Harry Sue (15 page)

I tried to push myself up one more time.

“Stay!” she ordered me. “You have to rest in that position for at least ten minutes.”

I weighed my options. There was no way I could take her down now. Besides, I had other feelings to
consider than how much Homer hated J-Cat. My shoulder felt warm and tingly. It wasn't sore. It wasn't throbbing. It was just … a shoulder.

“You okay?” I heard Homer ask.

“Yeah, thanks,” I managed to say in a normal voice. “Just a little …”

What?

What was this feeling?

Happy?

J-Cat stapled something to the ceiling before jumping back down.

“This paper is sensitive to UV light. This pen-light emits it. When you put it in your mouth like this …”

She kept talking but I couldn't understand her anymore. Still, if I laid my right cheek on the pillow over my knees, I could see the paper. Like magic, a line appeared on the black pad that was now stuck to the ceiling. A thin yellow line began to form into shapes that made letters and then words.

The words spelled out,
Surrender, Homer.

“Very clever,” Homer said, which meant he'd turned his head away from the wall and was looking at the words, too.

She was amazing like that. I always tried to stay away from the tough stuff with Homer. But J-Cat played right in the middle of it.

We sat there in silence as she lisped through
some stuff we couldn't understand, the pen still in her mouth. It was just a line on a piece of paper, but to Homer it must have felt like the first words that were ever written. He could draw again. He could make diagrams of new inventions, write letters, write books.

J-Cat got off the bed.

“C'mon, Hairball,” she said, and helped me to my feet. I stood still as she felt her way down my arm, pressing at certain points, like she was molding it into something different.

“Now, go sit in your corner,” she said. “I need room for this next trick.”

And so I did, giving Homer a quick smile, seeing an expression on his face that I hadn't seen for months. He wanted that pen. He did. But he was trying his darndest not to show it.

“I figured you wouldn't want to share,” she said as she licked spit off the pen she'd had in her mouth. “So I brought you one of your own and put this string around it so you could retrieve it with your bionic tongue.”

As she talked, J-Cat climbed onto the rail, reached up, and tore a sheet from the pad, tucking the rest of the pages underneath a band at the bottom to keep them smooth against the backing.

“Now don't look like that,” she said as she tore the sheet in her hand in two and dropped it on the
floor. “There's a whole pad up here. It's big paper, so divide it into quadrants. That'll give you more drawing space.”

J-Cat used her finger to divide the paper into four parts.

“I know what a quadrant is,” Homer said sulkily.

“Okay, Einstein….” She rubbed her hands together. “You heard the speech. So now you get your rock.”

“I hauled this up from the pier myself, Home-boy, and I do hope you appreciate the effort. I pinpointed the location from the sheriff's report. Do you know they're making an informational video about the danger of diving off the Grand Haven pier since you and a couple other lunkheads took the plunge?

“That sheriff is a real sincere guy … feels terrible about you young boys getting turned into vegetables on his watch. I told him, ‘I got just the kid to star in your film.’”

“You know what? Why don't you just shut up and go?”

“But you haven't admired the rock yet.”

“I never asked you for that rock.”

“Yes, that's true. But you been thinking about this rock, Homer, and don't deny it! I have my sources.”

Homer and I exchanged glances. Must be Ariel
“Cheese Eater” Dinkins she was referring to. I watched all this from my corner, never really sitting down, just pressing my back and shoulders against the wall and sliding down until my knees stuck out like I was sitting on a chair. Homer's face was dry and it seemed to me he was just cranky now, wanting J-Cat to leave so he could investigate his new toy.

J-Cat let a little puff of disgust escape from the back of her throat.

“You better want this rock! Or I wasted four perfectly good hours of my life and a sundress from Value Village on this project. The sheriff oversaw it himself. I went on quite eloquently about your psycho-social factors before he agreed to drive onto the pier with his squad car and haul it out.

“That was only
after
I got arrested for trespassing, mind, but that's a whole 'nother story….”

