Yes, I Know the Monkey Man

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  For a second I wasn’t even sure where here was. Then I smelled those medicine-y bandages, I heard Joe’s raspy breathing, and I felt the bar on the hospital bed pressing into my back.

  I was at the hospital. With Joe. And I had fallen asleep.

  I lifted my head toward the voice and blinked because the light out in that main area was so bright.

  “You have to get up. You have to leave,” a woman in a nurse’s uniform said. But it wasn’t the nice nurse from before. This nurse was shorter and skinnier and had a tangle of reddish curls all around her face.

  I started to sit up. I squinted at my watch: 12:04 a.m.

  I groaned. The last thing I wanted to do was walk all the way home at 12:04 in the morning. I wanted to stay here. With Joe. I was about to ask the nurse if there was someplace else I could go here in the hospital, but a machine out in that main room beeped and the nurse hurried away.

  I propped myself up on my elbow and glanced down at Joe. He hadn’t moved an inch the entire time I’d been here. If anything, the bruises on his face had gotten worse instead of better. I ached when I looked at him.

  I got up off the bed and tiptoed over to the doorway. It looked like the emergency, whatever it was, was in the room directly across from Joe’s. That room was all lit up and people in uniforms bustled in and out.

  Maybe they were busy enough over there that no one would notice if I stayed with Joe just a little longer. There was a straight chair in the corner of the room and a curtain that hung from the ceiling beside the chair. I didn’t dare pull the curtain all the way closed. The nurse would notice that. But maybe I could slide it over a little, just enough to hide behind.

  I checked to make sure that nurse wasn’t coming back. Then I arranged the curtain and chair so that the only way anyone would know I was still here was if they came all the way in and walked around the bed. I scooted the chair as close to Joe’s bed as I dared. Then I sat down and waited to see if I was going to get caught.

  I heard someone come in a few minutes later and do something with one of the machines on the other side of Joe’s bed. I couldn’t see who it was, but I could hear them. I barely breathed. They came back and did the exact same thing about half an hour later. If they came back after that, I never knew it because eventually I fell asleep again.

  Chapter Four

  A loud clattering jarred me awake. I heard frantic footsteps. And beeping. Something was beeping. What was going on?

  I sat up and peered around the curtain. Joe was still sound asleep. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t happening in here; it was happening in the room across from Joe’s again.

  I yawned and stretched my arms out in front of me. I could tell I’d been sleeping in an awkward position because my neck hurt. I massaged it with the palm of my hand. While I was massaging, that crabby redheaded nurse walked by. She did a double take, then backed up and poked her head in Joe’s room. “Have you been hiding behind that curtain all night?” she demanded.

  “No!” I said. I glanced up at the clock: 5:20. Okay, maybe I had been here most of the night, but so what? It wasn’t like I was bothering anyone.

  The nurse walked all the way into the room and stood in front of me. I returned her stare.

  Her face softened. “You don’t have anyone to stay with while your dad’s in the hospital, do you?” she asked.

  “I do, too.”

  The nurse just looked at me. She didn’t believe me.

  “There are all kinds of people I could stay with,” I insisted. I started counting them off on my fingers, “Friends. Neighbors. I even have a grandma.” Just because Gram was at Valley View didn’t mean I didn’t have her. “In fact, I live at my grandma’s house.” This was true.

  I stood up and made a big show of looking at the clock. “Wow! My grandma must be worried sick. I better go.” I started moving toward the door.

  “Why isn’t your grandma here at the hospital with you?” the nurse asked, blocking my way.

  Why can’t you just mind your own business? “Well, she would’ve been here, but … she’s sick. Not just worried sick, but sick sick!” Joe always said the best lies had an element of truth to them.

  “I should go,” I said again. I didn’t want to, but if I hung around much longer, this woman was probably going to call Social Services on me.

  I went over to the bed so I could whisper in Joe’s ear. “I’ll be back later, okay?” Just in case he could hear me. Then I made tracks for the elevator.

