Happy Baby

by Stephen Elliott

  “No,” I say from the porch, taking a drag from Toby’s cigarette and handing it back to him. “I’ve never seen anyone walk like a hamster.”

  “Again,” Nettles says. He’s holding his hat in his left hand and running his right over his scalp.

  “That’s all right,” John says, pulling up his pants. “We’ll do it one net at a time.”

  “Don’t ask me for shit,” Hunter says. Hunter’s big like John, but thick and solid. Hunter’s dangerous because he’s stupid and he’s only your friend when he wants something. One time I went with Hunter to his home on the west side. Grown men recognized Hunter and moved out of his way. It was the afternoon and his mother greeted us in a transparent peach nightgown holding a glass full of ice. “Hello boys,” she said. When she recognized us her expression changed and she told us to make some sandwiches.

  “Go get your boys, big man,” Kevin says, pretending to throw the ball at Hunter’s head. Hunter puts his hands in front of his face. “Get ’em as big as they come so I can knock ‘em down like bowling pins. Get in the game, Theo.” He’s holding the ball upside down in his palm. “Shoot it up, lightbulb.” He bounces the ball to me at the free throw line. “North side, make it take it. First bucket for two.”

  “Lightbulb,” Hunter laughs. “That’s messed up.”

  “You do have a big head,” John says to me.

  “I’m going to pass you like the wind, fatso,” I say. I turn the basketball over. I feel good. I’m going to have a good game. I hear the back door close as Toby goes back in the house.

  “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” John says.

  “Shoot the ball already,” Nettles says. “C’mon.”

  At night Cateyes leaves the radio playing beneath his pillow. His light snoring filters along the edges of the music, endless background noise, fast muffled house beats with repetitive lyrics: it’s not over, no it’s not over, it’s not over. Occasionally I can hear a gunshot from the projects, or the fence rattling in the backyard. Sometimes I hear sirens, but usually the sirens are part of the song. If I reach below the pillow to turn the radio off Cateyes will wake up and I’ll have to fight him.

  Cateyes’s small mustache catches bits of moonlight. He smiles when he sleeps and he never moves. I creep past his bed and out to the hall just as Dante is stepping from the bathroom. We stare at each other, then Dante disappears into his room.

  I lock Toby’s door behind me. Toby sits on his bed with his back to the window. He’s not wearing socks or a shirt, and his torso is pale, freckled, and hairless. Ladders of scars rising from his shoulders to his elbows. He puts his thumbs up and I nod and give him two thumbs up.

  “Hell yeah,” he says, swinging his fists through the air.

  “Keep it low,” I say. “Dante’s lurking.”

  Toby’s last roommate got sent to Saint Charles, long-term, so Toby has a room to himself for a little while. The empty bed is stripped, the naked mattress faded with brown and red stains. Toby’s room seems sparse and spacious with just him living in it, even though it just barely fits the two beds and dressers. He has an AC/DC poster and a Friday the 13th poster on the inside of the door, the killer in a hockey mask stalking forward. I sit down next to Toby; he bends his knees toward me. I pull the crumpled cellophane from my pocket while Toby lights a cigarette, takes a drag, and puts it in my mouth. “This rules,” Toby says.

  “Welcome to the windowpane.” The windowpane is a red plastic tab with a silver lightning bolt jiggered unevenly across it.

  “How do we do this?” Toby asks. I move away from him and grip the outside of the tab with my thumb and index finger and place it on the dresser. Toby stands, leaning against me, breathing on my neck.

  “It’s supposed to be the same as four hits. Got any scissors?”

  “I have a knife.” Toby digs his hand under his mattress and pulls out a large pocketknife with a wooden handle and a scrap of metal screwed into its end.

  “Fuck,” I say. “Who are you going to kill with this thing?”

  “Your roommate,” he says.

  I pull the blade from the handle and it locks into place.

  I split the tab in half, digging the knife into the top of the dresser and leaving a big scratch that no one will ever notice. We each place a half under our tongue. I carve the anarchy A with a circle around it into the dresser.

  “Once you kill someone you can never go back,” I say, brushing the blade over my wrist and sucking on my cigarette as my skin breaks and a small drop of blood spills onto the floor.

