Reality Boy

Mom said, “It’s really too much to ask of a ten-year-old. I don’t think she should be doing those sorts of chores. Especially the toilet.”

Nanny said, “Cleaning a toilet is certainly not too big a job for a ten-year-old. She’s nearly eleven. She’s got to learn to take care of herself.” Nanny looked over to Real Nanny to make sure she was on track. Thumbs-up.

Mom ignored the nodding director and said, “I disagree. I think cleaning toilets is a teenage job and, for now, she can help Lisi wash dishes and do other things around here to make sure the house is clean. Plus, isn’t toilet cleaner poisonous?”

Nanny rolled her eyes at the camera. “You should have brought this to me when we made the chart, Jill. Tasha agreed to these chores two weeks ago. She should have been doing them.”

“I told her not to,” Mom answered, crossing her arms.

Then Tasha said, “It’s his fault!” and she pointed to me.

I felt my body go numb. I remember it. I remember feeling numb and frightened at what she was going to say next. Because I knew that no matter what she said, my circus dreams were over.

“Oh?” Nanny said, hand on her hip, already in punishment mode. Camera one zoomed in. “How’s that?”

“I hate the smell of bathrooms!” She burst into fake tears. “I can’t even go into the bathroom at school if someone pooped in it because it reminds me of him! He’s ruining my life!”

Nanny cocked her head to the right. “You can’t clean bathrooms because you don’t like the smell of poop?”

Tasha nodded because Mom nodded. Real Nanny glared at Tasha.

“And she told you this when?” Nanny asked Mom.

“This morning,” Mom said. “The poor thing.”

Nanny looked back at Tasha. Then she looked at Real Nanny, who was still glaring.

Fake Nanny clapped her hands together and swished her hair as if she was in a shampoo commercial. “Lisi, you lose two hours of screens this week, for a total of five hours, right, love? Next week, do bett-ah and you can have all seven hours.”

Lisi smiled and nodded. Not sure why. Seven hours of screens per week was a stupid rule. Made us all have to talk to one another more… or find new ways to avoid one another.

Nanny looked at me next. “Gerald, you’ve just earned back your little comput-ah.” My Game Boy. I hadn’t seen it in a month. “And since you did every one of your chores for a whole two weeks, you get to go to your circus with Lisi and you can also have whatever you put in your reward box. Go get it, love.”

I ran to my reward box and pulled out the piece of paper on which I’d scrawled Ise Creem. I handed it to her.

“Oh, ice cream! I do love ice cream myself. What’s your favorite flavor?”

“Strawberry,” I said.

“Brilliant. You go and sit on the couch while I deal with your sist-ah.”

She looked at Tasha and pursed her lips. Mom stood close enough for Tasha to grab and sob into if she had to. “Tasha,” Nanny said, “while I’m very sympathetic to your newly realized fear of the smell of poop, I must point out that you didn’t do one single chore on your chart—not even the ones that had nothing to do with the bathroom—so you lose all screens for a week. No computer. No TV. No video games.” Tasha clung to Mom then, as if someone had just hit her.

“Why do I get punished because he craps everywhere?” Tasha sobbed.

Nanny turned to Mom. “Has Gerald been pooping again?”

“He hasn’t done it since my—uh—shoes,” Mom answered.

That’s right. And no holes in walls, either. I wished someone would say that.

Nanny looked back at Tasha and continued. “We can make a new chart with different chores on it for you, and this time, if we put something on there that disturbs you, you have to speak up, all right?”

Tasha glared at me, then asked Mom, who looked scared, “How is this fair?”

“It’s fair because you’re learning to work as a family,” Nanny said.

“Those charts are stupid,” Tasha answered.

“Don’t say ‘stupid,’ ” I yelled from the couch. “You’re not allowed to say ‘stupid.’ ”

“Oh, shut up, you little crapper!” Tasha screamed. “I hope you choke on your stupid ice cream!” She ran to her room and locked the door.

After the crew left, Mom asked Dad to take me out for ice cream. We went to Blue Marsh Dairy and I got a big cone of strawberry and Dad talked on his cell phone to a client about a bi-level he was trying to sell. Then he joined me in eating my cone because I couldn’t eat it all.

He said, “I’m proud of you, son.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Then we went back home and Tasha was sitting on the couch eating ice cream out of a bowl and watching TV.

I said, “Hey! I thought she wasn’t allowed!”

Mom tried to say something from the kitchen, where she was making dinner, but Tasha talked over her and said, “Shut up, you little troll. You’re the problem child. Not me.”

So I went upstairs and I did two things.

I crapped in Tasha’s pink-sheeted bed—right at the bottom, where her feet would hit it. After I was done, I pulled up the covers and sat on it, so it would be a big, nasty, sticky mess.

Lisi and I never got to go to the circus.

12

LET’S GET THIS out in the open: Lisi doesn’t call home because Mom tried to talk her out of college. Not specifically, mind you, but in her own ignore-the-middle-child kind of way. She never urged Lisi to get college catalogs, never bought her SAT prep books. The guidance counselor even called her from school one day and asked why Lisi hadn’t made college plans yet. Maybe the guidance counselor heard it in my mother’s voice—the complete lack of giveashit—because after he talked to her, he started to get Lisi applications and interviews. After Lisi started getting offers from colleges, Mom said two things.

“College is such a hard place to fit in” and “Look at what happened to your sister.”

Lisi doesn’t call home even though she knows I need to talk to her.

Lisi is probably too stoned to care.

She proved Mom wrong and went to college.

I would very much like to follow her lead—not only in getting the hell out of here but also in going to college, maybe… though that’s going to be hard, considering SPED class and all this trouble I get into. Mom and Dad could have helped me, but instead Mom just kept meeting with school officials with that same face she gave to Nanny. What can I do with this boy?