When I Was Five I Killed Myself (11 page)

“You aren't supposed to eat candy before school,” I told him. (He was eating it.) “It gives you worms, my mom said.”

“Does not,” said Shrubs. “I have ate candy my whole life and I never had any. Worms don't like candy, they eat dirt.”

At school everyone talked about their Halloween costumes. Marcie Kane said she was coming as the Tooth Fairy. She looks like a tooth, I feel. She should be a cavity for a living.

All during belltime I drew Superman suits on my
dividers. I always draw things that I want. I draw them over and over until I get them. Last year I drew Bengali. He is a tiger. I saw him on television. He is like real. He roars. I asked for him for Hanukah but my dad said he was too expensive and I would get bored after two days. I said, “Pretty please with sugar on it,” and he said, “We'll see.” This means no. So I drew Bengali. I drew him and drew him. I drew him on newspapers and in the margins of
My Weekly Reader
. Then I got him, the first night of Hanukah. It was Bengali, man, he was big. But he had wires. There were two buttons, one to go and one for the roar. Only the roar sounded like burping, not real like on tv, and also I didn't see the wires on tv, and also his head was different than the rest of him, it was like plastic and the rest was fur. I got bored with him in two days.

I drew Superman suits. Just the suit, not the head. I put the muscles in though. I drew them in Miss Iris' room where I sit by the window and look out and pretend that Tarzan is in the tree outside and I climb out and we swing and I give the call and save the school when it gets surrounded by colored negroes in grass skirts.

I was looking out the window when I heard Miss Iris yelling. She yelled at Pat Foder, who was talking to Francine Renaldo who sits behind her. Pat Foder is about four years older than everybody because she flunked eight times. She is a grease, she has hair that looks like an explosion only she wears short dresses with stockings which make me feel funny under my
stomach. She always talks to Francine Renaldo, who only flunked twice but is ugly. She has a big nose and a mustache. (But once I went to the office to give a note to the red-haired secretary for Miss Verdon and Francine was on the bad kid's bench and she talked to me and she was nice.)

Miss Iris called my name.

“Burt, please pack up all your materials and move to the second seat in the row by the bookcase. Miss Renaldo will move back one seat. Maybe with someone sitting between them, Miss Foder and Miss Renaldo won't feel they have to visit with each other so much and disrupt the rest of us who are trying to study.”

Marty Polaski said, “Who's trying to study?” and Miss Iris heard him and gave him daggers.

I moved.

Pat Foder wears perfume, I smelled it when I sat down, and she turned around and looked at me and blinked her eyes at me. It made me feel funny.

Then we had Reading. It was a story entitled “The Red Dog.” It is quite interesting as a story. It is about like a red dog.

Francine Renaldo touched my shoulder.

“Pass this, ok?” she said. It was a note for Pat Foder.

I passed it. You aren't supposed to but I didn't want to get in trouble for talking.

Then Pat Foder said, “Pass this back.” But I said no. Then I got in trouble for talking. Then later she made me pass it, and called me “Sweetie,” and blinked at me again. The whole day I passed notes for Pat
Foder and Francine Renaldo. One of them said

I think Bill Bastalini is sweat.

So I corrected the spelling with my checking pencil. Then Pat Foder asked me about how to spell and I got in trouble for talking again. Then it was time for Lunch.

The children started lining up to pass. Pat Foder turned around and asked if she could see my ID bracelet. I said no.

“Please, Sweetie?” she said.

“No,” I said. “And stop getting me in trouble.”

“I'll give it right back.”

“No.”

Then she started talking, and she said she wouldn't stop until I let her see it. I let her see it. She put it on her wrist.

“Why does it say Jeffrey on it?” she said.

“Give it back.”

Then our row got called to line up. She got up and went to the door. I tried to grab my ID but she pulled it away. In line she started showing it to everyone and saying we were going steady, but that Bill Bastalini didn't know and when he found out he was going to tune me.

I got real mad and ran over and started to grab her arm. Then Miss Iris saw.

“What's going on here?”

“Nothing.”

