When I Was Five I Killed Myself (3 page)

(I got conniption fit from my mom. She said I had one.)

There were drapes on Jessica's windows. I looked at them for a half an hour. I could tell time because I had my watch which I got for Hanukah until I lost it.

While I was looking at Jessica's drapes the sidewalk opened up under my feet. Luckily I didn't fall because my loafers have things so I can't fall. It was a hundred feet down and there were dinosaurs and fire. I jumped
over it and landed on the grass. Then I looked across the street and I saw Jessica had seen me and she said, “My, what a brave young man.”

When I got home my mom asked me why I was late. I said I was in a car accident. She screamed. But I told her it was ok because I didn't get killed, only somebody else did. She started yelling but I said I forgot who. Then I went up to my room and played with my men.

“Dad, how much are blue shutters?” I asked at dinner.

“Why?”

“I'm going to put them on my fort.”

“You're not building another fort while I'm alive.”

“Ok,” I said. “But how much are they, for when you're dead?”

Later he said he'd get them wholesale but I don't know what that means. I think it's when they bring them on boats.

Mauve. M A U V E. Mauve.

And in a few days school was over for summer vacation. Everyone said “Hooray.” During the summer I played with Shrubs quite frequent. We played Zorro, he was the horse. I taught him how to neigh. It is like coughing only longer. I rode him. Our maid Sophie said I was going to cripple Shrubs. She is a colored negro.

I have a Zorro suit. Also I have Robin Hood and Peter Pan (which have the same pants) and Tom Corbett Space Cadet and Santa Claus and Superman
and Doctor. When I play Zorro alone I use bolsters for the horse, I get them off my mom's bed and also I use them for bad guys to sock them. In Zorro the bad guy is El Commandante. He is on tv. Last month they got a different one. Jeffrey said he saw the old El Commandante on a Brylcreem commercial but he is lying, man.

Shrubs and me made a plan. It was a signal. It was whistling, like birds. The plan was that when Shrubs went to bed he was supposed to tie his sheets together and lower himself out the window, then come to my house and give the signal and then I would tie my sheets together and lower myself out the window and then we would play Zorro at night, like real.

My bedtime is nine but I can stay up later if I throw a tantrum, but that night I went quietly. Usually Mom tucks us in. Sometimes she sings to us. She is very excellent as a singer. Jeffrey's favorite song is “Shine On Harvest Moon.” Mine is “Hound Dog,” only Mom doesn't know it. Sometimes she doesn't tuck us in and I have to turn my light off by myself. I stand at the switch and point my finger at the bed, then I turn the light off and run where my finger goes. This is how I find my bed in the dark. I am scared of going to bed because there are monsters in my closet. I keep the door closed. The more times you push it the more closed it is. Before bed I push my closet door fifty times.

The night of our plan I had to take a bath before bed. I wish I was old enough to take a shower but I'm
not because I can't work it. Sometimes I take a shower with my dad. He is undressed and has hair on him and on his peenie. I don't have any on mine. I don't like to take showers with my dad.

Mom also reads to us before bed. My favorite book is
The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy
. It is delightful. Jeffrey's favorite is
The Rickety Rackity Schoolbus
. Sometimes Mom makes up stories and sometimes she makes up more songs. She invented one entitled “All the Kids in the Neighborhood.” It is about bedtime on Lauder. It has all their names and then it goes

It scares me to death.

That night we sat on my bed and Mom got out a book. But it was different.

“Tonight we're going to have a special story,” she said. “Your father and I feel it's time you boys learned some things about growing up. This book is called
From Little Acorns
. Soon you'll be young men, and it's time you knew.”

“How come I'm a young man when I was a little baby yesterday when I tracked in dirt?” I said.

She turned over the book which wasn't even in color.

“Are there going to be dogs, Mom?” I asked. I thought maybe there was going to be dogs.

“No, Honey,” she said. “This is a story about real people like you and Jeffrey and Daddy and me.”

“Boring,” said Jeffrey and he did this with his eyeballs, and Mom said, “Keep it up, you'll be blind someday.”

From Little Acorns
was about some children whose mother was going to have a baby and they are on a farm with their grandfather who shows them chickens and eggs and everything. It was boring as H. I was nervous because I knew Shrubs was coming, for our plan.

Finally she stopped reading and went and then I put my Zorro suit on under the covers. I donned it. Then I waited. I waited and waited. It was hot in bed in my Zorro suit. Then I heard Shrubs outside yelling, “Burt!” I got out of bed. I started to tie my sheets together. Then the lights went on. It was my mother.

