登陆注册
10436100000006

第6章

MY NAME THEORY

There is something wonderful and incredible about people's names. You are given a name when you are born, and some people are even given one before they are born. Your parents know nothing about you, except that you are very small, know how to yell, need your diaper changed a lot, and enjoy drinking milk. But right away they have to come up with a name for you. I think it may be a law. People have to call you something besides "Hey, you!" all your life.

The wonderful thing is this: After a while, it becomes clear that your name is the perfect name, the only-name-for-you name. Are parents that smart? I don't think so. That's why it's incredible as well as wonderful.

Take my name, Oona. Two O's = two eyes = "noticer." See?

Fred, sometimes Freddy = short, sometimes cute.

My friend Riya loves to sing. Her name is an Indian one that actually does mean "singer." Although it doesn't mean "sings on key," which is a good thing, because Riya doesn't.

Terri, my mom, RW merry, which she usually is, except when she's not. But she does try to look merry all the time. The key thing's the look in the eyes—ever notice? I try to keep my mom's eyes looking merry whenever possible.

Max, my dad's name = big, which he was, in heart and spirit and shoe size. No one will ever fill them.

Gramma Dee's name is easy. Dee RW bee = honey = sweet like candy. Gramma Dee likes to make Russian taffy, which she learned from her Russian grandmother, who was born in Russia. Although she doesn't make it as often as she used to, because of her concerns about weight gain. And also for dental reasons. That delicious taffy is murder on the teeth, really gluing them together for a few scary seconds. Seven scary seconds almost exactly, if you're counting, which our family always does. I call it the Seven-Second Meltdown Theory. Just when you think your teeth will remain glued together forever, the taffy begins to melt.

On Sunday, I wake up to the wonderful vanilla and butter and sugar smell of Gramma Dee's taffy. Gramma Dee lives down the hall from us, but she makes the taffy at our house. She says that way she can give us a gift: the smell of dad's childhood in our own home. She is famous in our building for her taffy. Maybe even famous on the whole neighborhood block.

I go into the kitchen and there she is checking the taffy with her candy thermometer, a long, clear string of sweet stuff dangling over the pot. Freddy is already there.

"I want a taste!" he says.

"And the magic word is… ?" Gramma Dee asks.

"Please!" says Freddy. Gramma Dee swirls a big glob of taffy around a spoon for him to lick. Mom wouldn't approve of taffy for breakfast, magic word or no magic word, but Gramma Dee is different that way. A lot of grammas are.

"We have to save the rest for the celebration today," she says, "at Soma's house."

Soma is my friend Riya's gramma, or didu. It's her backyard camellia tree that hangs over the fence, shading our back alley. It was actually Zook who got us all together, back in the days when I wasn't allowed to go around the block by myself yet. Zook was hanging out under Soma's camellia tree, yowling his yowl and pretending to be homeless so Soma would feed him. One day my mom saw Zook eating there and told Soma the truth about Zook. We had a good giggle about that. Now Riya and I are best friends, and so are the two grammas. They spend a lot of time drinking tea, and planning the trips they'll take together when they've saved up enough funds. Soma teaches Gramma Dee words in her Indian dialect, Bengali, mostly food words, such as aloo (potato) and dhoi (yogurt). Gramma Dee does the same for Soma with her second language, Yiddish. Actually, Yiddish isn't really Gramma Dee's second language, because she only knows a few words from her own grandmother. But she knows all the best words, she says.

"Celebration at Soma's?" I say. "It's hard to think of celebrating at a time like this!"

"I'm glad we have something festive to go to, especially now," says Gramma Dee. "It will take our minds off poor Zook."

"Why do we have to take our minds off poor Zook?" I ask. "I think our minds should be on him every single second, all alone at the vet."

I feel guilty because I really want to go to the party. It will be something special, a Hindu rice-feeding ceremony, called an annaprasan, for Riya's baby brother. It will be the first time in his life that he gets to taste solid food.

