by Gabi Moore
Anyway. They’re OK most of the time, I guess.
Dad’s always chill and forgetting things and getting stuck in his projects and whatever, and mom’s always freaking out and telling him he should be doing a different project instead, or she’ll be running around freaking out about the chickens or something and he’ll say, “which one do you want me to take out for you? You just tell me who’s giving you a hard time and I’ll take care of the problem, boom” and then he pretends his fingers are a gun and he takes aim and shoots. Mom never likes this joke much, especially when she’s stressed, but then again, I don’t get it either. My dad’s the chilliest guy ever. If anyone was going to assassinate any chickens, it would definitely be mom.
I had just about finished sorting through the laundry – colors with colors, whites with whites. That was my job. That and turning the eggs in the hatchery, although we didn’t have any fertile eggs going at the moment.
“Mom, what did you do in America?” I said. She was bent over and scratching around in the cupboard under the sink, looking for stain remover.
“I already told you, sweetie, I was a rep for a pharmaceutical company,” she said. The air around her head always went that strange blue and white color whenever she said it though.
“But really? Is that what you really did?” I said, and straightened out the pile with the edge of my sneaker.
“Why’d you keep asking, baby?” she said, and stood up to look at me.
“I’m not a baby. I’m already seven years old!” I said. It wasn’t true, I was only six years and eleven months, but grown-ups seemed to bend the rules all the time, so I decided I’d do it too and tell everyone I was already seven.
“I had a dream you were actually a soldier,” I told her, and danced the detergent and the softener bottles around each other like one was Beauty and the other was Beast.
“A dream?” she said. I just said it was a dream but it wasn’t really. It was like a dream I had while I was still awake. The kids at school didn’t like when I talked about the things I saw in my dreams, so I just stopped talking about them.
“Yup. You were working for a mean king, just like in fairytales.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I think that’s what you did, and you weren’t a rep for fosootlicals.”
“It’s pharmaceuticals.”
“That’s what I said.”
She gave me that look she sometimes does, the one that makes the air around her head go out in small little purple spirals, but she was still laughing, so I knew she wasn’t really mad. Then Melissa rang the bell and came inside.
“Heeeeeeeere’s baby!” she said and danced Isabelle around the kitchen a bit. My mom smiled and went to take the baby from her, and Melissa came to give me a hug.
“How you doing kiddo?” she said and kissed my head.
“I’m almost eight years old, Melissa! I’m not a kid anymore,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.
I started to pile the darks into the washing machine. I had to really squash the last few socks in there to make it all fit.
“Melissa, you were in America with mom, weren’t you?”
“Sure was.”
“What did mom do for her job?” I said.
“That’s easy. She worked as a rep for a pharmaceutical company. Same as me.”
I frowned. I just knew they weren’t telling me the truth. I know I’m not even really eight yet, but there are some things that I do know, I swear. I don’t know how I know them, but I just do.
“That’s not true! You were a soldier too, Melissa, I saw it!”
“A soldier…?” she said to my mom. My mom shrugged and shook her head, then added some washing powder to the machine.
“Janie says she dreamt it.”
“Dreamt it? Chiquita, dreams don’t mean anything,” said Melissa.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Ok, ask your dad. Ask him what mom did back in America.”
I sighed. I had a feeling he’d also tell me the same thing. But that was fine. I’d figure it out eventually. Miss Carla at school says I’m gifted, which means I can figure things out quickly, which means it doesn’t matter if I don’t know just yet. Who knows how many things I’ll know by the time I’m eight, which is basically just around the corner.
I bend down and started to gather up the laundry pile of whites. Something brown caught my eye.
“Oh man, mom what’s this?” I said. “Looks like you were dragged through a hedge backwards.” I held up a white dress so covered in mud it was basically a brown dress.
“Dragged through a hedge…? Baby, where do you get this stuff from?”
“Heard it from TV probably,” Melissa said and pinched my cheek. In fact, I knew they wouldn’t like it if I told them where I really heard it from, so I just kept quiet.
“But seriously, Evie, what the hell?” Melissa said and held up the muddy dress as well. It looked pretty bad.
Mom blushed.
“Oh, that. Jack pushed me in the mud,” she said. Even though I was pretty sure that Melissa couldn’t see that same squiggles around mom’s head that I could, even she could see that mom was telling a big old lie.
The door banged open and dad came in. He nodded hello to Melissa and gave mom and me a peck on the cheek but what he really wanted to do was scratch around the kitchen drawers for something.
“Dad …what did mom do in America?” I asked.
He didn’t look up from his scratching, and said, “Your mom? That’s easy, she was a beauty queen.”
“Dad! That’s so lame! She wasn’t a beauty queen.”
“She was. Prettiest woman in America, they even gave her a certificate, so you know I’m not lying…”
“Where’s the certificate then?” I said, laughing.
“The certificate? Uh… I don’t know. It’s around here somewhere,” he said. I ran up to him and grabbed his legs and he made a big game of trying to shake me off like an angry grizzly bear.
“What did she really do?”
“Ok, ok, you got me. She wasn’t a beauty queen. She was a magician. You know the ones that can get out of the handcuffs and chains and things? Like that. We met one day when she got stuck and dad had to help her out.”
Now mom and him were both giggling and, can you believe it, they started kissing again.
“Ew! Come on, gross! You guys are so lame,” I yelled, but they never listen, as usual.
Now Melissa was laughing too. Mom scooped the baby up, and her and dad went off to the other room to put the baby down. I know I should be happy that my parents can make pretty pink and yellow sparks between them, but …you know, gross.
I put the whites back in the laundry hamper and lifted myself up onto the counter so I could swing my legs. Melissa was making tea for us all. I liked Melissa. She was my aunt but not really. Which is another way of saying that I was her niece, but not really. She told me once that everyone who dies goes to a special place where they can watch to make sure that everyone who’s still alive can be safe and happy. She always says stuff like that when mom’s not around. Maybe she’s right.
“So, Janie girl, when are you going to your new school, huh?” Melissa said. My mom was busy putting the baby down. My little sister was cool. She was the only other one who was the same as me, but she couldn’t talk yet or anything, so she wasn’t much fun. I bet that when she grew up, she’d be gifted too, and then we’d both figure out even more things together, like detectives.
“Next year only. Mom says she wants me to be eight first. But I’m basically eight already.” I knew how to tell a lie and not let it show in the air around my head.
“Ah, that’s good,” she said. “That means my Chiquita can stay with me a little while longer, I’m happy.”
“I’m happy too,” I said and we smiled at one another.
“You still gonna be a doctor when you grow up,” she said.
“Nah, that’s for babies” I said. I had wanted to be a doctor when I was just fiv
e, so that didn’t really count.
“So, what are you going to do then?”
“Something cool.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna have a nice farm like your mommy and daddy and live in a pretty place and grow veggies?”
I looked at her blankly.
“Of course not. There won’t be any farms in the future.”
She gave me strange look.
“What? No farms in the future? But Chiquita, how will people grow food if there are no farms, huh?”
“I don’t know. It’ll just be different in the future.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. People won’t eat veggies anymore.”
She laughed.
“And how do you know of all this, huh?” she said.
I shrugged. The same way I knew everything else.
I just did.
- THE END -
