What about the nights I’m asleep?
I don’t know, maybe Ma does the counting.
After the 217 it’s all quiet.
I hear the TV switch on, it’s just the news planet, I see bits with tanks through the slats that’s not very interesting. I put my head under Blanket. Ma and Old Nick are talking a bit but I don’t listen.
I wake up in Bed and it’s raining, that’s when Skylight’s all blurry. Ma gives me some and she’s doing “Singing in the Rain” very quietly.
Right doesn’t taste yummy. I sit up remembering. “Why you didn’t tell him before that it was my birthday?”
Ma stops smiling. “You’re meant to be asleep when he’s here.”
“But if you told him, he’d brung me something.”
“Bring you something,” she says. “So he says.”
“What kind of something?” I wait. “You should have remembered him.”
Ma stretches her arms over her head. “I don’t want him bringing you things.”
“But Sundaytreat—”
“That’s different, Jack, that’s stuff we need that I ask him for.” She points to Dresser, there’s a blue folded up. “There are your new jeans, by the way.”
She goes over to pee.
“You could ask him for a present for me. I never got a present in my life.”
“Your present was from me, remember? It was the drawing.”
“I don’t want the dumbo drawing.” I’m crying.
Ma dries her hands and comes to hold me. “It’s OK.”
“It might—”
“I can’t hear you. Take a big breath.”
“It might—”
“Tell me what’s the matter.”
“It might be a dog.”
“What might?”
I can’t stop, I have to talk through the crying. “The present. It might be a dog turned to real, and we could call it Lucky.” Ma wipes my eyes with the flat of her hands. “You know we don’t have room.”
“Yeah we do.”
“Dogs need walks.”
“We walk.”
“But a dog—”
“We run a long long way on Track, Lucky could go beside us. I bet he’d be faster than you.”
“Jack. A dog would drive us nuts.”
“No he wouldn’t.”
“He would so. Cooped up, with the barking, the scratching . . .”
“Lucky wouldn’t be scratching.”
Ma rolls her eyes. She goes over to Cabinet to get out the cereal, she pours it in our bowls not even counting.
I do a roaring lion face. “In the night when you’re asleep, I’m going to be awake, I’ll pull the foil out of the holes so Mouse will come back.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not silly, you’re the silly numbskull.”
“Listen, I understand—”
“Mouse and Lucky are my friends.” I’m crying again.
“There is no Lucky.” Ma’s talking with her teeth shut.
“Yeah there is and I love him.”
“You just made him up.”
“Also there’s Mouse, he’s my real friend and you made him gone—”
“Yeah,” shouts Ma, “so he won’t run over your face in the night and bite you.”
I’m crying so much my breath’s all whoopy. I never knowed Mouse would bite my face, I thought that was only vampires.
Ma drops down on Duvet and doesn’t move.
After a minute I go beside her and lie down. I lift her T-shirt to have some, I have to keep stopping to wipe my nose. The left is good but there’s not much.
Later I try on my new jeans. They keep falling down.
Ma pulls at a sticking-out thread.
“Don’t.”
“It was loose already. Cheap piece of—” She doesn’t say what.
“Denim,” I tell her, “that’s what jeans are made of.” I put the thread in Cabinet in Crafts Tub.
Ma gets down Kit to sew some stitches in the waist, after that my jeans stay up.
We have a pretty busy morning. First we undo Pirate Ship that we made last week and turn it into Tank. Balloon is the driver, she used to be as big as Ma’s head and pink and fat, now she’s small like my fist only red and wrinkly. We only blow up one when it’s the first of a month, so we can’t make Balloon a sister till it’s April. Ma plays with Tank too but not as long. She gets sick of things fast, it’s from being an adult.
Monday is a laundry day, we get into Bath with socks, underwears, my gray pants that ketchup squirted on, the sheets and dish towels, and we squish all the dirt out. Ma hots Thermostat way up for the drying, she pulls Clothes Horse out from beside Door and stands him open and I tell him to be strong. I would love to ride him like when I was a baby but I’m so huge now I might break his back. It would be cool to sometimes go smaller again and sometimes bigger like Alice. When we’ve twisted the water out of everything and hanged them up, Ma and me have to rip off our Tshirts and take turns pushing ourselves into Refrigerator to cool down.
Lunch is bean salad, my second worst favorite. After nap we do Scream every day but not Saturdays or Sundays. We clear our throats and climb up on Table to be nearer Skylight, holding hands not to fall. We say “On your mark, get set, go,” then we open wide our teeth and shout holler howl yowl shriek screech scream the loudest possible. Today I’m the most loudest ever because my lungs are stretching from being five.
Then we shush with fingers on lips. I asked Ma once what we’re listening for and she said just in case, you never know.
Then I do rubbings of a fork and Comb and jar lids and the sides of my jeans. Ruled paper is smoothest for rubbings, but toilet paper is good for a drawing that goes on forever, like today I do me with a cat and a parrot and an iguana and a raccoon and Santa and an ant and Lucky and all my TV friends in a procession and I’m King Jack. When I’m all done I roll it again so we can use it for our butts. I take a fresh bit from the next roll for a letter to Dora, I have to sharpen the red pencil with Smooth Knife. I squeeze the pencil hard because it’s so short it’s nearly gone, I write perfectly only sometimes my letters go back to front. I am five the day before yesterday, you can have the last bit of cake but there is no candles, bye love Jack. It only tears a little on the of. “When will she get it?”
“Well,” says Ma, “I’d imagine it’ll take a few hours to reach the sea, then it’ll wash up on a beach . . .”
She sounds funny from sucking an ice cube for Bad Tooth. Beaches and sea are TV but I think when we send a letter it turns them real for a bit. The poos sink and the letters float on the waves. “Who’ll find it? Diego?”
“Probably. And he’ll take it to his cousin Dora—”
“In his safari jeep. Zoom zoom through the jungle.”
“So tomorrow morning, I’d say. Lunchtime at the latest.”
The ice cube is making less bulge in Ma’s face now. “Let’s see?”
She puts it out on her tongue.
“I think I have a bad tooth too.”
Ma wails, “Oh, Jack.”
“Really real for real. Ow, ow, ow.”
Her face changes. “You can suck an ice cube if you want, you don’t have to have a toothache.”
“Cool.”
“Don’t scare me like that.”
I didn’t know I could scare her. “Maybe it’ll hurt when I’m six.”
She puffs her breath when she’s getting the cubes out of Freezer. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
But I wasn’t lying, only pretending.
It’s rainy all the afternoon, God doesn’t look in at all. We sing “Stormy Weather” and “It’s Raining Men” and the one about the desert missing the rain.
Dinner is fish sticks and rice, I get to squirt the lemon that’s not an actual but a plastic. We had a real lemon once but it shriveled up too fast. Ma puts a bit of her fish stick under Plant in the soil.