Sammie & Budgie

by Scott Semegran

  Under each blank in the puzzle was the type of word that needed to be inserted and both kids would prompt me for a reminder of just exactly what a noun, adjective, or adverb was. Sammie said, "Daddy, what's an adverb again?"

  "An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb and usually answers questions pertaining to how?, in what way?, when?, and where?. Got it?"

  "OK," he said, then quickly scribbled a word in the blank.

  Jessie looked up and then said, "Daddy, what is a noun again?"

  "A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. Got it?"

  "OK," she said, then quickly scribbled a word in her blank space.

  Both of them had handwriting that was juvenile and kind of crappy but legible, which was good. I was very proud of both of my children, able to continue doing well in school despite the hardships we all had to endure. I think--if I were in their place at their age--that I would not have dealt well with my parents getting divorced then one of my parents kicking the bucket. My kids, in contrast, seemed to be flourishing at school and in their little lives. Sometimes, a little adversity in your life, no matter how cruel or atrocious, can nourish your soul and help you blossom. It's the shit that fertilizes the flowers. It's true.

  Miraculously, little Jessie finished her puzzle first, rising on her knees and slamming her pen on her puzzle book, then said boastfully, "How do you like them apples?!" She danced in place, her hips swiveling, swinging her arms around, and chanting something like a deranged, miniature cheerleader.

  "Calm down. Let your brother finish. This isn't a race," I said, placing a calm hand on her shoulder. She was reluctant to dismiss her celebration.

  "Yeah, it's not a race, stupid," good ol' Sammie Boy said, irritated with his little sister. He continued diligently.

  "Hey! That's not nice!" Jessie said, clenching her little hands into tiny fists of fury. I could tell she wanted to deck her big brother and I knew--if she actually did--that she would clobber him pretty good. But I wasn't going to let that happen. I try to be a good parent, you know? It's true. I did my best to calm the little taekwondo master down.

  "To get nice, you have to be nice," I said, hugging my daughter. "Someone important said that but I can't remember who."

  "Yes, Daddy," she said, hugging me back, tightly.

  Sammie finally finished his puzzle and sat up, cross-legged, handing me his puzzle book, a big smile on his face, then said, "I hope you think it's funny, Daddy."

  "Of course, I will think it's funny," I said, trying to be honest. I picked up Jessie's puzzle book then held them both in front of me. "Which one should I read first?"

  "Mine!" Jessie said, throwing her hands in the air, like her brother and I had no idea she was there in our midst, as if she was invisible. Sammie rolled his eyes.

  "Read hers first," he said, annoyed. "She seems to want it so bad."

  "Yes, mine! Read mine, Daddy!"

  "OK," I said. "Just calm down. Chill." She sat down, struggling to contain her excitement. She was pulsating.

  I read her page out loud. Here is what it said:

  "The hippo shot out of a cannon while sipping tea and eating cupcakes. He walked home one night after school and ate ice cream for dinner. He threw his homework in the trash and watched TV until he had to go to school the next day."

  Little Jessie burst into laughter when I finished, falling back on the bed pounding her stomach with her fists, and kicking her legs like she was in the throes of unwanted death. She got a real kick out of hearing me read her puzzle out loud. She was laughing all over the place. I snickered, too. I thought her attempt at non-sequitur humor was pretty cute for a first grader. Good ol' Sammie Boy was not impressed and didn't laugh at all. He sat there--his arms crossed and his face twisted into pinched disinterest--ready for me to move on. His sister's attempts at humor were just not that interesting or funny to him.

  "Can you read mine now, Daddy?" he said, a bit of dourness in his tone. It caught me off guard a little bit: his sudden seriousness. I thought we were having fun. I thought wrong.

  "Sure Sammie. But do you want to at least tell your sister she did a good job?"

  "Good job," he said, as if being forced to eat pea soup and was ready to just get it over with.

  "Thanks a lot," Jessie said, sarcastically. She seemed genuinely hurt that he didn't find hers funny. It was a little out of character for him and our bedtime ritual.

  "Sammie, are you all right?" I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. His demeanor went from dour to distraught.

  "I'm OK. I just don't think you're going to like mine."

  "And why not? Your Mad Libs are always great, always funny. Can I read it?"

  "Sure."

  I looked at his page and read it out loud. Here is what it said:

  "The man stood in the fire while screaming and waving his arms. The fire grew bigger and stronger. The fire was hot although the fire ate the world. The fire walked and laughed all the way home."

  Little Jessie laughed but not because she thought it was funny. She laughed because she felt superior. Then she said, "That one is so stupid, Sammie!"

  I didn't laugh either. It was too strange and creepy to laugh at and, more than anything, must have meant something. I mean, why would he repeat using the word fire so many times? It wasn't like his elementary vocabulary was that bad. Maybe my boy was trying to tell me something. I decided right then and there to find out.

  "Jessie," I said, lifting her off the futon bed and onto the carpet. "Can you go brush your teeth?"

  "But I already brushed my teeth, Daddy!" she said, stomping her feet. "Before the game. I want to play Mad Libs some more!"

