The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,114

off, the kangaroo came alive and punched Mr. Goldman right in the eye. It took off jumping, and all three of them ran after it, but they couldn’t catch it. They’d left the keys to the jeep in the pocket of the jacket they put on the kangaroo, so they had to walk forever, and when they finally got to a police station, the Australian police just sat around and laughed.

“No way,” I say, trying to imagine this, Mr. Goldman, his tie flipped over his shoulder, running after a kangaroo wearing sunglasses and a jacket. “He made that up.”

“He showed me the picture! You can see the kangaroo, right before it woke up!” We’re both laughing now. If there’s a picture, then maybe it really happened. It’s a great story, if it’s true.

“You know what Deena said when I told her that story?” Travis asks. “She said, ‘What country is Australia in?’”

We laugh harder, Travis slapping his forehead with his fingers. But even while I am laughing, I think of Deena, what her face would look like if she could hear us, if she were on the bus instead of sick at home watching MTV, her large brown eyes widening with hurt.

But I deserve to be able to laugh a little, after all she has gotten, and all I have not.

Verranna Hinckle wants my mother to get Samuel a wheelchair as soon as possible, preferably a lightweight one. She says one of his legs is very strong, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to pull himself around.

My mother has found a wheelchair just like this in a catalog. She tore out the page and stuck it to the freezer with a magnet shaped like a banana. It’s been up there for a month, just a picture, too expensive to buy. Eileen says if my mother really wants the wheelchair, all she has to do is write a letter to any church and tell them she needs a wheelchair for Samuel, and they’ll come through for her, lickety-split. That’s what churches do.

But my mother says no way. She’s not about to write out some sob story and make us sound pathetic.

“We are pathetic,” I remind her. It’s just a joke, but the look on her face makes me wish I hadn’t said anything.

The next week, Eileen brings the same wheelchair from the catalog over to our house, a red bow tied to one of the wheels, a card taped to the seat:

To Tina, Evelyn, and little Sam,

You are in our hearts.

Love,

The First Christian Church, Wichita, Kansas

My mother eyes the wheelchair with suspicion, reaching forward to touch its shiny aluminum wheels. “No strings?” she asks.

“No strings, honey,” Eileen says. “They’re just being nice.”

My mother smiles, trying to hide it. She gives Eileen a peck on the cheek.

After a few days of tantrums and tipovers, Samuel learns to get around in the wheelchair. He uses his good leg to scoot himself forward and then plants his heel in the carpet to pull the rest of his body along, like a slow-moving hermit crab dragging its shell. He likes to sit by windows, we notice. We didn’t know that, before he had the chair.

The new wheelchair makes life both easier and more difficult for my mother. She does not have to carry him everywhere now, which is good. But he can move around quickly, get himself into trouble. He pushes himself into walls, and, not understanding how to back up, just keeps pushing, screaming to himself, his face pressed against the plaster. He inches into the kitchen when my mother is cooking, reaching up behind her at the handles of pots on the stove.

So she has tied a little bell to the side of his wheelchair, to better track his comings and goings. It works well, but it also encourages the cats to stalk him. They crouch like lions under the sofa, waiting for him to wheel by, their eyes wide, their tails twitching.

“Bad kitties!” my mother yells, swinging a dish towel at them. “Leave him alone!” They hiss and scatter, looking for new hiding places so they can do it again.

Verranna Hinckle says that my mother is doing an excellent job, and that Samuel is making, relatively speaking, substantial improvements. She tells my mother to keep her hand over Samuel’s whenever she is doing something for him—feeding him, brushing his teeth, washing his hair, pulling on his diaper, changing his clothes—so he participates in his self-care. Agency, Verranna Hinckle calls it.