Penguin Problems

by Lauren Myracle

  “So how was your day, Ty-bug?” Mom asks. We can talk and watch the cartoon, because Tom and Jerry never say anything. There’s just music as Jerry runs around inside the piano.

  “Good,” I say. “And we’re going to the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday. I’m supposed to bring a Lunchable. Also, Mrs. Webber needs more chaperones. Can you be one? Please?”

  “Sweetie . . .”

  I frown. I hate that “sweetie,” that sad sweetie that says you know I can’t, and I’m sorry, but also you shouldn’t have even asked, because now I have to use my sad sweetie voice.

  “You could bring Teensy Baby Maggie. She could be in her stroller.”

  “Mrs. Webber doesn’t allow siblings. You know that.”

  “Then put her in her sling. You could say the sling was your purse.”

  Mom laughs. I don’t want her to laugh. I want her to say, “What a good idea!”

  “Anyway, she’s not even a sibling. Not really.” Because she’s so teensy is why. “Sssoon she’ll be a sssibling, but right now she’s just a sss. A suh!”

  Mom roughs up my hair with her knuckles. “Sorry, bub. But you know what? You’ll have a great time anyway.”

  “I know,” I say. But I might or I might not. I get to choose. “I’ll probably be put in Breezie’s mom’s group.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “No.”

  “Will Lexie be with you and Breezie?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then that’s good, isn’t it?”

  I think about Lexie’s rubber-band gun. During math, when we were doing take-aways, Lexie shot a kitten. Not a real kitten, a kitten on a poster. The kitten was clinging to a tree. HANG IN THERE! it said underneath.

  If the kitten had been real, it would have fallen. Instead of five take away three, Lexie would have taken away that kitten.

  I think more about Lexie, like how she didn’t eat her healthy crackers at snack time. She said they were gross. So I told her about Teensy Baby Maggie’s gross crackers, which are called “teething biscuits” even though they’re not biscuits and even though Maggie doesn’t have a single tooth. And even though Teensy Baby Maggie can’t even eat them yet! A lady gave them to Mom at her baby shower, and now they’re just sitting in our pantry. I tried one for the fun of it, only it wasn’t fun.

  “Why are they called teething biscuits if they’re not for people with teeth?” Lexie said. “That’s dumb.”

  Then she crushed one of her gross crackers to smithereens and said, “I don’t want a baby sister, ever. If I saw someone without teeth, I would run and scream. And why do you have to call her Teensy Baby Maggie every single day of your life?”

  “I don’t have to. I just do.” I pulled my eyebrows together. “Everyone does.”

  “Well, I think it’s stupid,” she said. She scattered her gross cracker crumbs on my shoe. “Were you Teensy Baby Ty when you were a baby? Or were you Stupid Baby Ty?”

  I decide to stop thinking about Lexie.

  “It’s only half-good that I’ll be in her group,” I tell Mom. “Sometimes Lexie is annoying.”

  “Ah,” Mom says. “And that is why it’s all-the-way good that I got you as my son. I’m glad you’re my Tyster.”

  “And I’m glad you’re my Momster.”

  “A monster? You think I’m a monster?!”

  I giggle.

  She tickles me, and I giggle more.

  “I can’t believe you just called me a monster!” she says. “My own dearest, darlingest son!”

  “Momster! Not monster!”

  From the baby monitor on the kitchen counter, I hear a noise.

  A bad noise. A worse-than-the-noise-Price-made-on-the-playground noise.

  “Did you hear that?” Mom says.

  I grab the remote and turn up the volume on the TV. “I love this part. The piano lid is going to slam down on Tom’s head, see?”

  “Ty, put that on mute, would you? I think I heard Baby Maggie.”

  If I had an extendable arm, I’d reach over to the baby monitor and put it on mute.

  Mom tries to rise. I cling to her like a howler monkey.

  “Ty, please.”

  She attempts to pry me off her. I don’t let her. Every time she unlocks one part of me, I lock on with another. It’s funny.

  “When you were a baby, I went to you when you cried,” she says. She stands up, and I slide down her body so that I’m wrapped around her leg.

  “Ty, stop. It’s not funny.”

  I let go. My cheeks get hot.