I go into the hall closet. That's where we keep Zook's litter box. Zook's litter box is the expensive sports car of litter boxes, a real splurge, my mother says. Only the best for our Zook. It has really powerful charcoal odor filters and a cool burgundy trim around its cream-colored body. I pull the chain for the overhead light, close the closet door, and sit on the floor right in front of the litter box. Then I do something really gross. I just can't help myself. I peek inside.

We use special clumping litter for Zook. I see two small clumps near the entrance to the box. Two clumps that poor Zook dragged himself inside to create. I put my cheek against the top of the litter box and think about Zook.

"Where's Oona?" I hear my mother ask.

"In there," Freddy answers.

"In there?" My mother opens the closet door and looks down on me. "Hey, kiddo, get up off the floor," she says softly, and lifts me up. She has just washed her hair and it's all puffed up around her head like a big, curly orange halo. She smells good. My mom wears Beau Soleil perfume, which means "beautiful sun" and must be what Paris, France, smells like on a nice, fine day. Better than Zook's litter box, I have to admit, which stinks. It's my job to clean it, but lately it's hard to throw the clumps away, because they're Zook's.

"I'm not sure I want to go to a party while Zook's in the hospital," I say.

My mother says, "If you don't want to, you don't have to. I'll stay home, too, even though I know we'd both enjoy going. Why don't you think about it a bit? We still have time."

So I go into my room and lie down on the bottom bunk. I look up at the ceiling of my bed, which is the bottom of the top bunk, where Fred sleeps. I'd scribbled the name of My Secret Love there in code. No one in a million years will ever decipher it. Actually, I myself forget which code I used at the time, but that doesn't matter. I know it's him.

I admire My Secret Love because he wears bright shirts with cool patterns that hang to his hips, and he walks as if he's listening to music, which he usually is. I know this isn't what true love is based on. But my parents, the true loves of each of their lives, knew each other for years and years before they knew it was love, so maybe I should just be patient. I'm not sure it's true love that I feel for My Secret Love. Actually, I have no idea what true love feels like. I know that I love my family. I know that I love Zook. But you are not supposed to feel the same way about a boy as you feel about a cat. I believe in true love, just like I believe in magic. Or God. I just haven't had direct experience with true love or magic or God yet.

"Oona?" Fred is knocking softly on the door.

"What?" I say, annoyed, even though it's his room, too.

"I'm wondering what happens next."

"What do you mean?"

"What happens next after Zook—I mean, Miraculo—gets a new life?"

"Not now, Freddy. I want to think about the present-day Zook for a few minutes."

"Oh, OK."

I think about how Zook always knows the exact time we get home at the end of the day, even when clocks are moved backward or forward for the season. There he is at the window, waiting. And I think about how he likes to lap leftover tea from my mother's teacup. And how we snuck him into my dad's hospital room in a basket. That story, especially, keeps playing in my head over and over, like a stuck video.

"Oona?" Fred again.

"What?"

"Are you finished thinking about Zook?"

"Almost."

"Well, are you coming with us to the party?"

"Maybe," I say.

"Hope so," Freddy says.

Freddy really gets inside my heart with those two little words. I know I'm acting like a baby. And all of a sudden, just like that, out of the blue, I get this really good idea: I will donate the secret money we collect from our dancing-in-the-street job to a cat rescue society. I think my good idea is a sign from Zook himself that it's all right to go out and have fun while he recuperates.

I open my bedroom door. My mom is wearing a short lemonade-yellow dress and sandals, but Gramma Dee is wearing the long shimmery blue sari that Soma gave her. Some of her stomach is showing. I smile, not because her stomach is funny, but because it's a body part of my gramma I've never seen before.

"OK," I say. "I'm going with you."

And of course I'm wearing my Raiders sweatshirt. My dad always liked celebrating special occasions.

