Boy Robot Read online

  He said nothing.

  “Tell me you love me!”

  His lips didn’t budge.

  She grabbed his arm with her free hand and held it so tight he could feel his hand going numb. “Say it now, goddammit!”

  Nothing.

  She pressed the burning end of the cigarette into his arm, and the glowing tip seared his tender flesh. “Tell me!” Her eyes widened and her lips trembled as she pressed the cigarette in harder.

  He shook as silent tears poured down his face. The burning hurt so bad. Still, he said nothing.

  “Goddamn you!”

  She collapsed back onto the grimy brown carpet. A muddled look of shock and confusion bloomed on her face as she blinked and saw him crying in the hallway, saw the cigarette in her hand.

  She shot up and tore past him to the bathroom. She threw the cigarette into the sink and collapsed to her knees before the toilet. She’d barely flipped it open before she began vomiting violently into the water, droplets of brown splattering back onto her face, strands of her lank hair falling into the bowl.

  He waited until she finished and passed out on the linoleum before heading back into the room, back to the bed that smelled like pee.

  He tried to squeeze his eyes shut as tight as they could go.

  Maybe she’d leave him alone if they were closed tight enough.

  • • •

  One day he woke to discover that she’d finally found what she went looking for night after night. His name was Jim.

  Jim had long, greasy brown hair, a tattoo of a cross on his arm, and smelled more like cigarettes than she did. In the beginning all they did was laugh and kiss and spend time in her room. He didn’t mind. When they were in her room, they left him alone.

  He remembered Jim asking once why she even had him in the first place, and she said that her “dumbfuck sister got herself knocked up, refused to get rid of it, took one listen to him crying once he popped out, and died, right there and then.” She was her only living family, so she had to take him in.

  He took another swig from his bottle. His fourth or fifth of the afternoon. “The least she could’ve done was left you some money.”

  She sat down on his lap. “She always was a selfish bitch.”

  “Well, you ain’t selfish, babe.” He kissed her neck. “You’re pretty much a saint for taking the little fucker in, bending over backward to take care of him.”

  “I just did what anybody would. It’s the Christian thing to do.” She leaned in and smiled while he continued nibbling under her ear. “And besides, he’s my baby now.”

  He pulled back abruptly. “The fuck he is!”

  Before she could respond, his face broke into a wide grin. “I’m your baby now.”

  He dove back into her neck as she laughed and cooed.

  • • •

  It didn’t take long before everything got worse. He thought Jim would finally make her happy, that he was what she had been searching for so desperately, but ultimately he wasn’t.

  It was only the second week when Jim started hitting her, and it was terrifying. He’d hide under the little bed, close his eyes, and wait for the yelling to end. Sometimes the yells turned into screams and he could hear the sound of a fist colliding with her face.

  Sometimes, when the screams grew too loud, the neighbors would call the police. The shouts would be interrupted by a knock on the door and officers would ask them questions, staying long enough to make sure no one would get killed if they left. The yelling would stop for a few days after these visits but, like clockwork, it would eventually pick right up where it left off.

  • • •

  On that night—the bad night—they’d both smoked so much from Jim’s special glass pipe that their hands shook and they could barely see straight. One thing led to another and, sure enough, the yelling started again. He just wanted to get past them down the hallway. To hide under his little bed, where he could ride out the storm like always. But when he tried to pass Jim, he accidentally knocked the pipe off the coffee table and spilled the contents all over the dingy floor. The pipe cracked in half.

  He could feel the fist flying toward his face before it made impact. In a flash of pain, he was suddenly on the other side of the room, seeing stars. He started to cry. The woman wailed and began an all-out physical assault against the man. He picked himself up and dizzily made his way to his safe place as the two of them went at it.

  It felt like hours before the police finally showed up that night. He heard the men talking to Jim right outside the door. Though he didn’t know why, he knew he had to get to them.

  He stepped into the living room as a light shone on his face.

  “Hi, young man. Would you mind stepping a little bit closer, please?” asked the voice behind the light.

  “Get back to your room, boy,” Jim hissed through his crooked yellow teeth.

  “No. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if that’s all right.” The voice behind the light sounded powerful, and safe.

  As he walked out into the light, someone gasped.

  “Jesus Christ, Dave, look at him.”

  There was another voice behind the light.

  “Come here, son. We won’t hurt you,” said the first voice.

  He went forward toward the voice, as the second talked into his walkie-talkie. He could see them now, the two officers. Both wore belts just like Batman did on his sheets, but each of these guys also had a gun. He walked up to one and stood by his side.

  “We’re gonna need you both to step out of the house.” The first voice now issued commands to Jim. He obeyed and stumbled over the threshold. She followed him out and stood next to him, shaking her head slowly in the blinding light.

  “All right, son.” The man with the first voice leaned in. His eyes were kind. “Can you to tell me who did this to you?”

  He looked to the ground and his face burned. He didn’t want to do this. He knew it’d get him in trouble.

  “I promise you won’t get in trouble.”

