The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  “Yes, Mom,” I replied. “It’s me.” I reached up into a kitchen cabinet and removed a patch.

  “Joey, is it you? Really?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Really.”

  “Good,” she said, then her voice dropped down real low. “Joey, how is the baby?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Really.”

  “Do you see him?” she said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The baby,” she replied. “Can you see him with your eyes?”

  I looked out the kitchen window. Olivia had adjusted her hopeful Statue of Liberty pose. She had one arm up like a tree branch and the other wrapped around Carter Junior, who was happily settled under her arm with his head on her shoulder.

  “Yes, Mom,” I replied. “He’s fine.”

  “Well, keep an eye on him at all times,” she said. “Because he was just here, Joey. Your dad. And he wants the baby. He thought Carter Junior was with me and he dressed up in a disguise as a doctor and came into my room when I was sleeping. He came to steal Carter Junior but the nurse told him that my baby is being cared for at home. He’s after him, Joey. Keep an eye out and don’t let that man in the house.”

  “If you were sleeping, how did you know it was him?” I asked, because she had been making up a lot of stuff.

  “Because the nurse said the man had the face of a monster,” she whispered. “Frankenstein’s monster. So it has to be your dad because of what he did to his face, so don’t let him in the house whatever you do.”

  After Dad’s bad face surgery, he could look like anything. “I won’t let him near Carter Junior,” I said, still looking out the window. Carter Junior was tightly clamped under Olivia’s arm.

  “Don’t open the door for anyone,” she warned me. “Promise.”

  “Nobody but Mr. Fong,” I said, and changed the subject. “Mom, when can I come visit you?” I asked. “I miss you. And Carter Junior misses you.”

  “You can’t,” she replied. “You can’t leave the house. He’ll be waiting for you. He’ll sneak up on you like a monster and snatch the baby.”

  “Will he steal me?” I asked, and the question was so odd inside me because half of me was scared of being stolen and the other half wanted to be stolen—stolen by my own dad who wanted me too.

  “I don’t think he’ll take you,” she said. “He just wants Carter Junior.”

  “Because he’s not broken like I am,” I said. “Like you said I was.”

  “I was sick when I said that,” she replied.

  “But you weren’t wrong,” I said. “I am broken, because you know what I’m doing now? I’m putting on a new med patch, which you hid on me. I have to take meds every morning. That’s like cheating at being okay. Like faking that I’m as good as new when really I’m like something broken, like a boy made out of glass that you step on then glue back together but he’s still worthless. I’m not okay. I’m a mess.”

  I couldn’t slap my new patch on fast enough. I could feel myself getting all worked up and my words were racing way out in front of my brain and even though I was standing still the thoughts were spinning in my head so fast I was dizzy like I was on a Tilt-A-Whirl and I was thinking that I was saying angry stuff like Olivia did and I didn’t like it in her and now I didn’t like it in my own self. Just then a single roach ran by and I got so angry I slapped it as hard as I could. I could feel its back cover crack and its guts splat out against the stinging palm of my hand. I looked around to see if I could find another one. I felt like waking them all up in their little Roach Motel beds and then rubbing them all out like a roach-killing gangster.

  “Joey,” Mom said quietly as I rubbed my hand on the back of my pants after almost licking it. “Are you okay? Really okay? And Carter Junior? Is he okay?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, but my heart was racing. “I just got a little carried away but I’m okay now. Really. And Carter Junior is okay. I’m just sorry I said what I said, but I’m over it. Please don’t feel bad.”

  “Be careful,” she said. “I have to go.” In the background I could hear a nurse or somebody calling her name.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and I could hear the genuine yes in her voice, as if she believed in what she was saying.

  “Well, be pawzzz-i-tive,” I said in a wide-eyed way.

  “We’ll make this work,” she said quickly. “The doctor said it’s good for me to rest and talk my way through the bad stuff. And guess what? I’m on meds too!”

