The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza

by Jack Gantos

  I tackled the other side. Nope. Nope. Nope. I was starting to fidget like a squirrel that forgot where he hid his acorn.

  Then “Yes!” I hissed after the key slid into a lock, and when I turned it to the right it kept turning and then the tumblers rolled over and the door cracked open like an oyster.

  Until that moment I had only thought about finding his door. But what would I do when I was in the house? What would I say to him if he came home?

  I was feeling a little springy inside and realized I’d forgotten to change my patch this morning. I slapped my arm where I had my old patch just to wake it up and called out, “Carter?” I used his name like I was an old friend. “Carter, old buddy. Are you home? I got some money for you.” I figured that last bit would get him out. But no, so I stepped forward and pulled the door behind me.

  On the hallway wall was a peg with a doctor’s coat and white surgeon’s mask hanging down. I crept along that dark hallway not knowing what real monster mask was waiting to reach out for me. I turned the corner but didn’t see him.

  “Dad?” I called out. “Are you here?” There was no answer so I kept going. I entered the little kitchen. For some reason I opened the refrigerator. All the food was neat and tidy and perfectly wrapped up. On the windowsill he had lined up a row of apple cores and the room smelled sweet like rotting apples. Mom did the same. I went into his bedroom and his bed was perfectly made up. I opened his closet and all his shirts and pants were ironed. Even his socks were folded over hangers and hanging up. I opened a drawer and all his undershirts were folded. On a little desk all his mail was sorted out in neat stacks and there was a soup can full of pencils and pens. There was a framed picture of Carter Junior that was taken when he was born, and the little blue imprint of his foot on a piece of paper.

  I looked around for more pictures and noticed a small room off his room, like a closet without a door. I stuck my head around the corner and that’s when I saw the crib. It was brand-new and perfectly made up with clean sheets and a baby blanket and stuffed animals. The walls of the room were freshly painted and in one corner was a changing table with diapers and cream and a soft night-light and everything else a new baby would need.

  I reached into the crib and pulled out a little pillow. Carter Junior was hand-stitched on the front of it. Dad must have imagined living with Carter Junior and feeling all the love and happiness of starting over in a new house with a new baby and a new heart and hopes and dreams. But no matter what his dream was I couldn’t just let him take the piece of Pigza he wanted and throw away the rest of us.

  I don’t know what came over me but I kicked my shoes off and climbed into the small cage of that perfect crib. There was a mobile of farm animals attached to the rail. I wound it up and a scratchy voice sang “Old McDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-oooh.” And as the song played I curled up on my side and looked above me at the animals dancing in a circle like a halo over my head. I was cool so I opened the knitted blue blanket and pulled it up to my chin. When I was a baby I had a crib and a music box that played “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” Now I wondered what I had become because I was a boy but it suddenly felt so good to be the baby again.

  I still had the key in my hand and I held it up to my mouth, but instead of the key I pushed my thumb between my lips. It tasted so good and dreamy and I was suddenly as tired as a newborn. I lowered my eyelids and sucked on my thumb until I slipped into a deep sleep like Goldilocks finding just the right bed. I wish I had slept like the ancient Greeks and had a dream that revealed what was going to happen next in my life, but when I suddenly woke up it was night and the apartment was dark and all I felt was fear that he would find me—the wrong Pigza boy—in Carter Junior’s bed.

  I grabbed the bars on the crib as if I were trapped inside my own black box and in a panic I hopped out. I felt around and turned on the night-light. I pulled the sheets tight and smoothed them out as best I could with the flat of my hand. I folded up the blanket. Then I slipped my shoes on and slowly turned in a circle to make sure everything was the same as when I walked in. I hoped it was. I turned off the light and marched out of the little room, and through his bedroom and down the hall. It scared me to open his door because he could be an inch away from opening it himself with a new key, and if he was there he would grab me and the scare would hit me like lightning and I’d drop dead on the spot. But I had no other choice but to get out of there. I took a deep breath and turned the doorknob.

  When I returned home I stood on the sidewalk and stared blankly at the flat front of my dark house. The corner streetlamps were on. The parking lot security lights at Quips Pub were on. Up and down the row of houses the porch lights showed off all the front doors, and the windows were checkered with lights turning off and on as the shadows of people shifted left and right behind the curtains. But my house stood in front of me like a black tooth in a broken smile.

  “Don’t panic,” I whispered to myself. “She’s a blind oracle. She doesn’t need to turn lights on to see what’s going on. She has inner vision.”

  That seemed sensible for about a second and then I manically bolted up the steps, and when I yanked out my key I jammed it into the lock and turned it so hard the house could have flipped over onto its side. “Olivia!” I hollered as I pushed the door open. “Olivia?”

  Only the dogs answered as they ran barking at me and punching their heads against my ankles like two angry fists. I fell down then stood up and flicked the lights on. The house was a wreck. It was hard to know if someone had come in through the open back door and ransacked it or if it was just Olivia’s mess because dropping things on the floor was her method of putting things away.

