Lizzie!

by Maxine Kumin

  Mom said, “Lizzie for Pete’s sake! Will you stop reading us every grisly detail you come across?”

  “Will I have to testify?” I asked Rob the Scarecrow, who was now practically living with us and was eating clam chowder with us that night. “Because I don’t think I could stand to see him. Like if I had to go past him my whole body would shake so hard I wouldn’t be able to speak.”

  Mom said, “Think how it will be for Julio. Having an uncle who is accused of murder, an uncle who kept you prisoner for a year. He has to tell the whole story all over again in court.”

  “You will have to testify because you are a witness, but I’m sure you won’t have to go right past him,” Rob said spearing the last piece of garlic bread out of the basket. “Anybody else want this? You’ll have an advocate assigned to you by the court and whoever that is, he or she will keep you well away from the accused. Your advocate will not let them put you through the wringer. So let’s cross that bridge when we come to it Lizzie.”

  I sort of knew advocate, from the Latin ad, for, and vocare, to speak. As for putting through a wringer, that’s what women had to do in the old days before they had washing machines with spin cycles. Then I stopped and thought about all those women who have probably never even seen a washing machine and the millions of people who have to wash their clothes in the nearest river. I heard on the eight a.m. news on our local public radio station that Blanco was going to be arraigned this morning at ten. And then on the TV evening news there was a whole lot more. He was asked whether he pled guilty or not guilty to the list of charges that included holding his nephew in involuntary servitude, trafficking in endangered animals, which are the tamarins, and murdering the man named Carlos who had helped import them. He pleaded not guilty and was led away in shackles. (You have a choice of pled or pleaded and since I couldn’t decide which, I used them both.) Even though I know he is a terrible man I hated to see those shackles. They made me think of slaves coming out of ships’ holds and being taken to the auction block.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mom has been investigating the trip to the primate refuge in Georgia. In fact she and Jenna have been conspiring to arrange for a caravan of all of us to drive there. We would have to stay overnight in a motel because it is approximately 470 miles from Woodvale, Florida, to Old Harmony, Georgia, not too far from Savannah, and we would be on the road one night each way. Mom says some of the good motels have swimming pools, which is an attraction, but I’m already thinking that they may have cable TV and we might get to see some good movies.

  Then I overheard her on the phone with a woman at the refuge in Old Harmony. She had a voice as loud as a sports announcer so it was hard not to overhear her. It went something like: “Good wukkers? They’ah ahnt eny good wukkers eny moah. They’ah just cum in an’ one wik lateh they’ah wantin’ they’ah paycheck an’ they’ah outah heah.”

  Then I heard Mom describing Julio. “It’s a long story but he ended up caring for the thirty-two tamarins you took in several weeks ago all on his own, and it is only thanks to him that they survived, so would you consider?”

  And then that roaring voice saying, “Hail yes if he’s legal ah’d bless him raht inta tha’ job a’ keepin’ the birthin’ cages clean an’ the new mothas looked afta. We’ah got ten new’uns—five sets’a twins. We’ah very strict heah, that means he’d hafta mejjuh up to ah stannarts.”

  So that was how I found out that the tamarins were reproducing.

  Mom said, “I don’t want to get his hopes up, but if Julio wants to travel to Georgia to see his monkeys …”

  And then Teresa said, “Absolutely, we’ll come too. I think it’s a wonderful idea since Digger and I haven’t had a real vacation for ages.” Well, Rob was all in favor of Julio coming and I quote: “An excellent way to get this boy out of reach of the tentacles of Los Pícaros.” And I think he wanted to be within reach of my mom. So that’s how we got to be a caravan of three cars. Digger, Teresa, and Julio rode in one, Jenna and Josh in another, and my mom and me and Rob the Scarecrow, who had suddenly declared that he desperately needed to get out of Miami for a few days, in the third. All heading for the Old Harmony Refuge for New World Primates in Old Harmony, Georgia.