“He gave me his ID to go steady, Miss Iris,” said Pat Foder.

“Did not!” I yelled.

“I thought you were going steady with Jessica Renton,” said Marty Polaski, “I seen you kissing her at the zoo.”

And I socked him, and Miss Iris shouted, “That's enough!” and I got embarrassed and everybody went to Lunch but we had to stay behind and Miss Iris sent me to the office.

I had to stay after school on the bad kid's bench. Shrubs was there too. He always has to stay after school because he gets in trouble all the time. (Once he got in trouble for writing his own note when he was absent, he said he had lung cancer.) This time he was in trouble for eating candy in Miss Crowley's room. She told him it was bad manners to eat if you didn't have enough for everybody, so Shrubs opened his desk and threw thirty pieces of candy in the air and yelled, Happy New Year!”

“Are you going out for Devil's Night tonight?” Shrubs said.

(Devil's Night is the night before Halloween when you go out and soap windows and ring doorbells. You are supposed to be little goblins like. They are juvenile delinquents.)

“I don't know,” I said.

Shrubs said, “Your mom gave my mom a book she is supposed to read to me. It's called
From Little Acorns
.”

“It's about how babies are born,” I told him.

Shrubs said he already knew. He said, “First Dad goes to the shopping center and buys a balloon. It is white. Then he brings it home and wraps it in aluminum foil so he can put it in the freezer for later. Then my mom gets in her pajamas and they go to bed. Then he takes out the balloon and shows it to her and she is so happy she has a baby.”

After school we decided to rake leaves. We have a company, the Shru-Bu Company, we rake leaves. Also we make things. We make houses, they are cardboard boxes with doors cut in them, and once we even made one out of wood with plastic bags for the roof. We had dinner in it, potato chips. Also we made a newspaper, the Shru-Bu News. I wrote it myself on carbon paper. I made five of them. Miss Moss bought all five, she lives two houses from Shrubs. Then Jeffrey took over and made himself the boss and I was supposed to be the reporter so he told me to go out and get news, so I went down Lauder and got the
News
off everybody's front porch. Twenty-six of them. My mom had to take them all back. She was cross.

Shrubs has a good rake, it is wood, not like ours which is green metal and boings. First we raked Shrubs' house and made piles in the street for a bonfire, then we raked my house. My mom paid us a quarter, we bought Nik-O-Nips at Nick's. (Only it isn't Nick anymore, he died. Now it is Steve, who is foreign. He is mean. He wouldn't let me and Shrubs eat our peanut butter sandwiches in there when we ran away last time.)

After raking I went home for dinner. Mom said don't track up the living room. Then she said what a good job I did raking and I was a big boy, and she said that for being a good boy, Daddy would take me out after dinner and make a bonfire to roast marshmallows.

“Oh no, Mommy,” I said. “Tonight is Devil's Night, for all the little goblins.”

She said, “Oh my! I forgot!” But she said it like acting.

So after dinner Shrubs called for me and we went. It was dark. The streetlights were on. (I have never seen them go on, they are always just on.)

We rang doorbells. You run up real quiet and ring the doorbell and run away and when the person in the house answers the door there's nobody there. Ha ha.

I rang one and Shrubs watched. We both ran. Then we both rang one. Then I told Shrubs to do one alone. He said no, but I made him. He did. He went up to the door. He rang the doorbell. But he didn't run. He just stood there. I said run, but he stood there with his hands in his pockets, he was froze. The door opened and a man came out. He had a tie on. He said, “Yes, what is it?” Shrubs didn't say anything. He stood just. “What can I do for you?” said the man, but Shrubs just looked at him. The man stood there for a minute, looking at Shrubs. “Who are you?” said the man. Shrubs went like this with his shoulders. “Are you the paper boy?” Shrubs said, “I don't know.” Then the man went inside. He closed the door. Shrubs just stood
there. Then the man opened the door and looked at Shrubs again. Then he closed the door again. Then Shrubs left.

I asked Shrubs why he didn't run. He said he didn't know why.

