THE BUZZER AT THE BACK DOOR BUZZED THE NEXT morning. Conrad said, “That’s George.” He opened the door and George was there, behind 1, 2, 3 boxes of peaches, apples, and pears in cans. I could see them on the labels. He had a little boy with him, with curly dark hair and big brown eyes.
“Morning, Connie,” said George.
“Looks like a special visitor today,” said Conrad. The little boy smiled.
“Chris, my boy,” said George. “He’s ten. No school today. Teacher’s conference. Two months off during the summer isn’t enough time for the teachers to have a conference? Anyway, I brought him along.”
“He’s a big help for sure,” said Conrad. “I can see that. How goes it, Chris?”
Chris looked shy, but he smiled. George rolled in the boxes of cans. They clinked over each tile on the floor, apples clinking next to peaches, pears clinking on the edge of the brown cardboard box.
“Maybe Chris would like a little cereal?” asked Conrad. “We have cornflakes, Cheerios, Raisin Bran, and those wheat thingies,” he said. “Or maybe a glass of milk? Come by for lunch, and we’ll have cookies for you.”
Conrad turned to me.
“Good cookies, too. Sal Gal—Sally here—helps make them. What’s your favorite, Sal?”
I thought and thought, and then I said, “Chocolate chip. Chips stick on my teeth, but I lick them
off.”
I could see the little boy smile. It was almost a laugh. I like to make people laugh.
“I’m fine,” he said.
George reached into the pocket of his blue jacket with his hand. There was a loud sound of paper crumpling and rumpling. George took out a clump of pink and blue papers and rubbed out wrinkles with his fingers.
“Some crazy problem,” George said. “The wrong code or something on the billing for the cans. Mrs. B should take a look.”
“I’ll bring you back there,” Conrad told him. “Sal, take care of things a minute, can you? Make our guest welcome.”
Conrad and George turned the corner and I heard them begin to walk down the hall to see Mrs. Byrne. Chris looked at me and took a step back and turned down his mouth.
“I can get you some milk,” I told him.
The little boy shook his head.
Then he asked, “You live here?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I live here and work here and hang out here.”
“Oh,” said Chris. “And you’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” I told him. “I’m fine.”
“My dad says there’s something wrong with people here.”
“I had a cold when it was cold out,” I told Chris. “I’m fine now.”
“My dad says the people here can’t understand me, so I shouldn’t talk to you.”
“I understand you,” I told the little boy. “Not every word, or everything all the time. But I understand people.”
The little boy opened his eyes wide. We both heard George and Conrad as they came back in the hallway, walking and laughing. Chris shook a little. I told the little boy, “I won’t say anything.”
George and Conrad turned the corner, still laughing. I turned away from the little boy and began to wipe down the smooth steel counter behind me.
I know more than I can say. I know things I don’t know how to say. Even if I have heard words and know them, I can’t always say them. Sometimes it feels like I have a rock inside that sits on words. But I hear things and see things. I notice and figure out things. It’s all here, inside.
We were making sandwiches in the kitchen a few days later when Conrad lifted up a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard and asked, “These things are pretty portable, aren’t they?”
Mary, Darnell, Tony, Pilar, and I didn’t know the word.
“Portable,” Conrad repeated. “Small, light, easy to carry.”
“I’m not portable,” said Darnell, and Conrad laughed.
“Not hardly, Darney Barney. But you got two big ol’ feet to get yourself around. You’re what they call semiportable. I was just thinking,” Conrad went on. “The weather looks good. You folks have been through a lot here, losing folks and friends. What say I talk to Mrs. Byrne and see if we can go to the park and have a picnic? Just eat lunch out there.”
We cheered and clapped and rang the pans in the kitchen like bells.
Mark and Dorothy and Bob, the nurses, lined us up in pairs along the sidewalk.
“Hold hands, two by two!” Bob said. “Like Noah’s Ark.”
