He didn’t reply, didn’t agree, but Melanie carried on as if he had. ‘Come and have a look at the den, JC.’
She opened the door onto a small room. Inside there was a large comfortable sofa covered in big floral cushions, an armchair, and a TV that nearly covered one wall, with a games console attached.
I heard a sharp gasp from behind me.
‘Why did you bring that down here?’ he was almost whispering.
Melanie’s smile sagged. ‘It wasn’t doing any good up there. I thought JC might as well…’
He dropped his suitcase onto the floor with a thud.
‘JC doesn’t need computer games.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you?’
I didn’t know what to say, which side to take – and it was clear that there were sides – so I shrugged.
‘There’s plenty to do here without getting addicted to technology,’ he said, and forced a smile.
Melanie held her hands up, as if surrendering. ‘Ohhhkay, honey. I just thought…’ She turned to me and smiled as well, and hers was a fake smile too, deployed to make a bad situation better.
‘Your dad’s right. There’s a lot to do here, and I’m sure you’re going to love it all.’
‘I will,’ I said. But I was still thinking about the computer games.
I had pretended not to be interested, but I was very interested.
We had some games at Mamie and Pepe’s house, but they didn’t last long. It would only be a week or two before someone fought over them and they ended up broken.
My favourite was a fantasy quest, where you played as a warrior or a magic man, and fought evil creatures such as elves or zombies.
I had been a warrior, with deep blue fighting armour and long, sharp horns on my head.
I had seen the cover of this game in the den.
And I longed to be a warrior again.
That first week was the best of my life. I know I said that about the week we spent at the hotel in my country, but this really was.
He was working most of the time. He told me that he worked as a trader – buying and selling steel. I didn’t really understand how he could do that. Why would someone buy metal if they couldn’t check the quality or weigh it to make sure they weren’t being cheated?
As he told me he waved his arm around, ‘This house and everything in it is built on steel, JC,’ he said.
I thought that was probably a good thing because I’d seen what happened to houses that were built on the earth.
He didn’t go out to an office, he worked from his study downstairs. When he made a good trade he would leave his desk and kiss Melanie on the cheek and tell her exactly how much money he had made. The sums were enormous. I couldn’t understand it, how just talking on the phone and pushing some buttons could earn him more than a year’s wages in a morning.
His success made Melanie very happy. Each time he emerged from his study, punching the air, she would hug him and call him clever, and smile as much as she had the time before.
I smiled too because I understood that money is good. Money stops people from living on the street under a piece of plastic.
But sometimes he lost money. Then he would stay in his study all night, staring at the screen as if he were trying to see where it had gone.
On those days we had to be very quiet and the only sound in the house would be him sighing, and the clink of the bottle against his glass, and Melanie would suggest an early bedtime, though I could hear that she was up until late talking to him in a low, soothing voice.
But the next day I would wake to the smell of his coffee and the sound of his voice on the phone as he made more deals.
‘You’ve gotta get back on the horse,’ he said to me once, right at the beginning. ‘Start over. It’s never too late to be a winner,’ he said, and I nodded because I knew that he was right.
Because I had slept on the ground, and now I was a winner on a horse.
That first week they took me on sightseeing trips around the city, to the cinema, to huge parks, and to restaurants at the top of skyscrapers and by the side of rivers.
Boy, it was like I was in a movie!
I was in America. I was living as an American boy, in a beautiful house, with a nice family. It was what we had all dreamed of in the orphanage all those years before.
There was only one problem.
I was still a secret.
Melanie didn’t seem to think about this much, but he did. ‘Someone’s got to be responsible,’ he said.
So when we were in public he told me not to talk.
He tried to stop Melanie from taking photos of us.
And he wouldn’t allow her to invite her friends over to meet me. ‘My oldest friends!’ she said. ‘They’re not going to turn us in to the police!’
‘They only have to mention him to the wrong person and that’ll be it,’ he said. ‘They’ll have JC on a plane within days, and us locked up awaiting trial for people smuggling. Is that really what you want for the boy, Melanie? Huh? Is that what you want for any of us?’
I don’t suppose he’ll come out today.
Maybe not for a few days. He looked so sick last time.
Do you think he’ll die?
I don’t want to wish that because Melanie wouldn’t like it if he died
but it’s hard not to.
What would happen to us if he did?
I can wish we could leave though. I know we deserved our punishment, but
You wagged!
You agree, don’t you?
But we can’t break out because he’d be angry. Anyway, the wire is too thick for us to cut without special tools.
And the police won’t help me.
Melanie would be arrested for what she did.
I’d never want her to go to prison, otherwise what’s the point in being here?
Also where would we go?
We have to stay here until she gets back.
She won’t be much longer.
I’m going to join you up here for a sleep, Boy.
I hope I don’t return to the dream about the son’s room.
