Only Child(47)
Daddy put me down on the mattress, but his arms stayed around me tight. I stopped yelling and kicking and I started crying, and then the crying made my mad feeling wash away.
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Trick or Treat
“TRICK OR TREAT, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!”
I sat on the stairs in the dark and I heard laughing and shouting outside. Halloween is my favorite holiday—well, maybe Christmas is the number one favorite, but Halloween is definitely number two. I love going trick-or-treating and we get new costumes every year, and all year long I think about what I should be on the next Halloween, but Mommy doesn’t buy the costumes until right before because I change my mind too many times.
This year we were skipping Halloween. No new costume and no trick-or-treating. Daddy said we could go for a little while, but I didn’t want to go as Iron Man again, two years in a row, plus there was a big rip in the pants. I was going to go as Luke Skywalker this year. That was going to be my final decision.
A few times already kids came to our front door and rang the doorbell even though our porch light was turned off and they should know that’s a sign that we weren’t giving out candy. And our house wasn’t even decorated for Halloween this time, so that’s another sign.
I had a bowl of Halloween candy on the step next to me that Mimi brought over earlier. At first, when the trick-or-treating started, I sat on the stairs with Daddy, and when the doorbell rang for the first time, we went to open the door.
“Happy Halloweeeen!” Some little kids stood right in front of me and yelled too loud, and their moms smiled big smiles behind them. The mad feeling came back in my belly because it wasn’t a “Happy Halloweeeen,” and I didn’t want to look at how excited they all were.
“Here, only take one,” I said to the little kids in kind of a mean way, and I shoved the candy bowl at them. Their moms’ big smiles went away, and when they left Daddy said, “We don’t have to do this, you know,” so we decided to turn off all the lights inside the house, too. Daddy sat on the stairs with me for a little while longer and then went back in his office.
“Trick or treat!” someone yelled right outside our door. I went upstairs and into the hideout. I sat down on the sleeping bag and pointed Buzz’s light circle on the picture of me and Andy.
“Happy stupid Halloween,” I said to Andy.
Last year, at the end of Halloween, there was fighting. Daddy didn’t come trick-or-treating because he had to stay at work late, so Mommy went with me and Andy before it started to get dark. Mommy had the same purple witch hat on that she always wears on Halloween, and Andy went as a zombie with a scary mask.
After the second house we bumped into James and some other kids from school. They were by themselves with no grown-ups, and they were going to go all the way down Erickson Road to go trick-or-treating there. Andy begged Mommy to let him go with them. Ricky and his mom bumped into us, too, and then Ricky wanted to go with the boys like Andy. Mommy said no, we should all go as a family, but then Ricky’s mom said yes to Ricky, and that they were probably too old to go with their moms, so Mommy let Andy go, too. Mommy looked very mad after that.
Andy didn’t come home until after it was really dark outside and me and Mommy were about to go back out to look for him. “Wait ’til you see all the stuff I got!” he said when he came running in, and he didn’t notice that Mommy was mad and she just turned around and went in the kitchen to make dinner.
We poured out our bags on the living room carpet to see all the things we got. “Keep your pile on that side of the rug so we don’t mix up our stashes,” Andy said, and he pushed his pile of candy farther away from mine. His pile was huge, like double mine, because he was out a lot longer than me, and also because he always takes more than one candy, and you’re not supposed to do that.
“Awesome, I got a bunch of big M&M’s packs! One, two, three…like ten of them and a ton of small ones!” Andy said. M&M’s are his favorite candy. I’m not allowed to have them because they could have peanuts. Andy started to make smaller piles around himself with all the different types of candy he got—M&M’s, Tootsie Rolls, Skittles, Kit Kats…He kept eating the small candy bars, the ones that say “fun size,” and they’re so little you can eat them with two bites. He put the wrappers in his pocket so that Mommy wouldn’t notice.
I started piling up my candy, too. “Can I have this one?” I held up a round ball that had an eyeball on it, but it didn’t say what type of candy was inside. Andy came over and took it from me. “I don’t know what this one is. So don’t eat it,” he said, and he threw the eyeball over on his pile. “This you definitely can’t have. And that one and this one…” Andy started grabbing different candies from my stash.
“Hey, stop!” I yelled. “Those are mine. Don’t take all of mine!”
“ANDY!” a voice yelled behind us. It was Daddy and he scared us because we didn’t hear him come home from work. “Let go of his goddamn candy!” Daddy came over and grabbed Andy’s arm and pulled him up hard. Andy dropped the candies he was holding.
“What the hell are you doing? Look at your massive pile and look at your brother’s. Why are you stealing his?”
“I wasn’t stealing his—,” Andy started to say back, but Daddy got more mad because Andy was back-talking. He told Andy to stop lying, and he started to drag him out of the room by his arm.