I WENT DOWN TO HELP CONRAD FOR DINNER, BUT Tony and Darnell and Pilar had already helped and most everything was done. The kitchen smelled like soap and lemons. Conrad ran a towel over the counter, and I could hear people begin to walk in to get ready to sit down for dinner. We would have spaghetti with tomato sauce with a slice of bread and lettuce and green beans, and a big pan of yellow cake for dessert. I liked how the kitchen smelled, all tomatoes and garlic and hot oil and cake.

Conrad looked up and smiled.

“A long, tough day, Sal Gal. But you did good. You did great.”

I smiled back.

“Let’s hope our Mary Berry can be back with us,” said Conrad. “Soon.”

I came closer to speak softer.

“Conrad,” I asked, “will they throw us out of Sunnyside Plaza?”

I could feel wet spots in my eyes again, and Conrad untied his apron and held an edge of it just below them.

“No,” he told me. “No,” he repeated. “No, Sallie Pallie. But we have to be practical. First off, much as we love Mary, after she’s out of the hospital—well, Sunnyside might not be the best place for her. She may need some extra care that we can’t give her.”

“I’ll do anything to care for Mary. I’ll feed her, I’ll dress her, I’ll—”

“I know that, Sal,” said Conrad. “I truly do, and so does she. But sometimes, much as we love them, well… sometimes, we just aren’t the best people to be able to help the people we love. Maybe,” Conrad said, even more soft than ever, “that’s what your momma decided when you were a bitty baby. Maybe she felt like she didn’t know what to do, or how to begin, to help you. Besides… well, if something is wrong here… if there’s something here that’s not good for people…”

“Where will we go?” I asked Conrad. I could feel myself shake, and it wasn’t cold. “What will we do? Will my mother come?”

Conrad put his hands on my shoulders, and it made me shake a little less.

“Sal Gal, I don’t know any of that. But I won’t let anything bad happen to you. Do you hear me? Do you know that?”

Conrad looked into my eyes—we were the same height—and I nodded, up and down.

“I’ll do whatever I have to for you. For Darney, for Pilar, for Tony.” Conrad turned back to the counter, and the towel, but kept talking to me.

“I never met people like you before I got here,” he said. “And I think God puts certain people right in front of you because you’re supposed to help each other. You’ve sure helped me.”

I had stopped crying and was starting to laugh a little.

“I’ve helped you, Conrad?”

“Every day.”

He crossed his heart and held up a finger toward the sky.

“Chopping, wiping. Pear fishing?” I asked.

Conrad put an arm around my shoulders and told me, “That and some other stuff, Sal Gal.”

The spaghetti was good and Tony mixed in his lettuce, so most of the rest of us did, too, and that made it crunch. I used the bread like a sponge, and when I plopped my plate into the garbage can, Pilar said, “It’s so clean, like my dog licked it.” Pilar wants a dog, too, like me. The yellow cake had brown frosting. Tony said it was chocolate, Shaaran said no, it was peanut. I couldn’t tell, and didn’t really care, and ate it in 4 bites.

Matt, Keesha, and Vy didn’t eat dinner but ate their cake. Jimmy said “birdie” when he finished his spaghetti, and then once before he didn’t eat his cake. I looked around for something wrong but saw nothing.

Pilar and Darnell and me went back to the kitchen to help Conrad put things away. Darnell almost always lifts up the big cans, because he’s so big, and he put one of the big cans of tomatoes against his big belly and began to lift and then stopped when a label that wrapped around the can got loose and stuck over his thumb.

“The can bites,” Darnell said, but he laughed as he said it and shook his thumb like it was on fire.

“Labels slip sometimes,” said Conrad, “with all the handling, heat, and steam.” And he reached over and began to wrap the label into a ball. A smaller label fell out of the ball and fell flat on the counter. Conrad picked up the label and squinted. Then he reached into his pocket, took out a pair of glasses, put them up to his eyes, and squinted again. He unrolled the ball he’d made from the label and smoothed it out on top of the counter.

“That SOB,” he said softly. I knew the word was bad, but didn’t know why, and I burst out with a short laugh before I could stop.