All the while she talked, J-Cat was lugging and heaving and grunting with the effort of moving this huge, wet, heavy rock. I was still tangled up in how it got into the tree house in the first place, and I couldn't imagine now how she was going to lift it up so Homer could get a good look. I wouldn't have laid a bet on her, but there she was, squatting down and heaving that rock onto the bed like one of those puffed-up weight lifters you see on TV.

My blood must have been in all the right places at that moment because when the rock hit Homer's
hospital bed and made the mattress shoot up, there I was to keep him from falling into a heap on the floor.

Everything was in motion: the mattress, the rock, and Homer. For a minute, it looked like the rock was going to roll in my direction, too, giving me injuries I couldn't afford. But I held my ground for Homer, and when J-Cat corralled it to one corner of the bed, I laid him back down while he swore at her, words I'm sure I'd never heard come out of his mouth before.

She seemed completely oblivious to his words and his pain.

“These here,” she said, panting and pointing at the rock, “are authentic zebra mussels … sharp as razors if you walk on 'em barefoot. They're what cut your face on the way down.”

When I finished arranging his butterfly-light arms and legs back under the covers, Homer asked, panting, “How do I know you got the right one?”

She started tapping the side of her head. “How do you know? How do you know? Because when I was down there, I heard it bragging, that's how.”

She eyeballed Homer with a look that said,
It's on, baby
, and I saw they were going to fight. Using force on a quadriplegic, that's not a fair fight, so J-Cat was going into Homer's mind. It was horrible
to watch, like watching surgery on TV, but it was fascinating, too.

I didn't know how to fight like that. I would take a hit for Homer, I loved him that much. But I guess I figured, like he did, that his life—his real life—was over. My job was to be with him while he did his time.

He was down for life, wasn't he?

J-Cat didn't seem to think so.

“It's only right,” she said, patting the big ugly rock, “that I leave you two alone to get acquainted. So, Homerboy, what's my next challenge? I figure I got to prove my allegiance, you know, like those knights of the Round Table.

“You asked for the rock, you got the rock.”

Clearly, Homer was done playing. He was looking past her into the cold October sky and focusing his thoughts on some poor leaf, petrified of falling.

But J-Cat had not finished playing.

“Now I know you're partial to miracles, so how 'bout this. How 'bout I don't come back here until I can find someone with the same C4 injury—same break—who will dance with me? Just to prove it to you. Just to open your eyes to the possibility.”

“You're serious,” I said, before I thought better of it.

“Sure. We're talking miracles here, are we not? I like a good challenge.”

J-Cat put on one of those mock-serious looks that makes you feel like she's taking you for a ride, bowed deep, and said: “Do me the honor, Lord Homerboy, of letting me prove my allegiance.”

“Get away from me,” Homer said, not loud, but in this certain way he has, like he's just invented the words.

J-Cat straightened up and asked: “Before I take my leave, may I kiss Your Lordship's big ugly toe?”

“You can bring me the dancer. Fine!” Homer spit out. “But quit playin' what's left of me for a fool. And. Don't. Touch. Me.”

It was a threat Homer couldn't really make good on, so I helped out.

“Don't touch him.”

J-Cat regarded us. You could be very insulting to her and she just narrowed her eyes a little with her look that said,
No speaka English.
Her fingers hovered over Homer's toe.

“If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” she asked, fingers inching closer.

I tensed and got ready to spring.

“If a home health aide touches the toe of a quadriplegic and no one feels it, does he still hate her?”

“Go!”

“See ya!” She kicked open the hatch and sank right through the floor.

We were alone.

Homer turned his face away from me.

He blamed me. I was his road dog, his crew, and I hadn't protected him.

It was like she put me under a spell when she cracked me like that. I tried to hate her, for his sake, but I could shrug my shoulder without it hurting for the first time in memory. I wanted to think about what she'd done and what she said. About the blood.

What if I didn't have to be in so much pain all the time?

What if Homer could draw?

I put my hand on the top of Homer's shoulder, on a spot I knew he could feel.

“It's like Hansel and Gretel,” I said softly. “Both of 'em know hanging around with that witch and eating her candy is a bad idea … but they're starving when they get to that gingerbread house.”

