I need to find out if Mom registered me for any camps in late August. I need to be with other people. I played Civilization for seven hours straight today— I pretty much conquered the planet. Then I read Sammy a book where Scooby-Doo goes to ancient Rome, until I got a headache and yelled at him and made him cry. And that was my whole day.
I wrote to Karen, but I couldn’t think of much to say. I hope she writes back. I’ve liked her since grade two, and things just got started at graduation when we kissed and she said she really liked me. Then Mom died and Karen went away to camp. Things were really good before Mom died. I know it’s not her fault, but why couldn’t she have just pulled over?
This is later the same day. Any normal kid my age is sleeping.
We lost our soccer game tonight. I didn’t score a single goal, and everyone was mad at me. But why should I have to score every game? Someone else should score for a change.
Simpson’s mom applied for a cross-boundary transfer so he can go to the same junior high school as me. That would be good. He said he was switching parents at the game, which is why he couldn’t come over tonight. I saw his dad sitting in the bleachers far away from his mom, so I think it’s true. Anyway, I had some fun with him at soccer. I teased him because he wore his hat offside, trying to cover up a big scabby thing at the top of his ear. He denies it’s a failed and festering attempt at piercing, but what else could it be?
Sammy’s in here talking about kindergarten, even though it’s past midnight. He was scared in his own room. He says Mom is coming home soon, and he’ll sleep in his bed again when she’s with him. What am I supposed to say to that?
His journal is almost full. I told him to draw nice things that Mom would like. “Like Power Rangers?” he asked. Only he said it, “Li-i-ike, like, um, uh, uh, like, li-i-i-ike Power Rangers?” He’s not like normal stutterers, who can’t get their consonants out. Sammy stutters vowels. He fills space with whining gibberish like he’s mentally retarded, but really he’s not at all. He’s really very smart.
I said, “Yeah, like Power Rangers. And flowers and cats and walks in the woods.” He said, “And, and, a-a-and treasure hunts a-a-a-and mazes?” I said, “Sure.” Then he said, “And, and, a-a-and that will make Mom come home?” I said, “No.” So he’s probably drawing a psycho snake picture.
Okay. Just now I said to him, “Maybe Mom can see you wherever she is, and she wants to see you draw something she’d like, not a snake that would scare her.” That made a strong impression on Sammy. He put down his journal and cried his little eyes out, stuttering, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I-I-I’m sorry I scared you.” Little kids cry so hard they break your heart.
He ran to his room and came back with a toy Power Ranger. It’s a girl Ranger, a light blue one that he never played with before in his life. Mom used it when they played Power Rangers together. Mom would draw a map on the walkway, like a crazy hopscotch, and she’d put bad guys and wild animals in the squares. Then the Power Rangers would travel the map fighting the bad guys until they saved the world.
Mom said she and I used to play that game too, and we watched Power Rangers on tv together when I was little and it came on at a decent time instead of 6:30 Sunday morning. I don’t remember ever watching Power Rangers. I remember a few things from when I was Sammy’s age, but not much. I don’t remember starting school.
Mom made a kindergarten book for me, to hold the drawings and crafts I made. It has my class picture in it, but I don’t remember any of the kids. I can recognize Simpson, but I don’t remember playing with him back then. Mom has stories in the book about things I said and shows I watched and places I went. We went to England that year and I saw Stonehenge and Windsor Castle and all kinds of cool things I don’t remember at all.
That means Sammy won’t remember Mom by the time he’s twelve. And maybe I won’t remember her by the time I’m twenty. This is the saddest thought I’ve had since she died—and I’ve had a lot of sad thoughts.
Mom and I were really close. She’d tell me nice things about myself, and she’d make my favorite peanut-butter cookies on Sunday even though no one else likes them, and she’d take me to the IMAX whenever a new show came to town. She’d tell me funny jokes and ask if I’d heard any good ones lately. And sometimes I would make her laugh so hard that I could see her fillings and she’d smack the table and cackle like a witch. It was a great feeling to make her laugh like that.
