THE GOLD FISH: Questions (1.3)
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To Barbie, Mr. Charles’s small stature was perhaps the least interesting thing about him.
What was interesting about Mr. Charles was that he was interested. In things. All kinds of things. He was a voracious reader, consuming countless newspapers, magazines, and books on every topic imaginable. Huge tomes on things like caustics and other science-y subjects like genetics, astrology, physics, and biology. Or books by military strategists, historians, and philosophers, the latter whom Barbie’s grandfather, Pop, would have called peddlers of smarty pants folderol. But Mr. Charles was truly an equal opportunity reader. He also read westerns, spy thrillers, and murder mysteries, or educated himself on practical topics like nautical rope tying or scrimshaw. In contrast to Barbie’s sister Karen, who was a quiet, lip-picking reader, Mr. Charles was a loud, pipe-smoking reader, who puffed mightily and muttered unintelligible words while he read. Possibly words of delight, dismay, or disbelief, but who could really tell?
Whenever Mr. Charles wasn’t reading, he was puttering in his garden, which while relatively small, still took up the majority of his postage-stamp-sized back yard. Most residents on Pitney Road grew tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes, and Mr. Charles grew those too, but his tomatoes came in all colors, shapes, and sizes. The real wonders, however, were the strange, foreign things he grew. Eggplant. Zucchini. Fennel. Escarole. Things Barbie had never heard of, let alone seen with her own two eyes. Things, to Barbie’s great surprise, Mr. Charles actually ate and seemed to enjoy.
But Mr. Charles’ interest in unusual subjects and foreign items made a kind of sense. Because Mr. Charles was an official United States Postal Service mailman, which must, Barbie reasoned, put him into regular contact with all sorts of exotic things. News and packages from far-away places, love letters of both the Dear John and SWAK variety, and mysterious magazines wrapped in brown Kraft paper. Barbie had peeked behind the covers of a few of those in her day; her father was a regular subscriber of the brown-paper wrapped magazine variety.
So yes, Mr. Charles was interesting. Which was why Barbie liked him. But the reason she loved him was simple and singular. He treated her like a real person. Not just a dumb kid. He answered her questions, and more surprisingly, he asked her questions and actually listened to her answers.
Barbie thought you could tell a lot about a person from the way they asked and answered questions.
And she had a big one. One she was afraid to ask. One that filled her with unease. Because while Barbie didn’t care much about Mr. Charles’s being a dwarf, it was the source of her worry and her question. And the question was this: did the people on Mr. Charles’s mail route treat him nicely? Were they respectful? Kind? Or did they point, snicker, and giggle? Call him a member of the Lollypop Guild or something equally as silly?
Obviously, Barbie didn’t know. But what she did know is that these strangers didn’t know him. Not like she knew him anyway.
Of course, she had no evidence to believe anything bad happened to Mr. Charles whatsoever. Why shouldn’t the people he met on his mail route be like all their neighbors on Pitney Road? Who always offered Mr. Charles the same friendly smiles and comments about the weather as anyone else and offered Trixie the same affectionate pats and scratches under the chin as any other dog?
Barbie wanted to believe that everyone on Mr. Charles’s mail route was just as kind. And on her good, not so worrying days, she did believe it.
But on those days when fearful thoughts made it difficult for her to breathe, she wasn’t so sure. Because she had learned firsthand at Immaculate Heart of Mary elementary school that people could be very, very cruel. The kids at IHM could sense and needle otherness like a pig snorted for truffles. Barbie wasn’t the only redhead in a Catholic school half full of Irish American kids, but she sure was made to feel like it. And she’d never forget the torture Regina Ricci, she of the other half of IHM -- the Italian half -- suffered last year when she had come back from summer break with boobs.
Barbie could get over those petty offenses because, well, kids were kids. But IHM had also taught her that adults -- specifically priests and nuns, the very people who were supposed to be Jesus’s servants and therefore, nice -- were another matter. She’d never forget, or forgive, the time in 5th grade when Sister Mary Margaret, a battle-axe with a face like Winston Churchill, had sent her airborne for failing to sit like a lady. Barbie still had the crescent-shaped scar above her left eyebrow from the collision with the metal-edged desk beside her. She’d bled like a stuck pig -- another one of Joan’s expressions -- and had to be sent to the nurse for a butterfly band-aid. But had Sister Mary Margaret been sorry? Nope. Not one tiny, little bit. In fact, when Barbie had returned from the nurse, she’d been made to wipe up her own spilled blood from the floor with paper towels -- the cheap, non-absorbent kind that just left smears -- while Sister glared and reprimanded her for doing a “poor job” of it. On that day, even her underdeveloped 5th grade brain understood that if the Catholic Church allowed such mean-spirited behavior, they deserved the top spot on her do not trust list.
Not that her disillusionment with the Catholic Church meant Barbie stopped believing in God. Nope. She still did. But figured that the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and bible stories like the Good Samaritan were all she needed to guide her moral compass, although she could never have named such a thing. To Barbie, it was simply the difference between right and wrong. A kind of code. Why the priests and nuns didn’t live by that same code was a mystery, but not one she was terribly interested in solving. She simply resolved to never listen to them again. In fact, as far as she was concerned, nuns and priests could -- as her mother Joan might have said -- put a cork in it.
Barbie’s encounter with Sister Mary Margaret had also left her with another resolution. She would NEVER, EVER sit like a lady. Why should she? Ladies didn’t do anything. And Barbie intended to do stuff. Lotsa stuff.
Which leads back to Mr. Charles, who yes, was a person Barbie worried about, but was also a person she trusted implicitly with her baby sister. And in her eagerness to execute her idea, she decided to tamp down her natural shyness and do what she almost NEVER did.
She asked for help.
“Mr. Charles?”
Mr. Charles, lifted his head from his tomatoes, peered over the fence, and around the pipe clenched in his teeth, “hmmmm?”
Barbie nodded towards The Belle in the sandbox. “Could you, um, keep an eye on The Belle... just for a minute... while I run inside and grab something?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t kill me.” He winked first one eye. Then the next. Then opened both wide. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll use both eyes.”
Barbie giggled at the dumb joke, then was off like a shot, shouting over her shoulder as she went. “Thanks Mr. Charles.”
Next → The Pool (1.4)