I have a big part in the play this year, and I'm a little bit excited because everybody good is coming to see it. My mom and dad, and my brother but he's too little to really see it, and Uncle Jim and Aunt Heather and Warrick, Nick and Lindsay too. Aunt Catherine can't come because she's covering for someone, but that's okay.
I get to be the tree. I
know that sounds really dumb, but
really, the whole play is kind of that way, but the tree is important.
I have
to shelter the princess, and hold the treasure, and keep the rain off
the
prince and in the end when they get married, I get to be the canopy for
the
bride and groom and they even get to carve their names in me, but not
for real.
Mrs. Blake doesn’t trust anybody with knives, and especially
Whittaker Mead who
plays Prince Jon. She says giving HIM a knife is a good way for the
play to end
up on the eleven o’clock news, and that we’ll just paint
the names on my trunk
and cover it with an extra piece of bark that we can peel off at the
end.
Dad thinks it’s
funny that I’m a tree because he says I
never stand still for anything. He told Mom he’s going to take
pictures as
evidence to show at work. Mom didn’t think that was funny. She
told him that I
got the part because I’m tall and dignified and Mrs. Blake knows
I can do a
good job. Then Dad said he couldn’t take pictures of me anyway
because I wasn’t
lying down with chalk around me. Mom hit him with one of Squirt’s
diapers.
A clean one.
Anyway, Mom helped me
with the costume, which is this big
cardboard tube with armholes. I have a hole cut out for my face, and I
have to
carry these branches of paper mâché sticks with green
tissue paper on them in
my hands to make me look like a Sheltering Oak. Dad said I looked like
a big
brown stalk of broccoli, and that hurt my feelings. So then he said he
was
sorry, and helped put a bird nest up in my branches. It was a real one
from the
back yard, and he told me it would add auth-a-ticy or something to my
costume.
I think it looks neat. I have brown sneakers and brown socks so they
look like
roots when I’m standing.
Dad helped me learn my
lines. Well, not really. I’m a tree,
so I don’t get to talk. But I have to wave my branches at the
right places. So
when Dad reads Princess Julie’s lines I have to know when to
beckon her closer.
“Alas, I am lost
and alone in this unfriendly forest . . .“
he reads in a sort of high girly voice. On the sofa, Mom starts
laughing, and
that makes Squirt start wiggling because he always thinks it’s
about him.
“No heckling from
the audience,” Dad tells her, and Mom
coughs and says she’s sorry, but she thought his boxers were
looser than that,
whatever THAT means. And Dad makes a snorting noise and says something
about
making her check on it later.
Anyway, I beckon, and Dad
crouches down so I can shelter
him. I have to stretch to get my branch over his head. It’s a
good thing Kaysha
Ngu is a lot shorter than my dad.
“Now this is the
part were the orchestra makes it thunder,”
I tell him, and he nods. “Drums and cymbals and stuff.
Don’t be scared, but
it’s going to be really LOUD,” I tell him.
“I’ll do my
best to be brave,” he tells me, and then he
winks. Dad knows I don’t like thunder. I love the lightning,
it’s so pretty,
but when the big booms start I like to be squashed up right against him
or Mom.
And Dad flips the pages
to my next scene where Prince Jon
and Princess Julie meet under me and hide the treasure from her wicked
uncle.
Now Mom has to help, and she says she wants to read the bad guy lines,
and
Squirt can be Prince Jon. Dad says that’s typecasting, and she
tells him who’s
heckling now. I want them both to hurry up because I need to go to the
bathroom
soon, so I just wave my branches and Squirt yells because when I do
that, it
scares him.
He’s such a baby.
His hair is as curly as Dad’s but it’s
sort of blonde, and his eyes are deep brown like Mom’s. He likes
to pick stuff
up and throw it, and now that he can almost walk I have to keep my
Barbies in
my room because he likes to bite their heads. Once he carried one in
his mouth
by her hair, and Mom said he had Grissom jeans, but he was wearing
overalls and
I told her that.
