A Good and Happy Child (36 page)

My mother regarded me. “George, how long have you been hiding your medication?”

“Just since we came to Kurt’s,” I lied. “I didn’t think I needed it anymore.”

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“This is very serious.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. These pills may be what’s preventing you from having more episodes. You don’t want to go back to the way it was, do you? You were very sick.”

“I know.”

She stared at the shaggy white dots in her palm.

“How have you been hiding these? I watch you take them.”

Reluctantly, I pointed to the spot on my gum—the hiding place.

“Where is your pill for tonight?”

I produced it.

“Let me see you swallow it.”

I downed it.

“Now let me see your gums.”

I showed her.

She heaved a great sigh and slumped down on the bed. “Oh, George,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to go to Cincinnati,” I gushed. “No more medicine, no more Dr. Gilloon, no more Dean. I’ll go to a new school. Kurt says he’ll buy us season tickets to the Bengals.”

“Moving away will not solve problems, honeypie. Every school has its mean kids. And the problems you’ve been having,” she said, stroking my hair, “they’re not going away ’cause we move.”

I thought about this. “Maybe they will.”

“Maybe,” she said, and that word hung in the air a few moments; it was like watching a particularly beautiful bubble rise on a gust of wind. One thing is for certain: sitting in Kurt’s house made our craziest hopes seem possible. But Mom the Freudian popped the bubble. “Working through deep unhappiness takes time and effort. That includes taking your medication.”

“But . . .”

“And I’m going to call the UVa hospital,” she said. “If the pills are bothering you that much, maybe you’re ready for a lower dose.”

I panicked. “But we’re moving!”

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“Not for a little while,” cautioned Mom. “Plus,” she added grimly,

“I want to hear the doctor’s point of view on what’s happened—with those guys.” She was referring to Tom Harris, Clarissa, and Freddie.

“Maybe that will change his diagnosis.”

“But I don’t want the pills! I don’t need them!”

“George,” said my mother, surprised by my vehemence. “I had my doubts at first, but I must say, they’ve helped you tremendously. Ever since you returned from Charlottesville, you’ve . . .”

“
I haven’t been taking them,
” I blurted. “
At all.
Okay? So that proves they don’t work.”

“What do you mean, you haven’t been taking them? Since . . .”

“Not since the hospital. So the doctor’s wrong and Tom Harris is right. If you think I’ve improved because of the pills, it
proves
you’re wrong. I’m not mental. It’s not me. It’s
in
me. It’s not going to stop until we leave!”

“George, oh honey, listen to me . . .”

“I saw him
here.
He’s following me, Mommy. We’ve got to leave. It’s the only thing we can do. We’ve got to go to Cincinnati,
now.
Don’t you get it?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“You know who. The boy . . . that I see.” I explained, with a whisper: “The demon.”

My mother’s voice dropped an octave, to the calm, commanding lull of a hostage negotiator.

“You’re going to take another one of those pills, right now,” she said. She rose and took the bottle from the dresser. “Where’s your water?” She disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a full glass. She twisted the bottle, shook a tiny tablet into her hand, and handed it to me. “Take it.”

I swallowed it. For the second time, she checked my mouth and gums.

“Now it’s time for bed.”

“Can I read?”

“Ten minutes,” she snapped. “Then lights out. In bed,” she commanded.
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“Are you still going to call the doctor?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “You just get to sleep.” Then she crossed the room, and kissed me as if it were any other night. “Ten minutes,” she said. “I’m checking.”