I held hands with Mary. Darnell was told to hold hands with Tony, and he said, “I don’t want to hold hands with Tony.”
Dorothy let out a long breath.
“Okay. Then hold hands with…” Dorothy looked around. “Stephen,” she said.
“I don’t like Stephen,” Darnell said. “He’s on the first floor. I don’t know him. Tony is my best friend.”
“Then hold hands with him,” said Dorothy.
“He’s my friend, but he doesn’t wash his hands,” said Darnell.
Dorothy had one of those little envelopes with a wet tissue inside that smells like lemons. She opened it and handed the tissue to Tony, who liked how it smelled and wiped it under his nose with his hands.
“He’ll have clean hands now, too,” Dorothy told Darnell.
“But they’ll smell like lemons. So will mine. I don’t like lemons.”
“Then don’t eat your hands, Darnell,” she said. “It will wear off before we have our sandwiches.”
Bob counted us of by 2, 4, 6, 8, and a few more. “Sunnyside Plaza-ites, tallyho!” he shouted, and we began to walk toward the park. We walked by windows with red letters and pictures of fish and pictures of hot dogs and windows with people sipping out of cups and looking back at us.
Mary and I liked to look at people along the street. We’d smile and say hello, and some people would smile back. But a lot of people along the street would just stop and look at us, very hard. Like they didn’t know what they were seeing, or thought something was wrong.
We got to the park. It was like stepping into a big green sea. The trees were like boats, and the leaves were like people on the deck of the boat who waved at us.
Bob and Mark put down the bags of sandwiches, and then Mary noticed and cried out, “Conrad!” He wore blue jeans, and a short red shirt, and a light blue cap with a red letter on it. We were amazed to see Conrad could wear blue jeans. We always saw Conrad in white pants, and a white kitchen shirt, and his white cap. But it was still Conrad. He carried a white cooler in his arms and jiggled it up and down. We could hear ice cubes slosh inside.
“You’re gonna like this, folks” is all he said.
Dorothy had white laundry bags and began to pass them out.
“Pick a partner,” she told us. “We’re going to have races.”
“I can’t run with a bag over my head,” said Darnell, and Dorothy laughed.
“No, sir,” she said. “You put one leg in it, and your partner puts one of theirs in, too.”
“Then how are we supposed to run?” Darnell asked. “With our legs in a bag.”
“That’s what makes it a good game,” she said. Dorothy and Conrad each put a foot in a sack and began to run.
“You got to get coordinated,” she said, and they took a few steps and fell down, rolling around and laughing.
I took a bag with Mary, Pilar took a sack with Tony, and Shaaran took a bag with Darnell. Dorothy and Conrad fell down again. Mark and Bob laughed so hard they couldn’t run. Mary and I were ahead, but then we stumbled on our legs in the bag and fell over, too. Pilar and Tony were the first to get to the tree, and Bob jumped out of his bag with his arms up and cried, “The winner and world champions, Pilar and Antonio!” But we also ran a few more races, and Mary and I won one, too.
We stopped for lunch. Bob and Mark took the sandwiches out of paper bags and handed them out. They were ham with orange cheese, and Bob lifted the edge of the slice on top to make sure mine had no mayonnaise, no mustard, no butter, or anything else.
Conrad jiggled the white cooler again.
“And here we have…,” he said, then lifted the top, “lemonade!”
I had lemonade a few times before and usually don’t like it much. But I liked these little cans of lemonade a lot. It was fun to sit in the sun on the grass and eat outdoors, and see people playing and running and riding bicycles, and dogs jumping and kids throwing and running after balls, and just not look at the same old walls.
Tony and Darnell went over to Conrad and said, “Thanks, Conrad.”
“Thank Mrs. Byrne,” he said. “She said, ‘Yes, the folks could use a little pick-me-up, I’m sure.’”
“But you thought of it, Conrad,” Darnell told him.
“Well, it’s fun for me, too, Swell Darnell,” he said. “I like to hear you laugh.”