  I guess we were quite a sight en route. I mean, at every stop out came two wheelchairs and in them the two crips and then the grown-ups and Julio, who got a lot of suspicious looks because he’s Latino. It makes me pretty mad when I see people who are bigots. I never got to use the word bigot before. You might like to know there’s a story about it that it goes back to Rollo, who was a Viking and became the first duke of Normandy. He supposedly refused to kiss the foot of the French King Charles III in the year 911 and said, “by got.” Probably he meant by God I won’t. Charles was also known as Charles the Simple but I couldn’t find out why. It may just be a story to explain how bigot got to mean somebody who for no reason hates people who aren’t just like him.

  It was pretty comical sometimes, all of us unloading just to buy some sandwiches and juice or iced tea at the convenience stores attached to the gas stations, where “the facilities” were sometimes okay and sometimes disgusting. When they were disgusting I made a point of wheeling up to the cash register and telling the clerk loudly enough to be heard all through the store. I mean, I wasn’t exactly the shot heard ’round the world but I think I made a tiny difference.

  As for the motel going and coming, Josh and I did actually go swimming twice. This neat pool had steps with a big pole to hold onto and Josh and I could boost ourselves right into the shallow end. Julio did an awesome belly flop from the deep end to start us off. We stayed in taking turns playing Marco Polo till our fingers were prunes and we all were really bushed. In case you don’t know the game, it’s a kind of tag and the person who is “it” has to swim around with his eyes closed. The other person with his eyes open tries to stay away from him. The “it” player calls out “Marco” and the other player has to answer “Polo” and this goes on until the “it” player catches up with the other and tags him and then they change places.

  And at night we got to see two terrible movies—sci-fi, which I hate, but Julio and Josh both love them, so I suffered along. I mean, I just can’t get into these characters from different galaxies. I have enough trouble with our own mortals. “Mortals from Earth”—that’s what they always call us and it gives me goosebumps every time.

  Finally and none too soon, our destination! We didn’t need the GPS to tell us we had arrived, with Old Harmony Bank on one corner and Old Harmony Feed and Grain Store cattycorner to it. The Old Harmony Café two doors down advertised sandwiches and cold drinks along with the coffee. Everything else in Old Harmony was the sanctuary. It had a special campus set aside for little New World monkeys, squirrel monkeys, spider monkeys, capuchins, and several kinds of tamarins. Most primate refuges deal with chimps, sometimes left over from the entertainment industry, and rhesus macaques, discarded from medical experiments. Old Harmony had some of these on a separate campus but the main focus was on the tamarins. Once we were all installed in a nearby motel which incidentally didn’t have a pool, we went over to meet the director, Ms. Marybel Goodspeed, who turned out to be the woman with the loud voice.

  Digger wore his chief of police uniform to make the visit look more official but as it turned out he didn’t need to because Marybel Goodspeed was used to all kinds of official visits from governors to health officers to the FBI tracking down points of origin for stolen primates.

  What I liked about Marybel was she never once asked about the wheelchairs. She talked to us like normals. She took one look at Julio who saved all those tamarins and hugged him! He just stood there wrapped in her arms wondering what had happened. Her Southern accent was harder than Spanish but we gradually got the hang of it. And let’s face it, think how we sound to her. Like creatures from a foreign country, I bet. We talk through our noses and people in New England put r’s on the ends of things like parkar and drawr. And what about sawr? I sawr a
bird. That made me think about Henry and his flors and strub-bries and wanting a’sister livin’ for his mother. I sort of wished he could have come along and seen Old Harmony.

  Then we all got a tour of the campus where lots of the monkeys had been used in the Air Force space experiments and in medical research, which you don’t want to know about, believe me. Some with only one hand, two blind chimps, some looking starved from having been used to test the toxic effects of certain medicines. Those crippled monkeys had been through a lot.

  After that, she took us out to the New World’s forest, that’s what she called it, only it came out fahest, and at first I thought she was saying farthest but then I caught on. There were several rescued capuchins—some people call them organ-grinder monkeys—and squirrel monkeys she said had been captured in Colombia and put up for sale. The tamarins were living in a cluster of live oaks with lots of nests up high and plenty of bushes growing in what is known as the understory. It wasn’t a rain forest but it looked very airy and nice and it was clean. There was a moat all around and a tall fence around the moat. Marybel said we couldn’t go in because we would contaminate the monkeys and if Julio took the job he would have to be thoroughly disinfected before he could begin work. So he just stood outside their sanctuary and called to them in the same sort of chuckles and trills Trippy and I had heard that first day. He sounded just like them. You couldn’t really be sure they were answering him or that they recognized his voice but the level of their chatter definitely went up. Marybel was impressed. She didn’t say anything but there was an admiring look on her face so I thought that was a good sign.

