"Shit Plate" by Tyler McAndrew
For a whole week, Mike Cobb was swinging around this gold chain necklace that he bought with money saved up from playing Shit Plate at lunch. Shit Plate was short for “Mike Cobb's Million Dollar Shit Plate,” which Kyle Scheuller always hollered out in this game-show-host voice, like, “Welcome, folks, to today's episode of Mike Cobb's Million Dollar Shit Plate!” It was a game in which we all mixed up the grossest stuff from our school lunches, put down whatever change was in our pockets, and if Mike ate the whole thing, he'd get to keep the money.
Kids at school always picked on Mike, called him Dirty Mike or Cobb the Slob. But he was a nice enough guy. He was usually really quiet and always walked down the hall staring at his feet. He wore stained, oversized t-shirts, sometimes for two or three or four days in a row. I remember hearing that his mom was in jail, or that maybe she had gone crazy and was locked up in a mental hospital.
But after Mike bought that gold chain, he was like a whole different person. Like the chain was some sort of badge of his worth. Like he wasn’t poor anymore since he’d been able to afford this one expensive thing. J.J. Minelli asked him why he didn't just put the stupid chain around his neck like he was supposed to. “It's called a necklace, dummy. Neck-lace. Quit swinging it around like a fucking jump-rope.” Mike just smiled, made a big fart noise with his mouth, and that was that.
Mike had saved his earnings since Christmas break, when they raised the price of school lunch from sixty-five cents to over a dollar. Before the holidays, the PTA sent home fliers explaining how the School Board had voted to start serving healthier food, like fresh bananas and granola bars. It would cost a little bit more but would be worth it to provide us kids with the nutrition that we need.
But once that happened, Mike never had enough money for lunch. To some of us who sat with Mike at lunch every day, Shit Plate felt like a good thing that we were doing, like charity work. Mike never went hungry when he sat at our table, and sometimes he made as much as four or five dollars in a day.
The day that Mike bought the gold chain was the same day I stayed overnight at his house for the first and only time. It was the last couple weeks of school and my own house was a mess of boxes. Because of my Dad’s big promotion, my parents had bought a new house out in Manlius. It was a lot bigger than the house we were living in and Dad said that we might finally be able to get a trampoline in the backyard. I was going to be in a new school district and they were going to send me to a private school where I'd have to wear a uniform every day. I wasn't exactly thrilled, but the idea of private school somehow felt important, and my parents talked about it like it would be a really meaningful part of my life. “Ten years from now,” my dad said, “when you have a good job, you'll be glad you did it.” I hadn't told any of my friends about the move yet. Mom was glad for any opportunity to get me out of the house while she packed—she was probably thrilled when, Thursday night, Mike called to ask if I wanted to stay over on Friday. Dad even slipped me twenty bucks the next morning. “In case you guys want to order a pizza or something.”
I wasn't in the habit of hanging out with Mike aside from at lunch but I figured it wasn't a big deal if I hung out with him this one time since I'd be moving soon anyway. And I guess I felt sort of bad for him. I don't know that Mike really had any friends outside of our lunch table.
Mike's house was practically the last stop on the school bus, past neighborhoods that I didn't even recognize. The streets were lined with dollar stores and auto repair garages where guys in gray jumpsuits sat in lawn chairs on the sidewalk. By the time we got to Mike's house, I was feeling hot and dizzy from bouncing around in the back seat of the bus for so long. There was a tall set of cracked cement steps leading up to his house, which sat on the side of a hill along a busy road. Even though it was sunny outside, the inside of Mike's house was dark. Sunlight baked through the cracks in the blinds and the whole house had a smell like the inside of a microwave.
Mike's room was empty except for a plain mattress on the floor and a huge pile of dirty clothes spilling out of the closet like an avalanche. The first thing Mike did was dump a pocketful of change into a big coffee can stashed up on a shelf in his closet—his earnings from Shit Plate. The can was mostly full of coins, but there were dollar bills crumpled up in there, too, and it was filled almost to the top. It was probably the most money I'd ever seen in my whole entire life. I remember, when he pulled the coffee can down, all the change shifting around inside made it sound like one of those African rain sticks—those long bamboo things filled with beans or rice or whatever, and when you tip them over, it sounds like rain. After Mike took off his shirt and went digging through the clothes for a new one, he stuffed the coffee can into his backpack and asked if I wanted to go to the mall.
The mall was almost three miles away, so we rollerbladed, and the whole time, Mike had that coffee can sloshing around in his backpack, which only had one strap. The other strap had been ripped sometime last year when some kids jumped him on the playground after school. He'd been walking around with that torn strap dangling behind him like a tail ever since.
