by Jack Gantos
“But I’m not filled with hate,” I whispered. “You did okay with me. If you cut me open with the meat cleaver, you’d find nothing but love inside me—the love you put there. Really.”
She wiped her eyes and nose. “You,” she said, pointing the balled-up tissue at my forehead as if she were pointing at a defect. “I already ruined you. Inside, your head is a ticking time bomb. One day you’ll wake up and do something awful, and you won’t mean to do it, but you’ll be thinking of your lousy mother, and how I made you crazy, and you’ll explode.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I shouted, because every day I worked so hard at not going crazy, and now my own mother said I was crazy. I expected my hand to go mental with the yips and pluck out every single hair on my head. My pulse was pounding and my blood was so boiling hot I felt like I was about to erupt through my skin like a human volcano. “Why are you saying this stuff?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because I’m sick,” she hissed. “And I’m going to hurt Carter Junior if I stay, and he is pure goodness and I don’t want to do to him what I did to you.”
My shoulders dropped and I could feel something in me break and give up because I knew there was a part of me that was ruined. If you looked at me, I was like a perfect piece of fruit you pull from a beautiful tree, but when you bite into the fruit you find the whole inside is rotten. Maybe she was right. It was too late for me, but not for him. He was still the perfect Pigza and had to be protected.
She stood up and pulled her stretchy shirt down to her hips and stepped toward the open closet. “I hate these crappy clothes,” she said with sudden fury, then snatched a few things without really thinking about it.
“Don’t go,” I said, begging.
“Don’t talk,” she replied, and suddenly she hunched forward and gagged as if she was going to throw up, and I wished she would throw up because maybe some of the hate inside her would vomit out and I could clean it up and rinse it away. “The food stamps are in the drawer,” she said between halting breaths. “If you run out, call me.”
“Do you need a cab?” I asked.
“I know my way to the hospital,” she replied. “Over the years I’ve worn a path down to that emergency room. It’s like a church for me.”
“Can we all go together?” I asked. “Like one big sick family? We could get an apartment there and they could fix me too.” I smiled my big sunflower smile.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t even answer. Instead she held up a finger to let me know a distant thought was on its way. Suddenly, it arrived, and she loudly blurted out, “Promise me!”
I jumped back. “Promise what?”
“Promise not to tell anyone I’m not here. I told the school secretary I needed you with me for a few days, because if Child Welfare finds I’ve left you two alone, they’ll take Carter Junior away—and you too. So promise you’ll take care of him and not let the state hand him to someone else—some other mom. That would kill me for sure if they gave him to a better mom. Even though it would be good for him, it would kill me.”
“I promise,” I said.
“Prove it,” she insisted.
“Cross my heart,” I added, and slashed an X across my shirt as if it were a treasure map, and below the X was my heart wrapped up in chains, and inside of that was my promise not to let anyone hurt us.
She nodded her approval.
“And one more promise,” she said in a deeper voice. “Don’t let that man steal him.”
“What man?” I asked.
She lunged at me and I pulled back, terrified.
“The man who stands across the street at night with a mask on.”
“I’ve never seen a masked man outside,” I said.
“He’s in the shadows,” she whispered harshly. “I see him. He’s shifty, but I know those shifts. Your father is out there—lurking. He wants the baby.”
I glanced toward the window.
“I know I sound a little out of my mind,” she said, reading my thoughts. “I’m a little too sad, and a little too afraid of myself. It’s like your father stole the best parts of me. He took the happy me away and left the sad one behind. He’ll steal the good out of you too. And he’ll steal Carter Junior because little Junior doesn’t know sadness yet. He’s not like you and me. Carter Junior is still pure and that’s what your dad wants. Something that isn’t spoiled.”
