Amphibian

by Carla Gunn

  Then someone led her into the capsule and she went with them because that’s what dogs do – they go with their humans. They put her in a harness that would allow her to only sit, stand or lie down in the capsule. They put enough gel food in with her to keep her alive for seven days. The food for the seventh day was poisoned so that she would die after they proved that a dog could live in space. Then they closed the door and sealed her up in there all alone.

  When Sputnik II was launched, Laika’s breathing rate went up to four times its normal rate and her heart rate more than doubled. By the time it reached orbit, Laika’s heart stopped beating. She died of being so afraid.

  I tried to imagine how scared she was, but I don’t think I even came close to feeling that. She died alone, scared and in a place that was completely unknown to her. To make it even worse, she was a dog and dogs are social animals. That means they love being around other dogs and they love their humans too. Being all alone to Laika would have been even worse than being all alone was to Cuddles when he died.

  To make it even worse, Laika may even have trusted the humans. She may have done what they wanted because, being a social animal, she wanted to please them.

  To make it even worse, the scientists knew that they were sending Laika to her death. They knew it when they closed the door, and still they did it. I bet they even smiled at her or said, ‘Good dog, Laika.’ But in Russian.

  Part of being social means you feel love for other animals. Scientists have found that most rhesus monkeys will suffer of hunger if getting food means that another monkey will be shocked in the next cage.

  I would rather live nine years and die on earth with my family around than live one hundred years in a cage in space all alone.

  I couldn’t save Cuddles. I couldn’t even save one frog. Not even one small, little frog.

  I saw on the Green Channel how some people in Spain are trying to get the government to declare that other primates, like the great apes, are humans too. Then they’d have the right not to be locked in cages and used in experiments and killed, their hands used as trophies and their tails used as dusters. So far the people haven’t been able to do that, but if they’re successful I’m thinking I’d like to apply for a species change.

  I’ve had it with humans. I’d rather be a rhesus monkey.

  Today all I could think about was death. Everywhere I looked, I noticed dead things – like the dead spider in a web in the corner of the bathroom whose legs were all curled up. The spider looked like the eyelashes of a doll I once had. Grammie and Granddad – someone else who’s dead – gave me that doll when I was three.

  Thinking of death started me wondering about how long animals live on average. I looked up the life expectancy of different animals on Google. Then I made a list:

  Tree frog: 8 years

  Cat: 18 years

  Dog: 13 years

  Horse: 22 years

  Deer: 8 years

  Elephant: 50 years

  Yellow-headed Amazon parrot: 70 years

  Galapagos land turtle: over 100 years

  Human: 80 years

  You can’t count on those averages, though. You never know who’s going to get ripped off next. You could be walking along thinking you have another fifty-three years and then all of a sudden you’re dead – or worse, stuck in a cage somewhere. It could happen just like that, in the blink of an eye, before you even know what hit you.

  I started to feel super, to-infinity worried about who would be robbed next. I kept thinking that maybe it would be my grandmother. This made me feel all skinny inside. I made a list of animals I knew personally who got robbed and how many years each got robbed:

  Cuddles (if he was one year old when he was caught, that would put him at about seven years robbed, –7)

  Karen, a kid I knew in kindergarten who died of leukemia (–72)

  Jakie, Uncle John’s dog who got hit by a car when he was six (–7)

  Aaron, a friend of my mom and dad who used to come for dinner, who died of a brain aneurysm while he was driving to work (about –40)

  My grandfather (–12)

  Although Granddad died at the age of sixty-eight, the very last time I saw him, he looked more like 108. He was in hospital and looked like he was shrinking right down to just his bones. That last time I saw him, my mom left the room to go ask a nurse to give him more pain medication. While she was gone, Granddad, who was trying to sit up, made a motion with his hand that meant push a button on the side of his bed to make the front part go up. I pushed it and it kept going up and up and Granddad didn’t say stop. He didn’t say anything. He had closed his eyes and his mouth was shaped in an O. He didn’t move and he didn’t say anything at all. I finally stopped pushing the button when it looked like he was folded over too much. When my mom came back in, she looked at Granddad and then ran and pressed the buzzer to call the nurse in. When the nurse came in, my mom told me to go sit in the TV room. Grammie showed up a few minutes later and she was crying. I sat there some more not watching TV and the nurses tried to talk with me but I didn’t want to talk. Eventually Uncle John came to get me and take me to Grammie and Granddad’s house. Granddad died later that night.