It seemed so real. The first time I went in there was exactly like that, except that he didn’t catch me.
I had gone through the wrong doorway by mistake. I felt guilty, like I was intruding, because although no one lived there, it was like I could feel the son in that room.
But it didn’t stop me from going back the next day. I couldn’t help it. I had to see it properly, in the light. I’d never been in a room like that before. It was so full of Jake that it was almost like a person itself.
Like I was meeting him.
He had gone out to play tennis.
I told Melanie that I was tired, I even pretended to yawn, and she said she would let me rest while she did some gardening. Then I watched as she sat on the back door step, put on her little rubber shoes and went to the shed where the tools are kept.
Coming out, pushing the wheelbarrow in front of her, she shielded her eyes from the sun. She looked up at me standing in the window, and she waved, and I felt guilty about what I was going to do.
But as soon as she had gone round to the front of the house, I ran to the bedroom next to mine and slowly opened the door.
The curtains were closed, and I couldn’t open them, or turn on the light, so I stood in the doorway while the grey shapes changed into things I could recognise.
The room was larger than mine, with its own bathroom to the side.
The doors of the huge wardrobe hung slightly open, and I could see that it was full of clothes; T-shirts with baseball logos, hooded sweatshirts, smart shirts similar to the clothes they had bought for me when I arrived, but much smaller.
The bed was small too, the red duvet pulled back and ruffled, as if the son had only just left it, and there were black slippers kicked to one side.
Then the walls began to come into focus the posters with logos and characters I didn’t recognise, curling at the edges, against dark blue paint.
Dotted in between were smaller pieces of paper; certificates. One hundred yard swimming, Tennis Summer School, Fifth Grade Class Award. All with the same name written on the dotted lines, JAKE PEASMAN.
Next to his bed was a small table, a pile of comics, an empty glass and an old-fashioned alarm clock with big gold bells on the top. I put my ear to it. It was silent.
On a shelf there were models made from tiny coloured plastic bricks. One, some sort of a grey tower, was unfinished, and more bricks, the missing pieces, lay scattered at its base.
I thought of the broken buildings in my country.
In front of me there was a large wooden desk and an office-type chair. The carpet underneath was flattened in swirls marking the path of the wheels where the boy must have rolled. In the middle of the desk a monitor was connected to the Xbox that I had seen the day before. It was plugged in. The cover for the game lay open next to it.
A gust of wind slammed the door shut behind me, and the sight of his dressing gown, a dark blue lump dangling from a hook on the back, made me jump.
The phone rang downstairs. Melanie ran in from the backyard and picked it up.
‘Hello, yes, this is Melanie.’
She was silent for a moment, then sighed.
‘Well, that’s very disappointing news, but there must be other avenues to follow?’ She lowered her voice and I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation so I guessed that it was about me.
‘Yes, whatever it takes. Thank you. Goodbye.’
She was silent for a moment, then, instead of going back outside I heard the squeaks and groans of the stairs as she climbed up toward me.
I held my breath.
Melanie walked along the landing, past the room where I was hiding, then she paused outside my bedroom.
She called my name softly, but when there was no response she turned and went back downstairs and out to the backyard.
I should have left Jake’s room then. But I didn’t. I know that makes me a bad person. I know he’ll never forgive me. Nor will Melanie when she finds out.
I don’t blame them.
Because, Boy, I went over to the Xbox and I turned it on.
You’re snoring. Did you hear none of that?
Move over, I need to use you as a pillow.
A pillow stuffed with bones.
If I half shut my eyes, Boy, until everything goes blurry, you look like you could be in one of those Impressionist paintings that we went to see in the city.
Do you remember? I’m sure I told you about it.
It was when I hadn’t been here very long.
‘If he’s going to be our son the boy needs an education,’ he had said one morning.
Melanie looked up from the book she was studying. Did I tell you that she was learning my language? She already knew some words, but her pronunciation was terrible. I tried to help her when I could.
He said that it was a waste of time. He said that I needed to forget my language. Once he said, ‘Is it because you two want to talk about me behind my back?’ and it wasn’t a joke.
‘You know he can’t go to school yet,’ she said. ‘Not until his status is sorted out. Anyway, I’m teaching him as much as I can here.’
‘Education isn’t just about school though, is it, JC?’ He poked me as he spoke. It hurt a little, though I don’t think he meant it to. ‘Have you ever been to a gallery?’
I had no idea what he meant.
‘Have you seen paintings?’ he said. ‘Art.’
I nodded. ‘In the cathedral,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Real art. Not that religious trash.’
Melanie frowned.
‘Sorry,’ he held his hands up in surrender. Melanie smiled. He could always make her smile.
‘What d’you think?’ she asked me. ‘It might be fun. There’s an Impressionist exhibition on at a museum downtown. There won’t be anyone there we know, so it will be safe. Why don’t we all go?’
