by Jenny Lawson
But I wasn’t truly concerned until we were already in line at security, and then I suddenly wondered whether someone had once used this alligator to smuggle cocaine in fifty years ago but then forgot to take it out, and now I’m gonna get arrested in the airport for alligator-stomach cocaine that’s older than me. I quietly asked Victor whether you could tell if cocaine was expired, or if it just stays fresh forever, and he was all, “CAN WE NOT TALK ABOUT THIS IN SECURITY?” and I was like, “It’s not for me. I’m asking because of the alligator,” and he kind of glared at me. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, imagining myself saying to the security officer, “Oh, this? That’s old cocaine. It probably expired, like, forty years ago. It’s not mine. It’s the alligator’s. I can’t be responsible for the wild lifestyle an alligator had before I was even born. Besides, he doesn’t know your rules. He’s from Cuba.” I felt sure they’d understand. Besides, these are the risks you take when you bring a dead alligator on a plane trip.
Of course, Jean Louise and I got through just fine, and no one even blinked at the alligator on the security conveyor belt. Victor was stopped for a full body search. Probably because he was sweating, and the vein on his forehead was popping out. In the confusion, Jean Louise and I calmly walked through with no problem. Victor could learn a lot from that alligator.
When we finally got settled in I pulled down Victor’s tray table and perched Jean Louise on it so that he could see outside. “Take that goddamn thing off my tray,” Victor whispered between clenched teeth.
“But he’s never been on a plane before,” I explained.
“Voulez-vous les window seat?” Jean Louise asked pleasantly.
Victor glared at me. “I’m not kidding. We’re going to get kicked off the plane. Put it away.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said. The man sitting across the aisle was staring at Jean Louise, so I swung him toward his face. “Votre chemise est mooey bueno,” Jean Louise said confidently. The man stared at Jean Louise with a slightly open mouth.
“He says he likes your shirt,” I explained matter-of-factly.
Victor put his head in his hands. “If I lose my SkyMiles because of this I will murder you.”
Just then the flight attendant walked by, a businesslike woman who looked as if she needed a cocktail. I gestured at her and smiled widely as she walked near me, Jean Louise on my lap. “Excuse me, my son would like to see the cockpit.”
She hesitated for a moment as she looked at Jean Louise, and then said, “Oh. We don’t do that anymore,” before briskly walking off.
“These people are racist,” I said to Victor, who was pretending to be engrossed in the SkyMall catalog.
“Mmm,” he said, noncommittally.
“When we get home I’m going to buy Jean Louise a tiny ruffled pirate shirt. And a hook for his missing hand. And a saucy little ponytail.”
Victor put down his magazine and glowered at the dead alligator, whom he seemed to be viewing as a veritable money pit. “That’s it,” he said. “You’ve done it. You’ve managed to become your father.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said flippantly, as I contemplated how many Barbies I’d have to scalp to make a serviceable alligator wig. “My father has no taste at all when it comes to alligator pirate attire. I’m nothing like my father. Honestly, when it comes right down to it, I’m not really like anyone.”
Victor looked at me and Jean Louise, and slowly his gaze softened. “You know what? You have no idea how true that is.”
I stared back at Victor, and then rested my head on his shoulder as I moved Jean Louis to the empty seat beside us. And, as I wasn’t quite sure whether I should say thank-you or be insulted, I simply closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep while wondering whether anyone made tiny pocket watches for alligators anymore.
1. I’d planned on naming her “Pocahontas Wikipedia,” but Victor said that the cats would chew the hands off, but then I pointed out that even if that happened I’d love her even more, because then she couldn’t paddle and she’d be up a creek without hands, which seemed more and more like a metaphor for my life.
You Can’t Go Home Again (Unless You Want to Get Mauled by Wild Dogs)
So,” my sister says, as she leans back in the wooden chair on our parents’ front porch, “Victor told me you were mauled by a pack of wild dogs last time you were here.” She says it pleasantly, more like a statement than a question, in the same impassive way someone might say, “So, you decided to let your hair grow out again.”
