The Perpetual Motion Machine Read online

  Papagalos

  I am five years old. I am sitting in a plush chair in a fancy restaurant in the Cayman Islands. Papagalos, the restaurant with the parrots. We always come here during our yearly weeklong trip to the Caribbean. We like to take vacations. We live in New York, but it’s too cold in the winter, so we head to a warmer climate and come back as tan little faces wrapped in bubbly coats and puff boots.

  We rent a car and drive from the airport into town. The drive is my favorite part of the trip: the warm winds blowing from an ocean I only get to see once a year, the way Mom lists off all the exciting excursions we’re going to take this time, the promise of fun things to come. I love looking out the window while Dad drives, while Skyler plays video games. We make sure to stop at the local supermarket and stock up on chocolate milk boxes for me, cereal for Skyler, snacks for the hotel room.

  A few weeks ago a kid in my class had a birthday party at Gymboree. I wasn’t very close with him, but I saw him fall off a chair and crack his head open. Blood got on the mats that I had tumbled across earlier. He wanted to try a somersault from up high. It looked fake, the blood, the slit in his head, and the other kids said they could see his brain. The party ended early and I became anxious. Something stirred inside me that did not go away overnight, with a good night’s sleep, with a box of chocolate milk.

  Papagalos is known for its plethora of parrots that line the restaurant in glass showcases. Right now they all seem to be squawking at once. The anxious feeling heightens. My parents peruse the expensive menu. Mom orders her French onion soup, and Dad, a hearty cut of meat. My brother is entranced with his Game Boy, already knowing his order, the same thing he always gets, the spicy shrimp. My world is uncertain, though. I think about Ben Gula, his head cracking like an egg, fragile, Humpty Dumpty, no big deal, a hospital visit, stitches, and missing school. What if he doesn’t make it? What if he’s not okay in the end? And I’m here, in the Cayman Islands with my family, wearing a dress and ordering a side salad. When will these vacations end? What will I be like in the future? How long does it take to grow up?

  I feel it in my mind before I see it there, the big bug stuck to the back of my thigh. I know it’s there. I can feel its shape. The oval torso, the blackness of its body. Tiny feelers searching for air. My plump little thigh, shaking. I cry silently at the table, but I want it to be dramatic. I want the tension to build for everyone at the table. I think about taking a sip of my water and spilling it in a histrionic fashion. I think about moving around so the next table can see, the shriek of a woman, the sheer fear it would cause.

  The soup is placed in front of Mom. She leans over to me and asks if I’m crying. She knows this is what I do. Kids who cry get taken away, but where do they go? They go elsewhere, and that is where I want to be. Ben Gula was taken away, treated with special care. I turn my face toward her, but do not speak. Then it becomes a scene. Then it becomes the set of one of my many melodramas. I turn my leg toward her and she bats the thing away like crazy. Skyler discards his Game Boy and smashes the bug on the floor with his dress shoe. The bug is dead.

  I don’t stop crying though. My dad gets angry and says, “Don’t ruin the meal because of a bug. It’s dead. Didn’t you see Skyler kill it? It’s over. Get over it!” He cuts into his steak and keeps eating. The birds are crying, carrying on. Skyler watches our waiter sweep away the last of its legs into a dustpan. Dad points to Skyler’s shrimp and he continues eating as well.

  It is then customary for Mom to escort me away from the family, which is exactly what I want, the whole purpose of this dance. She takes me into the bathroom and lifts up the fluffy tutu of my black evening dress. She washes the spot where the big, fat bug was with cold water. I don’t want the ordeal to be over though. No bloodshed, no foul. I want more. I need attention, crave it badly.

  We go to the bar so I can sit on an adult stool and feel important. The bartender jokingly asks for an ID, and then gives me a glass of water with a lemon sliver. I pinch the lemon—fleshy, yellow—and plop the seeds into my drink so I can try to suck them out, one by one.

