Happy Baby (15 page)

“Fucking Mexicans,” Julie says, remembering her $5. “You’d think they’d be happy we let them into the country. We need to close the fucking border.”

“My girlfriend’s Mexican,” I say and Julie looks back at me, both of her hands clutching the wheel. Her face is like a cinderblock. Her lips roll over her gums, bright red daggers splitting her teeth, then it passes and her features soften.

“That’s too bad,” she says, water rising to her pupils. “Too bad you have a girlfriend.” Julie smacks her lips. “Because I have a friend, don’t I, Jackson? Tracy. Yeah. She’s got a great ass. You would love her ass. I told her we have a sixteen-year-old virgin sleeping on our couch. A little runaway, I said. And you know what she said? She’s twenty years old and when I told her you sleep in your jeans she was like, Oooh, I like virgins. She seemed really excited. I was going to invite her over tonight to listen to some music and party. But I guess I won’t. Unless you want me to. But if you have a girlfriend …”

“Do whatever you want,” I say, my cheeks twitching. Jackson lets out one short, loud laugh.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, bro.”

“Just like the rest of them,” Julie says, jumping the car into gear. “So much for the innocent.”

***

The blanket is wrapped around me and I’m cross-legged on the couch listening to the buzz of the phone on the other side. All of the doors in the apartment are closed. “Hello?”

“Maria?”

“Are you drunk?”

“A little bit.” Julie and Jackson are in their bedroom now. They left an album playing on the stereo.

“What’s that music?”

“That’s Elvis.”

“Oh. You shouldn’t call so late over here. It’s almost midnight. You’ll get me in trouble.”

“Sorry. We’re getting up early again tomorrow.” Out of the window it seems the snow has stopped. The city is covered with thick yards of white. I hear a crash behind her voice. “What was that?”

“Tamara and Jodie are fighting. I can’t stand it.” I picture Maria standing in the phone room, shaking her head, and the other girls breaking dishes and screaming just outside. Jodie is private and Tamara is a street fighter. I see Tamara pulling Jodie along by her hair, a dog on a leash.

“I wish you were here,” I say. I hold the line, keeping my eye on the door to the bedroom. Maria doesn’t say anything. “I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Here I am.”

“I’m going to take care of you.”

“Ha ha. Now I know you’re drunk.”

“I mean it.”

“What else do you mean?”

When Maria came to the boys’ home the first time, I pretended not to notice her. One time she asked me to walk her to the store and all the boys laughed and whistled. After that we always split apart from everyone else. Maria would tell me why the state took custody of her. She told me about her grandmother letting her uncle rape her, how her uncle left her tied up overnight. She told me stories like I had never heard before.

“Maria, Maria, Maria.” I wish I could sit behind her now, and comb her hair, and wrap my arms over her chest and my legs around her waist.

I see the door open.

“I have to go.”

“Are you coming back? You only have a few days left.”

“No,” I say. “I can’t.”

Today we lay a roof on top of a split-level smoker in Edgewater near the hospital. Jackson and I join Julie’s brother Jon and another crew with a tar heater. “Jon got a line on some dinosaurs,” Jon says. He likes to talk about himself like he’s not there. “Think about it. Jon Berry. Dinosaurs. Four o’clock.” We shovel the steaming tar from the furnace onto the black top and spread it over the roof with mops. The sun is out and the air is dry and cold. Pushing a mop full of tar is like trying to shove a piano. The heat from the tar keeps us warm and some of us strip down to T-shirts. The men who lay roof all the time wear green shirts that read Harry’s Roofers. They look like monsters from the movie
The Time Machine
, but without the fur. Their heads shaved, yellow eyes, tattoos running up their necks. By the time we finish my jeans are covered in tar stains.

“That will never come off,” Jackson says to me.

“That’s OK,” I nod. “Now I have work pants.”

“Do you have any other pants?”

“No. But I’ll get some.”

Jackson slaps my back. It’s cold still but the sun is out now and the sky over Chicago is blue. The Sears Tower pokes above downtown, miles away, near the lakefront. Our breath escapes us in thick clouds and we stare at the sticky, shiny black top of this building and compare it with the dusty tops of the two-flats nearby. The other men stand across from us, also staring at the craftsmanship spread out before them. The day is over already. We worked through another one. The roof is a wonder to behold.

