Help Me, Jacques Cousteau--excerpt
Heaven is a
Place That Starts With H
About nine o'clock my grandfather
pulls up in his convertible and says do
I want to go to the beach. He's got a dead dog in the back seat and when I say ‘what's that?’ he says it's
Rufus, but he doesn't turn around.
‘Aren't ya, boy?’ he asks, not looking
at it. After he leaves I try to ask my mother about it.
‘Never mind dear,’ she says ‘it's his way of coping, that's all.’
I wanted to go to the beach but I wasn't getting into the car with a dead dog.
There are ways of getting to the beach from my house and so I go out the back, run across several streets, sneak down into the ravine and head for the beach road. When I reach it I can see grandfather in his wide trunks standing in the water swishing it into the air, all stiff-legged like it was the Arctic ocean. Then he makes a big whoop, and throws himself in. The dog is still in the back seat and I can picture him asking it if it wants to swim, without ever looking at it. I figure one of these days he's going to look at it and say ‘Oh’, and then go bury it.
My grandfather is paddling around in the water. I go running in with my clothes on to swim with him. It is cold as the Arctic ocean. I have this urge to run out again faster than I went in, but I just float there, freezing. Grandfather notices my face.
‘What's the matter?’
‘Caught my toe that's all,’ I say, gritting my teeth.
When we get out my lips are blue, a sign my mother used to look for whenever we went swimming. If that happens, you're about to get hypothermia, she'd say. The thing my mother finds so thrilling about hypothermia is that you can still die even after they warm you up. It's like your brain stays cold and then dies slowly inside you while you sit there drinking cocoa.
We get back in the car and grandfather drives me back home, but I tell him I want to go out for burgers instead, and he thinks that's great. He turns the engine off and we glide by my house because my brother knows the sound of the car and would come running out. Then everybody would have to come and my grandfather might be forced to do something about the dog. It is getting kind of late and the street lights are on, but the sun hasn't quite disappeared yet. It kind of shoots out at you between the houses.
‘What do you want on your burger?’ grandfather asks.
‘Onions, relish, tomato, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, pickles, hot peppers, green peppers, mayonnaise, salt and black pepper.’
He turns to the little speaker. ‘Every damned thing you got.’
The speaker emits a crackle and a burst of gibberish and grandfather says ‘Right.’
‘I do calisthenics every day,’ my grandfather says between bites.
‘I sit on my bum. But I'm not fat.’
‘You ought to exercise, even at your age. It would build a good mind as well as a good body.’
‘Everything I eat has sugar in it.’
‘So?’
‘So I might get overstimulated and have a cardiac.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ I say and wipe my chin.
‘On top of that grandad, Andrew kicks me every chance he gets and I can't stay in one place that long. If I started doing sit-ups he'd be trying to sit on my face.’
‘Good point. You could always take up running.’
‘Flat feet.’
‘No!’ he says looking pleased, ‘You got that from your grandmother. At least you have something that makes you seem like family.’
I sit and think about that for a second. ‘You mean I don't look like family?’
‘Well,’ he says and looks down on me, ‘not that you look ... well, you ... frankly no. I don't know where you came from.’
‘What! What do you mean?’
He smiles and bites away
at his double-decker burger. ‘Birth's a mystery,’ he shrugs and I know he isn't
going to say anything more. I feel like
getting in the back with Rufus.
My brother is clamped to the TV,
both arms around it, his forehead
pressed to the glass as he stares at Rocketship Seven. Commander Tom says ‘Sit back, son, you'll
ruin your eyes.’
‘No,’ my brother says in his little voice.
‘Sit back, now. What if your mother walks in?’
‘No,’ he says and stares into Commander Tom's soul.
It is seven in the morning, a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and I come down to find my grandmother sitting in our kitchen.
‘I'm not going back until he gets rid of it,’ she says, embarrassing me with this honesty. Children should never know about marital problems. It just gives them ideas later on. ‘I'm not going back.’
