The Bear: A Novel Read online

“Cookie?” he asks.

  I am in the canoe. Stick has the tin and he has shuffled to my end of the canoe. His nose makes the breath. I sit up and keep my hands on either side of the edges to make sure we don’t take a fall in the water by mistake because a canoe is tipsy. The sky is blue and it is a little cold and I look to the side and see there is big long grass that has its feet stuck into the water beside the canoe. Then there are sticks that are crisscrossed all over each other in a hump like the back of a turtle. I blink and I don’t know where I am and then I think camping and then I know I took Stick for a canoe ride for a long time. Maybe we are back again and I look to see if I know and it doesn’t look the same. It’s not a turtle’s shell that is beside the canoe. It is sticks and some mud with parts that have grass growing out. Our canoe is lying beside it and so is less tipsy but I don’t like that Stick is moving around inside the canoe. It makes me scared of getting wetter.

  “Let’s get out,” I say.

  “Cookie?”

  I grab the tin from him. Stick screams.

  I try to stand and my one leg feels like someone has chopped it off by accident or on purpose. It won’t move for a minute and I think that the water at the bottom of the canoe has ruined it. It feels like a piece of meat and then my foot is like Daddy’s sneaker. And then it hurts and I grab it and think ouch and then it goes prickle and a cactus is rolling up and down except there is no cactus in the canoe. I want to get out to get away from the cactus because it hurts my leg so I chuck the cookie tin onto the turtle’s stick shell that is beside the canoe and get my hands on the edges. I step right out onto the sticks with the leg that still walks. My pj’s are a waterfall for a minute and then they go drip on the canoe. Drip drip drip it sounds like a clock. The clock stops when I step up to the sticks. They feel pricky too but not as much. I find a good place for my foot and then move the dead one out and crouch down to hold the side of the canoe like Momma would.

  “Come on, Stick,” I say, making my voice high like a momma. “Step out.”

  Stick nods and he is staring at the cookie tin. He stands up and it’s hard to hold the edge of the canoe because of his big bum and the canoe rocks but I hold it. He puts his hand on my shoulder and grabs one of the sticks and pulls up but it is tricky because his bum is so heavy. It is even harder because his bum is wet too. Water drips off in a stream and then drop drop drop. I hang onto the canoe as hard as I can and he manages to get his bum up and out.

  “Ow,” he says with his fat feet on the sticks.

  I grab the tin and look over and see we can get to the earth if we step off the turtle and along the sticks where there is earth.

  “Come on.” I shake the tin.

  “Cookie,” he says.

  I take a few steps and ow. I don’t like walking on sticks and I feel yuck and my heart goes boom because I think where is Gwen? I look over and she is floating in the canoe. She is looking at the sky. I can tell that she thinks that I have left her and I will never be back to snuggle and she is all alone.

  “Gwen.” I drop the tin clang and hop ouch back over to the canoe. I grab the edge and pull it close and reach but she floats away to the other side. I need a grown-up to hold the canoe or I need longer arms like Daddy.

  “Daddy!” I yell and look around.

  I can’t see him and I feel mad because it’s an emergency. He is gone and so I need to do some jobs myself that I didn’t used to do but this is one that I need help.

  “Momma!”

  No one comes and all the parents are mad and gone away and I am not supposed to scream except for an emergency and it is because the canoe is pushing away from the stick turtle so I grab it back. It bumps against the turtle and the turtle must feel angry because it kicks the canoe back and it starts to get away again and I see Gwen floating all alone and so I jump.

  I land and splash into the ankle water in the canoe and my hand is on soggy Gwen but then we keep going. Crack my nose goes into the canoe and it feels like blood. The crack comes from electric in my eyes and I grab Gwen and we roll. Bang on my head and I am pushed in the water and my pj’s pull me down. My whole body is under the water and I can’t breathe because I didn’t get to count before going in and bubbles blow out of my mouth and there are no more and I feel water has pushed so far up my nose it is in my brain. It soaks up all the water. It is so heavy I am pulled down and I thrash my feet and I hug Gwen close. I can’t swim because of the water in my head and I might be falling down or up. There are stars or white dots going round and making me dizzy. I am too tired and my swimming doesn’t work and I kick once but I can’t anymore.