No one will ever find me. I am a phantom. Jackson and I smoke cigarettes with Jon and roll dice in the valley between the couch and the television set. Dinosaurs are actually Placidals, heavy- duty downers, big white horsepills twice as thick as a cigarette filter. I had to cut mine in half and take it in two swallows. We’re all moving slow and the smoke swims through the air like fish. I am at the bottom of the world. Jon’s pants are nearly falling off because he doesn’t wear a belt. He leans forward on all fours on the floor, balancing on his elbow, mooning Jackson and me. He’s blue from the smoke. Junky Smurf, I think to myself and nod my head. He’s turning the dice over, matching them in his fingers, reminding me of the night I won the DCFS shirt and there was a fire in the group home. That was the best night of my life. “Keep drinking,” Jackson says, shooting a ray with his pinky to the beer in front of me. “It’ll help.” Julie slams through the front door and beelines straight into the bedroom, leaving a long, dark trail behind her. Jackson’s eyes follow her and rest heavily on the door.

“Watch closely,” Jon says. Mr. Berry gave me $25 today, which means Jackson must have made forty. Jon puts the dice right up against his eye and stares into the center of the blocks. “Jon Berry needs a six,” he says as the dice tumble over each other toward the bookcase. My lungs hurt and I cough. Mr. Berry asked me today how I liked laying roof. I said I liked it fine and he said that was good because Harry might want to hire me. Not enough work on the truck over the winter. Apparently roofers have a high turnover. Mr. Berry said roofers are only interested in making enough for their next fix.

Jon’s dice come up eight. “Jon Berry needs a six,” he says again, as if the dice had just misheard him the first time. Everything is very flat and on its side.

“Hold on a second. Just wait,” Jackson says, getting up, then falling over the chair, tumbling headfirst into the wall, then crawling back to his seat and sitting back down again.

“Oh no,” Jon says. “Watch Jon Berry.”

The dice come up seven. We all look at the dice. Seven is a loser. The most losingest number of all time, unless you roll it first. I’ve never seen such a loser. Jon owes Jackson and me a dollar. What horrible luck. Unbelievable. How could anyone be so unlucky? It makes me sad. We watch the dice, waiting for them to make a move. “Boo,” I whisper. Maybe they’ll jump or something. If I concentrate hard enough the dice will fly around the room and roll for me. I can feel every piece of air in my nostrils, each molecule of oxygen. I can see a space three inches in front of my nose where nothing exists.

“You owe me a dollar,” I say, because it’s true. I am a speaker of truth.

“You’ll get it,” he says. “Absolutely. Double or nothing.”

“Nope.”

“Take it easy,” Jackson says, waving his big hand in front of him, like he was clearing fog from a window and then closing his fist in front of his face, squeezing the sound from his fingers. “Everything’s going to work out.” I can’t take it. I turn away from both of them. Outside it’s starting to snow again. I think I’m going to cry. Things are not going to work out. It’s going to be horrible. Look at all that snow, grabbing dirt from the sky and pulling it to the earth. Hiding it beneath the white surface. It’s enormous, this city, it swallows everything. Maria lives out there in a building with bricks over the windows. She can’t even see the snow that is hiding her. I bet she’s staring at those bricks right now, wondering which side of them I’m on. I have to help her.

Nobody says anything for a long time. There’s comfort in silence, and as the pills wear off Jon stands and leaves. His engine starting shakes the snow from the ledges. Jackson makes it into the bedroom. And I hear my name being called through the hallway and I follow my name to their door.

It’s late, past midnight, and I’m freezing. Tiny icicles hang from my eyelashes and I can’t do anything but keep moving and tighten my shoulders. Julie came in with some cocaine and we were all having a good time, I thought. The cocaine and the Placidal felt really good together. I came out of the fog. I told Julie and Jackson that I loved them. I told Jackson that he was my best friend in the whole world. I don’t know if it was the buildup or the drugs. Jackson, Jon, and Julie had been swapping looks all night, like they knew something I didn’t know. It was suspicious, now that I think about it. Then Jon left and it was Julie, Jackson, and me, and we were sitting on the bed in their bedroom. It’s an enormous bed. It must be the biggest bed you can buy, and maybe even bigger than that. I can’t even imagine how they got it in the room. And we were listening to the Rolling Stones at full volume. It was all breakdowns and missed opportunities. Then Jackson said I had to leave. And I said OK and got up to go to the living room. But he followed me.

