Hazel's Theory of Evolution

by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

  My mouth hung open. Carina had to know I wasn’t busy, but she was giving me an out. Part of me wanted to say, Yes, of course! But it was complicated. I barely knew Carina. Now she wanted to have a sleepover—at my own house.

  What would it be like to fall asleep with her on the air mattress next to my bed? What if she snored? What would it be like to have her at dinner and breakfast, an extra chair squeezed in beside me at the table? How would we pass all those hours together? What if she got bored and wanted to go home?

  I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my chest. I missed Becca so much. I knew what to expect from her. I knew what she expected from me. At least, I used to.

  But Carina was fun. She liked my family, and they liked her. I swallowed and said, “I’ll ask my parents.”

  Carina nodded. “Of course. Me too.” She grinned. “I can’t wait to prank call Yosh.”

  Yosh rolled his eyes, but he didn’t actually look bothered by the idea. It figured.

  Thursday night, I read Yosh’s three-month entry in the baby journal.

  Baby Bernie is a future Riverdancer! Those fat legs of hers won’t stop kicking. Of course, she’ll have to balance that with her opera career. She consistently hits high C when she screams. Now to work on the lyrics. Right now all she can say is “oh” and “ah,” but I’m sure she’ll pick up “Una voce poco fa” any day now. Can Carnegie Hall be far away?

  I smiled, in spite of myself. I wished Yosh had been at Osterhout. He would have been the class weirdo, and the title would have been well earned.

  I wrote, Bernadette has doubled her birth weight (except not actually, since she is still a five-pound bag of flour). She can finally hold up her own head, which is supposedly some kind of achievement. I have started feeding her cereal, which basically means thinned-down oatmeal, except it’s made of rice. It looks like gray soup. She’s always grabbing my hair. I’m going to have to do the bird-nest-braid thing Mom does with hers.

  When I passed Bernadette to Yosh Friday afternoon, I felt a stab of regret. “Be careful with her,” I warned, and then felt silly. Our final grade depended on Bernadette making it through in one piece. Yosh might be joking around in his journal entries, but he obviously didn’t want to fail the project.

  “I promise not to involve her in any of my X-treme sporting activities,” Yosh said dryly.

  I couldn’t say anything to that without feeling even more ridiculous.

  Carina showed up on our doorstep at 4:03 the next day, the baby sling strapped to her chest, and her backpack, looking softer and fatter than usual, sitting on the porch beside her. “Hey,” she said, “I brought you a baby! All I remember about Hector from this age is the crying and the stinky diapers. But Bernie’s been an angel.”

  “Ha. I should hope so.” I picked up Carina’s backpack and welcomed her inside.

  We went upstairs to drop off Carina’s bag in my room. She took off the sling and set Bernadette on my desk. To my relief, Yosh hadn’t given her a tattoo or something since yesterday.

  “Here.” Carina unzipped her backpack and pulled out the yellow project folder, only slightly squashed. “Yosh said you’d need this.”

  I opened it to see what Yosh had written for month five.

  Baby Bernie rolled over for the first time! Our little princess continues to show signs of athleticism—or maybe a deep-seated desire to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She’s also talking up a storm, if only I could understand what she’s saying—although come to think of it, maybe it’s pig Latin. I’m pretty sure I heard, “OTTLE-BAY, OW-NAY!”

  Carina read over my shoulder and giggled. “Are they all like that?”

  “All what?”

  “People’s projects.”

  “No.” I sighed. “Only our project. Or I should say Yosh’s half of our project.”

  “It’s hilarious. Where does he come up with this stuff? He’s always so funny.”

  “That makes two of you who think so.” I stuffed the journal back in the folder.

  “You don’t?” Carina seemed surprised I wasn’t laughing my head off.

  “Sometimes,” I admitted. “But everything’s a joke to him. He’s incapable of having a serious conversation. I don’t think it’s occurred to him that some things aren’t funny.”

  She looked thoughtful but didn’t argue. “Aren’t you supposed to take photos for the project?” she said instead. “Let’s do that. Have you introduced Bernie to the goats?”