So Squirt yells and Dad
picks him up so he can see my face
in the tree trunk and that makes his eyes go big. Mom is reading the
wicked
uncle part and sort of choking.
“Give me your
hidden treasure, Princess,” Mom growls at Dad.
He looks at me.
“Do I have
to?”
“Nope,” I
tell him, “He’s going to get chased off by Prince
Jon with a sword. The teacher says he gets stabbed in the fray. Is that
near
your heart?”
“Not quite,”
Mom murmurs, setting Squirt down. “Okay pal,
it’s up to you to chase me—“ she starts pretending to
run.
Squirt gets so excited he
falls down and starts giggling,
then climbs up and goes after mom. Dad just watches them and then
whispers to
me.
“Somehow, I
don’t think your mom’s really trying too hard to
get away—“
***
*** ***
The bad thing about the
night the play is on is it’s
raining. Not a lot, but sort of misty outside. Mom hopes it
doesn’t ruin my
costume, so she puts it in a big trash bag and then in the back of the
car. I
have to wear my black leotard and my brown socks and sneakers and my
big CRIMELAB
sweatshirt. It was one of Mom’s old ones, and I love it because
it’s got a real
bullet hole in it, right on the sleeve. Mom keeps saying she’s
going to sew it
up, but I won’t let her. It’s from when she helped bring in
a bad guy. He
showed up when she and Dad were at a scene, and he tried to shoot Dad.
That
made mom so Mad because she didn’t have her gun, so she threw her
kit at him,
and when he fired the shot right through the corner of it and it went
sideways
and through her sweatshirt.
Dad says he almost had a
heart attack, and I should never
EVER make mom really angry because she does very ass-na-nine things
when she’s
that mad. I think she was really brave because she saved him, but Dad
says he
felt sort of sorry for the bad guy who had to sit with Mom in the back
of the
police car all the way to the station. Dad says Mom gave everybody an
education
that day.
Some of the police are
still scared of my mom.
Anyway, Mom takes me to
the school and I meet up with
Angeline and Kaysha and Whittaker in the multipurpose room. Whittaker
thinks
he’s SO great because he’s got curly hair but I know he
cheats at math. He’s got
his crown on, and his mother is chasing him to put some make up on his
eyes.
Kaysha has her costume on and I wish I was the princess, but Angeline
says I’m
a great tree and it will be fun. She’s going to be a lady-in
waiting.
And Mrs. Blake makes us
all take our marks that means our
places. I don’t have my costume on yet, but I can see Dad over on
the side with
it, waiting until Miss Blake is done talking to us. He’s looking
at the ceiling
and I can tell he’s checking for spiders. Whenever he goes to a
place with a
big ceiling he always looks up for them. If we go somewhere and I spot
one
before he does he gives me a dime. When we went to the
I look up and I can see
where he’s looking—there’s a big
grey blob in one corner that’s a thick cobweb. It might even be
an egg sac like
Dad helps me into my tree
suit and gives me a little squeeze
on my hand holding a branch.
“Remember Bingo, BE
the tree—“ he says to me, all mysterious
even though he’s smiling. I love my dad’s smile.
“Okay.”
***
*** ***
Mom and Dad and Squirt
are in the middle on the side of the
audience. Squirt is standing on Dad’s lap and he keeps trying to
jump. Dad
keeps making unhappy faces when Squirt does that. I can see Warrick
standing in
the back because it’s crowded, but he’s waving when I look
at him. We are
almost at the part where the princess and the ladies in waiting are
supposed to
sing about running into the forest when the fire alarm goes off.
Mrs. Blake looks over at
Mr. Kossoff the principal, and he
takes the big microphone from where the CD player is. It squeaks.