‘You want some eggos, Grandmama?’ I ask. My brother shouts ‘Me too!’ from the other room, and his breath clouds Rocky the Squirrel for a second.
‘What is he doing with it, the smelly thing?’
‘It's just his way of coping, that's all.’
‘It is?’ she says, and for a second I have hope. ‘But can't he cope if it's in the ground instead of soaking into the Cadillac?’
I know she's not asking me. She's sort of pretending he's there and she's talking to him. I stand up tall and say, in a deep voice I hope sounds like his ‘No I can't and that's all.’
‘Well for heaven's sake, why not?’
‘You never understood my needs.’
‘Your needs?’
‘Yes my needs. Do you know what I really need?’
‘What, pray tell?’ She snorts and sits back smiling.
‘You.’
‘Oh!’ This warms her up a bit. But I put my foot in it then:
‘You, and the dog.’ She
leaves the room. I knew then I'd blown it.
‘Andrew, let go the TV,’ my mother says in passing.
‘No,’ he says. She keeps going.
‘What did your grandfather say to your grandmother? She's all upset.’
‘He just said he needed her.’
‘He did? When was he here?’
‘A minute ago. Mum ... I'd like to ...’ But she is gone upstairs to tell my grandmother how could she be so unforgiving. I don't have a chance to ask her for money. I ask for money every morning and if I get it I go and buy as much chocolate as I can. My brother takes his face away from the TV to look at me and his hair sticks to it with static.
‘Andrew, let go the TV.’ He thumps his forehead back in place.
‘No.’
I'm in the backyard trying to do
sit-ups. I get about three done before
I feel my stomach start to rip open. I stand up and hold onto it. Andrew comes out back, his eyes
like pinwheels.
‘What're you doing?’ he says, hoping I'd go back to it so he could kick me or something.
‘My gut just ripped.’ I try not to move in case all the intestines come tumbling out. I imagine it looking like toothpaste when you spit it into the sink.
‘Did Grandad make you do that? Commander Tom's a fascist. I ate eggos for breakfast. Can you sing with your mouth closed? A is for apple.’
‘Andrew, go get Mum.’
‘This is a test, do not adjust your Indian. Have you seen the Breakaway Twins? Sound off at eleven.’ Andrew says as he goes back into the house.
’Hurry!’ I yell and feel another little tear.
I know it then. Grandad's right. I am not really from this family. Something terrible happened at the hospital. It all starts to make sense, I mean, at school they always forget which one I am, and I've been there for four years! I bet I could do someone's tests for them and no one would know. I could walk up in health class and get weighed and they'd say ‘Well, Freddie, or whoever you are, you've lost weight and a couple of inches! Do you eat properly?’ What about babies that all look the same?
My mum comes down and sees me out on the grass.
‘I was the wrong baby, wasn't I?’ I yelled.
‘What, in heaven's name, have you been doing?’ she sighs and hustles me in to breakfast.
~ ~ ~
‘Where'd the dog go, Grandad?’ I ask. Andrew is standing with me beside the car as grandfather roars the engine.
‘What dog?’ says Andrew, looking up at me.
‘God! That smelly thing!’ grandfather bellows, ‘I just looked around one day and couldn't believe it. He was dead!’ He hit the steering wheel.
‘What dog?’ Andrew repeats.
‘Is that boy all right?’ grandfather asks, looking closely at him.
’I have twelve teeth. Heaven is a place that starts with H.’ Andrew says.
‘You know, young man, you're a little off centre. You don't look much like your sister, either.’
‘Grandfather ...’ I want to stop him.
‘Hospitals are terrible places, Andrew, ...’
‘Grandfather!’
‘ ... and I think you got packaged wrong.’
‘Prizes inside!’ Andrew says, but he looks worried.
‘Want to go for a burger, son?’ he says, and off they go, Andrew holding onto the dashboard with both hands, pressing his face to the glass.
