by Karen Foxlee
“Oh, no,” said Mother.
“Yeah, poor Fletcher. There was this boy named Teddy and his grandpa has a Ford Golden Jubilee tractor.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“No kidding, Lenny,” said Davey. “He got to ride on it. On his farm.”
“No kidding.”
“Stop saying no kidding,” said Mother.
“No kidding, Lenny. I drew him a picture of it and he said, ‘Yep, that’s my grandpa’s Golden Jubilee.’ He said maybe one day I can go on vacation with him and ride on his grandpa’s tractor.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Last warning, Lenore,” said Mother.
“It was the best day of my life,” said Davey. “But poor Fletcher. It wasn’t just like a little pee, Mama, I mean this was just so much piss, like an elephant, it just hit the ground splatting everywhere.”
Miss Schweitzer must have had the worst day ever.
“Do not say that word,” cried Mother. “Do you hear me? I will wash out your mouth with soap. Where’d you learn that word?”
“So much piss,” said Davey, shaking his head, when Mother was in the kitchen.
I blew juice out my nose.
September 15, 1975
Burrell’s Publishing Company Ltd
7001 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46241
OUR GIFT TO YOU IS THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE
Dear Mrs. Spink,
Thank you for your recent correspondence. Unfortunately, I must inform you that your prize subscription to the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia set does not include the volume covers. The volume covers are considered an extra, and all subscribers must pay for these after the first two complimentary volume covers. The covers are available through our easy order system and are of course available COD.
Yours sincerely,
Martha Brent
General Sales Manager
* * *
* * *
September 27, 1975
Apartment 15, 762 Second Street
Grayford, Ohio 44002
Dear Martha Brent,
I am writing to inform you that I will not be paying for the volume covers for the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia set. It is a sad day in the Spink household. I have two children and I must provide for them both. I wrote about this in my letter to win the competition you will kindly remember. My younger child, Davey, has a condition, which makes him much bigger than other boys his age. Our family doctor said it was just in his genes but the school nurse says I must take him to the doctor’s again so he can have blood tests. My children get hours of enjoyment from the encyclopedia set and now we will not be able to build it. When we have visitors, rest assured, I will tell them of the horrible service we have received from the Burrell’s Encyclopedia people who, it seems, do not give the gift of knowledge after all.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs. Cynthia Spink
* * *
C:
Coleopterist
4’ 10”
OCTOBER 1975
“How’s Davey doing at school?” Nanny Flora asked me. She’d heard Mother’s version. Well, he’s just fine. You should see his writing. He’s got some little friends. One’s named Teddy and one’s named Fletcher.
She’d heard Davey’s version. I like it a lot, Nanny Flora. Sometimes I get to be the class monitor. I check that all the bags and coats are hung straight. I am the best at drawing in the entire class.
I figured she wanted a different version.
“He had to go to the school nurse,” I said.
“Why’s that?” asked Nanny Flora.
“He had some bad growing pains,” I said. “He gets them sometimes but he never had them at school before. The nurse said he needed to have his blood tested.”
“Give me that telephone,” said Mother.
“What?” I said.
“Give it to me,” said Mother.
“No, it’s nothing to worry about,” said Mother to Nanny Flora when she had the phone back out of my hands.
But there was. Sometimes I imagined I could hear Davey growing at night. I could hear his bones stretching. I could hear the hair growing on his head, a soft rustling sound. I could hear his fingernails and his toenails and his teeth. In the dark, I lay and listened. I willed him to stop but he was an unstoppable thing.
“Yes, I told the doctor all about Uncle Gus. Yes, and the nurse too.”
My sinking feeling grew.
The school nurse’s name was Sandy Strachan and she was full of sunshine and dazzlingly bright. “Well, hello, honey,” she said when I got to the nurse’s office and saw Davey lying on his side moaning. He was moaning the way Davey moaned, as though he was about to die, as though someone had stabbed him with a knife.
“Hush, Davey,” I said. “He’s just got growing pains, ma’am. Mother just gives him some aspirin.”
“Well, I’ve called your mom, honey, and I’ve given him some. And she’s coming from work right now.”
“Hush now, Davey,” I said.
“Len–neeeeeee,” he bellowed.
“It’s just that he grows all of a sudden,” I said.
I wished I had a reason. Nurse Sandy smiled at me, her mauve lipstick parted around her very white teeth, while she waited for the reason.
“For no reason,” I said. “It’ll stop soon. Hush now, Davey.”
“You’re a tall boy, all right,” said Nurse Sandy. She stroked Davey on the cheek and I saw him open his big blue eyes at her. I could tell he was secretly enjoying it.
“And so clever,” Nurse Sandy added. “He knows everything about tractors. Every different sort there is. Pretty good for a city boy.”
Of course Nurse Sandy would fall in love with Davey. Everyone fell in love with Davey. I crossed my arms and felt aggrieved.
Davey smiled at Nurse Sandy and then moaned for good measure.
Mother came in like a grass tornado in her green “King of Fruit” Fruit Store shirt with the banana embroidered on the pocket. She came in wild, like Davey had been hit by a motorbike and he was lying half-dead on the street.
