Elfie Unperfect

by Kristin Mahoney

  Until the day she brought in the eggs.

  “Now that we’re all getting to know our classroom family, I want to talk to you about a new social studies project,” Ms. Rambutan said with visible excitement as she stood beside an egg carton on her desk. “As you can see, here I have some rather ordinary eggs, although they are fresh from a local farm. They are the eggs of the Gallus gallus domesticus, which is the scientific name for the ordinary chicken.” She looked at me, and I nodded. Ms. Rambutan had learned how important scientific names are to me.

  “But these will soon be much more than ordinary eggs to you,” Ms. Rambutan went on. “They will be your children! This is the first day of our egg baby project. You will be responsible for keeping these eggs safe and well cared for, just as if they were your babies.

  “You’ll be keeping track of your parenting adventure in a baby journal. This is where you’ll write about Baby’s activities, your favorite parts of being a parent, and anything you find challenging. And new parents like to take lots of pictures, so include photos or drawings too. This may sound like a lot, but don’t worry; you’ll be working in groups! I’m going to keep you in the same groups you did your character studies with on the second day of school.”

  Urft. I was going to be the parent of an egg, and I had to do this project with Will and of course—of course—Jenna.

  The class had questions. Lots of them. Elijah: Why don’t we each get our own egg? (Answer: Because raising children is ideally done by a family and a community, and part of parenting is learning to value the input of others.) Esme: Why do we have to learn about being parents when we’re only in fifth grade? (Answer: Because it’s never too soon to learn more about responsibility and empathy, and as the oldest students at Cottonwood, we should strive to be examples of both for the younger students.) Jenna: Shouldn’t the eggs be in the refrigerator? (Answer: No, since these eggs are farm-fresh, their protective coating hasn’t been washed off. So it’s safe to keep them at room temperature for a week or two. But don’t give your babies baths, because it will wash that coating off!) And Aliyah asked the question that was at the top of everyone’s mind: What if the egg breaks? (Answer: Try your very best to keep that from happening. But if it does, it will be a chance to think about what you should have done differently.)

  Ms. Rambutan had us sit with our groups, then she passed out booklets called Caring for Your Egg Baby: A Guide for New Parents. The first page, “Getting Started,” gave a list of decisions we should make at the beginning of the project, including:

  What will your egg baby’s name be?

  What will your egg baby look like?

  Who will take your egg baby home first?

  I glanced at the group beside us. Esme was standing with her arms folded and shooting desperate looks at Jenna. I was sure they both considered it a tragedy that they weren’t in a group together. But Esme’s groupmates, Elijah and Maxine, seemed happy enough. Maxine was even sketching an egg wearing a little outfit, complete with springy baby chick antennae.

  Will noticed Jenna and me gazing at the other group and snapped his fingers to get our attention. “Guys, let’s get to work. Our egg baby needs us.” Jenna gave me a surprised look, and for once I could tell we were thinking the same thing: it was very unlike Will to take schoolwork so seriously.

  Will wrote name, looks, and home first on three pieces of paper, folded them up, and put them in Jenna’s pencil case. When we pulled them out, I got looks, Jenna got name, and Will got home first.

  The baby’s gender was determined when Jenna named it Linda McMuffin. McMuffin was inspired by Jenna’s favorite egg breakfast. Linda is our grandma’s name. “She’ll be honored!” Jenna said. I wasn’t so sure. Grandma Linda didn’t even like eggs; she always ate oatmeal when she visited us.

  It was my job to draw Linda McMuffin’s face and hair. I was pleased, because this felt like an important responsibility, and I wasn’t sure I trusted Jenna or Will to be in charge of our baby’s looks. Art was never my greatest area of interest, but I felt confident that I could make an attractive egg.

  I started with the green eyes. “Why green?” Jenna asked. I explained that it was a nice color, but also that I was inspired by Goober’s green eyes. “That’s not so special,” Jenna said. “All cats have green eyes.”

  “That is patently false,” I said. “Cats’ eyes can be a wide array of colors.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. “Patently false,” she repeated. “You’re so weird, Elfie.”

  Will chimed in. “She’s right. It is patently false. My cat has orange eyes. Ooh, can Linda McMuffin’s eyes be orange instead?”

  I was simultaneously grateful to Will for defending me and annoyed that he was trying to take over my part of the assignment.

  “I’m in charge of drawing, remember? Besides, humans don’t have orange eyes.”

  “She’s not a human; she’s an egg,” Will said.

  “Yes, but we’re supposed to be pretending she’s a human baby.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

  Will had another idea. “Ooh, I think vampires might have orange eyes! Maybe she can be an egg baby vampire. And she drinks other eggs’ yolks for sustenance!”

  “Our egg baby is not a vampire,” I said. “She is a pretend human baby, and she is going to have green eyes because I am in charge of drawing them and I am making them green!”

  Esme looked over at us from her group’s table. “Jeez, relax,” she said. “It’s just a school project.”

  “Nothing is ever ‘just’ anything for Elfie,” Jenna said. “Especially when it comes to school projects. She takes them very seriously.”