“Mmm . . . sort of. It’s a long story.” I drowsily sit back in the matching chair and put my feet up on the authentic child-size chuck wagon my dad had built. In the Christmas months my dad hitches it to a taxidermied pygmy deer with a giant elk horn tied with a red bow to its head, in a strange homage to The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but the rest of the year it stands ownerless, as if abandoned after a 1970s dog food commercial.
“And I have somewhere to go?” Lisa asks.
She has a point. We were both in town to visit our parents for the week. Lisa now lives in California with her husband and a beautiful litter of children, but each year she’ll drive down to spend a few weeks in Texas, and I’ll bring my family, and we’ll have a disorganized family reunion. One where our kids gleefully ride the family goats, where our husbands complain that they are slowly suffocating from the heat and the lack of Wi-Fi access, and where my sister and I shake our heads in disbelief at their soft, sheltered ways, remembering days of bread-sack shoes and of pulling our mattresses out onto the porch so the whole family could sleep there on the hottest summer nights.
“So was it really an all-out mauling, or did the dogs just lick you violently?” she asks.
“It was less of an all-out maul and more of a prelude to a maul,” I answer. “Like when Julia Roberts got molested by George Costanza in Pretty Woman.” She looked at me expectantly, and so I told her the story.
When you cross over into our old hometown, you can pretty much guarantee that something fucked up is going to happen, but you’re really never prepared for what it is. You may come in knowing that you’re probably going to get a little blood on you, but you never think it’s going to be your own.
The morning of the day when I was partially mauled, Hailey and I walked outside my parents’ back door to see a stranger in a black hat and a bloody rubber apron, who was missing only a mask made of human skin and a chain saw to bring his whole outfit together. He apparently worked for my father, and he’d strung up a buck that he was in the process of skinning. He smiled naturally at Hailey and me, while he seemed to be digging his hands deep into the deer’s pockets, as if he were looking for his keys. Turned out, though, that deer don’t even have pockets, and he’d simply lost a glove in the deer. These are the things you come in expecting when you’re in Wall, and so you aren’t completely surprised when a stranger cheerfully yells at your preschooler to come over and help him “undress Mr. Reindeer because that’ll be a hootload of fun!” And when he tells her she can swing on the deer’s skin to help him get it all off, you’ll already have one arm on her sleeve pulling her back toward you, because this is the sort of thing you come prepared for. (Side note for nonnatives—“This’ll be a hootload of fun,” coming from a taxidermist’s assistant translates to: “This will cost thousands in psychoanalysis and will probably ruin your dress.”) Personally I prefer to avoid any activity that ends with a strange man offering to “hose the blood off of ye afterward, mate.” It’s just a rule I have. Because I’m picky. Also, when did my father hire a pirate to do taxidermy? The whole thing was weird.
Lisa agreed that it was unusual, but felt it fell short of being all-out “weird.” “Take yesterday, for example,” she explained. “Yesterday Victor walked into that swampy puddle behind the house and he was all, ‘Ew, is this from the septic tank?’ and I was like, ‘Where do you think you are? Beverly Hills? That’s leftover skull-boiling water.’ He looked ill, but I thought he should know. Comparatively,
deer pockets are really pretty humdrum.”
She had a point, but it still struck me as odd. Here’s a picture of it, but it might gross you out, so use your discretion:
My dad, dinner for weeks, random drifter/cowboy/pirate/taxidermist.
I know. I’m sorry. But in my defense, I did warn you.
Anyway, I expect a lot of odd things in a town known for armadillo races, and bobcat urine collections, and high school bovine fertility rituals, but one thing I did not expect was to be attacked by a pack of wild dogs. And yes, perhaps technically they weren’t “wild” so much as they were “excitable,” and maybe I wasn’t attacked by a pack of dogs as much as it was one jumpy dog and one bitey dog, but I can honestly say that the dog that bit me was probably infused with radioactive spider juice and had diesel-fueled vampire fangs. And adamantium claws. Also, he was part bear and his whiskers were made of scorpions.
