Crenshaw (2 page)

“We have jelly beans, Mom,” Robin said.

“Well, okay, then. As long as you're eating something nutritious,” said my mom. “I get my paycheck at Rite Aid tomorrow, and I'll stop by the grocery store and pick up some food after work.”

She gave a little nod, like she'd checked something off a list, and went back to the kitchen.

“Aren't you gonna eat your jelly beans?” Robin asked me, twirling her yellow ponytail around her finger. “Because if you want me to do you a big favor I guess I could eat them for you.”

“I'm going to eat them,” I said. “Just not … yet.”

“Why not? They're purple. Your favorite.”

“I need to think about them first.”

“You are a weirdo brother,” said Robin. “I'm going to my room. Aretha wants to play dress-up.”

“I doubt that,” I said. I held a jelly bean up to the light. It looked harmless enough.

“She especially likes hats and also socks,” Robin said as she left with the dog. “Don't you, baby?”

Aretha's tail wagged. She was always up for anything. But as she left with Robin, she glanced over her shoulder at the front window and whined.

I went to the window and peered outside. I checked behind the couch. I flung open the hall closet.

Nothing. Nobody.

No surfing cats. No Crenshaw.

I hadn't told anybody about what I'd seen at the beach. Robin would just think I was messing with her. My mom and dad would do one of two things. Either they'd freak out and worry I was going crazy. Or they'd think it was adorable that I was pretending to hang out with my old invisible friend.

I sniffed the jelly beans. They smelled not-quite-grapey, in a good way. They looked real. They felt real. And my real little sister had just eaten some.

Rule number one for scientists is this: There is always a logical explanation for things. I just had to figure out what it was.

Maybe the jelly beans weren't real, and I was just tired or sick. Delirious, even.

I checked my forehead. Unfortunately, I did not seem to have a fever.

Maybe I'd gotten sunstroke at the beach. I wasn't exactly sure what sunstroke was, but it sounded like something that might make you see flying cats and magic jelly beans.

Maybe I was asleep, stuck in the middle of a long, weird, totally annoying dream.

Still. Didn't the jelly beans in my hand seem extremely real?

Maybe I was just hungry. Hunger can make you feel pretty weird. Even pretty crazy.

I ate my first jelly bean slowly and carefully. If you take tiny bites, your food lasts longer.

A voice in my head said,
Never take candy from strangers
. But Robin had survived. And if there was a stranger involved, he was an invisible one.

There had to be a logical explanation. But for now, the only thing I knew for sure was that purple jelly beans tasted way better than bran cereal.

 

5

The first time
I met Crenshaw was about three years ago, right after first grade ended.

It was early evening, and my family and I had parked at a rest stop off a highway. I was lying on the grass near a picnic table, gazing up at the stars blinking to life.

I heard a noise, a wheels-on-gravel skateboard sound. I sat up on my elbows. Sure enough, a skater on a board was threading his way through the parking lot.

I could see right away that he was an unusual guy.

He was a black and white kitten. A big one, taller than me. His eyes were the sparkly color of morning grass. He was wearing a black and orange San Francisco Giants baseball cap.

He hopped off his board and headed my way. He was standing on two legs just like a human.

“Meow,” he said.

“Meow,” I said back, because it seemed polite.

He leaned close and sniffed my hair. “Do you have any purple jelly beans?”

I jumped to my feet. It was his lucky day. I just happened to have two purple jelly beans in my jeans pocket.

They were a little smushed, but we each ate one anyway.

I told the cat my name was Jackson.

He said yes, of course it is.

I asked him what his name was.

He asked what did I want his name to be.

It was a surprising question. But I had already figured out he was a surprising guy.

I thought for a while. It was a big decision. People care a lot about names.

Finally I said, “Crenshaw would be a good name for a cat, I think.”

He didn't smile because cats don't smile.

But I could tell he was pleased.

“Crenshaw it is,” he said.

