I Am Isabel the Storyteller

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January 19, 2021

#15. I fill in the blanks: “Nothing cures_______ like________.

I’m not homesick, exactly. Homesick is more like that time I went to Nature’s Classroom and missed Dad’s grilled cheese.*

And, I don’t know if there ARE any good towers to explore around here.  The ancient wooden fire tower at West Lake is no Hogarts’ Astronomy Tower.  I would love to climb that steep spiral staircase, pull on the iron ring-handled door leading out onto the crenellated ramparts, the parapet and all that. But that’s in a book. This is life.

What if I treat “unexplored tower” as a metaphor—a message about something else?

My mind wanders to Harry Potter and how sad I was when I finished the series…

All of a sudden it seems like a big hand–a Dad-size hand–is on my back, nudging me. I straighten up and start to talk out loud.  

Or maybe it’s that I’m HEARTSICK.  Not HOMESICK. Hmmm.  HEARTSICK for Mom and Dad. 

The words “unexplored tower” still puzzle me, but I’ve always thought of puzzles as a kind of pump. Mimi has a pump in her little catfish pond. It’s got a photovoltaic panel that uses the energy from the sun to run its motor, so it can squirt the pond water up into a fountain. (Besides getting good air into the water, it makes rainbows too.)

So. I’m pumped.  And I’m catching the sunlight. Energized.

I find a t-shirt and jeans.  I pull on my socks.

An Unexplored Tower could be anything I explore, or find out about. Or do.

I tie my sneakers tight, so I won’t trip on the laces.  

It could be like a quest or a job. It doesn’t have to be a real tower. 

I go back to the first lace and double-knot it.

I know exactly what my quest will be.

Revenge. I will seek vengeance on the guy who killed Mom and Dad.

I double-knot the other lace and stamp my foot back to the floor. I do a mental inventory. Hey, this is good. I can’t feel determined AND heartsick at the same time. I’ve found a “tower” to explore!  I race downstairs, but stumble on the last step when I wonder if Dad would agree with my cure for heartsickness.

Well, he isn’t here now, and I do.  I do agree with myself, that is.

ISABEL

* See my comment in the comment-reply section for Dad’s recipe for grilled cheese. It was Pop’s originally, so he was able to pull it out of his recipe box when I asked about it today.

isabelinchair

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January 19, 2021

# 16. I, Isabel Scheherazade Solve the Mystery of the Missing Paper and Another Mystery Pops Up in It’s Place.

Is it possible that the papergirl hasn’t come yet? Not likely. I’ve just arrived at the breakfast nook for breakfast. Something’s up. The paper isn’t spread out in the usual messy, comfortable manner. It’s weird to see Pop and Mimi without a “table cloth” of newsprint under their elbows. No comics for the twins. No editorial or quirky story under discussion. 

It’s unusually silent too. The twins look from me to Pop to Mimi and up to the bookshelf at the window end of the nook.

As I pour Cheerios I spy the paper out of the corner of my eye, HIDDEN, sticking out a bit from between a cookbook called How to Cook Everything New and Revised and Pop’s notebook, also new and revised, of the recipes he’s creating for the five of us.

I can just make out the top part of the headline and the date.  (Okay. Okay. I know my blog-readers are probably saying, Right, Isabel, how can you read the print on a paper that’s been hidden? Easy. I bet you can read a sentence even if all the vowels are removed? Or the letters are scrambled in the word? Well, me too. Only difference is I’m reading the TOP half of each word. Put a card halfway through the headline below.  See? You CAN read it!)  I make some guesses and see that the headline says:

                            Preliminary Hearing Scheduled for Traffic Fatality.

I pretend I don’t see the paper, sprinkle blueberries on the toasty o’s, slice in a banana, add the milk, sit down, and dig in. I’m halfway through when Mimi and Pop say they’re taking the twins off to get their teeth brushed. (We have to go to Dr. Moon for shots and school checks.)  Teeth-brushing will take a while, so I reach up to the bookshelves and yank out the paper. I spread it out after pushing my bowl to the side. No more appetite for Cherrios. The Killer’s picture is above the fold in the center of the page. He still has that dusty,  jean jacket look about him.

