The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  By the time I finished with the whole class I was pretty good at being positive. The other kids even smiled at me as if I had been handing out candy. As a result I sat up smartly in my seat and tilted my head back. I closed my eyes. Now it was my turn to ask the Greek gods a question and receive my own special answer. I took a deep breath. “When will my mother feel better?” I dared to ask.

  At that moment a stuttering, scratchy intercom voice came on over the classroom loudspeaker.

  “Mrs. Fabian,” the sandpaper voice said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Fabian replied loudly, glancing up at the speaker. So we all glanced up at the speaker, which at that moment looked like a round-faced oracle from Mount Olympus about to tell us something important.

  As we waited for the office voice to return we heard some switches clicking back and forth, and then a worried, desperate voice came snaking through the speaker. “Only Joey can help me,” the voice said in a whispery way. “Only Joey.”

  Everyone in class suddenly turned and looked at me. “Who was that?” asked a wide-eyed kid.

  “A Greek goddess?” someone guessed.

  But it wasn’t a god or goddess. It was my mother. But how could it be her? I must have been hearing voices. I shot a puzzled look at Mrs. Fabian, and she was staring right back at me.

  Then the switches clicked back the other way and the secretary’s voice returned. “Sorry about that,” she said breathlessly, and quickly added, “Send Joey Pigza down to the office—immediately!” I knew it! Someone must have asked that radio oracle to name the first kid to get in trouble on the first day of school.

  But why would the oracle sound like my mother?

  Mrs. Fabian turned her eyes toward the door. Her nose was like a needle on a compass and I slowly sailed away. “Are they going to test me on something I know?” I asked over my shoulder, hoping they would test me on changing diapers and cleaning up baby puke because I’d done a lot of that this last while.

  “I think they are just going to fill you in on something you don’t yet know,” she said. “Don’t worry. Skip on down there with your sunflower face held high. I predict it will be good news.”

  I didn’t have to be an oracle to know it wasn’t good news and the only thing that skipped down the hall was my heart skipping a beat.

  The office secretary sat at a desk behind the long yellow counter lined with visitor stickers, tardy sheets, hand sanitizer, and a box of tissues. She passed me the phone with her damp hand held over the mouthpiece. “I’ve been talking to her for a while,” she said nervously. “But I think she’ll settle down.”

  It was my mother.

  “It’s me,” I said into the phone, hoping Mom might say something like “I found your meds! Come home and I’ll fix you right up.” But that was just wishful thinking.

  “Joey,” she whispered spookily as if there was a serial killer climbing through her window.

  “Yes?” I whispered back.

  “Joey,” she repeated.

  “Yes?”

  “Joey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Joey?”

  “Yes! It’s me!” I shouted in frustration, and then told myself to calm down. This is how she had been since Carter Junior was born. She repeated everything over and over until all the rubber bands in my head snapped at once. “Yes?” I said again, trying to sound concerned because if I got mouthy she’d say “Never mind” and not talk to me for the rest of the day.

  The secretary looked up from her desk and raised an eyebrow. “Is everything okay with the baby?” she asked.

  Who knows what Mom told her? She could say anything when she’s in one of her moods. “He’s fine,” I mouthed, and smiled.

  “Joey?” Mom asked.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Is that you?”

  I wanted to snap back and say, “No. It’s Pablo the Chihuahua, Joey’s answering service.” I said that once and she started to cry so I didn’t dare say it again.

  “Joey, you have to come home and rescue me,” she said with her thin voice trailing off into vapor.

  “Speak up,” I replied.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt him,” she said.

  I cupped my hand around the mouthpiece of the phone. “If it’s a serial killer please do hurt him,” I advised. “The meat cleaver is in the freezer.”

  The secretary pushed a thick plank of brown hair behind her ears so she could hear better.

  “Carter Junior is not a serial killer,” Mom said. “He’s a perfect baby angel, but I’m exhausted and at my wits’ end. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt him. I’m just calling to let you know that I’m walking to the hospital to check myself in. I need a little break, and a nurse I know told me they have a program to take care of depressed moms.”

  “What nurse?” I blurted out.

  “I used to cut her hair,” she said. “She’s been helpful, so you have to come home before he wakes up, because the Department of Child Welfare will take him away if they find him stranded again.”

  Once, she had left him asleep with the dogs on our front porch and run to Quips Pub on the corner for “one quick drinkie,” because she could look out the pub window and keep an eye on him. But when he woke he somehow wiggled out of his donut doggy bed and rolled down the front porch stairs, where neighbors found him on the sidewalk protected by my ninja Chihuahuas. The neighbors threatened to call the cops but didn’t.

  “Can’t you wait until school lets out?” I asked Mom. “This is my first day and I’m off to a good start.”

  “I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do this,” she said.

  Her voice was so drifty. I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or looking into a mirror and talking to her sad self.

  “Do what?” I asked, trying to get her to speed up.

  “Check myself into the hospital for a few days,” she continued. “I think I need medication now.”

  “Well, tell the nurse to double the prescription,” I must have said too loudly, “because I need some medication too!”