I knew what Mom meant, because I stayed awake at night just wishing I was perfect and happy and smart and that everyone liked me and that when I came home from school my mom and dad were both waiting and when I opened the door they hopped up from their chairs and did a little happy dance around me and sang a cheerful song because I was the sweet center of their lives. I was the sun and they were my planets and when they danced around me my face beamed and beamed with happiness. Then they would cook for me and help me with my homework and tuck me into bed. I knew that wishful dream from hoping for it all my life, and suddenly I could feel that my dad had that dream too. In his dream he wanted something that he hadn’t screwed up yet. He wanted something unspoiled that would be the new center of his life—something he could hold in his arms and cook for and tuck into bed. And that something was not me. It was little Carter Junior.
“Promise me,” Mom said, and gently touched my face like she does when I’m sleeping and she is sneakily treating me like a baby. “Promise me you’ll take care of the one pure thing in this house. Just for a few days. A week maybe.”
“But how can I take care of him if I’m ruined like you said?” I asked.
“You were broken once but you healed and are stronger. You have what I want,” she said. “Inner strength. Self-love. You have it. I want it. Carter Junior is full of it and your dad wants to steal it. Don’t you let him!”
She picked up her suitcase. “I’m going,” she said.
“Can I visit?” I asked.
“I’ll call when I get situated. I’m not sure what they are going to do with me. I don’t care, as long as they do something. Now close your eyes and count to a hundred,” she ordered, and pushed me facedown onto the bed as if she were robbing me of herself. “And keep them closed.”
“Okay,” I replied with my voice muffled by the pillow. I listened as she descended the stairs down to the first floor and walked across the living room. The dogs yapped a little after she opened the front door, but since it wasn’t Mr. Fong with pizza, they grumbled and settled down. Mom carefully closed the door behind her, but I could still hear the sharp snap of the lock and feel a little shudder run through the spine of our house. Then she walked slowly across the porch and down the outside stairs. When her shoe hit the concrete sidewalk I heard the scrape and gouge of the bare metal tip of her high heel, then the other. Then she picked up speed and tap, tap, tap, tap, tap she hurried away as if someone was chasing after her.
It was easier for me to imagine her as just a pair of scuffed-up shoes that were running away to be fixed at the shoe repairman, than to think of her as a mom who had to leave her kids behind in order to be fixed at the hospital.
When I couldn’t hear the tapping any longer I opened my eyes. The room seemed especially silent, not just because she was gone, but because my mind wasn’t racing from trying to guess at what awful thing she might say.
That’s when Carter Junior began to cry.
“Hey, perfect buddy,” I called over to him as I hopped up and went to his doggy bed. I picked him up and held him tightly and he quieted down. “When am I gonna have a good day?” I asked. He looked up into my face and smiled. Suddenly I could feel my special gift working in a good way and a smile spread across my face.
“Come on, you bucket of pee,” I said in a silly pirate voice. “Let’s get you a fresh diaper before somebody swabs the deck with you.”
Here we go again. Just when I thought one good parent was better than two lousy ones I end up with no parents. What kind of family arithmetic is that? But what else could I do? I had to take care of Carter Junior. He was my
brother and now I was the man of the house—my house. And as Special Ed said to me, “When you have bad thoughts just give your head a good shake and throw ’em out so you can make room for the pawzzz-i-tive thoughts.” When I woke up the next morning I decided that’s exactly what I was going to do with the house. I was going to shake it up, and clean it out, and raise Carter Junior in a house that was fit for a little Pigza prince, and not just a racetrack for roaches!
I figured I’d start from the top down—and that meant getting into my mom’s closet. I ran down to the kitchen and grabbed the roll of trash bags and ran back up before Carter Junior could break through the wall of pillows I’d made and flop off Mom’s bed. He was always slipping over the edge headfirst like he was going over Niagara Falls.
When I got back upstairs he was fussing so I had to take a time-out and give him some milk and change his diaper. And then I let him play on the floor in a heap of Mom’s old clothes while I got busy.
As it turned out, Mom’s closet was like a secret bank vault. Once I started going through all her pockets I started finding change and dollar bills and food stamps, and every time I found something good I’d yell out “Cha-ching!” and shove it into my pocket, and then if it looked roachy I’d throw the old dress or blouse or pants or pair of shoes into the trash bag.