  I dashed into the kitchen and got the meat cleaver out of the freezer. I hacked the air back and forth as I ran from room to room upstairs and downstairs and then right away did the same thing again just in case a burglar was hiding the first time and I’d catch him the second time trying to sneak out. But no one was in the house except for me and the dogs and a sick feeling that something bad had happened.

  Olivia and Carter Junior were gone and I stood there hating myself because while I was sleeping like a thumb-sucking little baby in a crib they were taken away. They were stolen and I should have been home to protect them because just before Mom left she told me I was the man of the house and that I had to act like one and protect Carter Junior from Dad. But I didn’t. Instead I fell asleep on the job and let her down and now everything was ruined.

  I went to the kitchen. The cupboard door with my calendar on it was open. Mom was supposed to come home any day now and I wanted everything to be perfect for her but instead I was just making her life more miserable. I figured that when she came home I’d give her the meat cleaver and let her chop me up into a thousand Pigza pieces like I was some stupid boy roach.

  I set the cleaver on the counter and picked up the telephone receiver to call the police. I wished I didn’t have to be the man of the house. I wanted to be the old out-of-control Joey, which was me at my best and worst. I never had to care if I was good or bad or helpful or trouble. I wanted to be the fun Joey. The wild Joey. The laughing-like-a-hyena Joey. I’d love to be my old wired self again and be the number one problem all day long and have everyone want to take care of me. But now I had to be the mature Joey, the think-before-you-speak Joey, the better-than-Dad Joey, the hold-the-fort-for-Mom Joey, the keep-the-baby-safe Joey, the answer-man-with-a-plan Joey.

  But I didn’t have a plan and I had to think of what I was going to tell the police because if I didn’t think about what I was going to say I knew I would just yell into the telephone “Help me! Help me! Help me!” about a thousand times in a row while I picked up the cleaver and chopped the entire kitchen to bits and when the police showed up they’d find me with the bloody meat cleaver whittling my own head down into a red pencil point so I could write “I’m helpless!” on the wall.

  Settle down and practice what to say, Joey, I said to myself. Re
member, practice makes a perfect Pigza. Do I tell the police Mom is in the hospital because she doesn’t want to hurt the baby, and my dad is trying to steal the baby, and I’m here taking care of the baby, with a blind girlfriend who loves the baby, and do I blurt out that now they are all missing and somehow it’s totally my fault? Is that what I tell the police? It sounded crazy when I said it out loud to myself. Even the dogs looked at me like I was crazy, but I had to tell the police something because if I truly was the man of the house I had to start acting like one.

  Then suddenly I heard tap, tap, tap up the front stairs. The doorknob turned back and forth but the door was locked. Then there was a window-rattling thwack, thwack, thwack on the front door.

  I loved that sound!

  “Coming!” I shouted, and tossed the telephone receiver in the sink.

  “Hurry up!” she shouted, and there was something in her voice that made me afraid.

  I ran into the living room and whipped the door open.

  Olivia stood there with her empty arms hanging limply by her sides and shiny lines of blood from her cut-up knees running down her legs and into her muddy sneakers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and lowered her head.

  “Where’s Carter Junior?” I asked breathlessly.

  She trudged past me and heaved herself onto the couch and began to cry.

  “Tell me,” I said. “What’s going on? Did Dad snatch him?”

  “I lost the baby.”

  I stared at her. “What do you mean lost the baby! You can lose a wallet or an umbrella but not a baby!” Then I anxiously grabbed her hand. “What did Dad do?” I asked. “Did he snatch him? Tell me!”

  She sat hunched with her hands held stiffly against her face like a stopped clock. “It was not your dad,” she quietly sobbed. “It was all my fault. I’m the one who lost the baby.”

  “How?” I shot back. “How can you just lose a baby? They scream when you lose them, so you can instantly find them!”

  “I don’t know! At one moment I had him in the shopping cart. And the next I stepped into a deep hole and he rolled away.”

  She wasn’t making any sense. “Did you hit your head?” I asked. She sounded nutty.

  “Just call the police,” she replied. “He’s gone.”

  I went into the kitchen, pulled the receiver out of the sink, and took a deep breath.

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  “It’s the police!” Olivia shouted.

  “I didn’t call them yet,” I yelled over my shoulder. “It’s somebody else!” I ran for the door with the dogs barking and running figure eights between my feet. Olivia was right behind me with her stick poking me in the back of the head.

  “If it’s your dad I’m going to kill him,” she threatened.

  “Don’t kill me by mistake,” I cried out.

  I whipped open the door and jumped back into a karate pose.

  It wasn’t Dad.

  “Pig-zah delivery!” Mr. Fong cried out happily. And it really was a Pigza delivery. He had Carter Junior sitting on a warm pizza box and gumming a slice of extra-cheesy pizza. “Baby-Buddha!” Mr. Fong said, and patted Carter Junior on his round head.

  “Where did you find him?” I asked, and picked him up and gave him a hug and kissed his sweet face and passed him to Olivia. She dropped her stick and purred, “My bundle of hope.” And she held him like she would never let him go.

  “Baby-Buddha likes Pig-zah,” Mr. Fong said. “I find him in a shopping cart in the pizza parking lot.”