  It was like the man could read his thoughts.

  “We’re going to help you. Just tell me who it was.”

  “He don’t talk none, Officer,” Jim said as he scowled into the light. “Kid’s retarded or something.”

  The officer looked back at him, and for a moment they all lingered in silence, the tension palpable and thick.

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  The officer began to realize it was futile. “I promise I’m only trying to help.”

  A deafening silence hung in the night air.

  Finally, he raised his finger, pointed it at Jim, and stared at him through an eye that was almost completely swollen shut. “Him.” His lips barely moved when he spoke.

  Jim lurched forward and slid something metallic out of his pocket. “You little piece of fucking shi—”

  Before Jim could finish pulling out his gun, a loud bang resounded and a patch of red blossomed on his white wife-beater. He fell back onto the rusted trailer and slid down into the filthy dirt.

  The woman screamed. Her man, her happiness, her Jim, was dead.

  They’d killed him.

  Another cop car pulled up just as she charged toward the first officer. He tried to subdue her but couldn’t. She was fueled by rage and whatever she’d been smoking all night.

  One of the officers picked him up and put him in the second car just as it started raining.

  He sat in the backseat of the squad car and watched them pin her down as she spat and cussed and screamed and fought. He watched them press her face to the ground, the whites of her roiling eyes flashing red and blue with each passing of the spinning lights.

  He knew he would never see her again.

  • • •

  Thoughts of that night came to him often—how all he had to do was open his mouth and, in an instant, Jim was dead. It only made him more reluctant to speak. Now he truly was a mute.

  Even when he went to live with the new family
, he kept his mouth shut.

  They were nice, the new ones.

  The man was tall with gray hair and dark brown eyes and didn’t really say much either. For the most part, the man kept to himself. He went to and from work, took hikes in the woods behind the house, and quietly regarded him as a sort of strange alien. He wasn’t mean, though, not like Jim, and that’s all that mattered.

  The woman was the kindest person he’d ever met. Her brown hair was just beginning to show the faintest touches of gray, and the only lines on her face surrounded her warm green eyes. Lines that only existed from smiling and laughing.

  She made him smile for the very first time a few weeks after he’d moved in. A real, true smile. He still remembered how strange it felt.

  She drove him to school, laughed and played with him when he got home, and took him on walks into the woods to tell him all about the different kinds of trees. His favorite time of day was bedtime. Every night she would follow him into his room, help him change into his jammies, and make sure he brushed his teeth. Then, after he crawled into bed, she’d choose a book from the colorful shelf by the door, sit down next to him, and read to him aloud. There were only a handful of stories to choose from, but even still, they were always different. The way she changed her voice for every character and how she had the perfect way of building suspense, or wonder, using only her tone—she’d weave a blanket of words to wrap him up and send him off to sleep every night. He finally knew what it felt like to have a mother.

  A real mother.

  Some nights, though, the other mother would visit him in his sleep. Terrible dreams in which she found him at this new safe place with his new family and dragged him out into the woods. There, she’d pin him down and press burning cigarettes into his face until he woke up screaming. On these nights, his new mother—his real mother—would come to him, wipe the hair gently from his brow, and sing him back to sleep.

  There was nothing in the entire world like her voice. It made him so happy, filled him with a warmth and comfort he’d never even known existed. She never asked him to speak, never tried to force the words from his mouth, but he thought it every night as she held him: He loved her.

  • • •

  The day she was late to pick him up from school still haunted him. He noticed her red, watery eyes the moment he sat down in the car, and the awkward silence on the drive home alarmed him. They pulled into the garage, where he hopped out and made his way in through the door to the kitchen, but he noticed she stayed behind, staring at the empty white wall before her. She started trembling and tears began to pour down her face. He gently closed the door behind him. He felt like he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.

  • • •

  He got off the bus and headed down the road toward the green house he now called home. Since she began treatment, his mom wasn’t able to drive him to and from school anymore, but he didn’t mind the walk. He just wanted her to get better.

  He walked in through the open garage, set his bag on the kitchen table, and saw her standing out on the back porch. The dangling ends of the peach kerchief tied around her bald head fluttered in the wind. Standing there in the light of day, he noticed how frail she’d grown. She didn’t really go outside much anymore, so he went to see if she was all right.

  He slid open the glass door that led from the kitchen to the deck and closed it behind him. She turned around and grabbed his hand, lighting up at the sight of him. Her light had dimmed to a flicker these days.

  She walked with him slowly, hand in hand, down the steps, onto the lawn, and into the trees.

  “Do you know what happens to the trees every winter, my darling?”

  He said nothing. He always said nothing.

  “Well, first all of the color drains from their leaves. One by one, they slowly begin to fall to the ground. Then shortly after that, they die.”

  The clouds loomed low and gray overhead.

  “Do you know what that means, darling? To die?”

  Still, he said nothing.

  “It’s when you fall into a deep sleep and never wake up.”

  The wind rustled the crisp remnants of leaves on the trees as she adjusted the powder-blue cardigan draped over her shoulders.