  Jenna said it like it was a bad thing.

  “Well, maybe we should take this project seriously,” Will said. “Linda McMuffin is our child, and only the best is good enough for her. Go ahead, Elfie, draw those green eyes. I trust you.”

  It was the nicest thing Will—or anyone my age—had ever said to me. I suppose it would have been appropriate to say “Thank you” in return, but I couldn’t make my voice work. I just nodded, took the green marker he was holding out, and made two little dots for Linda’s eyes. I added a nose and a little smile with a thin black marker, then paused, thinking what to draw next.

  “Are you sure you don’t want help?” Jenna asked. I could tell she didn’t trust my drawing skills.

  “I know what I’m doing.” I picked up the orange marker and used it to give Linda wavy hair. I thought Will might like that (since he hadn’t gotten his way with the orange eyes), and I was right.

  “Nice!” he said. “Linda has wavy hair, like her dad. Wow, it’s weird to think of myself as someone’s dad.”

  “You aren’t really her dad,” Jenna said.

  “Sure I am,” Will said. “We are all Linda’s co-parents, and we are raising her in what will hopefully be an amicable shared custody arrangement.”

  Jenna didn’t have a response to that. Her cheeks turned slightly pink, and she looked down at the floor, jamming her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. I knew she was thinking about her own situation and her parents’ breakup. I wondered if she would be taking turns living with Uncle Rex and Aunt Steph, the way Linda McMuffin would split time between our houses. For the first time ever, I actually felt bad for my cousin.

  “Here, Jenna,” I said. “Why don’t you give Linda an outfit. You’re good with fashion.”

  Jenna looked skeptical. “Are you sure? You’re supposed to be in charge of this part.”

  “I insist.”

  And that is how Linda McMuffin wound up with green eyes, wavy orange hair, and a glittery silver jacket. One element for each of her three co-parents. Now if only she could survive the bus ride home.

  “Make way, make way! Linda McMuffin is coming through!” Will held his left hand far in front of him to ward off the young
er kids as he, Jenna, and I made our way to the back of the bus. In his right hand, he carried Linda McMuffin.

  As soon as Will sat down, he wrapped her in his scarf and cradled her like an actual baby. He barely even looked up at me when I said goodbye and got off at my stop.

  Mom was working at her laptop at the kitchen table when I walked in. Goober was playing with the wire of her charger, and Mom kept trying to nudge him away.

  “How was school today, Elf?”

  “Okay, I guess. Except we were assigned a group project.”

  “Oh boy. What is it?”

  “We have to take care of egg babies. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes.” Mom nodded. “I’ve heard of schools doing this. We did something similar when I was a kid, only we used bags of flour instead of eggs. Less fragile, but much heavier. So where’s your egg?”

  “Oh, she’s at Will’s house. It was his turn to get her first. Then Jenna, then me.”

  “Jenna and Will are in your group?” Mom raised her eyebrows.

  “Yes.” I didn’t say anything more. I thought maybe I would pleasantly surprise Mom by not complaining about this. At least not yet.

  “Okay. Have you started working on it?”

  “A little. Will and I discussed it at lunch.”

  “What about Jenna?”

  “She came over once to ask if we needed help, but we were just setting a budget, and she said she didn’t care if we did that part without her.”

  “Oh. What part does Jenna want to help with?”

  “Picking out clothes. Will wants to do that too, so I hope they don’t fight over it. It doesn’t really make a difference to me. Oh, and Jenna got to name the baby. Her name is Linda McMuffin, after Jenna’s favorite breakfast, and after Grandma.”

  Mom tilted her head to the side, like she was processing that news. “I think Grandma would be honored by that?” she said. “It might take a while to explain to her, though. And what about you? What part of the project do you most want to do?”

  “Well, the budgeting is interesting,” I said. “Babies are expensive.”

  Mom smiled. “That’s for sure!”

  “And I also told Will that I can be in charge of Linda McMuffin’s education. You know, making sure she has a lot of good books, math manipulatives, and challenging puzzles. And that she is registered for an excellent preschool. He said he’ll handle her cultural and arts education.”

  “Wow, this is a lucky egg to have such dedicated parents. I hope you’re also going to make sure Linda McMuffin has time to play and have fun?”

  I shrugged. “That will probably be Jenna’s department.”

  “Okay, because that’s important too,” Mom said, picking up her phone and scrolling through her messages.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Our egg baby will be very well rounded.”

  “More like well ovaled, don’t you think?” Mom guffawed at her own joke. “Get it?”

  “Yes, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I know egg-zactly what you mean.”

  At school on Monday, Will was full of stories about Linda McMuffin’s weekend. “On Friday we went to see a performance of Phantom of the Opera at the community theater in Greenville. She liked the music, but I think the plot was a bit too scary for her. Luckily, she still slept through the night.

  “Saturday we went to the playground, and I debated letting her go down the slide, but I decided she’s probably still too young.”

  “You think?” Jenna said, her voice oozing sarcasm. I had to agree with her.

  “Will, you can not put an egg on a sliding board,” I said. “No matter how old she is.”

