All About Sam (4 page)

"Sam, I do wish you would be trained," his mother said one day as she was changing his diaper.

"No," said Sam. He said it very sweetly and smiled.

He didn't know what she meant. But he said no anyway. Sam liked saying no. It was an easier word to say than yes. And it always had a more interesting effect. When he said no, people sighed and frowned and scrunched their faces up. Sometimes his sister, Anastasia, got so mad that she shrieked when Sam said no.

Once, when Anastasia was getting Sam dressed for bed, she asked him, "Do you want to wear these pajamas, Sam? The ones with teddy bears on them?" She held them up.

"No," said Sam.

"Well," said Anastasia, "how about these? The ones with elephants?"

"No," said Sam.

Anastasia sighed and frowned and scrunched her face up. Soon, Sam knew, she would shriek. He waited, happily, for that.

His sister got another pair of pajamas. "These, then," she said. "The blue ones with a hole in the foot."

"No," Sam said loudly.

Then she shrieked. "MOM! Sam says no to
everything
!"

His mother was scrubbing the bathtub and picking up all the boats that Sam had been sailing during his bath. "Of course he does," she told Anastasia. "He's in the middle of the Terrible Twos."

Sam looked around himself with interest. He didn't see Terrible Twos anyplace. He was in the middle of the room, standing there wearing his Pampers.

He didn't know what his mother was talking about half the time. He was in the middle of the apartment. He was in the middle of the
rug.
Soon he would be in the middle of his crib. How could he be in the middle of the Terrible Twos? If there were Terrible Twos around, he couldn't see them.

Later that night, wearing his pajamas with teddy bears, after his light was out, he peeked out from under the covers to see if the Terrible Twos were out there. They sounded scary.

They weren't anywhere around, and he was quite certain his mother had been wrong. But he put his pillow over his head, just in case.

"If you would be trained," his mother said, buttoning his overalls, "you would be a big boy. You could dress yourself. You would never be wet. You wouldn't have to have that dumb box of Pampers."

Sam thought about that after he scampered away to play with his blocks. He
liked
that box of Pampers. He could stand on it and reach things. There was a lot of interesting stuff in Anastasia's room, on her desk: crayons, and some chewing gum, and a deck of cards with Ks and Qs, and a brand new goldfish, Frank the Second, in a bowl.

Sam planned to drag his Pampers box into Anastasia's room some day soon, when no one was looking, and stand on it and reach the top of her desk.

He would do his father's desk, too, because his father had a typewriter, and Sam liked to type stuff.

So it made no sense to Sam at all, when his mother said that about not having to have the box of Pampers anymore. He
needed
that big box of Pampers.

Still, he was fascinated by the idea of being "trained."

Sam knew about trains. He had books about trains. His favorite was
The Little Engine That Could.
Sometimes he made Mom read it to him two times before he went to sleep.

'"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,'" he and his mom would say together. Then: '"I thought I could! I thought I could!'" Sam loved that part best.

So he liked the idea of being trained himself. He stopped saying "no" when his mother sighed and said, "I wish you would be trained, Sam." He began saying "maybe."

He began saying "chugga chugga chugga" when he walked down the hall of the apartment. He was practicing being trained.

One day his mother came home from shopping. Sam was playing on the living room floor while his father watched a baseball game on TV. His father was
supposed
to be watching Sam; before she left, his mother had said, "Myron, will you watch Sam while I do the shopping?" And his father had said, "Sure." But he hadn't
really
watched Sam at all. He watched a baseball game instead.

When his mom came home, she said, "Sam, I brought you a present."

"Animal crackers?" Sam asked. Often she brought him a little box of animal crackers.

"Nope," his mother said. She reached into the bag she was holding and pulled out a little package. "Look! I brought you training pants!"

Sam took the little package and looked at it with interest. Training pants. He hadn't even known that train people wore special pants. Maybe he hadn't looked carefully enough at his favorite book.

He ran to get
The Little Engine That Could.
He sat down on the floor and turned the pages to look at the pictures again. The
train
didn't wear pants. The engineer wore pants, but they weren't white like the pants his mother had bought for him. The train engineer wore a special hat, though. It was striped, blue and white. He wore it on every page except the last, because on the last page, the engineer's hat flew off, right into the air, when the train said, "I thought I could!"

Sam trotted back to the living room, where his dad was still watching baseball.

"I want a training hat," Sam said.

"Ask your mom," Dad said. "She's in the kitchen."

Sam picked up the little package of training pants and went to the kitchen. "I don't want these," he said. "I want a training
hat.
"

His mother sighed. "Look, Sam," she said. Carefully she opened up the package. She took out three pairs of pants. "See? They're just like Daddy's."

Sam looked. They
were
just like Daddy's, only smaller. Sometimes, while Sam watched, his daddy stood in the bathroom and shaved carefully around his beard. Sometimes his daddy wore training pants when he was shaving.

Sometimes his daddy walked down the hall to his bedroom, wearing training pants. But he never said "chugga chugga chugga."

"Don't you want to be like Daddy?" his mother asked.

Sam thought about that. He didn't want to have a beard, especially. He didn't want to watch baseball on TV. He loved his daddy, but he didn't want to be like his daddy, especially.

He wanted to be like the train guy in the book, and drive an engine, and wear a blue-and-white striped hat.

So Sam said "No" and gave the training pants back to his mother.

She looked exasperated. "Sam," she said, "don't you want to be toilet trained?"

Toilet
trained? What did
that
mean? That was the weirdest thing he had ever heard. He wouldn't mind being freight trained. He wouldn't mind being passenger trained. He would
love
being circus trained, like the train in his favorite book.

