Life Is Funny (22 page)

“Absolutely,” she says. “Immediately.”

“I could get Air Jordans?” Mickey squeaks.

“We'll see,” my mom says.

*  *  *

Eric and my dad stay home. My mother writes down the sizes she thinks Eric wears, and she and Mickey and me get ready to go to the mall.

“You not coming?” Mickey says, looking over his shoulder at Eric, who's sitting very straight on his bed by the window.

“'S all right, Mick. I be here when you gets back.”

Mickey doesn't like it, though. He goes real quiet and won't smile again. My mother buys him eight pairs of underwear and socks, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of pants, eight T-shirts, two collar shirts, four sweaters, a pair of Air Jordans, a pair of hard-soled shoes, a pair of mittens, a down coat, and a haircut. She buys a couple of things for Eric, too.

“You tell your brother, if his new clothes fit him, we can get more,” my mom says to Mickey in the car on the way home. I don't think Mickey hears her, though. His head is hanging to the left, his eyes are closed, and the corner of his mouth is oozing drool.

“What's in your head, Linny?” my mother asks, after a few lights.

“I don't know,” I say, poking around in my shopping bags. She bought me a whole new outfit today, including shoes and a pair of earrings. Usually I don't get a shopping trip except in August, to get ready for school, and on my birthday.

“It's just the second day,” my mother reminds me. “It's going to feel strange for a while.”

Before Jackson died, she'd tell me more. She'd explain it somehow, like a teacher would, or a preacher. I wait a minute, hoping, like I always do, that maybe she'll go on. Fix things with her layers of words, like warm blankets.

“I don't think Eric likes us,” I whisper after the hope wears off.

“He just needs to get comfortable,” my mom says.

*  *  *

After three weeks he's still not comfortable. He sits in the chair that used to be Jackson's, and it's still the chair that watches over us, keeps us from feeling light. He barely talks, except at night to Mickey, when he thinks the rest of us can't hear.

I spy on them after my parents go to bed. I do it by looking through the keyhole of the bathroom that connects their room to mine. They share the bed by the window. Eric is usually propped by a pillow at his back, knees up. Mickey's usually scootched tight next to him, looking at what Eric's drawing on a tattered pad with a black ballpoint pen. Mickey talks a lot, too, while Eric pulls his pen across the page. I always try to see what's on the pad. Also, I try to hear what they say, but they're too far away, and the keyhole is small.

Sometimes Eric opens the window while Mickey sits cross-legged on the bed, bending over paper and tobacco that he rolls together in his little fingers. When Mickey's done, Eric pulls on the finished cigarette with his mouth and holds the smoke in for a long time before he huffs it out the window. Sometimes he makes smoke rings, which Mickey pokes his fingers through. When the wind is blowing a certain way, the keyhole lets me catch a sniff of something sour and tangy at the same time. I think it's marijuana.

Before, Jackson had bunk beds in that room, crosswise under and over each other. When we weren't fighting, we made forts out of blankets hanging down. We played pirate ship and jail and desert island. Sometimes we'd have a balloon. You couldn't let it touch the top of a bed or a floor or the inside blanket walls, and you could never tap it twice in a row. If the balloon popped, whoever brushed it last had to get hung by the ankles from the top bunk.

Once Jackson dropped me by accident, and I faked that I was dead. He was so scared he started crying, but when I jumped up, laughing at him, he was so mad he gave me a puffy eye. We weren't allowed to make forts for a whole month after that.

*  *  *

They put Eric in special ed over at the high school. They put Mickey in his regular grade at the elementary school. My father takes Eric on his first day, and my mother takes Mickey. When Eric leaves in the morning, he has his mean face, and he barely even looks at my dad. But at dinner, when my mom asks about how it went, he says, “Was all right.”

“We got computers and carpets,” Mickey tells Eric.

“You didn't have computers at your old schools?” I ask Eric.

“Linnette!” my father warns.

“What?” I ask.

“Didn't hardly have books in Brooklyn,” Eric tells me, sarcastic and ugly.

