You might make him sick.
She cursed him. She told him to go to hell. She spat bloody phlegm at him. He stood in the doorway, hands nervously fiddling in his pockets, and the cake wrapper crackled, the plastic damaged by the heat.
Where have you been?
Looking for food.
She gagged. Don’t say that word!
Watching him with bright red, bloody eyes.
Why were you looking for food? You don’t need any food. You’re the most disgusting piece of pig lard I’ve ever seen. You could live till winter on just your belly fat.
He didn’t say anything. He knew it was the plague talking, not his mother. His mother loved him. When the teasing at school got bad, she went to the principal and said she would file a lawsuit if the bullying didn’t stop.
What’s that noise? What’s that horrible noise?
He told her he didn’t hear anything. She got very angry. She started to curse again and bloody spittle spattered on the headboard.
It’s coming from you. What are you playing with in your pocket?
There was nothing he could do. He had to show her. He pulled out the cake and she screamed for him to put it away and never take it out again. No wonder he was so fat. No wonder his baby brother was starving while he ate cakes and candies and all the mac and cheese. What sort of monster was he that he ate all his baby brother’s mac and cheese?
He tried to defend himself. But every time he started talking, she screamed at him to shut up, shut up, shut UP. His voice made her sick. He made her sick. He did it. He did something to her husband and he did something to his baby brother and he did something to her, made her sick, poisoned her, he was poisoning her.
And every time he tried to speak, she screamed at him. Shut up, shut up, shut UP.
She died two days later.
He wrapped her in a clean sheet and carried her body into the backyard. He doused the body with his father’s charcoal lighter fluid and set it on fire. He burned his mother’s body and all the bedding, too. He waited another week for his baby brother to come home, but he never did. He searched for him—and for food. He found food, but not his brother. He stopped calling for him. He stopped talking altogether. He shut up.
Six weeks later, he was walking down a highway dotted with stalled-out cars and wrecks of cars and trucks and motorcycles when he saw black smoke in the distance and, after a few minutes, the source of the smoke, a yellow school bus full of children. There were soldiers on the bus and the soldiers asked his name and where he was from and how old he was, and later he remembered nervously stuffing his hands in his pockets and finding the old piece of cake, still in its wrapper.
Pig lard. Live till winter on your belly fat.
What’s the matter, kid? Can’t you talk?
His drill sergeant heard the story of how he came to camp with nothing but the clothes on his back and a piece of cake in his pocket. Before he heard the story, the drill sergeant called him Fatboy. After he heard the story, the drill sergeant renamed him Poundcake.
I like you, Poundcake. I like the fact that you’re a born shooter. I bet you popped out of your momma with a gun in one hand and a doughnut in the other. I like the fact that you got the looks of Elmer Fudd and the goddamned heart of Mufasa. And I especially like the fact that you don’t talk. Nobody knows where you’re from, where you’ve been, what you think, how you feel. Hell, I don’t know and I don’t give a shit, and you shouldn’t, either. You’re a mute-assed, stone-cold killer from the heart of darkness with a heart to match, aren’t you, Private Poundcake?
He wasn’t.