  But then something hits my hip and it keeps me up and I know a dolphin has come to save me with its nose. It will push me up onto a rock or I can ride on its back so we can travel but I can still breathe. But the dolphin doesn’t push it just keeps its nose there and I must be lying across the body because I seem to be keeping in the air and my nose can breathe. I hold Gwen up so her nose can breathe too. Then I look at my arm out of the water and I see that I did not fall into a deep lake. I am sitting on the earth under the water. My bum is on the ground. I bend my waist and my head is up in the sky. I take in big gulps of air and it makes me cough. Gooey snot runs out my nose. I wipe with my sleeve and no one tells me not to. I get my feet down. The water is up to the tops of my legs. I stand up quickly because the water is bad. The ground is mucky muck. I put my feet down and they sink in. Yucky muck.

  Behind me the dolphin has died. It rescued me with its last breath like I am the powerful queen or maybe a magic one and a fairy with big magic not small dust. The dolphin rolled over and is lying on the muck beside me except it’s the canoe’s belly. I didn’t recognize the canoe’s belly seeing it for the first time but that’s what it is. It slowly rolls back like it is just waking up from a nap. The tippy point is full of dirt and there is brown mucky water inside. It’s like a bathtub after a bath when I was really dirty from playing soccer in the mud and I rolled to get a kick but it didn’t work. Instead I went squishing through the mud and it went up my pants and came out in the bathtub and my daddy said “Holy cow” when he looked because he didn’t know that a girl could ever be that dirty. I felt proud because I am.

  The mud tries to drink my feet down. I pull a foot out and pull the other foot out and the first one sinks in again. I give Gwen a sniff but she is all wet. I give her a squeeze and she cries out the water and I say “Don’t worry, Gwen, I will save you.” So I pull a foot out and put it closer to the side and then pull another foot out and put it even closer to the side. Gwen gets to the side of the water that is grass and mud and I hold her close. My knees come up and I sit and let my head fall down. I put my holes where my eyes go on my knees and let them sit in there. Gwen and I are close and it is dark with my knees in my eyes so I don’t have to see. I sit and stay like that and Gwen keeps her cheek on mine.

  I don’t move until I hear a soft jingle. I look up and know it is the cookie tin. Stick is sitting on the stick turtle beside the dirty bathtub canoe. He is sitting on the sticks with the tin in between his feet and his stupid fat hands are trying to get the lid off the tin but they can’t. I see that the sticks and mud make a sidewalk between us. I stand up and pick over the sticks to get to where he is sitting. The sticks get more ouch as I get closer because there are more of them and less mud. But I get to Stick and he looks at me like he is sad that my hands are less stupid than his.

  “Come on,” I say.

  I grab the tin out of his hands and he yowls but stands up and I take one of his hands and pull on it. I keep pulling and he comes on across the sticks to the earth.

  “Owey, owey,” he says as he walks.

  The sticks jab at our feet and we have to go so slow because his legs are stumpy. I get more sticks in my feet because I am going first. If we hopped it would be faster or skipped. He can’t and I can but he is hugging my hand with his so I wait. We get our feet on the dirt and it feels better. I keep his hand and we go to a place up a
little from the water that is drier but that doesn’t matter because our pj’s are sopping. We sit and I open the tin and I give one to me and one to Stick and eat a cookie.

  After a minute I hear smack smack smack. I think it is Stick’s lips because he is eating a lot of cookies but it is not. Someone is swimming in the lake in front of us. Smack smack smack and huff breathing like Stick’s nose as it swims. I think a rat because I can see the fur but it swims more and I remember looking underneath the water that was like a fish tank at the zoo and it’s a beaver. I hold Gwen up to look at the beaver and its tail smacks again and she swims around in a circle and makes a breath on the water like swimming isn’t hard but she is mad at us. We eat more cookies each until all the cookies are gone and I look out at the lake. The beaver comes making a circle again. I think maybe the pile of sticks are her house and she doesn’t like us there. She smacks her tail on the water again and Stick looks at me.

  “It’s a beaver. She says hi,” I tell him because I don’t want him to feel like she is mad.

