“Please. Oh, please. I really want to feed the birds.” I grab at Aunt Pam’s sleeve.
“Amberino, if you keep pulling like that, one of my sleeves is going to end up much longer than the other.”
I pull at her other sleeve. “Oh, please. Oh, please.”
She takes some money out of her handbag. “Oh, all right. . . . Even though I think that these birds are vermin, rats with wings . . . it is part of the tourist experience. Go over and buy some birdseed and I’ll take some pictures for your album.”
Waiting in line, in the queue, I notice that my wet feet are a little squishy in my sandals.
I watch what other people are doing, putting some seed on the ground, on their arms, and in their hands.
I get the birdseed, go back to Aunt Pam, and do the same.
Immediately, one bird comes over and stands right at my feet. Then another bird comes over and sits on my arm. Then two more show up.
One stands on my head.
“Amber, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Aunt Pam sounds nervous.
“I’m having the BEST time.” I laugh as two more fly over.
I take out more birdseed and the birds eat right out of my hand.
Aunt Pam takes pictures.
When I run out of birdseed, the birds leave.
“Please, may I have some more money?” I ask.
“Are you sure?” Aunt Pam makes a face. “I’m afraid you’re going to get some awful disease.”
Pointing to everyone around me who is doing it, I say, “They all look healthy. Oh, please. Oh, please. This is so much fun.”
She gives in and I get in line to get more seed.
While waiting, I look around and see a mother wiping some stuff out of her little girl’s hair.
I hope that Aunt Pam doesn’t see that.
I hope that no pigeon drops a load on my head.
Gross.
When I get back, Aunt Pam says, “Why don’t you just put the seed on the ground and watch the birds?”
I bet she’s seen the mother, the little girl and the pigeon poop.
I give her my “Please. Please. Please” look again and she gives in.
The birds return to me.
One in front. One eating out of my right hand. One eating out of my left. A couple of birds on my arms.
I just keep laughing.
Then one comes down, lands on my hair, and knocks off my baseball cap.
I don’t mind.
Then that bird or another one quickly flies down and lands on my head.
I don’t mind.
Then the bird gets his claws caught in my hair and tries to fly away with some of my hair still attached.
I do mind.
Aunt Pam rushes over and gets the bird off my head.
I can feel some of the strands of my hair ripping.
And the bird is gone.
In fact, all the birds are gone.
In fact, some of my hair is gone.
When I open my eyes, I notice that Aunt Pam looks a little pale.
“Can I buy more birdseed?” I ask.
“Not on your life,” Aunt Pam says softly.
She really does look very pale.
Begging is not going to work this time.
“O.K.” I hug her. “Aunt Pam, thanks. This has been one of the best days of my life.”
She hugs back and then checks to make sure that there are no bird gashes on my body.
“Showers,” Aunt Pam informs me. “We’re going home and take showers right away . . . and get you some bug spray.”
At first I think she means New Jersey when she says home and then I realize she means the flat.
I could get used to living in lots of different places.
Chapter
Eight
“Amber Brown,” I say to myself in the mirror, “you’ve either got pigeon pox or chicken pox.”
They’re not bug bites.
I kind of knew it but I kept hoping it wasn’t happening.
Going back into the living room, I lie down on the sofa bed and try to figure out what to do next.
I miss my mother.
Aunt Pam is asleep in the bedroom.
I’m not sure that she’s going to know what to do. After all, she’s never been a mother.
My father is in France. He’s never been a mother, either.
Some fathers are good when their kids get sick but my dad always just got nervous and let my mom take care of me when I got sick.
And I feel sick.
I itch.
A lot.
My eyes hurt.
My head hurts.
I’m having trouble swallowing.
I think I have chicken pox down my throat.
My entire body hurts.
I feel like I was run over by one of those wrong-side-of-the-road drivers and now I am road pizza.
I wonder if I’m just imagining things.
I wonder if it’s the jet lag people always talk about, the time difference problem.
I don’t think, though, that people with jet lag get spots all over their bodies.
I wonder if those pigeons did give me some terrible disease.
I wonder if there really is something called pigeon pox and if I’m going to die.
Here I am in London and I’m sick.
I wonder if there are doctors in England.
I wonder if my mother is going to have to fly over here immediately.
I wonder if my father is going to have to fly here immediately.
I wonder if my chicken pox will bring them together.
I wonder if I’m ever going to stop itching and feeling so rotten.
I look at my body again.
There are spots all over me.
Closing my eyes, I try to go back to sleep.
Maybe this is all a bad dream, a very bad dream.
No use. I can’t sleep.
I open my eyes again.
It’s no bad dream.
It’s my worst nightmare, only I’m awake.
I want to scream.
So I do.
“Aunt Pam . . . . . . . . . HELP! ! ! ! ! ! ! !”
