The Mean Girl's Prophecy

or: did it have to be a graveyard?

When I was 10, I’d won the kid lottery: we finally got a dog.

Well, we’d had a dog, when I was 7. We had an Alaskan Malamute puppy for exactly one month. I was as enamored with her as any child would be. God, was she cute. And God, was she fast. My mother had to tie gallon-jugs of water around her neck just to slow her down enough if (when) the puppy took off. She was floofy and bouncy, the puppy any kid dreams of having.

My father had Big Fish-ed his way into thinking he needed an Alaskan Malamute, presumably to explore the Yukon Territory. I don’t know what he expected to do with this dog in rural New Jersey, but reality set in immediately—the only one who was going to functionally care for this puppy was my mother, and the only one who wanted this puppy was me.

And boy, did I want her. In the mornings before, I would wake from dreams that my parents had gotten a puppy, and that it was waiting for me in the kitchen after I leapt out of bed! I’d run into the kitchen in my Popples pajamas, absolutely devastated at the absence of puppy every morning of my young life… until the day she came home with us.

She wasn’t supposed to be for me, so I wasn’t encouraged to do any of the things I wanted to do with her: get her excited, chase her, dance with her, teach her to jump up, run around with her. She gets too excited, my exhausted mother, who did not approve of the Yukon plan, said. You’re gonna get her all worked up. It was a golden month of shrieking with glee and chasing her floofy big baby tail and getting tackled by her in the snow.

A month later, she was in the flatbed of a pickup truck, the new companion to a man who had more realistic dreams for her, and I was facedown in my snow fort, unable to make peace with this cruel fate.

But three years later, everything was about to change. I was old enough, and we were finally going to get a dog (again). Even better—we were going to get a Golden Retriever! My mom found him in the Treasure Hunt, a hyper-local classifieds rag. She went to the shelter to meet him. He was perfect: gorgeous, housebroken, a history of eating smaller dogs

(change of plans, we’re not getting a Golden Retriever)

The volunteer was relieved to see my mom pass, and offered that they had more dogs available for adoption. In a room of endless barking banshees in cages, huddled in a corner was a 10-year-old Shepherd mix named Maggie, shaking and trembling all over.

“She’s so sweet, but she’s just terrified here. I promise you, once she gets out of this room, she’s a totally different dog. Let me give you a leash.”

My mom brought Maggie out of the barking echo chamber and into the sunshine, where her tail started wagging, her tongue lolled out the side, and she trotted alongside her without pulling. When my mother opened her car to get a cigarette, Maggie jumped right in, cementing her new place in our family.

Maggie adored my mother, and she was indeed a new dog around her. But that same enthusiasm did not extend to me and my dad—she was on-edge around children, and absolutely terrified of men. My father was hurt and irritated at her rejection of him; I was undeterred, certain that the right game of chase or fetch would unlock her spirit of play.

She won’t go get the stick, my mother sighed. Honey, you need to just sit quietly with her.
I couldn’t! I had plans for us! From the second she came home, I imagined us getting lost on long journeys to a fairy forest; I dreamed of climbing trees together, where I’d play her Greensleeves on clarinet (yes, I was a deeply weird only child who only had cats).

inseparable

In my mind, she made me into the softball MVP I was destined to become, catching my curveballs mid-air, perfecting my spin on a stick that landed several neighbors’ yards away. We were made to dance, to frolic, to spin exalted in the dewy grass under the full moon!

Maggie’s dreams were decidedly more modest. All she needed was a mid-morning nap next to my mother while she read, a snooze in the sunny spot of the living room, a predictable walk (or mosey, more accurately), and a siesta under the dinner table in order to feel like she’d eaten the day.

The fact that she was 10 meant little to me. I was 10! We were made to be best friends! Maggie wasn’t a cuddler, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I remembered dancing with the puppy, her paws in mine, and Maggie’s arthritis groaned as I coaxed her to waltz with me across the living room to The Eagles Greatest Hits. She’d give me nervous side-eye as I covered her in hats and boas, parading her around in my home videos. She wasn’t that heavy, so I’d gather her in my arms, my face against her fur, waiting patiently for her to trounce me, covering me with slobbery kisses. Instead, she’d anxiously lick her lips and squirm until my mother told me to put her down.

It’s not that she doesn’t like you, sweetheart.
You’re just… a lot for her.

I hadn’t yet figured out how to unlock her joy. But something told me it would be revealed in the buoyant freedom of jumping, leaping like a gazelle o’er hill and dale. On this particular day—a day whose place in time is wholly lost to me now—I was in charge of her walk, a walk that made her deeply happy: simply moseying along the same path through the cemetery, squatting to pee, and going home.

The cemetery next to my house was not particularly creepy. With a tiny chapel of a mausoleum under a crabapple tree at the center, stones raked out in a labyrinth, etched with farewells like “Gone Fishin’” and “Out To Lunch.” It was topped by a great hill with a long stretch of lawn ahead of it, perfect for sledding during the apocalyptic blizzards of the ‘90s. The most gothic feature was a wrought-iron fence with rounded spears that stretched around the perimeter.

Our walk started predictably enough: leash on, hang a right, hang a left, squat to pee. As we rounded the corner around the big hill, the stately fence came into view. On the other side was a grassy slope covered in buttercups. I thrilled to discover the mystery of how they knew I liked butter, how they made my nose glow golden every single time. To La-La Land I went, fantasizing butterflies scattering in slow-mo, Maggie and I cavorting through the little yellow blooms.

