Looking for X (2 page)

“Which secret police?” I asked her once.

“All of them,” she replied, which is an awful lot to be frightened of.

I walked right past the park, pretending not to see her, and she pretended not to see me, just in case the secret police were watching.

I have my own set of keys, one for the apartment and one for the outside door. I keep them around my neck on a cow-colored shoelace Tammy found at the dollar store. I usually wear it under my shirt,
so that some creep won't get the idea that I'm alone in the apartment sometimes. It's a safety thing.

The teenagers hanging around the entrance ignored me as I unlocked the building door. They're too cool to bother with a kid like me. They're too cool to bother with anything. They're probably too cool even to breathe. They always hang around the entrance, draped over each other. Now and then I check them out to see if moss is growing on them.

“Nice day,” I said.

“Huh?” one of them grunted, almost collapsing from the effort.

I laughed and went inside. I'll be a teenager soon, but I won't be like them. I couldn't bear to stand still for that long.

Glad the school day was over, I opened our apartment door.

A strange woman was sitting at our kitchen table. The Monkees were not singing.

The twins were in the kitchen, too. David was on his knees by the cupboards, in his favorite rocking position. There was a pillow on the floor in front of him so he wouldn't hurt his head if he rocked too hard. Daniel was hopping in one place, flapping his arms like he was a baby bird trying to fly. I gave them each a hug, although I knew they wouldn't hug me back.

There was a heavy feeling in the apartment, and I felt I had just walked in on something very bad.

“I'm home,” I said to Mom, which was a dumb thing to say, since I was standing right in front of her.

Mom barely glanced at me. Her face had that tight, pinched look it gets when she's trying not to cry. I've seen it on her face when we're out in public, the twins are acting up, and she's tired, or when she gets angry at someone who says something stupid. She says when she gets angry she feels like crying, but doesn't want to cry. She didn't look angry today, though, just sad.

The strange woman smiled at me and said, “You must be (unmentionable name).” I saw the briefcase at her feet. The only people who come to Regent Park with briefcases are social workers. I started to ignore her.

Tammy cleared her throat. It was her we-are-polite-to-guests-in-this-house noise. I mumbled hello. That was as polite as I was going to get.

The twins' button collection was all over the floor. They can play with their buttons for hours. They look at them, spin them and let them drop like water through their fingers. Mom says it's part of their autism, to play like that for hours on end. She keeps trying to get them to do other things, like use crayons, but I don't think it's such a bad thing for them to play with buttons. They could spend
their time doing worse things, like trigonometry, or building bombs that would destroy places I haven't explored yet.

“No buttons in your mouth,” I said to Daniel, fishing it out. I rinsed it in the sink and dropped it back on the pile.

“My friend is waiting for me,” I said to Tammy as I made X a peanut butter and corn syrup sandwich. X likes my sandwiches. I've never seen her eat anything else. She worries that her food could be poisoned by the secret police.

The social worker had spread her papers all over our kitchen table. I considered pouring corn syrup on them, but then there would be none left for sandwiches.

I wrapped the sandwich in a piece of newspaper and put it in my shoulder bag, then fetched David's jacket and started to put it on him.

“David's going to stay here this afternoon,” Mom said.

“It's his turn, I took Daniel out yesterday.”

“Daniel's staying here, too.”

“But I always take one of the twins out after school.”

“Well, today you don't,” Tammy snapped, then immediately looked embarrassed. It took me a moment to realize she was embarrassed because the social worker was there.

It made me mad that this strange woman with the briefcase could make Mom feel bad.

It made me livid to then see the social worker put an ugly, claw-like hand on Mom's arm, as if to comfort her, and Mom let her do it! If any social worker did that to me, I'd slug her. I'd be in horrible trouble, but it would be worth it.

“You have the afternoon to yourself,” Mom said, in a voice that was a little too loud and a little too cheerful. I could tell they wanted me to leave.

