I liked to hide. I liked to be in a place where no one could see me or find me until I wanted them to. A place where no one could tell me what to do, or even say that they liked or didn’t like what I was doing, like grownups did. I liked it the most when, from where I was hiding, I could see and hear other people but they couldn’t see me. Then I could watch them without worrying about them watching me back. If another kid was hiding with me, that was okay, because they didn’t count. Especially Molly. I never wanted to hide from her.

Molly’s mom brought Molly over to play with me. Molly’s mom always wanted to talk about the baby in mom’s stomach.

“Jane”, she said, “You look like you’re ready to pop any day now!”

Mom nodded, rolled her eyes and said, “Joan, I’m a week from my due date. I’ve had some contractions, but my doctor says they’re not real labor yet.”

“They say the second one generally comes quicker than the first!” Molly’s mom said. She was always trying to tell mom things like that.

“I’ve heard that too”, mom said, “I’d be happy if it was quicker this time. Cloob…”, she paused and made a funny face like she wasn’t sure what to say next, “I was in labor with Jonathan for twelve hours! I’m counting on this one being a lot quicker.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. She had used that word “labor” before but I was afraid to ask her what it meant. It seemed like something that women talked about with each other but not with men because men would think it was yucky. If I asked, I was afraid that she would think I was being bad, or that word I’d heard, “naughty”.

“So know that Jack and I are always ready to take you to the hospital if Eric can’t do it for some reason”, Molly’s mom said, “You have all our phone numbers, right?”

Mom pointed down at her foot. “I do. You and Jack are sweethearts! I keep the list in my sock all the time, since these damn pants don’t have any pockets! I’d show you but I’d have to bend over.”

Both of them laughed. I started to laugh too but I didn’t know what we were laughing about. Molly didn’t laugh, and she looked at me and made a funny face.

Molly’s mom took mom’s hand and looked at her very seriously. “Jane, I appreciate you watching Molly while I do the shopping. It won’t be more than an hour. I’ll be at the A&P if you need to call and get them to find me there. You know I’ll watch Cloo…” she paused then said, “Jonathan anytime you need me to. And when your time comes, call me or call Jack and we’ll drop whatever we’re doing and take you to the hospital if you need that, or watch this guy”, she said pointing at me.

Again I didn’t like it because they were talking about serious things and I felt I couldn’t do anything. I wanted mom to get that baby out of her really soon so things would be regular again.

Mom got that look where her big blue eyes got kind of watery and she made a sort of pretend sad face. “Joan, that means so much to me! And make sure to tell your Jack that he’s a sweetie!” They squeezed each other’s hands one last time and Molly’s mom went out the front door and walked across the street, got in her car and drove off.

Mom looked at the two of us and smiled. Then she looked at Molly like she was thinking what to say to her.

She said, “I’ve been telling Jonathan that I’m going to have a baby any day now and he’s going to have a younger brother or sister. Your mom said she talked to you about it?”

Molly nodded and said, “Yes Misses Zale”, like she was using words someone else told her to say but not her own.

Mom made her biggest smile and said, “If I can call you Molly, you can call me Jane. Okay?”

Molly’s shoulders relaxed and she nodded, and I could tell that she was happy mom said that.

Still looking at Molly, mom said, “We won’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl until he or she is born, but I feel like it’s going to be another boy. We’ll see if I’m right again this time. Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled if it was a girl like you.”

Molly kind of squeezed her face thinking, and finally nodded.

“Well, okay”, mom said, clapping her hands together. “I’m going to sit in the backyard and try to get a little sun. You two are welcome to play in the basement or in the backyard.”

Molly’s eyes found mine. “Show me the island”, she said. I had told her the day before about what I had made with all the dirt.

“Okay”, I said and I started to run around the side of the house and Molly ran after me.

I stopped by the big tree and looked at the fort I had built under it. I had used pretty much all the dirt dad and I got. The green good guy soldiers were along the walls and in the towers of most of the fort, but the gray pirates had captured part of the fort and were in that part.

Molly came up next to me and looked at everything, thinking. She got down on her hands and knees and slowly crawled around looking at everything even closer. She pointed at the green soldier that had one hand pointing and the other holding a pistol.

“Is that the goodguy captain?” she asked.

“Yep”, I said.

She crawled over to the part of the fort where the gray soldiers were.

“These are the pirates?” she asked.

“Yep”, I said. I was happy she was getting it and that she was taking so much time to look at every part.

She pointed at the gray figure with his hands on either side of his waist and his elbows sticking out.

“Is that the pirate captain?”

I nodded.

“What about these guys?” She pointed at three green soldiers lying on their side in the dirt in the part of the fort where the gray soldiers were.

“They’re dead”, I said, as seriously as I could.

“And these guys?” She pointed at two more green soldiers surrounded by gray soldiers.

“Captured”, I said.

Mom walked by carrying a clear plastic bottle. She was wearing white shorts and a white shirt that covered her big stomach.

“Not to interrupt you”, she said, “But I was wondering if Molly wanted to see how the tomatoes and cucumbers are growing.”

Molly bounced up on her feet all excited, nodded, and ran across the grass towards the back of the yard. She let her body fall to her hands and knees in the grass right in front of the garden. I was mad that she seemed to want to see the plants rather than the dirt island, but I ran after her. Mom more slowly followed us.

So when mom got to the garden she got down on her knees and showed Molly the tomato and cucumber plants like she had shown me before. I got down on my hands and knees next to Molly, not so much because I wanted to look at those plants again, but because I didn’t want to be left out.

But Molly was done looking pretty quick at the green tomatoes turning red and the tiny hotdog shaped cucumbers with their little pointy things, which she ran her fingers over. She stood up again, her knees and elbows green from the grass. She looked up at the sky and made a funny face with her mouth.

Mom saw that and said, “Well okay, I just thought you’d like to see how they’re growing. Again, you two are welcome to play here out back or in the basement.”

Mom stood up groaning and slowly walked over to that “lawn” chair and carefully sat down on it, doing more groaning as she did. The sun was shining on her body, and she put a pair of glasses on that were dark in front of her eyes. She squeezed some clear liquid into her hand from the clear plastic bottle she was carrying and rubbed it up and down her other arm. It made her skin look all wet and shiny. She did the same thing in the other hand on the other arm. And then on each leg from inside her shorts down to and over her feet. Next was her ears and neck and down under the top part of her shirt. Finally she put some of the liquid stuff on parts of her face, sticking her lips out in a silly way as she did. When she was all done, her body was all wet looking and even more shiny in the sun. She put her head back and just sat there quietly. It all seemed like a strange thing to do. Just one of those strange things grownups did. When I looked at Molly, I could tell she was thinking that too.

Molly looked back at me. I could see the little blue circles in her eyes in the sun. She put her thumb in her mouth and bit on it. I could tell she was thinking things, lots of things, but I couldn’t tell what. When she was thinking just one thing, I could usually tell what it was. I always liked it when I was with her. I liked watching her think, and waiting for her thinking to turn into talking.

“Let’s hide!” she finally said.

Her idea surprised me. “Where?” I asked.

She looked at me and tilted her head. “I don’t know.” I could tell she thought I should know where because it was my backyard.

I tried hard to think of a place but couldn’t right away. She gave me a fierce look like she was waiting for me to come up with a good idea. I finally thought about that “spruce” tree.

I walked over to it and she followed me. I moved a big low branch with lots of needles, and then a second one, to where an open space was on the ground by the trunk between those two and other low branches. It was dark in there and the ground was covered with needles that had fallen off the tree and turned brown.

Molly nodded, like I was showing her a good hiding place. I held back the branches as she crawled in, the needles crunching softly under her knees and hands.

“Now close the branches and see if you can see me”, she said from inside.

I did, and walked away from the tree and turned to look at it.
“I can’t see you”, I said.

“I can see you”, I heard her voice from inside the tree. “Now you try it!” She crawled out, pushing her way between the branches. She held back the branches like I had and I crawled in. The needles pricked at my knees and hands and the smell went up in my nose and tickled inside it.

She was right. From inside the tree I could see her but she said she couldn’t see me. It was strange how that worked, but it was a perfect hiding place.

She was able to move the branches apart herself and crawl back in. The hiding place was small, and for the two of us to sit in it together we both had to squeeze right next to each other with our knees together and pulled up almost against the top part of our bodies. I felt her arm and leg press against mine. She felt warm. The smell of her body mixed with the smell of the tree. I was happy and not worrying at all. I could tell she was happy and not worrying either. Pressed against each other I felt we were two parts of the same thing.

“Coob”, she whispered my name but she didn’t need to, since it was only the two of us. I liked the easy way she said it. It would just pop out of her mouth, rather than the “Cloob” that mom and dad were calling me now, that was harder for your mouth to say. I knew my name was supposed to be Jonathan, but mom and dad only called me that when they were talking to other grownups. And I knew that it was not supposed to be “John” or “Johnny”, which was what other grownups tried to call me and made mom tell them not to.

“Mom told me a baby is going to come out of your mom’s stomach between her legs”, she said.

“Mom told me too”, I said, wanting Molly to know that I knew as much about it as she did. Though mom had not told me the between her legs part. How could that happen anyway?

“It could be a girl like me or a boy like you”, she said.

I heard her say that and I remembered that Molly was supposed to be different than I was, but I couldn’t figure out that she really was. The only thing was that her hair WAS longer than mine and I wondered why that made us different.

I tried to think really hard to figure it all out, but I couldn’t. I could tell she was figuring out what I was thinking about how boys and girls might be different.

“It doesn’t make any sense!” I said.

“I know”, she said, “Mom said that it will when we get older”.

She paused, thinking, then asked, “You think you and I will ever be a mom and dad and have a baby?”

I couldn’t imagine I would ever be like MY mom and dad or the other grownups. It made sense to me that I would get older and get taller, but they were completely different than us.

“I don’t think so!” I said, but now I wasn’t sure and it made me worry.

She patted my hand with hers. “Don’t worry about it Coob!”

We sat there quietly for a while. I figured she must be thinking a bunch of different things because I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. My mind was doing all kinds of thinking that I might be different than Molly, and that Molly and I might be grownups someday like mom and dad. It was a strange world outside of our hiding place.

“Cloob! Molly!” It was mom’s voice calling out, making my mind stop going places. She worked hard to get out of the chair and stand on her feet. We could see her looking around but we knew she couldn’t see us.

We looked at each other but didn’t say or do anything. We just watched. She called our names a couple more times then picked up the clear bottle of the stuff she had rubbed on her body. Then she slowly walked by us and into the side door of our house. I could hear her calling our names inside. Finally she came out the side door again looking worried and walked to the front yard and called out our names with her loudest voice. Then she came back into the backyard not far from the spruce where we were hidden and called our names once again.

“Oh dammit”, I could hear her voice almost crying. Molly and I still did nothing and said nothing. Mom went back out into the front yard.