About ten bags later I finished the closet and dragged the trash across the floor and heaved the bags out her bedroom window and down onto our front yard, which looked like our own Pigza pigpen. Nothing grew there. It was all scratchy brown weeds and hard-packed dirt decorated with orange and white cigarette butts, pancaked beer cans, loser lottery tickets, and flimsy plastic store bags that danced a ghostly litterbug jig each time the breeze kicked up a dance tune.
After all the busywork I got Carter Junior up and dressed and we went down to the grocery store to spend our newfound money. I got two bags of mostly baby food. I got one bag of cleaning supplies and one with nothing but peanut butter and crackers because I knew I could live on that forever. And when we checked out I tripled the plastic bags just for Carter Junior so I could haul him around by the handles like he was a big old fish flopping around in there. I put him in the shopping cart with the other bags and then I made a little train by shoving two more carts onto the front. We made a crazy racket as I pushed out of the parking lot and we went road-racing down the street while steering wildly left then right around the deep holes where they were fixing the gas pipes. Carter Junior liked the wild ride but kept rolling out of his bag and climbing up the side of the cart to lift himself over the edge. He wasn’t in danger because the tops of the other carts kept him caged in, and since I was the man of the house I had to spell out the rules of the road to him. “Rule number one,” I said, raising my finger in the air as we rattled down a hill. “From now on no Pigza shall harm him- or herself!”
I think that rule calmed him down, and he was a lot happier when we got home and I let him out of his bag. We had a good hug and then Pablo and Pablita lick-kissed him about a hundred times and I changed his diaper again and washed his hands and face and gave him a bottle. I put him on the couch to watch Spanish soaps on TV. Someday he’ll be bilingual, but for now I really wanted him to learn how to make those huge Spanish facial expressions so his face would tell me exactly what he was feeling.
So, while he became bi-facial, I roach-proofed the kitchen cabinets. I didn’t want to use any bug spray because of the baby and the dogs so I just set out the Roach Motels I’d bought, which were creepy because I started imagining what it would be like to spend a deadly night in one. I wish my special gift didn’t make me sensitive to the family lives of roaches because, really, I had to kill them.
While I was cleaning the cabinets I got some more trash bags and started throwing out all the old food that had been half eaten by us and rejected by the fussy roaches. We had a lot of dented cans of soup and chili and tuna that we got for free because when no one was looking Mom would drop the can on the store floor and step on it with her boot and crush in the side. Then she’d ask the lonely-looking manager with the label gun on his sagging plastic belt if we could have it for free, or half price. Usually we got it for free because Mom dressed up special to go food shopping and put on lipstick and perfume and a fluffy pink sweater. Her rule for me in the store was to stay with Carter Junior in a different aisle and act like we didn’t know her—until later when I had to carry home a lot of dented cans and crushed boxes of cereal and expired cottage cheese. I didn’t like it when Mom said that for us “America should be the land of the free everything because we were part of the land of dented lives.” I guess that’s why we also had a lot of coffee-shop sugar packets, and stacks of paper napkins, and coffee stirrers, and powdered creamer and pats of butter, and toothpicks, and disposable chopsticks, and plastic utensils, and Styrofoam plates, and straws, and a whole drawer full of ketchup packets and mustards and mayonnaise and hot sauce and half rolls of toilet paper she got at the public library. If it was free, we had it. “Even kids are free,” she had announced.
And even running away from your kids is free, I thought. Even losing your mind is free. Getting sick is free. Being alone is free. Being poor is free. Being afraid is free. Being ignored is free. Having crummy parents is free. I had to stop thinking that way because even torturing myself with sad thoughts was free.
So I kept busy, which is always the best free medicine for me. After checking on the baby, who was sound asleep with both dogs curled up next to him like a pair of furry bedroom slippers, I threw out all the old dented food and free junk and I put our new food in a clean kitchen cabinet and got some tape and sealed the edges of the cabinet door so the roaches couldn’t sneak in. That made me feel better.