  It was getting light out when I left the hospital. Considering how early it was, there was more traffic on York Avenue than I would’ve expected. Where were all these people going so early in the morning? I wondered as I walked along the curb.

  When I got home, Sherlock was jumping around like crazy. Poor thing. No one had been here to let him out before bed last night. “I’m so sorry, boy,” I said, reaching to pick him up. But he slipped out of my hands and made a mad dash for the back door. He really had to go.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, hurrying after him. I opened the back door and out he ran.

  While I stood on the back step, watching my dog, I wondered if there was anything I needed to do while Joe was in the hospital. Was everything at the hospital taken care of? Did they know we didn’t have money to pay for whatever was wrong with Joe? Was that okay? Was there anyone I needed to call? Probably not Joe’s work. His boss was the one who’d called me and told me Joe had been taken to the hospital, so he knew Joe wouldn’t be at work today. We didn’t really have any other family, except for Gram.

  Oh, man. How would I tell Gram what had happened? I had to tell her, didn’t I?

  I couldn’t tell her over the phone; I’d have to go to the nursing home and tell her in person. But what would I say? I didn’t even know what all was wrong with Joe. I just knew it was bad. Really bad.

  I sighed. Why did this have to happen? Why did it have to happen now? Aside from Gram going into the nursing home, and all that stuff that happened with Suzanne and Sam, things had been going so good for me and Joe. Joe was totally, one hundred percent clean. We were living in an actual house for the first time ever. Okay, it was Gram’s house, but at least it wasn’t a crappy one-room apartment. Or a camper. Joe had a job so we could actually afford to buy stuff like food and bus passes and a dog.

  Everything was going great until his accident.

  Well, at least I wouldn’t have to go to Iowa now. That was one good thing about Joe getting hurt. No one would expect me to go away while Joe was in the hospital. Of course the first thing Suzanne would want to know was who was taking care of me. Joe knew I was fine by myself. And I knew I was fine by myself. But Suzanne would probably have a fit if she found out.

  I would just have to make sure she never found out.

  Woof! Sherlock stood in front of me, wagging his tail. “Are you done?” I asked him.

  He let out another woof.

  We went inside and I got him some food and fresh water. I grabbed another monster burrito for myself out of the freezer. We only had two more left. But we had peanut butter. And boxes of macaroni and cheese. I’d be okay for a while.

  I put my burrito in the microwave, but once it was done I realized I was more tired than hungry. So I took a couple bites of the burrito, then wrapped it up and stuck it back in the fridge. After that I went into my room to try and take a nap. But once I got in bed, I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. I kept rolling around and flopping from side to side. Then I felt something kind of bulky poking me in the back. I reached underneath me and pulled out my old stuffed monkey, Chester.

  “I have a monkey just like this at home,” Sam had said when she saw it three weeks ago.

  “You couldn’t have one just like it,” I’d told her. Chester was a one-of-a-kind monkey. Gram made him for me.

  But Sam had insisted she had the same monkey. “Does Joe ever call himself the Monkey Man?” she’d asked.

  “The Monkey Man?”

  “Yeah. You know that
song, ‘Do You Know the Muffin Man?’ Did Joe ever sing it as ‘Do You Know the Monkey Man?’”

  I had no clue what she was talking about, so she started singing the song. “Do you know … the monkey man, the monkey man, the monkey man? Do you know … the monkey man, who lives on Drury Lane?” Then she started on the second verse, “Yes, I know … the monkey man, the monkey man—”

  I’d stopped her right there. “Joe? Sing?” I’d said.

  But he used to sing. He used to sing for money. In bars. I remember this guy making me a soft bed of towels under a counter, and I remember drifting off to sleep to the sound of people clapping for my dad.

  I didn’t remember any Monkey Man song, though. I finally asked Joe, just a couple of days ago, whether he’d ever sung “Do You Know the Monkey Man?” to me.

  He smiled. “You remember that?”

  “Sort of,” I lied. I hated that Sam knew something about Joe that I didn’t. I was the one who’d lived with him all these years, not her.

