Amphibian (6 page)

I was still so worried about Cuddles that just before bed I called Grammie to see if she knew what might be wrong with him. She used to work as a biologist and knows more about animals and plants than anyone else I know.

The phone rang and rang and rang. I was about to hang up when finally she answered. She sounded like she had been sleeping even though it was only 8:30. I think she sleeps a lot these days. Even when she's awake she looks a little like she's sleeping.

‘Oh, Phin, it's you, sweetheart,' she said. She sounded happy it was me but her voice was quieter than it used to be.

Since I hadn't talked with her in a few weeks, I told Grammie all about how there's a White's tree frog trapped in a glass aquarium in my Grade 4 class.

‘Oh, that's a shame,' she said.

‘You think so? Nobody else seems to think so.'

‘Well, there are different opinions about that, honey, but if it makes you feel any better, I think White's tree frogs belong in trees.'

It did make me feel better. But my grandmother said she didn't know what could be wrong with Cuddles. I'm going to keep a close eye on him.

A few days ago, I emailed my dad a story about the very last Ozie couple on Reull. I worked really hard on it because I really wanted him to like it. Because he's a journalist, I think he'll be proud of me if I can show him that I can write really good stories.

I got nervous when I was just about to press the Send button. I read over the story again. It looked to me like I'd gotten all the grammar and spelling right, and that it had a beginning, middle and an end, just like they teach you in Language Arts. But to be sure, I asked my mom to read it first. She said it was incredible and that I'm a fabulous writer. But Mom would say that even if all I wrote was my name.

Here is my story:

On Reull there was a small animal called an Ozie that looked like a dog but that was no larger than a rat. The Ozie absorbed carbon dioxide through its skin and cleaned the air just like plants do. Its digestive system made the carbon dioxide into Ozone, which it farted out all the time. The Ozone farts floated up into the sky and healed the atmosphere of Reull.

The problem is, there were only two Ozies left – one male and one female.

One day, the last two Ozies went out for a walk and were captured by a Gorach scientist who was hiding in the jungle. The scientist put the Ozies in a cage where they cried and cried. He thought about how he could make
hundreds of Ozies in his lab to heal Reull's atmosphere. He got more and more excited as he thought about how the other Gorachs would love him now that he'd found a solution to all of their problems.

But then later that night, the scientist looked at the Ozies, wondering what they would taste like. They looked a bit like a creature he had tasted before – the Coonit. The Coonit was one of the most favourite foods of the Gorachs. The richest Gorachs got to eat Coonit every day and the poorer Gorachs were very jealous of this.

The scientist tried really hard not to think of cooking the Ozie. But each time he heard one of them fart, the more he drooled and drooled. Each fart was like the smell of a Coonit to him.

Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore. He grabbed the screaming and farting male Ozie and killed it and cooked it up to eat. It tasted even better than he had imagined – even better than a Coonit. He was so excited about its taste that he ate it all in about three seconds.

The scientist still had the taste of the Ozie in his mouth when he killed the female Ozie without even thinking. After she was cooked and eaten, the scientist screamed in horror. He had just discovered the Ozie, which could have been the solution to many Gorach problems, but then, because of his appetite, he ate the very last one.

Then I drew a picture of the last Ozie couple ever. I drew what they were thinking in a thought bubble. They were thinking, ‘Help, help,' and even though all the other animals in the web of life on Reull heard their thought, nobody could do anything about it. They all cried, which made the Ozies cry all the harder, and that Ozie couple died knowing only fear and sadness.

After I sent my story, I checked the email every chance I got. It took my dad forty-one hours to write back. This is what he wrote:

Dear Phin,

I am impressed! That is a wonderful story and an excellent example of a satire. I really enjoyed reading it and hope that you'll continue to write and to send me your work.

I hope you and Mom are doing well. Right now I'm in France covering the labour riots. I hope to get a chance to call you within the next few days. Say hi to your mom for me. Love, Dad xoxo

I went to find my mother. She was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper. When I started to talk, she raised her finger to say just a minute. I sat down and counted the tiles from one end of the kitchen to the other. Still twenty-seven. Then she said, ‘Sorry, Phin, just wanted to finish reading that story I wrote.'

‘Don't you already know what comes next?'

Mom laughed and said, ‘Well, sometimes the editor changes things around.'

‘Mom, Dad says hi.'

‘Thanks, Phin. How is your dad?'

‘I think fine. He liked my Ozie story.'

‘It's an incredible story.'

‘What's a satire?' I asked my mom.

‘Well, it's when someone writes something that ridicules people or things happening in society. Why?'

‘Because Dad says my story is a satire. But how could I have written a satire if I didn't even know what
satire
meant?'

‘Well, Phin, we don't have to have a word for something before we understand what it is.'

I thought about that for a moment. ‘I guess that makes sense.'

‘Remember irony? Satire is a bit like irony,' said my mom.

My mom explained irony to me when she wrote a story about a man who ran into the very tree that he took the protective foam off to use for his sled. Mom said that is an example of irony of fate.

‘How about another muffin? Thank goodness for the word
muffin
or else we'd be eating a lot of cake,' joked my mother.

I sat down and ate a raisin bran muffin. As I chewed, I thought about how I haven't seen my father for nineteen days. Last time he was home, it was only for four days. I stayed with him in his apartment. There's only one bedroom in it so I slept in his bed and he slept on the pull-out couch. We did lots of things together like play chess and go to the theatre and carve Ivory soap into little animals. But now he's gone again, and I don't even know when he'll be home next.

