Suddenly I was grateful to her, to Mrs. Burt. It looked less suspicious if we sometimes bought things with cash. There was enough money left over so I got us a Slushie. A blue Slushie that we shared through two straws in the one hole in the lid while we sat on the steps of the Pit Stop Mart and breathed the fried-chicken air, watching the cars go by on Broadway and the homeless people rattle past with their carts.
Then we went to Mrs. Burt’s place and rang her bell. Again, about a week went by before she got to the door. First, the TV shut off. After a few minutes, the walker knocked against something and she started muttering, “Blast it, blast it, blast it.” Artie tensed up and squeezed my hand until she finally opened up.
A smell poured out over us, the most delicious smell. We both leaned into it.
“What happened? You two been drinking ink?” I looked at Artie and saw the Slushie had dyed his lips and tongue blue, and probably mine, too.
She motioned to the bag in my hand.
“Put it on the table.”
I went ahead to the kitchen. Artie followed, still nervous, but drawn in by the smell. Mrs. Burt was much slower. When she finally caught up, Artie and I were standing there drooling at the cookies on the table, lined up on baking sheets in perfect even rows, like checkers.
I still had the grocery bag in one hand. She took it from me and said, “Go ahead. Help yourself.”
Artie snatched two and crammed them in his mouth. I hoped my manners were better, but the cookies were still warm and so good. Meanwhile, Mrs. Burt went over to the fridge with the heavy bag and started to unload it, hanging the plastic handles on the walker, propping the door open with an elbow.
“Here,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
She let me. The last thing in the bag was the box of tea.
“Halleluiah,” she said when I handed it to her. Then she offered us milk, which I poured into glasses and brought to the table.
“Go ahead, Artie. Have as many as you want,” she said, even though he’d already eaten about fifty. “Sit, sit down.”
While she waited for the kettle, Mrs. Burt stood at the counter watching us. Well, she watched Artie. She didn’t seem cranky now. More like somebody’s cookie-making grandma.
“Artie with the legendary name,” she said.
“What?” Artie asked, spraying crumbs.
“You know. King Arthur and all them.”
“No.”
“No?” She shook her head.
The sugar from the Slushie and all the cookies kicked in. Artie slithered off the seat of his chair and onto the floor.
“Artie,” I said, warning him.
Mrs. Burt took the chair next to him and, plunking down her mug of tea, smiled at him down by her feet. He pinged the walker with his fingernail.
“Here, try this,” she said, handing down her teaspoon. Different notes sounded on different rails and they both laughed. Then Mrs. Burt took a big slurp of tea and sighed.
“Do you have rickets?” Artie asked from the floor.
“Rickets? Certainly not.”
“Then why do you have this thing?” He used it now, hand over hand, to get up off the floor.
“I fell down and almost busted a hip.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“From the hospital.”
“The ambulance took you away.”
“It did.”
“I like it,” Artie said, giving the walker a pat. “You could dry clothes on it. We washed our clothes in the bathtub and hung them on the chairs. Then we had nowhere to sit.”
“Don’t you have a laundry room over there?” she asked.
“It costs a lot of quarters,” Artie said.
I got worried then that he would give away even more personal information, so I stood up.
“Thanks very much, Mrs. — ”
The phone rang. Mrs. Burt set her mug down hard and cut me off.
“Oh, shut up!”
And Artie scooted behind me in fright.
“Not you,” Mrs. Burt told him. “Those telewhatsits. Or if it’s not them, it’s Miss Big Shot in Toronto. It’s just about killing me, running to the phone!”
It kept ringing, but she didn’t get up.
“We have to go,” I said. Mrs. Burt looked surprised, then hurt.
“Take some cookies,” she said. “Put them on a plate.” She looked right at me. “What’s your name again?”
“Curtis,” I told her for the first time.
Whoever was calling gave up then.
“Get a plate and load them on, Curtis,” she said, rising and getting a head start, picking up and putting down her contraption all the way down the hall so she could get to the door first and be waiting with the five-dollar bill.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You don’t have to pay me.”
She snorted. “Unlike most people around here, I have pride.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but I knew it would insult her if I didn’t take the money, so I took it.
“Is your mother at work?”
“Yes.”
She pulled a pad from the pocket of her man’s shirt. It had a little stub of pencil stuck in the coil binding.
“Here. Write your phone number down. I want to talk to her.”
“What about?”
“I want to ask her if it’s okay if you help me out until I don’t need this thingie anymore. Do you want to? You can bring the legendary Artie.”
“You don’t have to call her. It’s fine.”
“I want to talk to her. I want her to know I’m not a charity case.”
“She’ll say it’s fine.”
“She can say it to me then.”
I thought about writing the wrong phone number but that seemed pointless.
“When does she get home?” she asked.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “She works at night and sleeps in the day. Also, she’s studying for exams.”
“Exams? What kind of exams?”
“She’s doing her high-school equivalency.”
“Oh, a dropout.” She sniffed. “Now bring that plate back tomorrow. Ring the doorbell. Don’t just leave it on the steps or somebody’ll steal it.”