  On the TV, the piano lid flattens Tom, and his paws and whiskers and tail stick out like a pancake. Mom is missing the good part, and she doesn’t even care.

  “I’ll bring Maggie down here,” Mom says. “I’ll keep watching Bugs Bunny while I feed her.”

  It’s not Bugs Bunny. It’s Tom and Jerry! And Tom is so silly, and Jerry is so cute and little, and—

  Never mind. Jerry’s not cute, and I don’t even like him. I never liked him. I grab the remote and turn off the TV.

  From the baby monitor, I hear Mom get closer and closer to Teensy Baby Maggie’s room. Then she’s in there for real. I hear her say, “Hey there, Teense. How’s my baby? How’s my teensy bitsy Maggie-pie?”

  Next come crinkle-sheet sounds, which mean Mom’s lifting Maggie out of her crib. “Come on, bug. That’s my good girl.”

  My chest goes up and down. I’m her bug. She’s only supposed to call me “bug.” And I don’t like how Mom has to run run run to Maggie the very second she cries, either.

  Also, Maggie’s not as bitsy as everyone thinks. Spiders are bitsy, like the itsy-bitsy spider. Flies are bitsy. Jerry from Tom and Jerry is bitsy, but Maggie doesn’t even know who Tom and Jerry are. She doesn’t even know what cartoons are—and she made Mom miss the best piano-slamming part!

  If someone made me miss the best part, I’d be mad and call that person a meanie-head.

  So maybe Lexie’s right. Maybe we shouldn’t call Teensy Baby Maggie “Teensy Baby Maggie” anymore.

  We should call her Big Fat Meanie Baby instead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When I wake up the next morning, there’s something under my bed.

  It’s past seven o’clock, and Mom has told me three times to GET UP. But I can’t, because the thing under my bed is bumping and lashing its tail. It’s Winnie’s cat, Sweetie-Pie. Every time I sneakily sneak my foot out, Sweetie-Pie swipes at it.

  I hear Mom on the staircase. She’s heading toward my room. Uh-oh.

  “Ty, this is the third time I’ve had to call you to breakfast,” she says, sagging against the door frame.

  The fourth, actually. “I’m getting up. I promise.”

  “Baby, you’re not. You’re lying there like a lump.”

  “Okay, but . . .”

  “No ‘buts,’” she says, and she uses her sharp voice. “Get your hindquarters moving, bucko.”

  Then she just leaves! Without even asking what’s making me stay stuck in bed!

  I stick my tongue out at her even though she’s gone. Teensy Baby Maggie gets to sleep in her crib, la la la, until Mom goes and gets her. I have to get up by myself, only I can’t because of Sweetie-Pie.

  I stick my tongue out at Teensy Baby Maggie, even though she’s in her own room. In my head, I say, Big Fat Meanie Baby.

  It cheers me up, so I say it outside my head. But quietly. “Poop on you, you Big Fat Meanie Baby!”

  Anyway, cribs are stupid. They’re like cages, and if Price came over and climbed into Maggie’s crib? He’d get his head stuck between the bars for sure.

  I imagine Price in Maggie’s crib. I imagine his head sticking out between the wooden bars, and I giggle my man-giggle. My man-giggle is awesome. I use my stomach muscles to push it out—heh heh heh—and Winnie s
ays it makes me sound like an evil criminal.

  Then I remember that I still don’t know how to get out of bed because of Sweetie-Pie, and being scared of a cat makes me feel like a scaredy-cat. It dries up all my man-giggles.

  I’m not usually scared of Sweetie-Pie. When she sits in my lap, I pat her and say, “Good Sweetie-Pie.” Then Winnie pats me and says, “Good Ty. Good Ty for petting my good cat.”

  Hey! That gives me an idea! Sweetie-Pie is Winnie’s sometimes-good-sometimes-sneaky-clawed cat, so I use a whispery yell to call out, “Winnie!”

  “What?” Winnie calls back.

  “I need you!”

  “Why?”

  “I just do!”

  She growls, loud enough for me to hear. But she comes to my room. “Yes?”

  “Sweetie-Pie’s under my bed.”

  “So?”

  “If I put my foot out, she’ll eat it.”

  “She will not.”

  “She might.”

  “Then stand up and jump off, so she can’t reach you.”

  “What if she’s in a pouncing mood?”

