Notes From a Liar and Her Dog (17 page)

“No.”

“Are you waiting for
that
teacher?” My mother always calls Just Carol “
that
teacher.”

“No.” I try as hard as I can not to cry. But I lose the battle. The tears spill down my face.

“Well, who are you waiting for?” I can see my mother is getting exasperated. But she seems alarmed, too. I almost never cry in front of her.

My lips form the words “My real mom,” but I don’t say them. I can’t say them out loud. Instead I say, “You’re not my real mom.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…Antonia,” my mother says.

“You’re not,” I say. My voice is hoarse and so full of tears I can hardly speak. “You don’t love me. Neither does Daddy,” I whisper.

My mother is frowning. Her lips get small and closed, like when you tie off a paper bag with a rubber band. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“You don’t,” I say.

“I don’t cook what you like for dinner, I make you clean up your room, I punish you for getting bad grades, and what do you know.” She snaps her fingers. “I’m not your real mother. You know, I’m really tired of it. I learned a long time ago that being a mother is not about winning a popularity contest. So
I don’t expect you to say thank you for all the things I do for you. But I am up to here”—she puts her hand to her forehead— “with this nonsense.”

I have heard this popularity contest speech a hundred times before. I know she will go inside now and leave me out here to “learn my lesson.”

She sits down on the step. This surprises me. I move away from her, but I don’t stop crying. I can’t. The tears are pouring out of me.

She is quiet. Any moment I expect her to get up and go inside. But she doesn’t.

“Antonia,” she starts, but then she sighs and says nothing. We sit watching a hummingbird buzz around a blue flower and then fly off. I wish he would stay.

“Antonia,” she tries again, “I do love you. I just don’t understand you. And when I talk to you, I feel as if I’m talking to a brick wall. Like nothing I say gets through.” She looks over at me. I can’t stand to look at her. I focus on the speckled gray cement step. There is a slight glitter to it I never noticed before.

She sighs. “I get so frustrated with you, I could scream. And then I never know if you’re telling the truth or not. I always feel like you’re trying to make me look foolish.”

“I don’t want you to be my mother,” I say, scooting as far away from her as I can while still sitting on the step.

“Well, some days I don’t want you to be my daughter, either. But you are my daughter and I am your mother. We’re stuck with each other, so maybe we should try to make the best of it. Now why don’t you
go and get yourself cleaned up and put that stuff away.” She’s tired of talking to me. Her voice has that I’ve-had-enough-of-this edge.

I don’t move.

“What is that you’re holding, anyway?” she asks.

“Books.”

“Scrapbooks?”

“Sort of.”

“They’re pretty the way you’ve decorated them. Can I see?”

“They’re for my real parents,” I say.

“Antonia, you’re way too old to make up stories like this. You don’t really believe any of this, do you?”

She waits for me to answer. I say nothing.

“Do you?”

“Maybe,” I say.

“May I look?” she asks, running her fingers over the cover of the book.

I shake my head so hard my hair flies in my face. “No.” This is the only power I have. If I say yes, she will look at my books and tell me how silly I am for writing them. But if I tell her no, she’ll always wonder. She’ll never know what’s inside.

She nods as if she’s expecting this.

“Are you ready to come back inside?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her, but I am.

After she leaves, I take my books, my backpack, and Tashi and I climb the back trellis and shimmy in through the hall window. Then I tiptoe back in my room. I don’t want her to see me come back in. I have to win at least this much. I just do.

I
t is half past seven on Saturday and no one in my house is up except me. I like being awake when nobody else is. It makes me feel as if I have important things to do and all they have to do is sleep.

Besides, getting up early is a good way to avoid everybody, which I have been doing a lot lately. I’m pretending I’m a boarder in this house and I have no connection with anyone. I hate them all, anyway. I do. Pistachio is the only one who is totally on my side.