  “I’ve barely introduced her to Arby. The last thing I need is for her to get eaten.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Carina coaxed. “Come on. She’ll be safe in the carrier.”

  The two of us went out to the pasture, Bernadette riding in the sling. The herd trotted up to welcome us. Carina seemed just as excited to see them this time as the first time, but less scared, and she even greeted some of the goats by name.

  “Hey, Brigid, hey, sweetie. Hey, Freya. Yes, I see you, Kali—don’t worry, we know you’re in charge.” The goats nuzzled and nibbled at her until she’d greeted them all, plus Pax.

  “Now,” Carina said, pulling out her phone, “let’s get some pics of you and Bernie with the herd!”

  Normally I didn’t like having my picture taken, mostly because I was expected to smile, and I hated smiling if I wasn’t happy. I had trouble smiling now because I was afraid one of the goats would get too curious and knock Bernadette out of my arms. Before I knew it, she’d be a pile of white powder in the tall yellow grass, ten wiggling goat muzzles digging in.

  Carina didn’t seem to realize how nervous I was. “Turn to the side so Bernie’s face shows,” she coached. “Okay, now lean over a little and pet that goat. Who is that?”

  “Pele.”

  “Pet Pele. Pretend you’re introducing Bernie to Pele for the first time, and it’s the most exciting, adorable thing ever. Because it is. Goats! Babies! Goats and babies together!”

  I stretched out my hand to Pele, who started lipping it, thinking I had a treat for her.

  “You look like you’re in pain!” Carina called. “Relax! Smile! Okay . . . got it!”

  I heaved a sigh. “Can we go in the half-ton now? It’ll be safer there.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  In the truck, Carina took more photos of me cradling Bernadette. She told me to make a kissy face at her and took a shot. “Okay, now hold her up to the steering wheel! Let’s get a picture of you teaching Bernie to drive!”

  I couldn’t understand her excitement—it wasn’t even her assignment—but going along with it was more fun than resisting. By the time we went back inside, she’d taken over a dozen pictures of me and Bernadette, plus the selfies she’d taken perching Bernadette on her shoulders and tickling her chin, saying coochie-coochie-coo.

  As I swiped through them, I was surprised to realize that by the end I was smiling—a real smile. Someone who didn’t know better might think I loved this sack of flour.

  The rest of the day blew past. I needn’t have worried about Carina getting bored. She wanted a milking lesson from Mom. She took a tour of Mimi’s record collection. She convinced Rowan to show her his latest robotics project—though maybe convince wasn’t the right word, because he seemed all too happy to comply. Plus, we baked a batch of molasses cookies and watched a documentary on narwhals, which Carina insisted on calling unicorns of the sea, even though their closest relative was the beluga whale. Bernadette came with us each step of the way.

  Late that night, as we lay in bed, Carina said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, I guess so.”

  “At school, when we first talked? You said you weren’t surprised about me being a girl.”

  It wasn’t a question, so I waited, staring up at the ceiling. In the dark, without my glasses, there wasn’t much to see. But moonlight shone through the window, projecting the spidery shadows of tree branches across the slanted ceiling. Arby snuggled closer with a sleepy moo.

  “Was it because you already suspected?” Ca
rina asked.

  “No,” I said. “Sort of the opposite. I barely knew you, so how could I be surprised?”

  “Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I guess that’s fair.”

  “But now that I know you, it’s impossible to think of you any other way. This is who you are.”

  “Oh,” she said again, happier this time. “Good.”

  I rolled toward her. “What about your family? Did they suspect?”

  She laughed wryly. “Yeah. It wasn’t exactly news. More like accepting the inevitable.”

  “They have, though? Accepted it?”