  “But every spring, as soon as the weather begins to change and the sun begins to shine again, do you know what happens? Little buds begin to grow on the branches of all of the trees and then bloom into beautiful flowers. Pretty soon the trees are covered in brand-new leaves. They’re alive again.”

  A bird chirped in the branches overhead.

  “Now, people, humans, we don’t wake back up like the trees do after we die, but we do leave memories and stories. And every now and then, after we’re gone, the sun finds its way out from behind the clouds and makes them bloom, just like flowers, within our hearts.”

  She held his hand tight.

  “Do you know what makes my mother come to life in my heart? The smell of her apple pie baking in the kitchen. She died when I was a young girl, and for years and years I was so angry at the world for stealing away the one person I loved more than anything. I grew older and eventually began to forget the details of her face, and even the sound of her voice, but one day I found her recipe for apple pie. I picked some apples from the orchard by our old house and followed it exactly. Two hours later the house was filled with a smell that made the clouds part, made the sun shine on my face, and made the flowers bloom. I sat down, and I wept, as every single detail of her face, her voice, and her love for me came back and flowed through me like she was standing there before my very eyes. I thought I’d lost her forever, but in that moment she was brought back to life. Now anytime I feel lost, or afraid, or when I just need to feel my mother’s love once again, I go to the orchards, pick her favorite apples, and bake her apple pie.”

  She squeezed his hand and began humming the tune she sang to him at night when his old mother came back to haunt him.

  • • •

  The nurse walked him down the hallway and into the little room as he tried to catch his breath. School had just ended for the day when he’d felt a pain. A sudden panic so intense that he ran from the lot where the buses parked to the hospital a mile and a half away. He stepped inside, saw his mother lying in the white bed, her skin as white as the walls and sheets surrounding her, and his heart stopped. He sat down, grabbed hold of her hand, and desperately tried to catch his breath.

  He had to tell her something.

  He wet his lips and swallowed.

  “I love you.”

  She looked at him and her eyes rose in a feeble attempt at a smile that her mouth didn’t have the strength to make. A single tear rolled down her cheek as a faint whisper of a breath passed through her colorless lips.

  The machine monitoring her heart let out a long, single, droning note.

  The only mother he’d ever known, would ever know, was dead.

  • • •

  He closed the locker, clicked the combination lock tight, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed down the hall.

  “Hey!”

  He heard the voice, a girl’s, but he kept walking. She wasn’t talking to him.

  “Hey! Wait up!”

  Maybe she was talking to him. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around. He looked down—in his teenage years he’d grown taller than pretty much anyone else at his school—and stared.

  “I know you don’t talk much, but I’m pretty sure you can hear.”

  The words could’ve been insulting, but her grin and bright, gleaming blue eyes gave them an entirely different meaning.

  “So, prom is coming up, and I know this might be weird because we don’t really talk, and I know girls aren’t usually the ones to do this, but it’s the end of the year, the end of all of this, really, so I figured I should just go for it and ask if you . . . wanted to go with me?”

  He blinked in open surprise.

  “To prom? Like, go together?”

  He let t
he words sink in for a moment, smiled, and nodded his head.

  “Awesome! I think it will be really . . . nice.”

  She grinned again, and he couldn’t help but join her.

  “I wasn’t planning on going super all-out with, like, the dress and everything, so please don’t worry about getting fancy. I just think it will be fun to go and dance and hang out, and maybe even talk . . . if I’m lucky.”

  He chuckled under his breath, and she laughed.

  “All right, then, so see you Friday night?”

  He nodded. She began to walk away, but he gently tapped her on the shoulder. She turned back to him and found him with his hand outstretched, holding his phone out for her.

  “Oh yeah, you might need my number, sorry.”

  She laughed again as she typed her number into his phone, her blue eyes flicking from the screen to his face.

  “There you go. See you Friday.”

  • • •

  He opened his eyes as the morning sun shone through the window. The light flitted on his eyelids and kept him from falling back asleep. It was Friday.

  He shot up out of bed and got dressed for school. Everything felt buoyant and effervescent. The day seemed to glow around him. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face, ran his fingers through his sandy brown hair, and wondered what it’d look like if he grew it out long. He smirked in the mirror at the notion, grabbed his bag, and bounded down the stairs.

  When he came into the kitchen, he saw his dad at the table reading the newspaper. His hair and beard had turned white several years earlier. The tall man set the paper down at the sight of him, stood up, and handed him a pale blue envelope. As he pressed it into his hand, his dad placed his other hand upon his shoulder, squeezed, and let out the faintest hint of a smile. The man never said much, but they’d come to understand each other over the years.

  • • •

  He parked the old red pickup, the one that used to be his dad’s, in the school parking lot and picked up the envelope from the passenger seat. He stared at it a moment before he slid his finger underneath the edge at the corner and gently ripped it open. He pulled out the card and read the gold script embossed on the front.

  To a wonderful boy, now a wonderful man: