Fur poked from the flap at the top. I pulled out a monkey dressed in a top hat and tails. It had a monocle over one brown, beady eye. It looked a lot like Mr. Peanut.
You like it? My father tickled the fuzz that tufted the top of its minuscule cravat. My dad made it for me when I was your age. Now it’s yours.
A silk rose was pinned to its tuxedo jacket. It was very well rendered: the mouth proportioned perfectly, teeth set in even white lines. Its tail curved around its body, swirling into a gentle swoop that wrapped around the top of a tiny lacquered cane. I stared at its small, snickering face and wanted to throw it off the porch. It looked just like the monkey from that movie that gave everyone the plague.
Thanks, I love it, I said, trying to hide my disgust. Its fur felt too slick, like it was wet.
I held it gingerly as my brother ate pink and yellow Pez straight from a Batman-shaped dispenser. My mother gathered up the breakfast plates, gluey with cinnamon roll remnants, juice glasses peppered with pulp dried along their sides. Staring down at me, my father took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. His lips were pale and there was a bright red sore in the crease.
Where’s mine? Milo asked, shuffling on his knees in the wreck of wrapping paper. Do I get something special from Grandpa too?
Our father got up without responding and left us out on the porch.
You wanna hold it? I held out the monkey and wiggled it, the hat flapping back and forth on its head.
Milo sucked his lip between his teeth and blinked rapidly. Keep it, he said. It’s ugly.
That night my father cleared a space on the shelves opposite my bed, shoving down the music box with the ballerina that twisted awkwardly to the tune of Beethoven’s Fifth and the Russian nesting dolls that told the story of the three bears. He set the monkey, named Captain Peterbrook, smack in the center. The monkey leaned on its cane, one spindly arm permanently raised to its monocle.
Now that looks pretty good. My father adjusted it a few more times, carefully twisting the body so it’d get the best light. He coughed and leaned against the wall for a second before adjusting the monkey again. There. Perfect.
My parents left the door open as they always did, light from the hall coming in to cast a glow across the popcorn ceiling. A stripe lit Captain Peterbrook, who looked like an escapee from a mental asylum. I turned and focused on the opposite wall, trying not to think about the monkey climbing down in the middle of the night, its cane tapping lightly against the floor. I was still awake an hour later, listening to the murmur of my parents’ voices from the living room.
If I get through this, it’ll be a miracle.
Could you please stop. My mother’s voice sounded thick, as if she’d been crying. Just for one day. It’s Christmas.
I am telling you, I will never do this again. There’s no goddamn way.
Captain Peterbrook leered down at me from its perch, teeth bright and sharp.
Brynn loved it. She rocked it like a baby and cooed nonsense at its ugly face, wanting to undress it like a Barbie doll. His little outfit! It’s so sweet! She clutched it too tightly to her chest and its hat dislodged. If you don’t want him, can I have him?
I didn’t want the monkey, but I worried what my father would say if he saw it missing. He hadn’t gone into work the entire week after Christmas. His face was gaunt as a skeleton. The red chafing at his lips had gotten so bad he’d started rubbing Vaseline on the corners. Just play with him when you come over.
She pulled a plastic comb from her purse and brushed the fine, soft fur of its belly under its tuxedo jacket. The monkey lay facedown on her lap, one of its sly hands partly up her skirt. I’ll take such good care of him, I promise.
A frog tank would have fit perfectly on the shelf, or even a cage for a hamster. Instead there was only the monkey, a pinched, ugly thing with its dusty coat of fur and its creepy undertaker’s suit. It was the exact opposite of what I’d wanted—something warm and loving, something brand new that could’ve been only mine.
Brynn took the monkey to school and let everyone have a turn playing with it. By the end of the day, it was completely undressed. There were bits of it on the school bus, fur lining the floor, sticking to people’s shoes. Without its clothes, it looked more human and ashamed. There were holes in its neck from where the tuxedo shirt had detached. I felt like crying to see it like that, all bare and helpless.
Alone in my room, I stared at the empty space on the shelf where the monkey used to live. Something living—a lovebird, even a goldfish—would have made any of this seem more bearable. I took the other taxidermied pieces from my room and tossed them under the bed: the hummingbird sipping at a delicate pink hibiscus, my orange kitten with its eyes sealed shut, the deer skin I kept at the foot of my bed the way someone might throw a blanket.
I wrote Brynn’s name in Sharpie on the bumper of my sneaker, next to my own. I connected our names with fat, lopsided hearts, pressing my fingers to my lips and then to the rubber. Then I scrubbed everything out until there was just a big black mess.
5
Lolee and I sat at the kitchen counter at my parents’ house playing Jenga and swapping period stories. They got progressively more graphic as we pulled the blocks free of the wobbling stack, placing them gently on top.
“This one time I passed a clot the size of a garden slug. It got stuck to the side of the toilet. When I crushed it in my fingers, it felt like one too.” Lolee dropped her tile lightly, barely wiggling the tower.
I poked at several likely prospects. “Once I pulled out a tampon in a public bathroom. When I threw it at the little metal garbage can, it fell on the floor and rolled under the stall. Landed next to a woman’s shoe.”
“Never happened.”
“Swear to God.”
“Did she step on it?”
A block slipped free and everything swayed, but didn’t tip. “She kind of kicked it a little.”
“Nasty.” The electronic timer went off for the slice-and-bake cookies. She grabbed the oven mitts, two cartoon dinosaurs that bit either end of the baking sheet. We were playing at a slumber party, but really I was babysitting because everyone else was busy and Lolee was at an age deemed too young to stay by herself, which roughly translated to might invite a boy over to the house and get promiscuous.
It was something my mother had asked of me, not Milo. My brother never knew what his daughter was doing. When Lolee needed someone, she called me or her grandmother. Milo was like a fun uncle who remembered to bring home ice cream, the kind of dad who took you to the amusement park instead of making you do your homework. Lolee loved him, but I could tell she didn’t trust him to be there for her. Milo would tell you he’d show up for breakfast, and you’d see him two weeks later when he stopped by with beer. No clue what he’d done. Smiling, happy. Nonchalant.
I was the one who’d talked to Lolee about her body and what she could expect from it. I’d stumbled over my words, showing her the instructions from the box of tampons as a kind of how-to guide. Pointing out the uterus, the cervix, the little line drawings in baby pink and white, cartoon fingers and cartoon vaginas. She’d laughed and then I’d laughed, and it was awkward, but at least it was done.
Lolee sat back down across from me, hooking her bare feet onto the rungs of my stool. “I stained the mattress pretty bad one time,” she said. “Bled through my underwear, my nightgown, both sets of sheets, and the comforter. I was having a dream that I was swimming in the lake.”