The clerk bent over us on the floor. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Did you open that?” She pointed to the bottle in my hand. “You have to buy it now.”
“I want to buy it.” I put it in my basket. It cost $5.99 for a tiny, tiny bottle.
We got up off the floor and followed the clerk back to the counter, Artie rubbing his face, trying to get the lotion off.
“That doesn’t smell like Mom! Not at all!”
I was too shocked by the awful thing I’d said to Artie to remember to feel nervous about the credit card. I passed it over, the note folded around it like before, but she didn’t even read it. She just swiped the card and handed me a pen.
Now it almost seemed funny — me slathering Artie, him screaming. I glanced at him working his tongue in his mouth to get rid of the taste of the lotion. The bird was flopped backward over his shoulder. I laughed and he laughed.
The machine spat out the receipt. “Declined,” the clerk said.
“What?”
“Declined.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means the card’s no good.”
“I used it a couple of days ago.”
“Well, you can’t use it anymore. It’s probably maxed out.”
“What does that mean?”
She turned the card over and read the name. “That’s your mom? She’s over her limit. Go home and ask her if she’s got another card.”
“Okay,” I said, stunned.
“I’ll just put this behind the counter till you get back.” She lifted the basket down.
“She’s at work.”
“Okay. Do me a favor then and put the milk back.”
I returned the milk to the cooler and she didn’t mention the lotion I was supposed to pay for.
As soon as we were out of the store I sat down on the steps of the Pit Stop Mart and pitched a fit of my own. I put my face in my hands and cried for the first time since Mom left.
Artie just stood there. After a minute he started stroking my hair and when that didn’t work, he ripped Happy off his shoulder and made him hop all over my head and tweet. The wires stabbed my scalp and hurt like hell, but I was glad. It made me cry harder.
Finally Artie gave up and started bawling, too. I figured we’d better do our crying at home or somebody would call the police.
Mrs. Burt was standing in her yard, her body squeezed between the walker’s chrome rails. She had the hose out and, when she saw us, she started waving it in the air so the water sprayed all around her, catching the light.
“You-hoo! Fellas!”
And then we saw it — a rainbow, shimmering above her.
“You still got my plate!” she called.
And Artie pulled away from me and went running to her, full tilt.
“WHERE DO YOU think she’s got to?” Mrs. Burt asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Has she ever done something like this before?”
I didn’t answer.
“I see,” said Mrs. Burt.
We were sitting at her kitchen table, Artie drawing a picture of Mrs. Burt. I knew it was her because he’d drawn the walker, making it look like a ladder. In her hand was the hose with a rainbow shooting out of it.
After a big gulp of tea, Mrs. Burt patted her knitted cap and said, “I hate to tell you this, Curtis, but if she’s done it before, she’ll do it again.”
“She won’t,” I said.
“People never change.”
“They do,” I said.
“I change,” Artie said. “I change when my clothes are dirty. I wash them in the tub!”
“I’ve got a washing machine,” Mrs. Burt offered. Then she asked, “Don’t you have relatives?”
I told her my grandma died when my mom was in grade nine. All we really needed was to figure out the bills and the rent. I asked Mrs. Burt if she could help with that and she sent me home to get the stuff.
In the apartment I collected everything I could find, including the government check.
While I was there the phone rang. I froze, staring at it. If I answered, it would be Nelson, the landlord, demanding the rent. If I didn’t, it would be Mom. Mom calling to say where she was and what had happened and when she was coming back.
“Hello?” I said.
“Bring over some crayons or something so he can color his picture,” Mrs. Burt said.
I DIDN’T REALLY understand how credit cards worked. There was this thing called interest. If you didn’t pay back the credit card company every month, they added interest to your bill. The longer it took to pay, the more you had to pay, so the people with the least money ended up paying the most.
“That’s why I never touch the things,” Mrs. Burt said. “I’m not going to be cheated by anybody.” She looked at the Child Tax Benefit check. “We could probably get this cashed.”
“How?” I asked.
“Some poor little old lady could bring it in.” And she smiled, showing her tea-colored teeth. “Then you can use it to pay the phone and the electricity. Or you can let the phone go and just use mine.”
“What if Mom tries to call?”
Mrs. Burt looked at the ceiling and sighed. “You’re right, though. If the phone’s disconnected, people get suspicious. You should pay it.”
“What about the rent? I don’t even know how much it is.”
“Ask him when he calls again. Say she lost his number. That’s why she didn’t leave out the check.”
“But I don’t have a check to leave out.”
“Don’t you have her checkbook?”
“I never looked.”
“Well, look and leave out the check. It’ll take a while to bounce. That’ll buy you some time.” With both hands on the walker, she hoisted herself up with a grunt. “Let’s eat. Are you boys hungry?”
Ha ha ha.
I cleared the papers away and set the table. Then she asked me to put Artie’s drawing on the fridge and carry the pot of chicken soup over to the table. The soup was delicious. Even Happy, who drank a few sips out of Artie’s spoon, said it was.
