Imagine My Surprise (17a)
PART 3 — Back to Keenan
17. Daycare is a Halfway House — 1st part
In which Keenan finds daycare is a microcosm.
Imagine my surprise when I had to go to daycare.
You see, Drew finally got a job — selling commercial pest control — and Lou still worked part time. So—daycare.
This did not make me happy, and it did not make Lou or Drew happy, seeing as daycare was an expense they could scarcely afford. But there we were, Lou and I, pulling up in front of the brightly painted green and blue single-family home that doubled as a daycare facility: Happy Feet Daycare. Strapped helplessly in the children’s car seat, I gazed glumly at the high white picket fence, the red plastic top of a slide peeking out above it. The car smelled of perfume and cigarettes. Lou opened the door and knelt down to unbuckle and extract me.
“Mom!” I whined.
“Keenan, I know you hate this, but after your last stunt, if we don’t appear to be a normal, sane family, CPS is going to whisk you away, and then where will you be?”
Couldn’t’ve put it better. She was right.
“And if you get foster parents, they will want to send you to genius school and poke and prod you and fuck you up. Is that what you want?”
“No.” While Lou left a lot to be desired in a mother, she sure got me. I mean, she didn’t know for sure about my intellect, but she intuited that I wanted to be left alone. And she felt lucky not to have to chase after a toddler all day.
“Believe me, I’d rather just leave you at home in front of the TV, but even I’m not sure anymore if you won’t get into trouble. You’re too damn smart.”
She lifted me out onto the bright morning sidewalk. She had me dressed in little jeans, little sneakers, and a little blue plaid button-down. The car door slammed. She knelt down again, looking me in the eye as she fussed with my wispy ginger-blond hair. The high-pitched cacophony of twenty children of various ages drifted through the fence, which I now saw was constructed of molded white plastic.
“Keenan, I know this isn’t your scene.” She looked pretty in her knee-length business skirt, sun glinting red through her dark hair. “Your scene. Hell, I don’t know what your scene is, but I know it’s not with kids your own age. Frankly, you sometimes remind me of your grandfather. Anyway, don’t freak out the teacher or caretaker or whatever they call the people who watch over the kids.”
I looked skeptically through the fence. Kids running. “Okay.”
“And don’t organize any coup d’états against the management — this is the only place we can afford.”
I grinned a little. “Okay.”
“Ready?”
I nodded. She stood and grabbed my up-stretched hand.
Fifteen minutes later I found myself seated on a tiny red plastic chair at a tiny kelly-green table in the corner of a large playroom, all a-bustle with kids age two-to-five, a kaleidoscope of races, and an even mix of girls to boys.
The director and owner of Happy Feet, Dorothy, was a pudgy, middle-aged white lady with thinning brown-gray hair and a distinct no-nonsense demeanor. She was capable and a little tough. Dorothy was assisted by a young lady who I assumed was either her daughter or niece: late teens, very cute, name of Tabitha. What I could deduce from Tabitha’s chipped black fingernail polish, nose piercing, and deep red goth lipstick was that, under her accommodating façade, she was bored, bitter, and didn’t much care for Dorothy. Tabitha would rather be smoking pot and drinking beer with her friends in Santa Cruz instead of chasing little monsters like me. I immediately liked her.
But there I was at the little table with a box of Crayolas and a few sheets of newspaper-grade art paper. I argued in my head which level of kid-mode I should affect to integrate into the mix. The black crayon in my hand was poised over the paper; a miniature showcase of human sociology seethed around me and left me pondering. What was clear right away, as my eyes darted everywhere, was that the little girls directed most of the playtime activities — except for those outlier boys with blocks, dump trucks, Legos or trains. Trains were very popular. But most of the boys were sucked into playtime as directed by the girls.
A boy a little older than me with straight black hair whooshed past, snagging the crayon from my hand without a thought. This did not distress me. Tabitha was busy on the floor reading Dr. Seuss to several very interested children. Dorothy patiently and expertly changed a diaper on a table across the room. A little blond girl pounded relentlessly on a plastic toy piano in the middle of the floor, performing a dissonant and somewhat psychotic aria for her playmates, who ignored her.
One — indeed — flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
Is it any wonder that when your life, as such, springs from this kind of insanity, many of us so readily return to the loony bin? Some kind of gravity was in play.
