Amphibian (9 page)

On her way out, my mom wrapped a blue scarf around her neck and put on some hand lotion that smells like jasmine. She even dabbed a little bit on her neck. As she was zipping up her leather boots, I noticed that her face looked smoother, her eyes looked bigger than usual and that she had big red guppy lips. Then I realized that she had makeup on. She hardly ever wears makeup.

‘Mom, where are you going?' I asked.

‘I told you, Phin – to interview an activist who works with the homeless,' said my mom.

‘Is that it?' I asked.

‘Yes,' said my mother, ‘but I may stop for some dinner afterwards. Why do you ask?'

‘No reason,' I said.

While Mom was gone, I worked on my Reull stories and watched the Green Channel. I helped myself to lots of chips since nobody was around to see how many I had. Rena didn't get off the phone even when Fiddledee knocked a dish off the counter and it smashed onto the floor. She didn't hang up until she heard a car come in the driveway.

I ran to the front door and looked out the side window. What I saw almost made me choke on my chip. It wasn't my mother's car in the drive. She was getting out of a shiny red car instead.

I opened the door and stood on the doorstep. My mom was talking with a man inside the car. It was Brent!

I put my hands on my hips. Still they talked and talked and talked, like they didn't even see me.

I walked down the the driveway in my sock feet even though it was super cold out. I stared at the car. They didn't even turn to look in my direction.

I walked over to my mother's side of the car and put my face up to the glass of her window. That's when Brent saw me and he jerked his head back as though someone had slapped him. My mom's head swivelled in my direction. She looked like she did once when I caught her eating my Halloween candies. Then she gave a little wave.

She stepped out of the car. Brent leaned across the seat and said, ‘Hi, Phin. How are you doing?'

‘Fine,' I said, turning and walking back to the house.

I gave my mother the silent treatment. I pretended not to listen to her when she explained that she had had a few glasses of wine and didn't want to drive home in her own car after dinner. I didn't even let her read to me before bed.

My dad called this evening to talk to my mom. I couldn't hear all of what she was saying because the dishwasher was running, which made it really hard to eavesdrop. I could tell, though, that they were arguing about something. I was hoping it wasn't about me.

I didn't ask my mom what she and Dad were fighting about because I didn't want to make her say something about Dad that I didn't want to hear. She's only said a few things bad about him, but I wondered if there were a lot more bad things inside her. I don't want to hear any of them, especially since I'm part Dad. Because of that and because I can tell it makes her upset, I don't like to bring up the Dad topic with my mom.

Sometimes I send Dad an email that says, ‘Dad, you're the best dad in the world. Love, Phin' – even when it's not even Father's Day. Sometimes I also draw pictures of our family and put me in the middle. My mother didn't like my first one like that after my parents got separated. When she saw it, she sat me down and told
me again that she and Dad were separated and blah blah blah – another reason not to bring up the Dad topic. Once she told me that their not getting along had nothing to do with me and that I shouldn't blame myself. That didn't make me feel better at all. I wished it was my fault because then maybe I could fix it. After that talk I added horns to my picture of Mom. But then I felt guilty and erased them. Now when I draw pictures of all three of us, I just don't show them to her.

I hope that when Dad sees the letters and pictures I mail him maybe he'll think of me – and maybe even remember that he misses me and then come home to stay. But so far it's not working.

Today something shocked me. When I first heard it, my body got cold and my teeth chattered. It was something I would never have expected – never in a million years. It was a thing worse than the sound of Lyle's voice, a thing worse than getting sick with lice, a thing worse than having your eyelids held open for a week with toothpicks: MY MOTHER TOLD ME THAT I CAN'T WATCH THE GREEN CHANNEL ANYMORE!

