Emery left for home, telling Philip he couldn’t bear to watch. As Philip led Leon into the kitchen, he heard the front door close. He walked into the living room, and through the window he saw his mother carrying his baby sister Becky toward the car. He watched his mother put the baby into the safety seat and drive off.
“Come on upstairs, Leon.”
“roomroomroom”
“What are you doing?”
Philip’s mother had left the vacuum cleaner leaning against the sofa. Leon pushed it across the rug making vacuum cleaner noises.
“I like to play cleaning sometimes, too. It lets you make neat noises. Listen. roomroomroom.”
“Oh, Leon. Stop it! Never mind roomroomroom. Come up and clean my room room room.”
“Yuk yuk. That’s pretty funny. Room room room. I get it.”
Philip felt his stomach clench like it did when Emery acted stupid. Leon would be worse, he knew. Way worse. But if it got his room cleaned, it would be worth it. Leon followed him upstairs repeating roomroomroom all the way.
“Leon, shush. No more room room room. Here’s the real room.” He pushed his bedroom door open, and Leon took a step inside.
“Holy macaroni,” Leon muttered. “I can’t hardly even see the floor floor floor in your room room room. It’s so messy messy messy.”
“Yeah, well the floor’s down there. We’re walking on it, aren’t we? Can you clean this place or not?”
Philip watched Leon tiptoe through the mess to his dresser and pick up something. Philip recognized it as the jacket-thing his mother wore when she did serious cleaning around the house. Leon lifted it with two fingers and held it away from him.
“This what you sleep in? I wear pajamas. This doesn’t have any legs even, and it’s awful short.” He threw Philip a suspicious look.
“Leon, don’t be stupid. That’s my mother’s.” Philip grabbed it out of Leon’s hand, balled it up, and tossed it behind him. “She must have been in here. She always wears that to clean.”
“You wear pajamas, right? Regular pajamas?”
“Of course I wear pajamas. See them over there on the floor in the corner? What about cleaning?”
Leon glanced at the pajamas and then looked over the room. Philip followed his gaze. Two pillows sat on the floor, along with a crumpled up sheet. Socks and shirts were sprinkled around like overgrown snowflakes. Toys lay everywhere. Sneakers and shoes, never a pair together, were tossed sideways and upside down. Crumpled construction paper and some scattered crayons added color to the mess.
“I didn’t feel the earthquake on my block,” Leon said softly.
“What earthquake?”
“The one that shook up this room. Yuk yuk.”
“You’re not funny, Leon. Can you fix it?”
“Sure. I’ll throw the shoes over there; I’ll put the socks over there; the shirts’ll go there. I’ll separate everything first except what looks like junk. You want to save the junk?”
Philip threw his arms up. “No! Why would I want to save the junk?”
“How about food? You want to save the food?”
“Food? What food?”
“I see a half a sandwich over there.”
“No, throw out the food, Leon. Just be sure to get this place neat.”
“I need a trash bag.”
“I’ll get one.” Philip ran downstairs to the kitchen closet and pulled a large white trash bag off the roll. When he got back to his room, Leon had a twelve inch ruler in his hand, one of Philip’s socks dangling from the end of it.
“What are you doing?” asked Philip.
“Your socks stink.”
Philip grabbed the sock off the end of the ruler.
“Just give it here. Any clothes you find I’ll put in the hamper. Start cleaning. Anything that’s junk put in the trash bag.”
“Crumpled paper?”
“Junk.”
“Crayon pieces?”
“Junk.”
“Broken . . .”
“Junk, Leon, junk. The room’s gotta look like nobody lives in it.”
“Gotcha.” Leon made a circle of his thumb and index finger and poked it at Philip. Then he pushed an imaginary vacuum cleaner. “roomroomroom. Yuk yuk.”
Philip moaned. “Get started, Leon.”
“Did I tell you about my new friend? He likes to . . .”
“Never mind your new friend. Take care of me, your old friend.”
Leon shot another OK sign toward Philip. “You do all the socks. They scare me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The boys got to work.
Philip bustled in and out of the room, taking any clothing Leon discovered to the bathroom hamper. Leon scoured the room exclaiming “yuck” and “ugh” at finding all kinds of things he never expected.
“Stop making all those noises,” Philip finally shouted.
“I can’t help it. It had ants on it.”
Philip didn’t want to know what had ants on it. He simply grabbed another sock and rushed off to the bathroom with it.
An hour later, the trash bag could stand up by itself, so Philip twisted it closed and put it outside the bedroom door. When he turned back to his room, he stared in amazement. Now, all he could see was floor. Nothing, not socks, shoes, shirts, pillows, broken crayons, crumpled toys, or half-eaten sandwiches spoiled the view.
“You got a nice floor,” Leon said, a wide smile showing off his broken tooth.
Philip heard the front door open and Becky babbling.
“Leon, listen. Make believe you just got here. I’ll tell my mother I did all of this. She probably won’t yell at me all summer if she thinks I cleaned like this.”
Leon shot an OK sign toward Philip.
“That’s my new sign. I just learned it. Did I tell you about my new friend Gordon?”
“You didn’t know about an OK sign? Everybody knows about an OK sign.”
“I didn’t. My new friend Gordon’s . . .”
“Never mind. Quiet. Here comes my mother.”
Philip’s eyes met his mother’s gaze when she reached the top of the stairs.
“Philip, get started on that room. If it’s not . . .” She had continued walking toward Philip and now saw the inside of the room. “What happened here?”
Philip gave Leon a glance. “I just did what you asked, Mom. How’s it look?”
“I can’t believe it.”
Leon spoke up. “Can I take the trash bag?”
Philip’s mother didn’t answer. She walked around the room running her finger over things. Philip wanted Leon out of the way before he said something stupid and gave away the fact that he had been the one, not Philip, who’d cleaned up the room.
“Sure. You go, Leon. I’ll meet you in the yard.”
“I’ll be able to play with Gordon again.”
Philip wondered what Leon meant, but didn’t want to delay him by asking. Leon lugged the trash bag down the stairs, and Philip was happy to see him go.