The Kid (6 page)

I look up at her. Why is she talking to me like that?

“J.J., you just like all the rest come in here, you got to adjust. Whatever you had at home is over and probably never was! I know how you kids make shit up.” She opens my envelope, looks in a folder, and starts reading, “‘Father unknown, mother deceased November 1, 1997, HIV-related illness.’ Uh huh just what I thought, so OK, J.J., relax, you like everybody else here.” She looks in the drawer. “Is that a suit?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you hang it up in the closet. You can hang your leather up too. Landlord keep it warm in here. Y’all don’t need to be walking around in no jackets.”

She looks around the room, at what? Ain’t no toys or furniture except for the dresser and another set of bunk beds in the corner, diagonal-like across from the bunk bed Batty Boy is standing up in looking like a . . . a weird person.

“Well, let me go heat up some of this good ol’ chicken lo mein, pork fried rice, and egg drop soup.”

The door close and it’s like some magic or something, all of a sudden Batty Boy can move. He’s coming toward—I—He . . . he’s gonna hit me? For what, this is stu—BAP! I step back, look in his eyes, sleepy stuff, he smells like pee, hatred. Fight back, I tell myself just as he slams his fist into my eye, knocking me down. He jumps on my chest, pinning my arms down with his knees.

“Who you laughing at!” he screams

Oh, man, this dude is crazy. “Stop! Stop!”

“Shut up, you fucking baby! I said shut up, stupid!” He hits me again, and I see orange polka dots, then nothing.

 

 

“WAKE UP, STUPID!”
A gray shadow smell like pee-the-bed is over me shouting, “Faker! Faker!” It grabs me by my shoulders and raises me up and slams my head into the floor. No air. I can’t scream. Rita’s gonna be mad at me. I’m gonna die. Someone hit you, you hit ’em back. I try to raise myself up. My head burns,
burns
. I try to say something, spit blood on the checkerboard floor. My mother dead. Rita. Please please.

“You can have it,” I finally say. That must be it, my jacket, he wants my jacket. “You can have my jacket.” My suit? shirt? What he want?

“Fool I got that jacket! It been mine, asshole!” Blood from my nose in my mouth. My head burning.

“I’m thirteen!” He raises me up and slams me into the floor again. “You better do what I say.” I ain’t gotta do what he says. I gotta get home to my mother.

“I ain’t gotta do what you say! I only gotta do what my mother and the teacher say.”

“Nigguh, shut up! You ain’t got no motherfucking mother! She’s a crack-addict ho died from AIDS!”

“BATTY!” Miss Lillie’s voice bust through the door. “Batty! Nigger, is you crazy! Get up off that boy! Get up off J.J. Is you
crazy
! You done lost your motherfucking mind. He got to go to school! I said git
off
him! Well, I’ll be damned. He can’t go to school looking like that. Come on, J.J. sweetie, sit up. Batty Boy was just playing with you. He didn’t mean you no harm! I know how rough you boys are. Rough, honey! Yes indeed. Let me go get something to clean up this mess. And you FOOL! You better not lay a hand on him while I’m gone neither.”

She come back she got latex gloves on like the hospital. “Come on, let me wash you up so you can come eat. You ain’ had no breakfast. Neither has Batty, that’s probably why he’s so irritable.” She wipes my face with a warm washcloth. “You alright, you got a little bloody nose and a black eye. If Batty ever ever lay a hand on you again, they won’t have to take him out of here, I’ll kill him myself! Don’t you worry, that’s why he’s here’cause I’m one of the few that can handle him.”

She pulls my hand for me to follow her in the kitchen. Everything seems red or maybe everything is red, at least the tablecloth and chairs and kitchen cabinets. I can feel my eye swelling shut. My head is . . . feels like it’s broken or something.

“What you staring at? You done seen a roach before. Good thing is they only in the kitchen. Some people got ’em all over. I gotta get the man back in here to spray.

“Sit down, sit down.”

She places a plate in front of me, it smells good. I didn’t know I was so hungry. It stings the cut on my lip! I push the plate away and lay my head down on the table and start to cry. “I wanna go home! I wanna go home! I wanna go home—” The tears is burning my eye and the cut in my lip.

“Hush up, J.J., it’s over.”

