Do Not Pass Go, page 11
“That’s so cool. I don’t have anyone to talk to about it.” She paused a minute. Then she said, “Except you.”
Sheena was popular, had always had a lot of friends around her. “What about those girls you hang out with?” Sheena ran her hands through her hair, her face suddenly hard. “They stop talking when I come into the bathroom. Throw little looks at each other, talk in this fakey-sweet voice. They enjoy people’s troubles.” Deet knew how that would be. He was glad he was a loner.
“You know how they have this group for kids whose parents are alcoholics?” said Sheena. “They should have something like that for kids with someone in jail. So they’d have someone to talk to too.”
“Yeah,” said Deet. It was a good idea.
The visiting room was crowded that day: Meghan and Ian and their grandma, the old couple Deet had seen on the first day, visiting the Eskimo boy, Michael and his mom, the old black man, and Big Henry’s enormous family. They were like old friends now to Sheena and Deet.
Dad was looking better these days, now that he’d gone to work. Not so pinched. Deet asked him about the laundry job, and then they talked about the book Dad was reading, The Grapes of Wrath. Deet hadn’t read it yet. In that book the hero goes to jail for killing someone. Dad thought it was great.
Deet could hardly believe he was talking to Dad about books.
Just before it was time to go, one of the prisoners passing by the back window stopped and waved at Deet. Dad turned around to see what Deet was looking at.
Dad smiled. “That’s Ronny,” he said to Deet. Ronny mimed shuffling cards for Dad, and Dad gave Ronny the thumbs-up sign. “He’s saying we’ll have a game of cards before dinner tonight,” Dad explained.
Deet stared hard at Ronny, he’d wanted so long to see him. A short guy with curly dark hair falling in his face and a brilliant, happy smile. Ronny waved good-bye and Deet waved back before the guard made Ronny move past the window. Deet and Dad stared for a minute at the window where Ronny had been, both smiling. It was true what Dad had said. Ronny had a sort of cheering effect on people. Somehow he made you feel good.
“Doesn’t he ever have any visitors?”
“Not a one,” said Dad.
SEVENTEEN
Some days everything seemed to go wrong. The washing machine developed a leak and spewed suds all over the floor, the damper on the wood stove was wobbly and nearly smoked them out sometimes, the water pipes had to be thawed with a hair dryer a few times because they didn’t know how to baby them the way Dad did when it was cold.
Dad went nearly frantic when things were going wrong at the house, so Deet and his mom agreed that they just wouldn’t tell him about any problems that came up. That was hard to do, because they needed to ask questions about how to do this or that, but as soon as they did Dad would nearly jump out of his skin at having to talk about how to do something, instead of just doing it.
But one morning the car wouldn’t start. Bingo and all the guys at the shop had said they’d look after things, just call, but so far Deet and his mom hadn’t done that.
First of all, they were kind of ashamed to, because after all, it wasn’t as if Dad were sick. And second of all, they knew it would make Dad feel bad if they got the guys to help them, especially if they had to take time out from work.
But Mom had to get to work, and they sure couldn’t afford to pay the wrecker to take it to the shop, so Mom called Bingo to come and look at it.
Bingo said he’d be over at noon, so Mom called Sally to ask for a ride to work. Deet decided he’d stay home from school that morning to give Bingo a hand.
When Deet opened the door for Bingo he felt a surge of happiness, just like he was a little kid again, when he’d go to the shop and Bingo would take a candy bar out of his toolbox, or stick him up in a car that was going up on the lift. There was Bingo on the porch, undiminished, carrying his huge toolbox. His very bulk was comforting, all the rings of fat over his belt, the pads of flesh under his eyes. Deet was smiling so hard his cheeks felt funny.
Deet followed Bingo into the kitchen. “Mom said to give you coffee before you started.”
“That’s a good woman,” said Bingo. “She knows how important coffee is.”
Bingo hung his parka on one of the hooks by the door, then sat down at the kitchen table. He watched Deet pour the coffee.
“Hey,” said Bingo, “we really miss you down at the shop.”
“Yeah, I miss coming, too,” said Deet.
“Well, this will all be over pretty soon, and things can go back to normal,” Bingo said.
“Yeah,” said Deet.
“You’re looking kind of skinny,” said Bingo.
Deet smiled. “Well, I’m doing the cooking now, and I don’t eat as much when I cook as when Mom does.”
Bingo made a horrified face. “I guess I’d get skinny on my own cooking too! Good thing Mary does all that.”
He took a big slug out of his cup and asked for an ashtray. When he’d lit his cigarette he asked, “How’s Charley doing?”
“Okay. He’s got a job in the laundry.”
Bingo brooded over his coffee. “I’d go crazy if they locked me up.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”
Bingo made a yeah, right face.
“You should see how people laugh and all. It’s not like everyone’s all miserable and depressed all the time.”
“That’s just how people are,” said Bingo. “When I went to Vietnam I was scared to death at first, and I couldn’t get over how everyone else acted. Laughing all the time. It took me a while to figure out they were just as scared as I was. But people anywhere make fun of their situation. Gallows humor, they call it. Guy making jokes on the way to his hanging.”
