Middle of Nowhere (2 page)

“I miss her!”

“What do you miss?”

“I miss sucking her hair!”

Every night that she didn't have a class, Mom lay down with Artie and let him suck her hair until he fell asleep.

“Suck your own hair.”

“It doesn't reach! And it's not the same! I miss how she smells!”

“How she smells? Why didn't you say?”

In the bathroom a giant bottle of Economizer Extra-Strength Hand and Body Lotion sat on the windowsill. I pumped some into my palm. Back in the living-room, I dried Artie's tears with the sheet, then I dabbed some of the lotion on his cheeks. At first he shoved my hand away, but as soon as he smelled the lotion he closed his eyes and let me rub his whole face with it.

“Mom?” he whispered. “Mom, I smell you. I smell you coming closer. I smell you coming home.”

2

I WAS SO
sure that she would be back the next morning, but she wasn't. She didn't show up. She would, though. Soon. I was sure of it.

I was.

Mr. Bryant stopped me after class and said if I didn't bring back the permission form, I couldn't go on the field trip.

“We have a field trip?”

He took a lunging step forward and swung his arm like he was launching a bowling ball down the hall.

“Oh, right,” I said.

“If it's the fee,” he said, pretending to pick something off his sleeve so I wouldn't be embarrassed, “it doesn't matter.”

Mr. Bryant is maybe my favorite teacher ever, though Mrs. Gill was pretty nice, too. Mr. Bryant calls us “people,” but the best thing about him is that he wears earrings.

The first day of grade six this kid, Mickey Roach, put up his hand and asked Mr. Bryant if he was a lady. Mr. Bryant said he was a person, and he expected us all to act like people, too.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mickey asked. Mr. Bryant explained that human beings bore a grave responsibility because we've evolved. It was our duty to demonstrate tolerance and compassion just as it was our duty to exercise the extraordinary reasoning abilities only human beings possess. He said we would be studying all about this in science, in social studies, in language arts, in every subject across the whole curriculum, because it was what really mattered. Then he congratulated Mickey for being the first one in the class to show an interest in the subject.

None of us really understood what he was on about, but I went home and asked if I could get my ears pierced anyway. Mom said no. She said I needed new shoes first.

In the hall, Mr. Bryant waited for my answer. I looked right at his gold pirate earrings and wondered, should I tell him?

I wanted to. But I couldn't because he would contact Social Services. As a teacher, it would be his duty.

“I hate bowling,” I said.

SO THAT WAS
how I ended up at home on Friday morning. I took Artie to school and when I came back, I went straight to Mom's room and got her wallet out from under the cardboard box that she used as her bedside table. It was where she hid things ever since we were broken into. Burglars broke in, but they didn't take anything, not even the computer. It sounds weird, but that made me feel even worse. Like everything we owned was junk.

The day of the non-robbery, Mom came to me after Artie was asleep.

“I do own something valuable.” She held out a tiny box.

“What's that?” I thought there would be a diamond ring or a gold nugget inside.

It was a tooth.

“Do you know who gave that to me?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Pennypacker.”

It was my tooth. I closed the box and handed it back to her. I didn't like to think about that time in foster care with the Pennypackers.

Mom was robbed at the gas station once, too, by a boy waving a steak knife. He took her wallet and all the money in the register, which is why she always left her wallet behind when she went to work and only took her bus fare and fifty cents for the phone. She would sit in the lit-up booth all night and study for her high-school-equivalency exam, which is for adults who never finished high school and want another chance. After she passed that, she wanted to become a nursing assistant or even a nurse.

I emptied Mom's wallet on the bed. Pictures of me and Artie, a bank card I didn't know the PIN for, a credit card, her community college ID. There was still a five-dollar bill and enough change to bring it almost to seven, and a huge wad of coupons. If I could have exchanged the coupons for money, we could have gone another month. Not that we'd have to, since I was positive Mom would show up in the next day or two.

Just as I was thinking that — that Mom would come home or at least call — the phone rang.

“Congratulations! You're the lucky winner of a Caribbean cruise! Press five to claim your prize. Press five now. Please press five.”

I hung up and went out. Across the street, the little house was awake now. Somebody had opened the drapes.

One block up, on the corner of Broadway, was the Pit Stop Mart. The whole block smelled like old fried chicken grease from Chancey's Chicken down the street.

I bought four apples, a jug of milk and a dozen hotdog buns from the clerk with the gold front tooth. The hotdogs I had to put back in the cooler because there wasn't enough money. With the change, I got some penny candy to bribe Artie with if he pitched another fit that night and the lotion treatment didn't work.