Mom made cookies for the Halloween party and put them in a shoebox and tied it with a string and left it on the yellow counter in the kitchen for me to take to school. That night I went to bed and the Superman suit was on the other bed in my room. My mom dyed long underwear and it had a cape and an S and everything. It looked like really Superman. I could hardly sleep.

The next morning I woke up all by myself, Mom didn't wake me. I got up and washed and put on my Superman suit. I stood in front of the mirror and put my hands on my hips and made like the bullets bounced off. I made myself breakfast, it was orange juice and bread. I took the shoebox of cookies. I went. I didn't even wear a coat because I was like Superman.

When I got to school there wasn't anybody there yet, so I stood outside and waited for the bell. I held the cookies extra tight so I wouldn't lose them. I stood and waited. Nobody came. I waited and waited. It was cold. I held my cookies. Nobody came, I didn't know what to do.

Then the door of school opened and a man came out. He looked at me but I saw behind him inside, there were children in school, so I went in.

I went to Miss Iris' room but there were all different children there, not from my class. They looked at me. Miss Iris wasn't there. I stood next to her desk in my Superman suit and everybody looked at me and laughed.

Then Miss Iris came in. She said, “Why Burt, what are you doing here? The Halloween party was this morning. Your class is in Library now.”

I went to Library and everybody looked at me because I was in my Superman suit. I forgot to bring any other clothes. When I got home after school my mom said, “I'm sorry, Honey. I had an early beauty shop appointment this morning. I wrote a note for Jeffrey to wake you but I forgot to leave it. I found it in my purse at the beauty shop.”

I
HAVE BEEN AT
T
HE
C
HILDREN
'
S
T
RUST
R
ESIDENCE
Center for three weeks now. I haven't been visited by my mommy and daddy because they aren't allowed yet, it is the rules here. Dr Nevele says I'm not adjusted. I can't control myself. I have tantrums. He says that I am a good little boy who unfortunately does bad things sometimes. Like what I did to Jessica.

I am here by myself. I don't have any friends. I don't know anybody hardly except Rudyard and Mrs Cochrane. No children. I have only been away from home once before (except for sleeping over at Shrubs' house). When I was five I went to camp.

It was entitled Little Camp Atinaka, for little kids. It was far far away from our house, we drove, it took an hour. I sat on the hump all the way there. All the way there my mom told me how much fun it was going to be, just like on “Spin and Marty” on the Mickey Mouse Club. They have cowboy hats and
ride horses. (I love “Spin and Marty,” man, they are swift, only I hate Mickey Mouse because he talks like a girl.)

Little Camp Atinaka lasted a week. They had cabins. Ours was Cabin Number One. We ate in the Arrowhead Lodge which was like school only no line. And every day at lunch we sang a song.

Except we weren't. We stank at everything. Every morning somebody peed in their bed, except me. I never did.

Cabin Number One had two counselors, Miss Laurie and Miss Sherry. They had very short hair but they were girls. They slept in Cabin Number One with us and they saw us when we got dressed and when we put on our pajamas. I always got dressed under the covers because I was embarrassed.

One day was Gold Rush Day, it was a special activity at camp. For the whole day everybody pretended we looked for gold, which was rocks painted yellow. One of the counselors dressed up as Sneaky Pete, and went around shooting flour out of a gun at the campers, and if he hit you, you were supposed to be killed. I was scared of him, even though I knew he wasn't real. He frightened me. And that night I woke up in bed, it was
very cold and I had to make. But I was too afraid. I was afraid that Sneaky Pete was outside, and there wasn't a bathroom in Cabin Number One. You had to go outside and walk down the hill. So I held it. I held it and held it until I couldn't anymore, and I made in my bed. I covered it with the sheets and blanket, only it was very cold and it was wet and soaked through. I had to lay on top of it. And the next morning everyone woke up and I was the only one who wet. Miss Laurie said the blanket was ruined, she had to throw it out. I wanted to be dead.

Now I am at The Children's Trust Residence Center, and I am all alone still. I don't have any friends. I wish Shrubs was here or even Marty Polaski. Sometimes I get letters from my mom and dad. Today I even got one from Jeffrey.