42 pages • 1 hour read
Jack GantosJoey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Crossing”
Despite his apprehension regarding the new special ed program, Joey’s bus pick-up goes very well. He finds the handicapped accessible bus puzzling, as it leans to one side “[…] like an elephant kneeling down on one knee” (89). Joey tries to fulfill his promise to his mother to avoid having three consecutive negative thoughts, but this is very difficult to avoid when the bus driver asks, “Are you the new foster kid?” (90). Joey’s thoughts run wild; he is afraid that the new school is taking his mother away from him.
The four classmates who share Joey’s bus are not frightening: Charlie, who has deformed, small arms, introduces himself and makes an effort to shake hands; the boy behind Joey wears a motorcycle helmet and rocks back and forth into the back of Joey’s seat; and two very nice sisters, “May and June,” who have dyslexia and write everything backwards. Nonetheless, Joey suffers from a sense of panic and fights the impulse to dive out the door of the bus and run when the driver stops at the railroad tracks. The bus picks up a final passenger, a boy who answers “Yeah” when the bus driver asks if he is the foster kid.
Immediately upon reaching the Lancaster County Special Education Center, Joey meets a tall man named Mr. Ed Vanness, who is known as “Special Ed.” He explains that the purpose of the Center is to help, not punish students. Specifically, he wants to help Joey learn to make better choices. As they walk to Ed’s office, Joey sees “A line of blind kids […] kids in wheel chairs and ordinary kids carrying books [and] […] kids who were busted up, or deformed” (98). In response to questioning from Ed, Joey replies that he had taken his meds that morning but has not eaten breakfast; Ed explains that the boy must learn to eat at regular intervals. Joey is somewhat calmer after realizing that Special Ed is not frightening, but he worries that something was “wrong inside me […] eating away at me like termites” (99).
Joey blurts out information to Ed: he relates that Grandma had told him the entire family was sick. Ed calmly responds that the Center will help by administering tests, adjusting his medication, helping him to complete homework, and making him feel better about himself. Ed returns to the importance of good decision making and reviews some of Joey’s mistakes: putting his finger in the pencil sharpener, climbing the barn rafters on the field trip, and swallowing the house key. Further, Ed explains that Joey’s “home life is part of the problem” (102).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Shifting Gears”
After returning home the Special Ed program, Joey bounces a Nerf ball on the porch while awaiting his mother. When she arrives, he shouts at her and repeats portions of his session with Big Ed. Joey is still overwrought from the anxiety induced by the bus driver mistaking him for a foster child and by the Ed’s statement that his “home life was a big part” (104) of his problem. His mother immediately gives him some of his medication; Joey gets her the ingredients to mix a drink of Amaretto and Mountain Dew. Joey advises her that he discussed how he felt after his parents abandoned him with Ed. His mother is upset that Joey has given a full recount of their home life to the counselor; she rebuts that she loves Joey and works hard at the beauty parlor to support him. Joey tells her that “Special Ed said he’s here to help me and that things would get worse before they’d get better” (106), and his mother has more Amaretto sours. Finally, Joey tells her that the nutritionist advised him that his diet should include more vegetables, salads, grains, and vitamins. The two have a few more tense exchanges, during which Joey alludes to his mother’s drinking, but they ultimately reconcile and order a pizza with vegetables for dinner.
Mrs. Maxy delivers homework assignments to Joey the following morning. He asks after Maria, and the teacher responds that she has been transferred to a Catholic school. Joey expresses remorse once again, and his teacher advises that “we have to get over it and move on” (109). The pair hug in parting, and Mrs. Maxy puts a gold star sticker on Joey’s forehead. When the bus arrives, Joey helps his new friend Charlie eat a piece of the leftover pizza from the previous evening’s dinner.
It is difficult for Joey to focus on classes that day due to his anxiety over undergoing a medical exam that afternoon. His impulse control suffers. For example, Ed tells him to replace a box of Band-Aids that he removes from a cabinet. Nonetheless, when Ed leaves the room, Joey immediately places over 20 Band-Aids on his chest and stomach. This leads Dr. Preston, who administers the physical, to fear that the boy is being physically abused, but Ed has Joey explain the situation.
The doctor speaks honestly to Joey, explaining that he has both a medical and a behavioral problem. He orders further tests to assist with his diagnosis including a brain SPECT test, which requires the boy and his mother to travel to the Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. Joey is emotionally depleted by the end of the exam, and Ed calls Fran Pigza at the beauty parlor so that Joey can talk to her.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Pittsburgh”
Joey’s mother buys him a new shirt and pair of pants so that he will “look good” (119) for the bus trip to the Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. As the pair travel to the medical appointment by Greyhound bus, Joey expresses the hope that he may meet his father, Carter Pigza, in Pittsburgh, but his mother explains that his father would not recognize his son if there were to meet.