“I wan—” I can’t hardly talk. “I . . . go home.”

“Hush, J.J., you is home.”

I put my head back down crying. I don’t know where to go. If it was the olden days, I could run away to be with Crazy Horse, be a great warrior. Walk in moccasin shoes. I feel cold, I got my head down. I don’t see him or hear him, but I feel Batty Boy in the room.

“Look at him! He can’t go to school like that! Goddamn you, Batty! Put your hands on him again and your simple ass is going to a group home or Spofford, hear! HEAR!”

Loud as she’s screaming, he oughta be able to hear. Heeeaaar! HEAR! I raise up to look at Batty, like those dogs, can she control him. I’m surprised, he looks like a different person from a few minutes ago, bright and cheerful, smiling, not weird.

“Soup,” he says.

“What!” Miss Lillie says.

“What! Smut! Some soup, that’s what!”

“Good idea, Batty! You smart as a whip when you wanna be. Put him some soup in a bowl.”

I’m looking at him, then it seems like he disappears, like everything disappears. The cabinets is turning from red to rainbows.

“Here, drink your soup, J.J. It ain’t gonna burn you.” Batty Boy’s voice comes through the colors, sounds nice like a mother almost.

Miss Lillie is putting some ice in a plastic bag against my eye. “You can’t go to school like this. I do know that. Lord have mercy! What you say to Batty to make him so mad? Here, hold this ice on your eye and finish your soup. Then when you finish you can come in and watch TV with me.”

I look up at the wall, the clock is all twinkly with stars, but I can’t tell what time it is.

“What you looking at? I swear you is the peculiar-est chile I done seen in a while.”

“I’m looking at the clock. What time is it?”

“Ain’t no clock up there.” She looks at her watch. “It’s twelve o’clock.”

“I wanna lay down.” My head really hurts.

“OK, you can finish your soup later.”

I gotta get outta here, go home. Go back home. I’m hungry. My shirt and jacket is all messed up—

“Come on.”

My mother’s there, back home. Follow Miss Lillie to her room.

“Don’t you want to take your jacket off before you lay down?”

“No.”

 

 

I’M CONFUSED
when I wake up. I think I’m Mommy. But if I was her I wouldn’t be thinking I’m her, I would just be her. Then I think like on TV, that cartoon, the magic genie, or that TV show where you get another chance, get a wish, make it better, do it different. Mommy is not dead but in bed and like in the movie gonna change and she gonna get up and we go home or to have pizza and our life be good. We win like the Indians winned once, we win like that, I’m so glad to be in the hospital with my mother. Huh? Huh? I don’t think this guy understand, he keep asking me stupid stuff. Nothin’ happened! Me and my mother, we getting ready to get out of here. You can’t keep us here we don’t want to be here. We well. My mom is well, I won the show, I get to go back, my wish? Today is not today, it’s yesterday.

“Come on, I think you do know. Can you tell who did this to you?”

Me and my mother gonna get pizza and go to the Apollo. Don’t nobody in my class go as many places as me—“Did what! What you talking about. Leave me alone!
Nothing
happened.”

“J.J.? J.J.? J.J.?”

My name ain’t no stupid J.J. and I’m not a little boy—

It seems like all the light’s whiteness is pouring in my eyes and I honestly don’t remember. I’m a little boy a little boy a little boy I’m a little boy! No I don’t, don’t have to, don’t wanna remember I don’t remember. I told you once! He banged my head on the floor. The floor was black and white squares on the linoleum. I don’t remember I don’t remember. It didn’t happen.

“What didn’t happen?”

“What you’re thinking didn’t happen. What you thinking—”

“Somebody hurt you, J.J.”

I forget all I don’t know. Sink further down in the bed even though I’m already flat on my back.

Home, home. How do I feel? I feel like I want to go home. Turn off the lights, Doctor.

so I can go to sleep

night in the hospital is light.

so you know what happened to you

so you know what happened to you?

Batty Boy jumped out of his bed and jumped me

for my jacket

I don’t know Batty wanted my jacket so he beat me up.

orange juice please

you like orange juice

yes I

yes I

five dollars

I had five dollars from the laundrymat guy

Star Magic Kaleidoscope from Rita

He hit me

“Where?”

I

Batty Boy hit me?