“Hi, I’m Lulu. You wanna play barbershop?”
I jumped at the sound of her voice. A girl with golden curls in a stained pink flowered dress stood over me. Lulu was probably four and she had little bee-stung lips and liquid pale blue eyes.
“Barbershop?”
“Yeah, come here with me.”
She took my hand (which was still frozen in place, empty of its black crayon) and led me to three plastic milk crates that she’d arranged into a sort of counter. Behind the counter was another boy, dark — Southeast Asian, I think — who stood there as confused as I was.
“Rakesh, you sell him the books.”
Whew! I feared scissors might be involved. Rakesh pulled a thin hard-covered children’s book from behind the counter and set it before me.
“That’ll be five dollars,” Lulu demanded.
Oh, shit. These people were insane.
“I thought this was a barbershop.”
Lulu got a little surly. “It is! Five dollars! Pay up!”
Er…use my improv skills! Yes, and….
I reached for my non-existent wallet. “I left my wallet at home. I’ll pay you six dollars tomorrow. Okay?”
She looked at me skeptically. “Okay, you can pay me tomorrow.”
She handed me the book and took a scrap of paper from her pocket and handed it to me.
“Here’s your receipt. Six dollars!” She took the book back and put it behind the counter. “What’s your name?”
“Keenan.”
“Keenan, you can be the casher now. Rakesh, you can go on your lunch break.”
Rakesh stood there. “Rakesh, go!” I watched him trot off to get bossed around by some other girl.
“Keenan, you are the casher now. Stand behind the counter and I’ll find us another customer.”
“Cashier.”
Lulu tilted her head. “What?”
“It’s not casher, it’s cashier. I’m the cashier.”
“Whatever. Get to work.”
Sur-fucking-real. I slid over the wooden block counter as Lulu went in search of another customer. Behind the counter were the aforementioned children’s books and a mangled plastic Barbie Doll head. Quite an inventory. Lulu dragged over a little black girl, hair in rubber bands, thumb in her mouth, orange top and brown pants.
“We are open for business!” Lulu shouted at her.
I looked at the little girl, she at me. I realized I was expected to do something.
“Thanks for coming by our little…barbershop. A shipment of new products just came in. I think you’ll be happy with the depth of our inventory.”
Taking her thumb from her mouth, the little girl said, “I’m Trisha.”
I paused. “I’m Keenan. Glad to meet you. Can I interest you in some fine literature from the latest authors.” I placed the three battered yet colorfully bound children’s books on the counter. “Short-listed for the Pulitzer.” Trisha put her thumb back in her mouth.
Lulu grew impatient. “Buy something!”
“I see you’re skeptical,” I continued with Trisha. “I’ve been holding on to this next item for just the right customer. I think you are that special customer.” I placed the ruined Barbie Doll head on the wood block. “For you — only one thousand dollars.”
“Okay,” Trisha replied.
I caught Lulu’s eye, and said, “Can I just put this on Ms. Trisha’s tab, Ms. Lulu?”
“Yes.” Lulu was super-cool with credit. She dug another scrap of paper out of her pocket and handed it ceremoniously to Trisha. “This is your receipt. Please come again.” Trisha, sensing her part in this insanity was over, grabbed the doll’s head and disappeared. Lulu was pleased with me, seeing as I played along and said things that sounded like what shopkeepers say.
“Good work. You can go on break.” I was dismissed. She shouted, “Rakesh!”
About an hour later it was story time. This meant we could nap while the daycare assistant, Tabitha, read us a story about a hungry worm.
I sat cross-legged in the first row on my appointed spongy yoga mat.
“In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf,” she read. I watched her face as she formed the words. It was like watching a statue speak. She was completely still, her skin porcelain but for sunburnt ears. Her expression was placid as she spoke, but her eyebrows danced, and her eyes glanced up to see who was still awake, who was paying attention. Catching my eye, she read on, “One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and — pop! — out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.” Her carpenter pants seemed new and pressed; her red Converse All Star hightops were speckled with blue paint. She wore a simple black t-shirt under a black-checked flannel. This girl had clearly smoked a lot of weed in her short time. “He started to look for food. On Monday he ate through one apple. But he was still hungry.”
