by B. B. Wurge
“Food, yes, that is a good point,” the red-haired man said, combing his stubby fingers through his beard. “I don’t know what to feed you because I’m not certain what species of monkey you are. South American, probably. Folivorous? That means you eat leaves. But what kind of leaves? I have an idea, Squig, that you should come home with me and sniff through my leaf collection.”
“Oh! Mr., Mr., um, what is your name?”
“Jeremiah Sponge, Ph.D.,” he said, spreading his hand out on his chest and grinning.
“Mr. Sponge, can I really go home with you? I…I don’t know where else I can go!”
And that is why, even though she had just met Dr. Sponge and didn’t know him very well at all, she found herself crouching in his backpack, peering out through the half-opened zipper, while he locked up his office and left.
11
Dr. Sponge was full of energy. He slung the pack over one shoulder and hurried down the stairs. Walking seemed to be too slow for him; he had to jog everywhere. When he got to the ground floor he boomed out a hearty goodbye to the janitor and then jogged out the door.
The janitor called back, “Have a good voyage!”
The janitor’s comment gave Squiggle a sudden nasty suspicion. Maybe Dr. Sponge was kidnapping (or monkey-napping) her for some horrible journey he was about to go on. Maybe he had only pretended to be friendly, to entice her into his backpack!
Soon they were out of the zoo and passing through busy streets. The sidewalks were so crowded that Dr. Sponge knocked into people every few steps. He didn’t seem to care, and he didn’t pay any attention when people turned around to yell at him.
Squiggle bounced up and down and banged her knee against a heavy book that was packed in with her. “This is terrible!” she thought. She considered unzipping the bag, leaping out, and running away. But just then they passed a policeman. Squiggle couldn’t see very well out of the little bit of zipper that was undone, but she thought it might be the same officer who had tried to capture her at the zoo. She decided it was better to stay in the backpack and see what happened next.
After a while Dr. Sponge began to talk to her. He spoke in a loud voice so that she could hear him over his shoulder. She couldn’t speak up enough to carry on a conversation, so she sat quietly and listened. Everyone on the sidewalk must have thought he was crazy, but he didn’t bother with that.
He began to tell her about all the places in the world he had been and all the strange and wonderful people he had met. Most of the names and places she had never heard of; but, as you know, she hadn’t read very much. She had the impression of jungles and a blaring hot sun and mist rising up from the ground, and strange animals, little squeaky ones hiding in the ferns, and big dangerous ones, poisonous snakes dripping off of the trees, and bright green and red frogs that you must never eat or you will die (“I wonder,” thought Squiggle, “if that is a poisonous frog tattooed on his eyelid. And who would want to eat a frog anyway?”). He told her about a secret village hidden in the jungle, where people lived exactly as they had for the past ten thousand years. Except that in the Council Hut, the big one in the center of the village, they kept a fax machine, three Superman comic books, and an empty Coke bottle.
They crossed a street and jogged through heavy traffic. Dr. Sponge’s voice got covered up by the clashing, grinding noises of cars and trucks. When they reached the opposite side, he was still talking. He had moved on to another topic. He was telling her about underwater caves. Pictures formed in Squiggle’s mind, of floating beautifully through warm water, in dark, craggy stone caverns. Only a beam of light moved around here and there. Strange sightless fish and giant crabs darted about. Feathery plants hung from the ceiling and swayed in the currents. . . .
Then he told her about the dry, unbelievably hot, dusty savanna. You could see only one tree way in the distance, all crabbed up and bent over. And there were elephants everywhere! Thirty of them. And the elephants came closer and turned into polar bears, with humped shoulders and narrow heads, yawning and growling and flapping their wings until they had roosted in the tops of palm trees. Little monkeys were climbing up the palm trees to get coconuts. And people dressed up in white cloth were standing around under the trees to pick up the snowballs and throw them at each other in the Great Greenland Snowball Festival.
(The jogging motion and the heat inside the backpack were putting Squiggle to sleep. She was getting confused.)
