Like a tumor, an awful idea took root in my brain. “So why don’t you pretend to be a grown-up like the other babies do?”
Like the advice I’d given Chaz and so many Littles before him, I was looking to rebel, looking to disrupt, looking to subtly piss in somebody else’s cereal. Ivy Zoge was such a perfect Little success story, paired up with me to be a ‘good influence’. Right before me was a golden opportunity; or at least a fun one.
“What do you mean?” Ivy asked.
I pursed my lips together and took in my surroundings. Beouf could technically see me, but she was preoccupied. Zoge could hear us if she was listening, but Chaz was yacking her ear off and we had the bookshelf as a visual blocker. “We’re not grown-ups, right? Just pretending?” I forced my voice into a conspiratorial whisper.
“Uh-huuuuuh…”
“But you’ve never.pretended to be a grown-up? Ever?”
“Yeah…” She paused. “I mean, no. I haven’t.”
“Maybe that’s why the others won’t play with you as much, Ivy. You won’t play our favorite game.”
This was it. This was my win condition that day.
Step One: Bait Beouf and do it better than the others. Make it obvious that I was on board with these Little tricks and that I could do it better than most.
Step Two: Openly defy Beouf to cement that I wasn’t anything like what anyone suspected.
Step Three: Subvert expectations and coax the ultimate teacher’s pet into playing along.
A week prior, I would have said something like this was beneath me. Back then I had a life, a house, a different last name and a wife. I’d wanted to live my life being a good influence to Amazon children. That didn’t work out, so I might as well try to be a bad influence on my fellow captives. Or so I reasoned.
Ivy’s skull might as well have been transparent. I could see the gears turning with every word I spoke… “You think that’s why?” She whispered back.
“Maybe,” I lied. “One way to find out.”
She scooted up close to me. “How do I play?”
“It’s easy,’ I told her. “Just ask questions.”
“Why?”
“Now you’re getting it!” I winked. “Grown-ups ask each other questions all the time.” I felt like a certain snake in a garden. I was loving it! “All you have to do is ask as many questions as possible. It’s a game.”
Ivy thought for a second. “Sooooo, do what you were doing?”
I clicked my fingers and pointed to her. “Exactly!”
“What if I get in trouble?”
“Everybody gets in trouble,” I told her as nonchalantly as I could. “I just got in trouble. Would it really be so bad if you were like everybody else?”
Ivy pouted out her bottom lip. “Hmmmm…I don’t think-”
“Come on Ivy,” I dared to place my hand atop hers. Cassie forgive me. “I thought we were friends.”
Calling myself her friend was like giving a shot of whiskey to a recovering alcoholic. When she stopped and breathed in, I knew I had her. Getting Ivy to agree to it was too easy. If a thirty something woman is convinced that she’s a baby, you can convince her of anything.
“Okay.” She whispered back. “I’ll play.”
“If you can’t think of a question,” I reminded her, “ just ask ‘why’.”
“Just ask why,” Ivy said to herself. “Just ask why. Just ask why. Just ask why.”
A few minutes later…
BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP!
Schedules checked. Tokens deposited in basket. Seats taken.
“Hello, Clark. Hello, Ivy.” Mrs. Zoge said in her gentle, quiet way. “Are you two ready to have some fun?”
She slid out a blank sheet of paper to each of us. “For this you’ll want to be using your non-dominant hand to color your emotions.”
“Why is it called ‘dominant hand’, Mommy?” Ivy started.
I slid my pacifier back between my lips to hide my smile. Game on.
“Dominant is the hand your brain wants you to use, my love,” Mrs. Zoge passed out some thick crayons. “It’s the hand that is in charge.”
I kept silent and urged my proxy onward with my eyes. “So it’s like the Mommy and Daddy hand?” Oh? That was a pretty good one.
“You can call it that if you want to.”
“Okay!”
I grabbed a crayon so that I could resist the urge to slap my own forehead. I cleared my throat, and mumbled past the mouth guard.
Ivy bit her lip. “Oh yeah! Who is more Mommy and Daddy hand? You or Daddy?”
“Me.” Beouf’s assistant didn’t so much as hesitate. Yikes. I’d never met Zoge’s husband, but an unpleasant image that I never wanted to picture jammed it’s way into my brain. An air of suspicion settled of Zoge and she noticed the still-blank paper. “Ivy, my love, what are you doing?”
“Nothing!” Ivy was such a rookie at this sort of thing that beads of cold sweat started forming. “Why?”
“Are you feeling well, Ivy?” her Mommy asked.
“Whyy?”
Zoge narrowed her eyes, peering intensely through her glasses. “Why do you keep asking why?”
Ivy was all but shaking. “Um…why?”
Zoge started speaking Yamatoan. It still had that gentle, musical quality she had when she spoke, but Ivy started to look very, very tense.
“Whyyyy?”
A few more words from Zoge that I couldn’t understand. This time more clipped; less musical; almost forceful.
“Dōshite?” Ivy wasn’t having nearly as much fun as I had been having.
Zoge kept speaking, but I couldn’t understand her. Her words all tumbled and folded in on each other. It might as well have been one unbreaking string of babbling tongues to me.
Ivy understood. “Dōōōōshite?”
The only word out of Zoge’s mouth that I understood next was “Ivy”.
“Dōōōōōōōshite?”
Zoge placed both palms flat on the table. “Ichi…”
“Dōōōōōōōshite…?” Ivy looked to me for support. I pretended to look away.
Zoge continued “Ni…”
Uh oh! I didn’t know Yamatoan, but even I recognized the tone and steady pace of a warning count. If I had any mercy or decency left in me, I would have spoken up or told Zoge to stop, or asked my own inane questions to draw the heat off of Ivy.
It’s not what Cassie would have done.
“San!”
Ivy broke like a dam, blubbering in her seat. I don’t know what punishment her Mommy threatened but it was enough to traumatize her. Bawling, she pounded the table with balled up fists. “Dōshite! Dōshite! Dōōōōōōōshite!” The girl sounded like a death sentence had just been handed down.
“Mrs. Zoge?” Beouf called over sounding concerned. “Is Ivy alright?”
“All will be fine, Mrs. Beouf.” Zoge called back. “Ivy just needs to learn a lesson.”
I looked around the room. All eyes were on Ivy. Bit by bit, I saw our classmates piece what had happened through half-heard snippets.
“Did Ivy say ‘Why’?” Jesse asked.
Very quietly, Zoge replied. “Yes. She did.”
“Why?”
That elicited a chorus of giggles.
Beouf tried to reassert control. “Don’t worry about it, dear. Back to work.”
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“When someone is making a scene we tend to our own business, remember? Don’t pay it any mind. ”
“Why?” Sandra Lynn now.
“That’s between Ivy and her-”
“Why?” Chaz interrupted.
“Why?,” Jesse said.
Mandy and Shauna piled on with their own “Why?” a second later.
“It’ll be fine.”
“Why?” Billy and Annie looked like they were on the verge of trying to start a chant.
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why?”
Someone listening in might have heard it as an overlapping flock of seagulls. To us though, it was victory. In that glorious moment, Why Day was back on!
“Hmmm,” Mrs. Beouf said in a very scripted monotone. “Mrs. Zoge do you think the children should have a longer nap this afternoon? Maybe skip the playground altogether?”
‘I think that would be very appropriate, Mrs. Beouf.”
The squawking stopped, and was replaced by a discord of ‘AWWWWWWWW!’ and general grumbling. We had flown too close to the sun and were being punished. I was part of that ‘we’ however.
No playground and the other Littles saw me as one of them?
Win-Win.