The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  “Is that my old friend Joey Pigza?” she asked warmly, and slowly pulled me back like she was reeling in a dog by its tail.

  I turned and beamed at her with my chunky carved-pumpkin smile with the extra orange glow inside because I was secretly happy to be called an old friend. “I bet you are pleasantly surprised to have me back again,” I said, and really meant it.

  She gave me a hug to hold me still as she stared deep into my eyes and hummed like a little engine picking up speed as she shifted through all the many gears of my past behavior. Finally she backed away and cocked her head to one side like a pirate’s parrot as she fixed her gaze on my yarmulke. “Are you having a good day?” she asked.

  “Am I gonna be tested on that?” I replied, because before I left the house my mom did say through her locked bedroom door that I was “going to be put to the test this year.”

  “Remember,” Mrs. Jarzab answered as she carefully reached up and removed my yarmulke and tucked it down into my shirt pocket. “A good day doesn’t happen to you, Joey. You happen to it.”

  Then before I could think of something clever to say in response, she spun me back around and I lurched forward as she turned toward a kindergartner and sang out, “Why, welcome back. I missed you so much, and I hope you had a lovely summer.”

  I marched through the school’s front doors with a smile on my face and wondered what nice thing I could do right away to make my new teacher like me better than anyone else in the class. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Maxy, had quit. Everyone said I did her in. One year of having me spinning around in my seat all day while yelling out “Can I get back to you on that? Can I get back to you on that?” really tried her patience. But she was strong. She held up for a good long while before I wore her down with a few of my tricks. First, I got a plan to remove my fingerprints and crammed my skinny little finger into a pencil sharpener and gave it a good turn, but only yanked my fingernail to one side like shelling a shrimp. That hurt, but Mrs. Maxy didn’t panic. She was even okay with me after I swallowed my house key in class and then brought it back for a show-and-tell sniff test. I saw her smile when I said in a Pepé Le Pew French accent that it smelled like “Pew-de-toilet.” It was only after I went running a little too fast with a sharp pair of do-not-run-with scissors and accidentally cut off Maria Dombrowski’s round nose tip which sprayed blood like a showerhead … well, I guess that was just too much for Mrs. Maxy or anyone else, and I was taken out of her class and sent to special-ed school. For Mrs. Maxy, that short time with me was like a whole fifty-year career.

  I bet if I asked her why she quit she would look at me and scratch her chin like she was giving the question a lot of thought, and then she would suddenly holler out, “Can I get back to you on that?” She probably has my school picture—the one with my bandaged finger—on her bedside table to remind her that if she even dreams of getting another job she should take on something easy like wrestling alligators or being a crash-test dummy.

  I liked her and those were fun times to think about as I walked down the main hall. I looked at my reflection in the glass trophy case and put my yarmulke back on. Then before I found my new classroom I passed the Health Office. My old school nurse, Mrs. Holyfield, who always took care of me, had her door wide open. I poked my head around the corner of her doorjamb and yelled out, “Guess what? Joey Pigza is back!”

  She dropped her pen and popped up from her old desk chair like she had just sat on a splinter. “Joey!” she cried. “Get your sweet self over here and give me a death-grip hug!” She swung her soft tan arms out wide and gave me a love target as big as her heart. I grinned my impish grin—the one I save for best friends—and lined her up in my sights.

  Since there was a desk between us I just took a few steps back, and then revved up. “Incoming!” I shouted, and launched myself headfirst over her desk like a missile. She didn’t have time to duck and we slammed back against her wall so hard the display shelf of bad dental hygiene came unhinged. Rotten teeth scattered across the hard yellow floor as if they had been knocked out of my own jaw. I counted up the cavities like I do when I open my mouth real wide in the mirror. The black spots in my teeth look like sea urchins hiding in the cracks of coral. I like to gaze past them and dive deep down my throat as if it’s a secret tunnel leading to a trap door where I can crawl out and escape myself, and later come strolling back home like a totally normal kid as shiny and fresh as Lincoln rolling in on a new penny.

  But when I give it some thought I don’t really want to be a totally normal kid. It is so much easier to be in trouble all the time because then everyone wants to help you, which makes the other kids jealous because when you are normal it is never your turn to get help, because somebody like me is always at the front of the line like a circus seal bouncing a ball on its nose and slapping its flippers while arfing out “Me! Me! Me!”

  “Joey,” Mrs. Holyfield suddenly said, locking my face in front of hers. “Look into my eyes.”

  I did.

  She didn’t blink. “You still got meds?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “I got a med patch.” I wished she hadn’t asked because when I left for school I swiped the old Out of Order patch off my front door.

  “Let’s see it,” she said.

  I nervously struggled to pull up my shirtsleeve, and when I did I showed her where I had that old patch rubber-banded onto my forearm. It looked a little crusty.

  “Out of order?” she read out loud, and raised an eyebrow. Then she hunched forward and sniffed at it like a police dog. Her nose crinkled up. “Pee-yew! When’s the last time you changed that nasty thing?” She grimaced, like she was talking about one of Carter Junior’s prizewinning diapers.