We thanked her. Then we crossed the street to our building where there wasn’t a single flower growing out front. Just some prickly knee-high bushes decorated with wrappers and lids from take-out cups. Mrs. Burt was still standing in her doorway. Artie looked back and waved to her.
“She’s not mean anymore,” he said.
“Really?” I said.
I’d learned a lot this year in Mr. Bryant’s class. Not just math and socials and health. All year Mr. Bryant set a high standard of behavior. We had to treat each other with respect. Respect meant we had to pay attention not only to what we said, but how. The how was almost more important. For example, I could say I thought you were smart, or nice, but if I said it a certain way, it would mean the opposite. At the beginning of the year I didn’t notice the how because everybody talked to each other that way all the time. But now I noticed.
Like how Mrs. Burt said “dropout.” Like it was the worst thing in the world.
In the lobby we stopped for the mail. I’d been taking it in but not opening it, just leaving it in a heap on the counter for Mom to deal with when she came back. If any of it had looked like a letter from Mom or to her I would have opened it, but it was mostly just bills and flyers.
Back in the apartment, the phone was already ringing. Mrs. Burt, I thought.
But it wasn’t.
“Is Debbie there?” a man asked.
I knew it wasn’t Greg from Pay-N-Save because the voice was different.
“No. Can I take a message?”
“When’s she going to be in?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell her to call Nelson about the rent. It came back NSF.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“She’ll know what I’m talking about. Tell her to put a new check in my box in the lobby. Not in the mail.”
“Okay.”
“She should call me to let me know it’s there. I don’t want to drive all the way across town and there’s no check. Also she’s got to add fifteen bucks on for the service charge.”
“Okay,” I said and hung up.
I opened the mail. The good news was there was a check from the government. Two hundred and eight dollars and fifty-six cents for the Child Tax Benefit payment, whatever that was.
Later that night I heard a siren. I thought of the ambulance that had taken Mrs. Burt away. Was it coming back?
No. The siren was in my head. It was screaming, Rent! Rent! Rent!
I got out of bed and wrote another note.
My son Curtis Schlanka has permission to cash this check.
UP ON BROADWAY, about half a block down from the Pit Stop Mart, next to Chancey’s Chicken, was Dominion Check Cashing. I thought it would be safer than the bank which, last time we were in it with Mom, was full of nice people asking, “What can I do for you today, Ms. Schlanka?” and, “How old’s your little boy, Ms. Schlanka?” and, “You have a great day, Ms. Schlanka.”
In other words, they would wonder where our mom was.
The man in Dominion Check Cashing with the toothpick in the corner of his mouth and greasy hairs glued on his bald head looked at the check and said Mom had to come in herself.
“She’s at work,” I said.
The toothpick shifted to the other side of his mouth. “She can come after work.”
“She finishes at, like, six in the morning.”
He pointed to the neon sign in the window. I read OPEN 24 HOURS, backwards.
“What about the note?”
He nudged it back across the counter at me.
“Looks to me like you wrote that yourself. Are you stealing from your own mother?”
“No!” I said.
“Kids today. Ba-a-ad,” he said, crossing his arms and settling back on his stool.
“I’m not bad!” Artie cried.
“Not yet,” the man said, spitting out slivers. “But just you wait.”
We stormed out. I wanted to slam the door, but it was glass with hinges that eased it closed. I marched ahead. Artie trotted behind me, saying loudly, “I’m good!”
A man in a dirty coat came along pushing a cart. He stopped and said in a gravelly voice, “Just how good are you, kid?”
“Really good!” Artie said. He didn’t even notice the man had a beard. That’s how mad he was.
“Show us. Sing a song or something.”
“I’m a little teapot short and stout . . .” Artie began. He added the actions — one hand on his waist, the other stuck straight out while he tipped over and poured some imaginary tea onto the sidewalk.
Somebody with tattoos was coming out of the Pit Stop Mart, and he stopped to watch. A woman in the coin laundry smiled through the window. When Artie finished singing, everybody clapped. He took a bow.
“You are good,” the man with the cart said. He lifted the plastic sheet off his stuff and started rooting around. “Here. This is for you. It’s the Bird of Happiness.”
It was a plastic bird with feathers glued all over it and wires sticking out of its feet. Some of the feathers had fallen off so it looked diseased. The woman from the laundromat came out and gave Artie the change she didn’t need for the dryer and the tattooed man offered everybody gum. All because my funny little brother sang a kindergarten song.
That’s the thing about Artie. He is good. He’s the good thing that came out of a bad thing.
When I remembered that, I felt better.
If worst came to worst, I figured I could get him to sing and dance while I passed around a hat.
4
AFTER SCHOOL THE next day Mrs. Gill said she needed to speak with me. First I had to wait while she walked up and down the squirming line of kids, checking that they all had their shoes on the correct feet and their backpacks zipped and their own paper-plate ladybugs, not someone else’s.
I remembered being in that line. When your mother showed up, or your brother, or whoever was assigned to pick you up, Mrs. Gill sang out your name and you got to fly away.