After the shock, I got really really really, really, to-infinity mad, which made my body hotter than normal. Now I'm so mad I'm practically burning up and my brain is buzzing like a whole hive full of bees. And my arms are shaking so much that the only thing that could steady them is to grab hold of something – like Dr. Barrett's neck. I just know this is all that friggin' psychologist's fault because after he talked to me, he talked to my mother and then she told me this HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, SHOCKING news. That's no coincidence.

I yelled at my mother that this was not fair. I screamed that she was ruining my life and that I won't be ready for my job when I grow up if she doesn't let me watch the Green Channel! I asked her how she would like it if she wasn't allowed to get ready for her job.

She said, ‘Phin, this is for your own good. There is too much on the Green Channel that is making you worried.'

I yelled, ‘The Green Channel isn't what's making me worried! The extinction of animals is making me worried! Everybody should be worried! Why aren't you worried?'

She said, ‘Phin, I am not going to change my mind on this. I'm your parent and I've decided this is what's best for you. I am not going to talk about it like this. If you'd like to talk about it calmly and listen to my reasons, then we can do that.'

I screamed, ‘I want a different parent! This is not best for me! I need a better parent who makes better decisions!'

She walked away and went to the bathroom. I screamed at her through the bathroom door. Then I went to my bedroom and slammed the door. I cried for a long time. Then my mother came to my door.

She said, ‘Phin, how about we play cards?'

I screamed, ‘No!'

She said, ‘How about we draw?'

I screamed, ‘No!'

She said, ‘How about we go out for an ice cream?'

I screamed, ‘No!'

She said, ‘How about we look up things on the computer that you want to know?'

I screamed, ‘No, leave me alone!'

I would not talk to her about things she wanted to talk about just like she wouldn't talk to me about what I wanted to talk about.

Later my mother told me that she was speaking with Dr. Barrett on the phone and that he'd like to speak with me too for a few minutes. I screamed at my mother that I didn't want to talk to the friggin' psychologist, but she whispered in an angry voice with her teeth clenched together that if I didn't speak to him civilly, I would lose something worse than the Green Channel.

‘What? What?' I screamed. She wouldn't tell me, she just kept staring at me, looking like the picture of the Maori warrior that my grandfather had hanging in his den. So I picked up the phone. Dr. Barrett asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about
and I said no – he's the one who wanted to talk to me, not the other way around. And besides, it was talking to him that got me into this friggin' trouble to begin with.

Dr. Barrett said he understood how frustrated I must feel, but that he and my mother are going to work really hard to help me feel better. He told me that one thing I can do when I'm frustrated is called deep breathing. He told me to breathe in through my nose to the count of seven and then hold it to the count of four and then breathe out through my mouth to the count of seven. Because my mom was watching I tried it, but it made me feel like I was going to pass out. I guess that's one way to stop being frustrated – just pass out and fall on the floor.

Dr. Barrett said that likely the reason I am getting angry easily is because I'm not getting enough sleep. That's not true but I let him think it because I figured that would get me off the phone quicker. The real reason I'm angry is that I'm worried. Nobody is listening to me, not even my own mother! Aren't mothers supposed to listen to their kids? Aren't they supposed to understand them? When she doesn't listen to me, it makes me even more worried than I already am about Cuddles and other animals and climate change and stuff. So I guess you could say my mother is the reason I'm not getting enough sleep. And it's also Dr. Barrett's fault because he's making my mother not listen to me even more than she already doesn't.

When I went to bed, I told my mother that I hadn't changed my mind about this – it was definitely not right that I can't watch the Green Channel. I told her that not being able to watch the Green Channel will just make me more worried. I will be more worried because the bad things I can imagine are worse than the bad things that may really be happening – much, much, to-infinity worse.

I didn't sleep a wink.

Tonight after supper I was really super upset and really wanted to talk to someone who wasn't my mother. The first person I thought of was my grandmother, but when I called her number, there was no answer. Maybe that was okay because I wouldn't want to wake her up again. Sometimes even when I talk to her face to face, it's like there's no answer. She has this blank look like someone has pressed the Pause button or something. Since Granddad's been gone, she's like a goose widow who hangs her head and droops her body after her mate dies. Can you die even before you're dead? I want Grammie to be like she used to be.

