How to Look for a Lost Dog (2 page)

Uncle Weldon, who was sitting at the Formica kitchen table with me, looked at my father from under his eyelashes and said, “I could go, if you want.” Uncle Weldon has a very soft voice.

My father whipped around and pointed his finger at Weldon. “No! Rose is my responsibility. I can take care of things.”

Weldon lowered his head and didn't answer. But when my father turned around so that he was facing outside again, my uncle held up two crossed fingers, which was his signal to me that everything would be all right (write, rite, wright). I held up my fingers too (two, to), and we each touched our hearts with them.

After that, Rain came into the kitchen and sat on my feet for a while.

Then my uncle left.

Then my father crumpled the letter from Mrs Leibler and Mrs Kushel and tossed it into the yard.

That is the end of the introduction to me.

The next character in my true story is Rain. A character doesn't have to be a human being; a character can be an animal, such as a dog named Rain.

Rain weighs 23 pounds. This is how you weigh a dog: You stand on the scales and weigh yourself. Then you pick up the dog and weigh yourself and the dog together. Then you subtract your weight from the weight of you and the dog together, and that's how much the dog weighs.

(Weigh and way are homonyms.)

Rain's back is 18 inches long. From the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail she's 34 inches long.

Rain's fur is mostly yellow. Seven of her toes are white – two on her right front paw, one on her left front paw, three on her right back paw, and one on her left back paw. Her right ear has brown speckles on it. Her fur is short. Uncle Weldon says she looks sort of like a yellow Labrador retriever. Since a female pure-bred yellow Lab should weigh 55-70 pounds, Rain is probably not a pure-bred yellow Lab.

When Rain and I are at home alone together, we sit inside or on the front porch and Rain puts one (won) of her front feet (feat) in (inn) my lap. I rub her toes (tows), and she gazes into my blue (blew) eyes with her eyes, which are the colour of a chocolate bar. After a while, she starts to fall asleep. Her brown eyes squint shut until they're completely closed. At bedtime she crawls under the covers with me. If I wake up during the night, I find that Rain has smashed her body against mine and rested her head across my neck.

Rain's breath smells like dog food.

Rain has lived with us for eleven months, which is almost one year. I will tell you more about the night my father brought her home in another chapter, Chapter 5, which will be called “When We Got Rain”.

Rain and I have routines. We like routines. Rain stays at home alone on weekdays while I'm at Hatford Elementary and my father is at his job at the J & R Garage.

When there isn't any work for my father at the J & R Garage, he usually goes to The Luck of the Irish where he drinks beer and watches television. One way or the other, he isn't at home. Rain stays in the house by herself. At 2.42 when school ends, Uncle Weldon picks me up. Then he drives me home. He drops me off between 2.58 and 3.01. Rain and I sit on the porch for a while and I rub her toes. Then we take a walk. Then I do my homework. Then I start dinner for my father and me. Then I feed Rain.

What Rain eats is My Pet dog food from a can – half a can in the morning and half a can in the evening – mixed with My Pet dry food. When my father first brought Rain home he said she didn't need wet food, which is more expensive than dry food, but I said that dogs in the wild eat meat, and my father said, “You're right, Rose.”

After Rain's dinner we wait for my father to come home. If he's been at The Luck of the Irish all day, he might not be in a good mood. Or he might be in a very good mood. If he's been working at the J & R Garage, he might not be in a good mood. Or he might be in no particular mood.

Rain is smart. She never goes near my father right away. She stands in the doorway to my bedroom while we wait to see whether my father will say, “What's for supper?” If he says, “What's for supper?” then it's safe for me to serve him and for Rain to sit by the table while we eat. She can stare at us and put her paws in our laps wanting food until I see my father's eyes get black and hard and that's the signal that Rain should go back to my bedroom.

If my father comes home and doesn't say anything, but walks into his own room, then Rain and I should not go near him at all. And I have to make Rain stay very quiet so she doesn't annoy him or give him a headache.

Rain knows (nose) to (two, too) stay away from my father's feet (feat) and his shoes (shoos).

I am the only student in my classroom who's interested in homonyms. This suggests to me that most kids are not interested in homonyms. So if you want to skip this chapter, it's all right.

But if you read it, you might get interested in homonyms. [
If you are not interested in homonyms at all, stop reading here and skip to Chapter 4.
] Homonyms can be surprising and fun, and that's why I started a list of them. The list is very long. Right now it takes up four sheets of paper. The words are in alphabetical order. I try to leave space between the pairs and trios of homonyms so that I can add new ones to the list easily. But if the spaces have gotten used up and I've thought of
another
set of homonyms, then I have to rewrite the list from that point on. Sometimes this makes me cry because I have to write the words perfectly, without making any mistakes. If I make a mistake I have to start over. Josh Bartel, who is a 4'10'' boy in my classroom, said to me last week, “Rose, just keep the list in your computer. Then you can add in new words wherever you want. The computer will make spaces for you. You won't have to keep rewriting the list.”

But my father and I do not have a computer. Or a cell phone or a digital camera or an iPod or a DVD player. My father says those things are expensive and unnecessary. He says we can't afford them, and who needs them anyway?

So my homonyms list is on paper.

In this chapter I'm going to tell you about my rules for homonyms. But since I've realized that most kids aren't any more interested in rules than they are in homonyms, I'll tell you something fun about homonyms first. Then I'll get to the rules, and if you're still interested you can keep reading.

What's fun about homonyms is hearing a word in a sentence and suddenly realizing that it has a homonym, or maybe two (or three, but that's so rare that I don't often think about homonym quartets), and that you haven't thought of that homonym pair or trio before. For instance, yesterday, Uncle Weldon said to me, “Look how carefully Rain chews her food.” And just like that I had a new pair of homonyms to add to my list.