We rollerbladed along the divider on Erie Boulevard with cars shooting past in both directions and barely enough room for us to skate beside each other. Pebbles kept getting caught in my wheels and I was afraid I was going to pitch forward into traffic. When we finally got to the mall, we skated around in the parking lot for a while and took turns doing jumps off the wheelchair ramp.
Eventually, I followed Mike into the jewelry store, which was one of the only places at the mall that was still in business—there was the jewelry store and the movie theater, a vacuum repair shop, a T.J. Maxx, and K.B. Toyz. The lady behind the counter told us we couldn't have rollerblades on inside the store, so we took them off and I sat out by a dry, empty fountain to make sure nobody stole them while Mike went back in wearing just his droopy old socks to look at the necklaces beneath the glass display counter. I could see from outside the store that the lady who worked there was watching Mike, like she didn't want him in there, even without his rollerblades. Finally, he pointed to something under the glass and when he unzipped his backpack and put that coffee can on the counter, the lady shook her head and told him, “Uh-uh. You cannot pay for it like this.” I don't know what the big deal was. Money is money, as far as I'm concerned. But the way she looked at him, it was like Mike could've been handing her a crispy new hundred-dollar bill and she still would've told him no.
We sat outside the store for a while, wondering what to do and flipping the lady off whenever she had her back turned. I grabbed a quarter from Mike's coffee can, closed my eyes, and said, “I wish for that lady to not be such a prick,” and then I flipped the quarter into the fountain. Mike punched me hard in the arm, then climbed down and got the quarter.
“What do you want a necklace for?” I kept asking, but Mike just smiled and shrugged.
“I dunno,” he said. “It’s cool.”
We skated around the food court and asked if anyone could trade bills for Mike's coins. I didn't tell him about the twenty my dad had given me cause no way was I going to let him stick me with eighty quarters. The teenager at the pretzel place let us give him twenty quarters for a five, but nobody wanted all of those nickels and dimes and pennies. Finally, the guy at the vacuum repair place told us there was a bank across the street, so we skated back across the Boulevard and helped the old lady who worked there count all of the coins into rolls. When we were done, Mike had one hundred and three dollars and eighteen cents.
A different lady was working at the jewelry store when we got back. She was a lot nicer—she let us both leave our rollerblades by the register and walk around in our socks—but she still gave us a look, smiling but furrowing her brow, like she didn't want us to know that she liked us.
Mike pointed at this necklace that was made up of little tiny links that fit together like fish scales. It had a nameplate on it that spelled out Brooklyn in big cursive letters. She brought the necklace over to the register and Mike handed her all of his money, which didn't look like very much after it had been changed into bills.
“Where'd a kid like you get this much money?” the lady wanted to know.
“Mowing lawns,” Mike lied.
“That's an awful lot of work for a kid your age. Must be for someone special. I bet it's a gift for your mom, huh?”
“Sure,” Mike lied again.
“I wish my kids were this thoughtful,” she said, and gift-wrapped the necklace for no extra charge.
It was dark out by the time we got back to Mike's house. His grandma still wasn't home from work. We put on MTV, turned off all of the lights, and danced to all of the rap videos like Nelly and Juvenile and Ruff Ryders. The whole time, Mike was wearing his new chain, holding it out in front of him with one hand while he raised the roof with his other. It was around nine o'clock when his grandma finally got home. As soon as he heard the front door, Mike ran to his room, took off his necklace, and hid it under his mattress. His grandma warmed up frozen fish sticks from a box and the three of us sat at the kitchen table and dipped them in ketchup.
“So, what grade are you in?” Mike's grandma said. She was looking down at her plate and it took me a moment to realize she was speaking to me. I nodded toward Mike and said, “Sixth. We're both in the same grade.”
“Well, I guess you two will be going into high school together pretty soon,” she said, and I told her, “I guess so,” even though high school was still two whole years away. Plus, I hadn't told Mike about how I'd be going to private school next year. “The two of you will be best friends if you're in high school together,” she said, but she sounded sad, like she didn't quite believe what she was saying.
“You weren't scheduled to work tonight,” Mike said to his grandma.
“No,” his grandma said. “No, I wasn't.” A fly buzzed over the table and landed in the ketchup on the side of my plate. Mike stared at his grandma and after a long silence, she sighed. “If you're asking me where I was, your uncle and me drove out to see your mom today,” she said.
She started saying something else but Mike cut her off. “Why didn't you bring me?”
