Only Child(40)



“Red and black, friend of Jack. Red and yellow, kills a fellow.”

The one the snake guy brought out had red next to yellow, so that means she was dangerous. At first she just lay there and didn’t move, so it looked like she was sleeping. The snake guy got out a long stick and he poked her with it. She jumped up at the stick right away and then she didn’t let go and was hanging from the stick with her teeth. It scared everyone, and some kids screamed, which was kind of dumb because we were sitting far away from the front where the snake was, so it wasn’t even dangerous.

This snake fact popped into my head yesterday when I was sitting on a barstool in the kitchen and I was eating a sandwich Mimi made for lunch for me, and I was watching Mommy. She was standing on a ladder and cleaning on top of the kitchen cabinets. And she reminded me of the snake that got poked with the stick. When Charlie and his wife came to our house on the day of Andy’s funeral, and that was three days ago, she jumped at them like the snake at the stick, but then they left—only Mommy’s mad feeling didn’t leave. She switched from sad to mad in a second and kept hanging on to the stick.

Mimi was watching Mommy clean the top of the cabinets, too, with a sad face that looked like it had even more wrinkles on it now. “Sweetie, why don’t you let me do that? Is it really necessary to clean up there right now?”

“What? No…yes, Mom, it is!” Mommy took another step up on the ladder and scrubbed the cabinets really hard. “It’s absolutely filthy up here!” Mommy thought everything in the house was absolutely filthy all of a sudden, and she cleaned and cleaned, even where I didn’t see any dirt and it looked clean.

When Mommy first started with the cleaning, on the day after Charlie and his wife came over, I tried to be her helper so we could do the cleaning together. Mommy told me when to give her a new paper towel piece and when to hold the bag open so she could throw out the dirty ones. But a couple times I didn’t open the bag fast enough and the dirty paper towels landed on the floor, and then Mommy got annoyed and said I should find something else to do. And she kept on cleaning without me.

After I helped Mimi wash off the mattress with a wet sponge and we put the towel and PJs in the washing machine in the basement, I went back in my room and looked at my books on my bookshelf. I have a lot of books, and my favorites right now are the Magic Tree House books. I have them all in a row on my shelf, from number 1 to number 53—that’s how I like it. They used to be Andy’s, and he read the whole series by himself a long time ago. He didn’t want them anymore, and so Mommy moved them onto my bookshelf.

There was still no school this whole week. Daddy said next week the other kids were going back to school, but not to McKinley for now. They were getting split up and were going to the other schools in Wake Gardens. But not me. Daddy said I didn’t have to go to school yet next week because we’re one of the affected families. Maybe the week after, we would see. I was happy about that, that I didn’t have to go back and that we would see when, maybe not for a while. Every time I thought about school, I got a bad feeling in my stomach, like I really didn’t want to go back ever.

When I looked at my books and I thought about school, I remembered my book baggie that was still in my backpack at school. I wished I could have it, because on the day before the gunman came, Miss Russell let me pick out all new books, and I didn’t even get to read them yet. I wondered if the backpacks were still in our cubbies or what, and if we were going to get them back, and I really hoped so, because my FIFA sticker book and cards were in there, too.

The Magic Tree House books are my favorite books because it’s a brother and a sister going on a lot of adventures in different places and different times. Even if it happened in the past, they can still go there because of their tree house. They’re really brave, especially the sister, even though she’s the younger one. She’s not scared of anything. When you read about how they’re going on adventures, it feels like you go with them and you are brave, too.

By the way, the brother’s name is Jack, and the sister’s name is Annie. Jack and Annie—that sounds almost like Zach and Andy. We noticed that when we were taking turns reading at bedtime one night. That’s our tradition, mine and Mommy’s—we take turns when we read a book. At first, when I couldn’t read so good yet, I did one sentence and then Mommy did a few sentences and then me one sentence again. But now I can read a lot more than one sentence. I can read a whole page or even more, and then we switch.

When we noticed the thing about Jack/Zach and Annie/Andy, Mommy said, “Hey, we can pretend it’s you and your brother going on adventures,” and I said, “Yeah, except we don’t do adventures together, so it’s just the names that are like the same, but not the rest.” And Mommy looked at me with a sad face when I said that.

I decided to pick one of the Magic Tree House books and see if Mommy wanted to take turns reading. Maybe she was done with the iPad and we could have time to do reading together. I went downstairs to look for Mommy but she wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. I thought maybe she started with the cleaning again, but I saw her through the glass door in Daddy’s office. I was about to go in, but then I heard Mommy and Daddy talking, and the way their voices sounded made me not open the door. Daddy was sitting in his big brown chair at his desk by the window, and Mommy was standing next to him, so I could only see their backs.

Rhiannon Navin's Books