  “When are you coming back?” I asked.

  “I’m working on it,” she said quickly. “Gotta run.”

  Then she was gone. It was like someone had taken the phone out of her hand and hung up on me. I tried to imagine what might’ve happened. I could only imagine a picture of her walking down a long hospital hallway. She seemed in the middle of nowhere. Or was it halfway to home? I could feel her coming and going at the same time.

  I looked out the window to make sure that someone hadn’t taken Carter Junior out of Olivia’s grip. But the baby was still there. And then he had company.

  As Olivia kept her one-armed pose as the Statue of Liberty for Blind Girls a sparrow landed on her head and began to peck at the pizza crumbs. Then another dropped down next to it. And another, and in a few seconds her head was covered with a crown of frisky sparrows all nipping at the crumbs in her hair.

  I could see it, but Olivia could feel it and her beaming face showed it. She smiled the biggest smile I had ever seen on her face and the birds flapped their wings and danced on their springy legs and when they finished getting every crumb they took flight and circled around her in a spiral up above the trees and then higher like a spraying fountain of birds and as they flew even higher I closed my eyes and had an oracle’s vision. I could see that the birds had plucked and plucked at Olivia’s head until they plucked that black box right out of her mind and then they flew into the air as high as the clouds and let it drop down in front of her and smash open and all her hopes and dreams were set free, and all the flames and anger turned into ashes and blew away. I could only hope I was seeing what she was feeling.

  When I walked outside and stood next to her she was still smiling. It was almost as big a smile as the first time she had kissed me. But that only happened once.

  “Did you see them?” she asked excitedly.

  “Yes,” I said, “it was great.”

  “Did they make a nest?” she asked.

  “They left a note behind,” I said, and pretended to pluck it out of her hair. “It says, ‘Will lay eggs next year and start a family.’”

  “You goofball,” she said, beaming.

  “I wish I had a camera because then I could show you how happy you looked when they were on your head.” And then the moment I said that I cringed because I had done it again. “I’m sorry,” I quickly said, and flinched because I expected to get a swat from her stick. “I was being stupid about you seeing a picture.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve been mean because I really want to be nicer. And it’s special times like this when the birds aren’t afraid of me and I have a sleeping baby in my arms that I become so happy I forget that I can’t see.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, “because when I’m really happy and close my eyes I forget that I can see.”

  “You don’t have to see to feel happiness,” she said. “When I hold this baby in my arms I don’t see that black box. I just feel him and I can hold him to my ear and hear his heart beat. I can smell him and kiss him and put his little fingers in my mouth. All I feel for this little Pigza is hope and love and happiness, and if you put all those feelings together it is like I have a bouquet of flowers in my heart that seem so real I can hold them in my hand and sniff them and smell their perfume.” She held Carter Junior up to her nose and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “When you are blind the heart sees the truth,” she said, and looked up toward the top of our tree
where the birds had cascaded down and regathered.

  Then I remembered something that Mrs. Fabian had said in class. “Did you know that the most famous Greek oracles were blind? The best one was named Tiresias who the goddess Athena blinded because he saw her bathing naked, but then she felt bad for blinding him and gave him the power to understand the voices of the birds—and Athena was the one that gave him a blind person’s stick.”

  She didn’t say anything to me. Her ear was tilted toward the tree and she was listening to what the birds were saying. They must have been telling jokes because she was laughing.

  I’m sitting in a living room chair playing with Carter Junior on my lap and I’m staring at the doorknob of the front door because I’m waiting for Mr. Fong to deliver our nightly pizza. But ever since Mom called I’ve been afraid. There’s a good chance that when the doorbell rings it will be my scary dad arriving to stir up trouble. I should have been in a good mood because I talked with my mom and she said she was feeling better and that we’d work everything out, which I think means she’ll come home at the end of her program and we’ll all get back to normal. That put a smile on my face and made me feel pawzzz-i-tive deep inside. But after a long while of sitting in front of the door waiting for the doorbell to ring, I began to remember when only my grandma and I lived together in this house and my mom had run off with my dad.

