Good Kings Bad Kings

by Susan Nussbaum

  “I’m sure it won’t be accessible,” I say. “People’s houses never are. You know.”

  He says, “It’s at Chuck E. Cheese.”

  I say, “You want me to go to Chuck E. Cheese?”

  “Yeah, why not?” he says, with a mouth full of tortilla chips.

  “You can’t even hear yourself scream in there. There’ll be five hundred preadolescents amped on high-fructose corn syrup. I’m not even exaggerating.”

  “And?” he says.

  “Thank you. I’m really glad to be invited,” I lie, “but it’s not a good idea. For me to go.”

  He shrugs and says, “Okay.”

  I was hoping he’d ask why it wasn’t a good idea, but being a person who relies heavily on subtext, I didn’t say so. The guacamole arrives to change the subject.

  “I have a question,” I say. “How many of the kids at ILLC would you guess were admitted to St. Theresa’s during a seven-month period in 2011? I’m only up to mid-July.”

  “Don’t know,” he says. “How many? Can you pass the green salsa?”

  “Admitted. Not just the emergency room.”

  “Ten percent?” he says.

  “Well, I didn’t do a percent thing,” I say. “I just added up the number. Out of eighty-one kids. That’s how many kids we have now, not then. Then it was eighty. How many?”

  “Hold up. I’m lost.”

  “Thirty-two out of roughly eighty kids were admitted to St. Theresa’s in a seven-month period.”

  “Really?” he says. He pours the salsa over the guacamole. “Sounds like a lot. You think that’s a lot?”

  “Yes, I do,” I say. “That’s almost half the kids. In about half a year. That’s a lot, right?”

  “They’re always sick. They’re always coughing or sneezing all over the place. ILLC is like one of those—what do you call ’em?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “No, where there’s viruses and flu—one of those—and they do tests and swab the germs on it. Come on, one of those—”

  “Petri dishes?”

  “Petri dishes. It’s like that. The place is crawling with bugs.”

  “Okay, but they get referred to the hospital for tests. Specific tests for X-rays and scans and MRIs.”

  “A lot of the kids have these shunts,” he says, drawing an imaginary picture on his head with his finger. “Shunts in their heads. Like if they have spina bifida or cerebral palsy they wind up with shunts a lot of times. It’s like they get fluid building up in their heads and the shunt drains the fluid off. To somewhere, and you can’t see the tube. It’s not obvious, it’s, you know, little, you’d have to look for it.” He gives up on the illustration. “They get sick all the time from those. All the time. They get headaches—migraines—and throw up and the nurse calls the EMTs. Or sometimes they get sick from bedsores and they run some high fevers from those, so that’s another reason. It sounds like a big number but for these kids it could be normal.”

  The waitress comes with our dinners and says, “Can I get you anything else?” She says it to Ricky, but I figure it was meant for both of us, so I ask for more napkins.

  “Why do they get all those bedsores?” I say.

  “From not moving around as much, right?”

  The waitress returns with a few napkins and presents them to Ricky. I have the power to become invisible in some restaurants. I just never know which restaurants. Or how to turn the power off.

  I say, “But isn’t that something they’re supposed to do at a place like ILLC? Make sure they move around more? Help them change positions when they’re in bed? Take care of their skin?”

  I don’t really know why I’m pushing this. The thing about shunts makes sense and a lot of crips get sores. Even non-nursing-home crips. But it’s a guaranteed side effect of nursing-home living. They might as well put it in the bylaws. I eat a bite of enchilada and drink a little more beer although I can already feel that my face is warm. This whole “nephew’s birthday” thing has put me off my feed.

  “I bet ILLC uses the cheapest mattresses on the market,” I say. “It’s like they want them to get sick.”

  “What,” he says, “you think there’s a conspiracy to make them get bedsores?”

  “Why not? How else can you explain it?” I can hear myself and I sound angry. I look up at him to see if he’s getting angry too. He’s smiling at me. Oh. “I’m just—ignore me,” I say. “I’m delusional from looking at forms all day.”