Joey and his mother look at a book about dogs as Joey imagines which breed he will choose, but he becomes angry at his mother when he recalls that he used to wait by the front window for her to come back, like a puppy. His mother responds: “it hurts me to hear this over and over” (122), but Joey ruminates about this topic. In an effort to control his behavior, his grandmother would pretend that she was speaking to his mother on the phone; she would tell Joey that his mother would come back if he stayed still long enough. Additionally, she would have him do “puppy tricks” such as sit up, bark, and beg because he acted like a puppy waiting for its mistress.
Joey refers to his mother checking his head several times in his narrative. In this chapter, he explains that when his grandmother would tell him that his mother was not coming home because he was a “bad boy” (124), he would get nervous and tear his hair out. This habit is apparently still a problem for Joey when he is under undue stress.
Joey explains that he wants a puppy because “it will wait in the window for me and every day I will come home to it” (125), as opposed to his childhood experience waiting for his mother, who did not come home. He notices that his mother responds by looking as though his comments were “all in her brain like a heavy weight” (125).
Ed had prepared Joey that he might have feelings of anger toward his mother when he recalled the circumstances of his abandonment. He still loves her, and the pair reconcile. She helps him control a fit of mania by bringing him to the restroom, giving him medication, and hugging him. Additionally, she confesses that she used to pass the house to try to get a glimpse of Joey when she was drinking heavily; however, she swears that she never knew how badly the boy’s grandmother was treating him during her absence.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
The author highlights some of the daily difficulties inherent to Joey’s behavioral and perceptive differences in this section. For example, when the bus driver for the Special Education program asks Joey if he is the new “foster kid,” the boy is unable to stop perseverative thinking that wrongly assumes he is being taken away from his mother, even after an actual foster child boards the bus. This difficulty with perceiving events correctly is an ongoing source of difficulty for the boy. Conversely, Joey is bright and possessed of an innate awareness of some of the sources of his trouble.
For example, he looks forward to telling “Special Ed,” his counselor, about some of the sadistic methods his grandmother employed in her efforts to control his behavior. Specifically, she would lure him into sitting quietly by the front window with the promise that his mother would return if he did so, only to punish him by telling him that he had not behaved well enough for this to occur. While the reader is tempted to judge this grandmother harshly, one must bear in mind that, apparently, she suffered some form of untreated ADHD herself, and she attempted to care for Joey when he was abandoned by his biological parents. Ed is correct when he advises Joey that they have “work to do” to sort out his feelings regarding his family.
Dr. Preston, the medical doctor who performs a physical exam on Joey, wisely seeks to rule out bodily dysfunctions that may be impacting Joey’s behavior. Similarly, the nutritionist at the Center advises Joey of the importance of including “vegetables and salads and grains” (106) into his diet. The reader may infer that supervision has been lacking in this area, as Joey advises her that he eats a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup every morning because his mother believes that peanut butter is beneficial for him. While the author alludes to patches in the hair on Joey’s head throughout the text, he finally reveals in this section that Joey started pulling his own hair out due to stress after his parents left the family home.
Trichotillomania, or obsessive hair pulling, may result from a variety of conditions including anxiety, depression, and OCD. It may be triggered by intensely stressful events—in Joey’s case, by the fact that his parents deserted him. Joey struggles with perseverative thinking, or the inability to cope with bad thoughts, throughout this section: he touches his nose when he meets the two young girls on his new school bus “because girls reminded me of Maria” (93); he covers his body in Band Aids while awaiting his physical exam, despite having promised Ed that he would not do so; he dials the phone number of his mother’s hair salon repeatedly when the receptionist explains that Fran is unable to take his call; and he fights the urge to “dive out the bus door and run away” (94) when the school bus stops at a railroad crossing.
Fran, Joey’s mother, labors intensely as she attempts to assist Joey in controlling his behavior, make amends for having left him, and overcome her guilt about alcohol consumption both before and after the boy’s birth. Despite all this, she strives to do the right thing and submits to the anger that her son experiences toward her when his conversations with his counselor reactivate the sense of grief caused by her departure. She is trying to become more appropriately authoritative toward Joey, an attitude that will allow him to have an increased sense of structure and security.
When Joey asks to read his dog book on the bus ride to Pittsburgh, she suggests that he do his homework first; Joey notes that “[…] it was more of an order” (121). She promises Joey the reward of a puppy as he adjusts to his new school environment. He loves her and appreciates the gesture; nonetheless, he poignantly explains that he will always come home to the dog who waits for him at the window, as opposed to his mother, who failed to do so. Joey is “replaying the tape” of a traumatic episode in his own past with the intention of providing a vulnerable creature with a happy ending.
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