Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It

by Sundee T. Frazier

  “Want some sardines and crackers?”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Don’t put down my midmorning snack just because you don’t want any.” I guessed nine o’clock was midmorning for Gladys, since she got up around five every day.

  She sat carefully in the recliner next to me, the plate of sardines in one hand, her Gatorade in the other. “Uhoh. I’m seeing the Brown Ridge Mountains.” Gladys says my forehead bunches up like mountains when I’m thinking. She picked up the remote from the little table between us and turned on the TV. Gladys never misses The Price Is Right. “What is it this time?”

  I shrugged. “Do you have any Ho Hos?”

  “It’s only nine in the morning.” She set her food down and pushed herself out of the chair. “Just don’t tell your mama.”

  “Like she won’t tell me about Ed DeBose?” A woman was going crazy on TV, jumping up and down and screaming. Bells went off in the background.

  Gladys glared at me. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Good. Don’t scare me like that, boy!” She brought the Ho Ho on a plate. “I got a new neighbor this weekend and I can tell already—she’s one of those hysterical types,” she said, nodding toward the TV.

  I bit into the chocolate log and licked the white stuff out with my tongue. It seemed like maybe Gladys was trying to change the subject.

  “Got a wiener dog named Dixie.”

  “A wiener dog?” I looked at her.

  “You know—one of those short, squatty dogs that looks like a wiener.”

  Gladys had taken off her shoes and socks. I stared at her toes, pinched tightly together and slightly curved like little wieners in a sardine can. She put the chair back and crossed one foot over the other. “I went over there the other day, to be friendly, you know, and this woman had newspapers lying everywhere. She makes the dog do its business on the papers. She won’t let it go outside to do regular dog things. I told her, ‘A dog has outdoor needs. It needs to sniff around and dig in the dirt.’

  “‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘Dixie’s too dainty for that!’ It’s disgusting, really. Absolutely shameful. That poor dog.” Gladys shook her head. She looked very disgusted.

  I held my nose because I was disgusted by the smell of that fish. It was making my Ho Ho taste funny. I set the plate down. “Why can’t we talk about my other grandpa?”

  She chewed on a sardine cracker, her forehead a big crease.

  “What’d he do that’s so bad?” I wanted to tell Gladys about the rock club and see what she thought about Ed not saying anything to people about me, but if I told her what I’d been up to, she could be seen as an accomplice. Dad had told me what an accomplice was. Accomplices could get in as much trouble as the actual committers of a crime.

  Not that I was committing a crime. I just wanted to know the truth.

  She followed the last bite of sardine with a gulp of Gatorade, then opened a small canister and pulled out a toothpick. She stuck it into her mouth. Gladys likes to gnaw on toothpicks, especially when she’s thinking. She never actually picks at her teeth, because they aren’t real. Once when I stayed overnight, I saw her and Grampa Clem’s dentures sitting in two glasses of water on the bathroom counter. That night I dreamed I was being chased by giant teeth and gums.

  Gladys picked up the remote and clicked off the TV. “You should talk to your mother about this.”

  “I tried. She won’t tell me anything.”

  “I’m sure she has her reasons.”

  Why wouldn’t anyone tell me what the reasons were?

  Gladys squinted at me through her pointy glasses. “They had a big falling-out. That’s all I can say.” She crossed her arms.

  “But I already knew that.”

  “Well, what more is there to know? Apparently, the man is as stubborn as a mule. Won’t apologize for what he did.” She reached for her crossword puzzle magazine and a pen. “Must be where your mama got it from.”

  “Got what?”

  “Her willfulness.”

  I sat on the edge of the chair. “But what did he do?”

  She slapped the magazine shut. “Cut off all contact. Wouldn’t even let your mama see her own mother.”

  I hadn’t known that.

  “Then your grandma up and died. Totally unexpected.” I’d never thought about how she’d died. She was just dead. “It’s pretty clear your mama’s never forgiven him.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “Stroke, I think.”