  I turned to Olivia. “Were you on College Ave when you lost him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I was going to take a left on Chestnut.”

  “Pizza store on corner of College and Chestnut,” Mr. Fong said. “So I deliver the special Baby-Buddha Pig-zah pizza.”

  Olivia bumped me with her hip and I moved aside as she stepped forward. “I want to say thank you,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “You just saved me from something worse than blindness. If Carter Junior disappeared, my life would be even darker because he is a light inside my heart.”

  Mr. Fong reached out and held her hand in both of his. He smiled. “Don’t lose baby again,” he warned her. “I deliver pizza. People open their door and I see inside their house. Bad people out there—but good people in here. Keep the baby safe.” He patted her hand when he said “good people in here” and that made me so proud to be a Pigza.

  “Thank you,” Olivia said in a quiet voice.

  Mr. Fong turned and walked down the stairs. I didn’t say anything to Olivia but across the street I saw a shadow of a man hunched down and shifting like a monkey between two parked cars. Thank goodness Mr. Fong had found Carter Junior first.

  “Now let me change this diaper,” she said, and took Carter Junior down the hall to the bathroom.

  I locked the front door and took the pizza into the kitchen and picked up the meat cleaver and started to chop up a slice for the dogs. But I wasn’t hungry and I don’t think anyone else was either. So I closed the pizza box and went out to the living room to sit on the couch next to Olivia, who was holding the baby.

  “I bet you are wondering what happened,” Olivia said, and started crying again.

  “I’m wondering if you hit your head and lost your mind,” I replied.

  “While you were gone your mother called the house,” she sobbed, “and wanted to see Carter Junior and get him used to her before coming back home. She says the doctor has a big plan on how she can better help herself and the baby when she gets out. I thought visiting your mom would be a good idea,” she said, “and it was. She really missed him and when he saw her he was the perfect mother-loving Pigza.”

  “Well?” I said impatiently. “All this is good news but tell me again what happened to you and the baby.”

  “After your mom called I put him in a shopping cart like you had done and wheeled him over to the hospital. She is really doing great,” Olivia said. “She’s eager to come home. Of course, when she hears how I lost the baby she’ll be sick all over again. It’ll probably kill her, though I wish she would just kill me.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” I said. “She lost me for a few years, so losing Carter Junior for a few hours is nothing.”

  “It was all going so well,” she continued. “We had a lovely visit. Then I had him in the shopping cart on the way home, and we were both so happy, and I was singing a silly song to him when I stupidly tripped over something and fell sideways into a deep hole,” she said. “I guess they were doing roadwork and left it open or something. Anyway, I was upside down in the hole and the cart kept going. I heard it rattling down the hill and then Carter Junior started screaming and I started screaming, ‘My baby! My baby! Someone help me. Please help me!’ And I really wanted help. I needed help, and for the first time in a long time I felt blind, and helpless, and afraid. And while I waited for someone to help me I promised myself that if Carter Junior could be found unharmed, I’d stop being so mean and angry and dedicate my life to being more hopeful and loving.”

  “But then what?” I begged. “Didn’t you climb out and run after him?”

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “It took me a moment to work my way up onto my feet. The hole was deep and the sides kept crumbling down as I tried to claw my way up. I kept yelling but no one came to help me, and after a minute I couldn’t hear Carter Junior or the cart rattling away and there I was stuck crying in that hole. It was like that awful black box in my mind finally opened up and swallowed me, and instead of being filled with hope it was filled with all my self-hatred, and I just felt like I was burning alive in that hole and I deserved it because I’m nothing but a useless blind girl.”

  “You are not useless,” I said, and put my hands on her shoulders. “Without you I’d be the useless one.”

  “But I didn’t have a clue where he went,” she blurted out, and threw her arms into the air. “My greatest fear has always been that my greatest weakness will keep me from
doing the one good thing I’ve always wanted to do—just take care of babies—and now I’ve lost one. Nothing could be worse. I wish you had called the police. I want them to arrest me. I’m nothing but trouble. I think I’m so clever but I’m not. The police should have locked me up and thrown away the key a long time ago. I’m a menace. I used to go into stores and knock over breakable stuff on purpose. I jump into the streets just to see if I can cause car crashes. Believe me, not even the police could punish me any more than I’m punishing myself at this very moment. The worst thing is they’d probably blame your mom.”

  That was probably true. “Well, we aren’t calling the police. Carter Junior is fine and you are too and everything is back to normal.” I reached across the couch and touched her hand.

  “Joey, I’ve made a decision,” she announced. “I’m going back to school.”

  “Don’t go yet,” I pleaded.

  “I got what I came for,” she said. “Carter Junior is back and I promised myself I’d be a more hopeful person if he was found—and less angry.”

  “Don’t go,” I said forlornly. “You are my only friend and I’ll never meet another girl I love so much.”

  “You won’t have to,” she said, and squeezed my hand. “But my suspension is up and your mother is coming home, so it’s time to leave.”

  “Then just give me one more day,” I begged. “Just one.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” I replied, “but let me do what I have to do and you can have one more day with Carter Junior.”