  “Mostly. Marta knew a couple of transgender kids from school. She’s the one who asked outright if I was trans. And Mom’s known for a long time I was different. I don’t know if Hector totally gets it, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal to him, one way or another. And Abi—well, she’s been amazing. If you’d asked me to predict who’d take it best, I would not have predicted my Mexican grandmother who prays the rosary every day. But I swear she barely blinked.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Carina sighed. “He . . . struggles. That’s the word Mom uses. I know he loves me, but he slips up a lot with my name and pronouns. It’s not on purpose, but still. He could make them stick better if he tried.”

  “What about Yosh? Does he know? Because he’s never said anything, but I think he might know.”

  She exhaled loudly. “Yeah. He knows.”

  “You told him?”

  “Actually, no.” A smile crept into her voice. “It turns out Marta’s friends with his older sister, and she told him. I should probably be furious with Marta, but in this case, I’m glad. You know what Yosh did, a couple of weeks after we met? He pulled me aside and told me if anyone ever bothered me, to tell him and he’d pound the crap out of them.”

  “How on Earth would he do that?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t underestimate him. Haven’t you noticed his arms? He’s ripped.”

  I hadn’t noticed. Was it obvious? The way Carina talked about Yosh, laughing at the things he wrote, noticing his arms—“Carina, do you like Yosh?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t know. If I did, you wouldn’t tell him, would you?”

  “Of course not!” On the other hand, I’d seriously question her judgment.

  I asked, “Has anyone bothered you?”

  “Besides Yosh, no one’s even said anything, at least not to my face. I’d be totally okay with other people knowing, you know, if I could count on them being supportive. But that’s a big if.” She sighed. “I wish you were in PE with me. Nobody’s raised a stink about me using the girls’ locker room so far, but I worry that could change. I’d feel safer with a friend.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. As nasty as Kirsten and her minions had been, I’d never felt in danger of anything other than my head exploding with rage. “I wish I could be with you too.”

  Carina said, “Maybe you won’t believe me, but when I was little, I had lots of friends.”

  “I believe you,” I promised. “If I’d known you then, I’d’ve wanted to be your friend.”

  “Mostly they were girls, but there were a few boys. Kids didn’t seem to care so much about who played with who back then, so I guess I didn’t stand out so much. But the older we got, the less girls and boys played together, and the less okay it was to be me. Apparently. People stopped being my friend, and . . . well, you saw how things were at Osterhout.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I hope Finley stays good for you.”

  “Me too. Regardless, I’ll survive.” Carina did a lying-down shrug and the air mattress farted, but neither of us laughed. “I’m glad we’re talking like this. It’s easier to talk about things in the dark.”

  I thought about that. The walls and ceiling and floor, the furniture and my nature posters, and even our bodies had disappeared into the blackness until nothing was left but our voices and our beating hearts. It reminded me of the way the night swallowed the legs and wings of fireflies so all that was left was the pure gold of their light. “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  It was quiet a moment—a comfortable quiet. Then Carina said, “Your mom—Mimi—she’s pregnant.”

  It was as if she’d switched on a floodlight, and I was caught in the beam. No longer in shadow. No longer safe. It took me a moment to force out a response. “Yeah.”

  “I thought so, the first time I was here, but I didn’t want to say something and be wrong. It’s more obvious now. Are you excited?”

  “Yes, of course.” I paused. “I mean, I guess so.”

  There was a rustle. I felt Carina’s eyes on me. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  A moment ago, I’d agreed the darkness made it easier to talk. But it wasn’t just hard to talk about the baby. It was impossible, and impossible things couldn’t be made easier. I felt bad for killing our moment of closeness but mumbled, “Is it okay if we go to sleep?”

  “Of course,” she said, sounding hurt but clearly trying not to. “I’m tired, too.”

  I rolled over, away from Carina, away from the moonlight, toward the black. Arby stirred, oozing into the crook of my knees.

  Carina hadn’t known what she was asking. She probably thought I was worried about the things most kids worry about when they’re about to be an older brother or sister, like whether my moms would still have time for me or whether I’d get stuck babysitting. She hadn’t been there when Lena died and Kirsten ridiculed me. She had no idea how worried I was that the new baby would end up with a stone in the memory garden. She understood her kind of secret, but she didn’t understand mine.

