100 Days and 99 Nights (3 page)
My father’s older brother, Uncle Colin, who Mom does not really like because he sometimes tells bad fibs, and my aunt Alma, who Mom really likes because she doesn’t, gave me Edgar my elephant for my fifth birthday. Edgar reminds me that fibbing can get you into big trouble. Fibbing, which is a lot like lying, is the worst thing you can do in our house. It will automatically earn you a trip to your room and a long lecture.
I
t was a Saturday morning in the kitchen like all others before it. We were beating the batter and beginning the butter when my father, the finest flipper from Fiji to France, put his spatula down and his thick arms around us.
“Esmerelda, Isaac . . .”
Oh, no, I inside-fretted. Anytime he called us by our full first names, something big happened, like we’d get another pet or . . . move to another country. Napoleon left his spot next to the fireplace and slow-walked closer, head down, probably expecting to hear that we were adopting the stray cat that wandered our block, or . . .
“I have to go away,” he said immediately, so as not to make us worry any longer.
“We’re moving again!” moaned Ike.
“No . . . no, this time I have to go alone.”
It was scary silent except for the angry hiss of butter skiing across the skillet.
“We’re not moving?” I asked, relieved and worried at the same exact moment.
“No. I have to go to a faraway place for one hundred days and ninety-nine nights,” he answered in his most deeply serious voice.
All I could think to say was, “That’s a long time.” So I said it: “That’s a long time.”
For a second I feared that last night bandy-legged blue bugs from the remotest jungles of Nostomania had crept into my head and I had become a fustilug destined to say whatever came to mind without any thought of how it might hurt someone else’s feelings. But Dad calmed my fears.
He slid his hand onto my shoulder and answered directly, “Yes, it is. I don’t want to leave you but it is my duty.”
“Duty” is what the army calls it when you have to do something that no one in the whole entire universe really wants to do.
“But why?” asked Ike, who was too young to understand the word duty and old enough to really love the word why.
Our minds raced around the short silence, trying to figure out possible reasons for his leaving.
“Because my commander says so, and when he says so, in the army we just do.”
He spooned the batter onto the sizzling skillet. The small circles sputtered and spit. When he stepped to the side he revealed my mom sitting at the kitchen table, the Drum & Bugle unopened, weak smile, eyes rimmed red. She must have been crying and looked like she was going to start to cry again, but she didn’t. It was her duty not to cry in front of us. So I did my duty and I didn’t cry in front of Ike, and since I didn’t — Ike didn’t. So we sat, doing our duty, holding our tears tight inside, heads down, concentrating on swishing the remains of our pancakes in the brown swamp of thick syrup on our plates. We didn’t talk about what had happened that week, or what was happening that day, or most especially what was going to happen. This Saturday morning was silent except for the sizzle of the last batch of McCarther pancakes.
One vacation, we drove all the way from Frankfurt to France. Since Ike and I never even asked once, “Are we there yet?” we were allowed to pick out souvenirs. Ike grabbed a snow-filled globe with a tall pointy tower at its center and I chose my frog and named him Freddie. In France they sometimes get so hungry they eat frogs’ legs, so by bringing Freddie back to Germany, where they do not eat such things, I had saved his life.
That night, climbing into bed, my room seemed to get darker faster, as if it were winter times two. I organized my bedzoo, putting my three lucky C’s (Cassie my camel, Cary my cat, and Cory my cow) across the top of my headboard to watch over me. Staring at the blank ceiling, I squeezed my limp blankie hard and pulled Freddie my frog close to my belly.
Dad soft-knocked and eased past the door. Nearing the bed, he leaned down and scooped up my long-haired lion, Larry, and my long-tailed squirrel, Sylvester, and wedged them back among my other animals that stared up at me from the foot of my bed. He tucked the covers tightly to my chin, then sat on the edge. The mattress slanted hard under his weight and several animals slid back to the floor.
“Esme, you’re going to have to help your mother around here,” he ordered and asked in the same exact sentence.
I understood and nodded in the same exact motion.
“Especially on Saturday mornings, because, as we know, your mother is a Swishback and Swishbacks don’t make perfect pancakes.” He grinned, herded a stray strand of hair back behind my ear, and left his warm hand to cup the side of my face.
