Happy Baby

by Stephen Elliott

  “No.”

  “You gonna tell your boyfriend?”

  Larry moves aside and I step into the halls, which are empty, and past the dorm rooms. I try to catch my breath but my neck is tightening on me. I stick my tongue out of my mouth, stretch my lips as far as they will go. I pull on the corners of my mouth with my fingers. The floor shifts. I turn the corner toward class and stop and place my hands on my thighs. I let the fear run out of me, drain from my nose and my eyeballs. Wait for my breath to come back.

  They don’t give us knives. It’s hamburger night. Hamburger and French fries, so even the fork is unnecessary, but there it is. “You gonna eat that?” Marco asks and I shake my head. Marco pushes the hamburger into his face, filling his white spotty cheeks with the meat patty and the dry bread.

  “You know what we should do,” Petey says. “We’ll start our own basketball team. If we practice every day we can probably play for the Chicago Bulls. It’s just practice. Why not?”

  Marco snorts but the food in his mouth stops him from saying anything.

  “You can play basketball, right?” Petey says to me. There’s basketball in the yard after dinner but Petey and I never get to play. We hang out with Marco by the back, hoping not to be noticed.

  “I’m too short,” I tell him.

  “You’ll grow. I bet you’re seven feet before you’re twenty. How tall are you now?”

  “Five six.”

  “Seven feet for sure.”

  “How tall are you, Marco?”

  “Fuck you, Petey.”

  I turn away. Sometimes the optimism in Petey’s voice is disturbing. I turn back to my fork and its dull points. Not much of a weapon. I wouldn’t use it anyway. And I don’t have pockets, nowhere to put it. And it would probably be noticed, and that would be worse. Mr. Gracie can protect me from the other kids but not from the other guards. The guards can do anything. They make you hold out your hand and they hit you as hard as they can on your palm with a spoon. The pain rumbles through your whole body. They restrained one kid by tying him to a table. Then they forgot about him. They left him in a room tied to a table for three days, then he was taken to the hospital ward and treated for dehydration. Another guard choked a kid to death. Everybody knows about it. Nobody says anything. That guard stands at the front of the room by the food line, a big man with a sloping forehead and an enormous hard round gut hanging over his belt. There were talks of investigations but nothing came of it.

  Things seem normal enough. Still air and the sound of chewing. The meat smell. It’s not going to happen here. It’s not going to happen during dinner. I turn to Marco, who, done with his food, also looks around nervously. We’re unaffiliated. Traffic will not stop for us.

  “It’s going to happen in the yard,” Marco says.

  “I know. I know.” I touch the fork prongs. Hold the fork with one hand and gently push my other hand onto it.

  “If you were seven feet tall,” Petey says, “you’d get every rebound.”

  “If I was seven feet tall I’d put on a cape and fly away.”

  “We need a plan.” Marco wipes his mouth with the napkin. Of the three of us Marco is the only one who is actually a fighter. He’s held his own in most fights so far but he knows he is marked because of the swastika tattoo on his left forearm. Marco came into Western a month ago. He told me it was for setting fire to a synagogue but I doubted it. I haven’t told Marco that I’m half Jewish. It isn’t the kind of thing that’s worth telling anybody in here. Marco got an early reputation for biting people during fights in the bathroom, trying to gouge eyes out with his thumb. “So what is it?” he asks.

  “What’s the plan?” I say.

  “What are we going to do?” Marco says, shaking his head. The fork is about to break the skin on my palm and I hold it for a moment to feel the pain. The sound and the smell goes away. The room is a TV set on mute. I pull my hand off and the pain stops and the sound comes back. In front of us hundreds of other boys eat. Some with shaved heads, the newer boys still with the hair they came in with, all of the heads bobbing over the sea of plates. The guards standing along the walls like sleeping bulls. Fluorescent bulbs swinging on chains above us. All of us in for different reasons. All of us waiting to go to the yard.