Just as he was explaining how he got the green squares around his eyes (and Squiggle was too sleepy to remember the story) he stopped talking, swung the pack off his shoulder, and said, “We’re here!” Then he chuckled and said, “Keep hidden, Squig. Let’s give the old lady a surprise.”
Squiggle peered out and saw a wooden door in a brick building. The building was on a busy street. Dr. Sponge took out a key, opened the door, and leaped inside. “Dearest!” he bellowed. “Hirsuita, Darling!” He hung the backpack up on a hook.
“What is all the ruckus,” a voice said. “You never make so much noise, except when you bring home a surprise.”
Squiggle opened the zipper a little bit more to get a better view, and this is what she saw. Jeremiah, standing and grinning, his beard sticking out about a foot in all directions from his chin. And facing him, a dark-haired woman about the same stocky height and build as him. She didn’t quite have a beard, but her face was very whiskery. She was wearing lipstick, as if she had just been about to go out, and the bright moist red of her lips looked very odd in the middle of that thicket of whiskers. She was wearing a blue dress and enormous fuzzy slippers. The slippers were in the shape of raccoons and had little glass eyes that goggled up at Squiggle, almost as if they knew she was there.
Dr. Sponge gave the woman a kiss. “But Darling,” he said, “I didn’t bring anything home. Can’t I be cheerful when I come in the door?”
“Cheerful!” she said, giving him a shove. “Usually you are a bear when you come home. Tell me what you brought. Is it something for the voyage?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know that,” he said, grinning.
Squiggle heard more footsteps and a little boy’s voice said, “Daddy, Daddy, what did you bring?”
The boy came into view. He was as old as Squiggle. He was about nine and looked very odd standing between his parents, because they were so large around and he was so skinny. You could tell he was going to grow up tall and thin and handsome. But he was just like his parents in one respect—he had a beard. It wasn’t very thick yet, just a scattering of hairs popping out of his chin unevenly, some of them only half an inch long, and one of them dangling all the way down to the top button of his shirt. He was unmistakably a Sponge.
“What makes you think,” Jeremiah said, frowning, “that I brought anything? You people are crazy!”
“What’s in your backpack?” the little boy said.
“A map!” Dr. Sponge said, doing a good job of sounding irritated. “Only a map! Go look for yourself!”
The little boy reached up and yanked open the zipper. A bunch of books fell out on the floor, and Squiggle fell out on top of them.
Everyone shouted at once.
“A MONKEY!” the little boy shouted happily.
“Easy there!” cried Dr. Sponge. “Don’t hurt her!”
“Oh, Jay, how could you bring home another pet!” Mrs. Sponge said.
“Ack! Help!” Squiggle shouted, but nobody heard her.
The little boy danced around in the hallway in glee with his hands up in the air.
“It is NOT a PET,” Dr. Sponge said, stooping down and helping Squiggle onto his shoulder. “She is a person. She has come to stay with us for a few days. Squiggle, this is my wife, Hirsuita, and my son, Toboggan. You can call him Toby. Everybody, this is Squiggle.”
“Um, how do you do?” said Squiggle.
The room was just quiet enough at that moment that everyone cou
ld hear her. The little boy stopped dancing and stared. The woman scratched her whiskers and said, “It’s a talking monkey?”
“I used to be a person,” Squiggle said, sounding very sad all of a sudden.
12
Everyone was quiet for a moment.
Then, “Oh, you poor dear!” Mrs. Sponge said. “Jay, take her into the family room and give her something to eat! Make her comfortable. What were you thinking, you ugly baboon, putting her in your backpack?”
“Well I . . . I had to get her past . . . I mean. . . . Now this isn’t fair at all. . . .” but nobody was listening.
Mrs. Sponge gently took Squiggle into her hands, carried her into a nearby room, and set her on a chair. Of course the chair was too big for a monkey, but it was nicely padded and felt comfortable. Her legs dangled over the edge. Just in front of her was a coffee table (covered in books) and on the opposite side of the table were several more chairs, where Dr. Sponge and Toby sat down.