Homer moved his head a little, but he didn't open his eyes. He was so pale. I could see a thin vein run across the lid. When I leaned close, it pulsed faster.

“I guess when you're starving,” he said, “you don't have much choice either way.” Then he gave me a little smile, one side of his mouth higher up than the other, and he opened his eyes.

“How did she get that thing in here?” I asked him.

“Some guy named Stan with a cherry picker. Pushed it right through the hatch.”

“You really think it's the one?”

Even with his eyes shut, Homer could raise one eyebrow and give me a look that said:
You playing me for a fool, Harry Sue?

Finally, he opened his eyes.

“My feeling is this: The rock was not my finest idea. But I can think of a thing or two to do with that pen.”

“As long as we are in here, enjoying a meal together, it would be fine for you to call me Baba,” Mr. Olatanju said the next day as I wrestled with his name.

He was unpacking something from a cooler. Just the smell made the back of my mouth tingle.

“It means that we are friends. That is what my friends call me.” He looked up at me and smiled, just for a moment, before busying himself again with his meal.

“That is what they
called
me. Where I came from.”

“Maybe here,” I said. “But not always.”

I tried to imagine what Jolly Roger and his associates would do with the information that I was
friends with the art teacher. It wouldn't be safe for Mr. Ola … it wouldn't be safe for Baba.

“Of course,” Baba was saying as he pulled plates out of a basket. “I understand. We create something together when we are here. And it doesn't exist anywhere else. And when we are not here, it doesn't exist in this room, either.”

He unfolded my napkin with a snap before handing it to me. “It is only present when we are present.”

I set down my backpack and unzipped it. “You got me thinking about a story, Mr…. Baba,” I said. “You ever heard of
The Wizard of Oz
?”

“I have seen that movie. It is about the girl … Dorothy?”

Oh, brother.

“But before it was a movie, it was a book. The book is the real story. And there's a wizard in it. But he's not really a wizard. He just starts playing all the Munchkins … and he does it for so long, they
think
he's for real.”

I pulled Oswald out of my backpack and fished around in the bottom for his missing eye.

“Nothing is the way it's supposed to be in that place,” I said. “But even after he gets busted, it's like he can still fix things. He's not magic, but he can still make all their dreams come true … well, except for Dorothy, but she's a special case.”

I stopped, feeling out of breath. I wasn't used to
talking about this stuff with anybody but Homer. And this idea that was in my head was slapping me around.

“Okay.” I decided to try again. “It's like he set up Oz to work a certain way, but then when Toto knocks over the screen and everybody sees he's just a little old man and not a big powerful wizard, he makes this great recovery. I mean, he loses 'em when he gets caught. And the Scarecrow calls him a humbug—which was a real insult in Oz—but then—just with words!—he pulls them back….”

I fell back in my chair, exhausted. I couldn't get it right, what I was trying to say. I wanted to tell Baba that I understood what he said about making a home just for a minute with words and food, knowing all the while it couldn't last forever. It could only be real for a short time.

But I wasn't sure how to say all that, so I held on to my tongue and put the bear on the table.

“Can you fix this?”

Baba reached out slowly and took Carly Mae's precious bear into his big hands, giving me another chance to admire Granny's handiwork. Oswald's ear was nearly torn off, and the piece of yarn that was his mouth hung in a string. His plump tummy had gone flat, as if she'd beaten all the cheerfulness out of him.

“I figured since you're an art teacher and all …”

“A substitute, remember? In the art classroom.”

Baba turned the little bear over. “He has met with an accident, no?”

I nodded. “It's Carly Mae's. She's one of the crum … the little kids at Granny's Lap.”

“Yes, I can fix him.” He laid the bear down carefully, next to the serving dishes. “But first, I want you to do something for me, Harry Sue.”

Har-ee Sue.

There was something about him today. Quieter. Slower. He left the covered dishes where they were and began pulling squeeze bottles of paint off the shelves. Red, yellow, purple, blue. He set them in front of me along with a big metal cookie sheet.