I look outside to see if Just Carol is here yet, but there are only parked cars on the street, the same ones that are here every morning and every night. I put my green plastic bowl in the dishwasher and get out my lunch so I will be ready when they come. I set my lunch sack on the desk by the door. Usually, my mom has everything neat on this desk. Bills, school flyers, coupons, everything has its own little cubby. But today, there are loose papers all over: moving estimates, notes about a security deposit, a Connecticut newspaper. And then I see a flash of purple. The color stops me. I know that purple. I have trained my eye
to look for it so I can put it in the bottom of my bucket and cover it with dog poop. But wait, I tell myself. Just because a paper is purple doesn’t mean it’s one of those creepy pamphlets. It could be a flyer advertising a sale on vacuum cleaners. It could be anything. I tug the tiny corner of purple and pull the paper out. My chest tightens. The golden retriever is looking at me with his sad old eyes. The clock asks: “Is it time to euthanize?”

My eyes search out Pistachio. He is under my kitchen stool, curled in a ball, his nose resting on his tail. I try to think about when my mother could have gotten that brochure. And why? Maybe she needed a piece of scratch paper one day. I look to see if there is anything marked on it. There is. She circled something. “Changes in environment can be especially upsetting for an old animal. Plane flights, extended kennel stays, and long car trips are not advised.”

I know my mom doesn’t like to take Pistachio in the car. She says he sheds on the seats and makes the car smell like a kennel. My dad says we are going to rent a U-Haul truck and drive our stuff to Connecticut. But what about Pistachio? He can’t go in the truck, and if my mom won’t take him in her car …

And then it hits me. My mom’s not planning to take him with us. She’s planning to…My heart is beating fast. There is no way I am ever going to let Pistachio out of my sight. I will never leave him alone with my mother. Not ever. I scoop him up and go upstairs and get a book bag and slip him inside. Just Carol won’t suspect the bag, because she’ll think I have my lunch
in it. I can’t put my lunch in the bag with Pistachio, though, because he’ll eat it. But I’ll have to bring a sandwich, otherwise Just Carol will be suspicious. It won’t make sense that I have brought a lunch bag and forgotten the food. I get some masking tape out of the drawer and I use practically the whole roll taping my sandwich and my banana to my belly. It’s lucky I’m skinny and don’t wear tight clothes. There is plenty of room to rebutton my jeans around the sandwich bag.

I’m stuffing my granola bar in my pocket when I see Just Carol’s car in front of my house. I grab the bag with Pistachio in it and run outside. I am careful not to let the bag bounce against my legs as I run. I smile and look straight into Just Carol’s eyes. “Hi,” I say.

“Hi yourself.” She smiles. Her hair is in a ponytail held with an orange scrunchie and she is wearing her brown Zoo Volunteer T-shirt.

I get in the car and place Pistachio’s bag on the floor next to my feet.

“Where’s Harrison?” I ask, hoping, praying Just Carol will say we’re going to pick him up second today.

“He’s got the flu.”

“Oh,” I say, so disappointed I can barely speak. How could he get sick today?

“He must be feeling pretty lousy to skip seeing Kigali,” Just Carol says.

All I can think about is Pistachio in my bag. If he makes one noise, I’m dead. I look at Just Carol. I wonder if there’s any chance we’ll get lost on the way to
the zoo and never get there. I keep hoping this the whole way until we pull into the zoo parking lot.

Just Carol stops the car and I pick up the bag with Pistachio in it and grab the cool metal door handle. My arm is resting on the toast-colored leather door. Slowly, I get out, but I don’t let go of the door. When Just Carol pushes the master lock switch, I spring to action, shoving back inside the car before it’s too late.

Pistachio and I are safely inside the car now. Just Carol is outside. I didn’t plan to do this, I just did it. But now I feel better. No one can make me leave this car. Pistachio and I will stay in Just Carol’s car for the rest of our lives. We will be safe here.

Just Carol taps on the side window. “Hey, Ant, what’re you doing?”

I stare out the front window, my whole body stiff.

“Ant?”

I don’t look at her.

“Ant? What are you doing?”

I say nothing. I look straight ahead out the windshield, as if I were driving the car and it would be dangerous to look in any other direction. Just Carol opens the driver-side door and climbs back in the car.
Fruuup
, the door closes. We sit quietly for a minute and then she whispers, “You want me to take you home?”

I shake my head. Just Carol sighs. I don’t know what she is thinking because I don’t look at her. I keep looking through the windshield. I try to make myself turn and look straight into her eyes because I know this is the only way to lie, but I can’t.

“What’s going on, Ant?”

I watch the branches of a big pine tree. There is just enough wind to make them do a little dance. Trees are so lucky. No one can make them move. They spend their whole lives in the same spot.

