Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

by Jack Gantos

  “He’s right on that score,” she said. “Damn right. You can tell him things might get worse for him too.” And she drank that drink down like it was water and mixed another while I just stared at her.

  “No. Don’t tell him that,” she said, calming down. “It was a bad day for me too. I thought about you at work all day and I worried about you and the more I thought about what you would tell them about us the more embarrassed I was. I came back for you, but just coming back isn’t good enough. It’s not just about having a roof over our heads, it’s about what is in our heads. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I spoke with a diet lady today and she said I don’t eat right for my body too.”

  “Now, what did you tell her?” Mom asked, and she lost her cool again.

  “That I like chocolate donut holes and Tater Tots and nachos and that you never make me eat what I don’t like.”

  “And what is wrong with that?”

  “She said I need vegetables and salads and grains and asked if I take vitamins. I told her I eat a Reese’s peanut butter cup every morning because you said peanut butter was good for me.”

  “I need another drink,” she said.

  “Special Ed asked me if you drink,” I said.

  She whipped around with the Amaretto bottle in her hand. “And what did you tell him?”

  “That you drink,” I said. “You do.” I pointed at the bottle in her hand. “See? And Special Ed said that if I didn’t tell the truth I wouldn’t get better.”

  “Well, I spoke with Mr. Vanness today,” she said, and mixed the drink.

  “It’s the same guy,” I said. “He’s Special Ed.”

  “I know,” she said. “He called me after you left his office.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I’m not telling,” she said. “That’s one of the differences between you and me. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I can’t help it that I talk too much,” I said.

  “Try,” she said.

  “Try not drinking,” I said.

  “Why is it that one of us has to be right and one of us has to be wrong?” she asked. “Why does it always come down to that?”

  “Don’t ask me why,” I said, and pushed my fingers in my ears to not hear the word.

  She pulled my hands away. “Sometimes you really get under my skin,” she said. “Sometimes I think it was easier chasing after your dad than it is chasing after you.”

  “But you love me more,” I said. “You said so yourself.”

  “You are such an imp,” she growled.

  I just smiled my big smile, the one where my eyes close up and I can’t see anything but the inside of my face, which is like wearing a great big Halloween yellow smiley face mask.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s be bad for another day and order a pizza.”

  “Can we get vegetables on it?” I asked. “I promised I’d eat more.”

  “Yeah. Like what? Mushrooms, green peppers, onions?”

  “Don’t forget the salad.”

  “Get real,” she said. “They don’t make salad pizza. Salad is the opposite of pizza. Salad is for rabbits and pizza is for people who love cheese and sausage and pepperoni. And that happens to be us.”

  In the morning I was sitting on the porch eating a slice of leftover extra-cheese-and-vegetable pizza and waiting for the bus when Mrs. Maxy pulled up in her car and waved to me. And she was smiling, too, which was a good thing or I would have turned right around and dashed into the house and locked the door. When she got out of her car she was carrying a brown paper bag and her purse.

  “How is it going?” she asked as she climbed the steps.

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Now that I’m eating more vegetables. Wanna bite?”

  “No, thanks,” she replied, and shook her head at me just like my mom does. “We’ve all been thinking of you.”

  That made me feel a lot better than pizza. “I think of you too,” I replied. “And I’ll be back. I told you I would.”

  “Well, keep making progress and I’m sure you will.”

  I got my courage up to ask the next question. “How’s Maria?” I asked. “I went to her house to say I was sorry and her dad chased me away.”

  “Maria is no longer at our school,” Mrs. Maxy said. “Her family put her in Catholic school.”

  “We have kids from Catholic school in special ed,” I said. “They still wear their uniforms.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Maxy. “We told her parents that the accident could have happened anywhere but they were very concerned for Maria.”

  “I still feel real bad about what happened,” I said.

  “We all do, Joey,” Mrs. Maxy said. “But we have to get over it and move on. Now, let me show you what I’ve brought.” She removed a folder from the bag and showed me my math, English, geography, history, and science lessons, “Do these here with your mom and you can keep up with the class for the next few weeks. I’ll keep bringing your homework so when they send you back you won’t be too far behind. Okay?”

  “Does this mean they are sending me back in six weeks?” I asked.

  “That is up to someone else,” she said. “But Mr. Vanness called and asked me to keep up with your assignments so if and when you do come back you can jump right in.”

  Then before she left I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are, Joey. We all are. But we can stop being sorry now. It’s time to shift gears and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I held my arms out for a hug and she gave me one and it was really good and when I let go of her I said, “I’m shifting gears and making certain it won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” she said. “Very good.” And she reached into her teacher bag and pulled out a strip of sticky gold stars. She peeled one off and pressed it onto my forehead. “This,” she said, “is for shifting gears.”

  I carefully touched the star and felt the five gold points. One for each subject. “My mom said when I’m better she’ll get me a dog.”

  “That would be very nice,” she said. “I have to run. You know how the class can get when I’m not there on time.”

