Christopher Paul Curtis by Bucking the Sarge

the only furniture was a couch and two end tables. Both of the tables had rings of melted candle wax all over their tops. There was one of those metal TV trays sitting across from the couch, probably where they used to keep their TV.
    I set my broom on the living room floor and pulled my cleaning equipment into the kitchen. When I went back to get the broom Darnell and Little Chicago had come back in.
    Darnell snatched one of the blanket-curtains off the window. A bunch of dust jumped off the blanket and looked like a cloud of swirling, gold-flecked specks when the sun hit it. Darnell threw the blanket down and said, “Them fools had been living up in here with no electricity and no gas for sixmonths. Only reason the pipes didn't freeze and bust back in the winter was because the water'd been cut off in February. She just got it cut back on last week.”
    “Tee-hee! Tee-hee!”
    Now that it was lighter in the living room I could see that both of the melted-wax-topped end tables and the couch were covered with bedsheets. The sheet on the couch was brownish-looking, one of the end table sheets was light blue and the other one was a washed-out sheet that had Masters of the Universe printed all over it.
    There were more blue ribbons and a comb and a brush, and a open jar of Dax hair grease and a book called
Tornado
by Betsy Byars sitting on the couch.
    Darnell walked over to one of the end tables. “Look at this,” he said. “It's a miracle that low-life crackhead didn't burn the place down.”
    He flicked some of the hardened melted wax off the Masters of the Universe table, then kicked at it. It lifted off like it was light as a feather and flew across the room, bumping into the TV tray and sending it rattling to the floor.
    It wasn't a table at all. It was nothing but a big empty box of Charmin toilet paper that had been covered up with a sheet.
    “Tee-hee! Tee-hee!”
    Little Chicago sent the other end table flying across the room. Another box of Charmin.
    He said, “Maybe she wasn't as ghetto as you thought, D, at least she had enough class to buy matching end tables.”
    Little Chicago hadn't heard anything so funny in hiswhole life. He sprayed tee-hees out like the roach man sprays Raid.
    That was more than enough for me. I could feel another irrational, inappropriate episode creeping up on me.
    With Darnell and Little Chicago kicking and tugging and pulling at everything in the living room it looked like a scene from the Animal Planet Channel where a pack of hyenas was slashing at what was left of a zebra.
    I got my broom and went back into the kitchen.
    Bo's family really was clean and neat. I emptied out the kitchen wastebasket and instead of the usual nastiness that you find, there was only a box of Hamburger Helper, a bunch of those empty little packs of coffee creamer, two empty cans of tuna fish cat food, an empty jar of jelly and an empty jar of peanut butter. And when I say empty I mean empty! The jars and cans looked like they'd been scrubbed out.
    Most times cat food is a bad sign, it means there's a nasty litter box somewhere in the house, but it looked like maybe the Bo family's cleanliness even ran down into their pet. There wasn't any cat smell anywhere.
    I opened the fridge. The only things in it were a box of baking soda, a bagful of little green apples and one of those plastic zip-up bags that you put six cans of pop in to keep them cool.
    If this was a movie on the Fright Network I'd unzip this bag and someone's head or heart would be staring up at me. Or worse, a chopped-off hand would leap out and snatch me by the throat. I walked over to the sink with the bag and slowly undid the zipper. That way if I had to drop itquick I wouldn't spill whatever was inside, I wouldn't destroy any evidence. Once it was unzipped I pulled the top back.
    Inside was a small carton of soy milk floating in some water with a bunch of half-melted ice cubes.
    This was going to be one of the easiest cleanups ever! The