by Carla Gunn
I described to my mom how Lyle walked by my desk and knocked over my pencil case on purpose. My pencils and markers and eraser and lunch money went all over the place. Lyle just looked back at me and laughed. Kaitlyn helped me pick them all back up but I thought maybe her licey hair would touch my hair when we were both down on the floor crawling around and that worried me.
I told my mother that I would really like to tell Lyle that I hate him. She nodded and said that she understood why I felt like that but that it likely wouldn’t solve anything. I told her maybe not, but it would make me feel better.
Then I told her that I would like to use the F word with Lyle.
She said, ‘What F word?’
‘You know, the F word.’
‘What? Fart?’
‘No, the really bad F word.’
‘What? Frig?’
‘No, the one that rhymes with duck.’
‘Oh, that one.’
After a few seconds she said, ‘Well, how would you use it with Lyle if you could?’
‘I don’t know – how about “Leave me alone, Lyle, you fucker”?’
She laughed and said, ‘Yeah, or maybe “Fuck off, Lyle.”’
‘Either one would work for me,’ I said. ‘I think it would make me feel better.’
‘Well, then, go ahead and say it out loud to me. Tell me how you feel about Lyle,’ said Mom.
‘Really?’
‘Sure, when I’m mad at someone, I like to express it to my friends and not have them tell me what I should or shouldn’t say or feel, so I guess why should it be any different for you?’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Lyle is a fuckface fucker and I hate him.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ said Mom. ‘Lyle acts like a fucker. Did that make you feel any better?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good, but you likely shouldn’t say that word anyplace else. A lot of people are really offended by it.’
I told her okay, I wouldn’t say it.
Then I asked her what fuck meant exactly, and she said, ‘It’s just a rude word.’
‘But what does it mean?’
‘You know about reproduction, right, Phin?’
‘Yes, I know about that.’ That was the second time this week she’d asked me that.
I have a book called The Lifecycle of Nature. It says that animals reproduce when the male puts a seed in the female, which already has a seed, and then the two seeds grow together into a baby.
My mom said, ‘When a male is putting his seed into the female, mostly this is called sex or copulating but some person made up a rude word for it years ago and called it fucking.’
But why would someone make up a rude word for something that makes more life and makes everything grow? How can that be bad? Why isn’t there a swear word for eating since that makes things grow too? Why isn’t there a swear word for breathing because that’s something animals have to do to survive too? Humans are weird.
After supper, my mother put on the Celtic Chieftains, which is music with fiddles and the guitars. We call it our joyful music. My mom just started putting it on again. For a long time I think she was too sad.
Sometimes Mom plays the fiddle along with it. Sometimes she misses some notes and it’s all messed up but messed up in a funnier way. Sometimes she doesn’t play along but instead grabs me by the arms and swings me in a circle until I feel like I am dancing on the ceiling. Sometimes I feel like I am going to throw up but since I am on the ceiling I would be throwing down instead.
When we dance, Mom laughs and laughs. I get worried when her head is back and her face is in a big laugh but no sound is coming out of her mouth, not even the sound of a breath, so I poke her in the stomach and make her breathe in loudly and still she laughs. When my father lived with us, he would dance too. Sometimes he would even put me up on his shoulders and bounce me around. That used to worry my mom and she’d yell, ‘Will, put him down! You’re going to shake his head off his shoulders!’
This evening, though, I didn’t really want to listen to the music or dance because there was a show coming on the Green Channel that I wanted to watch. It was all about tigers. Tigers and joyful music just don’t go well together because in India there are fewer than 1,500 tigers left and the scientists and conservationists who are telling the truth about how the tigers are being killed are being threatened by the people who want to make factories and mines. That’s not the least bit funny.
There are thirty-six animals in the family Felidae and twenty-three of them are near threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The Iberian lynx is the closest to extinction and if it’s completely killed off it will be the very first wildcat species to go extinct in 2,000 years.
I saw Dr. Barrett again. He told me he wanted to show me a new exercise to make me feel calmer and I said okay.
Dr. Barrett said, ‘Okay, sit back, close your eyes and take deep breaths.’
I breathed in, and then I breathed out.
‘Do any of your muscles feel tense, Phin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which ones?’
‘My hands and arms and legs and shoulders and neck and chest mostly.’
‘Okay, let’s start with your hands and arms. Just open your hands and let your arms hang loosely like you would if you were to lie down in your bed.’
I spread out my fingers and let my arms flop against the arms of his chair.
‘That is very good, Phin. Just relax. Relax,’ said Dr. Barrett in a slow, quiet voice that made me think of practicing a lockdown at school.
After a few seconds he said, ‘Now, do you have a favourite place – a place that makes you feel calm and relaxed and happy? It can be a real place you’ve been before or it can be one you imagine. Do you have such a place, Phin?’
‘Yes, Pete’s Pond.’