  ***

  At 6:30 two hundred boys line up outside the TV room in a single file. A guard takes attendance, occasionally pulling someone out of the lineup to be escorted somewhere. We stand in order of age, with the youngest, the twelve-year-olds, at the very back, even though one of the twelve-year-olds, Anthony, threw another child off the roof of a building and is being tried as an adult.

  We march with six guards. We wear our assigned clothes, brown pants with elastic waistbands that read PROPERTY OF DOC on the front as if someone was going to try to steal them, or us. T-shirts color-coded by group, green for owls, blue for bears. Nobody seems sure what the animal designations are supposed to mean. Everything is a system but none of it works. I was ordered released three months ago by a judge on the first floor of this very building but nothing came of it. I wasn’t even handcuffed. I didn’t even know I had a court date. I was pulled out of the line before breakfast. They walked me out the heavy, main door, past the office workers, down two flights of stairs, through the metal detectors and the windows and the security gates to the court rooms. They told me to sit down on a bench and they left me alone for an hour while I watched parents bring their children in and out of the room in front of me. Finally a man in a thin shirt with a small, sharp beard introduced himself as my guardian ad litem. I’d never seen him before. He was eating an orange, which he peeled with his thumbs, and he had a plastic Jewel Foods bag full of papers. He said I’d be heading to place ment, maybe a specialized foster home. Would I like that? He seemed nervous. He wanted to know how they were treating me upstairs. Any problems? He put his hand covered in orange juice on my shoulder. I couldn’t figure out who he worked for or what he was trying to tell me or what he wanted me to tell him. What if I said, “He takes me to the last room by the fire exit and I take my clothes off and bend over the table there. Sometimes I feel bad because I never put up a fight. The other boys are waiting to kill me, but Mr. Gracie protects me.” What if I said that? Probably Mr. Gracie would be gone and Larry and the other boys would cut me into tiny pieces and that would be the end of it. The judge ordered me fit for placement, which means I should be in a group home. Before leaving, my guardian said it was just a matter of processing some paperwork. They took me back upstairs and I waited. I waited on my mat, I waited in the lunchroom and the classroom and the TV room. I stopped sleeping. I almost told Mr. Gracie, who had told me never to say anything when we were together unless I was asked a question. I almost told Mr. Gracie one Tuesday night after Mr. Gracie had closed the door and pointed with his right hand toward the corner of the room, “I’m going to get out of here.” But I didn’t. I’ve never disobeyed Mr. Gracie and occasionally Mr. Gracie says, his hand over my face covering my mouth, pinching my nose shut, “You’re a good kid. Well behaved. You’re going to turn out OK.”

  We trickle, one at a time, through the double steel doors onto the yard. The stronger kids walk casually toward the lone basketball hoop, Larry dribbling the basketball. The rest of us just mill around. It’s a cold, damp day. The sky is the same color as the walls. There’s a tetherball stand where a leather bag hangs from a long rope. Usually there’s a game of tag and there’s card games, spades, hearts, and bid whiz. And usually the basketball game is so intense that others wait to play, watching the guys in the game lunging at the hoop, sweat soaking into the collars of their shirts. But today just a handful of boys throw the ball toward the basket, then let it bounce away on the cement. Nobody lays any cards out. No one goes near the tetherball. Other groups walk slowly into corners or lean against the walls.

  Marco catches up with me. His face is red as a beet. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Nobody has a jacket and usually when it’s cold l
ike this they’ll take us to the gym or just leave us in the TV room.

  “They know, you fucking jerk,” Marco spits at me. Petey joins us as we walk toward our spot against the wall, near the back but not in the corners. The corners are taken.

  “Hey,” Petey says.

  “The guards,” Marco continues. “The guards know. Look at how they were acting. And where are they now? They’re gone. They are gone. Oh man. Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers.”

  I turn around and see it’s true, and that groups of boys are congealing together like oil cooling in a pan. Across the top I see Larry whispering in someone’s ear then turning in my direction. A smile spills across Larry’s face when he notices me looking at him. Larry lifts his shirt slightly and I see the flat slab of metal then the shirt lowering back over the blade like a curtain. My view is obstructed by bodies swelling the yard.

