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| How the Shark Slippers Gave Us Away |
“Brush your teefies,” she tells you, “before your mommy comes.”
You hesitate, tying your hands together behind your back, hopping around like a troll or an uncoordinated fairy, hoping that she might change her mind. And it turns out that your dance was more fairy-like after all; it entranced her into doing the one thing mother never does: give in.
“Nanny, maybe just this once, maybe could I please please not brush my teeth?” You ask her, twirling around on the scratchy blue couch arm.
“Hmm…maybe just this once Karley honey. I won’t tell mommy you didn’t, but don’t tell her either! Okay?”
You decide that you have the best grandmother in the entire world, absolutely do.
“Okay Nanny! Best idea!”
You gallop to her, away from the bathroom and towards the kitchen tile, and she sweeps you up into the air when bigger arms meet smaller arms, holding you to the ceiling and circling once like a familiar, fleshy merry-go-round.
When your shark slippers hit the ground, you jump into the air once more, with your too-skinny arms wrapped around yourself.
Your Nanny walks to the fridge for – either a Coke or a V8 you think – a V8 tomato juice drink; she keeps both juice and Coke in her fridge consistently, one for diabetic need, the other for personal preference. You drank a V8 earlier, and you later realize that the main reason that you like most of the things that you do is because you were just picking up your nanny’s likes. But you can’t have a V8 now, because then mother would smell the strong tomato-y smell and know. No brushed teeth in this little girl’s mouth. Well, you can’t let that happen. So you have a Popsicle instead. Always purple, just like your sister Kyndal always ate red.
You sit down at the table with her and she tells you that there is only half an hour left before mommy gets here. You wish that the sleepover wouldn’t end, but your favorite bear blanket is soft and assures you that next time will come soon enough.
You remember that Arthur is on and immediately race to the TV, pop it on, and back up on the carpet, scraping your elbows as you do. You have never felt mushy carpet before. Nanny’s is always scraping you. You love Arthur show with a passion, especially in the theme song where Arthur’s teacher eats nails for breakfast.
“He really eats them, Nanny!” you exclaim, cradling your chin in your hands and dangling your feet in the air. You realize that many of your body parts end up in the air a lot. You think this is cool.
Nanny stays at the table, reading a Southern Comfort magazine, probably looking at the stitching in the pillows. You don’t understand why pillow-stitching is important, and come to the conclusion that it is for grandmas just like Arthur is for 8 year olds. Of course, you think.
After the first few scenes and first few commercials, Nanny reminds you that there is only five minutes before your mom will be here.
“Approximately,” she says.
“No one knows what proxy means Nanny. So you shouldn’t say it.”
“Oh no?”
“Nope. So no more.” You giggle, because Nanny always make funny faces when you talk like this, squinching up her nose into her forehead and squinting her eyes like a kitty kat. You love it when Nanny is silly, but you know how to do it better because you practice with Kyndal. So you have a funny face mega-war for a good minute-and-a-half before she gets all serious and says, “You’d better get in the bathroom and check your teeth to make sure there isn’t nothing in them, mmm?”
You nod, turn and skip to the bathroom, to the mirror to check for criminal residue. It isn’t like you hate brushing your teeth or anything; it was just the big secret of it all, that mother didn’t know. And she wouldn’t know, because you would never tell and Nanny would never tell and nobody else knew and so nobody else could ever tell. You notice a few purple stains and start to scrub them off with your finger; you wouldn’t want to ruin the secret by actually using a toothbrush!
After successfully getting them off you race back in to the living room, where Nanny awaits with your things and you hear mother pulling up in the driveway.
“Mommy’s here!”
“Hi momma,” you say, hoping that she won’t see the laughter in your eyes as you try to conceal the big secret. You can’t look at Nanny for fear that the secret might be laughing in her eyes, too. So you look right at mother, sighing for time to go home and Arthur isn’t over, but you see the bear blanket on the scratchy blue couch arm and you remember that it’s alright to go home every once and a while. Since you live there and stuff.
Nanny helps you carry your Cabbage Patch Kids suitcase to the car while Mommy carries you on her back. It has been raining and you go back in the house to get your slippers to keep your feet dry for a little bit, at least to get in the car. You slip them on and fly past the screen door to get in the car as fast as possible, and you step in a fat puddle with your slippers on and everything, getting all wet.
“Karley! How did that happen?”
“I really don’t know, momma, it was an accident, and this here puddle just seemed to reach up and grab my slippers like they was wanting the sharks to swim in it or something. I don’t even know, really.”
“Mhmm. Let’s get those off.” She pulls off the mushy shark heads and rounds back to the trunk of the car, to put the slippers with your bag. You notice that she is about to open your suitcase, and you get confused because – they’re wet! They don’t go with dry things – but there isn’t any room in the rest of the trunk so there is no other choice. She opens the bag and sets the slippers in.
You squinch your nose and squint your eyes because you can tell that she noticed your toothbrush. And it isn’t wet. Not even from the slippers. It’s crunchy dry, the kind of dry that toothbrushes feel like after not using them for a while, say, ten to more than that hours. And there isn’t even that old toothpaste stuff stuck to the inside of the wall where the whiskers are, and you always leave that there so…
You hang your head because the big secret isn’t laughing in your eyes anymore. It is drooping in your mouth and coughing in your ear like you should have known because mothers always find out. And you walk up to her slowly and say “sorry momma” and hop in the car to get away from the upsetness. When your mom gets in the car, you find that there isn’t much upsetness. Not again, she says, and laughs, like there was some kind of secret in her eyes all along. You are puzzled but you figure that that is why mothers are mothers and you are just eight and you wave to your Nanny the crazy way, flapping bigger and smaller arms all over the place, because that is the way to say goodbye. And on the way home you complain about your slippers, because them sharks are what really gave you away.
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Posted by karleyjayde on 2009-10-16 12:04:41 | Rating: | Views: 33
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