‘Great. Wonderful. Now go to Pete’s Pond in your imagination. Let me know when you’re thinking of this favourite place by raising a finger on your right hand.’
I raised my finger after a few seconds. I thought about how I saw a honey badger on the Pete’s Pond webcam a few days ago. Although it’s a small animal about the size of a skunk, a honey badger is listed as the fiercest animal in the world in one of the books of records.
Dr. Barrett said, ‘This is a calm, safe place where all your worries disappear. Look around at this place and look at all the sights … How does it feel to be here?’
I said, ‘It makes me feel happy.’ In fact, the day I saw the honey badger was really exciting because they’re hardly ever seen in the wild. They’re vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species.
‘That’s good. You are safe and feel very peaceful and calm. Notice what you hear or don’t hear in your special place. Look all around,’ said Dr. Barrett very slowly. Then, after he paused for a minute, he said, ‘Notice what you smell … Now, notice what you feel. Say to yourself, “I am relaxed. All of my worries are gone. I am very calm and peaceful.”’
I said those words to myself and they did actually make me feel calmer. Dr. Barrett said that I should go to this place inside my mind whenever I want. He told me to repeat, ‘I am very calm and relaxed here … This is my favourite place to be,’ to myself. He asked me if I thought this would help with my worry. I said sometimes. He said he’d settle for that and told me to practice over the next week.
I went to Bird’s house this afternoon and we played Ping-Pong down in his basement for a long while. Bird is good at Ping-Pong. I suck. Almost every time I hit the ball it flew up into the air and hit the ceiling. Then it would bounce down and hit the floor and roll away under the couch or toys or stuff and we’d have to search for it. I think we spent more time searching for the ball than playing. Once Bird’s dog, Ranger, grabbed it and Bird had to reach inside her mouth and pull it out. Some of Ranger’s drool got inside the ball and then for a while each time we hit it, drool flew out of it and all over the table.
Bird says Ranger is actually a big pain in the butt and a
lot of work because he and his brother have to take her for walks and pick up her poop. Sometimes when Bird is walking on the street and a car comes, Ranger pushes him and knocks him over onto the sidewalk. I don’t think I would mind that so much and sure wish I had a companion dog. But Mom says Fiddledee is enough for now and that Fiddledee likely wouldn’t like sharing my attention with someone. When I grow up, though, I’m going to have lots of companion animals – at least six or seven.
A female dog like Ranger is called a bitch. Once Bird said bitch because he thought it was a bad word. When I told him what a bitch really is, he was a little mad at me because I took all the fun out of saying that word. But then he started calling people who made him mad a female dog. He’d say things like, ‘Get out of here, you female dog.’ He asked me if the male dog was called bastard. He was hoping it was because then he could say, ‘Get out of here, you male dog,’ and that would be funny too. But I told him that dog actually means a male dog and that the species is hound.
While Bird and I were looking for the Ping-Pong ball, we could hear Bird’s mother and father having a fight upstairs. At least it sounded like a fight to me. I couldn’t tell what they were saying but it was as loud as the fight my parents had just before my dad moved to his own apartment.
I mentioned it to Bird. I said, ‘Um, Bird, your parents sound like they’re having a fight.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bird.
‘Doesn’t it worry you?’
Bird just looked at me like I was crazy and shrugged. ‘Nah, it’s probably about my brother. My mother yells at him and my dad says she should just leave him alone because he’s going through “The Change,” like growing hair all over his body and stuff. I think he’s turning into a werewolf.’
I didn’t say anything else because I don’t want to worry Bird. But I sure hope he doesn’t become one of ‘those kids.’ Then he would be like me. One day he could have a whole family and the next day half of one. One day he could have a father who was home 80 percent of the year who took him to swimming lessons and played chess with him and ate supper with him and read books with him and talked with him about lots of stuff, and then the next day he could have a father who’s only around 20 percent of the year and who he mostly only talks to on the phone or on email. And it could happen in the blink of an eye, just like that.
I think it’s a good thing I didn’t tell Bird that. There’s no point worrying him about it, I guess, because it’s not like he’ll be able to stop it from happening or anything. So I’ll just be worried for both of us.
Today I saw Dr. Barrett again – twice in one week. He asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about and when I said no, he said, ‘Today, Phin, we are going to talk more about facts.’
Oh great, here we go again, I thought but didn’t say.
‘Do you know what propaganda means, Phin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s good. So do you know that some people on the Green Channel may say things so that you and the other viewers get upset about the environment? That way they can get money for their projects or put more pressure on the government to support their projects. Do they do that – ask viewers for money?’
I nodded my head.
‘Well, the people on the Green Channel get more money from viewers if they can get them upset about animals.’
That makes sense. Why would you bother doing something if you weren’t the least bit concerned about it? It’s easier to do nothing.