  “I’m Jewish,” I say to Marco, sticking my thumbs in the elastic of my pants. The sky spinning above us.

  “What?”

  “On my father’s side,” I tell him. “I’m half Jewish.”

  “Why would I give a shit about that?”

  “You’d care on the outside,” I tell him.

  “We’re not on the outside, are we peckerwood? Does this look outside to you?”

  Groups are moving together, forcing toward the cen ter of the yard. We try to push through but find ourselves stuck in the coming waves. I lean back and realize that Marco is there behind me and Petey’s big shoulder is in my arm. We have formed a triangle. I look through the crowd for Larry’s knife. There’s a scream through my ear. He’s been waiting to do it to me. He has. Waiting. He’s been waiting since Mr. Gracie smacked him in the teeth with his club and pointed to me and told Larry, anything else happens to me Larry was going to take a long fall. The kind of fall you don’t get up from. Mr. Gracie sealed my fate then. He must have known he couldn’t always be there for me. Now I’m doomed. I wait for the blade in my stomach, peeling the skin from my ribs. For a second I close my eyes.

  The sound of a jaw breaking echoes through the noise. Fists and faces. There are teeth biting near my nose and Petey’s shoulder covering my face then jerking away. The boys rush together. The air burns. The arms swing in windmills. Blood flies against the blacktop. All over is smashing and punching. A fist hits my cheek, the ground flies toward me. The asphalt beneath my fingers is full of pebbles and I’m surrounded by knees bumping my ears. I am lifted by my collar from the crowding feet. I turn around and see Marco has gone down and is sitting in a position that resembles a prayer. But then Marco is standing again, his arms bent into his chest, feet planted, chin forward. The triangle between us grows larger. I stretch my arms in front of me, sucking air through my wide-open mouth. Guards are rushing into the yard, swinging billy clubs. A gunshot. They’re herding us toward the walls. Voices come from the loudspeakers shouting unintelligible directions but repeating them over and over again until they make sense.

  “Line up against the wall, single file. Line up against the wall, single file. Line up against the wall, single file.”

  We’re against the wall, our backs facing out, our legs spread, our hands pressing into the stone. Petey is on the other side of me, his head down. A smile grows across my face. Marco turns his head slightly and we look at each other and I think Marco is going to start laughing. His face is contorting, his eyes squeezing shut involuntarily, and tears are running over his cheek, pooling into his mouth. He’s mewing, his tongue licking at the puddles. Behind us, someone is dead. But it isn’t us. A doctor is examining a boy who is lying in the middle of the yard with a pitchfork carved into his chest. It isn’t us. We’re fine.

  I grab the bed rail and place my foot against the base and swing around it, wrapping my other leg around the pole. This is life. I spin three times this way before I sit down on the bed across from Petey. I’m dizzy and Petey deals me seven cards. I look at my cards and like them. “So how’d you get here?” I ask. I might be feeling more talkative than I’ve ever felt. I organize first by color and then by rank. The lights are on. Western is under lockdown. There won’t be school tomorrow, and they’ll feed us in our room. And maybe the day after that, but then Mr. Gracie will come for me, late at night.

  “Stealing,” Petey says as an answer, laying a card down, drawing from the deck. “Driving around. I would steal cars.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “The suburbs.”

  What’s done is done. It won’t happen again for a while. I’ll be gone before the next riot. I’ve got my walking papers. They can’t hold me in here forever. They’ll find a placement for me soon. I’ll be transferred. Things will be okay and I’ll start over, like I always do. When I get out I’m going to learn how to fight. I’m going to stop being scared. I’ll change completely.

  “And you?” Petey asks.

  I sit back on his bunk, back against the wall, the window above my head. I grab Petey’s foot. “Ha,” I say, and shake his foot. I lay down three hearts, the king, the queen, and the jack. That’s ten points each but there’s still an ace that goes on the end and the ace is worth fifteen. I discard a low spade and Petey finishes my run on both sides, with the ace and the ten.

  “Generous of you,” he says. We’ll never be this close again.