All we had to do was get over the fence. It was finally Maggie’s time to shine—she was going to leap, unfettered, her joy kinetic!

Okay Maggie, jump!

Not a twitch from Maggie. She looked up at me and licked her lips.

Thinking she just needed a one-and-a-two-and-a, I backed us up, raced us forward, and—another dead stop from Maggie.

“Come on girl, I know you can do it!”

I tapped the fence. I showed her how to jump. I ran with her from further and further back, building up steam. Each time, that same sudden stop. My shoulders slumped, the dream of our buttercup frolic getting further and further away. But then—an idea. Of course!

“Do you need some help, girl? Here, let me help you.”

I scooped her up in my arms, the same as I had countless times before. The fence wasn’t that high—sure, I hadn’t climbed it myself, but I’d thought about it lots. It’d be real easy to just shimmy up it and hop over. All I had to do was give Maggie a boost, and I’d follow swiftly behind, and then I’d laugh at how much she loved butter and we’d roll around in the meadow together.

I held her at chest level, her greyhound belly and hips in my hands, her upper body now on the other side.

“Good girl, Maggie! Now you just need to jump down!”

Maggie licked her lips and wiggled, squirmed, loosing herself from my grip and then I was scrambling to catch her, and then the fence did it for me.

It took my brain too many moments to wonder at her, suspended, no longer jumping or climbing but floating, my arms dumb at my sides.

not floating hanging

Her cry pierced our quiet street. A spoke of the wrought iron had disappeared into the flesh of her leg like a grand guignol parlor trick, her blood spattering the buttercups red velvet.

The street itself was a cemetery, a place where I knew people lived but never saw them coming or going. I must have been screaming because doors began opening and cars pulled over to stop, a mess of adults coming to pull me away, a word I’d never heard but could now never forget

(impaled)

a stronger, bigger man lifting Maggie so delicately off the post as she shrieked, somehow somewhere finding my mom before taking her to the hospital.

I have no memory of what happened after that scream. The dumb singularity: I just wanted her to jump. I don’t know what my parents said to me, or how I was able to fall asleep that night, or if Maggie had to be kept overnight at the vet. I remember her stitches, and the Cone of not her Shame but Mine.

I don’t know how the word spread like wildfire at school—the next day, all the kids who were normally terrible to me were exceptionally terrible: Jen Ponton tried to kill her dog on everybody’s lips.

Not remembering when this happened is important, because I don’t know if it was months or years later when The Meanest 8th Grade Girl chose me as her beneficiary in her Last Will and Testament in The Yearbook.

I’d waited for 7 years to be noticed by the deeply cool (and deeply cruel) older kids. On the very last day of 7th grade, when the yearbooks were handed out, every 7th grader would be willed something by the graduating class above them. You wouldn’t know who picked you, or what your legacy was, until you cracked open your brand new yearbook and stared wide-eyed at all the candid pictures and the various memorials to the 8th grade class.

I flipped to My Last Will and Testament and held my breath. All the other 7th grade girls got generous, if catty, hand-me-downs: Ashley’s fashion sense, Jamie’s sweet dance moves, Danielle’s collection of Troll dolls, Rachel’s good hair days.

I spotted my name, preceded by the name of one of the prettiest, meanest, most popular girls in her class. Just thinking of her conjured a cloud of bubblegum and CK One. At first, I couldn’t believe she’d chosen me—what will she bequeath upon me? Her effortless curls? Her contagious laugh? Sassy friendships that will last forever???

I, Stephanie Tiffanie Amber Brittanie, will to Jen Ponton…….…the ability to keep my dog alive.

---

It’s the prelude to summer and I’m almost 41, and I’m waking from a better memory; that old chestnut where I’m still 7, leaping out of bed to greet the wiggly puppy that my parents have wrapped in a big red bow. My arm is around the long line of Bear, who gives a big fumph of a sigh as he stretches happily into me, another gifted morning of being the Best Boy. Something in the air changes and my body starts to wake piece by piece, and then four more tiny floofy feet leap onto my bed, bound up my sleeping legs and belly and trounce my chest, followed by a tiny zooming tongue racing to sample my morning breath, the sleep drying in my eyes, the buried treasure that awaits up my nose.

Doc is in the doorframe as I laugh and squeal, fully regressed to 7, blowing raspberries at this eensy baby of a puppy who lives his days to do this to me every morning. Isn’t this how you always wanted to wake up?

I spend this eternal summer as doula for this borrowed time with my treasured Bear. I sweeten his days with willow bark and frankincense, zucchini and pumpkin, fistfuls of hemp. He listens to toothless jazz as I feather him with gentle massage. The breeze lifts us outside and I collect all the best sticks and let him pick his favorite to take into the grass, crunching with delight as his coat soaks up the sunshine, stopping now and then to consider tasting a carpenter bee (no). If we’re really lucky, Mr. Squirrely Whirly will come scrabbling down the fence, sending my arthritic old boy leaping to his feet, bounding across the grass in hopes of catching himself a real live squeaky toy.

Stephanie Tiffanie Amber Brittanie is the last person I’d think of in such a sacred moment, but ironically, here she is. Because despite all ill will, I have received her gift.

xxJen