  Stick smiles and looks back at Beaver swimming and holds up his hand. “Hi, Beaver.”

  She smacks back. Stick thinks she is waving but I think she doesn’t like us much and wants us to go away and no one wants us here. The parents are both mad and not coming not just Daddy this time it is different. The sun gives too much shine and there are trees everywhere with their dark in between and I don’t see anything I know.

  11.

  Momma said to me “Daddy and I will be there.” I am a good girl and our family is four. I don’t want to wait here because I don’t like it but I am supposed to watch Stick when Momma is not here. I am not old enough to be a babysitter because that is a girl who has long hair and her jeans go loose around her shoe and nail polish that is pink like a pink Popsicle except dark. I want nail polish but Momma says no and I can’t babysit yet so I just watch Stick. I don’t know how long until Momma and Daddy come.

  I look at Stick and he is boring to watch and I wish that Gwen could sniff like when she is dry and in my bed and we are in a cozy snuggle under the blankets. She is wet and her fur is mussed up. I hold her arm and twist it and water drips out of her. I worry her stuffing will drip. I check her for holes like once when the part by her neck came loose. White fluff came out and I showed Momma that Gwen’s stuffing was coming out of her body and I knew she would die. Momma said no she wouldn’t die and that we needed to needle her up. We got a pricky needle and got string that was brown. We had dark brown but that wouldn’t hide on Gwen so we went to the store and then to Mrs. Buchanan’s house and then she had string that was just like Gwen. I held Gwen and Momma got the string through the end of the needle that had a surprise teeny tiny hole at the very tip. Momma stitched up Gwen and I held her and said that it would be okay because her stuffing would stay in. I look at the part on her neck and it still works.

  And so Gwen is good but she doesn’t sniff as good. I see a rock a little bit over and stand up. The rock is smooth and flat and a little away from the water like the ones we use to dry socks. I put my hand on the rock and it is warm but not hot and the sun is coming more so soon it will get hot. I stretch Gwen out on the rock and she looks happy. I stand in the sun and then I feel like Gwen too. I reach down and my pj’s can also cry out water when I bunch them up on my leg. I would like not to be in wet pj’s and I take off the top and the bottom. I twist them like Momma does and lie them on the rock.

  I hear nose breathing and Stick is behind me trying to take off his pj’s too. He copies me always. If I eat cake then he wants cake. I have a doll with pretty eyes and he wants it. I play with the smaller Lego that is for big girls and he doesn’t want his big Lego for babies but wants my small Lego for big girls. He has his pj top off but just part of the arms and the body of it is still over his head and he can’t lift up higher because his elbows are stuck.

  “Help, help,” he says.

  I stand beside him and lift the shirt up and it comes up but then gets stuck. I pull more and it goes up from his neck and I can see his chin and his cheeks and his mouth sticking out but it is stuck around his head. He pulls his arms down so they come out but his big head is stuck in the circle and I can’t get it off the top.

  “Get it off!”

  “I’m trying,” I say and I bunch all the extra pj at the top and pull up because I am taller but not tall enough and it is hard to pull when he has such a big head.

  “Get off.”

  He is mad at me now and I know that he needs a smaller head and not one like a rock. I pull and nothing. The rock head is stuck in the pj’s. And that gives me an idea and I step back to stand up on the rock and tell him to move closer. He can’t see and his arms are out and his white round belly is hanging out and it makes me laugh. The pj’s cover his eyes and he trips on his feet around the ground with his arms out. I laugh again because it’s like we are playing Marco Polo.

  “Say Marco,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t say Marco. He doesn’t go to birthday parties yet so he doesn’t know that you say Marco and everyone answers Polo and even though it is dark under the blindfold you can hear where people are and try to find them. Except sometimes I can peek under the bottom of the blindfold if it is tied up on my nose and I can tilt my head under but not too much so the peeking is still a secret. And we play hot potato and you pass the potato around and pretend it’s hot even though it isn’t really hot and when the music stops everyone points at the person who is stuck holding the potato and I feel really bad. My cheeks feel like hot potatoes and someone says they are pink. Jessica’s mother told me not to peek but I still did because it was too dark and I wanted to not be “it” so I could get out from the dark. I don’t like to be “it.”