同类推荐
  • The Sexual Outlaw

    The Sexual Outlaw

    In this angry, eloquent outcry against the oppression of homosexuals, the author of the classic City of Night gives "an explosive non-fiction account, with commentaries, of three days and nights in the sexual underground" of Los Angeles in the 1970s--the "battlefield" of the sexual outlaw. Using the language and techniqus of the film, Rechy deftly intercuts the despairing, joyful, and defiant confessions of a male hustler with the "chorus" of his own subversive reflections on sexual identity and sexual politics, and with stark documentary reports our society directs against homosexuals--"the only minority against whose existence there are laws."
  • On the Edge of Gone

    On the Edge of Gone

    A thrilling, thought-provoking novel from one of young-adult literature's boldest new talents. January 29, 2035. That's the day the comet is scheduled to hit —the big one. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter outside their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise's drug-addicted mother is going, they'll never reach the shelter in time. A last-minute meeting leads them to something better than a temporary shelter —a generation ship, scheduled to leave Earth behind to colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But everyone on the ship has been chosen because of their usefulness. Denise is autistic and fears that she'll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister? When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?
  • The Storyteller

    The Storyteller

    Anna and Abel couldn't be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own. Fascinated, Anna follows the two and listens as Abel tells little Micha the story of a tiny queen assailed by dark forces. It's a beautiful fairy tale that Anna comes to see has a basis in reality. Abel is in real danger of losing Micha to their abusive father and to his own inability to make ends meet.
  • High and Dry
  • Suicide Blonde

    Suicide Blonde

    Vanity Fair called this intensely erotic story of a young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey "a provocative tour through the dark side." Jesse, a beautiful twenty-nine-year-old, is adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, bourbon-drinking, drug-taking outsiders. While desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend in a world of confused and forbidden desire, she becomes the caretaker of and confidante to Madame Pig, a besotted, grotesque recluse. Jesse also falls into a dangerous relationship with Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, hurtling herself and Jesse beyond all boundaries. With Suicide Blonde, Darcey Steinke delves into themes of identity and time, as well as the common - and now tainted - language of sexuality.
热门推荐
  • 黑与白

    黑与白

    文学评论集,收40余篇,既有对卷入市场以后文学流变现状的客观描述和前景的宏观预测,还有密切追踪作家作品,潜心琢磨新的批评路向的探索。
  • 活成自己喜欢的样子

    活成自己喜欢的样子

    《活成自己喜欢的样子》是作者易小宛的温暖文集。从前车马慢,书信远,一生只够爱一人。如今世界匆忙,只愿你眼中有光,活成自己喜欢的样子。或许我们所期待的明天,看起来遥不可及,而我们当下的每一个小努力,似乎都不值一提。但执着的人,注定会在岁月的淘洗下,雕琢内核,茁壮筋骨,将生活磨砺出微光。
  • 祝你幸福

    祝你幸福

    电脑前面放着一个用红色的闪着珠光的玻璃纸包装精致的小盒子,中午的时候,乔小乔打开看,盒子里面是一个红木的笔筒。这是坐在隔壁办公室的主管李锐送乔小乔的礼物,连同礼盒还有一张小卡,里面用黑色的油笔写着:祝你幸福!签名的地方,没有名字,也是用黑色的油笔画了一个笑脸,不同的是这是一个带着眼镜的笑脸。同事都知道,这个标志是李锐的,乔小乔当然也知道。
  • 寰宇大唐

    寰宇大唐

    天宝十五年,他率军奇袭幽州,一战惊天下!安史之乱结束时,世人皆惊,他已雄据江淮带甲百万!世人皆言他必反,司马昭之心,路人皆知!……
  • 第一女商:盛世耀倾城

    第一女商:盛世耀倾城

    玩个网游也能穿越,穿越就穿越,原主的身份还是一个冷情冷性的少女,只是和她性格中的一面相似,而她刚醒来就不得不面对妖孽帅气的侄子,随即又发现还有暗恋肉身的超级美少年。胆敢把她当替身,小心她玩死你不偿命;胆敢把她当软柿子,对不起,本人前世的愿望就是当一个富可敌国的奸商!
  • 文学武侯