Her footsteps disappeared. I had only moments to take the trash can from the corner and lean over it while I stuck my finger in my throat. My guts wrenched. I went to the corner of the bed and covered my head with the bedspread so that my mother wouldn’t hear me. After a few tries I heaved into the trash can. Recovering, I wiped my mouth, and turned my attention to hiding the foul odor of stomach acid. I shoved the trash can under the bed, to the center of the space under the springs, then draped the bedspread over the sides like a curtain. The trash can would remain unseen, unsmelled. I returned to bed, sniffed, and opened my book. As an afterthought, I jumped out of bed, rummaged under the socks, and pulled out the little icon of Saint Michael. I stashed it under my pillow. A few minutes later my mother apppeared in the door. “Lights out,” she said. Later I heard my mother’s voice on the telephone downstairs. I knew who she was calling.r r r

I awoke suddenly to a noise like whining, and an irregular thumping. I stood straight up out of bed, nearly tripping on the sheets. On instinct I snatched the icon from under my pillow and charged out of my room, down the dark hallway, following the noise to the room Kurt and my mother shared. I pulled open the door. Pitch blackness and noises awaited me.

The first sound was the rapid swishing of the bedclothes, as if they were being tossed about. The second reminded me of when my mother made veal cutlets, when she would cover the meat in wax paper and beat it with a kitchen mallet—a short, solid, punching noise. The third was what I had heard from my room: a kind of confused whining. This was my mother. I called out her name, and for an instant her crying ceased as she listened to my voice, but then the punching resumed, and a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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so did her groans. I ran to her bed. There was motion all around in the dark, and violence—I could feel the bed shake.

My eyes adjusted. I saw a scruffy, angry-faced boy with smeared cheeks and wild hair standing straight up on the bed, rearing back with his fist and slamming it into the bedclothes, and then, with his other hand, rearing back with a long staff or rod and pounding with that, too. My mother had self-protectively burrowed under the blankets. I wanted to lift the icon and thrust it at him, but I could not move. I could only listen to the horrible sounds. The boy stopped striking long enough to turn to me. It was my Friend. He smiled. Then he reared his fist back in a wide, mocking arc and brought it down onto the bed. I heard the blow land with a crunch. My mother cried out.

With a yell I dove for the bedside table, whimpering in fear, until I found the light switch—the frustrating kind built into the power cord as a little notched dial. I fumbled with it. At last the light came on. I leapt to my feet. There was no sign of my Friend.

“Mom, Mom, Mom,” was all I could say. “Mom, you okay?”

I wish I could forget what I saw next. My mother’s face emerged from the blankets. It was red and raw, swollen as a boxer’s around the eyes and mouth. You realize what a difference expression makes. Boxers emerge from fights deadened, beaten, but patient—they take their punishment willingly. My mother’s lips trembled. Her eyes were wide with animal panic. She flinched at the sight of me, then curled up on her side.

I crawled to her over the mounds of yellow blanket, got tangled in them. I had no idea what to do. I scrambled for the phone, and with a dry voice asked the operator for the number of a hospital or ambulance or something,
something,
and could she please help me, my mother was hurt, she was crying, please.

N o t e b o o k 1 9

Like Steve Garvey

My mother was visited by the sole on-call doctor, was injected with copious pain medication, and fell asleep. I slept in a pull-out chair, under a starchy sheet provided by the nurse. A few fitful hours later they woke us to begin the X-rays to determine if bones had been broken. Soon a policeman arrived, summoned by the staff to inquire about the attack. His hair was bristly white-blond, his face ruddy and weather-beaten, and he wore the brown Stoneland County sheriff’s uniform and a revolver in a holster. He asked me a single question.
Tell me ’bout the inc’dent.
He held a leather-bound notepad open, but made no notes. He listened with dead eyes to my answers as I babbled excitedly, and when I ran out of steam, he rose slowly, muttered one more word—
rright
—and eased from the room. If I’d been older I might have identified the vanilla whiff of booze on his breath. A nurse wheeled my mother back to the hospital room. The entire left side of my mother’s face had swollen into purple mush. Her lips had swollen. The rims of her right eye, and the white of it, were stained with thick streaks of vivid red blood. I stood over her, and whispered some questions, but the nurse told me she needed to sleep.
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•

•

•

I awoke. Afternoon light—white, wintry, and weakening already—

glared in the windows. Kurt stood, still and monolithic, with the window behind him, his great blocky head bent in a somber attitude over my mother. She murmured to him. Their voices had awakened me. When he saw me stir, Kurt approached me.