“Ladies and
gentlemen looks like we have an unexpected
intermission here—if you would please quickly and quietly move to
the exits,
we’ll get this matter settled and resume the play as soon as we
can. The exits
are clearly marked, no running please,” he says, just like he
does on the
intercom when we have a drill in the day. Mrs. Blake is making us line
up, and
I’m right by Whittaker. Mom’s stuffing Squirt in his
stroller and he’s yelling about
it. Dad and Warrick must be outside already because I don’t see
them.
It’s hard to walk
in my tree. I’m supposed to stand still
most of the time. I make it down the steps of the stage and get to the
door,
but Whittaker bumps me. I start to fall, but I stay upright and go
around the
corner of the MP room because I’m spinning and hitting the wall a
little bit. I
try to turn around but I’m dizzy so I wait a minute.
The alarm is still going.
I hate fire drills. We never have
any fires, and we STILL have to go out, even when it’s raining. I
turn around
to go back to the MP door when I hear somebody running and BAM!
I get run over. Knocked
down and my face hits the ground and
it HURTS! Somebody’s on top of me and they’re yelling and
squishing me HARD. My
tree is cracked and I wiggle and then I hear Warrick and Dad, and
there’s some
fighting noises and I’m trying real hard not to cry because my
nose is full of
blood.
Then I feel Dad’s
hands on my shoulders and he’s picking me
up, with his soothy voice like when Squirt’s really crying. And
when I hear it
I start crying because now it really hurts. Dad looks
“I’m sorry,
I’m sorry!”
“Shhhh, Sara-Mary,
it’s okay, it’s okay. Are you hurt,
honey?” Dad’s rubbing a babywipe on my face. It feels good
and then it stings.
I can see Warrick has somebody by the arms, but I don’t know who
it is, and I’m
sad that I can’t be a tree now because my trunk is torn and
smooshed down.
Dad gets me up, and walks
me around the MP building and both
mom and Mrs. Blake come over and they’re both fussing over me,
which is nice
and bad at the same time. Nobody but me cares that my tree is all
broken, and Mom
starts taking it off me while Mrs. Blake is still wiping my nose.
We all go back into the
MP room and Warrick comes over to
mom and tells her there was a B and E in progress in Mr.
Kossoff’s office which
is what set off the alarm, and that if I hadn’t stumped the perp
they wouldn’t
have caught him. Mom laughs a little and then tells Warrick not to save
the
rainforest, whatever THAT means.
So I get to be the tree
without a trunk. I hold up my
branches (which were okay) and even though I’m just in my brown
leotard and
socks and shoes everybody pretends I’m still the tree. I love
Kaysha because
she doesn’t laugh, and even though Whittaker looks like he wants
to, Mrs. Blake
is looking at him HARD so he doesn’t.
We get done and everybody
claps and claps and claps. I see Mom
and Squirt, and when we’re bowing I see Dad and Warrick in the
very back,
smiling and watching. And when we go off the stage, Warrick gives me a
flower
in green crinkly paper.
So it was good. My nose
was just a little bruised, and
everybody said I was just fine without my trunk, and Dad said the guy
who ran
me down was going to jail, but not for knocking me down, just for
trying to
steal in Mr. Kossoff’s office. And Dad and me and Mom and Squirt
all go to
Dairy Queen for cones because Warrick has to process. I give him a hug
first
though.
Squirt always makes a
mess with ice cream. He wants to hold
his own cone, and he sucks the scoop so hard it comes out, then he
cries
because it’s cold. He’s a dope. Mom has to clean him up a
lot.
“So, how’s
the nose, honey?” she asks me. I feel it a
little.
“Okay. But next
time I’m going to be a lady in waiting so I
don’t get run over. Being a tree is dangerous.”
“True,” Dad
says. Then he puts his hand on my shoulder and
rubs a little. “But given this family, you could always go into a
branch of law
enforcement.”
And that’s when Mom
starts laughing so hard part of her Blizzard
spills on Squirt.
END