If I forget all that, it will be like it never happened. And even though one day we’ll all be dead, and even the earth and the sun will be dead, it just seems wrong to forget Mom while I’m alive and she’s not.
Sammy won’t remember anything she did for him—the songs she made up and the games she played and the stories she read, and all the good things she brought into his life that are gone now. He’ll have an empty hole where Mom should be. And even if she’s dead, there should be something there besides a hole.
I’m going to make a scrapbook about Mom, like she did about me in kindergarten. Sammy and I can keep it forever, like a memory shelf, except it’s a book.
I just realized that when Sammy ran to his room to get the blue Power Ranger, he ran forward, not backward. So there’s hope for him yet. I forgot to ask our neighbor about the five-year-old soccer team, but I’ll try to remember before my game tomorrow.
I’m in a better mood now and it’s really late, so I should go to bed. Sammy’s head is hanging down near his journal and he’s drooling on it, so he must be asleep. He looks totally cute and peaceful, and you’d never know he was bawling his eyes out ten minutes ago.
Tuesday, August 14th
We saw Dr. Tierney today, and he didn’t ask to see our journals, not even to make sure we’ve been using them. When I told him about Dad’s time machine and Sammy’s psycho snakes, he said, “Let’s talk about you, Josh.” But when I told him that Sammy and I are collecting stories and photographs to make into a scrapbook about Mom, he scrunched his eyebrows together and frowned like that was a completely insane and puzzling idea.
So that confirms my poor opinion of psychiatrists. Except he gave us more journals, and they’re probably expensive. So that’s good.
Sammy loves the Mommy Book, which is what he calls our scrapbook. We haven’t even written it, but in his mind it’s already done. We started collecting pictures for it and planning which stories to include. Sam mentioned some of the less nice things about Mom, like how she yelled at me to stop combing my hair and get outside to the bus stop every morning last year. It must be a strong memory for Sam, because he asked about five thousand times, “Are, are, a-a-are we going to have a picture uh-uh-uh-of Mommy screaming at you in the morning?”
I can’t decide whether to include mean things like that or just leave them out. Maybe I can make them into funny jokes about life with Mom. But they were never funny at the time.
Man, she hated it when I was late for school. She’d go on and on about how we have a bus system so she shouldn’t have to drive me. She’d say, “What if we didn’t have a car?” and all sorts of irrelevant things like that. I only missed the bus twice in the whole year, but she yelled at me every single day to get out and wait for it. It’s only partly true that I combed my hair slowly on purpose to bug her. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to make her mad over something so stupid. She never got mad at other stuff, like when I lost my shoes or forgot my homework. But man, she got mad over the school bus.
At least she got me on the bus, which is more than I expect from Dad. I can see him driving off to work, waving at me in the window while I stay home gaming all day.
He took me to soccer on Saturday though. I scored three goals and we won the game. Sammy cheered, partly in his own voice and partly in his Power Ranger girly voice. It was very embarrassing to Dad, who stared at Sam like he was somebody else’s weird kid. Sammy told Dad he wants to play too, because Mom liked soccer. When Dad said it was too late to join, I told him that our neighbor is the five-year-old soccer coach. Dad said, “No
way, Josh. They’d never let a five-year-old be coach.” I think he was actually making a joke, even though his expression didn’t change. That has to be a good sign.
Cheetah dropped by with some photographs this morning. Some happy pictures of Mom at work made me smile and then cry a bit. Cheetah hugged me and cried too. She was soft and warm, and it was nice to hug her.
Her name is actually Chaitan. She wrote it on a photograph of her and Mom. I think that’s a weird name because it’s a lot like Sheitan, which is Persian for Satan. Maybe she’s the devil, and she put the snake in Mom’s car. Except I don’t believe in devils. And she doesn’t seem like a devil. She’s awfully pretty. When I told her I’d thought her name was Cheetah, she said that was a good name and if she were African she’d want that name. So that’s what I’m calling her.
I told her that Ashanti families in Africa mourn people for forty days after the funeral. She said it was cool to know stuff like that, but when I asked her if I was a know-it-all, she said no. That’s good, because a lot of know-it-alls win Darwin Awards.