  “Cut yourself?” Toby asks.

  “Just a little.”

  We smoke our cigarettes and wait. Then we light a couple more. Toby got a whole carton from somewhere. I stand against the dresser, then place my chin on top of the dresser in front of the knife and look into the grey piles of ash. Toby relaxes into his bed.

  “Lay down,” he says. “It feels good.”

  “I don’t feel anything yet.” The cigarette smoke is purple.

  One night we took acid in Toby’s room and couldn’t figure out how to get the door back open. I climbed out his window and across the fire escape as if it were a monkey bar and swung through the window into my bedroom next door. Maybe I’ll do that again. I like the way the stairs feel beneath my feet. You can use them for balance but if you try to put any weight on them they fall away from you. If I slipped I would have died but I felt like a superhero that night, two stories above the city, climbing in the air, the wind spearing through the towers, my feet against something unsteady. I could see the orange stripe of the hospital buried like a treasure inside the projects.

  “There’s a lot of people I want to kill,” he says.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” I ask. I push the smoke from my mouth slowly so that it covers my face. I think of melting rain and buildings humming like speakers. I want to laugh. Everything is so damn funny. I think of a city blanketed in fog, a horn sounding through the alleyways and long-nosed detectives in trench coats searching for clues. My father used to quote Humphrey Bogart. My father was killed with a shotgun at close range. My mother died shortly after that. She had multiple sclerosis and one day I came home late from school and her chin was on her chest, and I knew her head had fallen forward and she had been unable to breathe. I press my teeth together and my ears start to ring. It dawns on me that Toby probably has killed someone. Definitely Cateyes has, and Hunter. Hunter is big and dangerous. He once beat Cateyes to within an inch of his life and when Cateyes was lying unconscious Hunter kicked him in the back of his head. And Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, I’m sure Kevin’s killed someone. I don’t understand why Kevin even works here. I think Kevin is like Jesus. He’s trying to teach us something. He said once he’d been at a college in California for a year on a basketball scholarship but had to return to the state. One time he asked me if I was high and I admitted I was and he gave me a piece of chicken that had been fried with honey inside of it. I’ve never tasted anything like it. He always has rolls of money in his pocket. When I asked him why he works here he just said that it was a good job for a thug.

  Toby thinks about it for a second, like he’s considering lying. Then he says no, he’s never killed anyone. I wave my cigarette like a wand because I’m not sure if he chose to lie or not. I write my name in the air and try to inhale some of the smoke.

  “You’re my only friend,” Toby says, staring into the ceiling, desperately squeezing his legs together and rubbing his hands over his pockets. “I cut myself with that knife before, a bunch of times. We’re blood brothers. We need to back each other up.”

  “We need to not make any waves. I’m not your Tonto or Lone Ranger. I couldn’t back you up if I tried.”

  “Let’s go get my stepdad.” He always wants to go find his stepfather on the north side. He blames his stepfather for his mother kicking him out of the house. After she kicked him out he burned down the Wheels Warehouse on Devon and they caught him and put him in the mental hospital. Then th
ey discharged him here. People used to call him Crazy Toby, but it didn’t really fit and people stopped calling him that.

  I stretch my arms as far as they’ll go. I feel like exercising. I wonder if I could exercise without moving. Toby’s freckles are spreading like a red rash over his body. “What’s happening to you?”

  Toby’s arms are wrapped around his knees. He looks like a beetle turned on his back. “You look like a clown,” he says, the corners of his mouth dry and white. When he says something he leaves his mouth open. I had never realized before this moment that people always close their mouths after they say something. Everything’s different. I take a deep breath and hold it for as long as I can, then release the air slowly. It feels like a finger rubbing my lungs. I do it again.

  “I’m understanding things,” I say. The walls are water. This must be what scuba diving is like. “I think I get it.”

  “You look like a killer clown. The kind that kills children. Going from home to home killing children. A psycho killer in a clown suit. Hey, clown killer.”