The article says the Killer’s “Preliminary Hearing” will be in two weeks.  At the courthouse on Main Street. Right down the street from the school. Right after school starts.

Could this be my chance to seek revenge? I must go to this hearing and, er, well, I don’t know what I’ll do. What’s a hearing I wonder?

And why did Pop and Mimi hide this important information?

Isabel Scheherazade

Isabelcurlyheadfrombackonchair

(My sketches are by my friend, Ryan.)

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January 16, 2021

#13. I have another thought about the daily treat at Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe

I’m piling up a small stack of things I never did with Mom and Dad.

The stack sits in sun and shade. When we do something new with Mimi or Pop, it reminds me that I never did this with Mom and Dad, and that reminds me that they’re gone. Sort of like a chain reaction.

I explain this to Mimi, while I stir my pumpkin latte. I watch her face.

She sips her hazelnut coffee. Isabel, she takes a breath, after a while? Well, after a while, I hope that when we do new things it won’t always come with the sad thought…She hesitates.

I finish her sentence, With the sad thought that Mom and Dad are dead, you mean?

Mimi nods.

I think, THAT will never happen. But I don’t say this to Mimi.  Instead, I gulp the top froth; it gives me a milk mustache that gets the twins laughing. I’m about to say, Mimi, we’re not there yet, but then I just can’t help it; I start laughing too when the twins give themselves chocolate mustaches. Then Belle, who was drinking a Blueberry Smoothie, comes over with a blue mustache.

Like I said: sun and shade.

ISABEL

cropped-isabelcrosslegsmaller1.jpg

5 Comments
January 15, 2021

#11b. Old-fashioned Water Pumps: Metaphor alert!

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5 Comments
January 15, 2021

#11a. A story from the Way-Back Seat of my memory about Dad that shows how pumped he was about Miss Mary’s pump.

Miss Mary’s water pump looks like the one in Little House on the Prairie. In fact, it looks JUST like that water pump LAMP next to my bed–the one Dad made in shop class.  I wish I could ask  Dad if he got the idea for the lamp from Miss Mary’s real pump.

BEFORE everything changed, my family would “come over” to Pop and Mimi’s for brunch or picnics, stuff like that. And every time we come, Dad brings us to the farm to see the animals and, quiz us on how the pump works.

Dad really wanted us to understand, and I’m finally getting it. Here’s what happens the very last time we visit BEFORE. (Which, BTW, is only two weeks ago. Seems more like a decade.)

After cranking the pump handle a few times while the twins and I watch, Dad raises his eyebrow and says, Who can tell me why there’s no water coming out of the pump today?

ME:  Air.

DAD: Right, air’s gotten in, so there’s no water pressure. No water pressure, no water.

(You might notice that the twins aren’t saying anything. That’s ’cause they’re four. They ARE looking back and forth between Dad and me like it’s a tennis match.) 

DAD: So what do we do?

TWINS: Knock on Miss Mary’s door! Knock on Miss Mary’s door! 

DAD: Looking a little perplexed, Er, why would we do that dudes?

TWINS: Miss Mary has water in her sink! Miss Mary has water in her sink!

DAD: He ruffles their heads and fist-bumps with them, and then he says, What ELSE could we do?

ME: Get rid of the air that’s wrecked the water pressure.

DAD: How do we do that?

ME: Like this. And I run back to Mimi and Pop’s, turn on their hose, pour water from the hose into a bucket, and run back up the hill to Miss Mary’s. (The twins watch me like I’ve never done this before and, trust me, if I’ve done it once, I’ve done it a zillion times. Or at least three times when they were around.)

DAD: Now what?

ME: I pour the water into the top here.  (I have to stand tippy-toed to lift the bucket and pour it into this pipe that’s right next to the pump.) Then I pump the handle. 

I pump the handle updownupdown a few times and then, with a great gurgle and splash, water spurts out and into the trough below. The trough’s for the animals to drink from. In fact, one of Miss Mary’s lambs (Pretty funny, huh? “Miss Mary’s Lambs,” like in the nursery rhyme?) scurries around the corner of the barn and starts lapping it up.