Chapter
Nine
Dear Justin,
I have chicken pox.
Itch. Itch.
Scratch, scratch.
I have been stuck in this room for almost an entire week . . . a total tired week.
Here’s what Dr. Kelly said when she came to the flat. (Doctors in this country actually come to your house.)
She said:
“Amber, you have chicken pox.”
“There is no such thing as turkey pox.”
“Put calamine lotion on every day.”
“Don’t scratch.”
“You’ll live.”
And guess what else. . . . I thought that my mom and dad would immediately rush to my sick bed (actually the bed is fine. . . . I’m the one who is sick). And I thought that they would see each other and fall in love again.
Guess what . . . . that didn’t happen. Dr. Kelly said that they didn’t have to be here.
Aunt Pam said she could take care of me (and she has).
So my parents are not together . . . . boo hoo.
My itches have itches . . . . boo hoo.
And I am getting soooooooo bored.
Please write back soon.
Your pal,
I put the letter into an envelope and look over at Aunt Pam who is reading a book.
“Monopoly® Marathon,” I call out.
“Amber.” She looks up.
“Please,” I beg.
She sighs.
I give her a pleading look. “My eyes hurt too much to read . . . you don’t want me to watch too much television . . . and I’m sick of counting my chicken pox.”
“Just let me finish this chapter,” she says.
I nod and smile.
While she finishes, I look at some of the chicken pox on my right arm and try to figure out what t
he picture would be if I tried to follow the spots.
I think that it would be a picture of a blob of throw up or of craters on the moon.
Aunt Pam sits down at the table where we’ve had the Monopoly® board set up for almost a week.
I throw the dice and land on Chance.
CHANCE
Go to Jail
Move directly to Jail
Do not pass “Go”
Do not collect £200
I feel like I’m already in jail.
Aunt Pam rolls the dice.
“Drat,” Aunt Pam says. “I’ve just landed on Mayfair. How much do I owe you?
“Two thousand pounds,” I tell her on our fourth day of “Marathon Monopoly®.” “Or you can give me the deed to Liverpool Street Station and the two hundred pounds you got for passing Go.”
“Add the two thousand to my tab.” She sighs.
I look at the paper.
She owes 123,796. That’s pounds, not dollars. In England, they have pounds and pence not dollars and cents.
The Monopoly® board is different but that hasn’t stopped me.
I’ve got the best properties all in a row . . . Regent, Oxford and Bond Streets, Park Lane and Mayfair. (That’s Pacific, North Carolina and Pennsylvania Avenues and Park Place and Boardwalk in the American game.)
I also own seven other properties.
Actually, being in Monopoly® jail isn’t so bad, just sitting here, getting money and not having to think about landing on one of Aunt Pam’s properties.
“Drat.” Aunt Pam lands on Whitechapel Road. “How much this time?”
“Four hundred and fifty,” I say. “But I’ll let you get away with it this time.”
“What a pal.” Aunt Pam smiles at me.
She looks tired.
She’s stayed in with me the whole time.
Some of her friends visit, which is nice because they bring me presents.
Sometimes it’s not so nice because I want her to pay attention just to me.
“Aunt Pam,” I say. “Thanks.”
“For what?” she asks.
“For everything.”
She smiles. “Thanks for saying thanks.”
I give her a kiss and then look down at the board. “You’ve landed on my property again but you can stay rent free again.”
The phone rings.
It’s my dad.
He calls every day.
And he’s coming to visit me since I couldn’t go there.
I hear about what he’s doing.
I give him the daily Monopoly® report.
Then we have our kissing contest.
I let him win.
After we hang up, I turn to Aunt Pam. “Let’s elevator race.” I am so bored with just sitting around playing Monopoly®.
“Okey dokey.” She’s not only sick of playing Monopoly®, she’s losing.
We get up and go out into the hallway.
I go to the elevator at the other side of the hall.
She stays at the one near our flat.
“On your mark, get set, go,” I yell.
We both push our elevator buttons at the same time.
My elevator arrives first.
I rush in and push the button for the ground floor.
In London, the ground floor is first and the first floor is on second.
I just know I’m going to win.
The elevator stops.
But the doors don’t open.
I look at where it tells what floor it is.
It’s between five and four.
I’m stuck.
I push the button.
I’m still stuck.
Aarg! I’m going to die.
I should have stayed in Monopoly® jail.
I wonder how they will get me out, how they will get food to me . . . what if I’m not out by the time I have to go to the bathroom?
Then I think about how I’ve never heard of anyone dying by being stuck in an elevator.
I’ll just stay calm and wait.
Maybe they’ll call one of those T.V. rescue programs and I’ll become a star.
“Amber.” I can hear Aunt Pam yelling to me. “Honey, stay calm. Help is on its way.”