Lisa laughed, and so I pulled out my phone and showed her the pictures of me after getting out of the hospital the next day. I’d added some text to make things more clear:
“Holy crap,” she said. “That looks disgusting. Okay, I apologize, because I was really sure this was blown out of proportion.”
“Apology accepted,” I replied magnanimously.
“So, where did you even find wild dogs?” she asked.
“Oh,” I said hesitantly. “Well, ‘wild’ is perhaps a strong term.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Out with it.”
I explained that Mom, Hailey, and I had gone to our uncle Larry’s house so I could meet his new wife, who was sweet and adorable, and who had pet dogs that were ginormous.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve met them,” Lisa said. “Cute dogs.”
“Yes, well, apparently they’ve been trained to look very cute and tail-waggingly giddy to see you in order to lull you into coming outside with them so they can chew your bones off.”
“You got attacked by Theresa’s pet dogs? Aren’t they like collies or something?” she asked in disbelief.
“They’re animals. Literally,” I assured her.
She looked at the pictures again doubtfully.
“After eating dinner, I carried Hailey out to the backyard, because she wanted to see the dogs. It was pitch dark, but Uncle Larry was feeding them, so I thought they’d be distracted and Hailey could just look at them. But then one of them jumped up, in an ‘I’m-a-big-dog-and-I-want-to-smell-the-top-of-your-head’ kind of way, and Hailey was squealing in an ‘I’m-a-crazily-excited-and-slightly-freaked-three-year-old’ kind of way, and then I’m suddenly wondering why I’m outside in a ‘These-motherfuckers-are-the-size-of-polar-bears’ kind of way. Larry heard the barking, and settled the one dog down as I was backing off toward the door. But then another dog must’ve thought I was an attacker, because it jumped up and bit me in the arm that I was holding Hailey with. (In an ‘I-would-like-to-pull-you-to-the-ground-so-I-can-chew-your-nose-off’ kind of way.) I knew I’d been bitten, but I also knew that if I screamed for help Hailey would freak out and I might lose my grip on her, so I bit my lip and turned around so my back was to the dog and Hailey was blocked from him. Then I felt another bite on my arm as I slid open the back door and pushed Hailey through. I was afraid that the dog was trying to get at her, since she was squealing with excitement, so I blocked the door with my body to give her time to get farther in, and that’s when the dog bit me in the back. He latched on and yanked, and for a second I thought I was going to fall to the ground, and in my mind flashed all of those news stories about women killed in freak dog accidents. I put my leg back to steady myself and made sure Hailey was safely in, then pulled hard to rip my back out of the dog’s mouth and slammed the door behind me.”
Lisa looked at me in silence for a moment. “Dude. Was everybody freaked out?” she asked.
“No. No one even realized it had happened. I swooped Hailey up and checked her out all over, looking for blood and bites that I knew she must have gotten, but she didn’t have a scratch on her. It was weird. Then Mom assured me that I was overreacting and that everything was fine, and then she saw the blood and realized that I’d been bitten. Uncle Larry hadn’t even realized what had happened, because I’d been so quiet when it happened. The two bites on my arm were so deep that you could see a bit of fat poking out of them, and on my back you could see the dog’s teeth marks, like some sort of doggie dental impression. I spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room being stitched up, getting a tetanus shot, and wishing I’d had my camera with me so I could send pictures to Victor to show him what he was missing while he entertained clients with lobster dinners.”
“So, what did they do with the dogs?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m sure if I’d asked them to, Larry and Theresa would have put the dogs down, but they’ve been around Theresa’s kids for ten years with no problem. I think they saw a large, screaming, unfamiliar object approaching their master in the dark and were trying to protect him. Besides, it kind of felt like I’d asked for it. Taking your three-year-old out in the dark to see giant strange dogs while they are eating is bewilderingly stupid.
“Oh, and we’d just eaten, so I probably smelled like KFC.