  The secretary gave me a regretful look and I knew what she was thinking—that I was the same out-of-control kid as I had been before. And to make it worse I suddenly got a case of the yips and my hand shot up and flipped my yarmulke over the counter and my fingers started peck-peck-pecking at my head like old typewriter keys typing “He’ll never change” on my scalp.

  “Do you want me to speak with her?” the secretary whispered as she gave me a sad-puppy look and pressed my sweaty yarmulke into my hand.

  I rolled my eyes up into my head and thought about it. What would the Oracle at Delphi say?

  “Yes,” I replied. “Yes. Keep her on the line for as long as you can. She’ll get over this in a minute and I’ll be back.” I handed her the phone and then I ran bug-eyed out the door.

  I think I ran screaming down Chestnut Street as I cut through the center of town with my arms waving over my head like I was a boy on fire. Nobody could see the flames because they were only burning me up on the inside, where some of Mom’s crazy words had been smoldering in me like hot coals just waiting for this moment of weakness to flare up.

  Last week I had gone down to Goodwill, where they were handing out free school supplies. When I returned home she called me into her room and told me that she had caught a “flesh-eating” infection from decaying people while she was waiting in line to renew her food stamps at the Welfare Office. She was worried that she was going to spread the infection to Carter Junior. “Don’t tell him I told you this,” she whispered. “I don’t want him to suffer.”

  “What part of your flesh is being eaten?” I asked her, certain that Carter Junior was in no danger.

  “The brain,” she replied intensely, and roughly seized her head with her hands as if she was going to twist it off her shoulders like a bottle cap and throw the whole mushy hunk of it out the window. “Believe me,” she said firmly, “it’s getting worse.”

  “C
an’t the doctors fix it?” I asked, reaching for her hands and squeezing them tightly in mine. “Like, give you some medicine?”

  “I don’t think they can fix things that eat you from the inside out,” she replied, sounding overwhelmed and without any sign of fight in her eyes.

  “Well, does this mean the flesh-eating disease is going to swallow you up until there is nothing left but your skeleton?” I asked.

  She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s worse than that. First, it eats other people’s memories of you so that no one even remembers that you were ever alive. Then it eats your soul so that even God forgets about you.”

  “I think you are making this up,” I said shakily, thinking now that she was like an insane oracle.

  “I think you shouldn’t plan on starting school just yet,” she replied. “You have to stay home and protect Carter Junior from me. I could spread the disease to him and his little head could be hollowed out overnight.”

  I quickly glanced at Carter Junior. He looked like a warm loaf of fresh bread all curled up and asleep in his fake-fur doggy bed. He was fine.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked her.

  “Just stick around the house,” she replied.

  “Okay,” I promised, and then she closed her eyes.

  “I need to take a nap,” she said feebly, as if they were her last words.

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Sleep is the best medicine.”

  Then she tilted her head back onto her pillow and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Keep holding my hand until I drop off,” she whispered.

  I did, and when she woke up later that evening she didn’t mention any of what she had said to me—especially the part about not starting school. I thought maybe the flesh-eating disease had eaten the memory of our conversation. Then, after Mr. Fong delivered our Pig-zah pie and I made her favorite pizza salad, she perked up and took a hot shower and did her nails and hair and then bathed Carter Junior and kissed him all over his head, which had survived just fine. Her moods could go up up up until she was on top of sunny Mount Olympus, or they could go down down down into the black crack of Hades where they got the best of her.

  And now, as I ran down Chestnut Street, I didn’t know exactly what was wrong with her but I had a feeling her mood was sinking down down down again to that dark faraway place where I could never reach her hand to pull her out. I figured there was no nap long enough and no shower hot enough that was going to turn her around this time. She wasn’t going to pass through this mood. She was going to wedge herself down into it.

  I ran until my lungs felt like burnt toast and I still kept running. My yarmulke flew off my head like a puff of smoke but I didn’t slow down. I turned left onto Plum Street and after a few houses I pounded up our front steps. I reached into my pocket for my house key as I stumbled across the porch. I could hear the dogs barking crazily behind the front door. They were begging me to hurry. Faster! Hurry! Faster! As if they saw the meat cleaver flashing in her hand. I saw it in my mind and I was shaking so badly I had to use two hands to control the key. I stabbed at the lock like I was trying to blind an evil-eyed Greek Cyclops. Finally the key slipped in. I gave it a good turn and then I lowered my shoulder and pushed. When the door swung open it back-smacked the dogs and they yelped sharply as they scrambled madly across the bare living room floor.

  “Mom, I’m here!” I shouted up the staircase. “Are you and Carter Junior okay?”

  “I’m not myself,” she cried. I could tell she was weeping.

  I wasn’t myself either, but I had to help her. Nobody else would and she was my mom. As I bent over to catch my breath I reached out to pet the dogs.

  They retreated and crouched down under a chair and growled at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I am. I’ll give you treats, later. I promise.”

  But that was a lie. We were out of treats and they knew it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as if I were talking to the whole world.

  Then I took a colossal breath that was way too big for my lungs and I swelled up inside like a hot air balloon.