I am calm.
Actually, this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me since I got the chicken pox.
Justin is going to be so jealous when he hears about this.
I do get just a little nervous when the elevator doesn’t start up soon.
What if they don’t get me out by the time I’ve got to go to the bathroom?
What if I miss dinner . . . and breakfast?
What if they can’t get me out of here when my father comes and I’ll only be able to hear his voice, not see him?
The elevator starts again.
It works and doesn’t stop until it gets to the ground floor.
Drats! There are no T.V. cameras, but Aunt Pam runs up and hugs me.
“Aunt Pam,” I whisper, “I’m fine. Don’t make a fuss.”
Mary, the housekeeper, comes up to us. “When my son was a little boy, he got caught in a lift, too. And he cried and yelled,” she says.
“He did?” I, Amber Brown, feel very brave.
She nods. “It was a very hot summer day. He was so warm that he kept taking off pieces of his clothing. By the time we got him out, all he was wearing was his knickers.”
“Knickers are underpants,” Aunt Pam explains.
We all laugh.
Suddenly, I’m not bored.
And tomorrow I’ll really be able to see some of the places I’ve only been able to “visit” on the Monopoly® board.
Chapter
Ten
I really miss Justin.
He makes me laugh.
Sometimes he also makes me want to throw up.
This letter makes me want to do both.
I don’t know where I’m ever going to find another friend like Justin Daniels.
Aunt Pam quickly walks into the living room. “Sofa bed away.”
We put it up.
Placing the cushions on the sofa, she says, “Amberino, are you feeling well enough to go out?”
“Absolutely.” I grab my knapsack.
At the exact same time, we say “Wagons Ho.”
We wait in the hall for the elevator, the “lift.”
We take the elevator that didn’t break down.
Mary waves to us as we leave.
It’s raining a little.
Aunt Pam says that happens a lot in London.
We walk to the Tube.
That’s what the subway is called in London. It’s also called the Underground.
To make the trip even more interesting, I pretend that we are sardines in a can traveling to Sardinia.
I, Amber Brown, have a very active imagination.
We get off at our stop.
Aunt Pam says, “MOMI, Museum of the Moving Image, here we come.”
And after a short walk we are there.
Aunt Pam says that we are at the South Bank.
I don’t see a bank anywhere. Not south, not north, not east or west.
I’m confused.
“Do you need to change more American money into English money?”
She doesn’t understand what I mean until I say, “South BANK.”
She laughs.
I hate it when people laugh when I’m not trying to make them laugh.
“Oh, honey. South Bank is the name of this area. It’s called that because it’s on the south bank of the Thames River.” Aunt Pam is smiling. “It does get confusing sometimes. Doesn’t it?”
It sure does.
We enter, buy our tickets and go into MOMI . . . Museum of the Moving Image. It’s all about the movies and television.
There are all these really old machines with pictures inside that twirl around.
In one of the rooms, we get to make our own moving pictures.
We sit down at a big round table, where ther
e’s a big hole in the center where the artist sits and shows us what to do.
He hands us a long strip of paper with twelve boxes in it.
I draw a stick person doing a cartwheel:
I, Amber Brown, am not a great artist.
Neither is Aunt Pam.
Everyone sitting around the table puts their strips of papers in this machine that the artist calls a Zoetrope. (He says that means wheel of life.)
The machine looks like a hamster wheel with little see-through slits.
We spin our wheels around.
My stick person is not going to get a gold medal in gymnastics.
Aunt Pam’s flower makes the machine look like the wheel of death.
I walk around and see what the other people have done.
My personal favorite is done by this kid who looks about my age.
He’s drawn a face that looks like it’s puking. When you run the wheel backwards, it looks like the person is swallowing it back up.
It’s really disgusting . . . and I like it a lot.
Justin would too.
“Wagons Ho,” Aunt Pam says.
It’s so embarrassing when she says that in public.
We go into “The Casting Office.”
A guy dressed like an old-time director comes running up to me.
“Young lady, young lady,” he calls out.
I look around.
“It’s you. I want to see you. I think you will be perfect for the movie I’m directing.” He tilts my head up. “Yes, perfect.”
I wonder if he’s directing a horror movie, “Scab Face from America.”
He grabs a couple of other kids.
I become Lulubelle.
The boy who drew the puking face is Marv, “the meanest guy in town.”
There is also Clint, the sheriff, and Ma Baker, the donut maker.
We rehearse for about a minute and then a man dressed as an old-time cameraman pretends to film us and everyone else applauds.
I could get used to this.
“Wagons Ho.” Aunt Pam hands me my knapsack. “Wait until you see the rest of the museum. There’s an area where you can pretend to be Superperson, flying over the City of London, one where you are a newscaster, and another where you are interviewed as if you’re a big star.”
You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown Page 3