My mother wanted to talk to me, but I didn't want to. She kept coming into the living room and sitting next to me and taking my hand. But I wouldn't talk to her. I just kept rubbing Fiddledee and thinking about how unfair it was that I couldn't watch the Green Channel. After a while I got up and turned on the
TV
and watched a different channel, but I was not happy about it.

MythBusters
was on. They were testing the myth that you could kill yourself with your own farts. Jamie and Adam and Tory counted the number of farts they had on a normal day, and then they ate only certain foods all day long. Adam ate only beans, Jamie ate meat and Tory drank pop. Adam's farts went up the most. He farted twice as much – which shows that ‘Beans, beans, good for your heart, the more you eat, the more you fart' is true. Then they put Adam in a tub that had a tube over it to hold in all his farts, but he didn't die so they busted that myth. But they did find that there are three deadly gases in farts: methane, carbon dioxide and argon. But it wasn't enough to kill him. The death-by-fart myth was busted.

How come it's all right to watch a
TV
show about myths, but it's not all right to watch shows about truths?

After
MythBusters
I watched a show on the Travel Channel called
The World's Ten Most Dangerous Animals
. The animals from ten to two were:

10. Bears – kill about 6 people each year

9. Sharks – kill about 8 people a year

8. Hyenas – kill about 50 people a year

7. Jellyfish – kill about 55 people a year

6. Big cats like leopards, lions and tigers – kill about 80 people a year

5. Elephants – kill about 130 people a year

4. Scorpions – kill about 500 people a year

3. Crocodiles – kill about 2,000 people a year

2. Bees and wasps – kill about 10,000 people a year

I was sure I knew what number one was going to be. I watched about fifteen commercials waiting for the final animal. I was absolutely sure I knew what they were going to say, but I had nothing better to watch. But when finally they got to the big moment, it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be. The man on the Travel Channel said, ‘The world's most dangerous animal is …' There was a pause and then a drum roll and then he shouted, ‘The snake!'

I almost fell out of my chair. The snake? What kind of dumb show was this anyway? The snake kills only 100,000 people each year. What I was sure was the world's most dangerous animal didn't even make the list!

Just to make sure I was right and the Travel Channel was wrong, I went to my mother's computer and typed in
murders
. On Wikipedia it said there were about 500,000 people murdered in the year 2000. That makes humans five times more dangerous than the snake! If you count the murdering of other animals too – which should count because the Travel Channel included interspecies killings – the human kills billions each year. Do you know how big a billion is? It would take a person sixty-seven years to count to a billion if he counted two numbers every second. The human is the most dangerous animal in the world! Stupid, bleeping, crappy channel.

This just made me even angrier. I wasn't getting good information anymore. If I kept watching channels like that, I was going to get stupider and stupider, and then how was I going to know everything I need to know to save animals from extinction? To make it even worse, on one of the channels I was allowed to
watch, there was an advertisement about a program that will be on the Green Channel tomorrow. It'll be all about symbiotic relationships in the animal kingdom. But I can't watch it. The only thing that made me feel a teensy bit better is that I already know a lot about symbiotic relationships.

A symbiotic relationship is when one animal gets something from another animal and that animal gets something back from it. An example of that is the oxpecker and the ox. There are two species of oxpeckers, the red-billed and the yellow-billed. They live in the African savannah and have strong feet to hold on to the backs of mammals like oxen. They eat the ticks and parasites on animal skins. So in return for the oxpecker's meal, the ox gets rid of the insects that make him itchy and sore.

I once saw on the Green Channel that all over the earth, animals and birds and insects are all in what is called a dynamic symbiotic relationship with all the other animals and birds and insects. This means that if one is taken out of the food chain, many other animals could suffer or die out.