“This is the best hiding place”, Molly whispered in my ear, “We can stay here forever if we want to”.

“Yeah”, I whispered back. All sorts of strange thoughts went around in my head. Things were changing too much out there. Something was going to come out of mom between her legs and change everything. Molly would get a big stomach too and she and I wouldn’t be the same anymore. The grownups were in charge of everything. It wasn’t fair.

A car drove up across the street and stopped. It was Molly’s mom. She got out of the car and ran across the street towards mom who was sobbing.

“Oh my god Joan, I can’t find them!” Mom’s voice sounded very scared. “They were in the backyard with me and I think I dozed off and now they’re gone!”

Molly’s mom said, “Take a deep breath Jane, they’ve got to be around somewhere! You stay here and I’ll go over and look in our house and backyard, and then look in the park and walk around the block!”

“Okay”, mom said, taking quick deep breaths now. She put her hand out against the side of the house and cried. Still next to Molly, hidden in the spruce, but less than ten feet from mom, part of me wanted to come out and tell her that we were here and everything was okay. But now I felt afraid that she would be mad at me for not doing anything when she had called for us. Molly was quiet next to me but I could feel her worried too.

Molly’s mom looked very serious. “I’ll be back in five minutes, ten tops! We’ll find them!” She ran across the street towards their house.

“Jonathan! Molly!” Mom yelled the words in her loudest voice. “Where the hell are you two? Oh my god… please no!” She was breathing fast, her eyes were red and wet, and her face was afraid.

Still Molly and I were quiet and did not move. It was like we weren’t really there anymore, even though we were.

After a while, our car pulled into the driveway. Dad got out and went over to mom.

“Eric dammit. I can’t find them! Where the hell did they go?” She sobbed some more and dad looked like he was thinking very hard.

Dad’s voice was quiet but like he was trying to be in charge, “Liz, don’t worry. We’ll find them”, like she was making it a big problem but it really wasn’t. “They can’t have gotten far! Did you look everywhere in the house?”

Mom made a very angry look at my dad. “What do you think I am Eric, an idiot? Of course I looked everywhere in the house, ten times!” She put her hand to her forehead and leaned against the house, still sobbing.

Dad looked hurt by her words. His mouth closed and his face got very stiff.

At that moment, Molly sneezed. Then she giggled. Both mom and dad turned their heads toward the spruce. Dad quickly came over to the tree and moved the branches enough to see us.

“Here they are Liz. They’ve been right here all the time!” His face relaxed to a smile.

Mom came over and looked in the space now between the branches to see the two of us. She looked fierce at me and said, “What the hell do you think you were doing? Why didn’t you say something when I was calling you? I thought something awful had happened to you two!” She put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “Oh my god!”

I felt hurt and mad that mom had said those angry words to me, and my mind was blank, like I couldn’t think, or feel anything else. Everything was suddenly moving slowly and I felt very, very calm.

“Get out you two”, dad said like he was in charge and mad. Molly and I crawled out, crunching over the pine needles.

Mom’s eyes were still closed and her hand still on her forehead, now leaning against the side of the house. “I don’t feel well”, she said.

“Liz”, dad responded, “Are you going into labor?”

“Let me sit down for a minute and get my bearings”, she said.

Mom started to walk to the side door, but Molly’s mom appeared, running up the sidewalk towards our driveway where we were all now standing. “Oh thank god, you found them!”

Dad explained to her that the two of us had been hiding in the spruce the whole time.

As she listened to what he said, Molly’s mom rolled her eyes, shook her head, and let out a big breath. She kneeled down in front of Molly.

“Molly Wheeler”, her voice was quiet, not loud and angry like mom’s, “When Cloob’s… Jonathan’s mom called you two, you didn’t say anything?”

Molly’s eyes narrowed and she squeezed her lips together and shook her head.

“Did you know she was scared that something might have happened to the two of you?” her mom asked.

Lips still squeezed together, Molly said nothing. She looked at me and I could see in her eyes that she was trying to help me.

Molly’s mom stood up and looked at mom. “I am so sorry Jane!” then seeing how mom looked, “Jane? Are you all right? Are you having a contraction?”

Mom breathed hard and nodded. Finally she said, “I believe I’m having one right now!” She looked down at her wrist. “It’s two-fifteen”.

“Have you been having them today?” Molly’s mom sounded concerned, “You didn’t say anything when I left Molly here and went to the store!”

“I’ve been having them off and on but nothing strong or regular”, mom said, puffing air out of her mouth, “But this one feels much stronger”. More puffs. “When it finishes, let me lie down and pull myself together and see how long til the next one comes.”

Molly and I stood there not saying anything. The three grownups were talking about things that we couldn’t figure out, almost like they still couldn’t see us. I thought about Molly having to grow a baby in her stomach some day. I thought about mom’s angry words to me a moment ago and I still felt mad. Now there was silence all round as mom continued to puff out air.

Finally mom put her hand on Molly’s mom’s shoulder and took one long deep breath. “Okay, it’s done!”

Molly’s mom put her hand on mom’s, and patted it three times, “Okay… Jane… Eric… how can I help?”

Dad said, “Liz, should I take you to the hospital?”

Mom stretched her eyes open big after having them closed while she was puffing air. Her eyes quickly looked at dad, then at Molly’s mom, then Molly, and finally looked at me. I felt her looking deep into me. Her eyes weren’t angry anymore, but I felt like they were saying, “Well… here we go”, and for just a quick moment she didn’t seem like a grownup, but seemed more like a kid like me and Molly.

“I’m going to lie down”, she said. And then she was like the good guy captain telling his soldiers what to do. “Eric… can you fix me some tomato juice on the rocks and then sit with me until the next contraction comes. Joan… can you take these two characters over to your place for now? I’ll have Eric call you when we decide what’s what.”

“Okay dear”, Molly’s mom said, “Call me as soon as you know!” Then looking at Molly and me, “Okay you two, move out!”

We followed her across the street to Molly’s house. I could feel things were going to change. At least Molly and I were okay, for now.

I woke up. Dad was wiggling my toe under the blanket on my bed.

“I’m going to drive the car to get fresh dirt for the backyard. You want to come along?”

I nodded. I was excited. This was what he called “an adventure”.

Mom was still sleeping. It was early morning. The light coming in through the windows in my room was different when it was early. It was fresher and softer. I took off my pajamas and put on my clothes. Dad made me a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. We quickly ate and drank orange juice sitting at the kitchen table.

Outside the air was cool and quiet. The sun was a big orange ball just hanging there over the trees in the park. It was just hanging there over the trees and it was hard not to look at. Dad said not to look too long or it would hurt your eyes. That made the sun seem kind of scary. He put two empty trash cans in the trunk of our car but the top wouldn’t close so he tied it with a rope. He put the grownup shovel on the back seat. It looked kind of like my shovel but much bigger. I got to sit on the other part of the front seat of the car.

We drove down our street away from the park to the big street that dad called “Stadium”. Across the street was a giant “yard” with a really long building on the other side. He called it the “high school”, and he had taken Molly and me on our tricycles to explore it a couple times. After he looked both ways and no cars were coming, something he had taught me to do when I crossed a street, we turned right. I knew it was right because that way was the hand I didn’t throw a ball with. It was a wide street that had a curved part.

Dad stopped the car when we came up to one of those big metal poles with the hanging lights way above us, because the red light was turned on instead of the green one. He saw me looking up at it so he told me how it worked.

“So when you come up to the light in your car, you have to stop if the red light is on, but you can keep going if the green light is on.” So we had to wait, but not very long.

While we waited I was thinking so much about the lights and what you had to do that I asked a question. Dad was good at figuring out what I was thinking and answering my questions without me having to ask. But this time he didn’t, so asking was the only way he would tell me more that I really wanted to know.

“Why do we have to stop?” I asked.

He nodded. “Good question!”

I was glad it was a good question, though sometimes when grownups said that they did not have a good answer.

“It’s a rule we all agree to follow so our cars don’t crash into each other where big streets cross each other. Does that make sense.”

That sort of made sense. I had heard about those “rule” things before. And once we had gone by two cars that had crashed together and it had looked really bad. So I nodded.

When the red light turned off and the green light turned on, dad turned the car onto a different street he said was “Liberty”. This time we turned toward the hand I threw a ball with, so left. We drove under another road that was way up high with a bridge so we could get under it. Now there weren’t any houses, stores and sidewalks, but just trees, bushes and fields. It seemed very different. Dad said we were now “outside of town”. We turned left on another street and then left again onto a bumpy road that made a crunching noise and made dusty clouds around the car. There was a tall building ahead with no windows with a giant slide thing coming down from it.

It was so big and strange looking that I said, “What’s that?”, before even thinking about whether I was going to say that or not.

“That’s the elevator they use to take dirt or gravel way up there so they can dump it into dump trucks down there”, he said pointing at the different parts of the slide and the building. Then the next question was in my mind but he answered it without me asking. “The dump trucks take it to the people who need dirt or gravel for building or landscaping.” It all filled my mind up so much just looking at it that I stopped asking questions and just looked.

There was a man there in a blue shirt and blue pants that were the exact same color and a shiny yellow cap like he was playing baseball. Dad told him we just wanted a couple trash cans full of dirt. I kept staring at the giant building and the slide.

The man nodded and said, “Help yourself”, and pointed at a giant brown pile next to a giant gray pile of tiny rocks.

We got back to our car and dad drove it over to the edge of the giant brown pile. He untied the rope holding the top of the trunk and stood the two trash cans up in the bottom of the trunk so the open parts were on top. They had been shiny silver when we got them but now they were less shiny. Dad got the shovel out of the back seat. He stuck the shovel in the edge of the dirt pile so some dirt stayed on it so he could carry it over, lift it up, and dump it in the top of one of the trash cans. He did that a long time before both trash cans were full of dirt. By the time he was done there were drops of water all over his face, his white t-shirt had wet spots and his cheeks were a little pink. He wiped his face and head off with a white cloth from his pocket and grinned at me.

“Now we have to get it home”, he said, like that would be hard to do.

The top of the trunk could only close a little bit on top of the cans of dirt standing up in the trunk. But the rope was long enough to tie the top to the bottom part. He took a red cloth out of the trunk and tied it to the top part of the rope.

“That should be okay”, he said, ”The cans are so heavy with the dirt that it would take a really big bump to tip one over.” Then he looked at me and his eyes got fierce. “Here we go!”

He put the shovel in the back seat and we both got in the front. He drove the car very slowly by the dirt and stone piles and the crazy building with the slide, all the time there was the crunching noise under the car and dust everywhere. Back out at the regular road we didn’t go the way we came.

“In case you’re wondering Cloob”, he said, “We are going to take the long way home because there are less cars and we have to drive slowly to make sure the trash cans don’t tip over.”

I nodded, feeling worried. I didn’t like it when grownups were around and there was something that they were worried about but I felt there was nothing I could do to help.

