Platipuses

Daddy told me the real story about Mommy after dinner. I held out my hand to give him a hand to squeeze and so he would give me his hand to hold on to. But he just looked at it, like it was Pokey without his stuffing: useless. Then he walked away.1

∞∞∞2

I walked to school today. Mommy always wanted to drive me even though we live only five blocks away. Daddy knows it wastes gasoline. He bought me a brand new Florence Elizabeth backpack. It’s blue and gray, like my eyes. George really likes my new backpack. He’s my best friend at school. I was counting my steps when we were walking to art class together, and I felt something on my backpack. I looked at George and he looked like he had just leaned over. (I could tell because his shirt wrinkled to the right, and I was on his right side.) I thought he might have tried to put his arm around my shoulders, but then realized I had my backpack on and didn’t want to get it dirty. George is funny like that. I’ll ask him about it later. The only thing I don’t like about the walk home is the flowers. I am always a little itchy, but today I was extra itchy. Maybe Mrs. Moseden, who lives closer to school than me, planted more flowers in the gigantic garden she has had forever.3

When I got home, I unzipped my backpack to take out my Kendal Koala Bear binder and new Sparkle pencils. Then I unzipped the small pocket on the front and there was a bouquet of small, orange gerbera flowers. I was angry. The next day at school, I stomped up to George right after homeroom and threw the flowers at his green shirt. I have to admit, I didn’t like doing that because lime green and orange don’t go very well together and some petals stuck to him. But I forced myself to forget about that, and right after he looked at me with the strangest face I’ve ever seen, I said, “I think you forgot –“ George interrupted me with a ramble. “What? Is it your birthday? Oh no, did I forget your birthday?” He ruined my momentum. “No George. You forgot that I am allergic to pollen!” I took off my white shirt with a picture of a cat in the middle. It’s okay because Tuesday is Swim Day and I had my bathing suit on underneath. Then he saw all of the rashes, all over my back, my tummy, my arms – everywhere. I started to cry even though and I didn’t feel like it. “And your stupid flowers made my dad throw away my backpack!” I walked away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George pick up my shirt off the floor and wipe it off with his hand. I hated him more. He tried to say something nice, but it just made me feel worse. 4

I walked down the hall that never ended, when Mrs. Moseden stopped me. 5

“Where’s your shirt, Chelsea?” I looked so furiously at her that I thought my ears might have looked like chimneys. 6

“It’s gone, forever.” Mrs. Moseden looked around us. 7

“What do you mean it’s gone? Did a boy take it from you?” 8

“No, a boy didn’t take it from me, I took it from me!” 9

“Chelsea, calm down, calm down, deep breath.” I did what she said. “Okay, now, tell me exactly what happened.”10

“I don’t want to.”11

“Honey, if something bad happened, I will have to tell your mommy, okay?”12

“No you won’t.”13

“Oh I’m terribly sorry, dear. I didn’t realize – I, I forgot for a minute.”14

My ears wouldn’t hear a word of it. 15

“He knew! He knew and he did it anyways.”16

George and I have been friends since preschool. Of course he knew I was allergic to pollen.17

∞∞∞18

I had to write a nature poem for English today. Ms. Moseden made me read it out loud. It went like this.19

More than anything,
I hate flowers.
They make me sneeze,
My eyes water.
I get blotches of red
All over my body
I look ugly.
My mood turns sour.
More than anything,
I hate flowers.20

George didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like me.21

∞∞∞22

It was a long walk from school. I even smelled some flowers. It was nice, until I wasn’t only walking, but sneezing home. I walked under the trees that lined the path to my front door. I was tired of the sun. As I dropped all of my books at the end of the stairs, Daddy popped out from behind the kitchen counter. I wondered how long he’d been hiding there...23

“Honey…I have a surprise for you…”24

“It’s OK, dad. I’m kind of sleepy.”25

“Sleepy?! This is not a sleepy matter! Now come on, let me show you something.”26

He leads me into his tool shed and I’m already thinking negative thoughts.27

“OK. Remember how we had to throw your new backpack away?”28

“Yes…” This wasn’t exactly the chicken soup to my backpack flu. 29

“Well,” The growing hope made my tummy well with anticipation, my heart beat double-fast, my eyes freeze with anxiety. “I made something for you!”30

From behind the hammers and screwdrivers, old, failed projects and loose paper, Daddy reveals the most hideous creature of all! He scans my face, each freckle, each crease on my lips, searching for my happiness. He would not find it. 31

The backpack he showed me was a backpack made for a Peter Pan. Patches of every green on the color wheel sewn clumsily together with a thick, brown, almost wirey thread. Nothing like my beautiful Florence Elizabeth that matched my eyes. 32

