Happy Baby (17 page)

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

I first came here people said I was lucky.

“Why do you let people go through my things?” Cateyes asks. Hunter’s large shadow passes in front of the door and then disappears. I’m wondering if I tackle Cateyes whether I can hold him and make enough noise to avoid getting caught. I’m three inches taller than he is. But he would get me later. He’ll get me when I’m sleeping, the way my father did once when he slipped on the ice on the stairs. I woke into my father’s fists and then he dragged me by my hair to the steps to chisel away at the ice with a screwdriver. I can’t be safe here. It’s not enough to fight back one time. You have to fight back all the time. Fights never end until someone cuts you mouth to ear or your caseworker shows up and takes you to another home. But I’m the only one who thinks that way. My bed and Cateyes’s are only three feet apart. Everybody else fights all the time. I’m the only one who’s afraid.

Hunter’s dark shape passes across the doorway again. I think of the shark coming up beneath the swimmer. “Why do you let people go through my things?” Cateyes repeats, as if someone had pressed rewind on a tape player. I turn my ear toward him. He squeezes his hands shut and looks back to the door but Hunter is gone. I squint my eyes closed for a second. This is not about me. This is about Hunter. Last night Hunter put his finger against Cateyes’s temple as if his finger was a gun. “Beg for your life,” Hunter said. “Say goodbye to your wife and children.” It was a line from a movie. “Do him,” Nettles said. “He wasn’t never no Vice Lord.” I almost sigh with relief. But it’s too early. And I’m shaking. I can’t help it. I’ve always been a coward. I feel my voice become a whisper.

“I wasn’t,” I say. “I wasn’t here.”

“Yo, Cat, let’s get some Harold’s,” Hunter calls. Cateyes pushes my forehead with his palm. I try not to move. I keep my hands flat on my legs. Cateyes looks to me and the door. He makes a fist and puts his fist against my nose then kicks my laundry basket and my clothes fall onto the floor. He walks away.

In the living room Toby won’t talk to me. I sit quietly, trapped. It’s like I’m diseased. I want to be somewhere else. The staff office is off the entryway. Veronica is in there with the phone caught between her ear and shoulder and manila envelopes in her hand, the staff logs open in front of her. I see her through the Plexiglas wearing blue jeans and a brown belt. My first day here she received me and I sat in the office and she said I would like it here. She’s hardly said anything to me since then. I get up and knock on the office door. She doesn’t answer so I sit back down.

I sit quiet for a long time. In two years I’ll be an adult. The living room is a couch with two chairs and a television. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself but sometimes I do. The carpet is a strange green that doesn’t resemble anything. I don’t know where to go. The door is open; this is not a locked facility. I could walk through the Taylor Homes but all of the streets dead-end. They built them that way, dead ends and traps to prevent drive-bys. On the other side of the Taylors runs the Dan Ryan freeway and a fifty-foot drop into oncoming traffic. It’s easy to get lost in there and each building is controlled by a different gang. Kevin’s off work, in the Taylors somewhere. Those buildings are twenty-five stories high. In class the history book mentions them. I was surprised to see the buildings in our history book. The picture could have been taken from my window. They’re the largest housing projects in the world and thirty thousand people live in them.

After a while John comes to me and punches my shoulder. I grip the sides of the chair, a scream caught in my throat. I put my hand over my face. Oh God, I think. “Hey man,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with being scared.”

Toby’s lip is still swollen. He looks like a duck. But the fight is long over. Two days ago John and Nettles fought because John had said something that embarrassed Nettles at school. The fight ended with John holding Nettles in a bear hug, Nettles thrashing around, everything in John’s room destroyed. Staff didn’t come upstairs that time. Staff hasn’t come upstairs since.