  “How can you tell without opening your eyes?” I light another cigarette and smoke two cigarettes at once then put the smaller one out, pushing it into the tray and studying the broken paper and last weeds of tobacco inside the ash. I hold my cigarette as close as I can to my hand without burning myself. Toby relaxes his legs and lays flat on the bed. He’s serene and perfectly still. “I’ll kill you,” I say, crawling over him, next to the wall, stretching my mouth and twisting my neck, folding my fingers so my hands look like paws. I tense my shoulders then roll them back. Lick my teeth. Toby tenses his muscles, forcing me closer to the wall.

  “Don’t touch me, faggot.”

  “You’re untouchable,” he says, his eyes closed, motionless. Then a laugh escapes from him, like a bubble in a swimming pool.

  We laugh for hours and hours.

  There’s a hand in my hair, stretching along my scalp. I was just falling asleep and now the sun is coming through the windows, flooding the room. “Get up,” Yolanda says quietly.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She puts a finger to her lips, glances at Cateyes, who hasn’t moved, the radio still playing beneath his head. I try to rub my eyes. I’m so tired. The clock reads 8 a.m. I can still feel the acid coursing through me. I feel like my skin is too tight over my bones and like my blood is thin and moving too fast.

  “Yes,” Yolanda says. “Get up. I’m not coming in early again.”

  We drive down 55th to the school. Yolanda drives a small Honda with a vanilla Christmas tree hanging from the mirror. I want to go back to sleep but more than that I want to stay in this car.

  “We have a deal,” she says in front of the school. She’s turned the car off. We still have our seatbelts on. A line of kids are waiting to go in the main door. I don’t recognize any of them.

  “What deal?”

  “You have to go to school for the rest of the week.”

  “Why would I do that?” Already I know I will, because I love her and she came to get me. The line is disappearing into the building. I’ll do whatever she wants.

  “Don’t play games with me,” she says. She’s wearing short red shoes that match her lipstick. “I can’t wake you up and drive you every day. You have to take responsibility for yourself. You know what I do when I’m not at Stevenson?” I shake my head. “I have a second job, in a club downtown, serving drinks to people that pay too much money for their clothes and don’t know the value of anything. I have to pay all my student loans so I work eighty hours a week. I am not impressed by victims or by young men who don’t take responsibility for themselves.”

  The line is gone. The stairs are cement and empty. The first bell has rung. The school looks like a fortress. “Can you take care of yourself?” she asks. “Or did I waste my time this morning?”

  “I will.”

  “If you have perfect attendance for a week maybe I’ll drive you again next Thursday.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I know you can. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “I’ve heard that one,” I say, opening the car door.

  “Be good,” she calls after me.

  Everyone is gathered at my doorway. Toby and Cateyes are having a face-off. Cateyes has been stealing from people. Toby went in Cateyes’s drawers and found his sweater. Toby always wears Bugle Boy. We get $30 a month for clothing allowance. I bought a Bugle Boy shirt once to look like Toby and wore it when I went back to my old neighborhood. My friend Taro asked me why

  I was dressed like I was. “Are you hoping to grow into those clothes later?” he said. I haven’t been back to my neighborhood since then. It’s too far away anyway and it’s dangerous hitchhiking the Drive. Another time I bought Nikes downtown but I got mugged getting off at the Fifty-fifth Street train station and they took my shoes. They also took the receipt, so I lost my next month’s clothing money as well.

  “Who said you could go through my drawers?” Cateyes asks. He peels his shirt off. We’re like savages. Everybody is always half naked around here. He drapes his shirt over his dresser. He pushes his hands together, flexing his chest. I’m sitting on the end of my bed. The room smells of Cateyes’s Aqua Velva, smells like he’s been dumping it on the floor. This is not going to go well for me. Cateyes’s body is compact, with muscle wrapping around him like rope. He gave himself the name Cateyes because he considers himself very good-looking. Once, he took off his glasses and told me to look into his eyes. “You see,” he said. “Green, with gold flakes.” But his eyesight keeps getting worse and his glasses thicker. His real name is Harmon. He’s not who he thinks he is. He sits at night with workbooks studying for the GED, but he never learned how to read. Soon he’ll be blind and I’ll have to lead him around by the hand. He takes his glasses off and places them on top of his shirt. Toby and Cateyes are inches apart and Cateyes cranes his head. “You’re next,” he says to me over his shoulder. His body is the color of fake wood. Up and down his arms above his brand and around his chest are blue-ink tattoos too faded to be made out. The muscles in his back are like wings.