    文学武侯

    武侯,是一个闪烁着智慧光芒的文化符号,也是一个散发着浓烈的区域文化气息的诗意名字。在这个名字背后默默矗立的人和事,像时间长河中一坛窖藏的老酒,我们路过酒窖,就能闻到历史的瓶塞边流溢而出的醇香,不同的人还会品出不同的风味,让人回味无穷。跨越时空,对话历史,我们乐意成为文化的朝圣者。与历史对话不是为了单纯地触摸、延续,而是为了传承城市的文化血脉。如今,我们身边活跃着这么一群文化的守望者、探索者。他们来自不同的地方、不同的工作岗位,用文字孜孜不倦地耕耘着,用真心的投入丈量着生命的里程,凝聚、聚集、沉淀着武侯作家群落的内涵。
  • 炮灰逆袭,男配请自重

    炮灰逆袭,男配请自重

    1V1宠文(女扮男装)穿进一本书里已经够惨的了,没想到还要过着女扮男装的生活去打仗,好吧,这都不是事。但是,你个男配不去追女主,天天跟在我一炮灰后面是想要干嘛?某男配:“九弟,这温泉尚好,与为兄一起沐浴如何?”“不,我拒绝!”“九弟,一起抵足而眠如何?”“不,我拒绝!”“九弟,为兄也想要抱”某女大吼:“你还说你不是断袖?”某男配微微一笑:“我当然不是,我只是喜欢你。”
  • BOSS凶猛:顾少,轻点宠

    BOSS凶猛:顾少,轻点宠

    何晓玥做梦也没有想到,自己会因为一时脑热就嫁了人。而且嫁的那个人还是地位显赫,腹黑深沉的商业帝王顾云倾。商场上他手段狠辣闻风丧胆,却偏偏对她宠妻入骨。“顾先生,公司真给夫人拿去玩?难道卖了公司您也不管?”“卖你家公司了?”“顾先生,这家报社头条说您惧内,要不要我让他们关门?”“夫人怎么说?”“夫人笑着说他们在瞎说什么大实话。”“哦,这样,写这篇报道的人重重有赏。”“顾先生,今天有人在分公司门口对夫人表白了,要不要……哎?顾先生人呢?”
  • 残忍的季节

    残忍的季节

    四月最残忍,从死了的土地滋生丁香,混杂着回忆和欲望,让春雨挑动着呆钝的根。——艾略特《荒原》一张子川纵身一跃举手投篮的姿势是如此优美,简直要把许艺给迷倒了。许艺眼睛直愣愣盯着他,眼珠子骨碌碌骨碌碌地跟着他转,待到他篮下跨步时,直感觉呼吸紧迫,有点儿快要晕眩了。旁边的邵思琪说,哎,美女,你也太过分了吧,口水都要流下来了!许艺略微回过神来,说,怎么啦,我就是崇拜他!告诉你,张子川是我喜欢的,你们谁都别抢!
  • 暗恋那点小事

    暗恋那点小事

    本书已出版,出版名《顾少,情谋已久》“叔叔,咱两比比呗。”厕所里面对一个陌生小包子的挑衅,顾念深用实力证明了自己。从此被小包子缠身,“叔叔,你当我爹地呗。”然后到哪都能看到顾念深和小包子妈虐狗秀恩爱。后来很多人说:顾总您儿子和您长得真像。顾念深转头看向身边的女人:“你怎么解释?”林意浅很淡定的点头:“嗯,是你亲儿子。”顾念深咬牙切齿:“听儿子说我五年前就死了?”“误……误会啊……顾念深你特喵的禽兽!”本以为缘浅,奈何早已情深。(这是一篇青梅竹马高甜文,双洁,双腹黑,双强。)