  Mom looks upset, as if she has figured me out and yet still doesn’t understand me. She tightens my braid and asks, “Why do you do these things?” I start crying again, harder, uncontrollably this time. I am suddenly aware that my mom will die one day, like the bug, like our family trips, and that all of this will end. Like Ben Gula, my mom is not indestructible. She can crack and break, she can choose to ignore me, the way I am, the way I have become. But I need her. I need her to bobby pin my hair and pick out my dresses. I need someone to take me away from the bad scenes, from the hard things, from the things I don’t want to see.

  I drop down from the stool and hug her leg, my head leaning on her hip.

  “I’m scared you’re going to die,” I say, shyly, afraid that saying it might make it real, might make it happen.

  “I’m not going to die for a very long time,” she says.

  And there we are, the two of us. We play this game for years and years. I do not want my mom to grow old. I do not want to see pain. I do not want to be alone.

  Prisoners

  When we go out in the city, we all squish into the elevator, layering our bodies and puffy coats, breathing short, excited child breaths, watching each floor light up all the way down. We are always going places in cars, in groups, to the city, to birthday parties, to eat pizza and ice cream cake, to give a present to the kid from class and to take home party favor bags with whistles and parachute-bearing army men. There are always treats, lots of baked goods from the delicatessen, rainbow cookies and almond cookies and the Chinese cookies with big splats of chocolate in the middle.

  We are scooped up and taken everywhere with our parents. My brother sits in the front seat of the car and I’m scrunched in the back with Mom. We are never allowed to sit next to each other or we will fight. This is the thought our parents have given us. They don’t understand that we like to fight, scream, cry; it’s enjoyable for us. It means we are close. It means we are together. There is never a winner, just the separation of our bodies in the car until we get where we are going. Dad smokes cigarettes inside the car and I form a makeshift air mask with the sleeve of my jacket. I pretend I am in a safe, little incubator, like ET, while my brother stares out the windshield. He doesn’t mind the smoke, as if he is developing an early taste for things that are bad for him.

  Sometimes, the babysitter comes. Renee is our babysitter with the big brown eyes and long brown hair. She understands us and the games we like to play, how we run around the house and time our heartbeats with a toy stethoscope because we want to hear our insides. She lets us build forts on the couch out of big pillows and our large lion stuffed animal. She doesn’t get mad when I spill the carton of milk on my head and have to take another bath. She is a teenager, and she encourages us to be children. She likes how I make up stories about the books on my bookshelf, not yet able to read them, too young to understand the words. She helps me make fake pancakes in my Fischer-Price kitchen.

  Renee wears sweaters and skirts with sneakers. She takes off her shoes, as instructed, when she steps into the apartment. Sometimes she wears high-waisted pants with a big shirt billowing out. I listen to her because she is beautiful and fun. I act cute and shy around her. I open my eyes big and pout when my parents leave. I pretend I am sad because I know that will make her do things like hold my hand and hug me.

  As time goes on, it becomes clear that Renee and my brother are cooler than I am, or could ever be. They speak in double-g language. Their pillow forts never fall down. Renee talks on the phone or reads a Judy Blume book, and Skyler just wants to play video games and shoot plastic guns. I get demoted to Nerf gun ammo collector.

  I don’t want to be a kid anymore. I want to be older. I want to be ages twelve and up, like it says on the Lego boxes in my brother’s room. I want to understand why older people do and say the things they do and say. I want to win the high score. I want to get all A’s. I wa
nt to wear sweaters with skirts and sneakers. I look down at my own stupid shirt, the purple velvet one, long sleeves, warm enough for the city weather, but I feel dumb in it, like a child.

  Renee stops coming once Skyler is old enough to take care of us both. Skyler ties me to the leg of the pool table with my own green and yellow jump rope and tells me to stay. He doesn’t like when I play with his Buzz Lightyear Chrome Edition figurine. I stay tied to the table until I figure out how to untie the knot. I make jelly on crackers in the kitchen, play with my Barbies, and then return to the table leg, retie myself, and wait for his next move. Skyler comes back and lectures me on what it means to be a prisoner.