We drove slowly down the road. We drove by lots of fields with bushes or trees by the road. It took a really long time, but there was only one other car that drove by. I sat on my knees on the seat so I could look at the trunk in the back part of the car and stuck my head out the window to see the edge of one of the trash cans in the trunk. I could feel the wind on the back of my head. It felt nice and the air smelled good.

When we did hit a bump the whole car bounced up and down.

“Cans still there?” he asked.

I could only see the edge of one, but I figured that if the other had fallen out I would see it behind us in the road. So I pulled my head in the window and nodded, then stuck it out again. I liked being the lookout.

“So we’re on Wagner Road headed south”, he said. “We are looking for Scio Church Road, where we’ll turn left back to Seventh.”

Pulling my head in the window I nodded and then stuck it out again to keep looking at the can.

Finally the car stopped. I turned my head and looked forward. There was another road crossing the one we were on. We turned left and moved slowly forward.

I knew what the dirt was for. Dad had gotten some before but I didn’t come with him. He would put it in a pile just behind the house under the big tree and right by the window that I could see into my room. Then I could play with it and make things like hills, roads and forts, whatever I wanted, and then set up my soldiers there.

I could tell dad was happy. And when he was happy and mom wasn’t around he liked to start singing, which he did now as he drove the car slowly down the road. It was a song he had sung many times, and when he sang it was fun for me to sing with him…

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don’t fence me in

By this time I had joined in though my head was sticking out of the car window looking back at the trash can…

Let me be by myself in the evening breeze
Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in

It was funny that we drove by a fence while we were singing about fences. It was silver and looked like the fence around the football stadium where dad would take Molly and me on our tricycles, only not as tall. I remember him saying that when you saw a fence you had to figure out whether it was for keeping you in or keeping you out.

Finally the car stopped again. Then we turned left again and soon came to a stop by a tall pole with lights hanging from it, the red one lit up.

“Almost home”, he said, stopping his singing.

I pulled my head in from the window and said, “Still there.”

“All right!” he said.

The green light came on above us and he crossed the big street. I remembered it was the one we had gone on earlier. Stadium. As I looked down the street we were crossing I could even see the stadium in the distance. A few right turns and we came up to our front yard. He drove the car slowly by our house then stopped. Then he made the car go backward and turn into our driveway all the way back to the corner of the house where my room was. The back of the car was right by where the dirt pile would go.

“Made it”, he said, turning the car off. “Thanks for coming along Cloob, it was quite the adventure!”

I said, “Yep!”, and nodded.

He untied the rope and pushed up the top part of the trunk. He used the shovel to dig some of the dirt out of the top of one of the cans. Then he just pulled on the can until it tipped over and the dirt spilled out. It was interesting how it dumped out like water but not the same, it didn’t go as far. But it did go mostly in the right place. He did the same thing with the other can, then used the shovel to put the dirt now on the ground in just the right places in the area with no grass under the tree.

Mom came out of the side door of the house while dad was shoveling. She still had her big stomach that she said had my brother or sister in it, but that made no sense to me. She walked different now like it was harder. She looked carefully at all the things dad was doing and the places he was putting the dirt.

“Fresh dirt”, she said, “Good work guys!”

I looked at the dirt carefully too, and saw hills with forts on them, guarded by soldiers but about to be attacked by pirates. All the area with bare ground where the dirt was could be an island. All the area around it with grass would be the sea where the pirates would come from. My mind was getting excited thinking up all the stories there could be.

“Well Cloob”, mom said, “It’s all yours! I’ve got to do the wash.”

Dad pushed his lips together and nodded. “And I’ve got to work on my thesis”, he said.

Mom and dad went inside the house and left me outside with the dirt. I wondered if the sun was still orange, and I walked around the house to where I had seen it before hanging above the trees over in the park. It was still there, but higher above the trees, and now more white than orange. When I stood where I could see it, my body felt warm. When I moved back to where I could not see it I did not feel the warmth anymore. This morning it had looked like a ball just hanging in the sky. Now it seemed like just a flat circle and so bright it made my eyes hurt. I remembered that dad had told me not to look at it too much. But how could you not look at it when it was the only thing in the sky. I could lie on my back and look at clouds in the sky for a long time. But today the only thing to look at in the sky was the sun, but you weren’t supposed to, so I went back to the backyard.

I liked our backyard. It had different parts that were interesting and fun in different ways. It started with a very big tree just behind the window to my bedroom that mom called a “maple”. She liked to tell me the names of all the plants and what they did that was different in the summer than the winter. It went up higher than the roof of our house and the dirt was piled underneath it just outside the window to my room. It had shiny green leaves now because it was summer. They had come out tiny before in the spring, but were much bigger now. She said they would turn orange, yellow and brown and fall off before the winter came. I couldn’t imagine that happening, but I did remember winter with the snow on the ground and this tree with no leaves and just dark branches reaching up towards the sky.

On the other side of the maple tree was grass going back to the back of the backyard. It was fun to run on and when you fell down on it it was soft and did not scrape your hands, elbows or knees much, just made them green. It smelled good too, especially when dad cut it with the mower. On either side of that grass there were two trees that looked very different than the big tree that mom called “spruces”. She said they had dark green “needles” instead of bright green leaves and were “evergreens”, because those needles did not all fall off in the winter. Though their middle part went straight up like the maple, they had a lot more branches, branches really close to the ground so I could hide inside all those branches like in the lilac bushes across the street in the park. All the branches of the maple tree were way up above my head, and when you looked up you could see parts of the sky between the leaves. On the other side of each of the spruces were the backyards of the people that lived next to us.

Farther back over the grass beyond the spruce trees was a garden that mom made with dirt and seeds. She was growing plants that grew up like tiny trees and were getting round green balls on the branches that mom said were “tomatoes”. She had shown me how they started out as tiny flowers. Then the flowers fell off and they turned into tiny little green balls that got bigger each day we looked at them. Now the balls were bigger and starting to turn red. She said once they got really red you could pick them and eat them. A different plant grew along the ground around the little tomato trees. It had tiny flowers too that turned into tiny little green hotdog shaped things with prickles on them that kept getting bigger. She said they were cucumbers and when they got big enough you could pick them and eat them too. I didn’t think so, but she seemed to be pretty sure.

I went inside the side door of our house and walked down the stairs into the basement. Dad was over in his office corner reading a book and writing things on white cards. I could tell he saw me but he didn’t say anything. I went over to my corner where my toys were on the shelf and found the box with all my soldiers in it, the green good guy American soldiers and the gray bad guy German ones. Looking at the gray soldiers, I started thinking that when making stories, sometimes the bad guys did more interesting things than the good guys. They caused trouble that made the story interesting. That’s what happened in Treasure Island.

I took the box of soldiers outside by the pile of new dirt. I took out all the green soldiers and put them in a long line with the captain in front. They were coming to the dirt island to build a fort before the bad guy pirates came. All the grass around the dirt island was the sea where the pirates were. I decided that instead of turning all the dirt into a fort and then putting the soldiers into it, I would have each group of soldiers go to one part of the dirt island and start working on it to turn it into part of the fort.

So the captain climbed to the top of the dirt island and started to tell his other soldiers where to go and what to build. Some had to make walls and others made towers. Still others had to build places where all the soldiers could sleep when it was nighttime. I piled and pressed the dirt into the different parts of the fort. For the sleeping places I first tried making big mounds of dirt that I would dig out the inside of like a cave. But as I tried to dig it out just a little more the top parts of those places kept falling down.

Having this happen several times, I started thinking really hard about some other way to make the top part so it didn’t fall down. I thought about the box my soldiers were in. When it had shoes in it it had a top part that was now on the bottom of the box instead. I didn’t keep it on top of the box, because then I couldn’t see what was in the box if the top was on. So I used it as the top part of my sleeping place for the soldiers, and it turned out that it was strong enough to let me make the sleeping place bigger so more soldiers could sleep there.

After the good guy soldiers had worked for a long time mom came out and said it was time for lunch. She looked at everything that had been built in the dirt, now full of soldiers watching out for pirates while others were sleeping.

“Cloob, you really put in a lot of work on this!” she said. Her words made me feel shy. I didn’t like grownups saying things about what I was doing, even if they liked it. So I just nodded and said nothing, and tried to wipe the dirt off my hands.

“Please take your shoes off in the landing when you come inside”, she said, “And wash your hands before you eat!”

She had made “grilled” cheese sandwiches in the oven. The bread was brown, warm and crunchy and tasted like butter. The cheese was warm and soft, and it all felt good in my mouth as I chewed it.

Click to read the next chapter

When I woke up this morning I could see out my window that it was raining again. I liked it when it rained. It made the house feel more like a fort where you were safe and “cozy”. That was the word mom said. I liked being cozy inside when there was lots of weather outside. The bad part about when it rained was that I couldn’t ride my tricycle outside.

I did go for a walk with dad with our raincoats on. That was fun, but Molly couldn’t go because she wasn’t home. Everything was different outside when it rained. The weather was in charge instead of the people. It was washing everything off.

Dad would stick his tongue out to “taste the rain” and he got little drops of water on his glasses. I would taste it too. It was tastier and softer than the water that came out of the sink or the tub inside the house. The water made all the plants really green and shiny, and the grass too. Mom said that the grass was thousands of little plants all growing next to each other forming a “lawn” we could walk on. I had looked closely and seen this for myself. But when there was too much rain some grass got all squishy with mud. The flowers were all blooming because it was warm enough for them, like those special “bulbs” that mom had planted last fall. Not light bulbs but plant bulbs. They had all just grown up with very big red or yellow flowers. Also the lilac bushes across the street in the park had little purple flowers and smelled really sweet.

But now I was down in the basement playing. The rain still tapped on the small basement windows above me. Dad was over in his office working, but he was also listening to baseball on the radio. He said there was an “announcer” who was watching the game from a special “booth” and talking into a “microphone” that you could hear even far away with your radio. He said it was like when I talked to my grandparents on the telephone, they were far away too. He said today the announcer, his name was Van Patrick, was at the stadium of the New York team which was the Yankees. “Our” team, the “Tigers”, was playing against them and was ahead, “two to nothing”.

I knew what it meant to be “ahead”. Mom, who really liked numbers as much as dad liked words, had told me that “nothing” was another way of saying the number “zero”. “Zero” did not quite make sense to me because I used numbers for counting and I had never counted zero. She said that zero was how many of something you had if there was nothing to count. It seemed dumb to me, but she said in “mathematics”, the “study of numbers”, it was very important. Just as important as the word “nothing” was in “English”, the “study of words”.

Both mom and dad had explained to me that in sports, like baseball or football, you tried to score points. They called those points “runs” in baseball, because you had to run around all the “bases” to get one. I had seen kids and grownups play baseball in the park so I kind of knew how it all worked. The guy they called the “pitcher” was in the middle and he would throw the ball at the “batter” who would try to hit it with his bat. If he hit it in the right place then he would run around the bases, but sometimes he got “out” and had to go back to the “bench” and sit down and wait his turn to try again later.