“On Saturday mornings, you’ll be the boss. You’ll have to remind them that there are rules for pancakes.” He brought the left corner of his mouth slightly up toward his ear to form a lopsided grin.
“That’s a big responsibility for someone your age.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied in my most military voice, to try and assure him that I was absolutely one hundred percent “can-do.”
“Every day you look more and more like your mother,” Dad commented, which made me feel good because she is a very pretty mother. He gave me a peck on my forehead to try and assure me that he knew I was absolutely one hundred percent “can-do.”
The fullish moon outside my window barely lit the tattoo on his right forearm. I closed my eyes tight so I could memorize every detail of it. A robin, its red chest proudly puffed, perched on the edge of a twig nest with a long wiggling worm squeezed in her beak. At her feet sat two small baby birds, mouths open wide, anxiously awaiting their meal. No one really knew for sure exactly what it meant. Grandpa McCarther had the same tattoo though. He said that McCarthers have gotten that particular mark since the beginning of time or at least since they began joining the army — which to him was probably the same thing. I half worried that one day I would have to get that tattoo and half wanted to one day get it too.
Dad smoothed my tangle of brown hair, his soft strokes pushing me toward sleep. I remembered a beach in Kenya where the sand was so boiling hot we could not get back to our blanket without burning the bottoms of our feet. I could see it and feel it as if I were there and not tucked into my bed here. Mom tried but couldn’t carry little Ike and me across the sand at the same time. Dad came running, almost flying, and scooped us up. I remember watching the baby robins on his forearm frantically jumping, trying to reach the worm but never quite reaching it. He carried us for what must have been a mile, maybe more, or maybe not so far at all, but he did deliver us safely to our blanket and then even raced back to get Mom!
To me that tattooed robin meant that my dad, August Aloysius McCarther the Third, was the strongest, bravest person alive.
When I opened my eyes, he had turned and started away.
“Daddy,” I said, just a tad too loud, then said just a tad too low, “take this with you.”
I held out the tangled web of pink and blue cotton that was my treasured blankie.
“I’d be honored. But won’t you need it?”
“I think you will need it more.”
“You’re a very courageous girl, Esmerelda Swishback McCarther. One day you’ll make a great soldier.”
“You won’t forget to bring it back?”
He shook his head, sharp-saluted, and marched away.
I think every single one of my animals wanted to cry, from my frayed aardvark, Alvin, to Zelda, my zebra. I pulled my goat, Gabriella, closer; her usually clear eyes began to fog, and my walrus, Wallace’s, marble eyeballs got moist. I knew that if I started even a whimper they, all thirty-two of them, would join in. We would most surely wake the entire neighborhood with our sad cries and lonely howls and fill my bed with tears. Under the covers I squeezed Pete my python’s tail tight, then dug my nails into my palm, so I wouldn’t cry. And since I didn’t, they didn’t.
My dad’s best buddy is Supply Sergeant Gabe Sutler. Dad says he has known him since “basic” (which is the beginning of being in the army). Gabe’s job is to make sure every soldier has everything they need, from butter to bullets. By accident, a company once sent Gabe a box of stuffed goats instead of a crate of overcoats. This was unlucky for the army but lucky for me.
“O
ne hundred days and ninety-nine nights is a long time,” Ms. Pitcher, my teacher, threw out to the class. “How many daddies or mommies are away?”
Open hands sprouted like spring flowers. Arthur’s father was in the air force and Martina’s mom was in the marines, Pedro’s pop was in the paratroopers and Brid-get’s older brother was in the navy.
I wasn’t alone.
“Why?” Ms. Pitcher pop-quizzed. “Why?”
That was a hard question. Why, I wondered. There was a war. He was in the army. The president. Duty. He was a McCarther. To protect me . . .
“Because that’s how long a tour of duty is,” replied Pedro. “When they go to fight they are sent for one hundred days and ninety-nine nights. After they do this, they come home.”
“Very good, Pedro. A tour of duty.”
“It’s a long time.” The words rolled heavily from my lips and lazy-lolled across my desk.
“Not really, Esme, no. If you look at these days differently it will go by — like that.” Ms. Pitcher snapped her fingers to emphasize the “like that” part.
“One hundred days and ninety-nine nights sounds like forever, but it is also only fifteen Saturdays, and that doesn’t. And if you say three months, well, that doesn’t seem like a long haul at all.”