  “If you work hard, you will get one shiny coin a day.” He sips from a box of chocolate milk and paces the floor thinking of my next punishment. “You will retrieve my Nerf gun ammunition during the battles, but you must do so in your shackles!”

  He returns to his room, forgetting me temporarily. I wait until the little hand moves a bunch of space on the clock on the living room wall, untie myself again, and go into his room to watch him play Mario Kart. I sit on the floor and slowly make my way up to the bed and put my head on his soft, blue pillow. He moves onto the floor so I can get comfortable. We can be together in the same room and not kill each other because he is playing his game and I am watching him. This activity requires me to accept that he is older, better at the game, and that if I sit here and watch quietly, I can be a part of it.

  In between levels, my brother asks me if I remember the day Mom left us alone with Dad. He says Dad yelled and Mom cried and he watched it all. He tells me that Dad yelled at him, told my brother it was all his fault, and then went back into our parents’ room. He says he stood by the door and waited for my mom to come back for hours. Skyler had watched her walk down the long hallway, to the elevator, then away, gone, not knowing if she would return.

  He reminds me that when she came back, she took him to a friend’s house, and took me out for a treat. I remember that part. I remember how Mom and I shared Chinese cookies on a walk to the park and she told me, “These are my favorite.” I had said, “Me too,” because her eyes are hazel and so are mine, something she passed down to me, as I am told. Her hair is dirty blond and blown out so that it bounces and frames her glowing face. She was wearing a patterned sweater and soft jeans and I wore a miniature version of this outfit because I am her daughter and I will grow up to become her. I want to be just like her with her pink cheeks and feathered hair. I want to have a favorite cookie and children who cry for me when I am gone. I want to be missed and know what it is like to miss someone so deeply that it hurts my insides, the ones I can hear on the stethoscope.

  My pink room has a view of the Henry Hudson Parkway. I can see the street below and the edges of our white brick building. I can never tell whether it’s snowing or if it’s just an illusion. I have to look all the way down to see whether the cars are actually caked with snow.

  My brother’s room has the best view. Out his window, the New York City skyline is a silent stretch of lines and organized shapes. The game on the screen blares, honking, bustling, shooting, swerving. The picture of New York outside is quiet. I drift away into a Mario dreamland of boxy clouds and rainbow roads. The noises of the game do not wake or startle me; the sounds lull me to sleep, peaceful and soothing, like the city in all of its chaos.

  Bullfight

  Our family takes a plane up and away from everyone we know to spend Thanksgiving in Cancún, Mexico. There is parasailing, relaxing hammocks, and kids’ club treasure hunts, which we always win. A giant box of chocolate is delivered to our room with a card that says congratulations in Spanish. Our hotel TV gets Nickelodeon and I watch Rugrats for the first time ever. I don’t really like it but all the other kids in my second-grade class do and I want to be in the loop.

  The same string of photos is taken each year when we come to Cancún. Me in a swimsuit next to a palm tree, me in a hammock, me building a sand castle and giving up halfway because it’s too hot.

  All I want to do is play with my Barbie doll. I’ve become obsessed with these skinny women, and tonight, Barbie has a date and needs to get ready. Mom won’t let me stay in the hotel room, so I have to come up with reasons to sneak away and go upstairs. A stomachache usually works, but sometimes she wants to accompany me and make sure I’m okay. Telling her I want to change my bathing suit worked once, but the next time she refused.

  One morning, Dad takes my brother and I offsite to a water sports place where we rent a boat and go snorkeling. He asks the manager for the best little boat. The boats are meant for two, but fits the three of us perfectly, as I wedge between Dad and Skyler. I wear my favorite leopard bathing suit and Skyler seems somewhat excited to look underwater at colorful fish and maybe see something cool.