“What would you like to eat?” Mrs. Sponge said politely, bending down toward Squiggle.
“I . . . I don’t know. I wish I did,” she added. Poor Squiggle was faint with hunger.
In the meantime, Toby chattered, “Daddy, can I talk to her? Can I ask her what it feels like being a monkey? Is she a thousand years old, and that’s why she’s all shriveled up and looks like a monkey? Will I get that way if I eat all my vegetables and live a thousand years? How did you find her?”
Finally, Squiggle had to repeat her story to the entire family. They sat very quietly so that they could hear her whispery voice. Partway through the story an octopus oozed across the floor, up Toby’s leg, and into his lap. He petted the rubbery sac of its head. Even the octopus stared at Squiggle, while it twined a tentacle affectionately around Toby’s arm.
When Squiggle was done with the story, Dr. Sponge explained his idea of letting her taste his leaf collection. “Not all of it, of course,” he said. “I mean, hum, well, they are valuable. If you could smell them and decide which kind of leaf you’d like to eat, then we could—”
“Oh, bosh,” said Mrs. Sponge. “Sniffing that old dried peppery collection? Don’t even bother! I’d better go to the grocery store right now and bring back as many different kinds of leaves as I can. Fresh ones. Let’s see. . . . Toby, in the meantime you could scour the neighborhood and pick a collection of tree leaves and. . . .”
As she was talking she took out a hat from a closet and settled it on her head. It was an ugly old-fashioned hat, decorated with plastic holly. Along with her whiskers and raccoon slippers, it made her look extremely bizarre; but she never left the house without it. She thought it was very beautiful.
“Hold on,” Dr. Sponge said, jumping up out of his chair. “What are you staring at? Squiggle, what do you see?”
“Um, nothing,” Squiggle said, looking very embarrassed.
“Out with it!” Dr. Sponge boomed. “I think I know anyway, but say it, go on, say it!”
“It’s just that. . . .” She hesitated. “It’s just that, Mrs. Sponge, your hat looks delicious.”
“My WHAT?” Mrs. Sponge said. She was aghast. “You mean you want to eat my HAT?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Sponge. I don’t at all. I only meant that the leaves look delicious.”
“But they’re plastic. They’re not real. And nobody’s touching my special hat!”
“Ha, but it makes perfect sense,” Dr. Sponge said, bounding across the room and making a grab at his wife’s hat. “She is a synthetic monkey, and she eats synthetic leaves. What an amazing discovery! Off with it! Give it here!”
“Never!”
“Now!”
“Back off!”
They scrambled for the hat, and the octopus got so frightened by the noise that it oozed under the coffee table and hid. Finally the hat flew off and landed on the other side of the room.
“Jay, you are a pest!” Mrs. Sponge said, in a rage. “I will donate one leaf from my hat, just to see if the poor girl can eat it. If she can, then I’ll buy five pounds of plastic plants if you want. But I will not destroy my good hat!”
A moment later, Squiggle had one little plastic holly leaf served to her on a coffee plate. She picked it up in her paw and sniffed it, then nibbled it, then crammed it into her mouth and gobbled it down.
Dr. Sponge shouted out, “It worked!” His wife laughed and clapped her hands, while Toboggan danced around the coffee table shouting, “Hooray! Hooray!” The octopus wisely stayed under the table. It didn’t want its tentacles to get stepped on.
Mrs. Sponge put on her hat again (minus the one leaf, but no more or less hideous than it had been to begin with) and hurried out to the store. She was back in ten minutes, and Lobelia had a wonderful lunch of plastic geraniums with a bit of plastic fern for dessert and a bottle cap full of water. She felt so much better, and so much happier, and so grateful to these hairy Sponges, that she wanted to cry. But monkeys don’t cry, so instead she sat with her paws in her lap and smiled at them.
“Now,” said Dr. Sponge, bringing his fist down onto the coffee table so that all the books jumped in the air. “Now that we’re all here together, let’s decide what to do with Squiggle.”