  “I couldn’t stay put,” I tell him, picking one up. I measure my options. One of Petey’s eyes is higher than the other. I should be able to win this. My grandfather was a card player. My father told me once that his dad had bet their house and lost. He used to tell me I looked like my grandfather. I try to answer Petey but I don’t really know the answer. I pull on my nose. “I was in CYS, emergency placement. There were thirty of us in each room and there were four rooms. There was only two staff members and they stayed in the office with the door locked. I tried to ask them when I was getting out but they wouldn’t tell me. Then one of the ladies opened the door and said to me, If you don’t like it here, why don’t you walk away? It’s not like you’re in jail. She had hair on her chin. She was the bearded lady. And it was true, the door was open. So I did it. I just left. And she yelled after me where was I going. I said I was going home. I went back to my old neighborhood, but everyone was gone. And when they caught me they put me here.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HOME BEFORE THE LIGHTS

  I TAG THE base and stop, grip my legs, take a deep breath, and shake the sweat from my forehead. “I’m too fast,” I tell Sammy, who didn’t catch the ball on time and slaps my side with it anyway. “Safe,” I tell him, nearly falling off the base.

  “You think so?” He tosses the ball back to his brother Edward. Fifth grade is going to end in a week. The breeze is blowing hard, it could rain soon.

  “Could you imagine being as fast as me?” I ask.

  “Must be great,” he says.

  “It’s the greatest thing in the world,” I tell him.

  Taro is on the other base singing, “That’s the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it.” Four is a good number for a game of running bases, but five is even better, harder to get stuck between the two throwers. With five players you can place the bases further apart. Sometimes Justin plays, but his dad wouldn’t let him out today.

  “You’re out,” Edward says.

  “Shit,” Taro says. Taro stepped off the base. Taro likes to swear. Two years ago, in third grade, I met Taro in the bathroom and he said, “Motherfucker.” He spit in the urinal and put his hand inside his pants and waited to see what I would do. “That’s nothing,” I told him. “My father says worse things than that all the time. My dad’s a cuss faucet.” Then Taro wrote Mr. Petak is a jingle balls on the wall in black marker. He handed me the marker and I drew a balloon with a smiley face on it and wrote Don’t Pop Me beneath it. “That’s retarded,” he said. We’ve been best friends ever since.

  Taro and Edward switch places and Taro bounces the ball impatiently. Taro’s got a bad temper. Now Edward and I are runners. Edward is bigger than the rest of us, but
he’s kind of girly. He’s fat, but not in front like Gus Strylopalus. Edward’s fat hangs around his waist. Sometimes at school people call him sissy. His sisters are fat too, but they don’t look so bad. For bases we use Sammy and Edward’s jackets. We play in the middle of the alley in front of the garage. Sammy and Edward live in the only house on the block, a blue and white house with a big green backyard. Everybody else lives in apartments. I live in the corner building with my father, my mother, and sometimes my father’s girlfriend who comes over and stays for days at a time. He doesn’t think I know she’s his girlfriend. He says she’s there to take care of my mother. My mother is not well. He says Claire is my mother’s best friend, but I don’t think she is.

  I’m sprinting under the net and stop at the base. Taro misses the ball that Sammy has launched to him. He had to throw the ball over me; you’re not allowed to hit the runner. The ball bounces down the alley and Taro takes off after it. A dog starts barking. Sammy and I cross each other, then run back again, then again. We do the dance that you do when you steal three bases in a row.

  Taro is all the way down at the end of the alley and walking back with the ball in his hand. He’s red-faced. “Why don’t you learn how to throw?” Edward asks Sammy. Sammy is only nine. He’s lucky we play with him.

  “I can throw,” Sammy says.

  “You throw like a pigeon swims,” Edward says.

  “What?”

  “Fuck you guys,” Taro says, standing on the base next to Edward. He bounces the ball.

  “Shut up,” Sammy says. “My dad will hear you.”

  “Fuck your dad,” Taro says. “Fuck your dad twice, with a metal broomstick, in the ass.”

  “What did you say?” Edward says, turning around.