  Winnie puts her hands on her hips. “Ty, you’re acting babyish. Just get out of bed.”

  My ribs go whooomph, like someone tied a rope around them and pulled it tight.

  “Never mind,” I say. “You can leave now.”

  She does.

  Sweetie-Pie meows.

  • • •

  It’s my pee that finally gets me. I hold it until I can’t anymore. Until I almost explode, which would be awesome, but messy. Tinkle-sprinkles everywhere! Ahhhh!

  I lean over my bed and say, “Sweetie-Pie, out.”

  Her eyes gleam. I jerk back.

  What am I going to do?

  There’s no point calling for Sandra. She’d say, “Deal with it yourself. You’re a big guy.” And Dad’s already left for work. So what do I do?

  If I had a broom, I could jab her out.

  If I had an eagle, the eagle could swoop down and grab her and fly off into the distance. Bye-bye, Sweetie-Pie!

  Only that would be sad, because the eagle would eat her. Anyway, I don’t have an eagle.

  I do have eagle eyes, though. Mom’s always telling me that. She’ll say, “Ty, will you see if you can find the safety pin I dropped?” And when I do, she says, “You, my darling dude, have eagle eyes. Thank you.”

  I turn on my eagle eyes and scan my room. There’s got to be something I can use.

  My Lava lamp?

  My copy of Toys Go Out?

  How about . . . ah-ha! My old pal the Dustbuster! Mom gave it to me because I love it, and because I begged. I get lots of things that way:

  —a gold belt of Winnie’s with two hearts that hook together. I think it came from a pirate ship.

  —a dragon puppet I gave Dad for Father’s Day.

  —one of Teensy Baby Maggie’s burp cloths because it already was mine. It says TY on it and everything. So even though it was a handy-down, Mom wasn’t allowed to say, “Here, Teensy Baby Maggie, this can be yours now.” It has a football embroidered on it, and a little boy wearing a red cap and a yellow shirt, and it’s mine.

  The Dustbuster is blue and called “The Shark.” It’s cordless except when it’s plugged into the wall. When the light on the side is red, the battery needs charging. When the light is green, Sharkie is ready to suck up anything in its way.

  I kick off my covers and scooch to the end of my bed closest to my dresser. That’s where Sharkie lives, plugged into an outlet in the wall.

  His charged-up light is green. Yes.

  I think for a bit, and then I wrap my hand in my sheet. I lean off my bed and s-t-r-e-t-c-h over the ocean of carpet, and I almost fall. But I don’t! I grab Sharkie and sit back on my bed. I yank the cord out of its bottom, and when it falls to the ground, a black-and-white paw snakes out and snags it.

  I think, Too bad for you, Sweetie-Pie, because the cord is just a cord. Sharkie, on the other hand, knows how to roar.

  I aim Sharkie under the bed and slide the power button to on. ROOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

  Sweetie-Pie yowls and dashes out. Her fur goes spiky like Tom’s from Tom and Jerry, and her ears pull back. I hop out of bed and chase her, jutting Sharkie in front of me.

  “Hai-ya!” I cry. “Hai-ya, hai-ya!”

  Mom yells something.

  “What?” I yell back.

  Sandra, from her bedroom, yells something.

  “What???”

  Winnie storms into my room. “Ty!” she says angrily. She snatches Sharkie out of my hand and switches off the power.

  The roar dies down.

  Now I hear what all the yelling was about, because . . . someone else is yelling, too. Someone who isn’t Mom or Sandra. Except actually, the someone isn’t yelling so much as making really high fire engine siren sounds.

  I suck in a BIG uh-oh breath.

  “Great, Ty,” Winnie says. “You woke up Maggie. That’s just great.”

  She spins around to go to get her and passes right by Sandra, who stomps into my room and glares. Sandra is pretty like a princess, but not right now.

  “God, Ty,” she says. “What is wrong with you?”

  More stomping sounds come from the staircase. Double-triple uh-oh.

  Mom sticks her head into my room. Her mouth is a Magic Marker slash. “Ty, I asked you to do one thing,” she says in a voice even worse than her sharp voice. “I asked. You. To please be quiet.”

  I take a step backward and almost stumble.