  “You mean from too much sun?” Mom was always telling me to drink water when I went out on my bike so I wouldn’t get heatstroke.

  “More serious than that. Like having a heart attack in your head.” Grampa Clem had died of a heart attack.

  “But why wouldn’t he let her see her mom?”

  Gladys pushed in her footrest and stood up. “That’s all I can say.” Her lips clamped together so tightly, her upper lip disappeared.

  I followed her to the kitchen with my plate.

  She put her arm around me. “Don’t you worry yourself about it, my beautiful brown boy. What’s done is done.” That was what Grampa Clem had called me—his beautiful brown boy.

  I put my plate down. Over the sink hung a plaque that read “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  I’d seen that plaque every time I came over to spend time with my grandparents, but this time I thought about the words and what they might mean. I didn’t know why I would need serenity to accept some things, or even what serenity was, exactly, but I knew one thing: I couldn’t change Gladys’s mind. She’d locked up the subject and swallowed the key.

  I’d have to figure out the rest some other way.

  CHAPTER 13

  The reception area at Mom’s work looked about as exciting as a prison cell. Mom had made me come with her today. She still didn’t want me by myself.

  A toy box was shoved into one corner. In front of it stood a short table surrounded by small chairs. I tossed my backpack onto one of the couches and looked into the box, just in case they had anything good. Mom had gone into her office and Denise, the lady behind the counter, was talking on the phone.

  I dug through the toys, but, as I’d suspected, it was all baby stuff: some blocks, two Barbies—one brown and one white—a dump truck, little cups and saucers and a bunch of plastic food—pretend canned vegetables, broccoli, a banana and a pork chop. The best thing they had was a barrel of monkeys. I pulled open the barrel and dumped the red plastic monkeys on the floor.

  The door opened and a lady came in, holding the hand of a little girl. The lady’s stomach stuck out really far. It looked like hard work for her just to get to the counter. The little girl sucked her thumb. She stared at me. I picked up a monkey and started to make a chain by hooking one monkey’s arm onto another’s.

  I had hooked seven monkeys when the little girl’s feet appeared at the edge of my shrinking pile. “Me do,” she said, holding out her hand. Her eyes shone black like two Apache Tears. That was a rock I’d read about the night before.

  Mom came to the front and hugged the pregnant lady. As they started toward the back, the lady said something to her daughter in Spanish. I knew it was Spanish because that’s what my friend Oscar’s parents speak to him when we’re at his house. The only word I understood was Katie, which I guessed was the girl’s name.

  I handed a monkey to Katie and dropped my chain on the ground so she had more to work with.

  She picked up a monkey with the one in her hand, but when she got to monkey number three, the second one kept falling off. “Monkey malo. ¡Malo!” She threw them on the ground. Malo must mean something bad, because Katie didn’t want to play with them anymore.

  I made my monkey face by pushing out my ears and crossing my eyes. She giggled. I stood up and galloped around the room. I made a monkey sound. “Whoo-whoo-whoo.”
It felt good to make someone laugh doing the thing that boy in the park had done to make me feel bad.

  She laughed harder and clapped her hands. “Monkey loco.” Then she chased me around the room.

  She stopped in front of the toy box. She pulled out a tiny teacup and led me to one of the small chairs. She sipped from her cup and pointed to the one in front of me. I was glad none of the guys from Tae Kwon Do were here. I pretended to drink.

  Fortunately, the girl’s mom appeared before I had to pretend much more. “Vámonos, Katita.”

  Katie waved at me as they walked out the door.

  “She’s got the same name as you,” I said to Mom after they were gone.

  “Belinda liked the meaning,’” she murmured. She reached into her mailbox and pulled out a pink piece of paper. “Pure.”

  That was what Ed had called his minerals. Pure substances.

  I went back to the reception area and sat in a real chair. I had just started to read in one of my rock books about how pearls are formed when the door opened and Belinda appeared. She was holding her stomach. “My water broke!” Katie grabbed at her mom, crying to be picked up.