“Davey!” she cried and in response he bellowed like the knife had been stuck in farther.
“It’s these growing pains,” said Mother.
“He’s been to the doctor you know,” she said. Now she was an excuse tornado. She couldn’t be stopped.
“The doctor said it’s just in his genes,” she said. “But he gets these pains from time to time.”
Nurse Sandy listened and smiled.
“Well, he’s just gorgeous,” she said. Not once, He’s too big. “But I think you should take Davey to the doctor again.”
Mother went to start up again. She went to say, There are tall people in our family, but Nurse Sandy bulldozed right over her, smiling.
“I think there are probably some things that need checking. Growth hormone is one thing I’m thinking of. Sometimes a kid might have too much and sometimes not enough. I think Davey needs his blood tested.”
“The doctor said I worried too much,” said Mother.
“Well, you need to find another doctor, sweetie,” countered Nurse Sandy, and I don’t know what was more shocking, calling Mother sweetie or the hug she gave her straight after. Nurse Sandy grabbed Mother by the shoulders and hugged her while she was speaking. A sudden hug. A big out-of-the-blue squeeze. An ambush embrace. “Everyone is entitled to a second opinion,” Nurse Sandy finished.
It was outside that Mother started to cry. She put her head in her hands and sobbed and tried to recover herself but sobbed again. She wiped furiously at her eyes, enraged at her tears that wouldn’t stop. Davey hung his head.
“People shouldn’t just go hugging you for no good reason,” I said, enraged myself.
“Hush,” said Mother, and she hiccuped and tried to get herself under control which was straight up and down and skinny with a frown. She closed her eyes and I closed mine. The sun was warm and
bright against my eyelids. Davey did a smallish disgruntled bellow so we didn’t forget him.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“You have a good day now, Lenny. Go back inside. I’ll get this boy home.” She smiled and wiped her face. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“Yes, everything is going to be fine,” I said.
I walked back toward the entrance and they walked out toward the gate, and then through the gates, and then all the way to where the twenty-eight bus stopped. And I turned to check them several times, just to see that everything was still fine.
That day in class I counted the notches on a Goliath beetles’ legs in my head. I imagined them and I counted them and it calmed me. I thought it must be like Mrs. Gaspar and her rosary. Mr. Marcus was our new fourth-grade teacher and he was nothing like Miss Schweitzer. He had a bristly moustache and sometimes he gave up teaching us and took out his guitar and sang us “Kumbaya”. My handkerchiefs were already a crumpled mess in my underpants drawer. It was Davey who had to worry about handkerchiefs now.
Goliathus goliatus, I repeated, again and again in class that day after Davey went home with growing pains. Goliathus goliatus. Goliathus goliatus. Goliathus goliatus. Goliathus goliatus. Goliathus goliatus. Goliathus goliatus. Biggest beetle in the world.
They were words. And words felt good and solid.
Goliathus goliatus. I said it at recess beside Matthew Milford and CJ. I described that beetle to them in detail until their eyes glazed over, until CJ said, “Can you please shut up already about Goliath beetles?”
So I told them about the African leaf beetle that could kill you by paralysing you. I told them about the rhinoceros beetle, lesser cousin to the Goliath. I explained to them the life cycle of the cicada. Matthew Milford listened smiling.
“Beetles, beetles, beetles,” said CJ, sighing loudly.
I ignored her.
“First it was amphibians. Then ants. And now beetles.”
Amphibians seemed a long time ago. Amphibians seemed like something a baby would like.
“All you ever talk about is beetles,” said CJ. “When you sleep over at my house on Saturday, I think I better find my bug catcher.”
It was to be my first ever sleep-over away from home and I was excited and terrified. Even if I just imagined saying goodbye to Davey, a pointy lump formed in my throat.
“You have a bug catcher?” I asked, trying not to think of the goodbye.
“I certainly do,” said CJ. “A really big bug catcher.”
The first of the D issues began to arrive. Our mother felt the packages for volume covers but was disappointed each time. In fact, the D issues were for the most part a disappointment. Dairy farms. Dallas. The Dakotas. Dolls, deafness, and the history of dancing. All the drudgery of daffodils, Delaware, five pages of dogs, daddy-long-legs, dams.
“Look here, Lenny, there’s dressmaking,” said Mother. “That might be a nice thing for you.”
“I’m not that interested in dressmaking,” I said.
We flipped aimlessly. David killed Goliath. He killed lions and bears as well. We tried feeling sad for the lions and bears but it was a listless attempt; the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia provided no satisfying detail.
Even death.
Death was the end of life. Death occurred when vital organs, the lungs, heart, and brain, stopped functioning. Death sat between Dearborn, Henry and death adder on a lonely page. There was no illustration or diagram to accompany the death entry. There was a photograph of a death adder just below.
“Look at it,” said Davey. “Don’t you think they should have a picture of a dead squirrel or something?”
“Shush,” I said.
“Or a dead death adder,” said Davey. He thought he was pretty funny.
Those two death paragraphs seemed so clean and clinical. Empty.
I turned the page.