  I remembered.

  She turned and walked down the steps and I could see pizza sauce on the back of her dress where I had put my hands during our hug.

  “Mrs. Maxy!” I hollered and waved the pizza in the air.

  “I already packed a lunch,” she called back, before I could tell her about the hand prints. “Thanks.”

  As soon as she left I wiped my hands on my pants and dumped all the stuff she brought me inside the house. In a few minutes the special-ed bus pulled up. I got on and Charlie was waiting for me.

  “Sit here,” he said, and gave me a head nod just like yesterday.

  “Want some pizza?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, and I held it up to his mouth and he took a bite.

  “Be careful,” I said. “It’s a little messy.”

  It was a big day and it wasn’t going well. It was my turn to see the doctor and I think that had me all over excited. I had taken my meds in the morning but I still couldn’t keep my mind on my work. I had a reading teacher who made me read picture books instead of chapter books because she said the pictures would help me understand the words that were beyond my reading level. But I just wasn’t paying attention. Then in math I couldn’t do my drills because inside my head were loud scary doctor thoughts and I couldn’t seem to hear the teacher. Recess was about the best thing to do because I could just run around the swing set while dodging between the kids who swung back and forth like wrecking balls trying to knock my block off.

  Finally, at the end of the day, I was sitting in a small examination room with Special Ed and he was looking at his watch. There was a cabinet next to me with a lot of neat stuff inside. I opened it and took out the Band-Aids.

  “Joey,” Special Ed said, “put those back.”
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  “I was just looking at them. There’s no harm in that.”

  “While we are waiting,” he said in his fake doctor voice, “I think we should talk about something important.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Grandma always said not to waste time with the little stuff.”

  “The doctor is going to be concerned with your physical condition and your medication,” he said. “That is his job. My job is to be concerned about your behavior, which is why we have to be a team. Long after the doctor gets your medication regulated, you and I will be working together.”

  “I think I’ve had very good behavior,” I said. “I haven’t been in trouble for days.”

  “That is good,” he said. “But we need to do more than just avoid getting into trouble. We need to focus on how to make the right decisions so you aren’t in trouble in the first place.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Band-Aids, Joey,” he said, pointing to the cabinet. “If I left you here alone for a few minutes what would you do with them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” he said, doubting me.

  “Nothing,” I said again.

  “Then let’s test that out,” he said, and stood up. “I’ll be out in the hall.”

  As soon as the door closed I began to rip open the Band-Aids right away. I pulled up my T-shirt and started sticking them all over my chest and belly. I must have got about twenty of them on when I heard Special Ed say, “Good morning, doctor.” I quickly hid the wrappers on the windowsill behind the curtain, pulled my shirt down over my belly, and took my seat.

  The door opened and the doctor rushed in.

  “I’m Dr. Preston,” he said. “Sorry I’m late. My fault.”

  I liked him right away because, for once, what went wrong wasn’t my fault.

  He set his briefcase on the table and removed his jacket. “Is Mrs. Pigza joining us?” he asked, first looking at me, then at Special Ed, who had taken his seat.

  “She couldn’t make it at this time,” Special Ed replied. “But we’ve spoken and I’ll keep her informed.”

  The doctor pursed his lips. “Right,” he said dryly. As if he were thinking, “Wrong.” As if he were thinking my whole life was wrong and it started with my mom because she didn’t care enough about me to make it here.

  “Well,” he said, smiling again. “Here’s what we are going to do.” He snapped open his briefcase and removed my file. “First, I’m going to give you a quick checkup. Then we’re going to run some tests. Not awful tests, but we have to draw blood and you have to pee in a cup.”

  It didn’t sound too bad. “I’ve had to do worse things,” I said. “One time I was with Grandma on a bus and she made me pee in a Coke bottle.”

  “I get the picture,” Dr. Preston said as he opened my file and looked at what was written as intensely as if he had just cut open my chest and was watching all my organs work.

  When he looked up he took a deep breath, then started talking. “You seem like a nice, smart kid so I’m going to be honest and give you both the easy news and the hard news, Joey. We all feel that the meds you’re taking now aren’t doing the job and with better medication your attention disorder can be controlled. That part we can manage. But the hard part for us is determining just the right medication. The written tests and the question-and-answer tests help us chart your behavior. You know, can’t sit still, have trouble concentrating, stray from your tasks and all. I wouldn’t tell you this so bluntly unless you didn’t know it already. And I know you and Mr. Vanness have talked about this.”

  I wanted to tell him that I had talked with every teacher I had ever known about just this same stuff. But Special Ed had told me earlier to let the doctor talk and my job was to listen, so I chewed on the inside of my left cheek because I had chewed up the inside of my right one the day before and it still hurt.

  “What I’m getting at is this. What we don’t know is what, medically speaking, is going on inside of you. And that we need to know before we can get you the proper medication. So here is what we are going to do. I want you to go to the Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and get a test. It sounds scarier than it is. It’s called a brain SPECT test. They take pictures of your brain, kind of like X rays only a lot more detailed and in color. The test does not hurt one bit.”