  “I remember this one time though,” he says, reaching over to brush some fuzz off my sweater. “The doctor—what’s his name?—Spaghetti, Rotini . . .”

  “I am not guessing,” I say.

  “Ravioli,” he says.

  “Dr. Ravioli,” I say.

  “Right,” he says.

  “You mean Dr. Caviolini?”

  “Ravioli is easier to remember.”

  “True,” I say.

  “Yeah, so Dr. Ravioli sent one of the kids, Michael Jackson—”

  “Yeah, I know Michael Jackson,” I say. “Not the ‘Billie Jean’ Michael Jackson—”

  “Right, right, the spina bifida Michael Jackson.”

  “Right.”

  “So he was fine, right? Totally cool. Great little guy. Out of the blue, Ravioli sends him to the hospital for a week. I drove him over there. Michael’s like, ‘Why am I going to the hospital?’ ”

  “Why was he?”

  “I don’t know. When I pick him up the next week, I ask Michael is he feeling better. He says he wasn’t sick, he just had some X-rays.”

  “What hospital?”

  “St. Theresa.”

  “What’s that place like?”

  “It’s empty,” he says. “You walk around even a little and it looks like a ghost hospital. They closed up one whole floor. Not enough patients.”

  “Wow. How do they stay open?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well. It must’ve been something. With Michael Jackson. ILLC being a petri dish,” I say.

  “Ya think? The kids’ rooms smell like moldy diapers. And the houseparents don’t always clean up after they leave a mess. Some of ’em are cool—Beverly, Toya, Victor—but some of them, I don’t think they really give a shit. What do they make? Ten or twelve an hour? So you know . . . it is what it is.”

  “I wash my hands about sixty times a day now. I’m thinking of buying a Tyvek suit.”

  “Sexy,” he says.

  “That’s why I’m buying it.”

  “About time,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  The waitress comes by and asks Ricky if everything is okay. I realize that not only am I invisible, but she’s flirting with him. It’s a double-invisibility whammy. That’s one of the reasons I do not want to be all involved with anyone. Why do I care about a random very attractive waitress flirting with him? Or anyone flirting with him? I don’t care is the answer. He can ask the waitress to go to Chuck E. Cheese.

  “What’s up?” he says.

  “All that data entry was so boring I made up a big mystery to keep myself amused.”

  “It’s good that you question things. I like that about you.”

  “Thanks. But I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No. I don’t know much about the kids. I don’t really know how the money part works. I never paid attention to how Medicaid works. And why are some hospitals full and some empty? I’m just new. At the job.”

  “No, I hear you.”

  I eat as much enchilada as I can. Ricky’s fajitas are long gone, so I offer him the rest of my dinner and he digs in. For the first time I notice that his face is crooked. He has droopy eyelids with a fat fringe of black lashes and a white scar that runs through his left eyebrow. His hair is black, almost blue, like the way they draw the hair on men in romance comic books. He isn’t standard-issue handsome, but he is sexy. I can feel my heart speed up a little just looking at him. Or maybe I�
�m having a heart attack from the refried beans.

  He says, “Can you imagine how those kids would flip out if they served this for dinner over there? Or if they got to eat here? Just go out and eat like this? Something like this—this is a dream for them. My family never went out to dinner. I never ate at a real restaurant until I was like eighteen or nineteen. Not that we were all deprived. We weren’t hungry. Not seriously. We ate, but you know, we weren’t always sure what we were eating.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did I ever tell you about the pig snout?”

  “No, that hasn’t come up.”

  “It was actually pretty good. And I go to get some more, right? My mom put it in a stew kind of deal. So I’m trying to spoon up some of the good stuff and I look in the spoon—the ladle—and I notice something in there looks a whole lot like a nose and it’s got hairs sticking out of the nostrils.”

  “Okay, no. You don’t want your food to actually look like the animal if at all possible. I could never eat animal crackers for that reason. I thought you were going to tell me something really bad, like—”

  “Like we ate cat food or dirt?”