  I started to count days going backward from when Mom hid them but abruptly stopped the instant Mrs. Holyfield yanked my old patch off in one painful rubber band–snapping rip and flipped it toward the trash can. Then she spun around and opened the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. She fingered through a rack of manila folders until she found mine and pulled it up.

  “I was hoping you’d return,” she said, and opened my file. “I hate it when the great kids move on.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Believe me, it feels a lot better to return to a place you love than to leave a place you love.”

  “I still have a few emergency med patches left over from before,” she continued as she plucked one out of the folder and ripped the paper wrapper down the side. “Now stick out your arm.”

  I did. She peeled off the nonstick back and slapped it on.

  “Thanks,” I said, and then I took a deep breath and leaned way into her like an exclamation point at rest.

  After a minute she lifted my chin with a finger and gave me a no-nonsense tell-the-truth look. “How’s your mom?” she asked.

  That was a trick question. Once, when I felt bad, Mrs. Holyfield said there was a silver lining to me having parents who were a mess because when I’m a mess everyone blames it on the parents. But how I am isn’t all Mom’s fault.

  “She’s pretty great sort of,” I said, and dropped down onto all fours to pick up the jagged teeth. I wanted to sneak a few into my pocket. “She had a baby, which means I have a brother and he looks just like me.” I stressed the me part because I was so proud. “His name is Carter Junior—named after my dad, who is now renamed Carter Senior, or ‘Mr. Adios’ as my mom calls him.”

  “What’s your dad up to these days?” she asked casually, but I knew her methods. Her nice questions were really like magnets attempting to extract secret thoughts out of my brain.

  So I pulled my face way back into my neck, and then pulled my neck way down into my shoulders like a turtle. “Oh, he’s really great,” I said in a choked-off voice. “He’s turned into a new man.” That part about him being new was true because he had gone through a full-on face-lift that got rotten from an infection. He may have turned himself into something like Frankenstein’s monster, but I don’t know for sure because before
he took his bandages off and revealed his new Hollywood Horror face to everyone, he ran away from Mom and me and Carter Junior, and all I ever found of him in the hospital parking lot was the scabby gauze bandage that had been wrapped around his oozing face like an infected flag from a nation of zombies.

  “Yeah, Dad is lookin’ good,” I repeated, thinking it would be best to not say another word—which for me is hard to do.

  “I’d like to meet up with him someday,” she replied.

  So would I, I thought, but my mouth said, “I’m sure you will. He’ll come in for Parents’ Day this year.” The moment I said that I knew it was time for me to go to class before I said more stupid things, like “Why don’t you come over for a big Pig-zah family dinner?”

  I took a step toward the door, but she wasn’t finished with me and clamped a hand on my shoulder. That’s the one thing about always being in trouble. Even when you stop being trouble people continue to want to help you, because they are never quite sure you have straightened up. I guess once a nail is bent there is no way to make it perfectly straight again. You can almost straighten it out, almost make it new, but that little weak spot always remains.

  “Don’t worry about the meds,” I said. “I’ll do some spring-cleaning and find them in a sock or somewhere.”

  “Don’t wait until spring,” she advised, “because you’re already a bit springy. You hear me?”

  I gave her my big smile again.

  She gave me a pat-pat on the top of my head like a hammer going tap-tap on the head of a nail. Then she lifted my yarmulke and slowly combed her fingers through my hair, where I’m sure she felt around for my old weak spot.

  Like I said, when I’m just a little bit of trouble people give me extra help because they think they can teach me how to help myself, which is always their hope, and mine too. All morning my new teacher, Mrs. Fabian, had us studying ancient Greek mythology by acting it out.

  “This year we’ll live like the Greeks!” she declared with enthusiasm, and pointed to a map of Greece and a list of names and places she had tacked to the wall. She pointed out Mount Olympus, where all the gods and goddesses lived, and the dark underworld called Hades, and told us great stories about the Minotaur and Hercules and so much more ancient life. “We’ll eat, drink, and sleep Greek culture and mythology!”

  I liked her right away because she was talking about having fun before we went over the list of class rules. Still, there was something bothering me that I needed to ask her, so I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Joey?” she asked.

  “Are we going to be tested on that?”

  “Not yet,” she replied, and smiled widely. “We’re going to enjoy learning it first.”

  “After we enjoy it,” I asked, “then will we be tested?”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  “See a test?” I shot back.

  “You are a clever boy,” she replied, trying to put the brakes on me. “Don’t stress out. Always remember that the more fun you have the better you’ll do on a test.”

  “But all my life I’ve been tested and I do stress out a little bit,” I said with my heart pounding inside my chest like a fist punching its way out. “Because right now I’m repeating a whole year, which means I totally failed everything on last year’s test. You name it and I flunked it!”

  By then I had everyone’s attention so I tried to be helpful and blurted, “Testing turns me into a stress-mess. Everyone else, too!”