“I was up all night making this baby! Now that my guitar days are over, I have more time for my little girl!” My eyes said, Oh no! But the rest of my face managed to squeeze out a smile.33

“Thanks, Daddy.”34

“I know you love camping, so I decided it would be great idea to incorporate your hobbies with school! How great is that? Isn’t your dad a genius?”35

A beat escaped before I answered. “Yes. Wow. I never would have thought of that.”36

I didn’t hear anything else he said because I was thinking of ways to keep the backpack as far away from school as possible. My first idea was to hide all of my materials in my belt, and throw the empty backpack in the field of bushes in front of the gate around the cemetery on my way to school. I don’t think anyone would notice. I gave up on that idea and realized the reality was that all I would do that night was stick my head in the backpack, cry, and throw it into a river. Then one day, someone would find it thinking it was a rare, leafy log, only to discover it is a stupid Peter Pan backpack filled with a little girl’s salty tears.37

∞∞∞38

I hadn’t seen George all day and I was glad because I was wearing Daddy’s makeshift backpack. Daddy’s makeshift backpack with wood buttons. Do you know how long it takes to unbutton handmade buttons? My Florence Elizabeth backpack had metallic blue-tinted zippers. I miss them. Finally, George came to the curb to wait for his mom to pick him up. 39

“George?” He didn’t look at me. “George, please, I’m your friend, okay? And I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I know you are sad, but please will you talk to me again?”40

Still, his eyes stayed put. “George, you have a piece of lint on your pocket.” I smiled because George hates lint more than any other kind of dirt. “Come on, aren’t you going to wipe it off?” 41

He readjusted his feet, and tried so hard to keep his hands from moving up to swipe that little lint to the sidewalk. He couldn’t resist and as he brushed the lint away, his eyes followed his hand, towards me. 42

“What is that?!” He looked frightened. 43

“What?” I said, relieved. “Is there something on my face?”44

“No, but I think there’s a porcupine sleeping in some leaves on your back.”45

I laughed. “George, I have a funny story to tell you. Wanna hear it?”46

He did. I saw it in the corners of his mouth. He blurted out a yes.47

“Ok,” I said. “But only if you forgive me.”48

He thought for a moment and I could just imagine him replaying the horrible day when I threw the flowers at him. 49

“Well –“ I cut off thoughts that would remind him of my angry face. “I guess you just won’t hear my funny stories and all the funny stories I’ll have to tell in my whole life.” I walked away as a joke.50

I heard him over the roar of parent’s cars. “Chelsea…Chelsea! I forgive you!”51

I told him the story and we were best friends again. 52

∞∞∞53

The smell of Daddy’s Saturday morning breakfast woke me up. “Mommy? Mommy! Come down for breakfast!” Maybe she was still asleep. I walked into her room. Her pajamas were on the chair near the bathroom, the makeup and hairbrush were on the sink counter, her watch laid squiggly on the bedside table next to her reading light and her book with a bookmark. Mommy doesn’t plan anything for Saturday mornings because she knows Daddy makes breakfast. (And Daddy never cooks.) “Mommy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I yelled as loud as I could, but the house seemed quiet.54

It hit me like a hundred pounds of gravity falling on my head.55

I walked down the hallway, my eyes were pouring so much I could barely stand up. I sat down in the middle of the hall because my tummy hurt and my eyes were stinging. When I finally took a breath, I could just barely hear Daddy playing his acoustic guitar. I tried as hard as I could to stop crying to listen. It’s the one he bought right after he met Mommy. I could tell because it’s always a teensy bit off tune. Her birthday is today and I am happy it is on a Saturday so I don’t have to go to school. She would have been forty years old. I didn’t recognize the song Daddy was playing and that is weird because I’ve memorized all of the songs he’s ever written. I fell asleep to them a lot, even though he thought I couldn’t hear when he was in the basement. When he didn’t practice, I hummed into the dark. I was about to go into Daddy’s room and surprise him with my idea when I heard the doorbell. I ran to the bathroom to put water on my face so the person at the door wouldn’t have to know I was crying. I looked through the door’s mini magnifying glass and it was Samantha – guitar in one hand, brass strings in the other. I opened the door, took the guitar, took the strings and closed the door. “Bye,” I said, after it clicked shut. Samantha is a fifth grader. I am only a fourth grader. She has pretty, long blonde hair and bangs. I have plain, medium-length brown hair and no bangs. She also has braces. Luckily, I don’t have any braces. Not yet anyway. I don’t know why she would think I could fix the strings for her since I don’t play any instruments. (I think she has a big crush on George.) I learned to fix guitar strings when I was maybe six years old and Daddy was in a band called, “Verbal Motion.” He didn’t come up with the name – Roger did. 56