  Grandma used to make me get bathed and dressed up in my Tasmanian devil pajamas and sit by myself in a chair by the window. My dud meds were not working well back then and I was so squirmy and wired that to make me calm down my grandma used to say that if I sat perfectly still in the chair and kept my hands in my lap and didn’t kick the legs of the chair or wiggle or pluck out my hair then my mother would sneak a peek through the window and see that I was not a broken boy and she’d clasp her hands over her heart and walk up the porch steps and knock on the door and come back to her good boy with open arms. How I loved waiting for my mom to find me, and for a little while I sat in that chair as still as a good-boy statue.

  But after a while, no matter how hard I tried to lock my feet around the legs of the chair and hook my fingers under the rim of the seat, I’d slowly lose my grip and start to squirm. I’d grit my teeth and hold my breath and try not to wiggle even one finger, but after a while that good boy my mom wanted would start kicking the chair legs and pulling out his hair and slipping out of his seat like Houdini escaping his chains. I couldn’t stop myself. I’d flop down onto the floor and laugh crazily and clap my hands together and arf arf arf like a seal until Grandma would stand over me and say, “Forget it! You blew it! Your mom peeked in the window and saw what kind of bad boy you are. Now she’s never coming back for you. Ever.”

  That would just kill me and I’d hang my head and cry and cry and beg for a second chance and my grandma would soften up and say, “Okay, I’ll call your mother and ask for a second chance and we’ll try again tomorrow to sit still.” But then we’d just do it all over the next day and I’d lose control like I always did. I never could sit still, and my mother never did peek in the window. She wasn’t even in town. Sitting in the chair was all a trick my grandma cooked up to try to make me settle down while giving herself a breather so she could smoke her cigarettes and watch TV in peace.

  And now here I am again, sitting in a chair in the living room, only this time I’m not facing the window and waiting for my mom to see how good I am. This time I’m facing the door and I’m waiting for my dad to show up like the Big Bad Wolf to blow our house down and spoil things for the perfect little piggy Pigza. So I just sit with Carter Junior curled up on my lap and stare at the door so I can stare at something solid, which makes me feel solid. Usually when I get all worked up and fidgety and out of control it’s for all the wrong reasons, but now I feel wired and on task at the same time, like my face is the engine of a train speeding fearlessly through a tunnel, and it is the most powerful feeling I have ever had.

  I was leaning way forward in my chair and Olivia was on the couch tapping her stick on the floor like she was counting down the seconds to a head-on collision.

  “Remember all your talk about a black box?” I said without taking my eyes off the door.

  “How could I forget?” she grumbled. “It’s always blocking my beautiful black view.”

  “Well, you made me see something I had never seen before,” I said.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “This whole house is a black box,” I slowly said. “When I close my eyes all I see is this crazy house in my head. I wish it were full of hopes and dreams, but instead everything bad happens here—in fact we’re like a family-in-a-black-box.”

  “Then open your eyes and forget about it,” she advised. “Lord knows, I wish I could.”

  “When I open my eyes I just see that front door and I know the next time it opens, my life is going to change,” I said.

  “Change how?” she asked.

  “I’m going to fix my family,” I said with determination. “I’m going to change things around here.”

  “You?” she asked.

  “Yeah, me,” I replied. “Me. I’m going to do it. That’s my dream.”

  “You are dreaming,” she remarked. “How can you change your family when they won’t change themselves?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But part of the answer is on the other side of the door.”

  “Good luck with that plan,” she replied with skepticism. “Let me say that as an oracle, your dream of fixing this family is a nightmare! Believe me, you Pigzas are as blind to being a family as I am to seeing across this room.”