  “Well, in that case,” Mrs. Fabian swiftly cut in, “you need a fun job that can bring out the best-mess in you.” She snapped her fingers and right then and there gave me the job in class everyone else wanted. I became the Greek Oracle at Delphi and wore a Greek toga around my shoulders as I sat at her desk, and everyone lined up in front of me like troubled ancient Greeks with big problems. Instead of me being worried, it was their job to look worried, and then one by one they were to whisper their questions in my ear. My job was to listen, then “Greekishly” slap my palm up against my forehead, and roll my eyes inward, and moan like a ghostly wind, and then come up with a prediction. I liked this job because everyone always said I was a natural at being dramatic.

  My first anguished Greek was Chuck Darts. “O Oracle,” he chanted in a wavering voice that Mrs. Fabian had first acted out. “What do you see in my future?”

  He didn’t give me much to work with, plus he was my first troubled Greek and I hadn’t practiced my oracling yet. I have always been better at asking questions than at giving answers, so I hesitated as I twisted up my face into a question mark and scratched the side of my peanut head like a thinking monkey. Then suddenly I flicked my eyes open and in a whispery voice I told Chuck I had a vision of him on an ambulance stretcher after school. “You will stick your left hand into a baseball glove … and a black widow spider will bite you … and your hand will swell up so big not even Hercules can pull the glove off,” I added dramatically.

  “Do I survive?” he asked with his voice fading away like someone falling off a cliff. He gaped at his hand in horror.

  “Watch the TV news tonight,” I replied in my moaning, windy voice. “If you are not dead, then the Greek gods have spared you.”

  I thought I did well, but he must have run off crying to Mrs. Fabian because she soon snuck up on me from behind and dropped her arms crossways over my chest like a seat belt, and then she tightened them.

  “Remember,” she said softly into my ear, “your job is to make sure everyone has a good day.”

  She lifted her arms and I took a breath.

  “Well,” I said, looking straight up at her, “when am I going to have a good day?” It wasn’t that I was having a bad day, but if I had a chance to talk to a real oracle I’d want some answers about my missing meds, and how Mom was going to take care of Carter Junior and the dogs while I was at school.

  “Well?” I repeated.

  “Not every question gets an answer,” Mrs. Fabian replied as if she was the boss oracle.

  “Why?” I asked. “What goes up must come down, so it figures that every question has an answer.”

  “Not in this case,” she explained. “Some questions go up, up, and away—poof!” She snapped her fingers above my head.

  “That sounds so negative,” I remarked, trying to stay a step ahead of her.

  “It’s negative to waste your time thinking up questions that don’t have answers yet. Relax,” she advised.

  I knew she was right, because my brain was built as upside down as an iceberg. All my millions of questions were gathered on the bottom of my brain and I only had a few sweaty little answers melting across the top.

  “But,” she said cheerfully, steering right around my negative thoughts, “when you are positive, then every day is a good day. Now, can I make a prediction just for you?” Mrs. Fabian asked.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Peek into my future—but watch out you don’t get poked in the eye.”

  She held one hand over her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Then she leaned down and calmly said, “The key for you to have a sunny day is when you unlock all the good in the world, and not all the bad.”

  “Is there a keyhole I can peek into and see all that good stuff that’s waiting for me?” I asked. “I don’t want to unlock any more bad stuff.”

  “Just be positive,” she instructed, “and even the bad stuff will turn into good stuff.” Then she glanced up at the clock because someone had to go down to the cafeteria and get the classroom snack.

  “Pos-i-tive,” I said, cutting the word into slices like a pizza.

  “Now say it with the appropriate feeling,” she said, and encouraged me to brighten up my tone by making a face as perky as a sunflower.

  “Pawz-i-tive,” I said softly, like I was gently petting Carter Junior’s head. “Pawz-i-tive,” I repeated, until after a few tries I made that word sound like it had an optimistic future. “I’m pawzzz-i-tive,” I said to Mrs. Fabian, and licked my lips because all those zzz’s tickled t
hem.

  “And I’m positive you are,” she replied. “Now be a ray of sunshine. Remember, your good day reward will be waiting for you once you make everyone feel less negative.”

  Secretly I knew she really stressed the word positive because of my past, and even though she didn’t know a whole lot about my present, I could tell that someone had filled her in on me before I even walked through her door. I bet she had a file on me titled: JOEY PIGZA: TOP SECRET!

  I told the next kid there was a dollar in lost change behind his couch cushions. That was positive.

  “O Great Oracle,” a girl named Shirley asked, bowing toward me as she spoke, “what will my mother cook for dinner?”

  “What’s your favorite food?” I moaned.

  “Chicken under a brick,” she replied.

  “That’s exactly what she is cooking,” I said, sounding a little astonished. In a million years I couldn’t have guessed that people would eat a poor chicken after they flattened it with a brick.

  The next kid was missing his turtle and I said he’d find it in his bedroom slipper—his left one. Another kid wanted to know what was for her birthday. I told her the answer would show up in her wildest dreams just before her alarm clock went off.