  “Hang on, Mom,” I said, rising up onto my tiptoes. “I’m here for you!”

  Then I kind of floated up the stairs.

  When I heaved myself into Mom’s room she was half sitting up in bed. The phone was on the floor and her face was frozen over like she had hit her own pause button. Whatever button she had pressed I wanted to reverse it. Around her belly button I knew she had that dumb old tattoo that read Press here for more options! But that was not the button I was looking for.

  I stood there panting and swallowing my own gritty spit until I caught my breath. Carter Junior was on his doggy bed and playing with his toes.

  “Mom,” I said gently, and touched her shoulder. “It will get better. Don’t give up.” I reached around and massaged her damp neck. I glanced at her bedside clock. The battery was nearly dead and the second hand twitched with less and less effort, like a worn-out heart.

  She raised her head and gazed up into my eyes and as she quietly wept, the tears flowed down her cheeks and pooled inside the closed world within me. Nothing was going to change for the better. Her tears were drowning both of us.

  I remembered something else sad she had said to me last week before she started locking her door most of the day. “If I don’t get help soon,” she had said, “I’ll flip out like before. I’ll find your dad again and run off and do to Carter Junior what I did to you.”

  “No, you won’t,” I had replied. “I won’t let you.”

  “Even if my body is still in this wretched trap of a house, my mind will have run off,” she said.

  “That’s not true,” I replied. “Not at all.”

  “Look at me.” She sighed and slumped back into her pillows. “What you see is not what you get. I’m depressed from the neck up. One of these days you’ll come home and find me with my head in the oven.”

  “Don’t say awful things like that,” I had said and gave her a brave look in return, but I was so upset I later walked downstairs and found some old packing tape and taped the oven up.

  It had been one sad mood after another since Carter Junior was born, and now all those moods had added up to beat her down. She looked like something that died only you don’t know it yet, like a winter branch that gets hollow from the cold and doesn’t grow back in the spring and you just snap it off and throw it over our back fence and into the cemetery. I knew there was still a little life deep inside her and I wished I could stir up a spark and make her furious with me. I wished she would smack me across the room, or say something hateful, or curl her lip at me like a mean dog. But she wouldn’t even heat up and give me her anger. She gave me nothing.

  I pulled some baby wipes from a plastic tub and gave them to her.

  She blew her nose. “I’ve been through hell and back, Joey,” she finally said. “I only have it in me to straighten up one last time. Once and for all I have to fix myself right or I’m done for.”

  “You’re not done for,” I whispered. “Stay pawzzz-i-tive. Put your best foot forward.”

  “If I take just one more baby step forward it will be to jump off the edge of a cliff. Believe me, Joey, I’m not good. I’m broken. I’m beaten down.”

  “I’ll fix you a cup of tea,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “With honey.”

  “I’m leaving,” she said quietly.

  “What?” I asked, because her voice was like rustling leaves.

  “Leaving,” she repeated with sudden strength. “Get my suitcase.” She pointed toward her small closet, which was, as she put it, “a casket for clothes.”

  I opened the closet door. The clothes were shoved in any old way as if they had been caught in a stampede. Her battered suitcase was on a top shelf. When I jumped up and pulled it down an avalanche of scuffed shoes and empty boxes tumbled onto me. I flicked open the snaps on the suitcase and hesitated. I was afraid to open it. Who knew what she migh
t be hiding inside? She looked so crazy I thought she was going to tell me to put Carter Junior in there, but now he was asleep with his ear next to the little radio speaker that broadcast white noise.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said to her, meaning everything—her giving up, and packing, and leaving us.

  “I have to,” she replied, and slowly ran her hand over her face as if she were mapping her sadness. “My hair is a mess. I’ve let myself go.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to leave,” I replied. “I can fix your hair.”

  “I’m sure you can,” she agreed. “But it’s more than hair. It’s what’s under the hair. I need help in the head.”

  “I can always do more,” I offered. “I can be your houseboy. You can do all the resting and I’ll do all the working.” But I knew her mind was made up.

  Suddenly she pulled back the bedsheet and surprised me. She was already wearing high heels.

  “I’m not running out on you,” she said tiredly. “It’s that I’m sick. Depressed. I honestly don’t mind if I hurt myself. It’s Carter Junior I worry about.” Her voice was jittery. “He’s still good but I’ll ruin him. When he cries do you know what I do?”

  I hesitated because I was suddenly thinking about the meat cleaver. Maybe she had gotten up when I was at school and gone into the freezer and found it and now she had it in the hand that had slid back under the covers.

  I took a slide-step toward the door. “What?” I said softly.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. When he cries I pick him up and toss him into the air.”

  “He likes that,” I said. “It’s a game. It makes him stop crying.”

  “Maybe with you it’s a game, but with me I keep thinking if I throw him higher he might hit the ceiling and quiet down. Sometimes I almost let him drop to the floor and I can see his little eyes pop open and I can tell that I’m filling him with fear. A mother is supposed to give love, but I can’t because I hate myself, and now I’m so full up with self-hate I’m filling him with the overflow.”