 

6

I don't know
where I got the name Crenshaw.

No one in my family has ever known a Crenshaw.

We don't have any Crenshaw relatives or Crenshaw friends or Crenshaw teachers.

I'd never been to Crenshaw, Mississippi, or Crenshaw, Pennsylvania, or Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.

I'd never read a book about a Crenshaw or seen a TV show with a Crenshaw in it.

Somehow Crenshaw just seemed right.

Everybody in my family was named after somebody or something else. My dad was named after his grandpa. My mom was named after her aunt. My sister and I weren't even named after people. We were named after guitars.

I was named after my dad's guitar. It was designed by a manufacturer called Jackson. My sister was named after the company that made my mom's guitar.

My parents used to be musicians. Starving musicians is what my mom calls it. After I was born, they stopped being musicians and became normal people. Since they'd run out of instruments, my parents named our dog after a famous singer called Aretha Franklin. That was after Robin wanted to name her Fairy Princess Cutie Pie and I wanted to call her Dog.

At least our middle names came from people and not instruments. Orson and Marybelle were my dad's uncle and my mom's great-grandma. Those folks are dead, so I don't know if they're good names or not.

Dad says his uncle was a charming curmudgeon, which I think means grumpy with some niceness thrown in.

Honestly, another middle name might have been better. A brand-new one. One that wasn't already used up.

Maybe that's why I liked the name Crenshaw. It felt like a blank piece of paper before you draw on it.

It was an anything-is-possible kind of name.

 

7

I don't exactly
remember how I felt about Crenshaw that day we met.

It was a long time ago.

I don't remember lots of stuff about what happened when I was young.

I don't remember being born. Or learning to walk. Or wearing diapers. Which is probably not something you want to remember anyway.

Memory is weird. I remember getting lost at the grocery store when I was four. But I don't remember getting found by my mom and dad, who were yelling and crying at the same time. I only know that part because they told me about it.

I remember when my little sister first came home. But I don't remember trying to put her in a box so we could mail her back to the hospital.

My parents enjoy telling people that story.

I'm not even sure why Crenshaw was a cat, and not a dog or an alligator or a Tyrannosaurus rex with three heads.

When I try to remember my whole entire life, it feels like a Lego project where you're missing some of the important pieces, like a robot mini-figure or a monster-truck wheel. You do the best you can to put things together, but you know it's not quite like the picture on the box.

It seems like I should have thought to myself, Wow, a cat is talking to me, and that is not something that usually happens at a highway rest stop.

But all I remember thinking is how great it was to have a friend who liked purple jelly beans as much as I did.

 

8

A couple of
hours after the mysterious jelly bean appearance during cerealball, my mom gave Robin and me each a grocery bag. She said they were for our keepsakes. A bunch of our things were going to be sold at a yard sale on Sunday, except for important stuff like shoes and mattresses and a few dishes. My parents were hoping to make enough money to pay some back rent and maybe the water bill, too.

Robin asked what is a keepsake. My mom said it's an object you treasure. Then she said things don't really matter, as long as we have each other.

I asked what were her keepsakes and my dad's. She said probably their guitars would be at the top of the list, and maybe books, because those were always important.

Robin said she would bring her Lyle book for sure.

My sister's favorite book in the world is
The House on East 88th Street
. It's about a crocodile named Lyle who lives with a family. Lyle likes to hang out in the bathtub and walk the dog.

Robin knows every word of that book by heart.

Later, at bedtime, my dad read the Lyle book to Robin. I stood at her bedroom door and listened to him reading. He and my mom and Robin and Aretha were all squished on her mattress. It was on the floor. The wooden parts were going to be sold.

“Come join us, Jackson,” my mom said. “There's lots of room.”

My dad is tall and so is my mom and Robin's mattress is tiny. There wasn't any room.

“I'm good,” I said.

