It was three weeks till my fourteenth birthday and all I could think about was that bike in the Sears catalog. It had whitewall tires and chrome fenders with mud flaps. The rest of it was red, and it had a wide crossbar with headlights built in. I folded over the page so I could easily find it again, but I knew it would be stupid to even bother asking; the price was fifty bucks and Dad was out of work again, or maybe just on strike; I could never keep track of which, but either way he wasn’t getting paid. I guess that was one reason for Ma’s super-bitchy mood, but she might have also been upset about the foster kids. Although she loved them, I think she had expected the agency to pay her more than it would cost to take care of them, and she figured she’d come out a bit ahead. We had three of them before she found out she was wrong. Two of them were babies still. The other one was bunking in with me, a screwy little kid named Donnie. He was eight years old, acted like he was four, and followed me around like a puppy.
I took the catalog to our room to stash it. Donnie was sitting on the bed sucking his thumb while picking his nose with the little finger of the same hand. Every few seconds his tongue shot out to lick the snot off his finger. I was dreading the start of the next school year. The thought of taking him with me on the bus and subway every day made me sweat. It was embarrassing enough playing ball with the guys. They couldn’t resist teasing him. They got a big kick out of Donnie’s thumb-suckin, snot-lickin act. I had to keep telling them to leave the kid alone.
I tossed the catalog on the bed. A stream of viscous drool dripped from Donnie’s chin and pooled in the folds of his tee shirt. He took his thumb out of his mouth and wiped it on his shorts. “What’s this?” he asked.
“A catalog,” I said. “Take a look. It’s chock full of all the things we’ll never have.”
He pulled the heavy book onto his lap and flipped it open to a random middle page. He looked up from the page to me, then back to the page and said, “Wow.” He’d landed in the women’s underwear section.
I sat down beside him and said, “Hey, you hit the jackpot, little guy. Whatcha think of that stuff?” He looked up at me with his huge brown eyes, then back at the page and said, “Wow,” again.
Ma chose that moment to walk in. She grabbed the catalog off Donnie’s lap, slapped my face and said, “David, I’m disgusted with you, corrupting little Donnie with this filth. I’m not raising any perverts in this house. Both of you go wash your hands. Supper’s ready.”
I never saw that catalog again and I didn’t get the bike, but I did notice that Donnie stopped sucking his thumb.
E J Barron
E J Barron 