Little Chicago by Adam Rapp

Author:Adam Rapp
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497643956
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

Hey, Blacky.

Have a good day at school. See you later.

Love, Ma

Or:

Blacky,

Don’t forget to take your vitamins. Good luck on your Math Skills quiz.

Love, Ma

I put on my J.C. Penney’s jean jacket with twice the stitching and walk into the kitchen for a Pop-Tart. I don’t toast them anymore cause I have this problem where I always accidentally burn the corners.

Ma used to make us take two B-complex vitamins every morning. Her dead sister Aunt Diana gave us this huge bottle of them before she died. Last month Ma bought this other kind. It’s called Geritol and it’s for iron-poor blood. I think they’re supposed to be for women only but Ma says it’s okay for me to take them too. They’re orange and shaped like UFOs. I worry that they’ll make me grow breasts and a vagina.

But I have this secret:

I haven’t been taking mine for roughly three weeks. Ever since I choked on a sour apple jawbreaker I have a hard time swallowing.

I was at the Jewel with Ma when I started choking. I wandered like I was an astronaut in space for a minute. When I saw her in the laundry soap aisle I moved toward her.

The weird thing is that it was like time stopped. All I could focus on were the lights above the detergent aisle. There were thousands of bugs trapped in them. You could almost hear them screaming to get out.

The other weird thing is that even though I was choking I could whisper.

Ma seemed so far away it was like a movie.

Ma, I whispered, Ma!

She saw my face and dropped some Tide.

A second later the jawbreaker shot out of my mouth and bounced past her down the aisle and rolled into the meat section.

Ma said my face was blue.

Your face was so blue, Ma said. It was bluer than when you were born.

I couldn’t talk right for the rest of the day.

Since then I’ve mastered the Heimlich maneuver. In addition to that poster in the Health Office we were handed pamphlets during CPR training. It’s easy if you follow the illustrations.

I practice the Heimlich maneuver nearly every time I go to the bathroom. It works best if you use an object with a point or a snout. Lately I’ve been using Ma’s Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo. You have to stick it in your abdomen and thrust upwards. Sometimes this action makes me fart but it works pretty good.

I’ll concern myself with vitamins and minerals when I grow out of the choking phase.

In the kitchen the window is covered with frost.

It looks like crystal spiderwebs. The field behind the house is frosted, too, and then the woods come out of the field all sudden and black.

The abandoned Ford Taurus looks like it’s thinking. The FUCK is still there and now someone has added YOU right next to it. I’m pretty sure Shay was hiding drugs in it for a while.

There was this time I saw her and Flahive crawl out of the back seat and walk back to the house.

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