living memory Grace Deaton
My name is Ida Elizabeth and I am an only child. The kids in my class make fun of my name. They call me a grandma and ask how many times I had flunked to be a grandma who hadn’t graduated fifth grade. I don’t know what to say to them. My mom tells me to ignore them because my name is special and they will never understand, no one will ever understand. My mom and dad work a lot. They work even more than I go to school. I get lonely when they aren’t around, but that means I get to watch a lot of TV. Sometimes I wish I had someone to watch with, but then I imagine a little brother yelling at me to change the channel like dad does to mom, and I decide I’m happy on my own. Today I decide to be bad. Mommy always tells me that I can’t have a TV in my room because watching TV in bed will turn me into a zombie, eating other people’s brains instead of using my own. She and Daddy have always had a TV in their room which I think means they are already zombies. According to my science class, if two zombies have a baby then that baby has to be a zombie, that’s how genes work. I climb up onto Mommy and Daddy’s bed. The duvet swallows me whole like the time I swallowed an entire grape without chewing and Mommy cried and cried and cried while I coughed it up and told her everything was fine. But she didn’t stop crying. I reach for the nightstand on my mom’s side of the bed where the remote always lives, but it’s not there. I crawl over to Daddy’s side, thinking he finally stole the remote away from Mommy. But he didn’t. It’s not on the bed, nowhere on the floor. I can’t find it in the bathroom, nor in any of the dresser drawers. The digital clock on the nightstand blinks 3:26pm. Four minutes until my show starts, an hour until my mom gets home. I am losing time. I swing open the double closet doors. I’d never been in my mom’s closet before. It’s big. I didn’t know she owned this many clothes. I run my hand along the dresses, imagining their soft fabric brushing my own legs. I take a pair of tall heels and slip my tiny feet into them. My ankles wobble as I try to step and I fall to my knees.
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