“No, I mean it,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re going to get us in trouble.” Jackson was jawing when he said it. I’d never seen him jaw before. He was grinding his teeth to dust and biting the tip of his tongue. “The cops are going to bust in. We’re harboring a runaway.” I looked at him and then the couch. I wanted to cry. Runaway is the wrong term. I’ve been labeled a runaway since I was eleven. “I mean you have got to get out of here.” Then Julie stepped out and she was completely naked. I had never seen her naked before. She had a big tuft of red pubic hair fanning out over her thighs, and her legs and stomach were all flat muscle. But it was weird muscle, segmented in strange places. It wasn’t round like I thought it would be. It was like her muscles were trying to get out of her skin and run away from each other. She stood behind Jackson, staring at me, her mouth wide open. Her eyes were solid black, all pupil.

“Can’t I just spend the night? I’ll leave in the morning.”

Jackson was shaking his head and Julie grabbed onto his arm with both hands. I looked over Julie’s strange body. Beneath her breast was a small blue tattoo of a bird flying. I didn’t understand why Jackson had to be there at all. Why couldn’t it just be me and Julie? I wanted so desperately to get into the bed with her and lie there. I wanted it with everything I had. I wondered what it tasted like between her legs and I thought about it so hard that my tongue grew thick. But I gathered my stuff together and put on Jackson’s jacket. He didn’t say anything about me taking his jacket. Then I walked out the door.

There’s a row of mustard-colored three flats that run for a full city block between Pratt and North Shore. Some of the windows contain the flickering of television sets so I try to be careful and not walk under any street lamps. The cold is starting to hurt and I can’t feel my ears. A man was following me for a while but it got too cold even for him and he quit. By the time I find the basement door I’m shivering hard and it takes three attempts, throwing myself at the door, to get it open. It finally buckles and breaks, the latch lying on a cement stairway leading into darkness, and as I stand and look at it the shapes become visible and the darkness disappears. I belong here.

The basement is empty save a few storage closets, a metal sink, and a washer-dryer. The floor and the stairs are painted blue. A single bulb hangs on a thick cord unlit in the center of the room. Rubber tubes covered in dust lie across the washing machine and over the sink. The dryer is clean, large, and sturdy. I start the dryer and it fills the basement with noise. I undress, peeling off my layers, and put my clothes in the dryer to heat them up. I cross my arms over my chest. I’m worried that someone will come into the basement and find me naked. Will they let me put my clothes back on or will I have to stay naked until I turn eighteen? I fold myself over the drying machine, rattling around on the blue floor. I hug it to try to quiet it down, my legs pressed against its front, and lay my cheek on the top, trying to get the heat to enter my body. The machine quivers, my clothes tossing inside of it. I stretch my arms to its back, feeling. There, the metal forms ridges like ribs that I slide my fingers between. I rub my face along the lid.

It’s after school, and we’re waiting for the car to arrive. The heat is on but I’m still shivering. Maria and I are holding hands in the smoking room. I’ve been waiting all day, putting my stuff together, watching television, smoking cigarettes. A staff member gave me a full pack as a going-away present. Maria only just got here. “At least I’ll graduate high school,” I say. “There’s no missing classes in Prairie View. No point anyhow.”

“You’ll like school once you’re into it,” Maria says. Maria is the best student at CSC, the group home school. The CSC is just a holding pen, a babysitting facility. But her book is always open, no matter who’s being restrained. She gets an A in every class.

I shrug. I don’t want to talk about this. There’s two staff members in the front of the house and we can hear other kids running up and down the stairs. There’s windows looking into the empty play lot where I put up a basketball net last summer. We’re being given alone time, Maria and I. They think they’re generous, they all do. They think they’re doing you a favor every time they leave you alone. I kiss her on the lips and slide my hand inside her sweater. She leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I run my finger along the edge of her bra and push under her breast. Her sighs are like music. I think of her grandmother selling her to support a heroin habit, the time she spent in the closet. I just want to protect Maria. I see her uncle breaking through the door night after night, Maria against the wall, biting at the piece of rubber she’s been told to keep in her mouth, raped so many times the memories blur. I rub my fingers down her spine and she moves into me more and I pull her as she does. She lays her legs across my legs. We try to get inside each other. Soon the car will be here. “It won’t be long,” I say.