The timbre of her voice was a sonorous alto. Somehow this Tabitha infused her monotone with cadence; there was a storyteller in there despite her deadpan delivery. My eyes began to droop, my head nodded. I struggled to stay awake.
“On Tuesday he ate through two pears, but he was still hungry.”
I awoke to a slowish modern cover of a Schoolhouse Rock song and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The clock high on the wall read eleven-thirty. Only one more hour to kill.
After all the kids had been gently awakened (oh, the tears of newly awakened youngsters), Dorothy, with her maternal equanimity, announced to the room, “Boys and girls, please get your juice and a piece of fruit from Tabby in the back, and feel free to have open play inside, or out in the yard. Lulu, can you help Ms. Tabitha?”
I glanced over at Lulu, who perked up all smiley with such a privileged responsibility. “Yes, Ms. Dorothy! Thank you.” And she rushed to the back of the room where a straight-faced Tabitha set a box of juice bags and another of assorted fruit on a folding table.
Ah…I remembered this. I guess it’s not really déjà vu when you really have gone through it before: story time, nap time, play time, and snacks. The memory of it now, sitting here in my attic recording this, is that I had — have — a bird’s-eye view of the socio-behavioral microcosms that inform us all: the interactions between children, dominance and submission, the power hierarchy, the need for order, the raw fear and confusion…and the wonder.
I stood in line, tripping on those very notions, tripping on the Schoolhouse Rock songs, and for a second I even forgot myself and I felt like one of them, a child, stepping one step at a time toward the juice and fruit, in front of me a red-headed kid who smelled of cut grass, in front of him a shy Asian girl looking back at me with giant wonder-filled brown eyes.
Then the kid with the straight black hair and red sweater, who’d swiped my crayon earlier, cut in front of me without even a glance. I found this amusing.
“Hey, buddy, what’s with the attitude?”
He ignored me. He smelled like burnt rubber.
“You know, that’s very rude to take a guy’s crayon when he’s all ready to sketch a masterpiece.” Still nothing. “You know, the red sweater really isn’t working for me — you’re more of a Spring, I think.” Again, nothing. I wasn’t upset or anything; I was just in an experimental mode of communicating to other kids, seeing as this was perhaps the third time I’d ever been in a large-scale kid situation. It was interesting. Finally. I said, “Hey, dude in the red shirt — no cutting!”
He was about six inches taller than me and had emotionless almond eyes. I wasn’t about to give in. “Look, buddy — you can’t just cut in front of me. Get to the back of the line.”
“I’m Vincent,” he said, then walked to the back of the line.
The first instinct of children in my peer group was to identify themselves. It was a greeting: I’m Lulu, I’m Rakesh, I’m Vincent. This was often followed by their age: I’m three, I’m four. It was the pre-school equivalent of name-rank-and-serial number.
But here I was at the table being presented a choice of juices and fruits by Tabitha and Lulu. “Hey, Keenan,” Tabitha greeted, “You want apple or orange juice?”
“You got anything else?”
She looked at me strangely. Oh, that’s right…no coherent sentences. Maybe just pointing or repeating a word, apple, orange? I was pretty bad at this. “Well, Keenan, we actually do have a grape left.”
“Grape. Perfect.” I realized I was flirting with her. Sheesh.
And she gave me a reward — she tousled my hair and gave me a cold, sweaty juice bag with attached straw. “You’re funny, Keenan. What kind of fruit?”
I looked over at Lulu, Tabitha’s so-called assistant.
“Well, well, you finally got to play barbershop the right way, Lulu,” I said. Lulu stared vacantly, not really understanding what her job was. “Lulu?”
“Barbershop?” Tabitha asked.
I wanted to say, Lulu here thinks that barbershop means any store situation. But I’d already gone too far, so instead I said, “It’s nothing. I’ll have the grapes, Lulu.”
Lulu continued to gaze uncomprehendingly. “Lulu, give Keenan some grapes.” Tabitha actually handed Lulu the grapes and Lulu slowly relayed them to me; then Lulu leaned over and gave me a quick impetuous kiss. I jumped back.
Whoa!
“Hey!” I shouted.