  “I almost fixed them,” I said, staring at the door like it was a target. “I was close last year. I thought we could forgive each other for being so mean and find a way to come together as a happy family. But then everyone spun out of control and went their own crazy way. Dad ran off with his zombie face-lift, and Mom had the baby and got drifty and sad, and I fell into a rut. I used to sit in my closet with the lights off and cry. It was the worst crying too. It was like broken crying for a broken dream. I’d sit on my floor with my eyes glazed over and my chin sagging down and a weird sound like a floppy broken word tumbling around in my mouth, just kind of turning over and over like a flat tire going nowhere. That broken dream knocked the air out of me.”

  “And now you are going to try fixing them again?” she asked, sounding doubtful. “Remember when you said I was blind and blind girls couldn’t take vacations?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, you are blinder than I am. I can walk out that door free as a bird but you are completely trapped in this mess.”

  “Don’t be angry,” I said. “This really is hard for me even as I’m trying to feel pawzzz-i-tive this time,” I said. “Last time I was too angry to forgive everyone. I just wanted to hurt them. But this time I just need to remember my special gift—if I can feel all the good that’s in them, then I think it will work out.”

  “Well, I’ve been waiting for the door on my black box to open all my life,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “And you know what? Even if I open that box, my anger may never go away.”

  “I hate to put it this way,” I said, “but your own anger is blinding you to your gifts.”

  She frowned at that thought and pointed her stick at the door. “Before that ding-dog dinner bell rings I have a prediction,” she announced.

  “Let’s hear it,” I replied.

  “Tonight’s pizza,” she said in a spooky oracle voice, “is going to be a special gift.”

  “It will be the same as always,” I said with a big smile, because I loved pizza. “We don’t even call in the order. Every night it’s an extra-cheesy, extra-red-sauce pizza. Even if we aren’t home, Mr. Fong leaves it on the front porch. It’s exactly the same, which is how I like it. I don’t like surprises.”

  “Well, tonight it is going to be different,” she said. “When you open the pizza box it’s going to be surprisingly different.�
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  And then the doorbell rang.

  “Right on time,” she said. “Answer it. I’m starving.”

  I wasn’t. I stared at the door and uncoiled from my chair like a cold snake, and with Carter Junior pressed tightly against one shoulder I reached for the doorknob with my free hand.

  “Go on,” she said. “Get the special pizza.”

  I took a deep breath. “Ding-dog!” I said to the door. “Round one!”

  “Oh, and give me the baby first,” Olivia cried out.

  I should have. Instead, I slid the dead bolt to one side and twisted the doorknob. Then I pulled the door toward me.

  It was dark out and our porch light was busted, but from the light in the living room I could see he was wearing a red-and-white pizza delivery jumpsuit and holding out an Antonio’s pizza box. He had a baseball cap with the bill pulled down low, but it was my dad—only it looked as if he had an extra-cheesy, extra-red-sauce pizza smeared across his scarred-up face.

  “Where is Mr. Fong?” I asked, and eased back a step.

  “Muy malo,” he said in a fake Spanish voice.

  I turned and glanced at Olivia. “Catch!” I was going to shout, and toss Carter Junior past the open door and into her arms. In my mind throwing the baby didn’t seem dangerous at all. He would float through the air like a pitcher of milk that didn’t spill.

  I should have done that. Even if she missed him I still should have tried it. But instead something in me wanted to give Dad one more chance. I could still feel that faint spark of goodness inside him where he kept it hidden—even from himself. So I turned back to face him.

  “Dad!” I said, and cradled Carter Junior with both arms and held him out a bit for Dad to see his sweet face. “He looks like you—don’t you think?”

  I was also going to say that Carter Junior looked a little bit like everyone in our whole family—even the dogs—when Dad suddenly shouted out, “Pizza delivery!” In an instant the pizza box sprang forward and the front edge popped me across the nose. When I flinched and turned my face to one side he got his quick hands on Carter Junior.