You won a baseball game or a football game, she said, by having more points than the other team at the end of the game. That made sense. If you had two points and the other team had one at the end of the game, you won, because two was more than one. So the Tigers were ahead two runs to zero runs. They had more than the Yankees but the game was not over yet, so they were only ahead, but you still didn’t know if they would win, because the Yankees could still score more runs before the end of the game.

“Our team?” I asked just repeating dad’s words.

“Yeah Cloob”, he said with a serious face like this was important, “Our team is the Tigers, because they’re the Detroit team, and Detroit is the big city with a baseball team that’s closest to us”.

He could see I was not sure about that, I was “dubious” he would say.

He continued, “If we lived in New York, ‘our’ team might be the Yankees, because that would be the closest team to where we lived”.

He grabbed his cheeks with his hand and kind of rubbed them, which was something he did sometimes when he was thinking.

“Of course, I lived in New York but I hated the Yankees”, he said.

That got me really interested because he didn’t usually talk about things he liked or did not like, you just had to figure that out watching him if you could figure it out at all. Were the Yankees like the Germans during World War Two, or like the Soviet Union now? It didn’t seem like the same thing.

He could tell I was unsure. He was really good at figuring out what I was thinking because I hadn’t talked much before my third birthday.

“I always thought the Yankees were full of themselves”, he said, “Too big for their britches.” I could see in his eyes him thinking about what he had just said, then he started to chuckle. “I bet those two sentences make no sense to you at all!”

I shook my head. He laughed and his eyes sparkled. I always liked seeing that because that meant he was happy.

“The Yankees are bullies who always think they are the best”, he said.

As he said that I heard footsteps coming down the stairs slowly. It was mom. Her stomach was sticking way out because she was “pregnant”. She had told me about it a lot of times that I was going to have a brother or a sister soon, though it did not make a lot of sense to me. She slowly sat down on the bottom stairs.

“The Yankees ARE the best”, she said with a big smile on her face. “Your grandparents and I used to listen to the games on the radio when I was a kid. They are still MY team!”

Now this was all getting very interesting. Dad had lived in New York which was close to the Yankees but he didn’t like them, and now he liked the Tigers because he lived here in Michigan and now they were the closest team. Mom came here too from New York and she liked the Yankees. Now she lived here but she still liked the Yankees.

“What’s the score?”, she asked.

“Two nothing Detroit, top of the third”, dad said.

“Who’s pitching for the Yankees?” she asked.

“Whitey Ford”, he said

“He’s the Yankees best pitcher, right?”. She said that to dad but then glanced at me and raised her eyebrows like some signal that she and I had a secret that dad didn’t know.

Dad nodded.

“Eric… I’ll bet you a buck the Yankees win”. She smiled and then looked at me to explain. “I’m so sure that the Yankees are the best that I’ll bet even though they’re behind! That’s how good they are.”

Dad chuckled, looked at mom, and gave her a fierce kind of smile. “Liz, you’re on!”

The voice on the radio wasn’t talking about the game anymore, but about “buying” a new car at “Roy O’Brien’s at Nine Mile and Mack”, wherever that was. Dad went back to his work. He was reading these blue “booklets” with white paper inside them and using a red pencil to “grade” them. He had told me before that meant to give a student a “score”, but a letter like A, B or C, rather than a number, for how good their writing was. But then he would also write down what they could do to make their writing better next time.

Mom, still sitting on the bottom stairs, looked around like she wanted to do something.

“Hey Cloob”, she said. She was calling me that name that dad liked to call me rather than “Zuper” now. “Throw me a wiffle ball, one of the big ones.”

I went to the shelves where all my toys were and took a big white plastic ball with holes in it out of a wood box. I threw it to her and she caught it.

“Wow… good arm lefty!” she said.

She held the ball in front of her and waved it at me. “Try to catch it?”

Standing there on the basement floor, I nodded and put my hands in front of me. She threw the ball to me and I tried to grab it out of the air but it bounced off my hands.

“Nice try”, she said “You got your hands on it!”

I ran over to the ball and took it in my hand again. She held her hands up in front of her, fingers spread, and I knew she wanted me to throw it back to her, which I did. She caught it.

“Okay”, she said, holding the ball right down on the floor, “Ground ball this time”. She rolled the ball towards me. I bent over and grabbed it when it got close. That was easy. I threw it back to her.

“He’s out!” she said, making a fist with her thumb out and raising it in the air. I smiled.

“One hopper”, she said, and threw the ball and though I reached out it bounced in front of me, and as i pulled my hands back the ball hit my thumbs but bounced toward me. I pulled my hands back towards my body and managed to hold the ball between my arms and my chest.

“All right! Now throw him out at first”, she said, holding out her hands. I threw her back the ball and she caught it. “He’s out!” She did the fist and thumb again. I could see dad was smiling though he still was reading and writing in the blue books.

“Eric”, she said, “You remember the first time we met?”

Dad made a big smile and he looked up in the air thinking.

“I remember it was the semis of the IBM tournament in ‘43” he said, “I was covering your upset win over what’s her name.”

“Betty Wilson”, mom said.

“She didn’t know what hit her until you went up a break in the second set”, he said.

Mom could see that I was not understanding what they were talking about. She looked at me and I could see in her eyes she was remembering.

“Your dad worked for the newspaper and he wrote about the IBM tennis championship I was playing in”, she said

I wasn’t quite sure what that all meant. I knew what a newspaper was and what playing tennis was, and though not sure what a “championship” was, I had an idea that “champion” was something good. “IBM” was something mom talked about a lot when she talked about “New York”.

Dad turned from reading the blue book to look at me and then mom. “Your mom was quite the tennis player. She won several local tournaments.”

“Was!” mom said, looking deep into my eyes, and I could see some sadness in hers. “I don’t get to play much anymore.”

“Well, Liz”, dad said it like she was wrong, “We got out there and played until we found out you were pregnant.”

Mom squeezed her lips together like she did when she was mad. “It wasn’t the same Eric. I’m talking about real competitive tennis, not just a casual game.”

Dad seemed to maybe be mad now too, but you couldn’t hear it in his voice. “I gave you a run for your money sometimes!”

Mom puffed out her cheeks and then blew air out of her mostly closed lips. “It’s not the same Eric. You’re a man. You’re bigger and you can hit harder.”

Mom gave a fierce look in his direction, but then got quiet and thinking and her head turned to look at me.

“My point was that your father and I both love sports, and here we have you, our son, who seems to enjoy them as well, and we enjoy sharing all that with you.” Her eyes twinkled and she smiled at me. Grownups seemed more like me when they talked about their feelings. Mom did that much more than dad.

The voice on the radio got louder and more excited.

“Who hit a double for the Yankees?”, mom asked, she was excited too.

“Whitey Ford”, dad said, “But I think Kuenn misplayed it in center!”

“Hey, a double is a double”, she said, flashing more twinkly eyes at me, “How about that! Whitey Ford is a good pitcher and he can hit too! That’s unusual. Right Eric?”

Dad nodded and chuckled.

“Who’s up next?” she asked.

“Bauer”, he said, “The leadoff hitter”.

“All right”, she said, “Another base hit will drive in the run. Go Yankees!”

They both listened to the guy talking on the radio. I noticed the voice rising when he said “the pitch”, and then falling to say either “ball” or “strike” and then some other stuff. Then his voice rose for “the pitch” but then rose higher for “base hit to right”, followed by “Ford rounds third”.

“Yeah!” mom called out, making another kind of thing with her fist, different from the “he’s out” one she made with her thumb sticking up. Dad shook his head, but said nothing, still looking at an open blue booklet. She looked at me. “Those are my Yankees Cloob, they keep coming. They’ve got talent and they never give up. That’s what makes them the best!” She had a look on her face like it really was not so serious, but just fun. “At least in my opinion!”

She wagged her finger at dad. “Better have that dollar ready Eric!”

Dad chuckled. “Yeah I got it Liz, but we’ll see!”

Mom seemed to have even more energy now.

“How about you, lefty”, she said, groaning as she stood up, “You want to take a few swings?”

I looked at her and I wasn’t sure what to say. When one of them took me to the park it was always boys or men playing baseball, never girls or women. Dad had thrown the ball to me a few times so I could try to hit it. I always got nervous playing with grownups, but I really liked trying to hit the ball, so I would do it. But mom was a woman. Was she supposed to do stuff like this?

“You know”, she said, seeing that I was unsure and then looking at me more carefully, “Before I taught myself to play tennis I played baseball with the boys in the neighborhood. When they picked teams I was the only girl who wanted to play, but I was such a good player I always got picked first!” Her eyes lit up and her face was filled with a big smile.

Mom liked to say stuff like that, about how good she was. Dad never said anything like that. I had watched him play baseball and tennis, and he always tried really really hard to be good and win, but he never talked about it. I had never seen mom play baseball, and I could barely remember her playing tennis.

I looked at dad to see if he was okay with all this. Again, I felt strange playing with them. I had gotten used to playing in the basement when one of them was down here working at their own stuff while I played. This was different, they were both looking at me. But baseball was not something you could do by yourself. You did it with other people.

Dad looked in our direction and smiled. “Cloob’s got a nice swing. You’ll see!”

That changed things, I thought. Now it would be bad not to do it. I grabbed the plastic bat and stood like dad had shown me and like the guys did in the park. Not facing the person that was pitching but facing to the side, but turning my head to see them throw the ball towards me. I felt I had to do everything the right way because they were both watching. I was nervous.

My mind was still thinking about mom saying she was good at baseball, when she threw the ball towards me. Still thinking, I swung at it and missed. The ball bounced off the shelves behind me and rolled back towards her.

“Good swing”, she said, reaching down to grab the ball and groaning some more.

From his office chair across the basement dad said, “Keep your eye on the ball Cloob!”

She tossed it towards me again and I swung. This time I just barely hit the ball and it went up, and bounced off the top part of the basement and then back down and off my arm and rolled into the corner

“You okay?” she asked, though not looking too worried. It was just a wiffle ball, not a real baseball. Those real ones were really hard.

I nodded. I got the ball and threw it back to her. Dad had gone back to his work. I got ready again to swing and looked at her. I could tell she could see that I was nervous and thinking too much.

“When I’m about to hit a tennis ball that’s coming towards me”, she said, “I look to try to see the seams on the ball.” She looked down at the wiffle ball in her hand. “If I were trying to hit a wiffle ball, I guess I’d look at the holes.”

That didn’t make sense to me, but when she threw the ball toward me I saw the holes spinning. I swung at it and there was a thud. The ball flew across the basement and hit the side of the furnace and made a loud clang before bouncing once on the floor and then off the wall on the other side of the basement. When he heard the noise dad looked up from his work and smiled.