He exhaled noisily and squinted at Deet through the smoke.
“You mad at him?”
No one had asked Deet that before. He felt a jolt of shame, remembering the rage he’d felt when Mom had first told him.
Deet wiped his hands on his pants as if he was getting rid of that memory. He didn’t want to tell the truth, but you couldn’t lie to Bingo.
“I was at first. I was ashamed. You know, the papers and all.”
Bingo nodded.
“Then I just started feeling sorry for him and scared for him. Like he was going to be in with a lot of bad guys and get beat up and all that. And that was crazy. It’s not like that, not like the movies. But what you find out is that it’s so easy to get in trouble. Just one day something goes wrong and there you are. Now it seems to me like it could happen to anyone. I know there are some really bad people, you know, people who torture some guy because he’s black or gay or something, and Dad says some of the younger guys like to act real tough, but I think most people in jail are just—unlucky, I guess.”
Bingo reached over and ruffled Deet’s hair, something he hadn’t done since Deet was a little kid. “You know, you’re an all right kid,” he said.
After Bingo had the car up and running, Deet went to his desk and tried to find something in the quotation book that could describe someone like Bingo. He couldn’t find exactly what he had in mind, but he found this one:
Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.
Lots of times when something bad happens, people say the wrong thing. Things like, Oh well, it could have been worse, or things will look brighter in a few days, or something like that. That’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear them say that’s the most horrible thing I ever heard of! I don’t know how you can stand it.
—CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Or maybe they will lecture you like, you shouldn’t have done that, or that was really stupid, or something like that. If you’ve done something stupid you already know it, and you don’t need anyone else telling you that.
But we are really lucky. Most of the things people say to us about Dad being in jail are not like that. Like Bingo, who doesn’t try to act like what Dad’s going through is nothing, to make you feel better. He says right out that he’d go crazy if he was locked up in jail. You might not think that would make you feel better, but it does, because you know Bingo is really feeling for Dad. Nearly everyone we know is like that. They say the right things.
When Mom got home from seeing Dad on Sunday, she was full of the stuff she’d seen and heard in the jail that day. When Deet thought how she’d hated the place at first, he had to laugh. Now it was her favorite social scene. She had friends, and she knew the stories of nearly all the people who had been there for a while.
She’d done her grocery shopping after she’d visited Dad and was dashing about the kitchen, putting things away while she told him the jail news.
“Ronny got out today. Dad says he’ll miss him, but he’s really glad for him. He’ll be on parole for a year, but he already has a job waiting for him, and he’s going to take his little girl out of foster care and start to live like a real person.”
“I saw Ronny for the first time the other day,” said Deet. “He was walking in the hallway and he stopped to knock on the window at Dad. He’s got this big smile.”
Deet took the bag of potatoes Mom had bought and dumped them out of their bag into the bin he’d cleaned out for them. He looked to see if there were any bad ones.
“I wonder why no one ever came to visit Ronny,” he said.
Mom looked at him thoughtfully, then gave a little shrug. “I don’t know.”
She took the eggs out of their carton and lined them up in their little wells in the refrigerator door.
“The other news is that they shipped Big Henry out, so we won’t see him anymore.”
“Where to?”
“Dad didn’t know. Some penitentiary where they keep guys who have a long time to serve. I’ll miss seeing Big Henry. And his family! They just never stopped laughing. With all this hanging over their heads. Nobody to give haircuts now either.”
Mom shoved cans of soup in the cabinet over the sink with the canned fruit. It made Deet crazy to see her mess up his perfect system. He’d put them in the right places when he was cooking dinner. He spent a lot of time walking around behind Mom and P. J. and Jam, cleaning up their mess and disorder.
Mom slammed the last cupboard door and stuffed all the grocery bags into the garbage can. Deet pinched his lips together so he wouldn’t remind her that he’d put a special bag in the pantry for the plastic grocery sacks, so they could be recycled. He was trying not to be a nag.
“Dad said he told Ronny to write to him and Ronny laughed and said that would never happen, because he wasn’t any better at writing than he was at reading.”
“Ronny couldn’t read or write?”
“Not much, I guess.”
“How could that happen?” Deet asked, horrified.
“That’s what I asked Dad. He said Ronny had gone from one foster home to another, one school to another. It just never clicked with him. Dad said a lot of guys in there could hardly read.”
Deet stared at Mom. Not to be able to read. How did people get by without being able to read? What could be worse?
When Deet sat down that night to do his homework, he looked for a quotation about someone who couldn’t read. He found one that seemed pretty appropriate.
Better build schoolrooms for the boy than cells and gibbets for the man.
Dad says a lot of people in there can barely read. Schools shouldn’t be allowed to let kids get out of school without being able to read, should they? That should be against the law, shouldn’t it? It seems to me that maybe if you don’t give people a good education, you can count on their getting into trouble. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve found out about jail.
—ELIZA COOK
When Deet got his homework back at sixth period the next day, he read what Mr. Hodges had written at the top:
Did you know that the United States puts more people in jail than any other industrial nation? And did you know that we also have the highest rate of illiteracy in a nation that’s not “third world”? You’re right about the connection between not being able to read and a life of trouble. Our country has a lot to be ashamed of.