  “I told you I didn’t! But it’s hard; I just want her to have fun.”

  Jenna shot me a look. One thing we had in common: neither of us was sure if Linda McMuffin was going to survive having Will as a parent. His imagination might be good for school plays, but it could very well end up scrambling our egg baby.

  Will took the egg baby journal out of his backpack and handed it to Jenna. “Here, you can read the rest later. I took some pictures of her too.”

  Jenna flipped through the journal as I looked over her shoulder. There was a picture of Linda McMuffin resting on top of a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch. Will was sitting on the ground beside her, a huge smile on his face.

  “You took her pumpkin picking?” Jenna asked.

  “I know, I know. I tried telling her it was a bit early in the year for that; the selection wasn’t great.” Will explained this as though it was the timing that was the ridiculous thing about taking an egg to visit a pumpkin patch. “But she had her heart set on pumpkins, and who can say no to that face?” He looked adoringly at Linda and stroked the top of her shell.

  Jenna paused and gave Will a long look before saying, “Alrighty then! It’s my turn to take her tonight.” She reached out to lift Linda from Will’s hands, but he pulled her back toward his chest.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! We haven’t even discussed her routine! You need to know her favorite foods and lullabies! And she has a special blanket she sleeps with…wait; it’s in my backpack!”

  Jenna shot me a look again, then looked back at Will.

  “Can I hold the egg while you look for the blanket?” she asked.

  “Linda. Her name is Linda.”

  “I know her name is Linda. She was named after my grandmother, remember?”

  “Our grandmother,” I corrected her.

  “Right. Our grandmother. Will, Linda belongs to all of us. You have to trust us here.”

  Will didn’t look so sure, but he knew he didn’t really have a choice. He slowly handed Linda to Jenna in a special purple fleece bag. (“I made this baby carrier for her,” he explained.) Then he pulled her blanket, a small piece of green plush cloth, out of his backpack. I was impressed that Jenna didn’t roll her eyes as she took it.

  “Read the journal too!” Will said as Jenna took Linda over to her desk. “I wrote down lots of important information about her digestive trends!”

  Jenna carefully placed Linda’s box on her desk, then whispered, “You look tired. I’m going to let you get some rest tonight.”

  I hoped that didn’t mean Jenna was going to put Linda in a corner somewhere and forget about her. I leaned forward and said, “Don’t let her get too much rest. Remember that we have to keep a log of all her activities in a journal.”

  Jenna turned around. “Elfie, she’s an egg. Even if she were a real baby, all she would do is eat, sleep, pee, and poop.”

  “Okay, but you still have to write that stuff down.”

  “I will, Elfie. Relax.” Jenna started to face forward again, then turned back to me.

  “Hey, my dad told me about Rhoda. Is she gonna be okay?”

  I didn’t know what to say. For starters, I didn’t want to talk to Jenna about Rhoda, especially not right out in the open at school. It felt like something that should be kept much more private. Why did Uncle Rex have to tell her at all?

  But I also simply didn’t know the answer. Was Rhoda going to be okay? How was I supposed to know? I had asked Mom and Dad about it again the night before. Even her doctors weren’t sure. She had only had a few chemotherapy sessions, and it would be months—and lots of tests—before they knew if it was working.

  So I shrugged. It seemed like Jenna wanted to say more, but Ms. Rambutan asked us to take out pencils for our science test. It was a relief to start working on something with questions I knew how to answer.

  I was in my room working on the extra-credit math packet that afternoon when the phone rang. Mom answered it.

  “It’s Jenna,” she called up the stairs. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Well, this was something new.

  “Hi, Jenna,” I said, wondering what was so important that she would call me.
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  “When are you going to get a phone? I hate calling people. I wish I could text you.”

  “Nice to speak to you too. And when would you ever text me?”

  “Right now. I would text you now, for example, to ask if you can come over and help me with Linda McMuffin.”

  “Help you. With an egg baby.” Surely I wasn’t hearing her correctly.

  “Yes. I don’t know what to do with her. I think she’s bored.”

  Jenna must be losing it.

  “Jenna. She’s an egg.”

  “I know, I know…but Will wrote all this fun stuff in her journal over the weekend, and I can’t think of anything to say, other than the truth, which is that she’s just sitting here.”

  “Don’t you think that’s probably what she did at Will’s house too?”

  “No! He had all those pictures of her at the playground and the pumpkin patch and the theater! You have to help me think of fun pictures to take with her too!”

  “Since when do you care so much about school projects? And can’t I just help you make stuff up over the phone?”

  Jenna ignored my first question. “I told you, I hate talking on the phone. And I need somebody to help me stage the pictures. No one else is home right now.”

  “I thought you had soccer today. Just take her picture at the soccer court.”

  “It’s a soccer field, not a court. But soccer was canceled; my coach is sick. I told Dad I could stay home by myself, but I need help with this.”

  “I don’t know. I’m working on the extra-credit math packet.”

  “So bring it with you. I’ll copy your answers when we’re done with the egg pictures.”

  “Jenna.”

  “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Relax,” she said. “I never do the extra-credit packets anyway!”