“George,” Conrad explained. “George Nellos. The guy who delivers canned goods here. Gives us a good price, too, he says. But it looks like he gave us some old, outdated stuff here.”

Conrad pointed a finger to a jumble of numbers on the label he’d unwrinkled.

“See?” he said. “It’s all here after it says ‘Sell by…’ and the numbers that follow.”

“Like a story,” I said. “Like the big board at the ballpark.”

“Exactly, Sallie Gallie,” he said. “And the story here is that the numbers say this is a can that should have been used six years ago. Sheesh.”

“Sheesh,” Darnell repeated. “Sounds like a bad word, too.”

“It’s close to one,” Conrad agreed. “Let’s take a look at this one of apple slices,” he said, and put the can down on its side and rolled it over until he found the edge of the label and began to lift it off with his thumb.

Conrad held up his glasses and squinted again.

“This one expired seven years ago. George, that SOB,” Conrad repeated.

“Is that like ‘butthole’?” Darnell asked him. “A word we shouldn’t say?”

“Only say it when no other word will do, Darney,” he told him. “And I’m beginning to think maybe we should. Do me a favor, my friend, and bring that little ladder over here.”

Darnell picked up the small white stepladder and opened it in front of the counter. Conrad stepped up 1, 2, 3 stairs, and picked up one of the big cans, and handed it down to Darnell, who handed it to me, then another one to Pilar. We put them both on the counter. Then Conrad handed another can to Darnell, who handed it to me, then another down to Pilar.

Conrad came down from the ladder and began to run his thumb under a label, then another, then another.

“Tomatoes,” he said out loud. “Six, seven years old. The pears here—eight years old. Peaches—five years old. These apples—seven years old. Son of a—”

“You shouldn’t say it, Conrad,” said Darnell. “If you say it, I’ll say it.”

What Conrad finally said to finish his words was “Son of a… female dog, pardon my French. All of these cans. What a scam. Butthole!”

“Butthole!” Darnell repeated, and Conrad just laughed and didn’t tell him he shouldn’t talk like that.

“George delivers tomorrow,” Conrad said. “George and I are going to have a little conversation. We’re gonna put these cans over by the garbage—’cause that’s where they belong—and tomorrow George and I are gonna have a little conversation.”

We were all laughing by the time we turned the corner, and Conrad left to go home, and Darnell and Pilar and I went upstairs, and we all smiled to see Jimmy sitting in the corner of the room where people watched whatever was on the screen and to hear him say “birdie” when we walked by. Bad things had happened all around us, but we knew each other and were happy.

I closed the door to our room and lay down on the top of my bed and looked up at the 8 times 4 squares of tile on the ceiling—2 times 8 plus 4 are still cracked, and 2 times 8 plus 1 of them still have brown stains. I looked at the ceiling and tried to remember what I’d heard Esther Rivas and Lon Bridges say to Mrs. Byrne, and what Mrs. Byrne said to them.

I know I’m different. That’s how people say it, so they think you won’t know what they mean. But I do. I know we’re different—Mary, Tony, Pilar, Darnell, Shaaran, Ray, Jimmy, all of us at Sunnyside Plaza. I know we’re different because of the way a lot of people on the outside look at us when they come in here. The way they talk to us. Or talk like we’re not here. Like we can’t hear them. Or if we do, so what? We’re not people like they are, they think. We’re different.

I know lots of things go into my mind. Cows have 4 stomachs. There’s a town called Bacon, Texas. The moon isn’t really made of green cheese. Mrs. Byrne has a husband named Tim and a son named Jace. Stepladders, $79.99 at Home Depot! Violin and fiddle—they’re the same thing. There are 5 kinds of hurricanes. Oxygen action helps shrink swelling. It’s 7 to 2 in the fourth. Tractor-trailer overturned, backup on the Bishop Ford. More than half the people in the world have brown eyes. I do. But I guess I don’t always have a shelf in my head where I can put the things that come into my mind, keep them in place, and get them when I need them.

I knew I needed to put things into place now.

I looked up at the ceiling and counted the 8 times 4 squares of tile and then sat up, got up, opened the door, and called out into the hall.