Today Artie was the last one and he looked pretty cross as Mrs. Gill waved me into the room. He had his grumpy face on.
“How are you, Curtis?
“Fine.”
“How’s everything at home?”
“Great.”
“Artie?” Mrs. Gill said. “You may have Happy back now.”
Artie pulled his bottom lip up to its normal place and dashed over to Mrs. Gill’s desk. The Bird of Happiness was in the top drawer. Artie grabbed it and rubbed it all over his face.
“Poor Happy,” he told it. “Were you scared in that dark drawer all alone?”
“Bring Happy here please, Artie,” said Mrs. Gill in that firm, kind, kindergarten-teacher voice that is impossible to disobey. When Artie brought the bird over, Mrs. Gill said, “I won’t take him from you again, Artie, but you must let Curtis see what I’m talking about.” Mrs. Gill pointed to the wires in the hideous plastic feet. “Curtis,” she said, “someone got poked today.”
“By accident!” Artie wailed.
“By accident, but it still hurt. Poor Thompson. These are sharp wires. We can’t have things with sharp wires in the classroom, Artie.”
“He’ll leave it at home,” I said.
“I can’t,” Artie said. “I need Happy. If I don’t have Happy, I’m sad.”
“You only got Happy yesterday,” I said. “You weren’t sad before you got him.”
“I was so! I miss Mom!” And he started to bawl.
Mrs. Gill reached for him and pulled him close.
“Curtis?” she asked. “Is your mother away?”
Just yesterday I had been thinking how special Artie was, how funny and adorable when he sang “I’m a Little Teapot” outside the laundromat. Now I wanted to grab that ugly, bald bird and stuff it down his throat.
I remembered Mrs. Burt saying, “Oh, shut up!” I wanted to say it now. Oh, shut up, Artie!
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
But I didn’t, or Mrs. Gill would know for sure that I was lying when I told her, “She’ll be gone for two days. Our neighbor’s looking after us.”
Before Mrs. Gill could ask Artie if this was true, he stopped kissing Happy and said, “Mrs. Burt?”
“Yes,” I said. “Mrs. Burt’s looking after us tonight. Tonight and tomorrow night. Then Mom will be back.”
“She’ll be back tomorrow night?”
“The day after that,” I said, and Artie smiled and wiped his tears away.
We left school and headed for the store. Artie wanted Happy to sit on his shoulder. I explained that for Happy to sit on his shoulder, I would have to poke the wires through his shirt. Then he’d have holes in his shirt.
“Small holes.”
“All right,” I said. I was trying not to let him see how mad I was, but my hands were shaking, I was so mad. I just wanted to get to the Pit Stop Mart and buy some food, but now I had to stop and wire the plastic bird onto Artie’s shoulder.
When I finished, it flopped right over.
Artie stood him up. “Ow,” he said. “The wires poked me!”
“Now you know how that other kid felt.”
I walked on so Artie had no choice but to trot after me. He held Happy upright, then let him go. Flop! He did it again. Flop!
“He won’t sit up,” Artie complained.
“He’s sleeping,” I said, though I really wanted to say that Happy was dead.
“Oh,” Artie said. “Then shhh.”
I was happy not to say anything. Until we reached the Pit Stop Mart, we didn’t speak.
There was a different clerk this time who was talking on the phone in another language. She barely looked at us as we moved down the aisle, filling the basket.
“Happy wants a Slushie,” Artie said.
“Too bad,” I said. This made Artie suck in his lips. He trudged along behind me with the bird flopped over on his shoulder.
“What do birds eat?” he asked after a minute.
“Seeds,” I said, though I should have said bread. It was already in the basket.
“Happy wants seeds.”
“No seeds,” I said.
I should have just bought a package of sunflower seeds. They were cheap and good for you, but I knew what would happen. It would be too hard for Artie to shell them. I would have to sit there for a week doing it for him, all so the dead, bald bird wired to his shoulder could pretend to eat. Then I would get fed up and Artie would snatch the package and spill them all over the carpet. It would be me, not him, on my hands and knees picking them up one by one.
“You have a grumpy face,” Artie said.
I swung around and in a low, hissing voice said, “Do you remember what I told you about that kid Brandon Pennypacker? How he spat in my food? How he shrank my side of the room? Do you want to go and live with Brandon? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you go around telling people that Mom’s away. They are going to send you to live with Mrs. Pennypacker and you won’t have Mom and you won’t have me. You’ll have Brandon.”
Artie’s eyes rolled back in his head and his face went all purple. He shrieked and flung himself down and pounded the floor of Pit Stop Mart with his hands and feet.
The clerk was still talking on the phone. I knelt and apologized to Artie. I asked him to stop crying. When I tried to cover his mouth, the monster inside him bit me, so I left him there screaming and ran up the aisle where I’d seen toothbrushes and deodorant. I grabbed a bottle of baby lotion and dumped some in my hand. Then I ran back to Artie and smeared his face with it. He stopped screaming right away and sat up spitting.
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