Memoir of a Scatter-Brained Four-Year-Old

 

I had a collection of invisible friends. I never told anyone I had them or talked to them out loud. Our conversations went on in my head. 

My mother used to say she wished she knew what was going on in my head. I didn’t tell her since, even at four I knew that only crazy people talked to people who weren’t there, and if you were crazy, men in the white coats would put you in a straitjacket and take you to Byberry. I wasn’t sure where that was, but I knew I didn’t want to go there.

My mother said she didn’t want them to come for her until the azaleas were in bloom. I used to hope they’d never bloom so no one would take her. I never knew why she’d want them to take her. 

Who could understand grownups?

My mother had silly rules, like looking up and down before crossing the street. 

What about cars? 

On our street there were seldom cars except just before dinner when dads came home. No one crossed the street then; you were in the house not spoiling your appetite.

What about the big road? There were always cars on that. Still, I dutifully looked at the sky and then at the ground, peeking out the corners of my eyes for cars.

I never asked why I needed to look up and down for two important reasons: first, my brother would say I was stupid; second, I knew the answer my mother would give. “Because I’m your mother and I said so.” Even at four I knew that was the answer to most questions beginning with why.

It was different in the city. There, when the white rectangle word lit up it meant you could cross the street and cars knew not to hit you. When the orange square word lit up, it meant they didn’t.

I loved going downtown. We took the train. I knew we were almost there when my brothers pointed out the window at the sky and said, “Look, there’s Billy Penn,” but for some reason I thought they said penguin. 

I didn’t know who Billy the Penguin was, but I pointed at the sky and pretended I could see him, too. I thought maybe he was like Bertie the Bunyip and lived in the television.

I knew my address and phone number, even if I didn’t know what addresses and phone numbers were. In case I was ever lost, I could go right up to the nearest policeman – or the lady behind the counter if I were in Wannamaker’s – and tell them my name, address and phone number so my parents could find me.

My parents did so many things I didn’t understand; it’s amazing I ever understood anything. My mother would decide to tell me things I didn’t ask about. 

She didn’t need to tell me about monsters because it never occurred to me that they could live under the bed or in the closet – until she mentioned that they didn’t. 

I knew they lived inside the television, just like Beaver Cleaver, Opie Taylor, Bertie the Bunyip and the cowboys and Indians.

 Too many dead cowboys and Indians was the reason our television would break, according to my dad, and he’d go behind the console and clean them out.

Anyway, when I was four I guess my aunt was having another baby – she did that often – and my mother decided to tell me where babies came from. I hadn’t asked. It didn’t occur to me to wonder. Babies just were, although I didn’t know how grownups actually knew when they were going to get one. I guess my mother knew and had to tell someone, so she told me.

The whole thing didn’t sound right, in my opinion. She started off telling me that the dad had the seeds. Wait, what? 

She lost me right there. 

I knew about seeds. They came in little paper packets that you bought at the store and planted in a garden. Then you’d get flowers or carrots or something. I had been to my aunt’s house. She had flowers in her garden, not babies.

Somehow this had to make sense. Okay, so they buy baby seeds. They plant them in a planter that’s hidden in their room. That’s why we weren’t allowed in my parents’ room without permission: they didn’t want us to know too much about the plants.

Anyway, something grew – probably something yucky, like spinach – the mom would eat it and it made her get fat. I was four, after all, and had observed that only fat ladies had babies. 

When the mother was fat enough she went into the hospital, and they put her on a diet. When she lost enough weight her prize was to go to the nursery and pick out which baby she wanted. It sounded silly to me, but it was a grownup thing.

Where did the babies come from? Well, there were always babies in the hospital nursery, just as there were always groceries in the grocery store. I guess some people need more detail than that, so I thought up the most logical solution (Whatever my mother said certainly made no sense – but again, “because I’m your mother and I said so,” was the reason behind it, so I didn’t ask).

I knew at that time that God made all of us. 

And where are things made? In factories. There were car factories, bicycle factories, refrigerator factories – there must be baby factories, too. 

God would make the babies and send them down the checkout line. 

People would pack them in boxes – the kind with the little holes in the sides and a handle top. The boxes were put in a delivery truck. 

The truck delivered the babies to the hospital according to how many boys and girls and which colors of each they had ordered. 

Then the nurses took them out of the boxes and put them in the plastic bins in the nursery until someone picked them.

I don’t know what my mother may have said about babies. This was what I put together after she mentioned the seeds. It made about as much sense to me as anything else grownups did, and I figured it out by myself, without anyone telling me I was stupid.

If I told Rob about this he’d know I was smart, I thought. I didn’t know if I was as ugly as he said, but I knew I wasn’t stupid. I never did tell him though, because I thought he might not play with me if he knew I wasn’t stupid.

With this knowledge, I was well on my way. Someday I’d know how to read and then maybe I would drive across the bridge over the ocean and see that Iron Curtain the grownups were always talking about, and the little red people in Russia. Who knew? There might be lots of other things to discover.