I suppose I said yes, because later that day we drove into the city centre.
The museum was a huge white building, with Roman pillars outside. I had never seen anything like it before and I wanted to stop and stare, but he told me to close my mouth, and pushed me ahead towards a turnstile, which hit me in the stomach with its steel bar.
Once through, Melanie took my hand and squeezed it as we listened to him arguing with the ticket man about how old I was. Without any ID to prove my age he came back and handed me a ticket with the word ADULT printed on it.
‘You can stick that in your scrapbook,’ Melanie said. She had decided to make a book to prove to the child protection services that I was being well looked after. Just in case.
‘Yes, keep it as evidence of our generosity,’ he said.
A frown flickered across Melanie’s face, but she said nothing except, ‘Ready, JC?’ and she led me into the first room.
If you’ve never been to a gallery, never seen paintings that stretch from the floor to a ceiling taller than two men standing on each other’s shoulders, I don’t think I could explain to you how it made me feel.
One after another, scenes of men and horses and war and love, and the ones I liked best were the images of God and heaven and angels and Jesus.
He wanted to rush us through those rooms. He said we had paid to see the Impressionists, and he didn’t want to spend time on Old Masters. But I did. I could see their veins bulge, the reflections in their eyes, I could almost feel the folds of their clothing, so perfect and so real, but more than real, super real, if you know what I mean. So real that I could have reached out and touched them, Boy.
That’s when it all went wrong.
We had only been there a few minutes, and he was already angry. Melanie was holding onto my arm, pointing and explaining things, and it was then that I saw the dog. Not a big, handsome dog like you. It was a little scruffy terrier hidden in the corner of a painting, like the artist had put it there as a game. It was the sort of thing that adults wouldn’t usually notice because they’re too busy looking at the main part of the picture.
I just had to do it. I just couldn’t believe that it was made of canvas and oil paint and imagination.
You would’ve done the same.
You would’ve sniffed the dog.
Or licked it.
Or jumped up and scratched the canvas.
All I did was touch the dog’s head
very gently
to make sure it
wasn’t real.
It wasn’t.
The alarm screamed. Everyone turned and looked at my hand still on the painting, and I froze.
After a second I dropped my arm, but it was much too late. He had seen. Everyone had seen.
That was the first time I was really scared of him.
I’ve been scared of adults many times. But at the orphanage, on the streets, in the hospital and at Mamie and Pepe’s house I had known the rules. If anyone broke them they knew what to expect. If they stole food they’d be slapped and have to miss dinner. If they swore at an adult, they would swear back at them and they would have to miss soccer. At the orphanage or on the street, for anything worse, they might be given a bruise.
So what made me scared of him?
I was scared of what I saw in his eyes.
It was a combination of anger and glee. He was angry about the chaos that I had caused, but he was happy because I was giving him a reason to hate me, to reject me, to say to Melanie that the adoption hadn’t worked out, that they should send me back.
‘It’s OK, JC,’ she said. ‘It was an accident. You’re not in trouble.’
And then his expression changed as he saw that Melanie’s love for me was shining like her eyes.
That she was on my side.
Did the same thing happen to you, Boy?
Maybe when they first adopted you?
He said once that you had chewed his most expensive shoes.
Was that when it happened?
Was that when he turned
against you?
Do you know that Jake had a picture of you? It’s in a frame on his bedside table. You’re all in it. You, him, Melanie, the whole family. The old family. He loved you, just like Melanie does. I can feel it.
We had to leave the gallery then. Melanie said that it would be for the best.
I have to move you, Boy, my left leg has gone to sleep.
That’s better.
Are you wondering how I know what the Impressionist paintings look like if I didn’t make it past the first few rooms?
Melanie showed me later on the computer. But I feel like I saw them in real life because all the paintings that we passed on our way out were blurred to me.
No, Boy, I’m not crying now. I’m sweating. It’s hot out here with you lying on me like this.
I have to move you over a few inches more.
This dumb doghouse is too small for both of us.
It’s morning again.
We must’ve missed the whole day.
You know what that means? It’s another day closer to when Melanie gets back.
You wagged!
You must be feeling much better if you’re wagging!
Oh, Boy, that’s such great news.
I’ll fetch you some water, wait there.
Here.
Well done!
I’ll bring you more.
I’m back, drink this.
No. I’m sorry.
There isn’t any more.
Yes, go and have a pee.
No, go outside Boy.
Too late.
At least it was only a dribble. I’ll kick some dust on it.
Come and settle down here again.
How are you asleep again, so soon?
I’m really thirsty.
Maybe if I sleep too there will be some water when we wake up.
He’s in the backyard, Boy!
He has a plastic bag with him, and he’s coming toward the run.
Look how he’s walking. He’s dragging his leg through the grass behind him, and his face is the colour of sheets at the hospital.
Goodnight, Boy Page 12