“Burt, Kenneth is here, he was outside calling for you, he says that you and he had arranged to play outside tonight. That's out of the question.” Then she looked at me. I had on my Zorro suit. “Well, I suppose it's all right this once. Jeffrey will go with you. Look what you've done to my clean linens.”

She took me downstairs. All the lights were on. My dad was watching tv. I had my mask and Zorro hat and Mom took the mask and said, “Here let me help you with this so it's straight.” She said, “You can stay out fifteen minutes.”

We went. First I ran behind a tree and ducked down. I watched out for El Commandante. He is very clever, Señor. He was on Seven Mile Road at the A&P
with prisoners that I was going to rescue, so I hid behind a tree waiting for my horse so I could ride out of the night when the full moon is bright. I was going to rescue Jessica who was in jail for having blue shutters which aren't allowed. I heard El Commandante. I took out my sword.

“What are you doing with that pencil, Burt?” said Jeffrey. “That's mine, it was on my desk.”

He was telling Shrubs about his new model, it was a Thunderbird. Shrubs asked him how many parts and Jeffrey said a thousand, it was for big kids only. Shrubs asked if he could watch Jeffrey put it together and Jeffrey said no because he would wreck it.

I was the only one playing Zorro.

I yelled out, “Come amigos, we go!”

Jeffrey said, “What are you talking about? Hurry up and finish so we can get back.”

We went around the block once then, just walking. Then we went home. My mom asked if we had fun, but I just went up to my room and pointed my finger at my bed. I turned the light out by myself.

Z

Z

L
AST NIGHT WAS MY SECOND NIGHT AT
T
HE
C
HILDREN
'
S
Trust Residence Center. I threw up next to my bed.

It started when I had my appointment with Dr Nevele yesterday. He knew I am writing on the Quiet Room wall but he told me I am allowed. He said, “Maybe Burton can express himself better in writing than he can verbally.” I don't know what verbally is. I think it is some kind of vegetables.

At home I am not allowed to write on the walls, if I do I get it. But once I drew a horse on my bedroom wall and got spanked for it. I was just on the mane when Mom walked into the room. She screamed.

“What do you think they make paper for, young man?”

I said, “Airplanes, what else?” So she smacked me. She said, “Who do you think you're talking to, one of your friends?” And I said, “I thought you were.”

“Wash it off, mister.”

“No.”

“Wash it off.”

“No, it's my room and I can draw if I want.”

She said, “It isn't your room, who do you think pays for it?”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

“I'll pay him for it then.”

“How?”

“I'll get a job.”

“Doing what?”

“Selling stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Lemonade.”

I had to wash it off. It took all day, I used Bab-o.

At my appointment Dr Nevele made me sit in the same chair where I had the seatbelt before. He smiled at me but it was phony baloney, he made me sit there for a long time without saying anything. Then he did.

“Tell me about school, Burt.”

I looked at the carpet in his office, it is brown with little lumps in it and I thought, Those are the buildings of the city down below where criminals lurk on every corner to steal things from innocent people. Up here in the sky I can use my x-ray eyes to see them and swoop down to make them give it back.

Dr Nevele looked at me.

“Who are your favorite teachers, Burton? You must have a favorite.”

A little girl was standing on the roof of one of the
buildings down below and a robber was chasing her around. I yelled, “Don't worry I'll save you!” and got off my chair and swooped down through the clouds and socked him and saved her. She had on a red dress with like waves in it.

“Please sit, Burton. A chair is to sit in, not climb on. You wouldn't do that at home,” said Dr Nevele.

“I wasn't talking to you,” I said.

“She's not here,” he said and shook his head, and I kicked over the chair and it fell against the table and made the lamp tip over and it fell and the bulb exploded. Dr Nevele didn't say anything except, “What's your favorite class in school?”

Then out in the hall I heard wheels and I thought, There is a wagon with hay in it and inside is Shrubs only no one can see and he will jump out and throw me my sword and I'll point it at Dr Nevele and throw my head back and laugh and ride away. And I ran out into the hall, but I didn't see Shrubs. It was a wheelchair with a child in it with hardly any hair and her hands were like claws. I walked back into Dr Nevele's office and sat down. He didn't say anything to me.

“Can I have the seatbelt?” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“May I have the seatbelt?”

