watched the rain out the window. I really liked the rain. I hoped it would start to thunder and lightning. Most kids my age were scared of storms, but I had always liked them. In the evening, when my parents got home, we would sit in the kitchen and watch the lightning. I'd been to the theater, but I always liked our kitchen window better than the brightly lit stages. I heard the front door open, but I kept washing, figuring it was just Gran and Ilya.

"Where is everybody?" I ran to the door without rinsing the soap suds from my hands.

"Popi!" He caught me and lifted me. "How did you get home so early?" He normally wasn't home until dinner time.

"Bussiness was very slow, so they let us leave." I noticed he sounded sort of strange when he said it, like he was thinking about it a whole lot. He put me down and took off his coat that was soaking wet and had soap bubbles on the back. "So where is your crazy Gran? Did she take Ilya shopping again?" I nodded. "He's going to get sick if she keeps taking him out in the rain. So, what have you done today?"

"I gave Mr. Kolenkhov a squirrel." I said mister when I was talking to grown ups. Popi raised his eye brows, but just nodded. "Did you get a newspaper from Spud today?" Spud was a newsie. He was 15 and I don't think he liked me very much, but I met him in front of our building every day and he played cards with me. In return, I made sure Popi always bought a paper from him.

"Of course." He placed the paper on the table and sat down. I sat next to him and started to read the headlines.I did this every day, it's how I learned to read. "Do you two still play cards in th rain?"

"Sometimes. But sometimes it takes him longer to sell, cause there aren't as many people on the streets." Popi worried about the newsies a lot. Even though he didn't make that much money, he always came home with a paper, sometimes three or four. "He says ina couple years he won't be a newsie any more. He'll get a real job."

"The book store is always looking for more people if they can read well." The book store was right next to the repair shop where Popi worked. Spud was real good at reading. Popi wasn't. He could read anough to know what he had to, but that was it. He only bought the paper for me. "You have a deck of cards, don't you?" he asked after a little while. I nodded, then pushed back the hair that fell into my eyes. "Why don't you go get them and teach me some games?" I ran into my room and grabbed the cards I had bought with the little bit of money I had saved from doing odd jobs around the building. That's right, I bought them with my own moeny. I sat back down at the table and shuffled them.

"What should I teach you?"

"Whatever's easiest," he laughed. We had already played Go Fish and were halfway through Kings in the Corners when Gran and Ilya came back. the four of us played until 1:30. That was the only time I knew on the clock, because that's when I always met Spud. I ran down the stairs and opened the door to the building. The rain had let up a little. I saw Spud walking down the street towards meand ran to meet him.

"Are you still going to play cards with me today?"

"Did yer pop still buy one o' me papes?" I nodded and he smiled. "Den a course I'll still play cards with yeh." He had a really cool accent. New York and Irish, cause he was very Irish but had lived all his life talking to people from New York. "Cept where's we gonna play? Street's all wet."

"We can sit on the stairs inside, nobody's goin' up or down much today." He nodded and we set up our game halfway to the second floor. Today we played Blackjack. You were supposed to bet money, but we didn't. I didn't have any and Spud needed his for papers. It was fun, but it took a little while cause you're supposed to get 21 and I had to add on my fingers. We were on our third hand when my mother came up the stairs. She sold flowers in the mornings and came home in the afternoon. Spud took off his grey hat when he saw her, revealing curly red hair. If I had a hat, I'd've taken it off too. I really liked the newsies' hats.

"Afternoon ma'am."

"Hello Spud. Ivan, I don't want you to stay out here too long, it's drafty and I don't want you to get sick."

"Yes Mama." She smiled and continued up the stairs, stepping over our card game. Spud replaced his hat and we played a few more hands.

"Alright, I gotta go get da aftanoon edition. I'll see ya tomorrow," he said, gathering up his cards, "carryin da bannah."

"Carryin da bannah." That's how the newsies said good bye and it simply made my day when he said it to me. He tucked his cards in his pocket and headed out into the rian, while I went up to the third floor. I knew something was wrong when I saw Ilya sitting in the hallway. I sat down next to him. "What happened?"

"I dunno. As soon as Mama came in, Popi put down his cards and asked me the go out for a second." Whenever Mama and Popi had to talk about something serious, they asked Ilya and me to wait in the hallway. Then we'd come back in and they'd explain what they were talking about. "I hope there's a storm tonight."

"Me too." Me and Ilya weren't that close, and we didn't talk very much. What gave us the connection was simple stuff like this; sitting in the hallway and hoping for a thunderstorm. We sat there in silence for a long time. The sun was sinking and it was getting dark when Popi opened the door. We walked in and sat down at the kitchen table. Mama was holding a handkerchief and looked like she might have been crying.

"Boys, I lost my job today." I gasped. That's why he was home so early. "My eye sight is going and I can't see the small parts anymore, so I'm just not useful enough to keep around. I'm going to look for a new job, but until I find one, Mama's going to have to work more and you two might need to find jobs too." We didn't know how to react. After a moment of complete silence, Mama gave a sniffle and Ilya went and sat beside her. Gran was saying something in Jibberish from the other room, apparently she'd been told already. Popi turned and just stared out the window. He felt like he'd let us down. I walked over to him and hugged him.

"We'll make everything work, right Popi?" He placed a hand on my head and ruffled my hair.

"Of course we will." Outside there was a flash of light and a low rumble of thunder. "Sounds like we're going to have a good storm tonight." He lifted me and a rested my head on his shoulder. We just stood there and watched the rain fall and the lightning dance.