  "Go brush your teeth again, please. I need to speak to your brother. We'll play some more Mad Libs tomorrow night."

  "Daddy!" she said, protesting.

  "Just go brush your teeth. Please! Don't make me tell you again."

  And that was all I had to say. She stomped out of the room, shaking the plaster off the ceiling in the apartment underneath us, no doubt. Good ol' Sammie Boy sat there quietly, sulking. His arms had slithered themselves around his mid-section, as if he was preemptively protecting himself from an emotional assault. I took a deep breath then said, "Sammie, are you all right?"

  "No, Daddy. I'm worried."

  "Worried? What are you worried about?" I said, prepared for the worst. I wasn't sure what he was going to say. The apocalypse? Fire and brimstone? What could be on fire? I picked up his Mad Libs book. "This means something, doesn't it?"

  "Yes, Daddy," he said, ashamed.

  "What does it mean?"

  "I don't know, Daddy. When we started the game, all I saw was fire."

  "And where did you see fire?"

  "In my brain."

  "No, son, what was on fire?" I said. He looked down at his lap. His arms gripped his mid-section tighter.

  "Not what, Daddy. You mean who."

  "Who?" I said, confused.

  "Yes. You mean, who is on fire?"

  "In your mind, you saw someone on fire?"

  "Yes."

  "Who was it?"

  "I don't know. I just saw a person on fire. I didn't know who it was. Are you mad at me?" he said, quivering. He looked like he was about to cry.

  "No. Why would you think I was mad at you?" I exhaled, involuntarily releasing a sigh.

  "For telling you?"

  "No, son, I'm not mad at you. But you are being a little vague."

  "What do you mean vay-guh?" he said, looking up at me. His face took on a soft color, peachy in hue and tone, as if he was feeling flushed from drinking a warm beverage or sitting in a warm bath. His eyes caught something behind me. He craned his neck up a bit, his eyes peering into the distance, the color on his face becoming a little warmer and brighter. In his eyes, a splotch of orange danced and shimmered in the small pool of black of his pupils. I turned around to see what he was looking at and, through the mini-blinds of the window in his room, an orange gl
ow seeped between the thin, metal slats of the blinds. "Does being vay-guh mean you don't believe me?"

  "What the hell?" I said, lunging for the mini-blinds and pulling them open in the middle, looking through the gaping hole of bent slats to see a raging fire on the balcony of our apartment. The wooden bench was engulfed in flames with a pillar of black smoke swirling in a dense, grey knot then racing toward the sky. Sparks popped and snapped then jumped from the balcony, flying to the ground like miniature comets, their mini-comet tails streaking orange through the night air. "Oh shit!" I said, jumping off the futon and running full-speed to my bedroom on the opposite side of the apartment, where I knew I had stored a fire extinguisher--somewhere. Maybe under the bathroom sink. Maybe next to the toilet. Nope! Not anywhere handy. The frustration sent a yelp burping from my chest as I rummaged for it. Maybe it was under my bed. Maybe it was under my dresser. I furiously tore through my bedroom and bathroom before I noticed little Jessie standing in my doorway, the small, red, cylindrical fire extinguisher I was looking for, clutched in her tiny hands to her chest.

  "Daddy, there's a fire on the balcony!"

  "Yeah, no shit!" I said, grabbing the extinguisher from her. "Stay inside! Don't go near the door!"

  "Yes, Daddy!" she said, running off to her bedroom.

  I burst through the door to the balcony, the mini blinds on the door swinging wildly and clanking against the edge of the door because they were not attached at the bottom of the window. A wave of heat hit my face and chest, something I wasn't prepared for. I pulled the small hose from the clasp on the side of the extinguisher with one hand and squeezed the handle with my other hand--to no effect, instantly realizing that I really had no idea how to operate the damn thing. I had never used it before or any other fire extinguisher, for that matter. In a panic, I tried to summarize the instructions on the side of the red barrel--while reading and fumbling with the lever and other things that seemed like moving parts--when the extinguishing material exploded from the end of the small hose, getting me in the face and chest in the process, white foam spraying everywhere.

  "I got it! I got it!" I said, screaming for someone--anyone--to hear. I pointed the small hose at the fire, focusing on the bench because that's what seemed to be the fuel of it. I stepped to the left and stepped to the right, making sure to cover as much of it as possible with the white, foamy discharge. It seemed to work, my awkward technique with the fire extinguisher. After ten seconds of blasting the fucking thing, the fire disappeared with a final, pathetic pop. Underneath the bench, the Café Bustelo can sat, black and charred, smoke rolling over its top edge. I thought of how I tossed my lit cigarette into that can earlier before running inside to chase my wet, naked children around the apartment. I was such an idiot for doing that. It's true.

  While I stood over the smoldering remains, my downstairs neighbor walked out into the grass beneath my balcony, a Chihuahua wearing a red sweater in her arms, and a look of annoyance on her face. She was a rather heavy set woman wearing blue sweatpants and a red sweat shirt, her body the shape of a gelatinous yam, and her hair a curly, black mass that sat on her shoulders in a taut heap. I had only met her once but had forgotten her name. I was really bad with names. I've always been really bad with names. Maybe her name was Bertha or Sally or Jennifer or Guadalupe or some shit like that. The truth is, I had no idea what her name was.