  A few days later, I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe I pushed the button for too long. Maybe Granddad got folded over too much and that put too much pressure on his organs or something. Or maybe when Granddad made that motion with his hands, it wasn’t that he wanted me to push the button – maybe he wanted me to run for help.

  At first, I didn’t tell my mom what I was thinking because she was too upset. And then later I didn’t tell her because I was afraid I might make her think of something she had never thought of before – that me and the cancer were co-murderers. I know deep down that’s not true. But sometimes I still think about it. And now I just can’t stop thinking that maybe Mission Amphibian was too hard on Cuddles, and that I’m the reason he died. Not only couldn’t I save him, I may have helped kill him.

  My mother keeps asking me what’s the matter. ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter, Phin?’ she keeps saying over and over. She’s been saying that to me for a week now. I guess she was giving me ten days to be sad and when I didn’t all of a sudden feel happy again, she was like, ‘Time’s up. Smile now.’ She sounds like a CD with a scratch on it. I keep telling her nothing’s the matter. But that’s a lie, and she knows it.

  I don’t feel well. I don’t feel like having Bird over after school. I don’t feel like going outside. I don’t feel like drawing or writing in my Reull book. I don’t feel like playing with Fiddledee, but I do like her to sit next to me. I didn’t feel like going to swimming lessons, though my mother made me. I don’t feel like doing anything.

  My mother said she’s worried about me. She says I’m just not myself. I said, ‘Why does that make you worried? Isn’t that what you and Dr. Barrett want?’ She didn’t say anything back.

  Then after a minute she said, ‘Phin, that’s not true. Dr. Barrett and I want you to be exactly who you are – only less worried.’

  ‘All right then, be happy,’ I said, ‘because I’m not worried.’

  My mother changed the subject and asked if I’d like her to read to me, and I said no. She asked me if I wanted to play chess, and I said no. She asked me if I wanted to use the internet to look up the answers to questions I have, and I told her that the internet didn’t have the answers to my questions. Then she asked me if I wanted an ice cream, and I said no. I went to watch TV. That’s all I want to do after school because it means I don’t have to move or even think. And I don’t even care what kind of TV it is. Yesterday I watched Doodlebops. It had a bunch of adults dressed up in bright costumes and wigs. They all jumped around and sang weird songs. Once in a while a moose head on a wall talked and some lady jumped out of the wall and sang more weird songs.

  Today I watched Atomic Betty, which is really super stupid. It’s about a girl whose watch rings every once in a while and a spaceship picks her up and she g
oes off to fight evil things with an alien and a robot.

  While Atomic Betty was on, one of the commercials was of a father and son on different sides of the world who eat an Oreo cookie together on a webcam. It made me miss my father even more. It also made me really irritated. Why can’t we do things like that while he’s away? Some kids have all the luck. My father doesn’t have a webcam. And he doesn’t even like Oreo cookies.

  After Atomic Betty I watched Pokemon. That’s where the characters capture this wild Pokemon stored in this little tiny Pokeball and battle other people with Pokemons. I wasn’t even sure why they were fighting in the first place. It didn’t make any logical sense. But I didn’t care.

  Then I watched a show called Animals Flanimals. It was a cartoon of a giraffe who lived in the jungle. A giraffe living in the jungle. That made my mind wake up. The jungle! Giraffes don’t live in the jungle – they live in flat, grassy areas. What the bleep would be the point of a long, long neck if you lived in the bleeping jungle where you could only see one-hundred-foot trees right in front of your face no matter how tall you were?