Sometimes I wonder why my mother and father got separated. I remember when it happened, though. It was just a few days after they had a big fight, which was just after Dad got home from South America. On that day we were all in their bedroom and my mother was helping Dad unpack, and I was somersaulting across their big bed. I had just learned how to do a backwards somersault, and I was feeling happy because of it, and because Dad was home.

I remember that Mom and Dad were talking and Mom was putting away Dad's clothes, and then she stopped talking. And then my dad stopped talking too, and I stopped somersaulting because it was really quiet all of a sudden. I sat up and looked at them. My mother was holding a piece of paper, and they both looked really weird. Then Dad asked me to go downstairs to watch
TV
for a while.

I don't know what they said when they had the big fight, but I could hear that their voices were louder than normal, and I could hear what sounded like my mother crying. When she came downstairs later, her eyes were red and her hands were shaking. She sat down beside me and didn't say anything, she just hugged me and I could feel her whole, entire body shaking, and I was really worried, but I didn't say anything either.

Then, after a while, my father came downstairs carrying the suitcases he had just brought home. He came into the room and my mother got up and left, and my father sat down and told me that he was going to stay with my uncle Roger for a few days and that he would give me a call later to say goodnight.

A few days later, when my mother and I were out getting groceries, my father came and got his things, like all of his books from the study and his desk that used to be his father's and the big picture of a sandpiper that he got in the Magdalene Islands. Then later my mother sat me down and told me that she and Dad were separating. She said that it was because some people just can't live very well together. That didn't make much sense to me. I asked why they can't get along, and she said they have personalities that are too different from each other.

The thing is, my mother and father seem to have pretty much the same personalities. And they both like the same sorts of things. And they also have almost the same kinds of jobs. And they also both have me. So why couldn't they just fight and then make up like other animals?

In the animal kingdom, when there is a fight among animals that depend on co-operation to live, they make up. For example, when two chimpanzees fight, sometimes one of the others butts in to help the chimp who is losing. When everything quiets down, sometimes the chimp who won the fight goes over to the other chimp and reaches out a hand to him and hugs him and kisses him and grooms him. This is called
reconciliation
by primatologists.

Once a teenaged female chimp called Amber went too close to another chimp's baby and the mother got upset and hit her. But when the mother calmed down, she went over to Amber and kissed her on the nose and let her get close to her baby again.

I don't understand why my mother and father couldn't live together after their fight. Fighting is just a part of life. All the animals do it but those in the same social group – like my mom and my dad – mostly make up afterwards.

After my parents separated, my father started working even more as a foreign correspondent. Now he is hardly ever, ever home. Among primates, the only ones who just get up and leave the social group are the kids who are grown up. They go off to find another group so that they can mate. Parent primates don't just
pick up and leave. If there was anyone who was supposed to be doing the leaving around here, it should be me, when I'm older – not my dad.

Tonight before bed I couldn't stop thinking about Cuddles. I thought about him when I was watching the Green Channel, I thought of him as I was eating my bedtime snack, I thought about him when I was brushing my teeth. I just couldn't get him out of my mind. It was like he was in there hopping through my brain pathways and each time he made a turn, he split into two and went down two more roads and those roads split into two and so did he and so on and so on and so on until there were thousands of Cuddleses hopping all through my brain until it overflowed and frogs started coming out my ears.

I told my mother this and she got a weird look on her face.

Her lips twitched a little bit and then she said, ‘Phin, why can't you stop thinking about that frog? It's a frog, Phin. A frog! Would you like me to look up some information on the web to show you how little frogs know and experience compared to us? Maybe it would help you to stop worrying about him.'

I shook my head no. I already knew all about frogs.
That
was my problem.

My mother said, ‘You know, Phin, like I said before, you can't think of a frog as though it's a person. They're just not as intelligent.'

I asked my mother if aliens came down to the planet earth and they were one million times smarter than humans, would it be all right to capture all the humans with nets and put them in solitary cages and feed them once in a while and watch them bang their heads against the glass until the day they died?

My mother opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. Then she opened it again and closed it. She told me to jump in my bed and then she went downstairs to get me her relaxation
CD
s. They didn't work. In fact, they made me feel more scared and worried. One
CD
was of thunder and lightning storms
and all I could think of was being struck by lightning. The next one was of the ocean and it made me think of drowning. The next was called
Rainforest
. That was the worst of all. If you went to a rain-forest these days likely all you'd hear would be the sounds of power saws and big trucks and animals running and howling and crying because their homes are falling down all around and on top of them. That's supposed to relax me? What I really want is for my mom to let me have a computer in my room so that I can listen to what's happening at Pete's Pond.

I got up out of bed and walked down the stairs really quietly. I peeked into my mother's office and when she heard me I ducked and then ran in behind the couch so that she wouldn't hit me with her mad rays.

She said, ‘Phin, what are you doing? Why aren't you in bed? You know I have two hours of work to do after you go to bed, you know that! Why are you doing this again? You're making me crazy! I have a deadline to meet and I don't have the time to lie down with you, I just don't, Phin, I don't!'

I said, ‘I know, but I can't sleep and the
CD
s aren't helping a bit.' She sighed a really loud sigh and slammed her book shut and walked me back up the stairs. I ran up them fast because I couldn't see her behind me. She's scary when she's mad.

Sometimes I look at my mother and say
Mom Mom Mom
over and over again and the more I say it and look at her, the more she doesn't seem like my mother anymore. She seems stranger and stranger to me the more I stare at her and think the word
Mom
. It's almost like she becomes an alien or something and if I do this for too long, I get scared and then I have to look at something else. When I look back to her again, she's back to normal.

When my mother was mad at me, she wasn't at all normal. But then she lay down with me and she went back to normal. Especially after she fell asleep.