We were all putting our legs into our bags for another race when Mary looked up and saw 2 friends.
“Detective Rivas! Detective Bridges!”
They were walking down over a small hill beside the street, and each of them carried small blue puffy bags.
“We heard there was a picnic,” said Lon Bridges. “We didn’t want to miss out.”
“And we figured these might help,” said Esther Rivas, and she unzipped the top of her puffy blue bag.
Shaaran recognized what was inside.
“Popsicles!” she said.
“Red and orange and green,” Lon Bridges told us. “Who knows what flavors?”
We all sat on the grass, laughing and slurping.
“Javvy and Miriam say hello,” Esther told us. “They want you to help search for Easter eggs.”
“Ferne and I will be there, too,” said Lon. “It takes two detectives to track down all the eggs.”
“We’ll go anywhere with you,” Mary said immediately.
“I also thought,” said Lon Bridges, “I’d ask Mrs. Byrne if Darnell and Tony could join me and Ferne at church on Easter, then help out in the egg hunt at Esther and Rob’s.”
“Darnell will be great to find the eggs,” I told them. “If he can eat them.”
We looked over to find Darnell and Tony and saw that Darnell had walked a little bit away from our group to pick up a ball that a little girl in the park had kicked and run after. Darnell picked up the ball and tossed it up in the air toward the girl. A really excited adult—it must have been her mother—came running up within a few feet of Darnell.
“Okay, we’ve got it. Thank you. Just stay where you are.”
Darnell looked puzzled. No, he looked hurt.
“I was just—”
“Yes, I know. We have the ball. Thank you.”
She took her little girl by the arm. Esther and Lon had gotten up from the grass and were walking over to Darnell. The little girl stumbled on her legs to keep up with her mother pulling her. Her mother said, “Stay away from those people, Melissa. They’re crazy.”
Lon Bridges put a hand on Darnell’s back and said, “Come back over with us, Darnell.”
“Do you want Popsicles?” Darnell shouted toward the little girl and the lady. “They’re good. We have red and green ones left. And lemonade.”
“This is a fine man here,” Lon told the lady in a loud voice. “These are great people here. You’d like them.”
The lady began to run with her little girl. Esther came up behind Darnell and London Bridges.
“Don’t worry, I’m not crazy!” Darnell shouted.
“She’s crazy,” Lon Bridges told Darnell. “Doesn’t know nice people when she sees them.”
“I’m not crazy, am I?” Darnell asked. And I could see his eyes get wet and red.
“You certainly are not,” said Esther Rivas. “That lady is just worried about her daughter. She just doesn’t know. And,” she added, “she’s a butthole.”
London Bridges began to fall down laughing. Darnell laughed the tears right out of his eyes. Mary asked Lon and Esther, “What’s a—what did you say? What’s that word? Why is everybody laughing?”
Mary and I still laughed about all that—the races, the picnic, the Popsicles, the little girl, the crazy mother, and Esther’s word—on our way down the stairs to begin work in the kitchen the next morning.
“That was funny,” she said. “What hole? What’s that word again?”
“I forgot,” I told her.
“You remembered it last night,” Mary remembered.
“But I told Esther I’d forget it as soon as we got back here.”
Mary giggled.
“Darnell—he’ll remember it.”
“Did you hear him in his room last night?” I asked her. “He was singing it. Butt-hole!” I sang softly, and
tried to sound a little like Darnell. “Butt-hole! Butt-hole…”
Mary laughed and giggled and then her leg seemed to get stuck on a stair. I reached to grab her but she fell forward too fast and I missed her and Mary fell like she had just learned how to dive except there was no water. She dived down the stairs with a thump and a smack and another thump. Mary didn’t make a sound, but I heard one hard, hot, horrible breath from her, and then saw a swish and a splash of red as Mary’s blood spilled down the stairs from her head and onto the floor, where it flowed like spilled smelly red milk.
I heard myself scream.