Read Online Naked, on the Edge by Elizabeth Massie - Free Book Online Page A

pick him up. Most days, however, he would wet his pants or have a bowel movement and the counselors had no choice but to send him home.
    He was a sick boy. He was sick like his mother, and he needed to be home with her. If she died when he was at school, he would never forgive himself.
    Elliott looked at Mrs. Anderson. Mrs. Anderson looked at Elliott. She said, "Are your parents treating you all right, Elliott? How are you getting along with them?"
    "Fine."
    "Anything you'd like to talk about?"
    "No. We're getting along okay."
    She rolled this around on her face a little then let it go. "How about your math, did you finish the page of fractions?"
    "I finished some of it."
    "Why not all of it, Elliott?"
    "I didn't feel good."
    "And your civics?"
    "I didn't have civics."
    "Yes, you had a chapter to review. We were having a quiz today."
    Elliott said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot."
    "Get out your books," said Mrs. Anderson.
    They spent the next two hours working through civics, pre-algebra, and English. Elliott wondered if a homebound student could have entered the phone book contest. He wished Mrs. Pugh could come at least one hour a week out of his required twenty and let him paint for her.
    Mrs. Anderson left at four, and Elliott watched cartoons until six. He made supper of canned chili and chips and talked his mother into coming into the living room and eating on a T.V. tray next to him. She spilled half of her chili then went back to bed. Elliott rubbed most of the chili up with one of his father's dirty work shirts from the laundry basket.
    He lay on the sofa and looked at the phone book. He could have painted one of his horse pictures. Mrs. Pugh had loved his horse pictures. She said they made her feel free just to look at them. He could have made a picture the judges would have loved. He could have had his work on all the phone books in the county.
    Elliott fell asleep on the sofa. His father woke him when he got home from work at ten, and sent the boy to bed.
     
    "E llie, I can't get up. Bring me the bedpan." Elliott was in the bathroom on the toilet, looking at the phone book. His teeth clamped together. He hated doing the bedpan. He pretended not to hear.
    "Ellie, can you hear me? I need the pan 'fore I make a mess in here!"
    Elliott squeezed his eyes shut. Behind his lids, he saw horses running, watercolor horses free and running across a yellow beach and into the water where a happy white sailboat drifted to places far away. When he opened his eyes, he saw his pants down around his ankles, and the penis his mother said the boys would make fun of when he had to dress out in gym class when he went to the middle school.
    "The doctor made a mistake when they circumcised you, Elliott. You got a little penis with a nick in it and when the boys see you they'll laugh."
    When his father had sent him to school anyway, Elliott would wet his pants before gym so he could go home to his mother. For a couple of days the assistant principal walked him to gym and made him dress out. Elliott had hid behind a locker door and cried while he pulled on the royal blue gym shorts. In the gym, he refused to participate, and sat against the wall with the back of his head pressed into the cinder block. After a half-year, Elliott was removed from gym and got to sit in the library and read a book during second period.
    "Ellie!"
    Elliott went to his mother's room. She was already wrestling with the hem of her nightgown, tugging it up. "Hurry, honey!"
    Elliott took the pan from the floor and slid it under his mother's rear end, then turned away. He could hear the water run into the aluminum, could hear his mother's airy whistle of relief around the cigarette in her mouth.
    "Done, honey."
    Elliott took the pan into the bathroom and dumped the urine into the toilet. He glanced at the phone book on the -bath mat. Mosby's painting lay face up, taunting. Elliott rinsed the pan and took it back to his mother.
    She was already drifting to sleep.
    "You want some