Arthur, Pedro, Martina and me all forced smiles and gratefully agreed, but no matter how our teacher added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided the days, to us, it was still an awfully long time.
After lunch, Martina and I playground-played on the seesaw. We tried to count one hundred times up and ninety-nine times down, but somewhere around fifty we would forget and have to start again.
Martina and I were best friends. We sat across from each other in class, sat across from each other at lunch, and sat across from each other on the seesaw during recess. She had long brown hair and short brown eyes, just like me. And light brown skin and heavy brown eyebrows, not at all like me.
Ms. Pitcher said we were like “two peas in a pod.” We had no idea what she meant, and since neither of us really liked peas we didn’t consider it any sort of compliment. But since Ms. Pitcher was a grown-up and our teacher and we mostly liked her, we forced smiles and sort of agreed.
“Let’s play king and queen,” Martina requested. One of the reasons we liked each other so much was because we both loved to play made-up games.
“And they are our villagers!” I added, motioning to our playground-scattered classmates.
Slowly and carefully, I eased off my side of the “see” and then pushed down with all my weight to gently let her off her side, the “saw.”
We climbed the cold metal bars to the top of the jungle gym, where we could see our whole playground kingdom.
Pedro and Arthur were playing catch in the far corner. Bridget and her little brother, Walter, were wandering near the swings. Richie C. and Georgina B., whom Martina and I did not get along with so much, were hogging the water fountain. Ike was trampolining his butt against the chain-link fence, arguing with his friend Stony Jackson. For best friends they sure liked to argue a lot.
“Ike!” I yelled to get his attention, but the playground was too loud. Stony was tiny for his age, and Ike tall for his, so he towered over his friend. But Stony was “tough as nails and had a chip on his shoulder.” At least that is what Dad had once admiringly observed while we were sitting on the front stoop watching them play-wrestle. Dads can be silly.
The two boys stopped arguing and scrambled happily around the swings, playing tag.
“You be the queen,” Martina barely suggested and mostly ordered.
“On Monday you were the teacher and I was the student — remember?” I reminded her.
“But yesterday you were the princess and I was the evil stepped-on sister!”
“Evil stepsister.” As soon as the correction slipped my lips, I realized I shouldn’t have said that and that I would be the queen today.
“Okay, I’ll be the queen first. Then how about we switch in the middle?” After being mean and correcting her, the best I could hope for was halvsies.
“Cool.”
We stood atop the bars of the jungle gym barking orders to our loyal subjects, who scurried this way and that.
“I want to have a royal ball that will be remembered forever!” Martina grandly announced.
“A dress of gold and diamonds for your queen!
“Bring me my magic sword!
“Bring me my ruby crown!”
Food, sodas, shoes, jewels, clowns, and music. We commanded and planned, ordered and laughed, imagining every last detail of the grand ball. Then as our dessert of chocolate strawberries, chocolate cake, and chocolate ice cream was being served, the end-of-recess bell rang. Balancing on the round bar, Martina rose up to give a final order. She swept her hand across her body and commanded, “To war! Follow my magic sword and defend our castle.”
“All to battle. Defend your queen and king!” I added so enthusiastically that I lost my balance and wobbled down onto the bars, barely catching myself from falling farther.
Across our playground kingdom, our pretend villagers and very real classmates scooped up their book bags and streamed toward the big metal push doors where our arm-crossed teachers waited.
“To war! To war!” we again urged.
Martina and I laughed and laughed at the shoving students trying to funnel into the doorway. Exhausted, gasping for breath, we sat hooking our feet under a bar and watched the final boys, who had been playing basketball at the far end fence. Giggling, playfully pushing, still rhythmic ball-bouncing, they disappeared through the doors.
“To war . . . ,” Martina barely whispered under her breath, breaking the momentary quiet of the emptied playground.
“To war . . . ,” I soft-echoed to no one in particular.
“You girls get down right this minute. Martina! Esme! Recess is over.”
This direct order set Martina’s mouth straight. Sad at being relieved of command, she dropped to the ground.
On top of the jungle gym in the middle of the empty school playground, for one single moment, I was really alone. Half that moment felt really good, and then for the other half it felt really, really scary.
“Esmerelda! Now!”