“There we go”, mom said to me, then glancing at dad, “Base hit to right! The kid’s a natural, Eric.” Dad nodded and grinned. They both seemed happy.

I could see her start to get down on one knee, but she groaned a little and stopped, looked at me and said, “Do your ole mom a favor and get me the ball!”

I ran and got it and handed it to her.

“How are my Yankees doing?” she asked dad.

“They’re out of the third with just the one run. Two one Tigers.” Then with more feeling in his voice. “That dollar’s got a dozen donuts written all over it!” Dad loved donuts more than anything.

“Okay”, mom looked at me, waving the ball in front of her, “Cloob one’s on first, Cloob two’s up, another lefty folks.”

Mom continued to throw the ball to me, and a couple more swings and I hit it again, this time bouncing along the floor and onto the rug in dad’s corner of the basement.

“Cloob two gets a base hit to center”, she said, “Cloob one rounds second and”, she paused and winked at me, “he’s headed to third!”

Dad went and got the ball this time and tossed it to mom.

“First and third, no outs”, she called out, “Cloob three comes to the plate. Yet another lefty, ladies and gentlemen!” I could see dad chuckle as he continued to read a bluebook.

Liking mom’s pretending, dad turned round in his wood chair to face us. They were both now looking at me.

I swung at and missed three times in a row.

“Ooo”, she said, “Out swinging but he had his cuts ladies and gentlemen!” Then with the ball in her hand again, “But only one out folks!”

I swung and missed one more time before hitting one hard right at mom.
She stuck her hand out and caught it. She didn’t even use the other hand at all. Wow, I thought. She really COULD do this baseball stuff.

“That’s Jane Zale on the mound”, she said, “Snagging that sizzling linedrive from Cloob four.”

“Two outs”, she said, “It’s all up to Cloob five, yet another lefty, ladies and gentleman.” She threw the ball to me. I had to reach out with my bat but I hit the ball hard toward dad. Still sitting in his chair he reached out and caught it.

“Ohh”, mom said, making a pretend sad face, “Great catch by that center fielder for the Tigers, the kid from Pennsylvania.”

“Hey Liz”, dad said, “I’m just a fan sitting in the bleachers with a souvenir to give to my son. That’s a dinger!”

“A dinger?” mom asked.

“A home run”, he responded.

“The fans go wild!” mom called out, then in different voices, “Yay, wow, whoopee”. Then continuing, “Cloob five waves to the fans as he trots ‘round the bases”.

The Tigers ended up scoring eight more runs by the end of the game and the final score was ten to one. Mom had gone up to the kitchen to make lunch. When I ran upstairs and told her the score she said, “You win some and you lose some!”

Dad went out later in the day and came home with a dozen donuts from this place called “Quality Bakery”. He liked the plain ones, but he also bought some with chocolate “icing” on top for mom, and vanilla on top with sprinkles for me.

At bedtime, he came into my room as he always did and sat in the rocking chair. He carefully set the Tom Sawyer book on his lap like it was very special. The book was closed but a piece of paper stuck out from between the pages. He picked up the book with one hand and with two fingers of the other hand touched the top of the pages all pressed together between the closed covers. His two fingers touched the piece of paper coming out of the top of the book and he opened it.

“Okay Cloob”, he said, “Chapter 31. You ready?”

I didn’t say “yes”, just nodded without using any words. I had only really been talking since my birthday, so it still felt regular just to nod. I was more than ready. This is one of the things I liked best each day.

Tom and Becky were lost in the cave and lit candles, one at a time, to see in the dark. Becky got scared and started to cry. Tom tried to make her feel better. When I saw the story in my mind I was Tom and Becky was Molly. I remembered when Molly fell off the merry-go-round and cried, but not because she was hurt, but because she was scared. I didn’t try to make Molly feel better, but the grownups did. Grownups felt they had to make kids feel better, and make sure they were okay. But also grownup men felt that they had to keep grownup women safe and make them feel better too. Tom and Becky were pretending to be grownups I guess.

Then both Tom and Becky were scared by all the “bats” flying in the cave. Not “bats” like baseball bats, but flying animals that were pretty scary. Dad had shown me a bat in the sky the other day when it was starting to get dark. He had got a pinecone on the ground and thrown it up in the air at the bat. The bat then changed which way it was flying and followed the pinecone straight down almost to the ground. It was exciting and scary too. Dad said it was not a bird but more like a mouse, a mouse with wings. It felt like a thing that was “wild”, a thing of the dark, and not what we people were, we were people of the light. So one bat was scary enough, I figured what a hundred bats would be like. All that being wild.

Finally the last candle that Tom and Becky had was gone and it was all dark. I liked how Tom was smart to give Becky one end of the string and take the other end himself when he explored the cave, so he could use it to go back and find her in the dark. And then he saw a person with a candle and thought the grownups had found them but it was Injun Joe instead. Injun Joe was a grownup, but a lot of the other grownups thought he was a badguy. Like that pirate guy Long John Silver in Treasure Island, though Long John Silver was sometimes nice, at least to Jim, because Jim was a kid.

When he finished reading, dad said there were just a few more chapters to read and he seemed maybe a little sad, though he would never say so. I wondered if men pretended not to be sad so they could help women when they were sad.

When he stopped reading the story, it was time to sing. I loved it when dad sang because it was easier to tell how he was feeling. Now I was trying to sing with him because it made both of us feel better when I did. Along with singing some of the usual songs, he added a new one about baseball…

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks
I don’t care if I never get back
Let me root, root, root for the home team
If they don’t win it’s a shame
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out
At the old ball game

That was the last song. Now it was time to say goodnight, and he always did the same thing. He got up from the chair, and came over to the foot of my bed. He felt around in my covers to find one of my big toes and wiggled it, saying, “Sweet dreams kiddo!” That was a different funny name he only called me at bedtime, I didn’t know why.

After he left I waited for mom to come in.

She looked at me with her big warm eyes and shook her head and frowned. “Cloob, you don’t know how much I wish I could carry a tune like your dad. Life is not fair!”

She did what she almost always did and kissed me on the cheek.

“Night night my sweet little slugger!”

“Night night mom.” I wondered if “slugger” was another one of those funny “nicknames” they kept coming up with for me.

Back from our tricycle adventure, Dad, Molly’s mom, Molly and I went in the front door of Molly’s house. I loved the inside of her house. It had lots of furniture unlike mine. But what I really liked the most was that it had many more different places to go than mine, and every room was up or down from the other rooms, with stairs everywhere. Where our house was simple, Molly’s was “complicated”, a word I heard mom and dad use. Her house was like the pirate ship in the Treasure Island book dad had read me. The book had pictures of the top part and inside the ship.

Just inside the front door of Molly’s house was the first choice. You had to decide whether to go straight and up the stairs, or go right into the living room. I could remember right from left because mom had told me to pretend I was throwing a ball, that was left, and the other side was right. Unlike our living room which was pretty empty, Molly’s had this big thing called a “couch”, which was like a giant chair for more than one person. It was soft and puffy, and great for climbing on, sitting on, and playing around on. There were also two big chairs across from it that were soft and puffy like the couch. Then there was a fence in the middle of the living room on the edge of this top part of the room that kept you from falling into the bottom part of the room. You had to walk down six stairs from the top part to get to that bottom part, which had a big shiny wood table and shiny wood chairs around it where you ate food and did other stuff. Or you could look down into it from the fence. It was like the back part of the ship in Treasure Island.

Then once you went down to the bottom part you could go through a doorway into the kitchen. Like in our house, from the kitchen you could go down a couple steps and go one way out the door into the backyard, or the other way down more steps into the basement. But it wasn’t like our basement, it had a rug all over the floor and shiny wood on the walls and another couch with that television thing across from it. There was another door in the basement to the room with the washing machine and other stuff for cleaning clothes.

Back at the front door, if you didn’t go into the living room, you could go up the stairs and around a corner to a hallway with a door to the left to Molly’s mom and dad’s bedroom. The door to that room was always closed and I had never been inside it. Farther down the hallway on the left was the bathroom. It had a tub like mine, but also a thing that sprayed water from way up above into the tub. Molly called it a “shower”. She said you took your clothes off and stood in the tub, and then the water fell down on you like rain.

At the end of the hallway, across from the bathroom were even more stairs that went up to a small door. It was the door to Molly’s room, which was in the top part of the house just under the roof. Molly said it was an “attic”, but it wasn’t like the attic in my house. You could walk on the floor and it wasn’t all dark.

I liked all the parts of Molly’s house, but her bedroom was the best part. I felt like I was in some secret fort above the rest of the world, or inside a pirate ship. The room was really long and had a top part that was slanted like a roof. There were three windows along one side looking down on Molly’s front yard, our street, and my house across it. The windows were strange because they were closer to the floor than the windows in our house, so you could sit on the floor and still look down from them. Across from the windows were shelves in the wall filled with books and toys. Molly’s bed, with wood posts sticking up, was at the end of the room away from the door. There were also two big soft puffy chairs like the couch and chairs in her living room. They were great for pretending, either fun to sit in, or fun to hide behind so we couldn’t see each other.

So the four of us went into the house and followed Molly’s mom into the living room. She told the rest of us to “make yourselves comfortable”, which seemed to me a strange thing to be told to make, but that was grownups for you. Molly took off her shoes and jumped on the couch, so I took mine off as well and did the same. She lay her head on one side part, like it was a pillow, and stretched out her body along the couch and wiggled her feet. Her eyes told me to do the same, so I did on the other side, my feet going towards her and past her feet in the middle. Dad grinned seeing the two of us and sat in one of the big chairs across from the couch. Molly’s mom called them “easy” chairs, I guess because of how soft they were.

Molly’s mom came up the stairs from down below in the kitchen with a flat thing with four big cups that had strange patterns on them and steam coming out the top. She set the thing on the tiny table between the couch and the two chairs, and said the cocoa was still very hot and we had to wait before it was cool enough to drink. She sat down in the other “easy” chair and looked at the two of us lying on either side of the couch.

“Look at these two Eric”, she said laughing a little, “They look like they own the place.”

“Well Joan”, dad replied, squeezing his face with his hand as he thought, “They certainly own the future. We just need to make sure there’s a future for them to own.”

“I agree with you there”, she said, “And I have hopes that Khrushchev will be very different than Stalin, and we can end this insane nuclear arms race.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath.” I wondered what he meant. It didn’t make any sense to me why Molly’s mom would want to hold her breath.

But it looked like it made sense to Molly’s mom, who pressed her lips together and said nothing. She looked at Molly and me and her face was serious and I could tell she was thinking about us and what to say next. I knew dad did not like that “Khrushchev” guy, but mom and Molly’s mom both were hoping he would do something good.

Sadness flashed in her eyes, but then they looked at the tray of cocoa on the table between the four of us.

