That is why I tell people my mother fought off fifty million boatloads of cancers with a single sword.
“She was the bravest woman to ever live,” I tell people.
Before going to bed, I took the photo of Mom that I had in a frame on my desk and, in my head so that I didn’t wake anybody else, sung her praise. If you think about someone before going to sleep, sometimes you dream of them. In my dreams sometimes I think that Mom died and became a Valkyrie, that one day, when I am in a battle, she will take me with her to Valhalla.
chapter two
It is important to have a schedule to follow, so that everyone knows where you are and you know what to do.
For example:
On Mondays, I go to the library after breakfast to read the books about Vikings. Gert comes home from school and we have lunch together. I like to also play basketball on Mondays, on the basketball court outside of the apartment building.
On Tuesdays, I see Dr. Laird during the day for one hour, then I have Recreation Time at the Community Center.
On Wednesdays, I go to the library to read National Geographic magazine, to see if any new Viking pictures are in them. I also like to look at the pictures of animals.
On Thursdays, Gert and I see Dr. Laird together. Gert has no classes on Thursdays, so we go somewhere fun together on that day too.
On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, I go to the Community Center for Recreation Time, Literacy Class, or Social Class.
My birthday party was on a Monday, and the next morning was Tuesday, so according to the schedule I would be seeing Dr. Laird.
Normally we leave the house at 11:15 a.m. in order to get to Dr. Laird’s by 12 p.m. Today, Gert said, our schedule was different. He had gotten a very important call and said we would eat breakfast earlier and leave the house earlier, because we had a place we needed to go first.
“Is it another birthday surprise?” I asked.
“More like an errand,” Gert said, and he told me not to worry about it.
With Gert, I do not mind going to new places. If I am alone, I do not like new places, since it’s easy to become lost and kidnapped and held for ransom.
I also like Gert’s car, which he keeps very clean and shiny.
* * *
The place Gert took me to before Dr. Laird’s was not a place I had been before. There were a bunch of houses with dead flowers and lawns that looked like they hadn’t been cut in a long time. All of the houses were orange and yellow and looked very tired. Some had shrubs, and the leaves were brown and the grass on the lawns was brown and thirsty for water.
Gert pulled over by one of the houses, with a metal front door that had no screen. In front were two white plastic lawn chairs.
He parked the car and unbuckled his seat belt and turned the music off and the car engine grumbled until it was quiet.
“Where are we?” I asked. “These houses look sick.”
“Nowhere. Just chill out and I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
“One hundred and twenty seconds,” I said. “Which is two minutes.”
“I don’t mean literally two minutes,” Gert said.
“So then literally how long?”
He sighed. “Fifteen minutes. Tops. But if I take longer, don’t freak out.”
This is a problem Gert has: he likes to not be precise, a Word of Today that I use a lot because it helps me know exactly what to expect. When you are the opposite of precise, imprecise or very general, people do not know when something is going to happen, or how.
I set my watch for fifteen minutes.
“Will that give us enough time to get to Dr. Laird’s? Because he gets angry when you make me late.”
“We’ll be fine. Plenty of time. Now roll down the windows so you don’t boil to death.”
Gert walked up the sidewalk toward the house, to the door, and I smelled my armpits. He knocked and it opened, and he went inside. After rolling the windows down I took out my phone and texted Marxy and asked him what he was doing. He texted back and said Nothing and asked what I was doing, and I said waiting for Gert to come out of a house so we could go to Dr. Laird’s.
He sent a smiley face that was kissing and hearts and said his mother told him to put his phone away. I sent him a picture of a smiley face and sunglasses, and also a fist emoticon to show that we were powerful.
Across the street, a woman in a green bikini sat in front of two young children who were splashing in a blue plastic pool. They started wrestling with each other and the woman in the bikini told them to quit roughhousing. They kept going so she put down her drink and got up and grabbed the child who had started the wrestling by the arm. She pulled him up and pulled down his pants and started hitting his backside until he started crying.
I did not want to keep looking at that.
In my opinion, parents should never hit their children. Uncle Richard used to hit Gert when he was younger. AK47 says it leads to emotional problems.
I turned away from the woman and watched the house Gert went into, which was number 334.
The time was 10:41 a.m. Eleven minutes had passed by. My appointment with Dr. Laird was always at 12 p.m.
We had exactly one hour and nineteen minutes to get there.
Since I did not know where we were, I could not do my problem-solving and minus the time it would take to drive from where we were to Dr. Laird’s office, which is downtown.
Gert came out of the house and walked to the car. It had been twelve minutes.
“Come in with me,” he said.
“But you said I should stay here.”
“I know. But this is going to take a bit longer than I thought.”
“We have one hour and seventeen minutes before we have to be at Dr. Laird’s,” I said, and Gert told me it would be fine, that we had plenty of time.
While walking I tried to take Gert’s hand and he did not want to hold hands. “Not now,” he said, and before we got to the door he told me to try not to say anything. “Just be quiet, and if you get asked questions, just answer them with as few words as possible. Okay?”
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“Got it?”
He took my wrist and squeezed it until it started hurting. I pulled my hand away.
“Got it, okay. Jeez. Hurting children causes emotional unstability as adults,” I said, and the woman in the green bikini watched us, while one of the children cried. He would be emotionally unstable when he got older.
That was a fact.
Inside, the house smelled like cigarettes and marijuana smoke. There was the sound of a toilet flushing and a door opened down the hall. Then a large man with tattoos came out and opened his arms. Gert said that his name was Toucan and that he was very important, so I should be polite. Toucan had a cigarette in his mouth and didn’t care when the ash fell off it and onto the floor.
“So you are the famous Zelda,” he said to me, and he dabbed Gert and held out his hand to dab me.
I stared at his hand.
“Is my hand dirty?” he asked me, and looked at Gert. “Why isn’t she dabbing?”
Gert said, “It’s one of her things. Zelda, come on. Dab the man.”
One of my rules is that I use dabs for people who I like, or who have earned my respect. Hugs are for members of my tribe only. I do not like being touched at all by strangers, and do not like being in places with a lot of people.