They, by ‘they’ I mean the tidy family of four, heard the
knock on their front door from the kitchen where Sassy was applying glitter to
her paper mache pink walrus baby girl, Muchi-poo. Her older brother was
constructing the counterpart volcano on the floor out of wire, stone, and mud and
its slopes had crept out and were threatening to collide with the dishwashing
machine, which was broken and had been since Bag decided to clean his
collection of blue-red-green garden rocks.
“Is it almost done?” asked Sassy, now fitting out the walrus
fashion model with an Academy Award’s style gown. Walrus divas must look their
best when plunging down into the fiery depths of raging volcanos.
“I don’t have the east slope properly combed.” Bag was
rubbing his chin and looking suspiciously at a handful of multicolored pebbles.
“Also, waiting on dad and the boxes of baking soda. And sparklers.”
The dad was sitting at the kitchen table looking over schematics.
Large sheets of paper covered the well-used wood surface. “Mmph.”
“Dad!”
“Mmmph.”
“Your father is busy, Bag. We’ll go shopping for your
project later this morning,” said their mother sternly from the sink, where she
was cleaning and peeling sticks. “In the meantime, I have your defoliated
lumber. What was that?”
They were a normal, suburban family. And at seven o’clock on
a Saturday morning in March, before the sun pushed out the night, there was a
knock at the door.
Peggy Tinville dropped her paring knife into the sink. It
clattered against a spoon. “Did you hear that? Was that a knock?”
“Dad!”
Dad looked up. He had on peering goggles. “What?” he said, “a
knock? M-possible, that was only a realtor’s yard sign blown by the wind into
our siding which caused a noise, which alerted you all to the fact of said heavy
winds. Probably caused a dent too. Blast it.” Derby adjusted the goggles and
began gathering the confusion of papers from the table top. “Time to clean up
this mess,” he said. “You too, Bag.”
“I can’t just put away a volcano.”
Derby peered at the volcano. “You should have put it on wheels;
this is sandwich day after all. Followed by spaghetti night.” The goggles were
for peering at schematics, not volcanos. “Unacceptable.”
“You can’t just fold up a volcano and push it under the bed,
dad! Duh.”
“Duh,” repeated Sassy. The walrus baby was stunning. There
came another knock at the front door. This time it was series of raps and was
unmistakably knock-like.
“That’s no blown sign. That was repetitive, and clearly a
defined knock,” said Derby taking off the goggles and handed them to his son. “Go
check the door, Bag.”
Peggy turned from the sink, her flower pattern apron spun
with the twirl, and stepped over a landslide of graham cracker crumbs and loose
gravel. “We’ll all go,” she said. Sassy
hopped down from her chair and took her mother’s hand. “After all, this may be a momentous Saturday
morning!”
“Ok, gee. Come on Bag, leave that for later. The door
awaits!”
Bag put on his father’s big goggles then jumped up, as boys
do, and sprinted from the kitchen into the living room. A slight disturbance of
air particles and footfall on the floor caused a tremor and a North Slope
avalanche which killed a family of parsley munching plastic cows. Nobody was
there to see it. Cows made in China don’t count.
“Wait for us, please,” called Peggy, and he did while
hopping on one leg. “Okay, we’re here.” Bag opened the door a smidge and with
half his goggled face looked in to the outside.
“Nobody there. Musta been a sign.”
The family gathered at the door, and they heard another
sound. It wasn’t a knock, but a soft mewl from lower down. On the doorstep was
a lovely wire woven bassinet stuffed full of blanket and wriggling baby.
“A baby!” cried Sassy.
“Not a sign then, curious,” said Derby Tinville. “And on a
Saturday!”
The next noise they heard was neither a knock nor a baby
cry, but a weird clicking, like the whirring of a hand held, manual eggbeater,
from above. They all looked up, but saw nothing and soon the sound dissipated and
only the soft caterwaul of the infant remained. Peggy moved through her small crowd of family
and bent over.
She plucked out a printed sheet of alien velinium-sheef from the
blanket and read it aloud. “’Given your western propensity of bestowing three
names upon a child we of the dry and boney planetary system Staria name this
creature we found in your distant Cro-Magnon past from these popular titles in
your culture: Netflix Taco-bar Babyshark. Care for it as we choose not to, for this
baby is not so cute as the one we desired for our earth-themed zoo, and we
instead procured a mule deer. ‘”
There was silence, but for the wind which in any case was
not nearly blustery enough to blow realtor signs on to siding. Derby was
relieved.
“Well, that is just ridiculous,” said the father. “Netflix
is a rather unwieldy name for a baby. We’ll call him Taco-bar, by his middle
name. Is it a boy?”
Thus begins the enigmatic life of a normal everyday family
of five, voila!