  I didn’t know how water broke exactly, but I could tell what was happening. Her baby was about to be born. Whoa! Would it happen right here in Mom’s office? I knew I was staring, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen a baby get born.

  “Denise, call 911,” Mom said firmly, rushing toward the door. “Bren, take Katie, please.” I stood there. I didn’t really want to see a baby get born. “Bren!” She picked up Katie and dropped her into my arms. I sat her on my lap and held her fist. It was as hard as stone. She bawled so loud, it hurt my ears.

  Mom helped Belinda to the back. Other women who worked there came out of their offices and rushed into Mom’s office.

  “Come on, Katie. It’ll be all right.” I sat her on the couch next to my backpack. I tried to get her interested in the monkeys again, but she kept crying. She started to scoot off the couch. “¡Mamá!”

  I pulled her onto my lap and held her tight. “It’s okay. Shhh.” I wished Denise would come take Katie, but she was still talking to the 911 people.

  The office became like a cage full of big lady birds flying and fluttering everywhere. In the middle of all that, an Asian man came in carrying two brown bags. He asked me if I knew who had ordered the food, since no one else seemed to notice him. I told him I had no idea, but I wished it had been me. My stomach felt like a big, empty cave.

  He must have heard my stomach rumbling even over Katie’s crying, because he dug into the bag and pulled out two fortune cookies. He handed one to each of us, then went to the counter, where Denise had hung up the phone.

  Katie stopped crying. I tore open the wrapper and showed her how to crack the cookie and pull out the fortune. “‘A surprise is on its way,’” I read out loud. “Hey, this one’s for you! You’re getting a surprise today. Will you get a baby brother or a baby sister?”

  “Sis-ser,” she said, reaching for the cookie. She crunched it between her teeth. Her face glistened from her tears and snot.

  “I guess you’ll know soon.” I started to break the other cookie, but she wanted to do it, so I let her. I pulled out the little white slip. “‘The one who forgives ends the argument.’” At first I thought it was a boring fortune. Then I thought of Mom and Ed DeBose. They were still fighting, even though they hadn’t talked to each other for more than ten years. Someone needed to forgive, but who would do it first?

  After a while, the paramedics came and wheeled Katie’s mom away. Katie’s grandma came and took Katie with her. When everything was quiet again, Mom and I sat in the kitchen and ate noodles and fried rice off paper plates. One of the ladies had offered it to us.

  I placed the fortune about forgiving on the table. Maybe if Mom saw it, she would think about Ed, and maybe she would realize that she needed to forgive him for not letting her see her mom before she died.

  “Katie really took to you.” Mom put her hand on my arm. “You’d be a great big brother.” When she lifted her arm, the fortune was stuck to her skin. “What’s this?” She peeled it off and read it. If it made her think of Ed DeBose, she didn’t show it. “That’s a good one,” she said, putting it back on the table.

  I shoved it into my pocket. Maybe if I showed it to Ed DeBose, it would make him think about this forgiveness stuff.

  I thought of Katie’s mom and the baby getting born, even as we sat here and ate sweet-and-sour chicken. Thinking about what I’d seen that day made my stomach do flip-flops. I drank some of my root beer. “Are you ever going to have another baby?”

  She sipped from her glass of water, then shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Well…when you were born, I almost died.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep.” She stuck her fork into the pile of noodles on her plate and twirled. “I’ve known since then that I can’t have another one.”

  I chewed my food slowly. I had never thought much about having a brother or sister, other than that if they were all like Dori, I didn’t really need one. I liked it with just my parents, Gladys, Grampa Clem and me. But suddenly I felt sort of alone, like a moon orbiting a planet all by itself.

  “I never said anything before because I didn’t want you to think it had anything to do with you. It’s just the way it happened.”

  “Was that before or after Grandma DeBose died?”

  “A little before.”

  “And your dad still didn’t let you see her?”