“I think the cocoa is good now”, she said. She took a cup off the tray and put it by the corner of the table closest to me, then one by Molly, one by dad, and finally took the fourth in her hands, smelling it carefully.

“Here’s to the future!” she said, holding her cup up, though she didn’t look or sound sure about what she was saying as she took a sip.

“To the future!” dad repeated, picking up his cup and holding it the same way in the air before taking a sip himself. He seemed more sure when he said it.

Molly slid her body off the couch and flopped onto the soft rug that covered the floor, folding her legs together under the little table which came up to her chest. I did the same. She sipped her cocoa and said “mmm”. I sipped mine quietly, uncomfortable with the energy between the two grownups across from us.

I could see Molly’s mom relax again as she drank her cocoa and even smiled and looked at dad.

“So Eric, when will you be able to start on your dissertation?” she asked.

All the other grownups that were dad’s friends were always asking him about his “dissertation”. It was something he had to write, or make on the typewriter. All the other grownups thought that things would be so much better once he did it.

Dad looked up in the air, thinking. He took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew air out between his almost closed lips. I could tell he was thinking though he didn’t say anything yet.

“I hope to get started pretty soon”, he said, “But everything seems to take longer than I’d like.”

Molly’s mom nodded her head and put on a big smile. “Well, you got to keep at it, I guess.”

Dad nodded. He did not talk about how he felt about things.

“I’m jealous, Eric” she said, “I wish I could go for my PhD, but when is there time?”

Dad nodded again but didn’t answer her question. Usually dad liked to have answers to questions about how to do things, but not this time. I wondered why not.

Molly and I watched the two of them talk to each other about it while drinking our warm sweet cocoa. We both finished quickly, and I felt new energy in my body. I could tell that Molly did too because her knees were bouncing under the table.

She looked at me. “Coob, you want to come up to my room and play?”

I nodded, and Molly stood up.

Molly’s mom wrinkled her nose. “Molly, when we are with company we always ask to be excused!”

Molly, already standing up, said, “Excuse me!”

Molly’s mom chuckled then told her how she should say it. “Say, ‘May I be excused’.”

“May I be excused” Molly said. I could tell she was just saying the words because her mom told her to.

“Yes of course”, Molly’s mom said. She turned to dad. “Eric, you are welcome to stay for a while. I could use some adult company.”

Dad nodded and grinned.

Molly ran to the stairs by the front door and then ran up them, just like I liked to do. I followed her up. I could hear Molly’s mom behind me, laughing a little and quietly talking to dad.

“Molly is such a tomboy”, I heard her say, “I’m glad she has Jonathan as a friend. He appreciates her for who she is. He doesn’t expect her to behave like a regular girl.”

“Molly is SUCH a bright kid.” I could just hear dad say that to her as I followed Molly down the upstairs hallway to the last stairs up to her bedroom door. Mom and dad were always talking about kids who were “bright”.

I followed Molly up into her room and she closed the door. The room was full of soft light from the outside coming in the windows. Drops of rain tapped on the windows and I could hear the wind blowing outside. I liked being inside during a storm, and Molly’s room was the best inside place to be, because it was so high up.

I sat down on the floor by the first of the three windows and looked down at the street and my house getting wet on the other side. My house looked so different from up here. Small and lonely. Molly sat next to me and looked out too, pressing her nose against the glass. I had an idea on what to pretend.

“Let’s pretend we’re in a fort guarding the bay”, I said, “If a car comes we have to shoot at it before it shoots at us.”

“Okay”, she said.

I looked out at the streets I could see in the distance on the edges of the park. There were no cars.

“All clear”, I said. I had heard older boys say that in the park when they were playing that they were soldiers looking for badguys.

“All clear”, she repeated.

Finally a car did appear on the street on the edge of the park over by the trees where the swings were.

“Uh oh”, Molly said. Not excited, but steady like we were soldiers.

“I see it”, I said, “Aim the cannon and get ready to shoot.”

Her hands moved a pretend cannon to point at the car far off in the distance but headed towards us. The car did not turn onto the street that would have taken it along the edge of the park by our street, and instead disappeared behind houses.

“Whew, we’re safe”, I said, “Close call. But stay ready.”

“Staying ready.” Molly’s voice was as steady as she could make it.

We waited but we were still ready.

A car zoomed by on the street along the edge of the park.

“Oh my god”, she said, “We got to fire before it gets away!”

Molly made a cannon shooting noise with her mouth.

“You hit it!” I said, “Good shot!”

Molly nodded with her soldier face, not happy or mad or sad, just ready. The car didn’t turn on our street but continued out of sight.

“We can’t let any cars come down our street or they’ll get us!” I said.

She nodded, still with her soldier face.

Another car came down the street across the park.

“Ready to fire”, she said, her voice was cold and steady.

“Fire!” I said.

Molly made another cannon noise. “Got it!” she said.

This time the car did not disappear behind the houses, but turned on the street next to ours, still heading towards us.

“Oh no! Get ready to shoot again!” My voice was excited. My pretend captain wasn’t cold and steady like Molly’s cannon shooter.

“Getting ready”, she said, her hands moving fast. The car came up to our street.

“Fire! I said.

Molly made a third connon noise. The car turned on our street and drove between Molly’s house and mine.

“Oh no!” she said, “They’re firing!”

She made a big explosion noise and threw herself backward from where she was sitting to the floor behind her. I did the same.

“We’re wounded”, she said, “But we have to keep shooting!”

The pretend game continued with each car that we saw. With each wound we got we needed even more courage to keep shooting our cannon. We even tried to fix each other’s wounds, but it was never enough. Finally the end came.

“I can’t… do it anymore… sorry captain!” She closed her eyes and let her head fall to the side and she was dead.

“You tried your best!” I said, like I was so wounded I could barely talk anymore, and I closed my eyes and I was dead too, lying right next to her. Though I was dead I could still smell her hair, which smelled like plants. We lay there next to each other, dead. No one else knew what we had tried to do to stop the badguys, but we were still heroes.

Molly finally got up, and sat in one of the big puffy chairs.

“Let’s pretend we’re grownups!” she said. I got up and sat in the chair across from her.

“Okay”, I nodded. We hadn’t pretended that before, and she could tell in my eyes that I wasn’t sure how to do that, even though I had done a lot of watching and listening to mom and dad, her mom and dad, and other grownups.

She kind of held her shoulders stiff and pushed her lips together like she was sucking on a straw.

“I must tell you Coob”, she said, putting her chin on her open hand and looking into my eyes, “That was such a storm at the stadium! Don’t you think so?”

I just nodded, still trying to figure out what I could do to act like a grownup.

Molly looked at me like I wasn’t trying hard enough. I didn’t want her to think that about me.

“Oh my god, yes it was!” I said, rolling my head around, “All those lightnings!”

“Oh yes”, she said, nodding slowly more like a grownup would, and then in a different deeper voice like my dad or hers, “Scared crap out of me!”

Seeing the look in her eyes and remembering her scream, I got pulled into the pretend.

“Oh Molly!” I tried to put a lot of feelings in it, like I remembered mom saying to dad when he told her about something bad that had happened to him.

I could see Molly was also pulled into this part of the pretending. “Oh Coob! Oh Coob!” She said it a little different, like she wanted something that she couldn’t get.

“Oh Molly! Oh Molly!” I said it like I had heard mom and dad say it to each other in their bedroom one night when I couldn’t sleep. I looked at her eyes and she looked back at mine.

As I kept looking deeper into her eyes, I could see she was doing the same to me. As we kept our eyes that way for a long time, the room around her began to turn fuzzy and gray like it wasn’t really there anymore. There were only her eyes. I remembered being on the merry-go-round with her when something like this happened before. She put her thumb between her teeth and I could tell she had to say something.

“Did you see that too?” she asked, “The room went away.”

I nodded. “I didn’t see it anymore. Just your eyes.”

“I know”, she said, “Let’s do it again, even harder!”

I wasn’t sure how I could look at her harder, but I nodded and figured I would try to do whatever she was doing.

Her eyes met mine with a fierce look this time, like I had seen in some dogs’ eyes when they growled at me, or in a picture of a real tiger in one of dad’s books. She was so fierce it was almost scary, but I knew it was her behind the look, so I wasn’t really scared. My eyes still looking at hers, I tried to look back in a fierce way myself. I tried to pretend I was really angry. I could see her see my angry look and she tried to look angry back at me.

It looked like she was trying so hard to look angry, she really was looking more silly, and I couldn’t stop myself from starting to laugh a little. My laugh made her laugh, really hard, so much so that she let her body roll off the side of the chair onto the floor as she did. Falling off the chair made her laugh harder. I loved the way she liked to throw her body around, and the joy in her laugh as she lay there on the floor, arms and legs spread.

I tried to do something silly. I put my hands on either side of my face, looked up, and slowly shook my head back and forth, like I’d seen dad do when he was looking at the typewriter with a piece of paper in it but not knowing what to type. It worked. Molly laughed at my funny face and that made me feel good like a clown. I let my own body tumble off the side of my chair like she had done. Even when we both stopped laughing we continued to lay there on the floor. Neither of us said anything. There didn’t need to be anything that was next. It felt good just being there together, in Molly’s secret attic pirate fort, above the world of the grownups, where they usually looked down at us.

I woke up knowing today was my third birthday. My whole body shivered with excitement. I heard mom and dad in the kitchen talking about my birthday party. Rather than go into the kitchen so they knew I was listening, I stood in the back hallway by the door to the living room where they couldn’t see me and listened. It was always good to know what grownups were really doing, and they said more interesting stuff when they did not know I was listening.

“Liz”, dad’s voice was almost always soft, even when he got mad, “If it rains we can have the party in the living room. The kids can play down in the basement.”

“Eric”, Mom’s voice was louder than his with more feelings in it, “I’m not comfortable entertaining our friends in this house when we don’t have any furniture.”

“Oh it’ll be fine!” Dad was always saying that to mom, but she usually didn’t think so. “We’ve got the kitchen chairs, we can bring the lawn chairs in from the outside, plus the chairs from the basement and the rocking chair from Cloob’s room.”

“Where will people put their drinks and their plates?” I could tell mom was not happy.

“We can move the kitchen table into the living room. Open up the card table and even bring up the white table from the basement.” Dad always thought he had figured it out.

Mom sighed. “I know furniture is not a priority right now. But I’m having trouble asking people to come over and see that we have so little. I don’t want Jonathan to feel impoverished.”

I did not know what “impoverished” was but it didn’t sound good.

“I have another year of graduate school and hopefully just a year after that to complete my dissertation. Then I can get a real teaching job.” His voice was still smooth but it seemed more worried.

“I know. I know. God, I know!” Mom said, “But honestly Eric, I dread sitting down with the bills each month and figuring out which ones can wait til next month to be paid.”