“Mike, hon,” she said, “I told you a hundred times, it's not good for you to see her out there.”
“Fuck you,” Mike said, and it was so abrupt that, at first, I wasn't sure if he was really angry or if it was maybe like a joke where they pretended to be mad at each other.
“Mike,” his grandma said, “there’s company.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Then Mike said, “Bitch.”
Mike's grandma sighed again, then stood up and put her plate in the sink. “There's pop-tarts in the cupboard for dessert,” she said. She went upstairs and we didn't see her again for the rest of the night.
When it was late, Mike pulled the cushions off the couch and made a bed for me on the floor. He lay down on the bare couch frame and we watched TV in the dark until I heard him snoring. I turned off the TV and listened to the sounds of cars driving by in the night until, after a long time, I fell asleep, too.
About a week later, Mike and I were walking around after school and he was swinging the gold chain around as if it hadn't cost him half a school year of eating shit plates. We’d bought a bag of sunflower seeds at the gas station and were spitting the shells at different targets—mailboxes and stop signs and stuff like that. It was the last week of school and I was trying to get up the courage to tell him that I was moving. I didn’t even really think of him as my friend, but I felt like I should at least say something.
“Here, bite it,” Mike said, holding out the Brooklyn nameplate. I bit down on it. “See?” he said. “That's how you can tell it's real.” I nodded, but I didn't know what biting the thing was supposed to tell me. I wondered why he bought a chain that said Brooklyn when we lived five hours away in Syracuse.
Mike was holding the chain up in front of him when a car stopped a little ways ahead of us and this woman hopped out of the passenger side door.
“Mikey?” she hollered. “Mikey?” She had black hair that was so thin, even from far away, you could see her pale scalp showing through underneath. “Mikey, come here, baby,” she said, and without a second's hesitation, Mike ran toward her, the chain swinging at his side. His backpack slipped off his shoulder and he didn't even stop to pick it up. I grabbed it and by the time I caught up to him, he and the woman were both standing in the road and the woman was bending down, hugging him and kissing him all over his face, and Mike was smiling, but also sort of squirming to get away. The skin around the woman's mouth was all pink and irritated, like maybe she'd been burned. I stood on the sidewalk, holding Mike's backpack.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said when she noticed me standing there. She sort of whistled when she said the word sweetie. The car she'd hopped out of was stopped in the middle of the road, engine still running, the passenger-side door still hanging open. I couldn't see whether anyone was sitting in the driver's seat. She kissed Mike again and told him how happy she was to see him. “You getting good grades?” she asked, and Mike just furrowed his brow and looked down at his feet. “Hey,” she said. She crouched down in front of him. “Look at me when your mother asks you something. Are you getting good grades? Don't tell me you're flunking.”
“What are you doing here?” Mike asked, and his mother made this exaggerated frown, like when a clown is pretending to be sad. Mike just stared at her, waiting. She stood up and went digging through her coat pockets until she found a pack of cigarettes. “Mom,” Mike insisted, but she stood there flicking her lighter and not answering him until her cigarette was lit.
“Grandma taking good care of you?” she asked. “She giving you enough food?”
“Yeah,” Mike mumbled.“
Yeah,” his mom imitated. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” She cocked her head back and forth and made a little song out of it. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then she laughed really loud. She hugged Mike again. I'd never seen anyone do so much hugging before. “Baby, I'm so glad to see you,” she said. She smiled and let out a puff of smoke, then nodded toward the gold chain that was still dangling from Mike's fist. “What's that?” she said.
Mike started to say something, but his mom was already lifting his hand, his fingers already opening up like a clam revealing its pearl. She took the necklace and held it up in front of her face.
“Mikey, this is real gold?” she asked. “Oh, hun, this is really yours? Someone gave you this?” She stared at Mike for a long moment and then her face twisted up, suddenly disgusted, as if the necklace was a tangle of hair she'd just pinched from the drain. “Aw, no, you stole this, didn't you?”
“No, Mom,” Mike begged. His voice was all high and whiny like a little kid.
“Where'd you steal this from?”
Mike just stood there looking at the ground. I thought about speaking up, saying something about how hard-earned Mike’s money was, how long he had been saving, but I was afraid of how Mike's mom might respond.