“Plus, I’m kind of delicious. It was like I was wearing a perfume designed to get me mauled. But in a bad way.”
Lisa nodded slowly. “That’s gotta be in, like, our top-ten worst family stories ever.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” she admitted. “Top fifty.”
“It wasn’t that bad, really.” I explained: “It was kind of a learning experience.”
“Right,” she agreed. “And the lesson was, ‘Dogs eat meat. People are made of meat. You do the math.’”
“Okay, that’s not a lesson. That’s a word problem. A really bad one. No, I learned that I could put someone else’s life before mine. I always thought that I would, of course, give my life for Hailey, but in the back of my mind was always a sneaking doubt that if the time came I wouldn’t be able to physically force myself to go into the burning building for her, or step in front of an angry dog to save her, but that day I found out that I could. It was scary as hell, but in a way it’s reassuring to know I could do it if I had to.”
“Aw,” Lisa replied. “That’s pretty profound for a dog bite.”
“I also learned that seeing your own fat poke out of you is disgusting and is good motivation not to eat that third drumstick,” I added. “Oh, and that when a hot doctor comes in to tell you he really wants to ‘irrigate your holes,’ you shouldn’t laugh, because apparently that’s a real thing and not some sexual innuendo. Oh! And when they did it they found a tooth in my back.”
“Because it was from your silent twin,” Lisa said conspiratorially.
“EXACTLY!” I exclaimed. “Except not at all. It was just a tooth from the dog, because he was so old. But I did immediately tell the doctor that maybe it was a twin that I’d ingested before birth, and I asked him to feel around in my back hole for any human hair or a skull, since I was already numb, but he acted like I was crazy. Probably because I’d laughed at his sexual innuendo.”
“Yeah, doctors hate that,” she added.
“I guess the good thing about getting attacked by the dog is realizing that I’m a little less selfish than I thought I was. Before, the most selfless thing I had done was give all my wishes to Hailey. I see a falling star or blow out my candles and I wish for something for her, but it feels selfish. Knowing that she’s happy is going to make me happy anyway, so it feels like cheating, like wishing for more wishes. Also, it’s not much to give up, considering that every wish prior to having Hailey involved my seeing a unicorn.” I half hesitated in even telling Lisa that part, knowing that once you tell someone your wish it doesn’t come true, but the chances of my seeing a unicorn are slim. Especially since they appear only to virgins, according to unicorn lore. I imagine that if I ever see a unicorn it’ll be one that’s mostly senile and sort of skanky, purposely showing up disheveled and unsh
owered just to fuck with the other unicorns, who wish that that unicorn would stop embarrassing them all like this. Harold would be his name, probably, and he’d be a smoker. So I wasn’t giving up much. But getting attacked by wild dogs to protect my child? It was like a nod from the universe. A subtle recognition that yes, you are a good mother. It was one I was just as surprised to receive as the universe was surprised to give, and I sat there in the hospital room thinking that if I had to give some sort of acceptance speech I would be earnestly shocked and humbled, and I would probably cry the ugly cry, and not just because I was having large gashes sewn up at the moment. I would thank my mother for teaching me to put others first, and my father for unintentionally preparing me to not panic when attacked by large unknown animals. I would thank Victor for not being surprised that I’d sacrificed myself for our daughter, and I would thank Hailey for mindlessly trusting that she was okay in my arms. And then I would nod silently to the disheveled unicorn at the back of the room as he caught my eye and tipped his head at my awesomeness.
“And that was what I was thinking. And also that I needed to find out what kind of drugs they’d given me, because anything that makes you hallucinate proud but chaotic unicorns watching your acceptance speech for being mauled by dogs is okay by me.”
“Wow,” my sister said as I realized I’d been saying all of this out loud. “That’s . . . totally messed up. But,” she admitted, “I’ve given up my birthday wishes for my kids too. I guess it’s a sign of being a grown-up. God, imagine what our lives would have been like without Mom wishing good things for us on her birthdays. We’d probably be dead by now.”