  She doesn’t care. She says, “And so you turned on the Dustbuster and screamed like a banshee?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t,” she says, and not like a Momster. Like a monster. “Just go, Ty. Go downstairs and fix yourself a bowl of Cheerios.”

  My blood does a weird thing in my head, like bum bum bum. Moms aren’t supposed to say just go.

  Winnie returns with Teensy Baby Maggie, who’s wailing.

  Mom takes her and holds her close and pats her back, and since looking at Mom is scary, I look at Teensy Baby Maggie’s bald head. She’s not bald everywhere. Just in one round spot.

  Baby Maggie’s un-bald hair is the color of the dishwashing stuff Mom keeps under the kitchen sink. Pale, pale, very pale gold.

  My hair is the color of honey, Mom says, but really it’s brown.

  “I am going to try—try—to rock Maggie back to sleep,” Mom says. “I got three hours of sleep last night, and if I don’t get a nap, there’s a good chance I’ll have to check myself into a mental institution.”

  No one speaks.

  “Sandra, can I count on you to get everyone to school on time?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes. Of course.”

  “All right. Fine. Then I’ll see you all when you get home.” She turns to go.

  “Wait!” I say.

  She turns back.

  “Hug?” I say in a smallish way.

  Mom doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to hug her own son. I can see it on her face.

  Stupid hot wet splots push their way into my eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Mom sighs. She shifts Teensy Baby Maggie to one arm and opens her other arm. I go to her, and she hugs me.

  “Kiss?” I say in an even smallisher way.

  She kisses my cheek. Then she says, “Now, go. All of you. I love you, but I’m beat.”

  Mom shuffles out of my room, and Teensy Baby Maggie—Big Fat Meanie Baby!—gazes at me over Mom’s shoulder. Her head bobs as Mom walks, and her eyes are wide, like she’s surprised.

  But I think she’s faking.

  I think she likes hogging Mom all to herself.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At school, when it’s time for recess, I have to play with Taylor because Lex
ie’s grouchy at me. She’s grouchy because I’m not wearing any rubber bands. I don’t have any in my pockets, either.

  “Did you forget?” Lexie demanded when she found out.

  “I don’t want to do rubber-band guns,” I told her. “Let’s do something else.”

  “I don’t want to do something else.”

  “We could be Boingees,” I said.

  She made a sound like being Boingees was dumb, when she’s the one who invented Boingees. Well, we both did. Then she went to find Breezie.

  That’s why I’m stuck with Taylor.

  He says, “Let’s do puny arms.”

  I say, “I don’t want to do puny arms.”

  He says, “Then I’m going to put you in a headlock,” and he will, because he has before. And if he puts me in a headlock, I’ll have to kick him in the shin, and then I’ll have to scramble up and run. Then I’ll have no one to play with.

  So, fine. We do puny arms. We draw our arms up into our sleeves so that our elbows are inside our shirts and the only parts sticking out are our hands.

  We slap each other with them, and I laugh. Puny arms can be fun, which I forgot. Lexie is over by the fence with Breezie. Even so, I don’t look at her. Well, sometimes I do.

  “Now let’s be robots!” Taylor says. “Robots in a robot war!” He lands a good one on my shoulder. Thwack!

  “Okay, only let’s be something else instead,” I say. Because robots wouldn’t have puny arms unless their maker made them wrong, and then they’d get thrown in the trash. We could be robots in a trash heap, but another idea pops into my mind.

  “Let’s be babies! Giant babies who can’t even talk, and all they can do is go waa waa waa and flap their giant puny arms.”

  “Yeah!” Taylor says. He turns his body sideways and swats me. “Waa! Waa! I’m a big dumb baby!”

  “Waa!” I say. I swat his hand with mine. “I’m a bigger, dumber baby! Better watch out, or I’ll poop on you!”

  Taylor scoots sideways. He keeps flapping. “If you poop on me, I’ll poop on you. And pee. And stab you with a sword!”

  “Yeah?” I say. “Well, I’ll throw a pacifier at you! A yucky, gross, spitty one!”

  Baby Maggie doesn’t use pacifiers, but I did. Mom says I had a zillion different pacifiers when I was a baby, and I slept with all of them. She says I’d suck on one for thirty seconds, then spit it out and pop in another. Suck, spit, pop. Suck, spit, pop. I think it sounds very cute of me.