Ten Kinds of Crazy

Lily was an accident. That’s what Mom and Dad said, when they broke the news to me and the brothers over second-time-around meatloaf and corn on the cob. An accident, as if they were apologizing for puncturing holes in the inflatable pool with the lawnmower.

            Six months later they brought her home, small and hollering and getting pissed off every ten minutes at God knew what. As the oldest, at ten, I got to do the honors of changing her diapers every time she filled them up with that mustardy goop babies make. You know the kind. Looks like decayed squash and smells worse.

            Me and Lily got along okay, though. Even after that time I burped her for thirty minutes and she didn’t so much as hiccup, until I went nose-to-nose with the squirt to see what the hold-up was, and she threw up right into my mouth.

            Right into my mouth.

            By the time she was two, I had her on a tricycle. Mom sat fanning herself on the porch, on account the air conditioning was busted that summer, and told me I was ten kinds of crazy thinking I could get a two-year-old to ride a trike. But Mom didn’t know Lil like I did. I got her to ride that trike, all right. Even to make vroom vroom noises that were cute as heck until Mom hollered for her to shut up. But Mrs. Brady across the street would smile and wave at Lil and give her lollipops and things, and sometimes she’d give me one too. “Now you keep an eye on that little dumpling, Ellie,” she would always say. And I’d say right back, “Yes, ma’am,” because Granny had taught me to be polite.

            I wanted to teach Lil to throw a baseball, and climb trees. When she was old enough, I was going to sign her up for Girl Scouts and sign me up as den mother. I had a sketchbook filled with ideas for field trips and fundraisers enough to outfit a whole army of Girl Scouts, and none of it was that sissy stuff, either. It was all knots and lures and fire-making and things Mom called me ten kinds of crazy for.

            But Lil didn’t seem quite into that stuff, yet, because she would always throw her baseball into the bushes and then command me to go after it. “Command?” I said.

            “Yes, Ellie! I command you to find that baseball, because I am a princess. Didn’t you know I’m a princess? I’m the best princess and the beautifulest princess in the whole land!”

            And all this from a three-year-old. Now what kind of three-year-old talks like that who isn’t gonna be class president and an ivy leaguer and then eventually somebody famous for being smart? So I crawled into the bushes and slapped the ball into her little royal hand and she laughed and commanded me here and there, little brat that she was.

            “Why are you so fixed on this princess thing, anyway?” I asked. “Don’t you want to go camping?”

            She just wrinkled the freckles on her nose and said “Princesses don’t camp! They sleep in pink beds in castles and eat candy all day long!” Then she ran off to Mrs. Brady for a lollipop on that trike.

            I told her not to ride that thing when I wasn’t home. The boys were always racing wheelies down the hill or throwing rocks in each other’s spokes, and I wouldn’t have her caught up in that stupidity. And Mom didn’t really notice things like cars and stuff, so I just felt better if the trike was chained up when I was gone.

            But that one night, I went to bring Lil in for her bedtime story and she wouldn’t come, wanted to sit on her trike and holler about unicorns and nonsense. Well, I’d gotten a D on Mr. Whitlock’s algebra exam that day, and seeing as to how I was already failing middle school in just about everything except gym, I was not in the mood for pet-ulance. So I hauled her princess butt into the house and tossed the trike into the carport, and when she asked “Are you gonna chain my unicorn up so she doesn’t run away?” I said “If it runs away then it’s a stupid unicorn and you don’t want it anyway.”