Mrs. Burt said, “It’s homemade. You probably never had homemade soup before. If there’s any left,” — I was filling my bowl for the third time — “you can take it home. It’ll taste even better tomorrow.”
After supper, Artie and I cleaned up while Mrs. Burt drank her tea at the table. She watched Artie, her eyes crinkling at the corners, as he carried the dishes from the table to the sink. She said we were good, helpful boys. Then she patted the flat of her hand against her chest. She kept patting until, finally, she burped.
“Pardon me,” she said.
The phone rang. It was an old-fashioned one with a cord that didn’t reach all the way to the table, so Mrs. Burt had to get up.
“You just phoned yesterday,” she said to the caller. “What? No. No!”
I felt like I was eavesdropping and, anyway, Artie was grinding his eyes.
“We have to go,” I whispered.
She clamped a hand tight over the receiver. “Come over tomorrow, then. We’ll go to the bank and get it done.” Then she wiggled her fingers at Artie and showed him her scary teeth. He showed his unscary ones back.
On the way to the door I heard her say, “Nobody. Nothing. I’m fine. I am perfectly fine. Quit calling all the time.”
5
I FOUND THE checkbook in a drawer in the kitchen. Luckily, a record book was attached so it was easy to figure out the rent. Mom wrote a check to Nelson for the same amount the first day of every month. I did the same, forging her signature again. I was getting good at it. The next morning I stuck it in the metal box in the lobby. Then we
went across the street to tell Mrs. Burt.
“They charge that much?” Mrs. Burt said. “You in the penthouse or something?”
“What’s a penthouse?” Artie asked, mouth full of toast.
She explained that it was the fanciest apartment at the top of the building.
“We’re at the bottom,” Artie told Mrs. Burt.
“You sure you don’t want eggs?” she asked. “Breakfast is my specialty. You know what I used to do for a living? I was a cook. A cook in a logging camp. A mulligan mixer. That’s the slang for it. I can put on a spread like you never seen.”
We had eggs, over-easy for me, scrambled for Artie.
After breakfast, Mrs. Burt phoned for a taxi. Artie watched for it out the window and when it showed up, he squealed, “It’s yellow!” I helped Mrs. Burt down the front steps. Artie carried the walker on his back and the driver put it in the trunk.
Too bad the trip was so short — just up the hill and a few blocks down Broadway where our bank was.
I didn’t feel so nervous with an adult. We were even allowed to go straight to the front of the line because of the walker.
“I guess this contraption’s good for something,” Mrs. Burt whispered.
She took the check and the bills we had to pay out of her purse and explained the whole situation to the teller, about her daughter-in-law being at work and asking her to get it done.
“I got the boys with me today,” she said in a fake sweet-old-lady voice. She let go of the walker to put a hand on each of our shoulders.
“Whatever’s left, just put it in my daughter-in-law’s account,” she said, and I almost burst out, “No!”
Outside I told her, “We need the rest of the money, Mrs. Burt. We really need it.”
“Don’t you worry,” she said in her normal not-sweet voice. “I got a plan.”
“What?”
“Later. First we got to pick up some food for you growing boys.”
We took another taxi to the supermarket because, Mrs. Burt said, the Pit Stop Mart was run by crooks who charged too much and so was the supermarket for that matter, but what could she do? She used to grow her own vegetables, even here in the city, and can or freeze them, but now it was too much work. Now she only grew flowers.
Because she had the grocery cart to keep her steady, she didn’t need the walker. Artie stepped between the bars and held it waist-high, the back half dragging along behind him as he clopped and whinnied along the aisles. Mrs. Burt pointed to things and I put them in the cart.
“If you see something you like, tell me,” she said. Artie neighed at snack foods he saw on TV and she said, “You don’t eat that crap, do you? Oh, I’m going to fix you something better than that.”
The cart filled up. It teetered with food and Mrs. Burt paid for it in cash. Then we rolled it out the door and got in the third taxi of our lives and let the man from the supermarket load in all the bags.
MRS. BURT SLID the sandwich off the flipper and onto my plate. “Where’d the pickles get to?”
The things that needed to be in the fridge were already in the fridge, but the rest of the food was all over the counters and the kitchen floor. When we found the pickles, I was the only one strong enough to get the lid off.
“You ready to hear my plan?” Mrs. Burt asked.
My mouth was full of sandwich — ham and cheese dipped in egg and fried like French toast. It was the best sandwich I’d ever had in my life.
“I was going to pay you, right? Instead, how about you come over here to eat and do your laundry? Then you run the errands I need. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. We both got our pride, right? You’ll be home to answer the phone if your mother ever calls.”
I swallowed and said, “She’s going to.”
On a scale of one to ten, I ranked her calling a nine.
Mrs. Burt said, “Well, it’s a good thing I paid that phone bill then.”
That was Saturday. Nelson called again that afternoon to ask where his check was.
“In the box,” I told him.
“For cripe’s sake, I told her to call me when she put it in.”
“She couldn’t find the number.”
“For cripe’s sake!” He slammed the phone down.