I listened, but did not hear dad say anything back to her. I felt bad for him. I knew mom thought we needed more money, and dad was supposed to get it. But I was okay. They bought me toys to play with. I thought about that tricycle I had seen yesterday in the attic. After they started talking about different stuff, not about my birthday, I finally decided to go into the kitchen. When mom saw me she did a big smile and started singing the happy birthday song. Dad started singing too. It made me feel shy but I was still happy that it was my birthday.

“Are you excited about your party?” she asked, her eyes twinkling. Mom loved parties.

I did too, and it was my birthday. Feeling shy, I just nodded really hard.

Mom made me a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, putting on extra sugar for my birthday. I told her when to stop adding the milk. After breakfast, she and dad stayed in the kitchen and worked on boiling potatoes in the big pot and then making potato salad. I watched them for a while. They seemed the most happy together when they had something to do together.

I didn’t want to watch anymore, so I went back into my room. I opened my closet door and looked up at the attic hatch in the ceiling. I thought about climbing up and looking again to see if that tricycle was still there. Then I remembered that I hadn’t closed the hatch the right way yesterday when I had heard my dad coming, but now it was back in place. Dad must have seen it and put it back the way it was supposed to be. He must know that I had looked up there. It made me worried thinking dad might know something I did by myself when no one was watching me. My “secret” stuff. I knew they did secret stuff too, that they didn’t tell me about because they were grownups. Molly said her mom and dad did too. But I did not want them to know that I did the same thing.

I played down in the basement all morning. Mom called down to me from the top of the stairs that we were ready to go over to the park for the party. I ran up the stairs like I always did.

“Well”, she said with a smile on her face, clapping her hands together, “Mother nature is giving you her birthday present of a partly cloudy afternoon with no rain in the forecast!” Dad looked happy too, like he was right that it would be okay.

We drove our car over to the park instead of walking. Mom said we didn’t walk because the picnic basket was really heavy with all the food. Even though the park was right there across the street, we had to drive on four different streets to get there. I counted them. They “parked” the car on the fourth street and we walked through the big trees, like that “maple” tree in our backyard only bigger, to where the picnic tables were. Dad carried the picnic basket and mom and I carried the other bags with stuff for the party. Under the trees there also were swings, monkeybars, a seesaw, a slide, and my favorite thing, the merry-go-round. Two girls were swinging on the swings, talking to each other and laughing. Two boys, older than me, were at the merry-go-round, working to try to spin it around really fast before jumping on.

As I watched the two boys keep trying to make the merry-go-round go even faster, mom and dad started getting ready for the party. While they did that stuff, I walked over to the merry-go-round. I stood just far enough away so I wouldn’t get in the two older boys’ way as they hung off either side of it until it finally slowed down. They looked at me with red cheeks and excited eyes.

“Can I get on?” I asked. I was still worried about talking to grownups, even mom and dad. But talking to other kids felt easier. Kids just said what they were really thinking and it didn’t make me worry.

They told me to sit in the center and hang on, which I did. They grabbed the metal pipes on each side of the outside circle part and started to run. Everything began to spin around me. I saw mom and dad by the picnic tables, then the lilac bushes far away and my house and our backyard even farther away, then the girls on the swing, then other houses across the street, then back to mom and dad, over and over again. It all didn’t seem real anymore, more like the things I would see sometimes when my eyes were closed, or when I was sleeping and then I woke up.

The only thing that felt real was when I closed my eyes and felt something pulling me away from the middle. If I went where it was pulling me it got stronger and stronger. The only place where it didn’t pull me was right in the middle. I couldn’t figure it out, but it kind of made sense somehow, and that was one of the things that made the merry-go-round so neat. Stay in the center of things and let everything else spin around you. As the thing slowed down the pulling went away and mom and dad, the girls on the swing, my house, and everything else, seemed real again, at least mostly so.

“Again?” one of the boys asked, looking at me with fierce but friendly eyes.

I nodded and off we went again. Back to the spinning pictures and then closing my eyes to feel the realness of that spinning center. Finally the boys didn’t want to do it anymore, looked at the girls still on the swings, and then walked over to the seesaw and got on. No longer going around, I still sat in the middle of the merry-go-round, and when I closed my eyes I felt like I was going around again, though when I opened my eyes I was not. I did it more times until I opened my eyes to see a face I knew looking at me wondering.

It was Molly. She lived across the street with her mom and dad. She looked strange because she was wearing one of those “dress” things like a grownup woman would wear. Not the regular clothes like mine that she usually wore. Her straight light colored hair came down over her ears, unlike my hair which was really short. Other than mom and dad, I had probably spent more time with her than anyone else. She was a kid like me, and we both tried to figure out these strange grownups.

“I saw you going around”, she said, “It looks fun.”

Like a kid, she said what she saw and how she felt about it. Unlike all the thinking I had to do before saying stuff to mom and dad, I felt like I could say everything I was thinking to her. Now that I was talking, I was going to have a lot to talk to her about.

“Two older boys spun me around really fast. It’s strange to see everything spinning around me, like it’s only pictures. I close my eyes and I feel it pulling me away from the middle.” It was the best I could tell her with the words I knew.

Molly looked at me, pushing up her nose and biting her thumb, which she did when she was trying to figure something out. She took it out of her mouth to talk.

“You’re talking”, she said. Her thumb was back between her teeth as I could tell she was thinking about that, but then out again to say more.

“I want to try spinning too!” she said. I figured she would want to try it.

“Okay. Sit in the middle and hold on”, I said. I climbed off the thing and pointed at the center. She climbed on the merry-go-round on her hands and knees, and by the time she got to the center the open part at the bottom of her dress was up around her waist and her underwear showed. Not worried about it, she sat in the center and looked at me.

“So spin it… really fast!” she said.

I tried to do what the older boys did, and pushed on the bars on the edge of the circle, but I was only strong enough to move it slowly.

The two older boys on the seesaw were watching us. They came back over to help.

“You want us to spin you two around?” one of them asked.

Molly and I nodded.

“Well get on in the center”, he said to me, “And hang on!”

I climbed on the bumpy metal surface of the thing and sat in the middle looking at Molly. I grabbed the bars on either side of us just below where she had grabbed those same bars.

“You ready for a wild ride?” the older boy said.

Molly and I looked at each other and were both excited. “Wild ride” I thought, that sounded really neat. We both nodded and looked at each other again. I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was. “What’s about to happen to us?”

The boys stood at opposite sides of the merry-go-round and started to push. When they were running really hard, they jumped on and the thing spun around with Molly and I sitting in the center looking at each other. Molly moved her hands to hold on better and I felt the bottom of her hands touch the top of mine. As we looked at each other again, heads just a couple feet apart, our hands touching made it feel even more like we were hooked together. As everything spun behind her, I watched her hold her body still and I saw her eyes looking behind me at all that same spinning stuff too. Then she closed her eyes.

“I feel it pulling me!” she said. I could see her letting her head and the top part of her body being pulled away from the middle, then the hard work as she pulled herself back.

It was like I stopped thinking and just watched as I saw my mom and dad and hers at the picnic tables, then our houses far away across the baseball fields, the girls on the swing now watching us. It all turned into just pictures, only Molly was real. It seemed like she and I were part of the same thing. I didn’t want it to end.

But it did. The merry-go-round slowed down. But then I was thinking that though something was ending, something new could be starting. As we still looked at each other, now just slowly turning, I could tell she had thought the same thing.

“That was fun!”, she said.

She said it, but it was the same thing I was thinking and about to say. It was the only thing you could say! And we both knew we had to do it more to figure out the different things we were seeing and feeling.

“Again?” one of the older boys asked.

Molly and I looked into each other’s eyes. I could tell she was excited like I was to have this adventure to see and feel new things.

“Again!” Molly yelled out, her eyes flaring with fierceness, “faster this time!”. I liked that she wanted it faster, and that she was looking at me when she said it.

“Okay then”, called out one of the boys. I could hear in his voice that this was just what he was hoping we would say, maybe even what the two of them knew we were going to say. They started pushing again, making lots of noises to tell us that they were trying to go super fast, smashing each foot into the ground, as they made it spin faster than the first time. Finally they let go this time, and watched us whirl around, both of them I could tell feeling really good they were helping us littler kids have this “wild” ride.

“Wow!” We actually both said it this time, and at the same time.

Still spinning fast but not as fast as it had been, I felt like I wanted to try to stand up, while still hanging on to the bars. Molly watched me and started doing the same thing. We looked at each other fiercely, like we could do anything. The thing slowed more and Molly let go of the bars, took a step toward the edge, but looked like she couldn’t figure out how to stand up straight and it was pulling her more than she thought it would and she went off the merry-go-round. She tried to stay on her feet, but when they hit the ground, she fell face first into the dirt.

The older boys grabbed the bars and stopped the thing spinning. I jumped off and felt like I couldn’t stand up straight either, like it looked like Molly had. But I was able to stay on my feet as I ran over to her. She sat up. There was dirt in her hair and both knees and one elbow were scraped pink, quickly changing to red. Her dress was covered in dirt.

She looked at me as her mom ran over yelling, “Molly, oh my god!”. You could hear the fear in her mom’s voice, like Molly had been hurt bad. As I saw the thinking in Molly’s eyes, I could tell that at first she thought she was okay, just surprised. But what her mom said made her scared, that maybe she was not okay, and only then started to cry. Now all the grownups came and stood around us, like they were in charge now. The two older boys stood back, next to each other, worried.

“We’re sorry”, one said, “We didn’t think she’d try to do that!”

Molly’s mom nodded at them and then just looked at Molly.

Mom was behind me and put a hand on my right shoulder, patting my left shoulder with the other one. I stood there and didn’t say anything, wanting to say something to make Molly feel better, but feeling scared to, with all the grownups watching. Molly’s mom and dad rubbed their hands on her dress to try to get the dirt off. Then they looked at her arms and legs to make sure they were okay, and looked closely at the scrapes on her knees and elbow. Molly looked at me with sad red eyes, sniffling, as the tears rolled down over her now pink cheeks.

I could see Molly’s mom worried about what the other grownups were thinking about Molly.

“Molly is such a tomboy!” she said.

I didn’t know what a “tomboy” was, but it didn’t sound good, and I felt sad for Molly and mad at Molly’s mom for saying that, and mad at the other grownups who I guess wanted her to say that.

Her mom took Molly’s hand, looked at dad then focused on mom.

“Jane”, she said, “Let me take her home, get her cleaned up, and we’ll be back.”

Mom’s hands still on my shoulders, I looked up and she nodded with lips pushed together and worried eyes.

“Joan”, mom said, “When I was a little girl I was just like Molly. I’d come home at least once a week with some sort of bruise or scrape!” Molly’s mom looked like she felt better that mom had said that. Mom was good at saying stuff that made other grownups feel better.

The other grownup women said things to Molly’s mom to try to make her feel better too. One said, “Molly is such a pretty girl!”