  “Exactly,” I say. “Or bats.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “I like you,” I say.

  “I like you.”

  “I’m—thank you. You always make me feel better. I—I love being with you.”

  “I love being with you,” he says. Then he looks in my eyes, but I could only look back for a couple of seconds.

  “My pupils are different sizes,” I say. “You think I should worry about that?”

  “Let me see,” he says.

  I look up at his face again and he smiles and I smile back, but then I look away. I don’t flirt. But then I look up at him again.

  Yessenia Lopez

  Tía Nene would’ve been proud of me that it took three aides to pull me off Benedicta a.k.a. Shamu. It took Beverly, Jimmie, and Louie. That Louie looks like a cop. I’m not sayin’ he is a cop? But he got the look.

  Benedicta’s a freak. Even her lies are lies. She was all crying and acting like Little Miss Who Me when the whole time she had stole my black nail polish that my friend Cheri gave me and what she purchased with money from her own allowance. Benedicta said she just happened to have that same nail polish. Do you believe she had put some of that polish on her nails already? The girl’s just not right in the head. Like I told Cheri, if you took my nail polish and you already knew I was a ex-convict and a menace to the society and you knew I had my eye peeled on you anyway? I mean, would you keep stealing from me? Cheri said no, she definitely would not.

  And Beverly told Jimmie how this isn’t the first time and how me and Benedicta been pushing buttons on each other before, but I think I finally got lucky ’cause that Jimmie?—she a lesbian—Jimmie goes, “Okay, if they don’t get along, maybe one of them can move out of this room, move to a different room.” Hello! That’s what I been saying since the day I got here.

  Benedicta perked up at that. She’s a wrongful, lying bitch but she knows her only hope is for me to be in a different room. So even though Jimmie is only a aide? She tells me to start packing up my belongings. Beverly is like, “Can you do that?” to Jimmie, and Jimmie is like, “We’ll find out.” And she laughs and Beverly is all cool, like she’s not mad that Jimmie just did that and she likes Jimmie. Maybe Beverly is a lesbian her own self.

  I’m gonna be very honest with you now. When Jimmie did that, you could see that that woman was a Person to Know. I hope they don’t fire her.

  We got permission to move me to my new room from Anissa who is the supervisor in charge of all the aides, a.k.a. houseparents. And while I’m on the subject they better forget about that “houseparent” crap right now. I only got one parent in this life and she’s passed, so I don’t wanna hear it.

  Anissa is a Muslin Indian and she wears a scarf on her head so you can’t see her hair but even with her scarf that woman is hot. I bet the males always trying to get over with her. Today’s her last day though, so that’s the end of her. I told her, “Anissa, girl, just give me your castaways, that’s all I ask.”

  My new room is the exact same shape of room as my last room but instead of Shamu I gots Cheri, so her and me is both real happy. I repo’d whatever Benedicta stole offa me which wasn’t much since I don’t barely own nothing. Just what my caseworker got me from the place I lived at before Juvie and before here which was my clothes, my teddy bears—one polar bear and two brown ones—and my crucifix with Jesus on it. I said a prayer to my tía Nene who watches over me and loves me very much. I know she’s in heaven and is having fun all the time and not worrying about paying her debt on her credit cards.

  Cheri’s last name is Smith. Me and her is still getting along real good. But she scares me sometimes. One night she started in screaming and woke me up and woke up her own self. I asked her what the hell was her problem and you know what she said? She said there was somebody in her dream saying mean things to her. So I told her, “Cheri, if you got somebody saying mean things to you, you gotta tell them meaner things back.” I can see I gots a lot to teach the child.

  They got the most stupidest rules in here that I ever heard of. First one is, you got to pass a test to get on the elevator by yourself. Eccuse me? I think I know how to take a elevator! What I’m suppose to do? Fly down the stairs? Did somebody not notice I am challenged? But they still made me take their stupid test and now I can take the elevator all by my little crippled self.