  That’s when all of a sudden a thought struck me. And it was almost like it really did strike me because when I thought it, my head whipped backwards and hit the back of the couch.

  It struck me that watching all this stupid TV was making me into a moron. I couldn’t count on the normal channels to give me good information. I had to get back to reading my books and watching shows that told me the truth. I needed to watch the Green Channel – the one channel in the world I’m not allowed to watch.

  Then all of a sudden the sadness went away. It was like somebody opened my lid and tipped me upside down and let the sadness all drain out and then they filled me back up, but with something different: anger. I felt really angry. Really, really, really, really, to-infinity ANGRY.

  I got up and turned the TV off, and then I went to look for my mother.

  My mother painted the study – again. This is the third time as far as I can remember. First it was white, which she said was too boring, so she painted it burgundy. Then she said that colour was too dark and painted it green, which I liked because it looked like a forest and when I lay on the sofa listening to the sounds at Pete’s Pond, I could imagine I was actually there. Now she’s painting it yellow, but not yellow the colour of lemons – yellow the colour of buttercups. And pee after you take a vitamin.

  My mother asked me how I liked the colour and I said, ‘Why do you like to torture me like this?’

  She said, ‘What do you mean by that? And stop being so melodramatic.’

  ‘I liked the colour it was before,’ I told her.

  ‘But that colour was too green,’ she said.

  ‘How can something be too green?’ I asked. ‘Is this about getting rid of something that reminds me that I can’t watch the Green Channel? Because I’m not going to forget about that.’

  My mother didn’t say anything for a moment and then she said, ‘This is not about you, Phin.’

  ‘And besides, you’re making the room smaller,’ I said, ‘and I thought you’re always saying how you need more space.’

  ‘Yellow will make the room look bigger because it’s a lightish colour,’ she said.

  ‘But you’re actually making the room smaller because each layer of paint adds thickness to the wall. That means the walls are getting closer and closer,’ I told her.

  She looked at me and laughed. ‘I never thought about that,’ she said. ‘You likely have a point. Your brain is so busy – doesn’t it ever get tired?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t yours ever get bored?’

  She looked at me surprised. ‘Well, I see you’re feeling better. Would you like to help paint?’

  ‘No! Why would I want to help you do something that looks like the inside of a toilet bowl?’ I yelled. I knew this would make her angry, but something in me just didn’t care anymore.

  My mother turned away from the wall and pointed the paint-brush at me so that little globs of vitamin-coloured yellow paint dripped all over the face of George Bush on the newspaper she had down on the floor. ‘Phineas, it’s good to see you up off the couch and taking an interest – as critical as it is – but I’m warning you that you are only one more rude word away from throwing it all away for the evening: the TV, the computer, your sketchbook, all of it. So think carefully about what you say and go get a snack to improve your mood.’

  So I stomped to the kitchen to look for something to eat.

  I found a box of granola bars but they were a different kind than my mother usually gets. I looked on the back of the box for the ingredients. They were: rolled oats, rolled whole wheat, brown sugar, palm oil.

  ‘Mom!’ I said. ‘These granola bars have palm oil in them! Palm-tree oil! Goddamn palm-tree oil!’

  My mother put down her paintbrush and looked at me. She looked at me like I had just told her I found poop floating in the milk. Her eyes were really big and her mouth was open a little. She looked like a Japanese snow monkey that’s just seen a snake. ‘Phineas William MacKeamish Walsh, that’s it – you’ve lost the TV! Now you’d better think very carefully about where all this is going because I’m not in the mood for any more craziness!’

  ‘Then maybe you need some food to improve your mood,’ I said. ‘And this is all going to Indonesia because I’m not going to eat something that is made out of something else that is killing orangutans!’ I screamed. ‘And what kind of mood do you have to be in anyway to be a person who doesn’t kill animals for no good reason?’