  Mom’s fork froze in midair. “What?”

  My ears got hot. “Nothing.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Don’t blame Gladys. I asked. She didn’t tell me anything, really.”

  She sighed and put her fork down. “Look, Bren, we’ll talk about it.” I looked up. “Soon. A little at a time. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s just very hard for me to discuss. Do you understand?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand and I wasn’t going to lie about that.

  “Yeah, I don’t think I would either if I were you.”

  The carrots and peas in my unfinished clump of fried rice looked like gems in a mound of dirt.

  “What would you think if we adopted a little boy or girl into our family?” she asked.

  “And a salamander?” I didn’t need a little brother or sister, but I’d wanted a salamander all year.

  “Let’s talk about it. You know how much I like salamanders.” She smiled at me. Mom had had a pet lizard in college.

  That weekend, Katie’s mom called. Katie now had a little brother. Even though she’d wanted a sister, maybe after playing with me, having a brother didn’t seem so bad.

  CHAPTER 14

  The next week, Mom arranged for me to stay at Khalfani’s every day that she was at work, which was fine with me except for the fact that I didn’t have a bike to ride.

  On Monday, we swam in his pool and played Ninja Blast on his computer and his mom made us corndogs for lunch. Even Dori didn’t seem so bad.

  On Wednesday, I packed my Book of Big Questions in case I could convince Khalfani to help me do some research.

  I’d added some questions recently, like why wouldn’t Ed let Mom speak to Grandma DeBose after I was born—even though she’d almost died? And why didn’t Mom want to tell me about it? And how come buffaloes didn’t tip over? And why did some people’s breath stink so bad?

  But the question that gave me the Jitters worst of all was about what had happened at the rock club meeting. I still didn’t understand. Why hadn’t Ed told the group who I was? I couldn’t help wondering a little bit, way down in the bottom of my brain, if Ed had been embarrassed to call me his grandson.

  And even though I didn’t want to believe it, the thought wouldn’t go away, like a gnat that keeps dive-bombing your face no matter how many times you swat at it: What if he was embarrassed because of my color? I had been the only brown-s
kinned person there.

  Maybe Ed had a problem with black people after all—or at least with admitting he was related to one. I didn’t like this hypothesis. It wasn’t the true scientific thing to do, but I couldn’t help it: I shoved it out of my mind.

  After we swam in his pool, Khal played a video game on his handheld while I got on the Internet and searched for more info about thunder eggs. I still wondered what made them so round.

  Here is What I Found Out: Millions of years ago, gas pockets, like air bubbles, formed in lava flows. Over a very long time, water oozed through cracks in the hardened lava and left behind minerals that filled the gas pocket molds. These minerals became the thunder eggs. Because the gas pockets were round, thunder eggs are round.

  I found an Internet article by a man who got interested in thunder eggs when he was ten years old, just like me. When he turned fifteen, he decided to go to Oregon because he’d heard that the thunder eggs in that state were so amazing. He hitchhiked and jumped trains for six hundred miles just to get there!

  Would I ever do something like that? Would I ever get to dig thunder eggs?

  I knew one person who could take me—Ed DeBose.

  The questions surfaced again. Was he glad I was his grandson? Would he take me digging?

  I would just call and ask him directly. It was the only way to know.

  After lunch, I told Khalfani I wanted to phone Ed. But first I brought up the broken pick. “I don’t know what to do about it,” I said.

  “Tell him you lost it.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “So tell him you broke it.”

  “I didn’t do that, either.”

  “So tell him some big bully in the park broke it.”

  “Oh yeah.” I guessed that didn’t make it seem so bad.

  I didn’t have the green flyer with Ed’s phone number on it, so we looked it up in the phone book.

  When Ed answered, I said hello. He recognized my voice, and I got tingly all over, like I imagined it might feel inside Gladys’s water-massage machine.

  “When’re you coming over?” he asked. “Got another specimen for your collection.”