  Next thing you gots to do is you’re not allowed outside the damn building alone without passing another one of their bullshit tests. By “outside the building,” they don’t mean plain old outside either. They mean outside like “stay on the grass in front of the door.” That’s what they’re talking about. They think you’re too stupid to even walk out the door on your own. I was raised in the city. I grew up in the Puerto Rican ghetto. I think I know how to walk outside a damn door. Anyway, I passed that lame-ass test too.

  I know they gots some children here, real children who are below being teenagers yet. But even they know how to walk out a stupid door. There might could be a few children and even teenage ones that couldn’t do a elevator by theyself. They too challenged. So I say then help those peoples and leave us others alone with your dumb-ass rules!

  Awright. You ready for rule three? You’re not allowed alone on a bus—a regular bus that I been taking by myself since I was a child—without a houseparent. This is almost worse than Juvie. At least at Juvie you were suppose to be punished. And would you believe that they won’t even let me take that test till I been locked up in this snake pit for three entire months? Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior, please look down on my sorry ass and give me some serious mercy please. I’m so serious.

  Me and Cheri only got one more month in purgatory though. Once we pass that test? We’re going shopping. If it weren’t for Cheri who feels the same way I feel about everything, I don’t know what I’d do.

  Ricky Hernandez

  Pierre’s back in the time-out room today. Mrs. Schmidt said he told her he had a stomachache and he kept making whistling noises. I wasn’t sure if she meant his stomach was making whistling noises or if the two things were separate. I say to her maybe he could be sick. “You want I should take him to the nurse?” She says, “No, take him to time-out and then come back.” I say, “I can’t put him in there and leave him alone,” and she says to just do what she tells me. She says he just wants attention. The fuck? I’m not going to leave him in there and no one’s watching. This Mrs. Schmidt is a piece of work. She’s always saying negative stuff about a kid right in front of him and everybody. So I take Pierre out in the hall.

  “Hey, let’s go to the nurse and make sure you’re okay.”

  “No way!” he says, and he kicks the wall. Kicks it as hard as a kid with rickets can kick a wall. But he’s yelling, “No!” and freaking out in general.

  “You don’t wanna see the nurse?” I
say. “You don’t have to.” We start walking to the time-out room.

  “When I was in school,” I say, “I had a teacher like Mrs. Schmidt. She was a bad apple, you know? Always talking down to me. But you know what? When I got older I realized she don’t matter. She’s a blip on the radar, you know what I’m saying? I met lots of other people, teachers too, who treated me real good, respectfully, you know?”

  He’s not really listening. He’s off in Pierreville. When we pass the infirmary and he sees he really don’t have to see the nurse he calms down a little and when we get downstairs he walks right into the time-out room, just like he was home. Then he does a few kid-style karate chops to the wall and yells, “Fucker!” at it. I say, “Pierre, if you feel sick you let me know.” But then he sits down in a corner and settles his legs so he’s comfortable and stares at the ceiling. His body’s in action the whole time though. Fiddling his fingers and squirming around nonstop.

  I told Joanne about Pierre. What I know about him, which ain’t much. She knows who he is and some stuff from his file, so I thought she might like to get to know the little guy. Maybe she might have an idea or two of how to help him. The thing is, Pierre reminds me of my nephew Pucho. They both have that “If somebody tells me to go right, I’m going left” personality. I don’t care what is the issue—they both hafta make everything harder than it has to be. I always think of Pucho when I see Pierre.

  So Pucho was picked up for possession last week. He runs with a gang, you know? Latin Kings. A real bunch of knuckleheads.

  You can’t talk to him about it. You say, “You’re gonna wind up in jail,” he just says, “So?” And online he’s got pictures of him all “I’m the man” and wearing his colors and holding a spliff. On Facebook. For the world to see. I talked to his mother, my sister, and she’s thrown in the towel. She’s like, “What do you want me to do?” I’m like, “Tear the computer out the wall.” You know? There is no reason for this crap to happen. I grew up in a tough neighborhood, I had peer pressure, so what? You never saw me joining a gang.