  The snorkel trip leaves the dock and all the little boats and little families follow the leader. Dad drives us out into the ocean like a flock of birds, following and flying in one direction. The water is so blue and so green. I am nervous to snorkel, since the only time I’ve ever done it was unsuccessfully in the hotel’s lake. Dad made me go in and I knew I wasn’t supposed to because it was a lake and not a pool. I knew that this water was for looking at and admiring and not for swimming in. But I went in and he taught me to spit in my mask to make it clear. He told me to rub the saliva into the lens with my thumb and not to rinse it after. He wanted me to see things clearly, as clear as possible. When I saw my first fish, a blue and black angelfish, I splashed in the shallow water and ran out, back to the beach, back to Mom who was waiting with a towel.

  The boat sputters and gives out. It comes to a slow in what seems like the middle of the ocean. We are stranded. The other boats have zipped off to continue their adventure. Dad throws a fit with curses and exclamations. No one sees. No one comes. What happens if no one hears his aggravated screams? What happens if we never make it off the boat? Will we swim to safety? What will Mom think? I fear for my own life, the life of my dad, the life of my brother.

  I look out at the beautiful Mexican mountains and think of the bullfight Dad took us to the other day. Mom didn’t come to that either. The bull ran around the ring, around and around, chasing the toreros with the red blanket and I didn’t know why. Everyone was shouting and excited and I didn’t understand. I knew that I should be excited. Dad was enthralled. Skyler was happy.

  The matador stabbed the bull in the head with a sword. The crowd went wild. I began crying into my shirt and hid that I was sad because I didn’t want to ruin anything. Dad cheered and Skyler agreed with him for once. They felt something that I did not. The bull was dead.

  The boat is stopped. After a while someone from the water sports shop comes and rescues us. He ties our broken boat to his and we ride back to land. I’m still wearing my life jacket when Dad insists on a refund. Skyler unclicks my jacket and we are safe.

  Back at the hotel Mom is glad we are alive. The excursion took three hours longer than she had expected, but it’s still daytime, which means time to go downstairs. I open up my Barbie luggage set to play while everyone else gets ready for the pool. The maid seems to have moved it around and things have shifted inside. Barbie’s kitchen is in shambles. Her clothes have fallen off hangers in her closet. Shoes are missing and I am upset. Mom nudges me to get my bathing suit on, that we’re leaving soon, but I won’t move. I continue to dress Barbie for her date in a tight red dress and attempt to restore her living quarters to normal. Mom insists we go down to the pool and I tell her, no. She says I won’t be allowed to play with Barbie for the rest of the trip if I don’t go now, so I pack the luggage back up to the best of my abilities and stow it away in the mini closet.

  Sometimes, things happen for my family like magic. The way watermelon flavored water is waiting for us at the front desk when my parents go to complain about something, or how Skyler and I were the ones who found the treasure first, knowing where to look, having the right guess to get us that huge box of chocolate. But
other times the luck is on the other side. Sometimes Dad picks the wrong boat. Sometimes Barbie doesn’t get to go on her date. Sometimes we don’t apply enough sunscreen, even though we are told to, and we burn in the hot, hot sun, and it hurts.

  This is the trip to Mexico when Dad busts his hand open on a glass display at a local mall. He is rushed to the hospital and needs stitches. This is the trip where we can’t help ourselves from running around near the pool and Mom reminds us of when she broke her leg, which I don’t remember, but I know it to be true. This is the trip where Skyler goes scuba diving and I’m allowed to try it out in the pool. I remember going down each step, letting myself sink deeper, deeper into the depths of the blue pool. This is the trip where I get to take Koko, the class pet, (a monkey stuffed animal) with me, and forget about him until the last day.

  We make up for lost time with a string of photos; Koko in a pair of sunglasses next to a palm tree, in the hammock, in the sand with a shovel in his plush little hand.

  When I bring him back to school he smells like suntan lotion and there is sand embedded in the fibers of his body. Koko was supposed to go everywhere with me, but there were certain places I couldn’t take him. He couldn’t go swimming or get wet, he couldn’t come on the boat in case he fell out, he couldn’t come to the bullfight and watch his brethren die. Most of the time, Koko stayed in the room sitting atop my Barbie luggage, keeping it company, waiting for me to come back, to see what was next.