ISABEL

Isabelcurlyheadfrombackonchair-sketch by my friend Ryan Grimaldi Pickard

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January 14, 2021

#10. I remember a detail about the murderer.

Right before I confronted the killer, this is the scene at Ye Old Coffee Shoppe:  Mimi thought we should try the round glass-top wire table Belle has tucked in a corner. Since it’s further from the counter and other customers she figured it might work better for the twins. (She and Pop haven’t started to put their foot down yet with their antics. I understand. I don’t how they’ll react to having somebody who isn’t Mom or Dad say “no” either.

Mimi says, Sam, er, maybe you shouldn’t teeter?

“Maybe?” Really, Mimi?  I study Clyde as he moves his chair around on the flagstones to teeter it like Sam’s. I take a break from scooping pumpkin latte froth; it’s still too hot; I scan the rest of the room.

The door swings open and the oxygen sucks out of  Ye Old Coffee Shoppe.

It’s him. The guy. The one who ran the red light. I know it’s him for sure because I saw his picture in the paper the day after he murdered Mom and Dad. Black curly hair, one big eyebrow, whiskers, a faded jean jacket, work pants, and boots.

I watch him order coffee. Belle asks him to repeat what he said. Figures he would be a mumbler.

I see that he’s dusty. Looks like drywall dust, I think.  How the heck do I recognize drywall dust, I ask myself, and a scene from the Way-Back Seat of my memory emerges like magic.

This guy looks like DAD looked that time he fixed the wall in my bedroom–before he painted the rainbows and Mom did the constellations.  I play the memory out in my head as I stare at the killer ripping sugar packets. Four of them. That’s a lot of sugar, Mister, I think. While he dumps sugar,  the rest of him doesn’t move. My image of Dad and the drywall dust comes clearer, like a fog’s blown away from it.

At the end of the bedroom project, Dad is covered head to toe with white. He looks like someone with ghost make-up.

Mom and I laugh at him. (It’s just the three of us at this point in our lives; the twins haven’t been born yet.)  Dad chases us around and makes hooohooo noises. He was so fun.

This guy must be on a coffee break. I’d read that he has two jobs–a floor-polisher and shelf-stocker in a grocery store at night and a builder during the day. Maybe this is why he looks exhausted. Today he must have been putting up dry wall.

I watch him carry the coffee to a table. He pulls out the chair and sits down. He cradles the cardboard cup. He doesn’t sip, just looks into a middle distance. Suddenly, he puts the cup down and puts his head in his hands.

I glance at Mimi to see if she’s noticing either the guy or me, but she’s totally into twin-teetering.

I push my chair back, stand up, and go over to his table. The rest, as they say, is history.

ISABEL

cropped-isabelcrosslegsmaller1.jpg

(sketches by Ryan Grimaldi Pickard)

4 Comments
January 13, 2021

#9. An AFTERWORD. Get it? Like afterward, but with the “a” changed to an “o”?

One time Dad and I stand next to this huge steam engine that pulls the commuter train between our town and the next one.  I see the engineer and another guy shovel coal into a furnace. Dad says, The coal heats the water, and the steam from the water moves the train. 

I  hear all this huffing and puffing, like the engine is revving itself up for pulling all the cars.

Dad looks down at me and says, It’s called “gathering steam,” Isabel.

I think of Dad and the engine yesterday morning when Mimi comes up to see if I’m okay.

She sits on the edge of my bed and tells me that since Mom and Dad died it’s been hard for her to get up too. I feel bad ’cause I haven’t been thinking about how hard it must be for them.

It’s okay for you to feel the way you do, Mimi says.  It’s because we’re sad. This is what it means to grieve.

I’m about to ask her whether we’ll ever STOP grieving, but don’t think I want to hear the answer. If we cease grieving does that mean we lose Mom and Dad?

Mimi gets up to go back downstairs, but turns back and says, Take your time, Isabel. You’re gathering steam.

