by Clark Howard
“Can’t do it,” he mumbled to himself. “Just can’t do it.”
Head still cocked, squinting out of his one good eye, he left the cart and walked toward the streetcar line. He did not look back to see if Frances was watching.
35
The next morning, his mother shook him awake, asking urgently, “What’s the matter with you? What are you doing home? Richie, wake up!” When he rolled over and she saw his face, Chloe drew back in revulsion. “Good God, what happened to you?”
“Got beat up,” Richie said thickly, through lips that felt as big as automobile tires. “Some guys jumped me . . . on my route . . . took all my money. . . .”
Chloe had not been home when he got there the previous night; with the stores open late she did some of her shoplifting then. Richie had been in such abject pain that he did not even try to clean himself up; all he did was crawl onto his cot, pull the blanket over his head, cup both hands over his swelling scrotum, and go to sleep.
As he sat up on the cot now, Chloe staring at him in repugnance, Richie felt as if he had been rolled down the stairs of the Wrigley Building; there was no part of him that did not hurt; even his toes, for some reason, hurt. But, he realized gratefully, he could see out of both eyes. Looking up at his mother, he said, “Could I. . . have . . . some water?”
“You mean you can’t get up?” Chloe asked, appalled. “You can’t walk? Richie, how are you going to get my medicine? Will you be all right by this afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” he said, feeling very rocky, holding on to the side of the cot to keep some kind of balance. “Will you . . . get me a drink . . . ?”
“All right. All right,” she said placatingly. “Just sit still. I’ll get it. You’ll be all right in a couple of hours, I know you will.”
She brought him the water and he managed a few swallows of it. Then he forced himself to get up and walk a few excruciating steps down the hall to the bathroom, and was thankful no one was using it when he got there. Unable to stand steadily, he sat down to urinate. When he finished, while his trousers and underwear were still down, he looked at his scrotum. It had ballooned up alarmingly; the sight of it made him feel sick, and he almost threw up as he had done in the alley. Holding on to the sink to balance himself, he waited until the nausea passed, then got his trousers up again. Strength ebbing fast, he nevertheless paused long enough to look at himself in the mirror. He saw at once why his mother had stared at him with such revulsion. Both eyes were swollen, both nostrils nearly closed with coagulated blood; the automobile-tire lips stuck out grotesquely, and were coated with more dried blood; the tip of his chin was badly lacerated as if scraped, and already covered by scabbing.
Haltingly, Richie managed to get back up the hall to the apartment. As he made his way over to the cot, Chloe, sitting drumming her fingers on the table, watched him appraisingly.
“Do you feel better?” she asked brusquely.
“No,” he told her, “I gotta . . . get back in bed.”
Chloe’s lips compressed. “All right. Get in bed. Go to sleep. After you rest, you’ll be all right. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go get my medicine.”
Lying back down, Richie felt very thirsty again, as well as hungry, exhausted, nauseated, dizzy, and in fierce, unrelenting pain. In spite of it all, as soon as he got the blanket pulled over his head to shut out the light, he fell again into a deep sleep.
When Chloe awakened him the next time, it was with a gentler touch and a softer voice.
“Richie, honey, it’s time to wake up. You have to get up now, sugar, and run your errand for me.”
Richie lifted his throbbing head an inch. “I can’t. . . I’m hurt. I’m sick—”
“Richie, it is not far over there,” his mother said firmly. “I’ll give you streetcar fare if you don’t want to walk. Come on now, get up.”
“I can’t, I tell you . . . I can’t.” Each word he spoke hurt his face.
Chloe became incensed. “Oh—yes—you—can!” Jerking the blanket off of him, she grabbed his arm with both hands and dragged him half off the cot until his head and shoulders were on the linoleum floor, his legs still up on the cot.
“Cut it. . . out!” Richie yelled, as loudly as he could, feeling his bottom lip split with the effort and start to bleed. “Lea’ me alone . . . !”
“You—are—going!” She pulled his legs off the cot, took him by the shoulders, and tried to pull him upright. A sitting position was the best she could do. “Come on Richie!” she snarled threateningly.
“I can’t. . . I can’t. . . I can’t. . . .” Richie tried shaking his head for emphasis, but it immediately made him feel sick, so he stopped. His mother kept tugging at him, trying to get him to stand up, but she was far too weak to budge him, and finally she gave up and, stepping back, began shaking both fists impotently at him.
“How can you do this to me, Richie?” she shrieked. “You know how much I depend on you! What am I going to do now, just answer me that! If I go over there myself, I’m liable to get robbed! Raped! Killed! I’m a white woman, for God’s sake!”
Squinting up at her through slitted eyes, Richie said, “Can’t you . . . get it where you got it when . . . you first started using it?”
“No, I can’t! Don’t you think I would if I could? I used to get it from one of the other maids when I was working at the hotel. But she got fired for stealing too.” Chloe’s tone became adamant. “Richie, you have got to do this for me!”
“I can’t. I can hardly walk. Look . . . .” He showed her his distended scrotum.