  “Get me out,” Stick yells.

  He didn’t say please but I reach and pull his arm closer to the rock so I can reach. I am taller on the rock and he is only up to my belly button so I can get the sleeves and the end of the top all together and I pull straight up and pop. The circle comes off Stick’s face and he has a red line on his nose from the neck.

  “Stop growing your head,” I say.

  “Stop it,” he says and he doesn’t speak much English but he wants to say that he is mad.

  I think Stick has English inside his head and he doesn’t make it come out loud so much even when it comes out the wrong way or backwards like my name Nana. His words are in his head and they get stuck when they swim around inside. This is because I saw a picture of a brain and there are little squiggly paths that wind around and around like worms and English has to travel through the squiggles that are like tunnels for worms. A baby can’t push their thinking because there are so many worms. Stick isn’t a baby anymore but he still is wormy gross and I tease him about worms and get in trouble when I put them in his face. I have to put them back in the dirt to let them have a nice life again. And if I chopped there would be two worms instead of one and they could go one to the house and one to the alley. That is two worms having a nice life but I still don’t like worms and not in my head but I will touch them sometimes if it makes Stick say yuck.

  Now Stick is wiggling and trying to get out of his pj bottoms just like me. I tell him to sit and I grab the elastic at the top and pull so that they come inside out and off. They get stuck at the last part of his feet. I sit down to get a better grip and he thinks I am not pulling anymore.

  “My knees are stuck,” he says.

  “Ankles, silly,” and I know it is Stick speak and sit and pull them off.

  It is easy to get them off his feet not like his head and I remember the poo almost too late but it isn’t there anymore. Or I can see a few patches but they are mostly gone and any bigger chunk is not there. That is good because those are what I hate and smell the worst. Stick’s pj bottoms do smell a little and I wouldn’t want them on my nose but far away it isn’t so bad. He rolls over and gets onto his knees and says “Ouch” on the ground and gets on his feet. He puts his feet down and his bum is in my face.
He bends and I can see a red starfish and if I looked I would see right up Sticky’s bum. Yuck. Once when Sticky didn’t have on diapers and he bent down and we saw up his bum even if we didn’t mean to look because it was right there in our face. Daddy said that we could probably see all the secrets of the universe in there. I peek and no. And Daddy was wrong. There are no secrets just a little bit of poo.

  I twist his pj’s like I twisted mine and I put them on the rock on the other side of Gwen. I spread them out so the arms and legs are straight and after a minute it looks like Stick is lying on the rocks and so am I. And our pj’s are the same with ducks on them so it looks like two kids are lying on the rock except one is bigger than the other just like I am bigger than Stick. He comes up to my chest when we are standing except when I am standing on the rock and then only up to my belly button. I think his head might already be as big as mine but I hope it won’t grow anymore or else he will get stuck in his pj top forever.

  My skin feels warm now that my pj’s are off and I put my arms up to the sky. We are supposed to wait for our parents and it is okay because the sun is smiling on me and it feels nice. I let my feet wiggle around because the cookies have sprinkled sugar down into my toes. I hop on a foot and my bottom skin hits crunchy dirt. I see a little more sand a few feet over and closer to the water and I step and it feels really nice and soft on my feet. I let my feet jiggle more and my hands wave around and I laugh because it is fun and then Stick comes over too. He jumps and waves his hands like me because he doesn’t know how to dance other than jiggle up and down on the spot. My momma has to dance for him by taking his hands in hers or sometimes putting him on her hip so her legs are the ones dancing for him. If my daddy is dancing too I can step on his toes. He holds my arms and his shoes are shiny and black and slippery but if I balance just right and wear my sneakers not socks then I can stay on for the ride. But now Sticky is dancing like I am dancing and I look at him and he laughs with his face all bunched up in a smile and his small teeth are showing and the two dimples on each side. He puts his arms up like me and waves them around. I put a foot out and he puts a foot out. I wave my hand hard and he waves his hand hard. I put my thumb on my nose to do a na-na-na-boo-boo and he does it too. I stick out my tongue and blah blah blah.