  Her little dog yapped as it looked up at me. I was waiting for her to yap too but all she did was ask me calmly, "Is everything all right up there?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Just a small fire." I lied.

  "Do I need to call the fire department?" she said.

  "No, I think I got it under control. Sorry."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah. Thanks though."

  She stood there for an awkward, silent minute or two, scratching her dog's scalp, looking suspiciously at me, then walked back into her apartment without saying goodbye. I was actually glad she was gone and not making a bigger deal about this than it really was. Some people will do that, making big deals out of rather mundane events, or things that are kind of important but really, they aren't. I took care of the fire and that's what really mattered. As I stood there, clamping the small hose back to the side of the fire extinguisher (feeling sort of manly for putting out a fire by myself), I noticed two pairs of eyes watching me through the mini blinds across from the balcony--in the kids' bedroom--and remembered that these pair of eyes belonged to my kids: Sammie and Jessie. I decided to go back inside and assure them that everything was fine.

  Once inside their bedroom, they both attached themselves to my waist and squeezed tightly. They were shivering and warm, the damp warmth that comes from stress and trauma.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" They both cried. They were distraught and I couldn't blame them. There was a raging fire right outside their window and I'm certain it freaked them out, seeing their father dancing around the fire like a complete idiot, not knowing how to operate the fire extinguisher properly. It must have been a really scary sight from the vantage point of the bedroom window. I hugged them tightly, as tight as I could. Once they felt my embrace, they sobbed freely, without resistance, unrestrained. Sammie looked up at me, his little face covered with tears, his cheeks flushed. He struggled to breathe through his clogged nostrils, more tears welling up at the corners of his eyes.

  "I told you, Daddy," he said, burying his face in my side.

  "I know you did, son."

  "Are you mad at me?" he said, his voice muffled in the material of my shirt.

  "No, son. I'm not mad at you."

  I held them in my arms for what seemed like an eternity. We eventually laid down on the futon mattress, pulling the comforter over ourselves, and fell asleep together--my little family.

  ***

  ***

  My Volvo S70 sped us--me and good ol' Sammie Boy--through the winding, narrow streets near Rosedale, a swanky neighborhood whose homes were mostly built around the 1930s or so and whose local businesses had risen to iconic status, which sat northwest of downtown Austin. It was a pretty cool, quirky little neighborhood with a very desirable location, making it WAY out of my price range, as a normal person with normal income. But it was where the therapist that Dr. Dimes recommended was located, her office inside a building near Jefferson Street and 38th Street. Her name was Dr. Dena Davis, LCSW, BCD, LCDC, MD--with I'm sure a long list of other indecipherable abbreviations, too many to list or give a shit about--and she called herself a psychotherapist. Psychotherapy is commonly referred to as 'talking therapy' and Dr. Davis--as she would clarify to me during her introduction--was really good at talking. She could talk the shit out of practically anything, from the mundane definitions of childhood mental disorders to the elaborate descriptions of what she ate for lunch on any particular day. But I'll get into that in a little bit; back to what good ol' Sammie Boy and I were doing: speeding to his appointment in the Volvo.

  "We're shmooming to the shmoctor! Shmooming to the shmoctor!" he said, gripping the door armrest and leering out the window, watching the businesses and trees and signs and people at bus stops zoom by, their visages a colorful blur from the speed at which we passed them as well as the refraction of light through the door window. He loved pressing his face to the glass and distorting his view in such a way that it seemed to him that we were going much faster than the speed limit of 35mph. "Why am I going to see the shmoctor again anyway?"

  "It's a different doctor."

  "Oh! What's this doctor's name?"

  "Dr. Davis."

  "Is Dr. Davis a boy or girl?" he said, something catching his attention on the sidewalk. "The Statue of Liberty!" he said, bouncing in his seat. In the rearview mirror, I saw the reflection of someone dressed in a styrofoam Lady Liberty costume, performing the moonwalk, holding a sign that said, "BIG TAX REFUNDS!"

  "I believe the doctor is a woman but we'll have to wait and find out. You never know sometimes," I said, trying to be sarcastic.

  "That's weird," he
said. He raised his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, holding a position that looked like he was pretending to be a hard-boiled egg. I stopped at a traffic light, waiting to turn left through the intersection so we could get in the parking lot of the office building where Dr. Davis' office was. "Is that the building?"

  "Yes. Almost there," I said, the light turning green. We turned left through the intersection, then turned in the parking lot. I drove slowly as I looked for a spot.

  "And why am I going to see the doctor again?"

  After I found a spot, I parked, turned off the engine, then turned to my boy and said, "Well, I want to find out just how special you are. Does that make sense?"

  "Special? You mean like Dr. Strange or Spider-Man or something like that?!" he said, excited.

  "Well, no. I don't know. It's really hard to say. I don't know what to make of this ability of yours to... see things before they happen. Do you understand?"