Looking at my family, all there together, I felt like a relative from out of town. Like I belonged to them, but not as much as they belonged to each other. Partly that was because they look so much alike, blond and gray-eyed and cheerful. My hair and eyes are darker, and sometimes so is my mood.

Emptied out, it didn't look like Robin's room anymore. Except for her pink lamp. And the marks on the wall that showed how much she had grown. And the red spot on the carpet where she'd spilled cranberry-apple juice. Robin was practicing her T-ball batting and she got a little carried away.

“SWISH, SWASH, SPLASH, SPLOOSH…” read my dad.

“Not sploosh, Daddy,” Robin said.

“Smoosh? Splish? Swash?”

“Stop being silly,” she said. She poked him in the chest. “It's ‘swoosh'! ‘Swoosh,' I tell you!”

I said that I did not think a crocodile would enjoy taking a bath. I'd just read a whole library book about reptiles.

My dad told me to go with the flow.

“Did you know that you can hold a crocodile's jaws closed with a rubber band?” I asked.

My dad smiled. “I wouldn't want to have been the first person who tested that theory.”

Robin asked my mom if I had a favorite book when I was little. She didn't ask me, because she was pouting about my bathtub comment.

My mom said, “Jackson really liked
A Hole Is To Dig
. Remember that book, Jackson? We must've read that to you a million times.”

“That's more like a dictionary than a made-up story,” I said.

“‘A brother is to help you,'” my mom said. Which was a line from the book.

“A brother is to bug you,” said Robin. Which was
not
a line from the book.

“A sister is to drive you slowly insane,” I replied.

The sun was beginning to set. The sky was tiger-colored, with stripes of black clouds.

“I have to get my stuff ready for the yard sale,” I said.

“Hey, stick around, dude,” said my dad. “I'll read
A Hole Is To Dig.
Assuming we can find it, that is.”

“I'm way too old for that book,” I said, even though it was the first thing I'd put in my keepsakes bag.

“Lyle one more time,” Robin said. “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?”

“Dad,” I asked, “did you buy some purple jelly beans?”

“Nope.”

“Then where did they come from? The ones in Robin's T-ball cap? It doesn't make any sense.”

“Robin went to Kylie's birthday party yesterday,” said my mom. “Did you get them there, sweet pea?”

“Nope,” Robin said. “Kylie hates jelly beans. And anyway, I told you they were magic, Jackson.”

“There's no such thing as magic,” I said.

“Music is magic,” said my mom.

“Love is magic,” said my dad.

“Rabbits in a hat are magic,” said Robin.

“I would put Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the magic category,” said my dad.

“How about the smell of a new baby?” asked my mom.

“Kitties are magic!” Robin yelled.

“Indeed,” said my dad, scratching Aretha's ear. “And don't forget dogs.”

They were still going at it when I shut the door.

 

9

I love my
mom and my dad and usually my sister. But lately they'd really been getting on my nerves.

Robin was a little kid, so of course she was annoying. She'd say things like “What if a dog and a bird got married, Jackson?” Or sing “Wheels on the Bus” three thousand times in a row. Or steal my skateboard and use it for a doll ambulance. The usual little sister stuff.

My parents were more complicated. It's hard to explain, especially since I know this sounds like a good thing, but they were always looking on the bright side. Even when things were bad—and they'd been bad a lot—they joked. They acted silly. They pretended everything was fine.

Sometimes I just wanted to be treated like a grown-up. I wanted to hear the truth, even if it wasn't a happy truth. I understood things. I knew way more than they thought I did.

But my parents were optimists. They looked at half a glass of water and figured it was half full, not half empty.

Not me. Scientists can't afford to be optimists or pessimists. They just observe the world and see what is. They look at a glass of water and measure 3.75 ounces or whatever, and that's the end of the discussion.

Take my dad. When I was younger, he got sick, really sick. He found out he has this disease called multiple sclerosis. Mostly he has good days, but sometimes he has bad ones when it's hard to walk and he has to use a cane.