  Besides, Becca was my best friend, and even she didn’t know Mimi was pregnant again.

  Chapter 18

  The second week of the flour baby project, I’d grown so used to the pressure of Bernadette against my chest that if I started to leave the room without her, I felt a moment of panic until I’d picked her up again. I read her my language arts assignments. I brought her with me when I visited the goats and hung out in the half-ton. I did all the things I might have done with a real baby, except it was a sack of flour.

  I kept reminding myself of that. Bernadette was a sack of flour. Everything I felt for her was fake. My sense of responsibility, of attachment, of . . . well, I wouldn’t say love, because I hadn’t completely lost my mind . . . but some kind of affection—it was all fake. Wasn’t it?

  Without meaning to, as I composed journal entries about Bernadette, I started doing the same for Lena and Miles, imagining what things might have been like if they’d been born.

  Lena’s started the Terrible Twos. She screams so loudly when she doesn’t get her way, the walls shake. It makes me smile, though. That is one kid who isn’t going to get pushed around . . .

  Miles is 20 months. He is a TALKER. Even when I can’t understand him, I know he’s saying something important. He’s always dropping food from his high chair, which means he’s Arby’s new best friend . . .

  Lena knows all the goats’ names. I always carry her through the pasture because I’m scared she’ll get trampled. It’s so funny to hear her yell, “Kali, chill out!” In the half-ton, she pretends to drive while I read to her from GRZIMEK’S . . .

  After that, it was a small step to imagining keeping a journal for the new baby. Mom had started a baby book for Rowan, with his birth height and weight, his first smile, his first words, his first times rolling over and crawling and standing. But most of the book had stayed empty.

  “What can I say?” Mom had said when I asked her why she’d stopped writing in it. “Living life took precedence over recording it. It’s all still up here.” She’d tapped her temple. She hadn’t even bothered with a book for me.

  But Mimi might feel differently. She was a big believer in record keeping. With her job, she had to be. And I was detail-oriented. I could help. I zoned out for minutes at a time, imagining the things I might write in the new baby’s book: baby’s first tim
e meeting the goats, baby’s first walk with me and Arby in the woods, baby’s first firefly caught in a jar. And then a teacher would call on me, or the kid behind me would poke me to borrow my eraser. I’d wake from my daydream, eyes stinging, remembering I was supposed to be hibernating, not hoping.

  At least the assignment would end soon. We’d turn in Bernadette and our journals, eat cupcakes, and put the whole ridiculous project behind us.

  At lunch on Friday, Carina watched wistfully as I settled Bernadette in a blanket nest on the table between Yosh and me. Yosh noticed. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Carina said in that tone that meant she knew exactly what was up but didn’t want to say it. She sighed. “Maybe it’s weird, but I’ve gotten sort of attached to Bernie.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Next semester you’ll have H and HD, and you’ll get your own flour baby.”

  “Or, if you can’t wait, buy a sack of flour at the store,” Yosh said. “Only three ninety-nine!”

  “It won’t be the same,” Carina said. “No other flour baby could ever replace Bernie.”

  She sounded genuine, and part of me wanted to laugh at her. The other part was annoyed. “She wasn’t even yours,” I reminded her. “If anyone should be feeling sad, it’s me.”

  “Or me,” Yosh said. “You know, I was thinking of asking Mrs. Paradisi if I could take home Bernie—after the inspection, of course.”

  “Why would you do that?” I had to admit Yosh had turned out to be a decent father, but I couldn’t imagine him toting around Bernadette forever.

  Yosh shrugged. “Any number of reasons. Brownies and chocolate-chip cookies spring to mind. Biscuits. Pancakes. Pie crust.”

  My stomach lurched. “You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t.”

  Yosh’s eyes flashed wickedly. “Why not? It’s not like Mrs. Paradisi is going to save her until next semester. She’d probably get weevils. And with millions of Americans facing food insecurity, it would be a travesty to throw her out. This way she can be reborn, reincarnated as a tasty baked good.”