CHAPTER 9
James lay stretched out on his mattress, wriggling his toes in the beam of sunlight across his feet. He guessed it was close to lunchtime and his stomach rumbled at the thought. It would probably only be the same peanut butter sandwiches and juice that they always had, but sometimes there was an apple or some little carrots to go with it. Once there had even been jelly with the peanut butter.
Dragging his ratty old blanket, Sean returned from the toilet over on the other side of the stairs and snuggled up next to James. The baby sat up in her playpen, her thumb in her mouth, sad brown eyes staring at James. He’d changed her diaper a few minutes ago. The old one sat rolled up on the stairs where Mama had told him to leave it. He was tall for his age, so he could almost put it on the topmost step, right near the door. When Mama brought lunch, she’d take it and leave another clean one.
Sean turned to face him. “Quiero jugar.” The little boy thought a moment. “Want to play the game.”
James had made up a game to play with Sean using a plastic jar full of nails and some of the paper cups Mama brought their juice in. James would hold up his fingers, and tell Sean to put that many nails in the cup. At first, Sean didn’t understand what James wanted, but then he figured it out and could count out the nails up to six now.
They only played at night, when Mama went out. James had hidden a candle and matches so he could have light when Mama was gone. He’d found the candle and matches when he’d found the nails, stuck back behind the buckets of rags and cans of kerosene under the stairs. He kept the matches and candle stuffed under his mattress. The nails and paper cups just fit underneath the playpen, in a corner where the baby wouldn’t sit on them.
“Tonight,” James said. “I promise.”
Sean must have been tired, using Spanish that way. At the beginning, when the little boy would mix in Spanish words with English, Mama would scream at him, sometimes slap his face. Once James figured out why Mama was so mad, that she wanted Sean to speak only English, he helped the little boy remember.
James heard the rattle of the lock and quickly stood up as the door opened. “There’s the diaper, Mama.”
“Thank you, Junior.” She went down the two steps to retrieve it, then set a clean one in its place. She placed a cardboard box on the step, too. Their sandwiches and juice would be inside it, along with the baby’s bottle. “Mama has to go out.”
“But it’s daytime.” James glanced up at the window; the bright noontime sun still shone there. It was stupid, but for a second he thought maybe that beam of sunlight on his feet had been his imagination. Or maybe Mama had made the night-time come early. “You don’t go out during the day.”
Mama just stood there, quiet. James wondered if he’d said something wrong, something that Mama didn’t like. She’d only slapped him a few times since he’d been here, but he didn’t want her to do it again. Or make him hold the candle.
“I just want you all to go to heaven, Junior.” Her voice sounded dreamy and distracted. “Like you did before. You and your brothers and sisters.”
James felt a tug of fear, like he always did when Mama talked that way. “I’ll be good, Mama. I promise.”
“I know you will.” Now she sounded more normal, almost like his real mama. “Tell Mama you love her.”
He hated this the most. She asked him to say it at least once a day. The first time that she’d slapped him, it had been because he wouldn’t say it. Because he didn’t love her. He only loved his real mama.
But he’d learned to say the words as if he really meant them. It was much better to keep Mama happy. “I love you, Mama.” He forced himself to smile.
“And I love you, Junior. Even more than before.”
She swung the door shut. He heard the click of the lock, then her footsteps grew softer. He waited, listening to be sure she wasn’t coming back.
Then he dumped the rags from two of the buckets and set first one, then another on top of it below the window. He’d figured out he could reach the window standing on both buckets, even though one fit partway into the other. He wanted to look at the window, see if he could open it. He wouldn’t be able to fit through, but maybe Sean could.
First James peeked through to watch as Mama headed off away from the house. When he couldn’t see her anymore, he set his hands against the window frame and pushed up. It didn’t budge at all. He looked at the frame to see if maybe it was stuck with paint. Most of the paint had peeled off, so he knew it couldn’t be that.
Hiking himself up a little, he tried to see if there was a lock he’d missed. He had to really twist his neck around to spot the problem. The window had been nailed shut from the outside. He could only see two nails that had bent before being hammered all the way in, but he figured there were more than those two.
James dropped down to the mattress, then put the buckets back under the stairs, each with their pile of rags stuffed inside. He felt his throat get tight, and he knew if he wasn’t careful, he might start to cry. Mama wouldn’t like that.
Instead, he got their lunch and the diaper from the stairs where Mama had left them. He gave the baby her bottle and turned the cardboard box upside down to use it as a table for his and Sean’s lunches. Once they’d finished eating, he put the box back on the stairs and pulled out the cups and the nails.
“We can play now,” he told Sean as he set out the cups and spilled some nails onto the concrete floor. He held up four fingers. “How many is this?”
As Sean dropped four nails into a cup, all James could think of were those others, rusted and bent in the window, locking him in this room forever.