If I’d had any reservations about going to live with Larry and Charlotte Cushman and their son Butchie, they faded within moments after leaving the Juvenile Hall parking lot. I sat alone in the back seat of their black ‘61 Ford Galaxy, while Larry drove us to my new home in La Mesa. Butchie, I noticed, wasn’t with us, and when I cautiously asked where he was, Charlotte said he’d be staying with his grandmother for a few days while I got used to being in a new family. I said “Oh,” and tried to sound disappointed, but I was secretly glad. Larry said something about being hungry, so we stopped at a small Mexican restaurant in downtown La Mesa, where they let me order whatever I wanted from the menu.
While I gorged on tacos and enchiladas, I watched intently these two handsome strangers, who were married and yet seemed to genuinely like each other. They seemed as close to perfect as any people I’d ever seen, right up there with Laura and Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Larry was handsome; Charlotte was beautiful. They smelled good. They wore nice clothes that were neat and clean. Money jingled in Larry’s pockets.
I hardly thought about Mama.
After dinner, Larry drove us to the house on Olive Street. Again, I was nearly overwhelmed by the warmth I felt when I stepped over the threshold and Charlotte smiled at me and said, “Welcome to your new home, Billy.” She hugged me, and I nearly burst into tears. It felt so good to be held by her.
Someone turned on the TV, though apparently more for background noise than anything else, and we sat in the living room and talked. Larry lit a cigarette and told me a little of what it was like to be a policeman. “You have to fight a lot,” he said seriously. “And you meet a lot a bad people, most of them coons and wetbacks.” Charlotte balanced her own cigarette between two petite fingers and asked me about my family, my sisters, and when I’d seen Daddy last. I told them stories about San Francisco and Ocean Beach, about Karen and Debbie, Mama and Daddy. It felt strange, talking about my own family. They were like characters from a movie I’d seen a long, long time ago, so far from me, from this.
After awhile, Charlotte took me by the hand and gave me a little tour around the tiny house, showed me where my new bed would be, once it was delivered from Montgomery Ward. I was going to share a room with Butchie. I looked around his bedroom. There were pictures of clowns and horses hanging on the walls, stuffed animals everywhere, and a closet bursting with clothes and a huge wood chest overflowing with every sort of toy. I thought about how lucky Butchie was. How lucky, all of a sudden, I was.
Back in the living room, Charlotte made up the couch for me to sleep on. While she was working, we saw an ad on TV for a movie coming out soon, supposedly making all the headlines, called “Poor White Trash”. The ad showed some people sitting in a courtroom who wanted the film banned because it was dirty.
“I know what that is,” I said. As soon as I’d spoken, I wished I hadn’t. It had been more of a thought, really, but I’d found it so easy to talk to them, the words just sort of tumbled from my mouth.
“What?” said Larry.
“White trash,” I said. “I know what it is. I know why they don’t want it in theaters.”
“Oh?” said Larry. “What is it?”
Something clicked in my head, and I was back in San Francisco, more than two years earlier. Daddy was drunk, naked, sitting on top of me in our bed, thumping me on my belly with his hard dick. I felt the stinging of his dick on my belly. I heard his gnarled voice, calling out that he loved me, loved me, loved me. I felt his sticky cum spreading over me like thick, warm cream. That was the ‘white trash’ I was thinking of: my father’s cum.
I looked at Larry, then at Charlotte. They watched me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. I felt my face growing hot. I couldn’t think of telling them—these perfect, clean people—the dirty things I knew, things that couldn’t possibly exist in this shiny new world. I shook my head, as if to shake the sickening image from my brain, tried to think of something, anything else. But it kept coming back. My perfect world seemed ready to melt away, the way my nightly dreams often did after awakening in the morning. I stared at the floor.
“Billy?” said Charlotte, looking concerned. “What’s wrong?” She moved from her chair and sat next to me on the couch, and put an arm around my shoulder.
Her warm touch, mixed with the genuine care in her voice, settled over me like a soft, comforting blanket. I leaned into her, and pulled the blanket tight around me. The image of my father faded, and then disappeared.
“Billy?” Charlotte said again.
“I—can’t tell you,” I murmured. “I just know, that’s all.”
Charlotte and Larry exchanged puzzled glances, and shrugged.
We watched The Tonight Show until midnight. The big feature seemed to be a man dressed like a bird, perched in a large cage that hung from the studio ceiling. Then Larry turned off the TV and told me it was time to go to sleep, and tucked me in on the couch. Charlotte said I could stay in bed as late the next day as I wanted. Then she kissed me on the forehead and stroked my hair, and something like a cool breath tickled my groin. “We’re so glad you’re here, Billy,” she said softly. Larry tousled my hair playfully and said “Sleep tight, there, young man.” Then they turned out the lamp and went to their bedroom and closed the door.