Roger played the keyboard and he was always saying weird things to himself. Really. Weird. Things. (Once Daddy was making his traditional Saturday morning breakfast and Roger moved his eyebrows towards Mommy and whispered, “You have pancake hair.” I think I was the only one who heard.) We don’t see him around anymore since the band went their separate ways. The name Verbal Motion came to him a dream, he told us one day when I was sitting on the torn sofa eating sunflower seeds in the basement. Daddy asked him how, but he didn’t answer with words. He just wiggled his arms out to the side, like Spongebob. Then he spoke, letting his arms down as carefully as my old ballet teacher. “This powerful image came to me last night, and I saw our future name, like an angel was whispering the answer into my cochlea.” He took a dramatic pause and finally stretched his arm towards his keyboard and said, “Don’t you see it? Verbal. Motion.” I’m not sure what he was saying, but Daddy answered, “Yes. Fine. Let’s go with that.” 57

Daddy’s band never kept me up. I stayed up because they were practicing. He played the electric guitar and he told me last month that he has given it up. He says he’s lost his chance, his youth has vanished, he’s too old to make it. My dad is forty-two years old. I know he hasn’t given up, though. I just, I can feel it in my bones! I think I am the only one who knows. I guess it's our secret. Me and Daddy. I haven’t even told George. I know he hasn’t given up because the only reason he stopped is because of Mommy. She never liked his dreams. Now that she’s gone, I don’t think Daddy thinks he deserves any dreams at all. 58

∞∞∞59

I found a pamphlet I forgot about in my drawer today when I was looking for my pressed flowers book. It said “The Coffee House Event: Joe's Bar: 6PM to Midnight” in big bold red letters on a blindingly yellow background. I think they copied McDonald’s colors, or maybe Gryffindor from Harry Potter. That is my favorite book. Well, yellow and red doesn’t really mean McDonald’s or Gryffindor. To me, yellow and red really mean happiness and passion. Dad has red, and he can have yellow if he goes to The Coffee House Event. I know he wants it, but you cannot have yellow unless you show people you already have red. He has to show everyone he’s got the red in him. Everyone’s really red inside anyways. Or maybe we’re blue because blood only turns red when oxygen touches it. That’s what George’s mom told us. She is the one who gave that pamphlet to me because she thought I had good pitch when we all went to sing karaoke together. Dad looked at it with a faint glint of hope in his eyes, and I could see it although they were nearly closed as he sighed and said “Thank You.” I knew he wasn’t really thankful because I saw it crumpled in the recycling bin the next day when I went to throw away my empty orange soda can. I took it out and saved it. Now it's in my left pocket. 60

∞∞∞61

I showed George the pamphlet today. I said, “Here is the pamphlet I gave to my Daddy. Do you think it will work?” All he said was, “Chelsea, why do you think it’s called a pamphlet? ‘Let’ at the end of a word usually means small. Like...booklet. A small book. Pamphlet. A small pamph?” Sometimes I don’t understand George, but I still like him the same. He also noticed that the "e" in "Joe's" had faded, so now it looks like it says, “The Coffee House Event: Jo 's Bar: 6PM to Midnight.” I knew somebody named Jo once. I always thought it was "Joe" and whenever I said his name I would say it imagining it written "Joe" in my head, always. He liked typing on an invisible keyboard at school because he wanted his own laptop for his birthday. I never knew if he got it. I think I'll send Jo a letter and I will start it with "Dear Jo" so that he knows I know how to spell his name. He used to get angry whenever a teacher would correct his work, "Great Job, Joe!" with the little smiley face that looked like the depressed cloud in the Zoloft commercials. Some people would even call him Joey. He hated that because he knew if he added a "Y" to the end of his name it would be Joy, and that's a girl's name. 62

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The Science Fair Project starts today. Tuesday. I told George what mine was going to be on: Dreams. Where do they come from? Why do we not remember some of them? Will they ever be recorded in the future? I would like that. George’s mean older brother, Nathan, stole my project idea. Nathan overheard me telling George in The Cubby Closet. That night, I looked up everything on dreams and I learned all about REM. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. (But when I asked dad what it was, he said it was a band.) Nathaniel Klietman and Eugene Aserinsky discovered it in the early 1950's. Daddy wasn’t even born yet! Nathan said he wanted to dress up like Nathaniel Kleitman because they almost have the same name. Why couldn’t a girl named Chelsea have discovered REM cycles? The dreams you remember happen during REM, when your eyes move around under your eyelids. That’s how you know if someone is in REM sleep, but I don’t watch anybody sleep. I don’t think anybody would like if I watched them sleep for 90 minutes. That would be a little creepy.64

