A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

“Hi,” I said as she passed me.

“Are you with your mother?” she asked. Mrs. Perkins lived three doors down and thought that everything that had anything to do with anyone on our street was her own personal business.

“I’m waiting for a friend of hers.”

Mrs. Perkins shook her head and started pushing the cart again. My mother always said that Mrs. P. didn’t like us because there wasn’t a man in our house. She didn’t think that it was right, and my mother agreed with her. My mother thought there should be a man in the house, but after my father left she couldn’t find one. I think it was because of Rayanne. No good guy would want to live in a house with a retarded kid.

“Who was that?” the guy asked when he got back into the car. “Don’t you know not to talk to strangers?” He slammed the door.

“It was Mrs. Perkins. She lives on my street. She has two little kids. She’s not a stranger.” The guy didn’t answer and we drove away real fast.

“I’ve got a little something for you, Johnny,” he said. He pulled a bottle out of a paper bag. “Preventive medicine. You look like you might be coming down with something.”

“I feel okay,” I said.

“We don’t have a spoon, so you’ll just have to take it from the bottle cap.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Look,” the guy said. He took his eyes off the road to look at me and the car swerved into the other lane, the wrong-direction lane. “If I tell you to take your medicine, you take it. I’m not used to children talking back to me. Your parents might stand for it, but I won’t. Got it?”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t have parents, that my dad didn’t even live with us, and didn’t he know that, but I couldn’t. It seemed like he was already annoyed with me. I figured it was because my mother wasn’t home, he couldn’t just drop me off, and now he was stuck taking me everywhere with him.

He put the bottle between his legs and twisted the top until it opened. “Four capfuls,” he said, handing the bottle to me. Even though I felt fine, I did it. It was hard as hell to pour it in the car and I was scared I’d spill, but I did it. I swallowed the stuff. Cough medicine, grape only worse. It tasted like the smell of the stuff my mother used to polish the furniture. “Good,” the guy said. He pulled a Kit Kat bar out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “To clear the taste.”

We were quiet and he kept driving. It was dark. I watched the cars coming toward us, two white eyes, staring me down.

“Is my mom home yet?” I asked. I was getting tired.

“I called her from the drugstore and she said not to bring you home tonight. I think she wanted to be alone.”

“What about Rayanne?”

“Alone with Rayanne. She needed you out of her hair for a while, no big deal.”

I shrugged and thought about how much I hated retards, and how they stole the whole show for nothing.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“We’ll be there in a while.”

“I’m tired,” I said. “And I’m supposed to color maps for Geography.”

“Don’t worry, Johnny.”

“What’s your name?”

“Randy,” he said.

And then I don’t know what happened. I had my head out the window and felt sick from burgers, fries, shakes, and candy. I was throwing up out the car window while Randy was driving, and he didn’t even pull over. He didn’t put his hand on my forehead like my mother did. He just kept driving and calling me Johnny.

* * *

“Wake up, Johnny,” Randy said, shaking my shoulder.

It took me a few minutes to get my eyes to stay open, to remember where I was. “Here you go,” he said, pushing a spoon of the same grape medicine into my mouth.

“It makes me sick,” I said, after I’d swallowed the stuff. I told myself that I’d never swallow it again. I told myself to hold it in my mouth, in my cheek like a hamster, but not to swallow.

“I said you were sick. You didn’t listen, did you?” He brought me a glass of water. “Do you want some tea, some toast, some ginger ale?”

I shrugged and felt dizzy.

“You have to eat,” he said and then left the room.

I lay in the bed and felt like I would pass out just lying there. I realized that I was almost naked. I wasn’t wearing any clothes — except my underwear — and I thought about how my mother told us, especially Rayanne, to be careful of people who might want to mess with you. She said that anyone could be a person who would do a thing like that. She said it might even be someone I knew. She told me this a million times but never said anything about what if someone took off your clothes while you were asleep. She never mentioned that, and still I knew I didn’t like it. I sat up and saw my clothes all folded up at the end of the bed. I saw them and thought everything was okay because someone who folds your clothes up and puts them on the end of the bed doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would mess with a kid. I reached down, grabbed my clothes, and put them on under the covers.

“Hey, Johnny,” Randy said when he came back into the room. He was carrying a tray made out of cardboard. On the tray was a plate of eggs and toast and a glass of juice.

“I’m sick, I can’t eat.”

“Oh, but you have to eat, you’re a growing boy.”

“I want to go home.”

“Your mother won’t want you back if you’re sick.”

“She’ll take care of me.”

“Don’t be a baby, Johnny.”

“Today’s my day to collect lunch money,” I said.

You said you were sick. Do you go to school when you’re sick? Don’t play games with me. Eat your breakfast.”

I shook my head.

“What did I tell you to do?” he yelled. The veins in his neck popped out and he went white like sugar. “You do what I tell you and never say no to me, you hear. Never say no to me.”

I looked at Randy and thought about how some people were jerks. I thought about how I couldn’t wait to be grown up, to have my own private TV, to be alone always. “Now, what did I tell you?”

“Eat the breakfast,” I said.

“So do it.”

“I’m allergic to eggs.” I took small bites of the toast.

“Are you really allergic?” he asked. “Do you want cereal? There are some Rice Krispies in the kitchen. Do you want Krispies?”

“No.” I paused. “I want to call my mother and tell her I’m sick. She’ll come get me.”

“I don’t have a phone, Johnny. There isn’t a phone.”

Randy stood there watching me. He watched everything I did like I was something under a microscope. “Do you like to read?” I shrugged. He pulled a stack of old magazines out from under the bed. “I saved these for you. I have to do some work outside. Is there anything you need?”

“Where’s the TV?”

“Don’t say television to me. It’ll kill you. It makes you so you can’t think. Can you think, Johnny?”

I shrugged and he walked out. Randy’s magazines were the slippery kind that parents read. They were the kind that Rayanne would spread out all over the floor of the dentist’s office and then go skiing on until my mother stopped her. I got out of bed and walked down the hall. The first room was Randy’s. It was small and filled with light. There were two windows and a breeze was leaking in from somewhere. The air seemed to spin around, picking up dirt from the floor, making it dance and glow like gold. There was a mattress with green striped sheets, and rows of empty soda bottles, alternating Yoohoo, RC, and Mountain Dew, were lined up around the edges of the room, across the windowsill, everywhere. I was in the room, looking, and Randy’s hands sank down on my shoulders as if they were taking a bite out of me. He gripped me by the muscle across the top of my back, across my shoulders.