even so, you are happy to see her sitting on the porch because she is someone to tell.
Mary Janga says she will only listen if you tell her dollies too. You are too excited to care. You tell her, “Yes,” and you wait for her to line them all up so they can all look in your face and hear what it is you are saying. Now they are ready. Mary Janga and her dollies are all lined up, all ready to listen, except for Floppy Florenzo the Rabbit, who keeps dropping over on his face.
Mary Janga listens with eyes open big and wide. When you get to the end she makes a face like she is trying to squash it up into a ball and stuff it through a little hole. And then she says, “Yuck!”
Mary Janga is not from planet Earth. An alien spaceship left Mary Janga in your yard one day. She has come from a place where they talk to plastic dollies and they say “Yuck” to incredible stories. One day her people will come back for her and you won’t have to put up with this nonsense anymore.
You suck your teeth to let her know that you know the spaceship is coming any day now, and then you run inside to tell your mother.
She is in the kitchen. She is always in the kitchen. You wonder what it is about being a girl that always keeps them in places.
You just start to tell your mother the story. You don’t even get anywhere yet, but she turns around and smiles and says, “That’s nice.”
Nice? Nice?
Nice bounces around in your head. You cannot believe she said, “Nice.”
You feel like shouting, “NICE?” Like if you can make it big enough and make it have enough of a question in it, she will realize it’s not the thing to say.
You have just seen the most incredible thing in the whole wide world and your sister says, “Yuck,” and your mother says, “Nice.”
You go outside to look for your father.
The truck’s hood is wide open like a huge mouth. It has swallowed your father right up to his waist. Just as you reach him, the truck spits out his arm, and his hand searches around in the tool box, finds a spanner, and then disappears again.
The engine is roaring. The engine is louder than your voice.
You have to call him three times before he hears you.
He turns off the engine and stands up.
The light from the lamp stuck onto the battery puts shadows on his face. Where there are no shadows, you can see sweat and lines of black grease. He looks like he belongs to some tribe or some gang. In his hands are spanners and ratchets and screws and wires and chunks of metal that don’t belong in his hands. He doesn’t speak. Not with his mouth. He speaks with the look on his face. It says, What happen? like he doesn’t want an answer, like he would rather listen to the engine. Like the engine has something more incredible to tell him than you do, like you don’t have nothing incredible to tell him at all. But you do, so you open your mouth to tell him and he says, “Pass me the three-quarter socket.”
And even though they’re only words, it’s like a needle jooking you. Jooking a hole in the incredible bubble of the story you have in your head, and so now you feel all the wanting-to-tell-it come hissing out, and you feel the story shrivelling up and folding away.
You pass him the stupid socket and then you run across the yard and jump on your bike and ride through the gate in so much vexation you don’t tell anybody anything.
If it was daytime you would ride into town and ask the lady at the library who stamps books and knows everything if there isn’t someplace you could go to complain about the family you are in.
You ride until you realize it’s too dark to ride. This realizing it’s too dark to ride occurs at the same time you feel yourself flying because the bike realized, before you did, that it’s too dark to ride and it stopped this riding-in-the-dark stupidness before you did. So now you are flying, and flying would be okay if you didn’t already know that at the end of flying is bush and macka and pain.
The
Mary Janga says she will only listen if you tell her dollies too. You are too excited to care. You tell her, “Yes,” and you wait for her to line them all up so they can all look in your face and hear what it is you are saying. Now they are ready. Mary Janga and her dollies are all lined up, all ready to listen, except for Floppy Florenzo the Rabbit, who keeps dropping over on his face.
Mary Janga listens with eyes open big and wide. When you get to the end she makes a face like she is trying to squash it up into a ball and stuff it through a little hole. And then she says, “Yuck!”
Mary Janga is not from planet Earth. An alien spaceship left Mary Janga in your yard one day. She has come from a place where they talk to plastic dollies and they say “Yuck” to incredible stories. One day her people will come back for her and you won’t have to put up with this nonsense anymore.
You suck your teeth to let her know that you know the spaceship is coming any day now, and then you run inside to tell your mother.
She is in the kitchen. She is always in the kitchen. You wonder what it is about being a girl that always keeps them in places.
You just start to tell your mother the story. You don’t even get anywhere yet, but she turns around and smiles and says, “That’s nice.”
Nice? Nice?
Nice bounces around in your head. You cannot believe she said, “Nice.”
You feel like shouting, “NICE?” Like if you can make it big enough and make it have enough of a question in it, she will realize it’s not the thing to say.
You have just seen the most incredible thing in the whole wide world and your sister says, “Yuck,” and your mother says, “Nice.”
You go outside to look for your father.
The truck’s hood is wide open like a huge mouth. It has swallowed your father right up to his waist. Just as you reach him, the truck spits out his arm, and his hand searches around in the tool box, finds a spanner, and then disappears again.
The engine is roaring. The engine is louder than your voice.
You have to call him three times before he hears you.
He turns off the engine and stands up.
The light from the lamp stuck onto the battery puts shadows on his face. Where there are no shadows, you can see sweat and lines of black grease. He looks like he belongs to some tribe or some gang. In his hands are spanners and ratchets and screws and wires and chunks of metal that don’t belong in his hands. He doesn’t speak. Not with his mouth. He speaks with the look on his face. It says, What happen? like he doesn’t want an answer, like he would rather listen to the engine. Like the engine has something more incredible to tell him than you do, like you don’t have nothing incredible to tell him at all. But you do, so you open your mouth to tell him and he says, “Pass me the three-quarter socket.”
And even though they’re only words, it’s like a needle jooking you. Jooking a hole in the incredible bubble of the story you have in your head, and so now you feel all the wanting-to-tell-it come hissing out, and you feel the story shrivelling up and folding away.
You pass him the stupid socket and then you run across the yard and jump on your bike and ride through the gate in so much vexation you don’t tell anybody anything.
If it was daytime you would ride into town and ask the lady at the library who stamps books and knows everything if there isn’t someplace you could go to complain about the family you are in.
You ride until you realize it’s too dark to ride. This realizing it’s too dark to ride occurs at the same time you feel yourself flying because the bike realized, before you did, that it’s too dark to ride and it stopped this riding-in-the-dark stupidness before you did. So now you are flying, and flying would be okay if you didn’t already know that at the end of flying is bush and macka and pain.
The
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