Naturally, that made me want to stay.

If X hadn't been waiting for me, I would have pulled up a chair, just to make them angry. But I couldn't let X down.

Without saying goodbye, I left.

“I'll show her,” I muttered, closing the apartment door as noisily as I could without actually slamming it. Slamming the door would get me in trouble. “See if I ever take the twins out again.”

But that was just grumbling. Of course I'd take the twins out again. I liked taking them out.

CHAPTER THREE

X was gone, but I knew she would be. I also knew where to find her. She'd be sitting on a bench in Allan Gardens, the big park down the street.

Allan Gardens is not full of people named Allan. It's full of trees and squirrels and people who sleep on park benches. They may all be named Allan, but I doubt it. Anyway, anybody can use the park, no matter what their name is.

I didn't see X on any of our usual benches, so I headed into the giant greenhouse in the center of the park. She was sitting on a bench in the huge entrance room, hunched into her gray trench coat, as usual, looking down at her feet instead of at the plants around her. Her blue suitcase was on the ground, tight between her feet.

X is pretty old. She has short white hair, and her face is full of wrinkles.

I sat down on the other end of the bench and put
the sandwich between us. Slowly she reached out and pulled the sandwich toward her. While she ate, I talked.

X is like the twins. She listens to everything I say, but hardly ever says anything herself. Sometimes she answers a direct question, but it makes her look so uncomfortable that I don't ask them very often.

“There's a social worker sitting at our kitchen table,” I said. “She's got three heads, and claws, and she smells bad.”

X nodded as she pulled her sandwich apart and looked at it closely. She trusted me, but she liked to be careful.

“I hate social workers,” I continued. “They talk to Tammy as if she were a bad mother.”

“It's not just me,” Tammy once told me. “They talk to all people on welfare that way. It's because we take money from the government.”

That may be true, but some things are just for Tammy. I've heard social workers say, “I see from your file that you used to be a stripper. Hmmm.” Then they sneer at Tammy as if they were waiting for her to apologize. She never does, though.

X stopped eating, and I realized I had stopped talking. She feels more comfortable if I talk while she eats. I think it helps her feel invisible, because while I'm talking, I'm paying attention to other
things, not to her. If you're being chased by the secret police, invisibility is useful.

I started talking again. Since we were sitting under a tree from Brazil, I told her about some of the strange animals found in the Amazon jungle. I exaggerated a bit — there isn't really a five-hundred-pound frog — but X didn't seem to mind.

X and I left the greenhouse separately, as always. I headed toward the library. I don't know where X went.

It felt funny being out on my own on a weekday. I always had one of the boys with me, their harness strapped to my wrist, their hand in mine. It felt weird to be alone, but it felt good, too. I felt free.

On the way to the library, I stopped by an Italian restaurant. It had a menu posted outside. I stood and read the menu. I was hungry. I'm always hungry. Tammy feeds me, of course, and I get food at the lunch-and-breakfast club at school, but I'm always hungry anyway. Sometimes my hunger is so big I feel that I can eat everything I see — dogs, cars, park benches, newspaper boxes — just swallow them whole.

I read over the menu and decided on a ravioli dinner, with a side order of chicken and a double dessert. It would cost as much for one meal as it cost us to buy groceries for a whole week.

Someday I'm going to have enough money to be
able to walk into any restaurant in town and order whatever I want, and keep ordering and eating until I can't eat anything more.

In the library I spent an hour looking at the big atlas. I never go into the library when one of my brothers is with me. They make too much noise, and they bother other people. The librarian asked me not to bring them. I wanted Tammy to complain, but she said she has too many other things to worry about.

Through the library window I saw the social worker leave my building. Social workers always look like they're dying to wash their hands when they leave our neighborhood.

I went home.

Mom was sitting in the living room with the twins. Our living room has no regular furniture, just mattresses along the walls, covered with blankets and lots of colorful pillows. Making pillows is a hobby of Tammy's. She gets clothes from the second-hand store on dollar-a-pound days, and cuts them up into shapes and sews them back together to make pillows. They're really pretty.