“Hey, buddy. How you doing?” He spoke with his normal cheer, but in a scratchy, fatigued voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“Last night I got a call from the hospital. Got a 6:00 A.M. out of Cincinnati and drove straight down from D.C.”

I took this in. “How’s Mom?”

He grunted. “Not great. Broken wrist. Two broken ribs. She’s beat up pretty bad.” I rose and stood next to my mother. Her eyes stared out of the puffy flesh surrounding them. Her expression had grown hard.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Hey, buddy,” said Kurt’s voice behind me. “How about a trip to the cafeteria? You must be hungry for breakfast, right?”

I turned and waved to my mother over my shoulder. She did not speak.

We sat over green plastic trays holding Styrofoam bowls of milk, cereal in cardboard boxes, and plastic utensils. A few families sat at other tables, speaking in soft tones. They looked poor, and sad—county people with anxious faces. Kurt snapped the tab of a Coke. He popped a can for me. Then drummed his fingers on the table.

“George,” he said. “I want you to tell me what happened.” He leaned over, close to me, and whispered. “What
really
happened.”

I was surprised by this. I told him what I told the nurses: an intruder had beaten my mother, and that the intruder had fled when he heard me.

“That what really happened?”

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“Why?”

“Is it?” he persisted.

I hesitated. “You remember what you said? About us being a team, sometimes?”

“I remember.” But his eyes were hard.

“I’ll tell you what really happened, if you promise not to tell anyone. Mom, or anybody.”

Kurt shuffled in his seat. “I promise I’ll listen to what you have to say, George.”

That was good enough. He was my only ally now. “It was the demon,” I whispered.

Kurt lifted his Coke can and drained it, shook it to see how much was left, finished it off, setting it down hard on the table with a hollow bang. When he took his hand away, I saw his fingers trembling.

“I went home this morning before I came here,” he said. “I checked the closet downstairs where I keep my sports stuff. You’ve seen that, right? Where I keep my old lacrosse sticks and gloves . . . baseball mitts, and all that junk?”

I nodded.

“I couldn’t find my aluminum bat in there. Baseball bat.” He eyed me. “I also spoke to your mother. She’s hurt, George, but not just in her body.” He broke off. Looked down. Laid his hands flat on the table. Gained control. “Your mom says it was you who beat her. Did you use that bat on your mom?”

“No.”

“Why would your mother say that, then, buddy?” His great sandy-colored hands rested on the table. I felt like his client. I, too, spoke in a whisper now. “Because he looks like me.”

“Who does?”

“The
demon.
”

“Aw, man.” Kurt shook his head sadly.

“I heard them, and I ran in there and I saw him! He was standing over Mom—standing on the bed—and he
was
holding something! It could have been your bat!”

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“George, demons are imaginary. They can’t beat somebody up in real life.”

“But you saw it!”

“No, I didn’t,” Kurt said, taken aback.

“What about the shower door? Have you ever seen anything like that? It smashed, and there was nothing there! Wasn’t
that
real life?”

Kurt held my eye.

“George,” Kurt began. “I’ll grant you, that was weird. I know plenty of ghost stories from Richmond. Every old house’s got a young lass who appears at midnight waiting for her Confederate sweetheart. But this is different. Your dad’s friends have got you talking about the devil.” He shook his head. “Your mom has got to get you help.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded, cold suspicion in my voice. Kurt fixed me with a piteous stare.

“She told me she said something already.”

“The hospital.”

Kurt winced. “Soon as she’s discharged and on her feet, we’re taking you up there for treatment, buddy. And after last night . . . it might be more than a checkup.”

My ears rang. I gripped the sides of my chair, picking at them with my fretful tic.

“She said she was going to call about the pills. She didn’t say anything about treatment,” I argued.

“Well, now it’s treatment.”

“Who says so?”

“George, you saw your mother.”

“Yeah? So?”

“She’s in no shape to make a tough decision like this. And believe me, it’s as tough as any I’ve made.”

“So you decided for her,” I said fiercely.

“George, you’re missing the point,” he said, his voice rising. “You need help, buddy. The kind your mom can’t give you.”