I lay there for several minutes before I slept, listening to their murmuring from behind their door. Occasionally, I heard them laugh, and it made me smile. Something warm and pleasant began growing in my chest until I wanted to cry out, I was so happy.
The next morning Charlotte cooked us a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon and Rice Krispies and toast, with butter (which, at first, I didn’t like: I was too used to margarine) and strawberry jam. She told me I could eat all I wanted, and I ended up stuffing myself, even though I’d been eating relatively well in the Hall for the past several weeks. There was something different about this place, the Cushman household. I couldn’t seem to get enough of it.
I gobbled up every bit of information I could about Larry and Charlotte. I learned they’d both had gone to Helix High School in La Mesa, that they’d both graduated in 1958. Charlotte played the accordion; Larry ran track and played baseball. Larry had been a Star Scout when he was younger. He’d also been one of the first two police officers to graduate from the newly-created San Diego Police Academy. He had a large collection of rifles and pistols, which he kept locked up in a fancy, carved wood gun rack that hung on the wall in the living room. Larry showed them to me, let me hold them, and, again, promised that he’d teach me to shoot them. “One day,” he said, enticingly, “we’ll get you a rifle of your own.”
After breakfast, we drove down to the Sears and Roebuck in Hillcrest to buy me some clothes, since all I had were the ones I’d worn home from the Hall. Larry busied himself in the tool department, while Charlotte picked out for me two new pairs of jeans, some PF Flyers tennis shoes, shirts, socks, underwear. I would get more, she told me, before I started school again next week, after Larry got his check from the Police Department on Friday. She didn’t want me to be embarrassed, she said, by wearing shabby-looking clothes. Kids were unkind enough to each other, without a handicap like that.
Butchie came back home early the following Saturday morning, while Larry was out running errands. It was an event I had been dreading all week. In the six days since Charlotte and Larry had first brought me to their home, I’d been the one and only kid in the house. Now, the thought of sharing their affections—especially Charlotte’s—put a strange, deep ache in my stomach. I watched through the front window as Charlotte pranced smiling out the front door toward the beat-up gray sedan that had pulled up alongside the curb in front. A stern-looking woman with gray-black hair, whom I assumed was Charlotte’s mother, was already helping little Butchie out of the car. Charlotte bent down and gathered up her son in a tight bear hug and stroked his head and covered his face with kisses. “How’s my little boy?” she asked. Butchie pointed inside the car and said something I couldn’t make out, and Charlotte and the older woman both laughed as if he’d just uttered the cutest, wittiest thing in the entire world. Charlotte gave him another big hug and a kiss. I couldn’t help thinking for a brief moment how sad she would be if Butchie drowned in the bathtub or was hit by a car.
They walked toward the house, and I got up off the couch because I knew I was going to have to say hello to everyone. Then Butchie saw me. He squealed and pointed at me through the window. He broke away from the women and waddled down the short walkway to the porch and yanked the screen door open so hard it slammed against the opposite wall. “Butchie, be careful!” Charlotte called sharply. Butchie ignored her. He stormed into the living room, and ran squealing over to me and threw his arms tightly around my waist.
Butch’s love-attack took me completely by surprise, given how shy he’d seemed the first time we met. We stood there for a few awkward seconds, until something in me finally softened and I put my own arms around him. “Hi,” I said, still feeling tentative about all of this. “How are you, Butchie?”
“Good, good!” he said, still holding onto me.
“Okay, Butch,” Charlotte said, coming into the room with the other woman, “you can let go.” Butchie ignored her again, and held on just as tightly, as if he were afraid I might be leaving. “Butch,” Charlotte said again, more insistently. Butch relaxed a little then, but hovered next to me like a shadow. “That’s a good boy,” said Charlotte. “Remember what we said about not making Billy feel uncomfortable?”
“Uh-huh,” Butchie said, hanging his head slightly.
The older woman clucked her tongue. “Well,” she said, her voice a huskier, deeper version of Charlotte’s. “Butch sure seems excited about your new arrival.”
Butchie beamed at her. “Bi-wee ma new butter!”
“That’s right, Butch,” Charlotte said. “Billy is your new brother.” She smiled, watching Butch and me together. I basked in that smile. Then she looked as if she’d suddenly remembered something important. She turned and touched the older woman’s arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Where are my manners? Billy, this is my mother, Pat.”
“Pat Heskett,” said the woman to me, brusquely, holding out her hand. “I’ve heard quite a lot about you, Billy.” There was something distant about her, something less than friendly behind her dark eyes. My mind ran amok with the things Larry and Charlotte must have told her. Still, I held my hand out to her and she shook it, two short pumps, and then let it go.
We stood there for a moment. Charlotte cleared her throat. “Butchie, why don’t you take Billy to your room and show him some of your toys?” she said.
“Yeah!” Butchie said to me, pulling on my arm. “Toys! Toys!”