  “Why did you stop singing?” I asked.

  “I had to take care of you,” he’d answered.

  Oh.

  But he never had to take care of me. He didn’t have to take me away from Suzanne. He chose to do that. But that was because he couldn’t bear to lose me. And even though he lied to me all these years, he gave up his whole life … all his dreams, everything, just to take care of me. I needed to remember that.

  Well, obviously I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I tossed Chester aside, threw off the covers, and went to take a quick shower. If the nurses who worked at the hospital were like the ones who worked at Valley View, they probably changed shifts at seven a.m. Which meant the crabby redheaded nurse would be gone. It was safe to go back.

  This time I took the bus. It let me off at the mall across the street from the hospital. I crossed at the crosswalk, went inside, and took the elevator up to ICU. When I got to Joe’s room, I saw his eyes were partially open.

  “Joe!” I cried, running over to him. “You’re awake! When did you wake up? Do the nurses know you’re awake?”

  But he couldn’t answer me because of that fat blue tube in his mouth.

  Had he just woken up that very second? Did he know where he was? Did he know what had happened?

  “I’m going to go over to the nurse’s station to get someone,” I said, backing away.

  Joe moaned.

  “What?” I asked. “Do they know you’re awake?”

  He nodded once. It looked like it hurt a lot to do that.

  “Oh. Okay.” I walked slowly back to the bed. “How are you feeling?” I asked. Which was probably a really stupid question.

  Joe sort of grimaced. His face was still all red and swollen between the bandages. If anything, it was even more red and swollen than before.

  “Not so good, huh?”

  His eyes were so droopy it looked like he was going to fall back asleep any second. He pantomimed holding a piece of paper in one hand and writing something with the other hand. A giant clothespin-like thing covered his left finger. But hey, at least his hands weren’t tied down anymore.

  “You want to write something?” I asked.

  He nodded. Then he cocked his elbow toward a table on the other side of his bed. There was a white board and a black marker over there. I got them and handed them to Joe.

  It was hard for him to write with that thing on his finger. His letters ran uphill across the board and each one was smaller than the one before it. BRKE BAK.

  Was that supposed to say “broke back?” As in “I broke my back?”

  “I know,” I said.

  He kept writing. LONG TIM TIL BETER. I had to follow each letter as he wrote it because he wrote right over the top of the words he wrote before.

  I swallowed. “I know. But I’ll help you get better. I’ll take care of you when you come home.”

  DONT TLL GRM, he wrote.

  “What?” I looked up from his message. “Joe, I can’t keep something like this from Gram.” It was bad enough he didn’t want me to tell her about Suzanne and Sam. I had to tell her Joe was in the hospital.

  He closed his eyes and let the board fall to the bed.

  “No! You can’t go to sleep yet. We have to talk about this. What am I supposed to tell Gram when she asks why you stopped visiting her?”

  No response.

  “I know you don’t want her to freak out. But she’s going to freak out anyway,” I said.

  Joe’s eyes remained closed.

  “She’s not as mixed up as you think she is. Plus she’s your mom. Don’t you think she should know what happened to you?”

  Still nothing.

  I sighed. “Fine. If you don’t want me to tell Gram you’re in the hospital, what do you want me to tell her?”

  I didn’t actually expect an answer. I thought he’d gone back to sleep. But he picked up the white board and I saw his fingers feeling around for pen. I picked it up and put it in his hand.

  He opened one eye and scrawled: ANTHG BT TRTH. Anything but the truth? What? Was that his new motto?

  It looked like Joe was going to sleep for a while, so I decided to head over to the nursing home and visit Gram. It took two buses to get there from the hospital. And then I still had to walk six blocks.