I walked home, past the apartment blocks with their balconies crowded with plastic flower pots and plastic furniture and clothes racks draped in underwear. And mops. We lived on the ground floor with a sawed-down broom handle wedged in tight so the window couldn't be opened from the outside.

Then I saw the old lady. I saw the old lady and I froze where I was on the sidewalk and just stared at her. I guess I thought she was never coming back. The old lady, I mean. I was so sure Mom would be home first. I actually thought the old lady had died, but there she was, sitting on the bottom step of the last house left on the block wearing that little knitted cap with wisps of white hair sticking out, a man's shirt and those big glasses. There was something like a three-sided ladder made of shiny chrome standing in front of her. A walker.

And I felt sick when I saw her. Sick, because who was dead then? Who was dead?

“You!” she called. “Come over here, would you?”

I crossed the street and stopped in front of her closed gate. There was a sign on it that read
ABSOLUTELY NO FLYERS!

“You been to the store?” she asked.

I held up the plastic bag by the handles.

“I saw you. I waved to you from the window, but you hurried by so fast.” She just sat there with her speckled hands on her knees, scowling at me through her glasses. “I don't normally ask for help.”

She was stuck. She couldn't get up off the step.

I went through the
ABSOLUTELY NO FLYERS!
gate and offered my arm. The way she grabbed it and held on tight, I realized that she was scared of falling. If I hadn't come by, who knew how long she would have sat there? I really had to haul to get her up.

The second she was on her feet, she reached for the chrome walker and clutched it just as hard.

I waited until she was steady. “Okay?”

“I wanted you to go for me,” she said, taking a twenty-dollar bill from her slacks pocket and putting it in my hand.

“To the store?” I said.

“Hold on.” She switched hands that held the metal rail and took a list and a five-dollar bill from the other pocket. “This is what I need and that's for you. You're not going to run off with my money, are you?”

“No,” I said. “Here.” I put my bag down on the walk and left it with her as security. I felt dizzy with good luck, or maybe it was just that I hadn't eaten anything since supper the night before.

Back in the Pit Stop, I bought the hotdogs to go with the buns I'd already got. I bought the things on her list and made sure I kept the change separate from mine. The package of hotdogs I put in that big pocket on the side of my pants that I never used. They fit exactly.

When I got back, she was still there hanging onto the walker.

“Could you take it into the house? Put it on the kitchen table.”

I did. I went up the steps and inside. The kitchen was straight ahead. When I came back out she asked if I'd take her in, too, which I did.

“Don't forget the thingie,” she said, waving to it.

She kept one freckled hand on the stair railing, the other on my arm. Inside the door, I set the walker down, making sure she was gripping it before I let her go.

I tried to give her change back. I really did.

AS SOON AS
I got in our apartment, I dropped the groceries on the floor and went over to the wall and stood on my head. Once, in art class, Mr. Bryant showed us how copying a drawing upside down makes it come out better. You look at it in a different way, I guess. So I stood on my head and looked differently at that awful question.

Who was dead?

Now everything in the room was upside down. What a mess. Did I need to be upside down to notice the hideaway bed was not hiding and not made? That dirty breakfast dishes were still on the table and damp laundry draped all over the chairs? It was a one-bedroom apartment. Mom got the bedroom because she slept during the day. Artie and I shared the hideaway bed. We didn't dare leave the bed open with Mom around. Artie would never bounce a ball against the wall if she was there.

If somebody ever suspected Artie and I were on our own, they would come straight over and the mess would give us away. Obviously, there wasn't a mother for miles around here.

The blood drained from my feet and the hotdogs slid out of my pocket and bounced on the carpet. I stayed upside down for as long as I could. Then I kicked off the wall and landed on the floor in a ball. When I tried to sit up again, I toppled right over on my side.

That was probably how the old lady felt. Dizzy. Dizzy and scared. But after a minute, I got up fine on my own.

I never did see an answer to my question.

UNTIL IT WAS
time to get Artie, I spent the rest of Friday cleaning the apartment. The vacuum cleaner was broken so I had to pick the dirt off the carpet, go around collecting little bits of stuff with my fingers. I did a good job because as soon as we got in, Artie went running to Mom's bedroom, calling, “You're back! You're back!”

Then he pitched another one.

Economizer Extra-Strength Hand and Body Lotion — it's great for fits!

They should put that on the label.