“All right,” she said. “All right. All right. That's okay. I understand. I'm not gonna pretend I'm perfect. Nobody's perfect. Especially not me. I know damn well that I'm not perfect. Listen,” she said. I could see little gobs of spit congealing at the corners of her mouth. “Listen to me. I'm gonna do you a favor, okay? I'm gonna hold onto this for you and keep it secret so that grandma doesn't catch you with it, okay? Grandma doesn't tolerate stealing. She sees this, she'll march you right back to wherever you took it from and make you embarrass yourself over the whole thing. And I ain't gonna let her do that.” Her voice swelled to a proud bravado. “Nuh-uh. Uh-uh. I'm your only mother,” she said, “you came from out of me—I made you and nobody else is gonna be allowed to embarrass you except for me.” She laughed, and then she glanced at me and winked, like I was supposed to be in on some joke with her.
“Listen,” she said, turning back to Mike. “Listen to me. Listen.” She pointed a finger close to Mike's nose. With her arm extended, the sleeve of her shirt rode up a little bit and I could see that there were dark bruises around the knobs of her wrists. “You're a good kid,” she said. “You are a sweet, sweet baby,” and she reached down and pinched his cheek. “I don't want you flunking. And I don't want you stealing. You're a good boy and I don't want this shit.” She held the necklace right up in front of Mike's face. “You hear me? I don't want this shit.”
“I didn't steal it,” Mike said.
“I gotta tell you something,” his mom said. “Okay?”
Mike didn't respond.
“Okay?” she practically yelled, and Mike nodded. “They're probably telling you that I'm in that hospital again, right? That's what grandma is telling you?” She stood up straight, smiled, shook her head. She looked up at the sky for a moment and muttered some stuff that didn't sound like words, then scoffed and laughed and then scoffed again.
“That's lies,” she said. “That's lies. You got that? I'm here, aren't I? This is where I am. I'm right here. Right?”
“Okay,” Mike said.
“Can't be in two places at once, can I? I'm right here. Don't forget that. Now come here,” she said. “Gimme a hug.” The gold chain dangled from her fist as she hugged him. Mike seemed to wither in her arms. “You're a good kid. I'm gonna come get you soon. Okay? I'm gonna come get you and we'll live together again. Okay?” She kissed him on the cheek with her weird, burned mouth, then turned around and hopped in the car. The brake lights glowed red for a second and then the car sped off and I stood there holding Mike's backpack and he stood there holding nothing.
The next day, J.J. and Kyle mixed up a shit plate of mayonnaise and apple sauce and red Jell-O with bananas. The money on the table was just change—fifty-three cents, which wasn't even enough for Mike to be able to buy a school lunch.
Thinking back on it, I wish I had just let Mike say, “No way. Not enough.” I wish I had let him push the shit plate back across the table. I wish I’d let him go hungry. But I was thinking about how I hadn’t spoken up to his mom. I felt so sorry for Mike and watching everybody pull out their empty pockets, I got this impulse. I reached into my wallet and put down the twenty-dollar bill—the pizza money that my dad had given to me.
“Are you freaking crazy?” J.J. Minelli screamed. He stood up so fast that his chair fell over. “Twenty big ones—are you freaking crazy?” Everyone began cheering and laughing and drumming on the edges of the table.
“Welcome, folks,” Kyle Scheuller began crooning, “to today's very, very, very special episode...”
But before he even finished, Mike had lifted a dripping sporkful and shoved it into his mouth. Then another. And another. His spork clawed against the styrofoam tray. I wished for J.J. or Kyle to snatch the twenty and run. I wished that one of the lacrosse bullies like Spencer Pearson or James Archacki would come over and yank Mike's chair out from under him. I wished for some disruption that would send us all scattering across the cafeteria like roaches. Anything to get Mike to stop eating. He chewed slow, his mouth opened so that all of us could see each bite squish between his teeth and get pushed around by his tongue. The bell rang and Mike sat there, scraping up the last few bites, running his tongue along the front of his teeth. When the shit plate was clean, he pocketed the twenty and hustled off without saying anything.
That was the last time I ever saw Mike. By that time, it was mid-June and there were just a couple days left in the school year. I went straight home after school and Mom gave me some boxes to pack up my room—my baseball cards and video games and CD player. After I packed up most of my stuff, I helped her clear out the attic. Winter coats and extra blankets and the tent that we'd bought for camping last summer. Other things—like my sister's old car seat and the cheap set of wine glasses that my Mom had received in some free giveaway, pieces of old Halloween costumes, and the crutches from when I broke my leg in second grade—we drove that stuff to the Salvation Army store and donated it. There was a lot of old stuff like that—things we didn't need, things we didn't want to take with us.
Tyler McAndrew lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and cat. Originally from Syracuse, NY, he holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches in the Writing Program. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Baffler, Confrontation, and December Magazine.