Cheetah already knew about the Darwin Awards. She said she told Mom about them a few years ago. I guess she’s been working on her PhD for a long time. When I asked her if she knew how the snake got in Mom’s car, she said no. But she looked guilty, so it’s hard to say. Maybe she was feeling guilty for liking the Darwin Awards—she started to cry when I said I hoped Mom wouldn’t get one. I told her not to cry, because some of them are funny, and it’s okay to laugh at the ones that were astoundingly stupid.
I don’t think Cheetah put the snake in Mom’s car. She was very nice to bring the photographs and let me call her Cheetah. When Sammy walked into the room backward and I explained why he did that, she told him it was an excellent idea. She even left our house walking backward. But since she was crying, if she dies, the last thing we’ll remember of her is her face all screwed up and weeping.
It’s hard to think that someone you just saw this morning might have died at lunchtime and you wouldn’t even know it. With Mom, there was a long time when I was bumming around at home thinking she was at work, but really she was dead. You have no way of knowing. You could say good-bye to your friend on the phone, then remember some joke he made, and think, “He’s such a funny guy. I’m sure glad he’s my friend.” But really he could be dead already. He might have tripped down the stairs and broken his neck.
Mom told the best jokes. She was on a hundred joke e-mail lists—it’s hard to see how she got any work done with all those jokes to read. She’d tell me the best ones. On the day she died, she said, “What did the Buddha say to the hot-dog vendor? Make me one with everything.” She laughed all bright and happy when she told me that. Sammy didn’t get it, of course, but she didn’t tell it for him. She told it for me. I know about Buddhism and being one with everything. She told that joke while she was unpacking groceries and putting away the hot dogs. I told it to Simpson later in the day, but he didn’t get it either. And by then Mom was already dead. It wasn’t right to tell her joke while she was dead. I wish I had known right away.
If there’s anybody who’s not actually in your line of sight right now, they could be dead. Dad might be sprawled in his time machine, dead of a heart attack. Or a brain attack. Maybe your brain shuts down if you get so stupid it can’t stand to live with you. Like if you’re building a time machine and ignoring your kids whose mom just died.
I went into the basement to show Dad the pictures Cheetah brought this afternoon, but he must have been out in the yard with Sammy. He has half the basement curtained off. Behind the curtain is a strange rocket-shaped construction covered in a tarp, which I’m guessing is his time machine. I didn’t want to look.
Dad’s journal was lying on a table behind the curtain. It wasn’t full of time-travel theories. It was full of sad thoughts about how much he misses Mom and how he doesn’t know if he can go on living and how much he loves me and Sammy. It was frightening to read that he’s so sad. I would rather he were just insane.
I don’t think Dad put the snake in Mom’s car anymore. He wrote that he thinks I did it as a prank. Or maybe he just wrote that to cover his tracks and set me up in case the police start investigating again, and they take his journal as evidence. He should know that I’m not a prankster. Okay, I put fake poop on the porch once. And on April Fools’ Day, I wrote a letter saying Dad won a million dollars a year for life. But I would never scare Mom with a snake.
If he reads my journal like I read his, he’ll find out it wasn’t me.
So I’ll say right here that it isn’t very nice of him to keep walking forward when Sammy asked him to walk backward. A total stranger did it! But Dad won’t do it for his own four-year-old kid who has obviously gone wacko, peeing the bed and speaking to Mom through a Power Ranger. How is Sammy ever going to get through kindergarten without being labeled a freak? It starts in three weeks.
I’d understand if Dad were trying to help Sammy break his walking-backward habit. But Dad’s not helping Sammy. He’s not even making him supper. We’ve been eating microwaved hot dogs and Mr. Noodles for five weeks straight. Tonight Sammy clapped when I gave him cinnamon toast. We could use a real dad.
I’m going to accidentally-on-purpose leave this journal on the kitchen counter by the coffeepot so Dad will find it and know for sure that I didn’t put the snake in Mom’s car. And he can learn that he’s failing as a parent.