Dr Nevele shook his head slow, like my dad did once when he had to put our dog to sleep.

“Please don't put me to sleep,” I whispered.

I looked at the floor but there weren't any more buildings on it, just carpet. Dr Nevele shook his head.
“Are you talking to me now, Burton?” he said. And I said, “I don't know.” Then I started to cry.

He wrote something in his book for a long time and I just sat. Then he closed the book and said if I wanted to I could go to the Quiet Room and write things, if I didn't want to talk about them.

He stared at me for a long time then. He tried to smile at me. He tried and tried. I saw him trying. It made me sad. Dr Nevele was trying so hard to smile at me. He didn't know how.

I went to the Playroom instead. It is a room, it has toys in it for playing, there is even a little jungle jim made out of plastic which is good for climbing on and playing Tarzan. I am good at Tarzan, I can give the call.

There is a little square cut in the door of the Playroom so you can look inside from the hall. I did. There were children falling off the jungle jim who hit their heads, and other children running around like spazzes. I deduced they are mental. And there was a man with them who had red hair and white shoes like a doctor. I looked at him through the square. He was like the doctor of the spaz children. Suddenly he came toward me and opened the door and looked at me and said, “Keep an eye on them will you, till I get back?”

One little boy sat by himself in the corner of the Playroom, because no one would play with him. He was a colored negro. He put his fingers up to his eyes and wiggled them like he was waving goodbye to himself. He rocked on the floor back and forth back and
forth. Over and over. And over.

“Any trouble?” It was the red-haired man, he came back.

At first I didn't say anything but he looked at me with his eyes and they were brown with green pieces in them, like Jessica's.

“There's a little boy in there,” I said, “who is waving goodbye to himself.”

The red-haired man looked at me. He held out his hand. “Name's Rudyard,” he said. But I didn't shake his hand. I didn't want to. I was scared. “Actually,” he said, “he's waving hello.” And he went back in the Playroom.

I went back to my wing. I was sleepy. I sat on my bed. It has sheets. At home is blankee. He is blue. I have had him since I was a baby. My mom wants to throw him away but I won't let her. But one time I did something. I peed on blankee. He smelled very pungent.

My bed is in the middle of the row. There are six beds in my wing and four other children. I don't know their names yet, except one. His name is Howie, he sleeps next to me, he has scars on him from when he threw a can of gas into a fire. He is mean. I asked him if they had hot dogs at The Children's Trust Residence Center and he told me to blow it out my ass hole. (This is swearing.) The bed next to me on the other side is empty. Maybe a little boy will come and sleep there and be my friend.

I sat on my bed and then I started to cry because I
wanted to go home, so I pushed my face into my pillow and pushed and pushed until I fell asleep. I had a dream.

It was my house only not. We were in the den watching Popeye on tv, my mom and dad and Jeffrey. Then a man came on with a special announcement that there was going to be a tornado. I jumped up and yelled, “Come on everybody, quick, down into the cellar for shelter.” But no one moved. Mom laughed at me and said, “Don't be such a little baby, Burt.” Jeffrey was on the floor. He was looking at cars in a magazine. He said I couldn't look. I looked out the window and saw the sky was black and I yelled, “Hurry up!” But nobody moved. They acted like I wasn't even there. They talked to each other. My mom said, “Now no horseplay,” and my dad looked at me and said, “Burt, did you take your bath? No bath, no Zorro on television.” Behind him, through the window then I saw the tornado coming, it was long and black and squirmed so I couldn't tell which way it was going. I ran downstairs to the basement. I sat under the stairs and listened for them to come down, but I couldn't hear anything except the tornado. It sounded like a train, so loud it hurt my ears. It got louder and louder. It was coming at our house. And I screamed, “Please you guys, please hurry up.” I screamed so loud I got sick until I couldn't hear myself anymore. Everything started shaking. A glass broke. Then I looked toward the door. There was Jessica, standing there and her lips were moving but I couldn't hear. I said, “What?” but I couldn't hear. The
tornado roared like lions inside me, and then Jessica turned and bowed and walked away. I ran after her, but I was afraid to leave the cellar because of the tornado. I was scared. Chicken, man. I yelled and yelled. Then Jessica turned around and looked at me, and said, “Why did you do that to me, Burt, what you did?” I started to cry. “Why did you do it?” she said, and the tornado was inside me and I got down on my knees and put my head against the floor and said, “Please don't be dead, Jessica, please don't be dead.”