Pingwen

People sometimes ask me how I lost the tip of my left hand’s pinky finger.  Here is the story:

When I was just a little kid, my parents split up.  My brother, Darby, and I lived mostly with my father.  That was because he had the money and the nice house.  My mom had messed-up somehow and the divorce judge didn’t like her – at least that’s how she explained the situation.  At the time, I was six and Darby was eight and we didn’t question what she told us.  I remember liking to stay overnight in her messy house but, always, feeling somehow relieved when she took us back to the suburbs where Dad lived. 

During the winter that Darby and I became pingwens, mom said that her furnace was broken.  She told us that there was a crack in the housing and that poison gas had almost killed us once when we slept.  Mom said that we should ask Dad for some more money so that the furnace could be replaced.  She said that the crack in the furnace ran through the cement floor of the basement and, also, made a fissure in the earth.  If the crack opened a little more, the furnace would not fire and we would all freeze or, maybe, fall down into the sinkhole that was opening up under the house.  Money was needed, more money, she told us and we were supposed to ask Dad for an advance on his child support so that the repairs could be made.  This sort of thing was distasteful to us and I told Darby that he should ask for the money, but he said that he was afraid, particularly since Dad’s new wife had been sick during her pregnancy and was on bed-rest and things were tight in the suburbs as well.  A couple of times at supper, Darby tried to raise the subject, but Dad was distracted and the thing was never said

The weekend was cold and dark and snow was expected.  Dad dropped us off at the curb in front of Mom’s house.  He didn’t want to see her, because talking with Mom always led to tears and fighting.  Darby and I went inside and found Mom smoking a cigarette and watching TV as if she were afraid of something on the screen.  Mom asked us if we had told Dad about the furnace.  Darby said that we had asked him for money, which wasn’t really true, and that Dad had said that there was nothing to give us. 

Mom put out her cigarette and said that she was scared that the furnace would stop running in the middle of the blizzard that was coming.  She told us that the house would become cold as an icicle and that we would go to sleep and never wake up because of the cold.  The house was shadowy because she was conserving electricity, I think, and the gloom already seemed very cold.

Then, Mom brightened and lit another cigarette and said that everything would be fine because we were pingwens.  “I dropped you off at your Dads as human children,” she said, “and, now, you have come back as little pingwens.”  She showed us to how waddle around like pingwens, flapping our short stubby wings in the air and making honking noises with our mouths.  “The cold won’t bother you,” she told us, “because you are now pingwens.”

Darby went and looked in the refrigerator and saw that there was no food, only a bottle half-full of some kind of transparent fluid.  He looked in the cupboards and found a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter but there was nothing else to eat.  “Pingwens don’t like peanut-butter anyway,” Mom said.  She told us to put on our coats and go outside and wait for her as she got the car started.  “We’ll go to the grocery store and get some food,” she said.

At the grocery store, Christmas lights hung on poles over the parking lot.  There were some evergreen trees slouched against the front of the store.   After mom parked the car, she told us that we should climb off the ice-floe.  “This car is an ice-floe floating in the cold, cold ocean,” she said.  Darby and I squealed with delight at the idea.  “As we walked to the store,” she said, “be careful for mean old polar bears.  There is nothing a polar bear likes more to eat then pingwen children.” 

The air was cold and had the crisp smell of snow.  Mom said that the man ringing the Salvation Army bell in front of the grocery store was a hungry polar bear and that we should watch out for him.  We thought that this was very funny and tried to imagine the fat, old man in ear-muffs and with sad eyes as being a big white bear.  In the grocery store, Mom said that the carts were really killer whales –orcas, she called them – and we should watch out for their sharp teeth and jaws.  Mom bought some ketchup and fish sticks.  She also bought some generic pop and a sack of candy canes.  At the check-out, she didn’t have enough money for the pop and candy-canes and said that we would have to be satisfied with the fish sticks and the ketchup.  “After all,” she said, “pingwens love fish and so we’ll have fish for supper.”

We were pingwens and we knew that we loved fish.  Back in the car, Mom said that the ice floe was now drifting across the Arctic Ocean under a cold moon.  Darby and I imagined the sea filled with whales and the polar bears nearby on the frozen tundra and we laughed so hard that we cried. 

Mom said: “My boys used to be human children.  But look at them now – they are pingwens.” 

At home, mom heated the oven and told us to go out and play.  The fence and bushes and gate were all droopy with new-fallen snow and the backyard was pillowy with the stuff.  We frolicked in the yard and Darby found a big pile of snow plowed into a heap by the garbage can in the alley.  He called me to the eaves-high pyramid and we climbed to its summit, squawking and flapping our short little wings.  For awhile, Darby and I tunneled into the side of the snow-mound, cutting a slot-like gallery into the pile.  Then, mom called us to eat and we went inside.

Maybe, there was something wrong with the oven.  The fish-sticks were soft and wet inside, not really very warm under their breaded crust.  It’s odd that I have recalled that detail after all these years.  We poured bright red ketchup on the fish-sticks and ate them anyhow.  Mom smoked one cigarette after another.

After dinner, she went to the door and opened it, telling us to go out and play some more.  We weren’t wearing our coats and hats and mittens and, it seemed, that Mom was willing to let us play in the snow without those garments.  But Darby found his overcoat and hat and told me to put on my warm clothes as well.  Mom said: “the pingwen children are going out to play.”

We went outside.  It was strange to play outdoors in the dark.  The moon rose behind some clouds and winked down at us and we scrambled around in the snow, jumping and diving in the soft drifts.  After awhile, I got snow down my back and wanted to go inside.  I couldn’t get the door open and pounded on it.  Mom came and said that we were now pingwen babies and that it was no longer good for us to be inside.  “What do you want to do in a hot and stuffy house like this?” she asked.  I said I was cold but mom said that pingwen children could not get chilled and that they loved to swim in icy water.  Then, she shut the door.  I pounded some more and mom came again and opened the door just a crack and said that we were better off no longer being human children.  Then, she closed the door again.

I found Darby and told him what mom had said.  He answered that mom was just joking.  Then, we played some more and pretended that we were pingwens marching single-file across the tundra.  Darby, then, got cold and he went to the door of mom’s house and knocked some more, but she didn’t answer.  The wind began to huff in the bushes and knocked down some puffs of snow and I was afraid.  Darby said that his hand hurt from beating on the door.  He went to the snow-pile where we had built the tunnel and crawled into that big heap of ice.  There wasn’t room inside that hole for me and so I sat on the back step.  Sometimes, I stood up and hit on the door with my hands.  After a while, I felt very hot and, so, I took off my mittens and, then, pounded on the door again.  Mom didn’t answer.  The cold wasn’t that bad anymore and I even felt sleepy.  I went out in the yard where I had flapped my arms to make a snow angel and lay down in those ruts in the drifts.  Then, there were bright lights and I was inside some place with white walls where there were worried-looking people staring at me. 

I was okay except for my pinky finger which was frozen and had to be amputated.  Darby was warmer inside his snow tunnel, but he was also harder to find and I guess it took a couple hours to locate him.   The igloo had protected him and, except for a tiny part of the very tip of his nose, he was also okay.  Mom was sick and had to go to the hospital and we didn’t really see her much after that night. 

This is a cold climate.  Sometimes, you might see me go outside without my coat and hat. Don’t waste any worry on me.  A man who has been a pingwen when he was a boy can’t be bothered by ice and snow and cold.