Uncle Weldon and I were sitting at my kitchen table when he said that, and I jumped out of my chair and cried, “Oh! ‘Chews' and ‘choose'! That's a new homonym pair!”

Uncle Weldon gets excited about homonyms too, so he said, “Wonderful, Rose. Go find your list. Let's see if there's room for two more words.”

While I was getting the list out of my backpack, I thought about the word
chew
and how it rhymes with
brew
and as I ran back to Uncle Weldon I began to shout again. “And also there's ‘brews' and ‘bruise'! Oh, that's a
really
good pair! Two new pairs to add to my list! This is almost a red-letter day.”

So, in conclusion, that is what's fun about homonyms. [
If you've heard enough about homonyms and you don't want to learn my rules, stop reading here and skip to Chapter 4.
]

Now, here are my rules of homonyms. It's important to have rules, because without them, you could get overwhelmed thinking of words that sound alike. Your list would be pages and pages and pages long. The purpose of most of my rules is to limit homonyms to words that are pure and also that are English.

1. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes no proper nouns. A proper noun names a particular person or place or thing, such as Josh Bartel or Hatford or Rice Krispies cereal. I thought about including
coax
and
Cokes
on my list, but
Coke
is a proper noun, not a pure word. Including proper nouns would make my list too long. Luckily,
Rose
and
Rain
are proper nouns
and
regular nouns, so I was able to include them on my list.

2. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes no foreign words. I put the words
peek
and
peak
on my list, but I did not add
pique
for a trio, because
pique
is a word of French origin. Including foreign words on my list would become very difficult, because I don't know all the languages.

3. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes no contractions.
Isle
and
aisle
are on my list, but I didn't add
I'll
because it's actually a contraction of the words
I will
. Therefore it doesn't count as a pure word.

4. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes no abbreviated words. I did not add
ink
and
inc.
to my list because
inc.
is short for
incorporated
, which is clearly not a homonym for
ink.

5. A true pair or trio of homonyms includes only words that sound
exactly
alike. Since
desert
and
dessert
do not sound
exactly
alike they are not on my list.

I guess that's enough about homonyms for now. You probably want to get on with my story anyway, so now it's time for me to introduce the next main character to you. The next main character is my father, Wesley Howard.

Oh, one more fun thing about homonyms: The word
pair
implies
two
, but it is part of a homonym
trio
– pair, pear and pare.

Wesley Howard is my father and he's 33 years old. He was born on March 16th during a quarter moon. He's 6'1” tall. He has a scar on his cheek that is 1.5 inches long. He got it when he was seven and his father whacked him in the face with the handle of a shovel in order to teach him not to leave his bike outside.

Some things about my father and me that are the same are that we grew up with our fathers but not our mothers, and that we live in the country.

My father's profession is mechanic at the J & R Garage.

My father has one sibling, my uncle Weldon, who is 31 years old and 6'0” tall. Uncle Weldon was born on June 23rd during the kind of moon called a full strawberry moon. My father was born at 6.39 p.m. and my uncle was born at 9.36 p.m. so their birth times are opposite when written out. Also, the numbers are all divisible by 3.

My father was 21 when I was born. He was 23 when my mother left. He was 26 ½ when I started kindergarten. He was 26 years and 7 months when my kindergarten teacher, Miss Croon, told him that Hatford Elementary might not be the right school for me.

“I didn't know there was another elementary school in Hatford,” my father replied.

“That isn't what I meant.”

What Miss Croon meant was that since I was having trouble talking to the other kindergarteners and I cried a lot and was apt to hit myself in the head with a shoe or a picture book if somebody didn't follow the rules, I might need a special school or programme.

My father told Miss Croon to work harder. Teaching me was her job.

“Are you sure you don't want to look into another programme for Rose?” asked Miss Croon.

“Where are the other programmes?” asked my father.

“There's an excellent one in Mount Katrine.”

“Mount Katrine that is 22 miles away?”

“Yes.”

My father shook his head. “Rose will be fine right here.”

In first grade, my teacher, Ms Vinsel, called a meeting with the principal and the school psychologist and Miss Croon and my father. I don't know what happened during the meeting because I wasn't there. After the meeting my father picked me up at Uncle Weldon's office and took me home and shook me and said, “Rose, this behaviour has got to stop.”

And I told him that you could write out my name two ways and both ways would be pronounced the same.

For second grade I had Miss Croon again because she didn't want to teach kindergarteners any more. Miss Croon said to my father on the afternoon of September 13th, “I believe Rose would benefit from spending part of every day in the Resource Room, Mr Howard.”

Mr Howard, who is my father, said, “That's fine with me as long as the Resource Room isn't for retards.”

For
has two homonyms – four and fore.

By fourth (forth) grade Mrs Leibler had become my aide (aid). My father said he didn't think I needed an aide, but that he wasn't going to fight Hatford Elementary. “Just stay out of trouble, Rose,” he told me. And everything was fine until fifth grade when Mrs Leibler thought up the idea of weekly (weakly) progress reports.

Now I am going to go back in time to report on my father's childhood some more. When my father was ten years old he went to school with a brown-coloured two-inch-long mark on his arm and his teacher decided it was a burn. She called Child Protective Services and that very night the police arrested my father's father, and that was when my father and Uncle Weldon went into foster care.

“We were always placed together with the same family,” Uncle Weldon told me once. “We weren't split up. But we never stayed with any family for very long.”

My father and Uncle Weldon lived with seven foster families before my father turned eighteen.