I was grateful for her suggestion, boring though it might be to play with someone nearly seven years younger than me: the unpleasant prospect of sitting with Pat, even with Charlotte there, had already started to gnaw at my stomach.
We went to Butchie’s bedroom. Butchie opened his toy chest and pulled out his new Mr. Machine, which he’d got for his birthday back in October. He wound it up, and we watched it—a mechanical man with a top hat and swinging arms—marching around the floor for a few minutes. Butchie was entranced, and probably could have played with it for hours without stopping. It got pretty boring for me, pretty fast. “What else do you have?” I asked him.
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wanna play armymen?” he said. He reached in back of the closet and dragged out a cardboard box containing the biggest set of plastic army men I’d ever seen, complete with miniature tanks and guns and jeeps—even plastic mountains. I found myself suddenly revived. We divvied up the men and equipment, and spent the next hour or so blowing up each other’s armies to smithereens with alphabet blocks we imagined were atomic bombs. I actually had fun.
At last, Charlotte and Pat came to the room and told us Pat was leaving. Pat squeezed my hand and told me with a toothy smile it was such a pleasure meeting me, and that she’d happened to overhear Butch and me playing, and was impressed with how well we seemed to get along.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“You’re welcome, dear,” she said. She peered down at Butch, who was still playing. Something dark gathered in her face, though she was still smiling. “Just remember,” she said seriously, “Butchie is a very little boy. A very impressionable little boy. He’s not big and strong like you are. He hasn’t done a lot of the things you have.” She paused. “If you know what I mean.”
I looked at her, catching the special way she said the word done, knowing exactly what she meant, though she hadn’t exactly said it. A warm flush came into my face. But I didn’t say anything. We stood there for a few long seconds, with me trying not to wither beneath her obvious glare.
“Mother, please,” Charlotte said. She fidgeted behind Pat and struggled to keep a smile on her own face.
“Well, Charlotte, he’s my baby’s baby,” Pat said, smiling down at Butch. She looked at Charlotte and pinched her cheek, the way she would if Charlotte really were still a baby. “I’m just making sure—I mean, it’s so easy for a little boy to be hurt.”
“Butchie will be fine,” Charlotte said.
Pat smiled even more widely at her daughter. “Yes, yes, of course he will,” she said, waving her hand in the air dismissively. “Don’t mind me. I’m just an old, overprotective grandmother.” She kissed Charlotte on the lips and said good-bye, then did the same with Butchie.
“Bye-bye, Gamma Pat!” Butchie said.
We followed her into the living room. “Good-bye, dears,” she said again, waving a wrinkled hand in the air as she opened the door and walked out.
We waited in the doorway while Pat got into her car and started it up, then drove slowly away. Charlotte had her arms tightly folded, and puffed absently on her cigarette. She looked at me apologetically. “My mother’s a little stiff, at first,” she said. “But she’s really a sweetheart. Once you get to know her.”
Butch immediately started tugging on my shirt, wanting me to go back and play army some more. But now that Pat was gone, I wanted to stay out here with Charlotte. “Later,” I said to him.
“No, now!” he said, whining, tugging at me.
Charlotte spit a piece of tobacco from her tongue and glared at Butchie. “Butch,” she said wearily, “you and I have already talked about this. You need to be patient while Billy gets used to being here. This is all very new to him. Do you understand?”
“No!” said Butchie, shaking his head defiantly.
“Yes, you do,” said Charlotte. She held her arms out toward him. “Come here,” she said. Reluctantly, Butchie let go of my shirt and, pouting, stepped slowly into her arms. Charlotte pulled him in, against her legs, and rubbed his back. “This is new for all of us,” she said. “Billy. You. Me. Your Dad. Even Grandma Pat. We all of us need to be patient.”
Butchie settled down, finally, and Charlotte got us busy the rest of the morning cleaning up the mess Butchie and I had made in his bedroom. Then we helped rearrange the furniture to make room for my new bed and chest of drawers, which were to be delivered later that day.
Larry arrived back home in time for lunch. Charlotte made us bologna sandwiches and pickles and potato salad. Then Larry went out into the balmy December afternoon and mowed the huge back yard lawn. I watched him from the kitchen window, the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass and acrid power-mower exhaust mingling together to make an oddly satisfying perfume. Afterward, Larry let Butchie and me do a little of the edging and raking. Meanwhile, Charlotte had found a couple of old cotton bed spreads for Butchie and me to use, which she washed and dyed a bright red. By dinner time, I had a new bed, complete with a new-looking bed spread that matched Butchie’s exactly. I had a new chest of drawers that held new, clean clothes in it. And hanging in the closet, I had a small collection of new, freshly-ironed shirts and pants, with the promise of more to come.
It wasn’t just Butchie’s room anymore. It was our room. I was part of the family.
I was home.