But
toilet
trained?

"
No,
" said Sam loudly. "
No.
No. No no no no no no."

And his mother began to shriek, just the way Anastasia did. "I CAN'T STAND THE TERRIBLE TWOS!" his mother shrieked.

Sam looked around, but the mysterious Terrible Twos were still invisible.

"I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I could," Sam sang as he chugga-chugged down the hall.

"Sam," Anastasia said in a serious voice, "I have something very important to tell you. Horrible, awful news. You're going to hate it just as much as I do."

"What?" Sam asked. Anastasia had just changed his diapers and now she was trying to snap up his overalls. He liked it better with his legs bare, so he wiggled about.

"Hold still," Anastasia said, "and listen."

Sam stayed very still. He listened.

"We're moving," Anastasia said.

Sam stared at her. She was mistaken. He was being absolutely still. He wasn't moving at all.

"I'm not moving," Sam said.

"Yes, you are," Anastasia said. "We all are. Our whole family."

He continued to stare at her. It was true that she was moving. She was snapping his overalls, and in a minute she would put his sneakers on him, and tie them, which meant that her hands would be moving.

From the kitchen, he could hear his mom's footsteps as she walked from the stove to the refrigerator to the sink. His mom was certainly moving.

He didn't know about Dad. But it was almost the time when Dad would be getting home from atwork, so probably Dad was moving, too.

But Sam was absolutely motionless. So Anastasia was wrong.

"I'm not moving," Sam whispered. He whispered it so that not even his lips would be moving.

Anastasia tied both of his sneakers. She sighed. "Yes, you are," she said mournfully. "You have no choice." She adjusted his overalls, lifted him, and stood him on the floor.

Sam was very still. He tried not even to breathe. "I'm still not moving," he whispered.

"Mom!" Anastasia called toward the kitchen. "Sam's on my side! Sam says that he is absolutely not moving!"

His mother appeared in the doorway. "We'll discuss it later," she said. "Sam? You want to help me frost some cupcakes?"

"Sure," Sam said. He began to breathe again. He ran toward the kitchen. "Now I
am
moving," he called to his sister. "I like moving."

Anastasia glared at him. "Traitor," she said.

Sam loved moving day. Men with tattoos on their arms came in and out of the apartment. Sam had never before seen anyone with tattoos.

One man had a fish, another man had a dragon, and the third had an anchor.

Sam decided that when he grew up, he would be a moving man, so that he could have tattoos. When no one was looking, he took a blue marker and made himself the beginning of a tattoo on one arm. Possibly it was the beginning of a dragon.

The moving men carried everything to their truck. They carried the living room couch. When they picked up the couch, their tattoos bulged.

"Oh, no!" said Sam's mom, after the moving men picked up the couch. "That's disgusting!"

Sam looked where she was pointing. He didn't think it was disgusting at all. He thought it was
wonderful.

A whole lot of lost stuff appeared on the rug where the couch had been. There were three socks, each covered with gray dust. There was the plastic pretzel that Sam remembered from when he was a baby just getting teeth. There was some green paper, crumpled up. Anastasia grabbed it.

"A dollar!" she said. "Finders keepers!"

That was okay. Sam found four pennies.

"What's
this?
" Mrs. Krupnik asked, with a look on her face that meant "yuck." She poked something with the toe of her sandal.

"I dunno," Anastasia said. "It's something gross."

Sam knew what it was. But he didn't tell them. It was part of a lunch that he hadn't wanted to eat, once, quite a long time ago. Tuna fish sandwich. When he had stuffed it under the couch, he had thought it would disappear forever.

He began to remember all the other things he had hidden in other places. A vitamin pill under the washing machine. A partly chewed cucumber. He had poked that under the radiator in Dad's study.

And broccoli. Sam hated broccoli. Every time they had broccoli for dinner, Sam waited until no one was looking, and he hid his broccoli in his lap or his pocket. Then, later, he tucked it under the corner of the living room rug and squashed it down carefully with his foot. There was a whole year's supply of broccoli there by now. A mountain of broccoli, all squashed. Sam had always thought that he would never get to see it again. He had thought that it had disappeared forever.

Now, on moving day, he waited. The living room rug was one of the very last things. Sam had to wait while the movers did everything else: the beds, the desks, the tables and chairs.

Finally, after all the furniture was in the truck, they returned to the living room. One of them—the one with the blue-and-red dragon tattoo—leaned down to begin to roll the end of the rug.

But Mrs. Krupnik stopped him. "No," she said. "Not the rug."

Sam looked at her in surprise. He wanted very much to see what had happened to his broccoli, especially now that he had seen how his tuna fish sandwich had turned an interesting shade of blue.

"We're leaving the rug here," his mom told the moving man. The man shrugged and dropped the edge of the rug back down on the floor.

"Why?" Sam asked. "Why can't we take the rug?"

"Dad and I bought a new rug for the living room in the new house," his mom said. "We'll leave this one for the people who move in here. They can decide what to do with it."

"Why? Why don't we keep it?"

His mom frowned. She kicked at the rug with her toe. "It's gotten old," she said. "I used to like this rug. The color is so nice. But somehow, it's lost its shape. It doesn't lie flat the way it should. We'll just leave it as a surprise for the next people," she told Sam. "Maybe they'll be really happy to have a free rug."

And broccoli, Sam thought. Lots of free broccoli, too.

The new house was very, very different from the old apartment.

It was much, much bigger.

There were three floors instead of just one. Front stairs and back stairs.

There were lots of rooms. Three bathrooms instead of just one. More closets than Sam could count.