If words can warm, then Mimi’s heat my heart.

ISABEL

cropped-isabelcrossleg2.jpg

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January 13, 2021

#8. Why I Can’t Hop Out of Bed.

Every morning since coming to live with Pop and Mimi, after I wake up? After my eyes open? I.  Just. Lie Here. It’s like I don’t have a habit of what to do next in this place. I haven’t jumped out of bed once.

Yet.

One reason is I’m shocked to be at Pop and Mimi’s still. Of course the twins and I have stayed overnight lots of times. It was always a special treat. We loved it. Now it’s like a Big Mistake.  This place we loved to visit is now instead of the place we loved to live in. With the two people we loved most in the world. The universe. 

So I’m shocked, like I-stuck-a-finger-in-an-outlet-shocked.

I think it’s partly because I’m not in my regular-when-life-was-good bedroom: Rainbows on the walls–painted by Dad. Constellations on the ceiling–painted by Mom. In our second floor, crowded apartment. 

Where I am now is Dad’s old bedroom. The one he had when he was a kid like me.

Dormer window facing the morning sun. Bed with carved pineapple bedposts.

Tiny bedside table with one drawer. I found a basketball inflator needle in it, leftover from Dad’s b-ball days as a hotshot three-point champ.

Water pump lamp. Dad made it in woodworking class when he was in fourth grade. The handle of the pump has a chain on it. When you pump the handle the light goes on and off. There’s a pretend spout and a water trough for pretend water to flow into. Oh, and did I mention this? The lamp shade has horses on it, like hole-punched horse shapes, so when it’s dark and the light is on you see horses all over the walls.

Back to why I can’t budge out of bed in the mornings:

I feel like I have to check on my mind and muscle powers. You know, to see if I’ve got any.

It’s like I’m Mr. Frank, the grocery man at Frank’s Grocery and Food Mart. I help Mimi with our weekly shopping there. She holds onto the cart and her list, and I fetch stuff for her. (That’s a Mimi word–fetch.)  I always bump into Mr. Frank in his white apron.  He checks the shelves and makes notes. Just doing inventory, Isabel, he says to me and pats my head. Need to see what’s what. 

That’s how it is with me. I’m doing inventory, checking to see what I have left on my shelves.

It’s not that I don’t want to go downstairs and see Mimi and Pop, Clyde and Sam. I can hear them from here. They’re up and at ‘em, as Mom used to say.

Listen to this, Dearie, Pop says as he reads the sports page.

Do you want oatmeal or Cherrios, Clyde? Mimi doesn’t know exactly what the guys like for breakfast, and she’s trying to Get It Right.

And I hear VaroomVaroom noises that tell me the Tonkas are on the table next to the cereal bowls. Pop and Mimi don’t know that Dad didn’t allow toys at the table, because of all the spills.

Or maybe they do know and don’t want to say NO yet.

ISABEL

isabelcrossleg2

(sketches by Ryan Grimaldi Pickard, Isabel’s dear friend)

2 Comments
January 9, 2021

#4. I need to seek revenge for my parents death, don’t I? I mean I can’t just do nothing. I’m sympathetic to all those guys who tried to pull the sword out of the stone. They didn’t know what they were dealing with either.

I don’t expect to succeed. Right away, that is. Picture all the knights gathered around the sword in the stone. And all those wrong knights trying to yank it out. I know that at first my attempts at revenge will be like a string of wrong knights. But. Never fear. I will exact revenge, eventually, on the man who killed my parents. Not with a sword. Heaven forfend, as they say in the King Arthur books. But revenge, nonetheless.

I don’t have a sword anyways.

Isabel

 

 

 

 

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January 8, 2021

#3. I need an escape den: could it be this blog?

Mom and I found at least 8 escape dens in the back woods last year. Our Red Fox used them to get away from predators and storms. But! She slept in the open. I need something like this too: both a way to escape bad guys and weather and also a way to emerge and do what needs doing. I’m thinking metaphorically. Although the idea of curling up under a hemlock with a furry tail or warm coat all around me? Not bad.

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