And at the bottom of the page, Mr. Hodges had written:
Here’s a quotation for you.
No evil so great but that some good comes of it.
When my mother had cancer, she went to a support group meeting—you know, a lot of people with cancer—and the guy who ran the support group asked them all to talk about the good things that cancer had done for them. They were all shocked to think that anyone could talk about good coming from a disease so horrible, one that could kill you. That did kill my mother. But then my mom said they all started to think and talk about the good things. One woman said it brought her closer to her kids. And so on. Maybe you’d write something for me about that—the good things this jail experience has done for you, your dad, your family.
—PLATO
Deet thought about that for a long time, and so many things came to mind that he started to make a list.
He printed Plato’s quotation neatly at the top of a clean page and began to write.
When you stop and think about it, maybe it was a good thing. Everyone sort of stopped what they were doing and said, maybe we’re off course here! Maybe we need to do things differently. I think my dad thinks it was good to get stopped before he’d been taking drugs too long to quit. And he thinks about how he might have hurt someone, driving when he wasn’t straight. I like it that my dad started to read, too.
I guess the really good things are what we learned about people. Well, maybe my mom and dad knew most of it already, but I didn’t. There are some people we’ve known all our lives—the guys Dad works with and our neighbor Sally, who turned out to be really good friends. I never thought about friends before. I thought it just meant people you hang out with. I never thought I had any friends, really.
There’s Nelly, who rides the bus with me. I never thought much about Nelly, but he is a real friend. I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but it’s like he’s guarding me. I never knew Nelly would care so much about somebody else’s feelings. I’m glad I found that out about Nelly, because to tell you the truth, I never gave him much credit.
And other people, who you thought of as enemies, some of them turned out to be friends too. Like I thought prison guards were all guys who like to shove people around. But there’s Mr. Tobolowsky. I don’t know how he got to be a guard, but he’s just this little skinny guy who sees inside people. He sees things other people don’t think about. Like he told this one woman, “It must be hard to work and take care of a baby and visit here all the time.” She just about melted, to think someone would notice. And he talks to me, and to Sheena. He told me what a nice guy my dad was, and I felt like someone had given me a present. Because even though my dad is in jail, someone noticed what he was like, he was a real person to Mr. Tobolowsky. And he asked Sheena how her brother was getting along. He told her he was worried because Billy, her brother, is very depressed. He notices things about people, and he worries about them.
So that’s another good thing I learned, not to dislike someone before you know them.
And we met a lot of people we’d never have met it this hadn’t happened, and we’ve heard a lot of stories. All the stories make us feel lucky. Like before, we never noticed how good we had it. Especially me. I never noticed what great parents I had.
It was late in the afternoon on Easter Sunday when Grandma called again.
“Deet, I have some little things for the girls for Easter. Ask your Mom if I can bring them over.”
He should have realized that Grandma wouldn’t let a holiday go unnoticed. She was always big on Valentine’s Day and Easter and birthdays, things like that, nothing last-minute like Mom. Grandma really put her whole heart into it.
“Mom had to work today, because they get so many people on Easter,” he said, “but sure, come on over.” Then he remembered that Grandma never drove the car if she didn’t have to, especially after dark.
“Is Grandpa coming?” he asked, dreading the answer.
No,” she said brightly. “Just me.”
The girls were delighted to see Grandma. She brought chocolate bunnies and her special Easter pastries, huge Easter cards, the kind that cost a lot of money, and lots of packages tied with lavender and yellow ribbon. There was candy for Mom and a shirt for Deet, and each girl had a new outfit.
When the phone rang and P. J. yelled, “It’s Dad!” Grandma looked shocked.
“He calls on the phone?”
“Almost every day,” Deet explained, “unless they have a lockdown. Then …” He stopped in midsentence because he had a feeling Grandma wouldn’t want to know about prison routine.
P. J. was chattering away to Dad when Grandma suddenly walked to the phone and said to her, “May I talk to him, please?”
P. J. threw Deet a startled look, then handed the phone to Grandma, who turned her back to them before she began to speak.
“Charley, this is Mom. How are you, son?” Deet and the girls could tell from the sound of her voice that she was crying. She was listening to Dad and trying to get control of herself.
At last she handed the phone back to P. J. and carefully wiped the bottom lids of her eyes with the tip of her broad, wrinkled thumb.
She bustled about, picking up wrapping paper from the rug, not looking at Deet.
“Well,” she said, “he sounds all right. It was so noisy in there, just terrible. I could hardly hear him. But he sounds all right.”
She pinched her lips together and frowned at Deet.
“He’s not the first person who ever got in trouble, you know, Deet.”
“Well, yeah, I know that, Grandma.”
“Well, your grandfather is a stubborn Finn,” she said. “He doesn’t know that.”
Deet had never known Grandma to speak so firmly before. And he’d never known she had ideas before, never known that she would ever disagree with Grandpa.
She put her parka on. “Tell your mom I’ll come again, Deet, and tell her to call on me if she needs any help. And tell her I’m sorry that Grandpa yelled at her.”