“How could you let that happen to you?” she accused. Pounding her temples with the heels of both hands, she began to pace, moaning beseechingly, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” After several minutes of that, she stalked into the bedroom, put on her worn coat, got her dilapidated purse, and stormed out of the apartment.
When he was sure she was not coming right back, Richie pulled himself back on the cot and drew the blanket over his head again.
It was dark when he awoke next. Rising painfully, he turned on a light and saw that it was nearly four A.M. Chloe, he noticed at the bedroom door, was not there. His body, in addition to the pain of the beating, was now wracked by hunger and thirst. At the kitchen sink, he had a few swallows of water, immediately regurgitated it, then drank some more that stayed down. In the cupboard above the sink he rummaged for something to eat. There were several cans of soup. Finding a can opener, Richie managed to open a can of vegetable soup. Sitting on the floor, he sipped a little at a time, cold, from the can. Finishing it, he dragged himself back up, urinated in the sink, and returned to his cot.
The next time he awoke, it was mid-morning. Chloe still was not home. Richie opened another can of soup, this time sitting at the table to drink it. Between swallows, he tested various parts of his body for flexibility. Woodenly stiff, every muscle tightly defensive, he nevertheless seemed to be capable of moving everything: wrists, knees, ankles, elbows. His head felt huge and top-heavy, as if it might tumble off if he were not careful.
With a compelling curiosity to look at himself again, when he finished his soup this time Richie made his way into Chloe’s tiny bedroom where there was a small mirror hanging above a dilapidated bureau. When he saw his reflection, Richie could only stare incredulously. It did not even look like him. His normally thin face was round and puffy, lumpy, ugly-colored, like a rotting cauliflower.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
As he was about to turn away, Richie noticed that the top drawer of the bureau was not quite closed; something odd-looking was sticking out of one corner. Pulling the drawer open a little, he examined what turned out to be a length of brown rubber tubing. Lying next to the rest of it in the drawer were a hypodermic needle, three blackened spoons, and a cheap Zippo cigarette lighter. Picking up the hypodermic needle with thumb and forefinger, Richie stared at it in horror as he realized what it was for. Like tiny metal shavings being attracted by a magnet, ther
e converged in his mind bits of previously unrelated knowledge: the word “hype” that the black drug dealer sometimes used; the phrase “shooting up” that he had heard, somewhere; the fact that he had never really known for sure exactly how his mother used the heroin she sent him for.
Feeling nauseated at the sight of the needle and the thought of his mother puncturing her arm with it, Richie put it back and closed the drawer. After resting his head on the bureau for several minutes to compose himself, he once again maneuvered back to the cot and covered up entirely with the blanket. He slept, but he dreamed of his mother with a million tiny holes all over her body.
Chloe came back late that afternoon. The sound of the door slamming woke Richie up. He saw his mother sweep nervously across the room, stopping abruptly when she noticed the open cans on the counter and the table. Snatching up the one on the table, she hurled it across the room at him.
“Goddamn you, who said you could have this soup?” she shrieked. “That was my soup!”
The can bounced harmlessly off the wall and Chloe stormed on into the bedroom, slamming that door also. Richie put one of his shoes under the blanket, keeping it handy in case she came out and started beating on him.
A little while later, Chloe emerged from the bedroom and, glaring at him, opened one of the two remaining cans of soup and heated it in a pan. It was chicken noodle and the aroma of it wafted across the room to Richie, causing his innards to gurgle. He watched from the cot as his mother broke crackers into the soup and ate it from the pan. Occasionally she would glance over at him, but she did not speak. Richie wanted desperately to ask her for some of the warm soup, but he did not because he was afraid she would say no, or, worse, get angrier and throw it at him.
When she finished eating, Chloe set the pan in the sink without rinsing it and returned to the bedroom. Although the bedroom door was left open and she could see him, Richie got up anyway and went over to the kitchen alcove. With one finger he wiped the soup remains from the inside of the pan and licked it into his mouth. There wasn’t much left and it was barely warm any longer, but it tasted extremely good nevertheless. As he was standing there, Chloe came back out of the bedroom, wearing her coat and carrying her purse. Seeing what he was doing, she came over to the kitchen, glowering disagreeably, and took the one remaining can of soup from the cupboard. Without a word, she put it in her purse and left the apartment.
Richie ate a few crackers, drank as much water as he could, and went back to his cot.
In the week that followed, Chloe was home for only a few hours at a time. Richie had no idea where she was. When she was home, she ignored Richie entirely, either staying in the bedroom with the door closed or heating soup she got from her purse. Richie guessed she was either buying or stealing one can at a time. She did not offer him any; once when he finally mustered up enough heart to ask her for some, she stared flatly at him and said, “You don’t help me, I don’t help you.” She did not speak to him again.
On the third day after his beating, Richie took an old towel down the hall to the bathroom and cleaned up his face as best he could. Though still very puffy, his features looked markedly better with the crusted, scabbed blood washed off. His scrotum was only about half as swollen as it had been, making it easier for him to walk. Returning to the apartment, he took off the clothes he had been in since the beating, and washed the rest of himself as best he could at the kitchen sink. He ate the rest of the crackers, leaving the cupboard completely bare.