The park gardener had come and snipped the roses down to nothing, just brownish sticks. Now there were no aphids left, not even a chance of finding an aphid. When the aphids disappeared, I hadn’t known what to feed Lady. I’d tried honey. I’d tried raisins. I tried little snippets of lettuce, but she ate nothing. She went up and down the wall of her glass jar prison. Up and down her sticks, searching and searching, and searching. She grew slower and slower.
She died.
We had taken her little body wrapped in a handkerchief and buried her near those snipped-down rose bushes in the park, the place where she always should have been. I’d felt sad for stealing her from those summer days.
I couldn’t tell Mother about her death. It was my own small grief. I told Mrs. Gaspar, though, and she nodded her head and closed her eyes while she listened.
“Did you try jam?” she asked.
“It was too late for jam,” I said.
“Well, then, you tried good,” said Mrs. Gaspar. She said goot for good. “You tried your very best.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was despondent.
“I will tell you my dream,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
She never asked permission. I went to call for Davey because he liked her dreams too, but she put her soft damp hand on mine.
“In this dream we were walking, you and I. We were walking on Second Street. And I was just a girl like you.”
I needed to picture it, a young Mrs. Gaspar.
“What were you like?”
“Long hair, roses in my cheeks,” she said.
“Red hair?”
“Like fire,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
I had it.
“We were walking and walking and then we found a field,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “A big field, covered in pink morning dew, because we were walking and the sun had only just come up.”
“Whereabouts was it?”
“I do not recall, Lenora, but in this paddock there were two white horses.”
Oh. I don’t know if I said it. The oh may have been silent. I loved Mrs. Gaspar’s horse dreams, but I’d never featured in one.
“They were shining in the morning sun,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
“Did we ride them?”
Sometimes Mrs. Gaspar rode her dream white horses. She once rode a dream white horse all the way to Safeway and then right in through the front door and up and down the aisles, picking up canned corn and canned franks and dill pickles in a jar.
“We did not ride them,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “We flew them.”
“What?” I shouted.
“What?” said Davey from her little living room.
“Nothing,” I said.
“We went toward them and they were frisky. They stamped their hooves and took off running and we chased them around that paddock,” said Mrs. Gaspar. “And as they ran their wings opened up. Great wings, white wings! And as they ran, their hooves lifted from the ground. We ran after those horses and you had one first and you were on its back as it flew up into the sky.”
“Did you catch one?” I asked breathlessly, like I’d actually been running.
“Yes, I caught one.”
“Did you fly too?”
“Yes, I flew, and when I looked down it was not here but Hungary and I saw my mother and father in front of their little house, waving up at me.”
I imagined it. It was a good dream. The best one yet. After Mother and her black egg, it felt much better.
“What does it mean, Lenora?” Mrs. Gaspar whispered, as though I might know. As though I might have such knowledge inside me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back.
That night Mr. King came to our apartment. Our mother let him in. She let him in because she was expecting him and when I knew that, I realized why she had been so long in the bathroom putting waves in her hair, and why she kept smoothing down her denim skirt and looking at herself in the mirror.
Mr. King was as short as my mother, who was small. I got my smallness from her. Mr. King had a little round belly like he’d swallowed a baby. His satiny s
hirt strained over it. His Ford Gran Torino keys jangled in one hand. He held a bunch of bananas in the other. He looked at my mother like he could suck her up through a straw, just like that, and she would be all his.
“Hello, children,” he said.
I was having difficulty comprehending. Mr. King of Mr. King’s “King of Fruit” Fruit Store. In our living room. Holding bananas.
“This is Lenny, you’ve met her, I know,” said Mother, all fluttery and soft and nervous. “And Davey, you’ve met Davey.”
Davey was looking at Denmark. In Denmark, nearly everyone rode a bicycle. Davey sorely wanted a bicycle. In his daydreams, we both rode to Great Bear Lake. He was utterly impractical.
“Hello, sir,” said Davey. He stood up and he smiled, the way Davey always smiled, very good-naturedly, leaning to one side a little, squinting his left eye.
Mr. King put his keys in his pocket and shook Davey’s hand.
“I bet those are the keys to your Ford Gran Torino,” said Davey.
“Sure are, boy. Do you like the Ford Gran Torino, Davey?” “No, I like tractors,” said Davey. He was only six.
“I’m just nearly finished cooking,” said Mother. “What can I get you to drink?”
What. Can. I. Get. You. To. Drink.
We only ever had water or milk in our house. Mr. King didn’t look like a milk kind of man. His black moustache was terrible. By terrible, I mean I didn’t want to look at it. By terrible, I mean I couldn’t stop looking at it. I looked at it and looked at it all through dinner. I watched the food going into the little red opening beneath it. The pot pie we always ate on Fridays. The milk droplets hanging onto the bristles.
“Whatcha been doing at school, Lenore?” he asked.
He had a big gold chain around his neck. Back to the black moustache. There was a little piece of pastry caught in one corner.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Don’t be rude, Lenny,” said Mother.
Mr. King’s pants strained over his plump thighs. He was all sausage meat inside his shiny pants. Back to his bristly moustache. Mr. Marcus’s moustache had nothing on Mr. King’s moustache.
