Free Little Boy by Anthony Prato

watching your father unbuckle his
belt—hearing the clank of the brass and the rip of the leather—was
like having a cocked revolver put to your head. The sounds hurt
more than the leather. Nevertheless, Mom, you always accused Daddy
of going soft on me. God, I despised you for wanting to see me
punished more severely. And I always wanted to say or do something
that made you rethink your behavior and grasp how viciously you
treated us all. But nothing ever got through to you, sober or
otherwise.
    ***
    As I thought about all this, overlay images
of Maria, and the life we could spend together if I only could
forget my own past. I kept watching the poster like it was a movie,
and then switched back to the photo. First one, then the other, and
then back again. I smoked a few more cigarettes, and cried one more
tear for you, Dad.
     
    I thought a lot that night. I thought about
this guy named Richard that I worked with in an office the summer
before. Richard was a short little man with thick black glasses and
a big shaggy beard. He was a real slob, even more of a slob than my
friend Kyle. Hell, he practically never had his shirt tucked in.
And, even though he never wore a tie, he always kept his shirt
buttoned up to the top. Fucking weird. Worse, sometimes he’d tuck
the front part of his shirt into his underwear and then his
belt-less pants would fall a few inches, displaying an elastic band
that read Hanes . He was thirty-five, unmarried, and living
with his mother when we met. He hadn’t shaved his beard for almost
twenty years, and he hadn’t left the island of Manhattan since he
was eighteen. I once asked him why he hadn’t gotten married, and he
responded: “Because I don’t want to lose my freedom.” What
freedom? I thought.
     
    I used to pick on this guy non-stop. It’s not
like I made him cry or anything; he always knew that I was just
busting his balls. I started little arguments with him about
everything. I argued for everything that he was against. He was one
of those orthodox Jews who justified moral righteousness by quoting
Biblical passages.
     
    I also busted his balls every time he asked
me for help. At least once daily, he'd approach me timidly and say
something like, "A.J., can you show me how to use the photocopy
machine?" or "Please help me turn on my computer. I forgot how." My
response was always the same: "You've been here fifteen years and
you can't operate the copier? Yeah, right!" I thought he was trying
to unload his work on me, the bastard.
     
    Despite these exchanges, we were friends in
the office, and he knew I never meant any harm. But one day, about
halfway through the summer, my supervisor pulled me aside and said
something like, “Don’t be so hard on Richard. He’s retarded ,
you know.” At first I thought this was funny, because everyone knew
that Richard was more than a little retarded. But then I noticed
the somber look on my supervisor's face, and suddenly it all made
sense. Richard had been working at the same office job for almost
fifteen years; he lived with his Mom; he acted like a weirdo; he
dressed like a hobo with bad taste. It hit me: Shit! I've been
making fun of a retarded guy! A guy with actual Down’s
Syndrome! My stomach sank like the Titanic and my mouth went
dry. I couldn’t believe that I’d been making fun of a real retarded
guy all along. Poor Richard! I thought. I had been dissing
the weakest person available. I don't think I spoke to him once
after I found out what he was.
     
    I thought about all this stuff for a while.
Finally, after an hour or so, I regained my composure.
     
    I smoked a few more cigarettes, wrote about
the dance in my journal, and I fell asleep right there in my
clothes and sneakers. Lucky it was a Friday night, because I didn’t
wake up until around noon the following day.
    ***
    At school, two days later, I told all of my
friends about what happened at the dance. The response was what I
expected: Kyle asked, “Did you bang her?”