Kindness for Weakness by Shawn Goodman Page B

take my time at Morton.
    Crupier cranks Bobby’s arms even harder so they stick out behind him, looking all disconnected and jerky, puppetlike. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so grotesque, this small, foulmouthed marionette being jerked around by big men in gray and black uniforms.
    Then there’s a crack. It’s so distinct—the Morton equivalent of a stick breaking over someone’s knee. Bobby opens his big mouth and lets out the most piercing animal scream I’ve ever heard. I look at Tony, who is tapping his desk repeatedly with his balled-up fist. He refuses to meet my eyes. Freddie, too, avoids my gaze and instead focuses on the graffiti carved into his desktop.
    Out of the corner of my eye I see Oskar, whose desk is behind Freddie’s. He’s standing up, chewing madly on his ragged fingernails. He takes his hand out of his mouth and points at the tangle of Bobby and the two guards. In a soft monotone, almost a whisper, he says, “Stop.” And then, just as abruptly, he sits back in his chair and resumes chewing his nails.
    Pike hits Crupier’s shoulder and says, “Hey, Croop, man, let go. I think you broke his fucking arm.”
    Crupier examines the weird bend in Bobby’s arm. Then he picks up his radio like it’s some kind of strange object put there by someone else, and pushes the pin, which is what the guards call the small orange emergency button. Freddie says that if you push the pin, a bunch of guards will come running and clean house. Pike gets off Bobby’s legs and helps him sit up.
    “You broke my arm,” Bobby sobs. “And I ain’t done nothing except talk trash.”
    Then he looks down at his bent, hanging limb, and gags like he is going to throw up all over the front of his bright red polo shirt. A troop of guards arrive and take him away.

24
    At night Freddie knocks three times on the heater vent. “Hey, man, how come you’re so quiet?”
    “Thinking about Bobby.”
    “Yeah, that shit’s fucked up.”
    “They can break someone’s arm like that?”
    “They
did
, didn’t they?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, there you go.”
    It’s hard to believe I’m in a place where kids get their bones broken by adults in uniforms. I want to go home. Even if home is a place where I sleep on the couch and pretend not to hear the sounds of Ron doing sick shit to my mother behind their bedroom door. Even if home is a place with an older brother I can’t trust.
    Freddie is still talking. “Bobby’s got to go to another unit now.”
    “Why?”
    “ ’Cause Crupier can’t be around him until he’s cleared for child abuse,” he says.
    “You mean Crupier won’t get fired?”
    Freddie laughs. “Hell, no, he ain’t gonna get fired. They gotta do an investigation any time a kid gets hurt. But Morton investigates itself. And nobody wants to work here, so they always short staff, which is why they gonna write up a report to say that Bobby was fightin’ and broke his own arm.”
    I don’t want to talk about Morton anymore, so I ask Freddie to change the subject.
    “What do you want to talk about?” he says.
    “Anything. What kind of stuff do you do at home?”
    “I like to dress up and go shoplifting in Manhattan. SoHo and the Upper East Side.”
    “What?”
    “You heard me. That’s where the best stores are. Bloomingdale’s and Barneys. Shit like that.”
    “Why get dressed up?”
    “Because people treat you different when you look sharp,” he says. “Most of the fools in here dress like thugs. Wearing they colors and shit. And they wonder why cops hassle them. They should carry a sign that says ‘Arrest My Ass.’ What’s it like where you live?”
    “Not so good,” I say. “My father left when I was little.”
    “Man, everybody’s father left,” Freddie says.
    I want to tell him more, about how my mother stopped caring. I want to tell him about Louis, how he moved out and didn’t take me with him. And then left me a second time when I got busted. But I say nothing, because my hand