Humans are not the only ones who have REM when we sleep. Animals and birds do too. That means, Ezekiel, my Yorkshire terrier has dreams but he just can't tell them to us. I wish he could. I'd like to hear about Ezekiel’s dreams. I wonder how many hours Ezekiel dreams. We only have one and a half hours of REM sleep, but the platypus has eight hours of REM sleep. They are so lucky. If I could be an animal, I would be a platypus, not a dolphin. Dolphins get even less REM sleep time than we do. No, never a dolphin. But if I were a platypus, I could be friends with a dolphin so I could tell them about my dreams and then maybe they'd feel better about never remembering theirs. Then that dolphin would go find other dolphins using echolocation because by then it would be too dark for them to see. They'd share the dreams with their dolphin friends and the dolphins wouldn't feel so dreamless anymore. Did you know we spend 6 years of our entire lives dreaming? I wonder how many years I've dreamt. If everybody lived to be 100 years old and we dream for 6 years, that means that we are fully awake and conscious for 94 years of our lives. I will be nine and a half on February 18th. That means my birthday is on August 18th. If I have slept an average of 8 hours for 365 days, then that means I have slept approximately 27010 hours so far. 65

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I hate platipuses! I hate them more than I hate flowers! And I hate flowers a lot. Why do they get to have all of the dreams? I want to have the dreams. I want Daddy to have dreams. What makes platipuses so special? They don’t even need dreams. They don’t need to remember anything! Their Mommys don’t go skydiving! They live underwater! Their Daddys don’t lie to them for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks until they finally ask, “Can I see her?” And he says no. And he never stops to tell you the truth. And then two months later their Daddys don’t sit them down and tell them every detail. The they don’t wish he’d never told them. They don’t wish that they really believed for the rest of their lives that she died a quiet, peaceful death in her bed. I feel like crying but my eyes feel so dry. I miss Mommy so much and if I could spend one more tiny millisecond with her even in a dream, I think I would be okay forever and ever. 67

George doesn’t understand. He has a Mommy and a Daddy.68

∞∞∞69

Mommy died before she hit the ground. I will never stop imagining it. Did she know? Was she thinking about me? Was she thinking about Daddy? I couldn’t go to school today. George will never get what I am feeling. The worst part is, they film skydiving. Daddy told me that they asked him if he wanted to see the tape. He said that he told them no. He wanted to remember her as she was. Then they asked him if he wanted to them to edit out the end and give him the tape anyways. He said yes. So, Daddy stayed home from work and we watched Mommy together. Like a family.70

∞∞∞71

Daddy shook me awake this morning. “I’m going to that thing. I’m going to that thing tonight! Where is that little paper Chelsea? You still have it, right? Coffee...Joe’s Bar... 6PM?” He smiled his most real smile at me. “I’m going! And you’re coming with me.” I put on my prettiest dress on that day because I already knew it was going to be the best day of my life. It was blue with white lace borders and a little dark blue heart on the strap over my shoulder. Daddy picked me up in some clothes that has been hanging in his closet for two months. We went out to lunch because Friday is Leave School Early Day and we get to go home at twelve noon. He took a big gulp of his tomato soup and his forehead muscles turned serious. “If there’s anything else you want to know, anything that’s bothering you about your mother, you just ask me, okay?” I had a linguini strand half in my mouth, so I nodded, “Mhm.” After I slurped in the strand, I said, “Daddy, what was the last thing she said to you?” 72

“Well” he said to me, “I’m one of the lucky ones. She told me she loved me. Then right before we jumped out of that plane she said, ‘Here goes everything’ and we jumped like we still had our whole lives ahead of us.” 73

“Everything did go, didn’t it Daddy?”74

He laughed a little bit. I don’t know why, I don’t think my question was funny. Then, all of a sudden, he was serious, but he was still smiling. “Chelsea, you are everything. And you aren’t going anywhere.”75

He put out his hand, and I looked at it like it was the ruby in The Cave of Wonders. Was he really putting out his hand for me to hold? Did his hand just fall there by accident? While I was thinking, he took my hand and squeezed so tight I thought my hand bones would turn to dust. I could feel what he was feeling and it made my dry eyes not so dry anymore, and I cried. 76

“Home?” he asked.77

I nodded, because dreams don’t matter so much anymore. They’re all in our heads. Daddy’s open hand, that’s something you can’t dream up.78