13
Everyone began to talk at the same time. Dr. Sponge, who was about to go on a voyage in a week, thought that Squiggle should accompany him. She would be the perfect assistant. She could climb up trees and get specimens for him.
Toby thought she should stay home and keep him company.
Mrs. Sponge was certain that the little girl should return to her parents as soon as possible.
They shouted at each other over the table for a few minutes, and then finally turned to Squiggle to find out what she thought.
“I think,” said Squiggle, miserably, “that my parents might not want me back. Now that I think about it, I wasn’t very nice to them. And they seem to be afraid of monkeys.”
“Hooray!” Dr. Sponge cried out, then clapped his meaty hand over his mouth. “I mean,” he said, “that’s very sad. But if you can’t go home, you’ll want to come to the amazing Pacific island of Buttok Buttok. Obviously. Let me fill you in on the—”
“Jay!” his wife said. “Let the girl talk!”
“I think,” Squiggle said, “that I better not decide anything right now. I’m just so very, very tired. . . .”
Right away, all three Sponges jumped to their feet and apologized. Toby asked if Squiggle could share his room (he thought it would be fun to have a monkey stay with him) and Mr. and Mrs. Sponge said it was okay.
As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, with Squiggle riding on his shoulder, Toby said, “You can sleep in the cat bed. There aren’t any cats in it. I made it in case we ever got one, but Mom doesn’t want one and Dad said the octopus won’t like cats. Do you like cats? I sure hope you get to stay with us. You can be like my sister, only you’re a monkey and we can play with the octopus together. He’s lots of fun. I’m teaching him to read and write, but he’s a little slow. I have an eyeball collection. What’s it like being a monkey? I sure wish I was one. You’re lucky. If I was a monkey, Dad would let me go on expeditions with him, so I could climb trees and get specimens for him. He says I can’t go until I’m done with school, and that’s not for years and years. . . .”
The cat bed was a painted wooden crate set against the wall and lined with clean terry-cloth towels. Squiggle curled up in it, and was so tired that she fell asleep in the middle of Toby’s chattering.
She dreamt that the Lesser Spotted Pickfloo had reappeared and turned her into a little girl again. She was still hairy all over, but didn’t mind because she was so happy to be back in her familiar size and shape. She ran home to tell her parents and promise never to throw anything at them again—but on the way home, she woke up.
It was the middle of the night. She could hear Toby breathing quietly in the
bed across the room. She checked herself all over in the moonlight, but she was still a monkey.
14
Squiggle lived with the Sponges for a week. She had a wonderful time. All the Sponges were nice to her. They seemed to like her, and although that may sound ordinary to you, it was new to Squiggle. Nobody had ever liked her before. When they set the table for dinner, they always put out a plate full of delicious plastic leaves for Squiggle. She got to sit on the tabletop because she was so small. After dinner, when they sat around the family room in the evening, reading or talking (or arguing), they always gave Squiggle a chair with lots of pillows on it and included her in their conversations, and were polite enough to be quiet while they listened to what she had to say. She was so surprised at being treated in this way that very soon she began to love the Sponges.
They had a TV but Squiggle never watched it. She had too many other things to do. In the morning, after breakfast, she would gallop downstairs to Dr. Sponge’s big study in the basement. While he worked at his desk, planning out the voyage, Squiggle would look at the maps pinned up on the walls or read through books on strange foreign animals. The room was full of exotic books with titles like, The Mobility of the Hippopotamus Ear, The Feeding Habits of the Carnivorous Squang Doodle, and Is the Pterodactyl Really Extinct? Now that Squiggle was an exotic animal herself, she liked to read about other strange animals and their habits.
Dr. Sponge was always writing lists of the things he wanted to bring, like rope nets, and malaria medicine, and an extra pair of underpants, and a supply of chocolate. He would scribble more and more quickly, while his red beard and hair bounced and shook violently, and then suddenly he would jump to his feet, wave his stubby arms, and shout, “Squig, think of the fun we’ll have! Ha! Don’t tell the old lady. She thinks you’re staying here with her. But of course you’ll come with me on the voyage!”