Tabitha laughed a deep laugh, knowing all-too-well what was going on. My face must’ve been deep red. Tabitha put a hand on Lulu’s shoulder and said empathetically, “Lulu, we don’t kiss other people unless they give us permission.” The children behind me tittered, and Lulu, formerly my bossy barbershop overlord, shyly buried her face in Tabitha’s be-jeaned thighs.
I stood there, lost for a second, juice packet in one hand and table grapes in the other. I scurried out to the play yard, beelining for a little wooden bench in the corner behind the blue and green hard-plastic merry-go-round. Whew! Day one was turning out to be both interesting and harrowing: a harbinger of much drama to come, preschool-style.
Stabbing my straw into the juice bag, I drank quickly of the grapey goodness. Looking around, I saw that the yard was a long rectangle bordered by the tall white plastic picket fence. On the far end from me were little tables littered with crayons and coloring books (childhood is all crayons and coloring books) and a sandbox with buckets and shovels; adjacent to that was a hard-foam play area strewn with plastic and rubber balls; next to this was the obligatory multi-colored plastic play tower constructed of puzzle-like panels that formed tunnels and parapets, equipped with a monkey bar and rope swing. A slide slanted down from the top of the tower and child after child slid laughing to the rubber-padded bottom, only to gain their feet and race around for another frolic. Kids scrambled monkey-like everywhere. Next to me the small merry-go-round twirled, the centrifugal force tossing gleeful tykes everywhere. That’s when Vincent and his cronies showed up.
Vincent and his kid gang.
Vincent had a crew-cut of bristly black hair and was the biggest three-and-a-half-year-old you ever saw. A bully in the making, he was flanked by a hapless crew of post-toddlers who clearly didn’t know they were part of a gang.
Vincent approached me, sized me up and said, “I’m Vincent.” He paused. “I’m almost four.” Talk about throwing down the gauntlet!
I calmly put down my juice bag and the rest of my grapes and stood. The two kids on either side of him really didn’t know why they were there. I think they thought candy was involved.
I looked them up and down. “So, Vincent…who are your buddies?”
They looked at me blankly. I kept forgetting I had to speak in child-speak. “I’m Keenan. I’m almost three. Who…are…you guys?” I pointed at them simultaneously.
The one on the left said automatically, “I’m Julian!” But before the one on the right could pipe in, Vincent stopped him, all the while staring at me. “I’m three…and a half!” he announced threateningly.
If this were prison, say, this would be my opportunity to shank the alpha dog so I wouldn’t later get ass-raped in the shower. But, it wasn’t prison. Per se.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I cursed, but then checked myself. Not because I shouldn’t swear, but because swearing wasn’t on their radar yet. It was meaningless. Instead, I said, “Excuse me. Did you say three…and a half?!” Vincent nodded. “That is so freaking cool.”
“I’m Walter,” said the other kid, finally.
Rescue arrived in the form of a pink flowered dress and gold curls. Lulu appeared, fearless and oblivious. She gave a cursory glance at Vincent’s pre-school mafia and said, “Good-bye!”
Vincent gave me a “this isn’t over” look and shuffled away with his grateful henchmen. Lulu asked, “How was the grapes?” Oddly, she said this with a scowl.
“Uh…loved ’em.”
Then she stole a kiss from me again and ran away at full sprint.
“Ugh!” I said, in spite of myself, once again feeling the heat in my face.
The impressive weirdness of the day made me realize being out of doors and socializing with miniature lunatics was way more fun than reading old magazines and surfing the web at home. This was a George Orwell story come to life: politics and absurdity. Hell, Lou and Drew had become an overwrought Greek tragedy compared to this living metaphor of society as portrayed by pre-school. Lord of the Mud Pies.
A bell rang and the kids immediately headed for the door. Dorothy appeared in the school yard. “That’s it, my precious children. Time to go home!” The kids had disappeared, except for me, near the merry-go-round. Dorothy said, “C’mon, Keenan. Your mom’s here.”
I strode up to her and she led me to where the kids were queuing up. “You have a good day, Keenan?”
“The best,” I replied.
Outside on the sidewalk, Lou, looking a little tired, opened the rear car door and helped me in.
“Was it a disaster?” she asked, seriously.
I climbed into the kiddy seat and buckled myself. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Amused, she kissed my forehead. “Good, cuz you’re gonna be spending a bit of time here.”
Dorothy and Tabitha waved as we sped away.
