I answer the door and look down into the face of one of the girls from the neighborhood.
“Can Maj and Kallan play?”
“Hold on, let me check.” I turn from the open door and yell up the stairs, “Maj? Kallan? Are you guys done being in trouble?”
Maj yells back down, “I am not apologizing for anything! I am innocent of all charges!”
Kallan yells as well, “Only thing I am sorry about is that Maj is such a big fat liar!”
I turn and speak to their friend, “Apparently, they are not prepared to . . .”
Maj has come to the top of the stairs, “Wait, wait, wait . . . you didn’t say someone was at the door. Of course I am done being in trouble! Look at me . . . I am the picture of apologetic perfection!”
Kallan appears as well and hurries to add, “Yes, me too! I am done being in trouble . . . I do not even know what this trouble is but I am done being in it.”
They stare down at me together, “Does that mean we can come out of our rooms?”
I step aside to let the guest pass, “Fine.”
Maj and Kallan hurry down to collect their friend and whisk her away.
I hear Maj, “We weren’t really in trouble, just so you know. We just have to humor her or she goes all insane.”
“Exactly,” Kallan explains, “We weren’t in our rooms because we were being punished. We were just lounging.”
Maj agrees, “Yes, just lounging. We like to do that sometimes. Our mother is a tricky woman who is prone to punishing us randomly, so sometimes we need to get away and just lounge in the privacy of our rooms.”
Kallan giggles, “Yeah, what Maj said.”
I am still standing at the bottom of the stairs, “I can hear you, you know.”
Three girls race giggling away.
Not so long before the doorbell rang, I was standing in the kitchen and there was this from the other room . . .
“Oh my god, Kallan. When I tell Mother on you, you are going to be disowned!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Mom loves me best . . . anyone is getting disowned, it would be the person who is interfering with my enjoyment of this house. Hello . . . that would be you, unsweet sister of mine.”
“Nope. Mother will see the wisdom of my plan. Kallan needs to be unhomed. It’s genius!”
“Unhomed? That is not even a word.”
“Yeah, well . . . look it up in your homeless people dictionary. Unhomed . . . someone who had a home but then was too incredibly annoying to continue having that home and so then she was UNHOMED.”
“Mother is not even going to care what I did to you, because she is going to be so horrified at your uncaring attitude toward the sister she birthed so that you would not be a horrid only child. She had me so that you would turn out normal.”
“Kallan, let me tell you . . . never in the history of the world has a plan gone so utterly wrong.”
“Bwahahahaha! So you admit you are not normal!”
“What? I admit no such thing.”
“So be normal. Don’t tell on me. Pretend that you love me so much that you cannot bear the thought of me being in trouble. You love me so much you are not going to tell on me.”
“Poor miscalculating Baby K. I am going to tell on you, and then I am going to cackle with ferocious glee when we drop you off on the freeway entrance with a piece of cardboard and a Sharpie.”
“Good job with the normal thing, Maj.”
“And then you will be unhomed and living on a freeway entrance and all of this will be mine!”
“Guess what, though? After you drop me off? With my Sharpie and my piece of cardboard? I will write in careful block letters . . . FREE FROGS’ LEGS! . . . and then I will put your address and phone number.”
“You dare to threaten my frog babies?”
“You make me homeless? Your frogs are nibbled and legless.”
“You are evil, Baby K.”
“I am your sister. Evil is required.”
“OK, let’s do this thing.”
They come running into the kitchen . . .
“Kallan tried to spit on me!”
“Only after she knocked down the badminton net I spent all that time setting up.”
“She spit on me!”
“I did not spit on her, and she threw the badminton racquet into the bushes because she is the worst loser ever.”
“I did not lose! I won! That’s why she spit on me.”
“I did not spit on her! She is insane and also weirdly drooly. She probably spit on herself.”
“Mother, she spit on me eleven times, and I demand she be unhomed. Let me get a Sharpie and a box and we can make this happen.”
Kallan giggles, “Really, Maj? You want Mom to believe you stood still while I spit on you eleven times?”
Maj raises her eyebrows and considers, “Too much?”
“Maybe a little.”
Maj tries again, “I was traumatized by saliva and I may have lost count, but she must be disowned! I demand it!”
Kallan makes a puckery face and gathers saliva, “I did not spit on you, but I can show you spit. You want to see spit? I will cover you so the whole world is a slobbery blur!”
“AIEEEEIIEIEIEIEEEIEIIEIIEIEEEE!”
So then I sent them to their rooms for a while.
A long while.
Ding dong.
“Can Maj and Kallan play?”
“Hold on. Let me check.”
Hee hee!