Pulling on some other clothes, Richie sat on the cot and contemplated his situation. He had to have food, yet there was virtually no way to get it. After leaving the pushcart in the alley and not showing up for three days, he knew he had lost his paper routes; he was in no condition to work them anyway. He could not filch coins off newsstands or steal food from markets either, because both endeavors required great speed of foot, and it was all he could do merely to walk. He knew that with his face in the condition it was, he could go nowhere unnoticed, which precluded any serious stealing. Since his mother would not voluntarily help him, there seemed just one thing left to do.
Leaving in plain sight for her to see the clothes he had taken off, Richie folded up his coat and put it under Chloe’s bed, so that she would think he had gone out. With a library book, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, he lay down on her bed, which had not been made in weeks, and started to read. Chloe had not been home all night, so he expected her sometime during the day. When he got tired of reading, he allowed himself to doze a little, but always with the book in his hands; he knew he would not fall completely asleep as long as he held the book.
When a key sounded in the apartment door, Richie knew his mother was home. Getting quickly off the bed, he shimmied under it with his book, rested his head on his jacket, and lay very still. Chloe rummaged around in the other room and the kitchen alcove, muttering to herself, but he could not make sense of anything she said. Eventually she came into the bedroom, locked the door, and hung her coat on the bedpost, its hem hanging to the floor where Richie could see it. He heard a bureau drawer being pulled open, the metallic sound of one of the spoons, some other, indistinguishable, sounds, and then Chloe sat down on the side of the bed; he could see her feet: her shoes were off and there was a run in each stocking. After she was on the bed for a few moments, Richie heard the unmistakable sound of a Zippo being sparked up. There was some more movement, a very soft sigh from his mother, then she went back to the bureau for a moment and put some things back in the drawer before closing it and returning to lie down on the bed. For the next few minutes, she moaned quietly a few times, then became very still.
Richie waited until there had been no sound or movement for a while, then slowly edged out from under the bed and peered up over its side. His mother was lying facing him, her mouth open, a line of spittle running down her chin—but her eyes, thankfully, were closed, and she was breathing evenly. Coat and book in one hand, Richie got to his feet, quietly unlocked the door, picked up Chloe’s purse, and tiptoed out of the room.
In the other room, coat now on, he quickly searched her purse for money. Besides a little change, she had fourteen dollars in currency—two fives and four ones—and a welfare department check for twenty-two-fifty. Richie took half the money, seven dollars, and put the purse back on the bureau. There was no way to lock the door from the outside, so he just quietly closed it. Grabbing his library book, Richie hurried across the room and out of the apartment. He wasn’t sure whether his mother would figure out what happened or just think she had spent the money somewhere and forgotten to lock the bedroom door, but Richie knew better than to take any chances.
He decided to stay away for a few days.
At the White Castle, the counterman looked curiously at Richie’s face and asked, “What the heck happened to you, kid?” The other customers at the counter all turned to look.
“My dad and me was in a car wreck,” Richie said. “A streetcar crashed into the side of us. It was in all the papers.”
“Jeez, I must’ve missed it,” the counterman said.
“I t’ink I seen it,” one of the customers said.
“Yeah, my dad was killed,” Richie continued. “He’d only been back from the war a month, too. And he had the Purple Heart.”
“Jeez,” the counterman said self-consciously. He glanced at the other customers, but they all turned back to their food. “Well,” he asked, “what’ll you have?”
Richie ate six dime hamburgers and drank two glasses of milk. When he went to pay, the counterman gave him a wink and only charged him for two burgers and one milk—twenty-five cents. “Thanks a lot, mister,” Richie said, wondering as he left if he could parlay the story into discount meals elsewhere.
Back on Adams Street, Richie slipped into the basement of the building where he and Stan used to live, and was pleased to see that the superintendent’s huge stack of bundled newspapers was still there. Squeezing back between the papers and the coal chute, he moved several bundles
and found the concealed crawl space that had been his cubbyhole. Still was, as a matter of fact, for there, just as he had left them months earlier, were the extra corduroy trousers and shirt he had worn the morning he fled the Hubbard household. It delighted Richie to find them; the clothes were like old friends. The quilt Stan had given him was there too. And the basement was warm from the roaring furnace.
Now that he knew where he was going to spend the night, Richie left the basement and trudged through the snow over to Madison Street to the Haymarket Theater, where he sat through a double feature and all the short subjects, then dozed in his seat an extra hour before leaving. For supper he had more hamburgers, at a different White Castle, but it was almost deserted and no one paid any attention to his face this time. At a grocery he bought two packages of Twinkies and a bottle of Kayo chocolate drink to take back to the basement with him. He also stopped in a Neiser’s variety store and bought a twenty-nine-cent penlight with battery to check for rats when he got back.
There were no rats, and in a little while Richie was safely, warmly ensconced in his cubbyhole, extra clothes for a pillow, quilt for a cover, Twinkies to snack on, and Of Mice and Men to read by penlight. It amazed him that he had not thought of a penlight or flashlight the last time he slept there. He supposed it was because he had been younger. As Stan often said, “The older you get, the more you learn.” Richie wondered if there was anybody smarter than Stan. He doubted it.