Then I opened another cabinet door and taped a piece of paper to the inside of it and drew a week calendar with seven squares. In square number one I wrote, Mom left. In square number two I wrote, cleaned house. Then I looked at the last square. “O ancient Greek Oracle,” I whispered quietly, in case she was asleep. “Do I dare write Mom returns?”
I closed my eyes and waited for an answer. And then I heard Mom’s voice saying, “Inner strength. Self-love. You have it. I want it.”
“Thank you, Oracle,” I said, and raised my eyes toward the shiny spot on the ceiling over the stove, because there was a lot of ancient grease up there.
I drew two little humans and two little dogs under the calendar. “O Oracle,” I said while I had her attention, “if Mom asks, tell her we’ll be here for her no matter what day it is.”
After I did that I felt a lot more hopeful and remembered some good advice Mom gave me. She said the best way to find anything that was lost was to just act like the person who lost it in the first place. Since she was so spacey when she lost my meds, I took a break from kitchen work and ran around the house in circles until I got falling down dizzy and spacey and then I started looking for my meds. I opened the hall coat closet and went through those pockets and found a handful of change, and then I spun around again until I was good and wobbly and cracked my nose on the edge of the door as I lurched sideways into the bathroom. I opened the medicine chest. There was some old tooth powder and a rusty single-edged razor blade and toenail clippers. But no meds. I gave it one more chance. I spun around and even moaned, “O Oracle, please tell me where my meds are hidden.” I got an idea and went upstairs into the empty bedroom across the hall from hers. There were some boxes of Christmas decorations stored in the closet. I clawed through a few cases of lights and crushed ornaments but found no meds. What totally spacey planet could she have been on when she hid them? I thought.
Then I heard something clatter loudly and go thump from down below. “Carter Junior,” I hollered, “hang on!”
I turned and pounded down the stairs. The front door was still locked but Carter Junior wasn’t in the living room. He wasn’t in the kitchen. I dashed into my bedroom, which was across from the kitchen, just as a baseball slowly rolled along the floor. He was in the back of m
y closet playing with my old baseball stuff from when I belonged to a Little League team. “Carter Junior,” I called out, and poked my head under my hanging clothes. “Hey, buddy, let me teach you how to pitch because I was the best there ever was—until I lost my control and smashed car windows in the parking lot.”
I hoisted him up with my right hand and jammed my left hand into my baseball glove—but something creepy was already in there. For a shocking moment I remembered Chuck Darts at school and that I had told him a black widow spider was in his baseball glove. What I didn’t realize at school was that the prediction wasn’t for Chuck, it was for me, and as I wiggled my fingers deeper into the glove I felt the spider bite me. I yelped out loud and flung the glove across the room. Carter Junior saw the bug-eyed fear on my face. He yelped out loud and began to wrestle out of my grip.
When I looked down to see if the spider was coming after us for another bite I saw a bunch of my med patches on the floor and scattered across the room. Ha! There was no spider! Mom had stuffed my med patches into my old baseball glove! I looked at the tip of my finger and the spider bite was only a paper cut. I began to laugh, and laughed like a maniac because it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to me. The Oracle had worked! It told me exactly where Mom hid my meds.
Then something even funnier happened. I plopped Carter Junior down on my bed and as I held my stomach and belly laughed he held his stomach and belly laughed. Then when I hopped around, he rolled around. I slapped my thigh, and he slapped his thigh. And when I yelled with joy, he yelled with joy. Everything I did, he did. He was a little me. He had become bi-facial from watching soap operas—or maybe I was his own personal soap opera. He couldn’t tell me what he was thinking but he could imitate me perfectly. I sat down on the bed and hugged him and began to laugh. “I love you, Carter Junior,” I said. “You are my Oracle helper!” Then I poked him in the chest and smiled my huge carved-pumpkin smile.