  Hunter, John, Nettles, Waukee, Keef, and Dante are crowded behind Toby, stopping him from going somewhere. Everybody loves to see a fight. “Go, man,” Dante says. Even I could beat Dante up. I hate him more than I hate anybody. He goes to all of his classes and collects his education bonus every week, which he keeps in a bank account. On Sundays his mother picks him up and takes him to church. She dresses fancy and always asks loudly if anyone would like to go with. We never say no, we just don’t answer her. I like to think if my mother was still around and she came to see me here she’d bring something for everyone. People would be jealous because my mom is so cool. I want to do something horrible to Dante.

  “You’re a thief,” Toby says, and Cateyes turns in one motion, his arm snaps, his fist landing in Toby’s mouth. A loud crack, like a tooth breaking. Then Toby is swinging back in windmills. His arms are longer than Cateyes’s but Cateyes is stronger. Toby is skinny. He’s leaning back to create distance, but the crowd is forcing them together. I turn to the window. Kevin is outside, alone, shooting baskets and chasing down the ball. I can hear the ball bouncing above the screams. Kevin seems happy and oblivious. I wonder if Kevin’s lonely. I would like to be lonely.

  The fight tumbles back toward me and I jump out of its way onto my bed. Cateyes hits his head on my bed frame as they roll over each other. I can see everybody’s head from where I’m standing and Cateyes’s elbow, rising and falling, like a drill. The loud slaps of muscle and bone and the quiet scuffling against the furniture.

  “What’s going on up here?” It’s Yolanda’s voice, coming from the hallway. Cateyes’s fist is raised, a thin smear of blood over his knuckles. Yolanda’s arms at her sides, her long skirt with only her ankles showing before her flat shoes. She’s so small, her body fills the door frame like a painting. I’m standing on my bed against the wall. The circle of boys tries to
spread out but there’s little room. Dante is the first to slide past Yolanda into the hallway. Cateyes stands; Toby doesn’t get up.

  “We’re just playing,” Cateyes says. Everyone is looking away somewhere, places just in front of their faces, empty spots.

  “Playing is for children,” Yolanda says. Nobody says anything. We’ve never seen her angry before. There’s not enough of her to go around. It would take years to know somebody, meeting that person for one hour a week, and we don’t have years. Her anger is gathering and I’m worried about what’s going to happen. The worst thing you can call a child is a child. Someone should have told her that. I want to open the window and yell to Kevin to get upstairs quickly. I want to hide behind Yolanda and go with her when she leaves.

  “Is this how you prove your manhood?” Yolanda asks. Cateyes’s shoulders sink lightly. Waukee and Nettles squeeze past Yolanda and down the stairs. Keef and John follow. Cateyes moves to the dresser where he takes his glasses and wipes them with his shirt before putting them on. Hunter’s looking at Yolanda, his thick hungry lips, chewing slowly as if he had grass in his mouth.

  “You want to see my manhood?” Cateyes asks, unbuttoning his pants, showing his pubic hair. Yolanda’s mouth opens, her clean red lipstick, her skin so creamy it’s wet.

  “C’mere,” Hunter says suddenly, snatching at her sleeve. Yolanda yanks her arm up, backing out the doorway, her shirt catching on the latch. She pulls frantically and her sleeve rips. Hunter catches her wrist and shoves his fat hand inside her skirt, banging her into the open door, and Yolanda screams. Kevin looks toward my room and drops the basketball and runs inside. Hunter lets Yolanda go and she runs down the stairs.

  The police have come and gone but they didn’t take Cateyes away. Yolanda is gone and Veronica has taken her place. Veronica is the other female staff. She has a hole in her cheek the size of a filter and she swears at you if you ask her for anything but at least you know where you stand. Nobody likes Veronica. There’ll be meetings tomorrow, social workers from downtown and the school. We’ll lose privileges: phone, television, visitors. Toby is downstairs on the couch in the living room with ice on his face. I remember the knife beneath Toby’s mattress and then Cateyes walks into the room. We have the largest bedroom and when