  My mother yelled back at me. ‘Phin, cut it out! Stop fretting about things that happen all the way on the other side of the world, or you’re going to drive yourself and everyone else crazy!’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense!’ I screamed. ‘That’s like saying only be nice to your own kid and don’t worry that your next-door neighbour is eating his! Or it’s like saying don’t learn anything at school because you can’t possibly learn everything! How about that, Mom? How about I stop going to school because what’s the point? I can’t learn everything!’

  My mother said, ‘I can see that everything I say is going to fall on deaf ears so I’m not going to waste my breath discussing this with you any longer, Phin. This is something for you discuss with Dr. Barrett next week.’

  ‘You’re the one with the deaf ears, so maybe it’s you who needs to see a doctor!’ I yelled. ‘I’m not going to waste my breath talking with you!’

  My mother dropped her paintbrush on the floor and rushed over to me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Really hard. If I were a baby she might have done some serious damage to my brain. ‘Stop acting like a crazy person!’ she screamed.

  When she let go of me, I ran into the kitchen and threw the granola bar in the garbage. And then I picked up the whole box of granola bars and threw them into the garbage can. Then I kicked the garbage can.

  I was really surprised that my mother didn’t chase me into the kitchen when the garbage can hit the wall. But I knew she heard it. Most of the time she only pretends to be deaf.

  I stayed in my bedroom until supper. I was so mad even Fiddledee stayed away from me. I bet she could see the mad heat coming off my body.

  After a while my mother came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Phin, for shaking you like that. That was wrong and I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t say anything back.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  I shook my head.

  She said, ‘Okay then, let me know if you change your mind.’ Then she got up and left my room, closing the door behind her.

  After I calmed down a little, I wrote in my Reull book. I wrote about how the reign of the Gorachs has come to a sudden end. The creatures of Reull felt they had no choice but to call for help. They knew that each and every time a creature died on Reull, this made a creature-sized hole in the universe. There were so many holes now that the other creatures were afraid the
whole galaxy might get sucked in.

  The first life forms to hear the cries for help of the creatures of Reull were the Wooloofs from Planet Chary. They sent out messages to creatures on the other planets. Every life form learned of what was happening on Reull and they were all very worried. But the Wooloofs of Chary sent mental messages for them not worry – they would fix things.

  So the Wooloofs immediately started landing on Reull, a few ships at a time. Only a few Gorachs noticed them, but when they told the others about the tall thin creatures with huge heads and eleven eyes in ships at the tops of the spikit tuffs, mostly everyone laughed at them and told them they were wonky.

  The Wooloofs talked with the creatures of Reull and heard all their sad stories, such as how the Gorachs killed Oster babies in front of their parents by throwing them up in the air and catching them on the ends of their spears. They were brought to big gravesites that held the bones of billions of animals – the skulls of Tussleturtles, the backbones of the Ozies, the feet of the Plubbers, the hipbones of Electric Cats.

  The Wooloofs cried and cried when they saw all this evidence. They couldn’t believe their eleven eyes. The Wooloofs and the creatures of Reull all put their heads together and thoughts moved back and forth between them all. Finally, they had an idea. An idea that just might work.

  At noon hour, I was having a lonely day because Bird was home sick, and I had nobody to talk to. I thought about maybe trying to join in on a game of tag with the Korean kids, but I didn’t feel like being It the whole time. Most of those kids are really fast and can climb up on the monkey bars lickety-split. When I do it, I’m not so fast and it’s more like lickety-splat. When I’m It, it’s like a groundhog chasing a bunch of squirrels. The only thing that makes it kind of worth it is that one of the kids shares his Korean candy with me. Bird doesn’t like it, but I kind of like how it makes my eyes water and my cheeks feel like they’re flipping inside out.