  There wasn’t any paperwork involved because as Marybel said, “We’ah operatin on good faith.” She and Julio shook hands on it. I thought he looked a little afraid she was going to hug him again. He was promised time off and airfare from Savannah to Miami when Jeb Blanco’s case came to trial, which according to the Scarecrow might take a year, so we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I think that’s his favorite expression.

  Another sweet thing is, the job came with an apartment on the grounds, which we did get to see. I thought it was pretty grim—one room with a bed, a table, and a lamp. And second room with the smallest fridge ever made plus a microwave and a hot plate, which is two burners to cook stuff on. Julio said, “This is a palace compared to the shack I was living in.”

  I had to agree. I can’t really think of that shack without thinking of the trapdoor and the ladder and the whole … abduction.

  Marybel said, “I think if things wukk out I might could locate a couch and a TV.” She also said she would help him with his study plan for the GED exam. It turns out that The Hammer had already been helping him with his algebra, so he was rounding second base on the way to third. That was Rob’s call.

  Marybel thought the office computer could be freed for Julio’s use after five p.m. Mom said, “If you email me your English essays I will send them back with comments. Be sure you use the spelling and grammar app on the computer. It will help you to see where your mistakes are.”

  Still, it was hard saying goodbye to Julio. Everybody acted very cheerful but I felt sad. I’ve never been good at goodbyes so when he bent down to give me a half hug I had to pinch myself to keep from letting any tears leak out.

  AFTERWORD

  Well, Teresa has read my autobiography up to here and says she really likes it. I thought the ending might be too sad. But she pointed out that the book ends happily for the cubs and for Julio and that plenty of people’s lives don’t have happy endings, including rich movie stars.

  And I said, “To say nothing of the millions of people who go to bed hungry every night.”

  “Also,” Teresa said, “Digger might have another heart attack and I have to live with that fear every day.”

  That made me choke up.

  I’m still really sad when I think about saying goodbye to Julio and I still feel scared when I think about that night in the root cellar. Sometimes I’m really angry about being probably stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. But now that I’m practically an adolescent I can look back at everything that’s happened with some perspective (from the Latin per, through and specere, to look). I’ve made some good new friends, not just the kind you email with. Josh and I still have to perfect our email shorthand since we aren’t going to see each other for months at a time. Not just things like yolo which stands for you only live once and rofl for rolling on the floor laughing and smh for shaking my head. (It sort of makes me shake my head just writing these things down.) Tom and Aurelia will be getting married in ten days and I’ll attend their wedding. I’ve got new honorary grandparents and a mom who’s pretty special and it looks as though Rob the Scarecrow might be my father one day in the not-too-distant future. All in all, it’s been quite a year. I’m definitely feeling ready for high school with my binocs and my Mac and my American Heritage Dictionary.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Honored as America’s poet laureate from 1981 to 1982, MAXINE KUMIN has been the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and many other awards. In addition to her seventeen poetry collections, novels, and essay collections for adults, she is the author of many children’s books. Seven Stories Press is re-releasing four of Kumin’s out-of-print children’s books for kids ages five to eight, co-written with poet Anne Sexton: Eggs of Things and More Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall) and Joey and the Birthday Present and The Wizard’s Tears (illustrated by Evaline Ness). She lived with her husband on a farm in the Mink Hills of Warner, New Hampshire, where they raised horses for forty years and enjoyed the companionship of several rescued dogs. She died in early 2014.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  ELLIOTT GILBERT has illustrated and written numerous children’s picture books including Max Goes Hunting and My Cat Story. Among the many books he has illustrated are Mittens In May by Maxine Kumin and the popular classic The Best Loved Doll by Rebecca Caudill. His paintings have been exhibited in many galleries and won numerous awards. Examples of his work can be seen on his website elliottgilbert.com. He lives with his wife in Hoboken, New Jersey.