*  *  *

It snows so much we get to stay home, and my parents can't get into Manhattan for work. My dad asks me and Eric to shovel the walk while he and Mickey build an igloo in the back. Eric purposely waits until I begin, so that he can start at the opposite end of our path, as far away from me as possible. For a while the only sounds I hear are the scrip-scrapes of our shovels against the cement, the shudder of the snow rippling to the side as we go, and Mickey's giggly shouts from the backyard.

“Why don't you like us?” I ask Eric, finally, as we reach each other in the middle of the path. I'm sweating underneath my coat, and my heart is beating fast from exercise and nerves.

Eric just gives me that ice pick look.

“I asked you a question,” I tell him.

“Don't like nobody,” he says after a while.

“Bull,” I argue. “You like Mickey.”

He shrugs and stares over my shoulder.

“You don't scare me,” I lie. His eyes flash on my face and away again. “And if you're going to stay with us, you better start acting human,” I add, scared of what he'll do.

He stands extra still for a second and then takes a deep breath. He swings the shovel up over his head, and for a second I think he's going to bash me with it. Instead he rests it across his shoulders, hands draped over the bar, fluttering from the wrists, and he says, “You know maths and English?”

*  *  *

Eric and I let Mickey sharpen the pencils in my father's electric sharpener. Then Mickey and Eric sit at their desks. Eric has a marble notebook and Mickey has one with cartoon superheroes on the cover. I sit on the bed farthest from the windows, the one that never gets slept in.

“Once upon a time there was a boy without a name,” I say. I have to wait a while for their pencils to slow down. “He lived in a big mansion near the ocean.”

“What a mansion?” Mickey asks.

“Big house, bigger than this house, but a real house, not no jail,” Eric says.

“This boy had a unique talent.”

“What a unique talent?” Mickey asks.

“Shut up,” Eric tells him.

“What a unique talent?” Mickey asks me.

“Something unusual that you're good at,” I tell him. Then I go on. “This boy without a name was good at making himself disappear.” I look out the window and think of what to say next. I hear their pencils scratching. I hear one of them erasing something and then blowing the red bits away. From the sound of the blow, I think it's Mickey.

“This boy would make himself disappear when it was time to do the dishes. He would walk into a candy store and make himself disappear just before he would take some candy.”

“This boy a stealer?” Mickey asks. He turns all the way around from his desk to look at me.

“Just candy,” I say. “Just sometimes, for his sister, when she's sick.”

“Yo,” Eric grumbles. “Slow down. I can't be going so fast.”

Mickey climbs out of his chair and crawls up on the bed next to me. “That boy going to get into trouble?” He lifts up my arm and settles himself into my side. He's warm, and he smells like new shoes.

“I don't know yet,” I say. “I'm just making it up now.”

“I makes up stories all the time,” Mickey tells me.

“Shut up, Mick,” Eric says. His voice is sharp. Hatchet man. Mickey pulls my hand down over his head to cover his face.

“You got to check me now,” Eric orders. He leans way back in his chair and hands me his notebook. He doesn't know about capital letters or commas or periods. He writes like a little kid. Worse than a little kid. His spelling sucks, too.

“It shit, yo?” he asks me.

“It's pretty bad,” I tell him. Mickey peeks out from under my hand. “But I can show you.”

*  *  *

Eric works hard. Sometimes Mickey tries to help Eric, but Mickey doesn't know how to explain things very well. He just knows how to do things. I have to be careful because if Eric thinks I'm laughing at him, he'll stand up fast and stomp away, and he won't let me help him for a couple of days.

“He mad,” Mickey says whenever I mess up with Eric.

Then Mickey will shake his head, all serious.

“He get mad easy,” Mickey will tell me. “But he real soft on the inside.”

We do homework, the three of us, after we watch
Oprah
and before my parents get home. We do dictation, too. I always add on to the story of the disappearing boy. First, though, during
Oprah,
Mickey and Eric sit on the sofa eating Campbell's chicken dumpling soup, and I sit in the armchair eating blue corn chips dipped in salsa sauce.

Today Oprah's doing a show on makeovers. Mickey hops up off the couch and walks up close to the TV screen. “That lady look like Mama,” he says, pointing to one of the made-over guests.

Eric keeps his face closed.

“Eric,” Mickey insists, “that lady look like Mama.”

