Flying Leap. Judy Budnitz

it doesn’t seem polite to me, exactly.

      “If he thinks he’s a dog, then he is a dog,” my mother says, in a way that means, That’s final.

      “Okay,” I say. Then I look down and see what she’s doing. She’s sweeping out little dried carcasses from the back of the closet. Dead beetles or roaches or something. Dozens of them, curled up and hollow, legs in the air.

      Now it is September. Now the man in the dog suit comes to our house every day.

      My mother feeds him bits and crumbs of things. Then I play with him, tell him things. He is a good listener. I show him the bruise Pat gave me the day before, pushing me out of the basement. They don’t want me down there, but sometimes I sit at the top of the stairs and listen to their voices.

      I tell the man in the dog suit all this, and also about the limp dark hairs on Eliott’s upper lip. And about the dark cloud that always settles in the room where my father is. I tell him about Rick Dees, my favorite DJ on the radio, before the power went out. Rick Dees, I tell him, has a slick, handsome voice and he must be a slick, handsome man, with sunglasses and movie-star eyes.

      The man in the dog suit nods.

      I decide to give him a name. Prince.

      I tell my mother and she says, “Good. That’s a good name for a dog.”

      Then the day comes when my father comes home too early and finds Prince on the front steps, and my mother and me stroking his back.

      “What’s this?” says Dad, his face going darker than ever. He’s got his gun pointed at Prince, at us. His shirt is unbuttoned, so I can see the tuft of fur peeking out. Prince freezes.

      “Oh, Howard,” says my mother, “he’s not hurting anything. Really.”

      “What’s that you’re giving him?” Dad says.

      “Just trash,” my mother says. “He’s helping me clean up.”

      “He’s dangerous. He could hurt you,” says my dad, aiming with the gun.

      “He keeps the other beggars away,” says my mother.

      This is true. Since Prince started coming, the other beggars have avoided our house. “Like a guard dog,” I say.

      My dad looks at us, squinting, like he’s aiming.

      “Howard, let him stay. He’s not doing any harm,” says my mother.

      “Please, Dad,” I say.

      And Dad—I don’t know why—cocks his head and says okay and stomps into the house. A moment later he calls to my mother to find him something to eat.

      I sit on the stoop with Prince. We listen and wait. We watch the sky.

      October now. We’re still holding our breath, waiting. Nothing happens. It is still hot. Nobody tells us anything: how the war’s going, or when school will start, or how many people are dead. I think the war is getting bigger, coming closer. No one has told me this, but I can feel the waiting, the tension buzzing in the air around my head like a hornet.

      I think people are moving away. I don’t see our neighbors peering from behind their curtains anymore. “They’re dead,” says Pat, “The government comes with trucks and clears them out in the middle of the night, when we’re asleep.” I think he’s teasing. Maybe not.

      I play in the yard with Prince. I throw the ball. He chases it, brings it back to me in his mouth.

      My dad, watching us, says, “He’s not a dog, he’s a man, for God’s sake. Treat him like a man.”

      But we ignore him. I throw, Prince fetches. We are having an all-American good time, just like Dick and Jane and Spot in the reader. After my dad leaves, I sing all of Rick Dees’s favorite songs for Prince. Prince likes that. He barks with me.

      I tell Prince all kinds of things. I know he won’t laugh, like Eliott, or punch me, like Pat does. He presses against me, all warm and furry. He would never hurt me. I am taller than he is anyway.

      His face is so kind: warm, wet, blank eyes.

      I have little pink bumps on my legs. Fleabites, I think, but I won’t tell my mother.

      “If he ever hurts you, tell me right away,” says my dad.

      Prince would never hurt me.

      My dad thinks everybody thinks like him.

      One day I see my dad in the yard, talking to Prince. “You’re a human being, for God’s sake. Stand up like a man. Listen to me! Take off that Halloween costume shit. I’ll give you my own clothes if you’ll take it off and stand up like a man and talk to me. I know you can talk. Come here, you.” And he grabs for the dog suit, tries to pull it off. Prince runs away.

      One night Eliott says, “Well, you know what they say. Man’s best friend.”

      Pat says, “Don’t let him touch you. You want to end up with a litter of puppies?”

      He and Eliott snigger and lean in together, their faces all twisted. Pat’s face is rotten with pimples. He doesn’t have any cream to put on them, so they are getting worse and worse.

      Sometimes at night I creep downstairs and out on the porch, and Prince is there sleeping or waiting. I curl up beside him and bury my face in the rough, sick-smelling fur. Prince gives my hand a lick. That is his way of saying good night.

      November: The army trucks, with their ration packages and bottles of water, stop coming.

      The sky is a curdled yellow color. It seems like most of our neighbors have gone on vacation, or died or disappeared or moved away, or something.

      We seem to be losing.

      The silence is deafening.

      In December Eliott and Pat break into some houses at night, looking for food. An army patrol brings them back. If they do something like this again, they will be taken away for good.

      “Taken away where?” I say. No one will tell me.

      My father has a dark look all the time now, as if a black mildew is growing and spreading on him.

      “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, to get out of this shithole,” says Pat. But he and Eliott stay in at night.

      There is nothing to eat. My mother has scoured the house. She tries making us a salad of grass and things. It makes me throw up.

      I find a bottle of Flintstones chewable vitamins in the back of my drawer. I don’t want to share. I eat a whole handful and it gives me a horrible stomachache.

      My legs are nice and thin now. And my bones stick out of my face in a nice way. I look like the models in the magazines. I know this because I spend a lot of time in my room now, looking in the mirror. I don’t want to be with my parents, or Pat or Eliott, so I sit with the mirror to keep me company. The mirror behaves. We have conversations. Sometimes if I squint really hard into the mirror, I can see Marjorie there, in the mirror room, smiling at me.

      I’ve been writing things down in my diary, month after month. I’m beginning to lose track of the days. They all run together. I remember when every day was different: Monday was music day at school; Wednesday I had piano lessons; Friday I went to Marjorie’s house. Now they are all the same.

      Sometimes I look in my closet and it surprises me to see all the clothes hanging there. Now I always wear the same shirt, and some pants all bunched up with a belt. There’s no reason to change. I remember my mother used to yell at me to put on clean underpants every day. Now they are all dirty and she is too tired to yell.

      Every day I go downstairs and sit on the porch. Prince is still curled up there, shivering in the cold. My dad won’t let him in the house. And Prince won’t leave, even though we can’t feed him anymore.

      He