Because of my birthday I get to choose what we wear both. Ma’s live in the
higher drawer of Dresser and mine in the lower. I choose her favorite blue
jeans with the red stitches that she only puts on for special occasions because
they’re getting strings at the knees. For me I choose my yellow hoody, I’m
careful of the drawer but the right edge still comes out and Ma has to bang it
back in. We pull down on my hoody together and it chews my face but then
pop it’s on.
“What if I cut it just a little in the middle of the V?” says Ma.
“No way Jose.”
For Phys Ed we leave our socks off because bare feet are grippier. Today I
choose Track first, we lift Table upside down onto Bed and Rocker on her
with Rug over the both. Track goes around Bed from Wardrobe to Lamp, the
shape on Floor is a black C. “Hey, look, I can do a there-and-back in sixteen
steps.”
“Wow. When you were four it was eighteen steps, wasn’t it?” says Ma.
“How many there-and-backs do you think you can run today?”
“Five.”
“What about five times five? That would be your favorite squared.”
We times it on our fingers, I get twenty-six but Ma says twenty-five so I do
it again and get twenty-five too. She counts me on Watch. “Twelve,” she
shouts out. “Seventeen. You’re doing great.”
I’m breathing whoo whoo whoo.
“Faster—”
I go even fasterer like Superman flying.
When it’s Ma’s turn to run, I have to write down on the College Ruled Pad
the number at the start and the number when she’s finished, then we take them
apart to see how fast she went. Today hers is nine seconds bigger than mine,
that means I winned, so I jump up and down and blow raspberries. “Let’s do a
race at the same time.”
“Sounds like fun, doesn’t it,” she says, “but remember once we tried it and
I banged my shoulder on the dresser?”
Sometimes when I forget things, Ma tells me and I remember them after
that.
We take down all the furnitures from Bed and put Rug back where she was
to cover Track so Old Nick won’t see the dirty C.
Ma chooses Trampoline, it’s just me that bounces on Bed because Ma
might break her. She does the commentary: “A daring midair twist from the
young U.S. champion …”
My next pick is Simon Says, then Ma says to put our socks back on for
Corpse, that’s lying like starfish with floppy toenails, floppy belly button,
floppy tongue, floppy brain even. Ma gets an itch behind her knee and moves,
I win again.
It’s 12:13, so it can be lunch. My favorite bit of the prayer is the daily
bread. I’m the boss of play but Ma’s the boss of meals, like she doesn’t let us
have cereal for breakfast and lunch and dinner in case we’d get sick and
anyway that would use it up too fast. When I was zero and one, Ma used to
chop and chew up my food for me, but then I got all my twenty teeth and I
can gnash up anything. This lunch is tuna on crackers, my job is to roll back
the lid of the can because Ma’s wrist can’t manage it.
I’m a bit jiggly so Ma says let’s play Orchestra, where we run around
seeing what noises we can bang out of things. I drum on Table and Ma goes
knock knock on the legs of Bed, then floomf floomf on the pillows, I use a fork
and spoon on Door ding ding and our toes go bam on Stove, but my favorite
is stomping on the pedal of Trash because that pops his lid open with a bing.
My best instrument is Twang that’s a cereal box I collaged with all different
colored legs and shoes and coats and heads from the old catalog, then I
stretched three rubber bands across his middle. Old Nick doesn’t bring
catalogs anymore for us to pick our own clothes, Ma says he’s getting meaner.
I climb on Rocker to get the books from Shelf and I make a ten-story
skyscraper on Rug. “Ten stories,” says Ma and laughs, that wasn’t very funny.
We used to have nine books but only four with pictures inside—
My Big Book of Nursery Rhymes
Dylan the Digger
The Runaway Bunny
Pop-Up Airport
Also five with pictures only on the front—
The Shack
Twilight
The Guardian
Bittersweet Love The Da Vinci Code
Ma hardly ever reads the no-pictures ones except if she’s desperate. When I
was four we asked for one more with pictures for Sundaytreat and Alice in
Wonderland came, I like her but she’s got too many words and lots of them
are old.
Today I choose Dylan the Digger, he’s near the bottom so he does a
demolition on the skyscraper crashhhhhh.
“Dylan again.” Ma makes a face, then she puts on her biggest voice:
“ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan, the sturdy digger!
The loads he shovels get bigger and bigger.
Watch his long arm delve into the earth,
No excavator so loves to munch dirt.
This mega-hoe rolls and pivots round the site,
Scooping and grading by day and night.’ ”
There’s a cat in the second picture, in the third it’s on the pile of rocks.
Rocks are stones, that means heavy like ceramic that Bath and Sink and Toilet
are of, but not so smooth. Cats and rocks are only TV. In the fifth picture the
cat falls down, but cats have nine lives, not like me and Ma with just one
each.
Ma nearly always chooses The Runaway Bunny because of how the mother
bunny catches the baby bunny in the end and says, “Have a carrot.” Bunnies
are TV but carrots are real, I like their loudness. My favorite picture is the
baby bunny turned into a rock on the mountain and the mother bunny has to
climb up up up to find him. Mountains are too big to be real, I saw one in TV
that has a woman hanging on it by ropes. Women aren’t real like Ma is, and
girls and boys not either. Men aren’t real except Old Nick, and I’m not
actually sure if he’s real for real. Maybe half? He brings groceries and
Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not human like us. He only
happens in the night, like bats. Maybe Door makes him up with a beep beep
and the air changes. I think Ma doesn’t like to talk about him in case he gets
realerI wriggle around on her lap now to look at my favorite painting of Baby
Jesus playing with John the Baptist that’s his friend and big cousin at the
same time. Mary’s there too, she’s cuddled in her Ma’s lap that’s Baby Jesus’s
Grandma, like Dora’s abuela. It’s a weird picture with no colors and some of
the hands and feet aren’t there, Ma says it’s not finished. What started Baby
Jesus growing in Mary’s tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but
a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all surprised, she said, “How can
this be?” and then, “OK let it be.” When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina
on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew, only
warm him up with their blowing because he was magic.
Ma switches Lamp off now and we lie down, first we say the shepherd
prayer about green pastures, I think they’re like Duvet but fluffy and green
instead of white and flat. (The cup overflowing must make an awful mess.) I
have some now, the right because the left hasn’t much in it. When I was three
I still had lots anytime, but since I was four I’m so busy doing stuff I only
have some a few times in the day and the night. I wish I could talk and have
some at the same time but I only have one mouth.
I nearly switch off but not actually. I think Ma does because of her breath.
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