We don't have a television. We used to, but Mom had to sell it to get money for a treatment for the boys. I don't really mind. It didn't work very well, anyway.

The twins were curled up with Tammy, making
their little noises and playing with their fingers.

“If they're quiet now, they won't sleep tonight,” I said.

Mom smiled me a hello smile. “We'll worry about that tonight. Right now, I want all my babies close to me.”

I like it when she calls us her babies. It's kind of a dopey thing to say, since we're not babies, but I like it anyway.

I joined them on the mattress and we all snuggled in. We might have stayed like that all night, but my stomach let out a huge rumble, so Tammy decided it was time to light the fire under the soup. She meant turn the stove burner on. There's no actual fire. We have an electric stove.

We almost always have soup. Even if we don't have it for dinner, it's always around. Tammy makes it herself and puts everything in it, but lets me pick out any lima beans I find. Sometimes we have soup and bread, sometimes soup and sandwiches, sometimes soup poured over mashed potatoes. On this night, we were having soup poured over little squares of toasted stale bread.

While Tammy made the toast and cut it into squares, I stirred the soup and sang the soup song:

“Beautiful soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!”

It's the Mock Turtle's song from
Alice in Wonderland
. We made up the tune. Sometimes we make up other words to it.

“Horrible soup, so slimy and foul
Made with the head of a wormy owl!
Who for such maggots would not stoop?
Soup of the graveyard, horrible soup!
Soup of the graveyard, horrible soup!”

When I was younger, Tammy sometimes put joke eyeballs and big rubber insects in my bowl of soup, but I've mostly outgrown that now.

Later that night, we took the twins out to the baseball field in the middle of Regent Park. We all ran around until they were tired out and ready for sleep. We were all alone out there, just us. The air was clean and cold. Tammy and I played tag, and the twins ran with us. It felt great. It felt like we were the most powerful people in the world.

I could see other people looking down on us from their windows and their balconies. They could hear us laughing and having a good time. I wanted to wave to them all, so I did. Tammy saw
what I was doing, and she laughed and waved, too. Some of the people waved back. I think our good time gave them a good time, too.

Back at home, I did my homework while Tammy put the boys to bed. When she didn't come back into the kitchen, I went into the boys' room. They have mattresses on the floor, like we have in the living room.

Mom was sound asleep, half of her on David's bed, half of her on the floor. It didn't surprise me to see her there. She often fell asleep when she was putting them to bed. She's almost always tired.

I covered Mom up with David's blanket and kissed her goodnight.

Our apartment has a tiny bedroom for Tammy and a bigger one for the twins. I have an alcove. It has a narrow bed built up high beside a window, with a ladder beside it. A curtain can be pulled across it, like the upper berth of a train. Underneath it is my bookshelf and a place to keep my clothes. My real treasures are on shelves by my bed. I keep the important stuff up high to keep my brothers out of it.

When I lie on my bunk and look out the window, I sometimes pretend I'm on a train trip through the Gobi Desert, or in a bunk on a freighter ship, heading for the Cape of Storms.

This night, I didn't pretend to be anywhere but
on the northeast corner of Regent Park, with my belly full of soup and my mom and little brothers asleep nearby.

It would be a while before I had such a good night again.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Are you sure you want to come?” I asked Mom. “It's a really dumb play. I look like a fool in it.”

“Of course I want to come. It will make a good story to embarrass you with to my grandchildren.” She buttoned David into his jacket.

Every year, in late October, my school holds an open house to show the parents what their miserable brats will be up to in the coming year. Most of it's a lie, of course, but everyone pretends it isn't. Last year, one of the parents complained that his kid was in seventh grade and still couldn't read, and what was the teacher going to do about it? The teacher peered over her glasses at him and asked him what was wrong at home.