words.
My mother stopped the car, right there in the middle of Waterman Street. âIsnât life strange?â she said.
The car behind us honked its horn, but she just sat there, shaking her head.
âYou know I donât like seeds,â Cody was crying. âOr skin on fruit. Or fuzzy fruit like kiwi and peaches.â
The car behind us squeezed past, and the driver swore at my mother.
âHave you ever heard of Persephone?â my mother asked me.
âUh, no,â I said. I was starting to feel a little nervous. Also, I didnât like not knowing something.
âPersephone was a Greek goddess and she got kidnapped by the god of the underworld. Her mother, whose name I canât remember, was devastated, and eventually Zeus sent someone to rescue Persephone. But she ate these three pomegranate seeds and that forced her to return to the underworld every year for one month for each seed she ate. Three seeds. Three months. Thatâs winter.â
More cars were honking now.
My mother looked at me, satisfied. âThat is an allegory for what is going on in this car, Madeline,â she said, and she started to drive again.
I wanted to ask her what an allegory was. In Humanities we had just covered onomatopoeia and similes, not allegories. But I knew what sheâd say. Look it up.
Ever since my father married Ava and went on to have a real life, I have had to do a lot of thinking. In science, Mr. Renault calls that developing the power of observation:watching something and drawing conclusions from what you see. Like we watched snails for weeks in science class. You would be amazed what you can learn from watching a bunch of snails. I had the misfortune of being paired up with Michael Montana, who smells like a wet sweater even when heâs not wearing a sweater. His powers of observation, however, are incredible. He can tell snail poop from gravel in a nanosecond. I let him take the notes so that I could better my own powers of observation.
âOnce you have developed your powers of observation here in the laboratory,â Mr. Renault told us, âyou can use them anywhere in the outside world.â He seemed to be talking to me when he said, âUse them in your own habitat, for example.â The most important thing I observed about my own habitat was that my mother was not living a real life. She was all alone and wrote stuff that people read in doctorsâ offices months late and only then out of boredom. She wrote things she didnât even believe in herself. In essence, she lied.
Take that stupid article about strawberries and Easy-Make Jelly, Strawberry Shortcake, and a snack of Strawberries Dipped in Yogurt and Brown Sugar. It was true that she dragged us to a strawberry patch one blistering hot summerafternoon. Bees and mosquitoes buzzed all around us, annoying me and scaring Cody. We picked and picked, a boring few hours spent awkwardly bent over, getting dirt in our fingernails. Then we had to go home and eat so many strawberries and strawberry pies, cakes, waffles, and preserves that Cody broke out in hives and had to take oatmeal baths for a week.
But did the article mention any of that? Of course not. It talked about the joys of being outdoors picking stupid strawberries. It never mentioned the bees or the hot sun or any of the true things. In it, a phony family sits in a field somewhere surrounded by strawberries, every one of them grinning like a bunch of idiots. My mother works so hard at making up a life, she never spends time on the one she really has. I used to think her articles were kind of cute. Corny, but cute. That was when we were a happy family. Now I feel like weâre no different than the phony family in the pictures.
However, my powers of observation revealed that my fatherâs life really was like something out of a magazine. He had a beautiful wife who smelled like something exotic and romantic and took me to shops in the East Village
My mother stopped the car, right there in the middle of Waterman Street. âIsnât life strange?â she said.
The car behind us honked its horn, but she just sat there, shaking her head.
âYou know I donât like seeds,â Cody was crying. âOr skin on fruit. Or fuzzy fruit like kiwi and peaches.â
The car behind us squeezed past, and the driver swore at my mother.
âHave you ever heard of Persephone?â my mother asked me.
âUh, no,â I said. I was starting to feel a little nervous. Also, I didnât like not knowing something.
âPersephone was a Greek goddess and she got kidnapped by the god of the underworld. Her mother, whose name I canât remember, was devastated, and eventually Zeus sent someone to rescue Persephone. But she ate these three pomegranate seeds and that forced her to return to the underworld every year for one month for each seed she ate. Three seeds. Three months. Thatâs winter.â
More cars were honking now.
My mother looked at me, satisfied. âThat is an allegory for what is going on in this car, Madeline,â she said, and she started to drive again.
I wanted to ask her what an allegory was. In Humanities we had just covered onomatopoeia and similes, not allegories. But I knew what sheâd say. Look it up.
Ever since my father married Ava and went on to have a real life, I have had to do a lot of thinking. In science, Mr. Renault calls that developing the power of observation:watching something and drawing conclusions from what you see. Like we watched snails for weeks in science class. You would be amazed what you can learn from watching a bunch of snails. I had the misfortune of being paired up with Michael Montana, who smells like a wet sweater even when heâs not wearing a sweater. His powers of observation, however, are incredible. He can tell snail poop from gravel in a nanosecond. I let him take the notes so that I could better my own powers of observation.
âOnce you have developed your powers of observation here in the laboratory,â Mr. Renault told us, âyou can use them anywhere in the outside world.â He seemed to be talking to me when he said, âUse them in your own habitat, for example.â The most important thing I observed about my own habitat was that my mother was not living a real life. She was all alone and wrote stuff that people read in doctorsâ offices months late and only then out of boredom. She wrote things she didnât even believe in herself. In essence, she lied.
Take that stupid article about strawberries and Easy-Make Jelly, Strawberry Shortcake, and a snack of Strawberries Dipped in Yogurt and Brown Sugar. It was true that she dragged us to a strawberry patch one blistering hot summerafternoon. Bees and mosquitoes buzzed all around us, annoying me and scaring Cody. We picked and picked, a boring few hours spent awkwardly bent over, getting dirt in our fingernails. Then we had to go home and eat so many strawberries and strawberry pies, cakes, waffles, and preserves that Cody broke out in hives and had to take oatmeal baths for a week.
But did the article mention any of that? Of course not. It talked about the joys of being outdoors picking stupid strawberries. It never mentioned the bees or the hot sun or any of the true things. In it, a phony family sits in a field somewhere surrounded by strawberries, every one of them grinning like a bunch of idiots. My mother works so hard at making up a life, she never spends time on the one she really has. I used to think her articles were kind of cute. Corny, but cute. That was when we were a happy family. Now I feel like weâre no different than the phony family in the pictures.
However, my powers of observation revealed that my fatherâs life really was like something out of a magazine. He had a beautiful wife who smelled like something exotic and romantic and took me to shops in the East Village
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