“Anything else? Did he do anything else?”

Nothing happened, really, I fell and hit my head at school and my head hurts bad I wonder can you fix it. In my dreams I’m not black, and if I am I’m only half black and an Indian. I’m a warrior riding across the plains, in my dreams we drive the Europeans back into the ocean, in my dreams sometimes I am black, blacker than I am now, the blackest black man, Hannibal riding an elephant over the Alps, a ruler of a kingdom of a land where my father’s picture is like George Washington’s on the dollar bill, in my dreams I have not been beat. Or left alone. My dreams are mine, I do ’em with my eyes open. When I close my eyes my dreams belong to the boogeyman, the devil. They are the devil’s
lies.
But my dreams were not lies before my mother died, or, except, maybe that time just before Mommy died was bad dreams. Before that my dreams was very good, like I was clear who I was gonna be when I growed up, I was like Michael Jordan. Like how my father must have been.

My mother says everyone even the ones who go to the same church have different ideas of what’s God.
It’s different for every person, Abdul. I don’t know exactly how to describe it to you, Mommy’s learning herself. Sometimes I feel you know more than me. But how I see it—I dunno. OK, see that apple, tell me about it.

It’s green.

It’s shiny.

No, but apples can be shiny.

Little.

No.

I never seen a golf ball.

But that’s on TV.

Yeah!

You don’t have to be, Mommy.

What we think can be God. We can think anything.

 

 

WHEN I CLOSE
my eyes I fall down without moving, like I’m tumbling through space, like astronauts but I’m not weightless and keep tumbling down to a dark place and my breath feel like fear in my throat. In the hospital I been dreaming one thing. One thing that didn’t happen. Batty did bad. Batty hurt me. They ask me questions over and over. I wanted the tubes out my nose and hands. I don’t have AIDS. I don’t have pneumonia. Stupid questions. When will I get my computer back, go someplace that’s not here? To Michael Jordan, to training camp. To the Indians. I don’t want to talk.

“In the three weeks you were there—”

Stupid guy! “I was not there no three weeks!” What’s he talking about. I was only there for one day. It hurts to turn my head.

One day an extra-stupid lady comes with dolls. She holds up one of the dolls. I hate her. She has flakes of dandruff.

“What happened to this little boy?”

She leans toward the bed. I feel like I’m swimming on the white walls, the air, like I can go anywhere. Just float. I’m anybody. I could be God if that was the agreed-upon reality. In the dream I have a bad headache for two weeks and we’ve finished dinner and I want to do my homework. In the dream Batty is sitting across the table from me. Snowball is on one side of me, he’s a little albino boy. He doesn’t like to be called Snowball but that’s how it is. I forget his name anyway. My head hurts all the time. Bobby and Richie Jackson are sitting next to Batty, across from me. I’m hungry. Everybody’s eating, I’m not. I’m hungry but sometimes my head hurts so hard I can’t do nothing not even eat. Miss Lillie say it will go away. I just need to eat and drink plenty of water. I do. Miss Lillie says shut up crying or I’ll give you something to cry about. But she doesn’t. She’s nice sometimes lets us watch TV in her room. Miss Lillie doesn’t ever hit us, none of us, not even Snowball when he doo-doos in the bed. Batty hits us. Until my head echoes like a bell. In school I can’t remember nothing. I sit there. They talk about dinosaurs. I go to the library and check out books I had at home:
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Indian Chiefs, Sitting Bull and Other Legendary Native American Chiefs, Michael Jordan: The Athlete and the Man.
In real life if real life was real I am not here. My father came and got me the minute he found out my mother died and they had put me in foster care. Not my son! My head hurts so bad. All the time I vomit. Inside I feel like Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. (My mother had got her nose pierced.) “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.” My mother said he probably didn’t say that, they probably just wrote it that way to make him sound like a fool. Mommy, do you hate them?
White people?
Yeah.
No, why, does it sound like I do?
Yeah, sometimes.
I . . . I, but I don’t, I really don’t, but they hate us, and they hated the Indians and the Asians, but now it seems like it’s us they hate the most.
Why?
A lot of reasons, none of them good.
BONG! BONG! My head. I’m scared he’s going to hit me again. I look down at the hot dogs and pork and beans on my plate.