Molly’s mom said, “Thank you”, and rubbed Molly’s head. Molly stood there quietly looking down, as her mom tried to fix her messed up hair. I watched her mom start to walk her home across the baseball field.

Now other kids and grownups were at the party, the kids came over to me. Kenny lived across the street next to Molly, but I didn’t play with him as much. Danny, who was older than me, I played with when my mom took me with her when she would go to their house.

“So what happened to that girl?” Danny asked. He didn’t know Molly.

After seeing Molly’s mom worried about what the other grownups were thinking about Molly, I wasn’t sure what to say to him.

“She fell I guess”, Kenny said, though he wasn’t there at the merry-go-round.

“Yeah!” Danny said, “Girls!” He said it like he thought girls weren’t as good as boys.

“Girls!” said Kenny, thinking he wanted to think the same way as Danny who was older than we were.

I wanted to tell them that I didn’t feel boys were better, but I got worried when older boys talked about girls being different, so I didn’t say anything and just looked down at the ground.

Dad and Molly’s dad were making the corn and the hot dogs on that really hot “grill” thing. Mom was passing out plates and being in charge of things. The other grownups were sitting at one of the two other tables, including Kenny’s mom and Danny’s mom. The other two men were dad’s friends. Kenny, Danny and I were sitting at the other table, which had boxes on it, that I knew were presents for me, on the other end. Just looking at them made me feel excited, and I wondered what was in each. Mom called out to the three of us to come over and get some food.

“Jane!” Danny’s mom said, “You’ve got a bun in the oven. You should let me do that!”

“I’m just getting into my third trimester”, mom said to her, rubbing her big stomach with her hands, “I still have lots of energy.” Mom didn’t used to have a big stomach like that, but she said that was my “little brother” getting ready to come out, though I couldn’t figure out what she was really talking about.

“I wouldn’t disagree that you do, dear”, said Danny’s mom, “But please let me help!”

Mom nodded, and Danny’s mom and Kenny’s mom put the corn and hot dogs on our plates, which they brought over to the table where Kenny, Danny and I were sitting. The three of us ate our food and didn’t say anything. I thought about Molly and why she let go of the merry-go-round bars, and that she was okay really until her mom got scared. I figured I would ask her about it later, now that I was talking.

I could here the grownups talking about my name, though they didn’t think I was listening

“So what are you calling him?” dad’s friend asked, “Johnny?”

“Well…” said dad like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“His name is Jonathan”, mom said, her voice was loud and kind of fierce, “Not Johnny or John. My brother is named John. Our son is Jonathan!”

I didn’t really feel like my name was Jonathan, or John or Johnny. It was one of those nicknames, but it wasn’t “Zuper” either. Mom and dad mostly called me “Clubius” or “Cloob”. Molly called me “Coob”, I think I liked that one best. When grownups asked me my name and I wasn’t talking yet, mom or dad answered for me and said “Jonathan”, but they almost never called me that. Now that I was talking, I wondered what I would say my name was.

Molly and her mom finally came back. Molly was now wearing regular clothes like me, with a bandaid on her elbow. Her mom got her a plate of food and pointed at the table where Danny, Kenny and I were sitting. I could see that Molly didn’t want to sit with us, but her mom kept telling her to and she finally came over. I figured that it wasn’t because Molly did not want to sit with me or the other kids, but that she didn’t want to talk about falling down. She came over and sat next to me without saying anything.

But Danny did want to talk about it. “So what happened to you on the merry-go-round?” he asked.

Molly looked fierce, putting her thumb in her mouth and biting it. She moved her shoulders up and down and took her thumb out and said, “I fell.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. He didn’t ask it like a grownup would. Not like he was going to do something about it if she said no.

Molly nodded and stuck the end of her hotdog into her mouth, and seemed happy that that kept her from having to say anything else. All four of us ate and didn’t talk. I was happy to have her back and sitting next to me.

When we finished eating, Danny’s mom came over and took our plates. Then all the grownups sang happy birthday to me. Danny was singing too and really loud. Kenny sang to, I think because Danny was singing and he wanted to be like Danny. I looked at Molly and she smiled like they were singing the song to her too.

The song ended with mom carrying my birthday cake towards me so everyone could see it, with three candles that had fire on top. I remembered Molly’s birthday, when she was three. Her cake was different but it also had three candles. I remembered her blowing them out, so I figured I was supposed to blow them out since it was my party this time. Mom put the cake down in front of me. It was all white with blue words on it. I knew that first word “Happy”, since mom had shown it to me in some of the books she read to me where she pointed at the words when she read them. And I knew that the last word was my real name, “Jonathan”. The word in between starting with the “B” I figured had to be “Birthday”.

“Now make a wish before you blow out the candles!” Mom said to me, looking into my eyes with hers like she was trying to figure out what my wish would be. I didn’t remember this part from Molly’s birthday. I got worried that all the grownups were waiting for me to say what my wish was, and then what would I say now that I was talking. I thought about the tricycle, maybe that would be the wish. But then if I said that was my wish, would mom and dad figure out that I looked in the attic and saw it there. Would they think I was bad for doing that? I tried to think of a different wish to say.

I was so happy when mom said, “Now don’t tell anyone your wish or it may not come true!” Not worried anymore, I thought about the bicycle and blew out the candles with the biggest breath I could make. Danny and all the grownups cheered and clapped. Kenny and Molly did what the grownups were doing and clapped too.

Mom asked me if I wanted to open my presents. Even before I could say anything, Danny said, “He definitely wants to!” All the grownups laughed.

I was mad at Danny for saying that, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t like that he was thinking he knew how I felt and was talking for me, even though I did want to open my presents. When I wasn’t talking yet, I had to let other people, mostly mom and dad, say what they figured I was thinking or feeling, though sometimes I still didn’t like it.

But I stopped worrying about it when I got to open my presents. I loved holding each box in my hands, with that special paper stuff all around it so I couldn’t see what it was, feeling how heavy it was, and wondering what it might be before tearing the paper off. I didn’t care that others were watching me, even all the grownups.

The first present I opened was from Kenny and his mom. It was a box of Lincoln Logs, with a picture of a fort on it. Kenny’s mom said, “Kenny told us you already have Lincoln logs, but you can never have too many!” That was true, and I was excited and nodded really hard.

Mom said, “Thank you Kenny and Missus Novak.” Kenny’s mom nodded her head but just once.

The next present was from dad’s two friends, Frank and Walter. It was six books, all the same size and wrapped together.

Walter said, “It’s the latest series of Tom Swift books. Frank and I know you’re probably not reading quite yet, but we made your dad promise to read them to you. And we have verified that your dad’s reading skills are sufficient for the task.” Frank, Molly’s dad, and dad all laughed.

The book on top had a picture on the cover of a rocket ship shooting up from the ground below with a big window in it with a boy in a gold suit looking out. Each of the others had something like that – jet plane, submarine, rocket ship – with the same boy either inside it or next to it. The pictures, and the stories each picture made me think about, were very exciting.

The next present was from Danny and his mom, Danny said he had picked it out himself. I ripped off the wrapping paper and the cover of the box had a picture of four smiling boys around a small board that looked like a football field with little figures of football players on it in two different colors. I figured it was a football field because mom and dad had taken me to a game at the Michigan stadium not far from our house. Danny said it was an “Electric Football set”. You turned it on and the players moved all by themselves. It interested me, but Danny said I should probably wait until I got home to open it up and try it, and ask my dad to help.

The last wrapped present was from Molly and her mom and dad. It was a space helmet with a front part that you could see through like a window, and that could be opened and closed. I took it out of the box and put it on my head, looking out through the clear front part at the people around me.

“Jonathan sure looks like he’s ready for what’s coming!” It was my dad’s friend Frank talking. “Just heard that Eisenhower wants us to set up a civilian space agency so we can outdo the Russians.”

I didn’t know who these “Russians” were, and if they were the same thing as the “Soviet Union”, but I figured this was not the right time for me to ask.

“I don’t know if you could pay me enough to sit on top of one of those big rockets”, said dad’s friend Walter, “I watched that Vanguard rocket explode last December at Cape Canaveral.”

Then dad said, “Once they work out the kinks, I’d do it! Poe, Verne, and others have been writing about taking a rocket to the moon since early in the 19th century. And I grew up reading all the pulp science fiction – John Carter and Buck Rogers.”

“Yeah, me too”, said Molly’s dad, “Though I never in a million years thought it could ever come true!”

The grownup women at the party had not been saying anything, but now mom did. When she talked, it sounded like she was in charge, and other people stopped talking and listened.

“I believe”, she said, “That anything we can imagine we can make come true!”

“Really Jane?” asked Walter, “Even time travel?” Like mom didn’t know what she was talking about.

But it didn’t change what mom was thinking, and she said, “Really Walter… even time travel!” She didn’t sound mad but her voice was kind of fierce. Walter sighed and shook his head.

“Honestly,” Danny’s mom said, putting her hand on mom’s shoulder, “I sometimes wonder if Jane hasn’t traveled back in time to our age to get us all off our rear ends!” All the grownups laughed, even Walter.

Mom nodded and grinned, her cheeks got a little red as everyone was looking at her. But I could tell she LIKED IT when everyone was looking at her.

“Lennice”, mom said, “I’ll never confess, but it’s been a heck of a ride!” More laughing from all the grownups. The four of us kids just looked at each other, not sure what they were talking about. Danny rolled his eyes. Strange grownups.

“But Liz”, dad’s voice was always quieter and less fierce than mom’s, always reminding her of something, “There’s one more present.”

“Right!” Mom looked at dad like there were lots of things she was thinking about. She turned and looked at me, still with my new space helmet on my head, her eyes sparkled. “This is for you from your dad and me”, she said.

Dad ran over to our car and opened the back part and took out that red tricycle with black wheels. He carried it over to the picnic tables where we were sitting and put it down in the middle of them. There it was in front of me, the one that I had seen in the attic yesterday, but wasn’t supposed to see until now. I stared at it, feeling everybody looking at me, so I didn’t know what to do next. Unlike my mom, I did not like talking when everyone was looking at me, especially when grownups were looking at me.

“Do you like it sweetie?” mom finally asked.

I nodded, but felt the grownups maybe were thinking I didn’t, thinking I should be more excited and say so. But I had already been thinking about that tricycle for a long time. I looked at mom and didn’t say anything, but nodded again really hard, and then at dad and did the same. I decided I should at least sit on it to show how much I liked it. It was all shiny and new. The seat felt cold and slippery under me. My hands circled around the black handle grips. Plastic had a special feeling to it when it was new. My feet rested on each of the black plastic pedals. I pushed the pedal with my left foot and then with my right and the big wheel in front started to turn and I was moving.

I headed toward the merry-go-round. Molly, Kenny and Danny got up from the table and walked around me. I was happy to just be with other kids and away from the grownups.

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