Thursday, August 16th
Dad was showing no sign of having read my journal, and it was in exactly the same spot where I left it two days ago, so I just went up to him and said, “I didn’t put the snake in Mom’s car, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He said, “I would never think that, Josh.” So obviously he doesn’t know that I read his journal. I asked him straight out, “Did you put the snake in Mom’s car on purpose so she’d have an accident?” He looked pretty shocked at that. He walked away toward the basement.
I freaked out. I shoved the plant stand over and yelled, “You’re a terrible father! You’re worse than no parent at all!” Then I started to cry. Sammy ran into the hall, and the girl Power Ranger said she loved me. Then Cleo came over and started pawing the dirt I’d spilled, like maybe she was going to poop in it. I started laughing hysterically. We’re such a pathetic family.
Later, when Dad and I were alone again, he said maybe Sammy put the snake in Mom’s car, and that’s why he’s gone wacko. But I can’t see Sammy catching a snake without getting a hundred bites and a lot of bad-smelling anal secretion all over him. The kid can’t catch a baseball. I’ve never tried to catch a snake, but once in the schoolyard I saw Karen grab one right behind its head. She said if you grab a snake anywhere else, it will swing around and bite you. I asked if she’d ever been bitten, and she said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt that much.” Then she chased me around the schoolyard, laughing.
I wonder why Dad suspected me, since he’s seen me run away from snakes. Last fall I lifted up a wooden board behind the shed, and I totally spazzed out when I saw a snake under it. I ran to the deck as if it were chasing me. Meanwhile, Sammy rushed over to check out the snake. If he were older, he’d have shouted, “Josh, my boy, you’ve discovered a common garter snake!” He loves snakes. He could probably learn to identify all the different species if he took half a minute away from the tv and just looked at a book sometime.
Mom always said she wished she were like Sammy around snakes. If he did manage to catch one, he might have put it in her car, thinking it would help her become unafraid like he was. But it’s a long shot.
Dr. Tierney said kids Sammy’s age can feel like murderers if they were mad at the person who died. But Sam was never mad at Mom. When she was alive, you could ask Sam if he was having a good day, and he’d look at you like the question was retarded, and he’d say, “Every day is a good day.” He really meant it—every single day of his life was a slice of Heaven. I don’t think he would say that now. I don’t know if he’ll ever say that again.
I do
n’t believe Sam put the snake in Mom’s car. I asked Dad if he thought it might have been the crying guy. Dad said, “Why would Professor Johnston try to kill your mother?” I said, “I don’t know. Maybe if he’s a crazy stalker?” Dad gave me his confused smile. Then he asked, “Did your mother ever talk about him?” It was way obvious he suspected something was going on between them.
The crying guy is totally good-looking when he’s not crying. Aunt Laura says that women like men who are tall, dark and handsome, and he’s all three. Plus, she says that women like men who aren’t afraid to show their feelings, which obviously he isn’t, since he cried for hours in front of hundreds of people.
I said to Dad, “I never heard of the guy in my life, but he cried an awful lot at the funeral.” And Dad said, “Hmm.”
Friday, August 17th
We have to get to work on the scrapbook right away, because I’m already forgetting stuff. Today when Dad opened the door and shouted “Charlemagne!” I thought he’d gone insane. Like more than usual. I forgot that’s our cat Charlie’s full name. I don’t know why Mom named him that. The real Charlemagne changed the face of Europe and conquered a whole empire. Our cat hasn’t even conquered the yard—there’s a bigger cat who pees on our porch regularly, and Charlie just runs inside when he comes around.
Our other cat is named after Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt. She killed herself with an asp, which is a poisonous snake. That would have been the most horrible death Mom could have imagined. If Mom were Cleopatra, she’d have drowned herself in the Nile.
Other people name a cat “Boots” because it has white feet, or “Ginger” because it’s orange. Mom felt the need to name Cleo and Charlie after great historical leaders, even though all they do is sleep and eat and roll around all day biting each other’s heads.
Walking Backward Page 5