FRIED CHICKEN. I don’t mean Chancey’s Chicken. It didn’t even taste like Chancey’s. Everything we’d ever eaten that was called fried chicken was not even in the same family as what Mrs. Burt cooked for us. Maybe Chancey was selling fried rats.
“This was pretty popular with the fellas out in the bush,” Mrs. Burt told us. “You wouldn’t believe how much they ate. I’d stand at that stove cooking and cooking and they wouldn’t let me step away for a minute. It was a woodstove, too. Not electric like this. This here is a sissy stove. I’d be chucking in the wood with one hand and frying up the chicken with the other and whipping up another batch of johnnycake with the other.”
“That’s three hands,” I pointed out.
“You’re sharp. I needed three hands working up there! Try the johnnycake, Artie.”
Artie loved the johnnycake.
“Try the coleslaw,” she said.
He did not love the coleslaw. There was dessert, too. Apple cobbler with ice cream.
After supper I helped Mrs. Burt down the basement stairs. I’d brought over our dirty clothes in a pillowcase. She was surprised a boy knew how the washer worked. Then she told us that she used to wash the men’s clothes in the logging camp using an old-fashioned wringer washer because there wasn’t any electricity.
“I washed their clothes once a season whether they needed it or not. Even the Stanfields.” She poked Artie. “That’s a joke. They were so filthy they stood up by themselves.”
Stanfields were long underwear, she told us.
We went back upstairs, Mrs. Burt very slowly. While we cleaned up, she drank her tea and thumped her chest with the flat of her hand, like she’d done the night before.
Artie asked her why.
“I’m trying to bring up the gas. I get terrible gas after I eat. Here, give me a pat.” She leaned forward in the chair so Artie could pat between her shoulder blades.
“Harder.”
He patted harder.
“Harder!”
He really whacked her one and Mrs. Burt ribbited like a frog.
“Pardon me!” she said, and we all laughed.
Sunday the menu was pancakes (she called them flapjacks) and sausages for breakfast, and ham and scalloped potatoes for supper and leftover cobbler. For lunch we had flapjack sandwiches. That was Artie’s idea. I watered Mrs. Burt’s garden and cleaned up the dishes and Artie thumped her on the back. The person who called before called again and Mrs. Burt was just as rude.
Later, at night in our own apartment across the street from Mrs. Burt’s house, Artie and I lay together in the hideaway bed listening to Happy tweet his goodnight song to us.
“Tweety, tweety, tweet, tweet! Tweety, tweety, tweet, tweet!”
“Happy’s sure happy,” I said.
“Me, too,” Artie said.
I knew he was happy, because I hadn’t had to use to the Economizer Extra-Strength Hand and Body Lotion for two nights in a row. And because, when I put my hands under my pajama top, I felt my stomach round and hard and full. Artie’s would feel the same, if he’d let me touch him, which he wouldn’t, because he’s extremely ticklish. Still, I asked him why.
“Why are you so happy, Artie?” I wanted to hear what he would say about Mrs. Burt’s cooking.
“I’m happy because Mom’s coming home tomorrow,” he said.
Happy went on tweeting above our heads, flying at the end of Artie’s arm.
“That’s what you said, Curtis. That’s what you told Mrs. Gill.”
“I s
aid in a few days.”
“You said two sleeps. I’ve been counting.”
And so I had to tell him about Brandon Pennypacker again. I had to tell him in case Mom didn’t show up the next morning. Because if she didn’t, Artie might tell Mrs. Gill, or some kid at school. Then Social Services would come and take me and Artie away and put us in foster care. And we would be separated.
I was the same age as Artie when I went into foster care. A woman from Social Services came to our apartment to pick me up. I was waiting with Mrs. Gill. Waiting for Mom, who never came home for me.
Through the city, over the bridge, up the side of the mountain. That was where the Pennypackers lived, where trees pressed in all around the houses and even after it stopped raining the water dripped off their shaggy branches for hours. There were no apartment buildings, only houses, all of them with huge garages big enough for two cars. The Pennypackers had two cars. One for Mrs. Pennypacker and one for Mr. Pennypacker, though he was almost never around to drive it because he worked out of town and only came home once a month.
Mrs. Pennypacker welcomed me into their home.
“You are so lucky to be placed here. Because I have my own boy, too. Brandon. He’s nine. Brandon!” she called. “You get to share a room with Brandon. He’ll be a big brother to you. Brandon!!!!”
It was night and I was tired from everything that had happened that day. Mrs. Pennypacker opened a new toothbrush for me and put on the paste. She showed me which facecloth and towel to use. Then she left me alone.
When I was finished in the bathroom, I opened the door. Right behind it stood a heavy boy in striped pajamas.
Mrs. Pennypacker came up behind him and said, “Oh, good. You’ve met.” She handed me some striped pajamas, which turned out to be exactly the same as Brandon’s but in a smaller size.
As soon as I put them on, he said, “Those are mine, you know.”
My bed was on the right, Brandon’s on the left. There wasn’t any nightlight so I cried for a long time in the dark.
Then Brandon said, “Shut up. I can’t get to sleep.”
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