  Valley View was a one-story brick building with three separate wings: one for the people who didn’t need much extra help, one for the people who needed lots of help, and one for the Alzheimer’s patients. Gram had had a stroke; that was why she was at Valley View. Joe thought it was too hard for us to take care of her, which made me mad because I didn’t think it was that hard. Then the nurses thought she was also showing signs of Alzheimer’s, so they put her in the Alzheimer’s wing. That really made me mad because Gram was not as crazy as some of those people, and I was afraid that being around crazy people all the time would push Gram over the edge. But I’m a kid, so nobody cared what I thought.

  They kept the Alzheimer’s wing locked so the patients wouldn’t wander out. I punched in the code, and when the door unlocked, I went inside. Yuck. It always smelled like disinfectant and gross food in here.

  Gram was stretched out on her bed, sound asleep, when I got to her room. Her mouth hung open at a weird angle and she was snoring.

  I eased myself into the rocking chair across from her bed and rocked slowly back and forth while I waited for her to wake up. Her room was about the size of our bathroom, which meant it wasn’t very big. The bed took up most of one wall. A bulletin board with old Get Well Soon cards hung above it. The only other thing in the room was the little bureau with the TV on it that stood next to my chair.

  That TV used to be in our kitchen. When we first moved in with Gram, I’d sit at the kitchen table with her and we’d watch Wheel of Fortune after dinner. She used to be good at it, too. I’d seen her solve puzzles that only had two letters in place. But she couldn’t do that anymore.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a square of bubble gum.

  “T.J.,” Gram said suddenly.

  I jumped. “Gram! Hi,” I said, stuffing the gum back inside my pocket. Gram didn’t like it when I chewed gum. She said the sugar would rot my teeth.

  “How long have you been sitting there?” She squinted at me and tried to sit up. “Where’s your dad? He hasn’t been to see me all week.”

  “Joe was here yesterday, Gram,” I said. I went over and helped her sit up. “Yesterday morning.”

  “He was?” Gram looked confused.

  “Yes.” I sat down next to her on the bed. I felt like I was the grandma and she was the little girl as I reached for her bony hand. “But … he’s not going to be able to come back for a while. He’s … really, really busy at work.”

  “What’s he doing?” she asked.

  “He’s … um … working for that builder out in Excelsior, remember? That guy’s building like thirty houses right now, so Joe’s … well, doing whatever he does at work. He’ll be there from seven in the morning until
ten at night for the next couple of weeks.” Man, I hated lying to her.

  “Well, I hope he doesn’t work too hard,” Gram said.

  I helped her into her wheelchair and wheeled her around the nursing home for a while. I wished I could talk to her the way I used to. I wanted to tell her where Joe really was. I wanted to tell her I was scared and I didn’t know if I had done everything I needed to do. I also wanted to tell her about Sam and Suzanne, and I wanted to ask her why she never told me the truth about who I was. I’d wanted to ask her that every time I’d seen her over the last three weeks. But I wasn’t supposed to bring up any of that.

  “I should go,” I told Gram. It was time for her afternoon snack in the big activities room down the hall, and I’d already been away from the hospital longer than I’d wanted to be.

  “Okay,” Gram said. “Tell your dad to come and see me. I haven’t seen him all week.”

  I sighed. She’d forgotten everything I said already. “Okay, Gram,” I said, bending to kiss her cheek. “I’ll tell him.”

  The buses didn’t line up very well for my trip back to the hospital. I had to wait half an hour for the second bus. But eventually it came and I hopped on and took a seat at the front. I thought about getting off at my street so I could go let Sherlock out again before I headed back to the hospital, but it hadn’t been that long since I let him out. He should be okay. I stayed on the bus all the way to the mall, then got out and walked across to the hospital.

  I hurried inside and took the elevator up to the third floor. But when I got to Joe’s little glass room, his bed was empty.

  It was all made up as though he’d never been there.

  Chapter Five

  I strode over to the two new nurses who were sitting at the big desk in the main room. “Where’s my dad?” I demanded.

  “Who is your dad?” the one with the glasses and bad dye job asked.

  “Joseph Wright. He was in that room over there.” I pointed, panic rising in my chest.

  The dark-haired nurse slid some papers around on her desk. “He was moved,” she said finally.