Dr. Barrett asked me to tell him about one upsetting show I saw on the Green Channel. I picked a show about factory farms. That’s where mostly all the meat in grocery stores comes from. On factory farms cows and pigs and other animals are raised in tiny stalls. Their whole lives are spent standing, sitting or lying down. They don’t develop muscles in their legs because they never get any exercise. They get sores on their bodies because of the constant rubbing against their stalls. They spend their whole lives there. Their whole entire lives.
Dr. Barrett said, ‘Hmmm. I bet they showed lots of pictures of animals penned in that way and it made you feel really sad, right?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
Then Dr. Barrett said, ‘Well, Phin, I think the story is a little more complicated than that. Factory farming is how many people around the world make enough money to feed and clothe themselves and their families. Was any of that discussed on the show you watched?’
‘Not as much.’
‘If you got the other part of the story – the part that I just told you – would you still think they should stop factory farming?’
I nodded my head.
‘But, Phin, what about the men and women and children who depend on farming in order to survive?’ said Dr. Barrett.
‘My grandmother says organic farmers can make money. She said that by letting their animals move around in the fields, the animals are healthier and don’t need all those antibiotics and stuff to keep them alive. So that means the meat that comes from them is healthier for people. And even though they end up eaten, at least the animals are treated humanely.’
I stopped for a second to think about the word humane. It comes from the word human, which sometimes makes it kind of ironic – like calling death a cure for a sickness.
‘Well, Phin, I don’t want to disagree with your grandmother, but I think it may be even more complicated than that. I think the factory farmers are doing it that way for a reason. It may be the only way they can produce as much food as we need and make a good profit at the same time.’
I didn’t believe him. I think they do it that way just because they can. ‘The Green Channel says it doesn’t have to be like that either,’ I told Dr. Barrett.
‘Well, I would still argue that it’s much more complicated than what you’re watching on the Green Channel. Companies need to be able to make a profit to keep people in jobs so that they can support themselves and their families.’
‘My grandmother says that less than .2 percent of the world’s people own more than 25 percent of the world’s wealth. So I figure mostly people can afford to make their stuff in a way that doesn’t totally destroy the animals and the environment,’ I said.
‘Well, Phin, that would be nice for sure, but accumulating wealth is how our free-market economy is structured, and we can’t really change it.’
‘Why do people tell kids that we’re all equal and to treat everybody equally if that’s not the way the real world is?’ I asked Dr. Barrett.
When Mrs. Wardman talks about being considerate, the only kids who really listen to her are the considerate kids. The kids like Lyle don’t pay any attention. So what ends up happening is that the nice kids become even nicer so that the not-so-nice, greedy kids can get away with taking more and more from them with less and less of a fight. Sharing might work if we were all capuchin monkeys or bonobos but some humans are more like chimps. Alpha chimps do things like give food only to those other chimps who are most likely to give them something back. And a wannabe alpha chimp grooms the real alpha chimp just so he can mate with a female without the alpha interrupting.
Dr. Barrett changed the subject. He said, ‘Phin, how about we learn some more relaxation exercises?’
So that’s what we did – we relaxed … again.
This is what I wonder: I wonder if Dr. Barrett is working for the alpha humans. And I think he’s the one with the propaganda.
This evening my mother put on her new white pants and her favourite grey shirt made out of a silkworm’s life project. She said she was going out to interview someone about the homelessness problem in our city and that Rena, my babysitter, was coming over to stay with me.
I don’t like the word babysitter because I’m not a baby. I like the word caregiver better. The thing with Rena, though, is that she’s not even much of a caregiver. When mother meerkats go out to hunt, the mob’s subordinate and teenage meerkats look after all the babies. Those teenagers chase and play with the pups and let them climb all over them. It’s not
that I want to climb over Rena or anything, but playing a game of cards or chess or something might be nice. All Rena ever does is talk on the phone.
On her way out, my mom wrapped a blue scarf around her neck and put on some hand lotion that smells like jasmine. She even dabbed a little bit on her neck. As she was zipping up her leather boots, I noticed that her face looked smoother, her eyes looked bigger than usual and that she had big red guppy lips. Then I realized that she had makeup on. She hardly ever wears makeup.
‘Mom, where are you going?’ I asked.
‘I told you, Phin – to interview an activist who works with the homeless,’ said my mom.
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said my mother, ‘but I may stop for some dinner afterwards. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ I said.
While Mom was gone, I worked on my Reull stories and watched the Green Channel. I helped myself to lots of chips since nobody was around to see how many I had. Rena didn’t get off the phone even when Fiddledee knocked a dish off the counter and it smashed onto the floor. She didn’t hang up until she heard a car come in the driveway.
I ran to the front door and looked out the side window. What I saw almost made me choke on my chip. It wasn’t my mother’s car in the drive. She was getting out of a shiny red car instead.
I opened the door and stood on the doorstep. My mom was talking with a man inside the car. It was Brent!
I put my hands on my hips. Still they talked and talked and talked, like they didn’t even see me.
I walked down the the driveway in my sock feet even though it was super cold out. I stared at the car. They didn’t even turn to look in my direction.