“Nah,” Eric finally says. “That lady prettier.”

“Mama dead?” Mickey asks Eric. I try not to crunch my corn chip between my teeth because I don't want to drown out Eric's answer.

“Shut up,” Eric says.

Mickey climbs back up on the couch and looks at Eric straight in the eyes. Eric stares right back at Mickey, trying to look evil. Mickey smiles at him. “You not mad,” he tells Eric. Then he plops down on his butt and looks over at me.

“My mama dead?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I say to Mickey.

“None a your business,” Eric mutters.

“Duh,” I tell him.

Eric slurps up some dumplings. I've noticed that he eats all the soup part first and then saves the dumplings for last.

“Probably she not dead,” Eric says, into his bowl. “Probably she in a program somewhere.”

“A program for what?” I ask Eric. He stays quiet, staring at the TV. It's on a commercial now for quick dry nail polish.

“Program is for crackheads to stop using the pipe,” Mickey tells me. “Right, Eric?”

Eric glares at Mickey. “You not supposed to tell all everybody that.”

“Linny not all everybody,” Mickey says. Then he smiles up into Eric's face. “You not mad.”

Now Eric glares at me. “She a crackhead and a whore and all kind of nasty shit,” Eric tells me. “You heard enough?”

*  *  *

As I watch through the bathroom keyhole, my parents walk in on Eric and Mickey. The tattered sketchpad is open on Mickey's stomach. He's asleep on the bed by the window, and Eric's sitting on the bed's edge, blowing tangy smoke out through the screen. My father takes the cigarette out of Eric's hand. My mother picks up the sketchbook and looks at it for a long time. Eric acts like they haven't even come into the room. He just stays staring out the window. My mother sits on the bed next to him. I keep waiting for her to say something, but I don't think she does. I watch my father head for the bathroom with the cigarette, and before I can move out of the way, he's swinging open the door, hitting me in the face.

*  *  *

On Saturdays Eric and Mickey go to therapy, and I get to have lunch alone with my parents. I used to go to therapy after Jackson died, and so did my parents. But now we eat in a diner once a week instead. I always order a well-done cheeseburger with onion fries and a hot fudge sundae for dessert. Afterward we pick up Mickey and Eric, and my parents switch off taking them out for lunch while I get alone time with whoever's left.

On Sundays we all go out for brunch together. Today the lady who serves my french toast looks at the swollen darkness over my eye, from the bathroom door, and then glances hard and mean at Eric. He glares back at her. When she sets my plate down, I knock over a water glass, right into her black and green apron. She gets soaked.

“Sorry,” I tell her, and I give her a blank Eric-style stare.

*  *  *

When we get home, I follow them into Jackson's room.

“My mom says you draw really good,” I tell Eric.

“He draw mad good,” Mickey says. “He do pictures for my stories.”

“Shut up, Mick,” Eric snaps.

“My parents would buy you supplies,” I tell Eric. “They'd buy you pads and color pencils and stuff. I bet they'd even help you get into an art class.”

Eric keeps his arms crossed over his chest and sits straight, staring out the window.

“Make me up a blunt,” he tells Mickey.

“They took it all,” Mickey says.

“What's a blunt?” I ask.

Mickey stares at me. A piece of a laugh hops out of Eric's mouth. I can see his teeth. Suddenly he looks more like Mickey than like a murderer.

“She don't know what's a blunt?” Mickey asks him. Now Eric's smiling for real.

“Don't make fun of me,” I warn him.

“Weed,” Eric says, smirking. “Reefer. Happy smoke.”

“Oh,” I say. “You mean it's marijuana.”

Mickey giggles. “Mari
juana
,” he imitates me. “Mari
juana
.” He's laughing big now. He's pulling on Eric's knee. “She talk funny,” he snorts. “Eric, she talk so funny!”

“She talk white,” Eric tells Mickey, smiling and lying back on the bed. “I be telling you. These niggers talk white.”

The word
nigger
makes my ears burn, but Mickey's laughing so hard he falls on the floor.

“Stop it now,” Eric orders, but he's giggling a little bit, too. Eric is giggling. “Come on, Mick,” he snorts.