  “Is there something wrong with my brain?” I asked. “Because I’ve seen a lot of people around here with sick brains and they don’t look right or act right.”

  Special Ed jumped in. “The doctor is saying he just wants to get the test so he can make sure nothing else is wrong before he gives you the right kind of medicine and the right amount.”

  “Exactly,” said Dr. Preston.

  “Can my mom come?”

  “Absolutely,” the doctor said. “In fact, she has to.”

  “I don’t think she can get off work,” I said, and looked at Special Ed. “She works a lot.”

  “We’ll see to it,” Special Ed said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Joey,” the doctor said as he pulled a stethoscope out of his pocket, “I want to listen to your heart. Sit up here,” and he patted the edge of the examination table that was covered with a sheet of paper.

  I glanced over at Special Ed and was going to tell him about the Band-Aids but he just looked at me as if he was so proud of me. Like he was a really good dad, so I hopped up on the table and took a seat.

  When Dr. Preston lifted my shirt his face got really worried and he lowered my shirt again. “Mr. Vanness,” he said seriously, “may I speak with you out in the hall?”

  As soon as they were gone I began to peel off the Band-Aids but I only had a few off before Special Ed shot back into the room. “Joey,” he said in a very strict voice. The doctor was right behind him. “Explain to the doctor what you did.”

  I looked at him. “I decorated my belly with Band-Aids,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The doctor thought you had been abused,” Special Ed said in the same tight voice. “That’s the big deal.”

  “No way,” I said. “Nobody has beat me up since Grandma did it with a flyswatter.”

  The doctor continued his exam, then turned to Special Ed. “I’m finished for now. Have the nurse fill in his chart,” he said, “and run the blood and urine tests.” Then he stepped over to the desk and closed his briefcase. “I’m sorry to be in such a hurry, Joey. But until I get all those test results I can’t make a decision in regard to medication, and there are a lot of ways to go.” I stood up and he shook my hand and I looked right into his eyes because Mom told me that if you look into a person’s eyes you can tell if they are lying or not.

  “Am I okay?” I said. His eyes stayed right on mine. They didn’t slide left or right or blink and roll back or do something else like look at the door or his watch.

  “My feeling is that you will be okay. You do have a medical problem. You also have some behavior problems. I think both of those problems can be managed. I think your brain is fine. You have slugged it out for a long while and now you’ve hit the wall. You couldn’t have done that if something was seriously wrong. We’re doing the test just to be on the safe side.”

  “I’m only asking because it’s my brain and I need to know and I’ll see my mom and she’ll want to know too.”

  Special Ed stood up and nodded to the doctor. “I’ll take care of this end of things,” he said. “And keep you posted.”

  “Bye, Joey,” the doctor said. “I’ll see you as soon as we get the results from the tests.” Then he opened the door and I could hear him marching down the hallway.

  I just waved at where he had been as if suddenly I was only two years old and didn’t know “hello” and “goodbye” and would wave no matter if I was coming or going. And I wanted to keep looking at the door because I figured as soon as I turned around, Special Ed was going to get on me about the Band-Aids. But he didn’t even ask about them. Instead he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “How ar
e you holding up?” he asked.

  I was trying to be hopeful. To look on the bright side as Mom said. But thinking that there was something wrong with my brain was scaring me. I had already seen so many kids with bad brains and the worst part is that some of them looked just like me. Looked normal. But like me, there was something wrong inside.

  “I’m not doing so good,” I said. I was going to say that I was scared, but I had said that so many times already that I thought it was dumb to keep saying the same thing over and over as if my brain wasn’t working right.

  “Do you want to call your mom?” he asked, and picked up the phone. He had already dialed the number by the time I said yes.

  12

  PITTSBURGH

  After I had talked to Mom, Special Ed spoke with her about going the next day to the hospital in Pittsburgh. When she came home from work that night she had a new slacks-and-shirt outfit for me, but it was for the hospital visit. “I want you to look good,” she said, and examined my head. “I always feel my best when I look good.”

  Early the next morning when it was still dark we got all cleaned up and I dressed in my old jeans and a Penn State T-shirt for the bus ride. I took my meds and Mom drank coffee while she made sandwiches and packed them in our travel bags. By then the taxi was blowing its horn and once we got in it took us to the bus station. We were the first in line. After the driver opened the passenger door, we went up the steps. I had been on school buses and city buses, and of course the special-ed bus, but I had never been on a big Greyhound bus before and I was very excited not just because it was a bus but because it was named after a dog.

  We had our choice of where to sit. I wanted to sit all the way in the back and have the whole long seat.

  “No,” Mom said. “The bathroom is back there.” She pointed at the tiny silver room. “And they smell funny. Get a spot in the middle for the best ride.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your dad and I took a lot of buses,” she said. “We went to Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, all over. He was always on the move.”

  “Do you think he’s in Pittsburgh?” I asked.