I open my mouth to say something. Nothing comes out. I try again. My voice sounds funny, like a tape recording of myself. “I’ve got Pistachio with me,” I say.

Just Carol’s teeth grind. I think about crying, but I’m afraid once I start, I won’t stop.

“Why?” Just Carol asks.

I can’t tell if she’s mad or not and I am too upset to look at her. I take the purple pamphlet out of my pocket and hand it to her. “My mom had this. I’m afraid she wants to…I’m afraid …” My hand finds Pistachio’s little body and I pull him out of the bag and bury my face in his scruffy fur. I smell his dirty ripe smell.

“Oh,” Just Carol says. She is very quiet. I wonder if she is going to drive me home and never have anything to do with me again.

Just Carol sits for a moment, then she reaches over and squeezes my arm. “I’m proud of you, Ant. You told me the truth.”

I feel relief ease my stiff neck, tense back, strained arms. She heard. She understood. I can’t stop the tears now. They pour down my cheeks.

“Okay, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to borrow a rope and a dish. Then I’ll fill the dish with water and bring it here. I’ll pull the car up by those pine trees. We’ll tie Pistachio outside the car with a dish of water. He’ll be fine for a few hours. And as for
your mom and Pistachio…we’ll work that out. We will.”

I like the sound of this. I like the “we” as if she is in this together with me. I wonder now if I should tell her about the move. But I don’t want to. Something tells me that this is not a problem Just Carol can solve. My mouth stays closed. I sit quietly petting Pistachio while Just Carol is gone.

When she comes back, we get Pistachio set up. I’m not crazy about tying him here. I worry he will pull out of his collar or get twisted in the rope. But Just Carol is probably right. He’ll be fine. I cinch Pistachio’s collar up a notch so he can’t possibly slip through, just to be sure.

Pistachio whines and jumps up and down all crazy when we leave, but this is for show. When we get far enough away, he makes a nest for himself on top of my book bag, curls up, and goes to sleep.

Just Carol keeps saying not to worry, we’ll work it out, we’ll figure out a plan, but first we need to report for work, otherwise Mary-Judy will have our hides.

Mary-Judy seems the least of my worries, but I follow along, glad to have someone tell me what to do, because my head is mush. We walk through the zoo entrance, by the flamingos, past the chimp with his teddy, and down to the bamboo fence with its Do Not Enter sign. As usual, all the khaki people are milling around down there. It’s almost as if this is their cage at the zoo…the keeper exhibit.

Just Carol says hello to a skinny khaki person. We go into the room that smells like a pet store and pull
on our boots, just like we always do, and march back out to follow Mary-Judy.

Mary-Judy says she’s going to split us up. Just Carol is going to start cleaning the camel exhibit and I am going to help Mary-Judy with the aviary. Normally, I would be very excited about this because this means I get to feed the macaws. But today I want to stay close to Just Carol. Only when Mary-Judy says to do something, you do it. No questions asked. Besides, it’s kind of an honor getting to go with Mary-Judy without Just Carol around. It means she trusts me. I like the feel of that. I like the feel of the extra set of keys she hands me, too. I hook them on my belt loop, the way Just Carol does.

Mary-Judy has fifty-seven animals to take care of, if you count the roans, the bison, and the python. There are only three keys, though. All the keepers carry three keys and a radio. The radio is important because the zoo is so big and being a keeper isn’t the safest job in the world. Mary-Judy says Dora, the giraffe keeper, got pinned by a zebra once, and if it wasn’t for her radio, she’d have been a goner. And then another time, a lion climbed the fence when there was a third-grade class right there. Mary-Judy says that was a long time ago. She says the only thing that happens now is a kid will drop his backpack from the aerial ride that goes over the lions’ area, and then the next day when Mary-Judy walks the exhibit, she’ll find a pink Barbie backpack torn to shreds. Of course, she doesn’t know about how Pistachio was almost a Dog McNugget one day. Just Carol never told her about that.

While we work, we listen to the radio calls. Somebody’s got a shipment of Pretty Bird. Where should it go? Pauline wants to know who took the hillside barn hay hooks and when maintenance is going to fix the snake windows. But today I am not paying much attention. I knock yesterday’s fruit off the macaws’ tree and worry about what I’m going to do when it’s time to go home.