literature

Orange Lion

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Orange Lion
November 1/06



Shutup mom I wanted to say. Oh my with’ring soul is maybe more like what I felt, but I doubt that at eight years old I would have used a word like with’ring. Instead I looked at my brother who had somehow known the sentence sitting on my mother’s tongue. So now it was out in the open and my brother had known and my mom had known and my step-dad had probably known, too.

I was thinking that maybe the reason my mom looked so sad when she came downstairs was because our puppy had eaten one of my Archie comics or something like that. We still hadn’t gotten the hang of having a dog in the house. So she ate stuff and scratched her chubby little claws on our coffee table until someone noticed and said Moochie, go lie down. And whoever it was that noticed would point to a corner and our new puppy would look up at us and her puppy eyebrows would move around a lot like she was trying real hard to understand what we were saying and we would forget that she had scratched the coffee table and we’d go Aww, it’s okay puppy, just don’t do it anymore, okay? And later on she would go scratch some more stuff.

So I stood there at the spot where the kitchen met the living room, which is a spot that I always tripped at because we had what I think is called a “sunken living room” so there’s a very small step, but it’s not an official step, not like a staircase. It just sort of drops off and I always thought it would’ve been a really good idea to have one of those signs that they have on city buses that say Watch your step. But it probably would’ve turned into one of those things you just sort of forget is there after a little while. Like the calendar you get for Christmas and hang up on the back of your bedroom door, promising that you’ll flip it at the appropriate times and write down all your important engagements like Heather’s slumber party, even though you don’t really know her that well and your mom’s “not that keen” on you going. And when your mom says she’s “not that keen” it kinda makes you want to go. Which is weird.

But let’s get back to the important stuff.

Even though it was a day for being sad, me and my brother were young enough not to have the big sort of sad that older people get sometimes. Plus, when we were packing our suitcases into the car, we saw this thing in our driveway and it was running around in very small circles, over and over and we thought maybe it was hurt, so my mom called this man from the animal control place and he came over and told us it was a shrew, and that the shrew was old and blind. Which added to the already sad day. But then the animal control man told us that it would be okay if me and my brother took care of the shrew. Like a pet. And that was really neat, because now we had two pets including our puppy, and we’d never had two pets at the same time except when we were really really little and we had those two birds named Teacup and Bert. So we took care of the shrew. My mom found this clear plastic storage box that was the perfect size for the old, blind shrew and we took some dirt from the garden and put it in the box and filled two bottle caps with water in case the shrew got thirsty. We even made him a sort-of cave and put in one of those little umbrellas that go in drinks. And we kept taking care of him on the way up to Ottawa, my brother and me. We put the box between us in the back seat and filled up his water if it spilled after we went over a bump. And my mom kept saying how it was a sign that we found this shrew. Not a sign like Watch your step, though. A sign like somebody was trying to say that stuff would be okay. But whoever gave us the sign, I think they might’ve had a lot of other signs to give to people because that shrew died when we got to Ottawa.

When we got there everything was even weirder than it had been when my mom looked all sad about stuff that wasn’t Archie comics. She asked if we wanted to have our stuffed animals be a sort of present. And that sounded nice, so we said yes. But my brother looked so sad when my mom asked about the stuffed animals. And it was the grown-up kind of sad.

Then we got to the real There. The place that wasn’t way up in the apartment building. The place that was too quiet and didn’t have any music playing, not even the really quiet music without words. And there were so many crumpled Kleenexes on all the little tables and lots of old people with blue-grey hair sitting in the uncomfortable chairs and there was this wall that could disappear if people wanted it to. It was like an orange accordion. But it didn’t play any music either.

My mom asked if we wanted to see Her. And that sounded nice but then something happened. It was like when I would play catch with my brother and I’d miss the ball and it’d hit me in the stomach and it’d take a little while to breathe normally again. Shutup mom I wanted to say. But that’s not how she raised me, so I just said No.

Later I was sitting one of the uncomfortable chairs and looking at the crumpled Kleenex in my hand. And then I looked up and saw my brother standing on a small, fancy bench and looking at Her and putting his orange lion beside her. I was thinking that my brother was really great, and my mom was really great at comforting the old ladies in uncomfortable chairs, and I wondered if people got hit with baseballs all the time. And I thought about that morning when my brother knew what sentence was sitting on my mother’s tongue, and if he’d really wanted to say Shutup mom but instead asked Is it about grandma?
It's real, it's juvenile, maybe it's a little bit sad. But it was kinda nice to remember stuff, too.

Suggested soundtrack: "Honey and the Moon" by Joseph Arthur


Thanks for stopping by,
Alie
© 2006 - 2024 niceparabola
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extramundane's avatar
*bearhugs*

oh alie.