MIRANDA PEAR’S BRAZEN BED-TIME STORIES: UN-PC Fairytales for Grownups

Chapter Three

(Miranda Pear main page | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter)

DEAD PEOPLE: A Comedy

By Maralyn Lois Polak

Illustration: Marlene K Goodman
(MKG GRAPHICS@AOL.COM)

1. "Death is hardest on the living"

 

Death first came to Miranda Pear in the form of a goldfish. One of her father's goldfish from the tank in the dining room. The goldfish would watch the Pear family eat. Then Mr. Pear would feed their leftovers to the goldfish. He had fattened them up on overcooked morsels from family suppers-- tiny minced cubes of her mother's stringy roast beef, dented green peas, gluey grains of rice-- that made the fleshy fishes' orange scales pale and puffy.

This alarmed Miranda. She was a sweet child but sensitive, prone to dark circles under her eyes from worry and bad dreams. Each night she said the "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" prayer, with a swelling God-Bless list nearly as large as the welfare rolls of a big city. She even said prayers for the fish.

Tiptoeing downstairs to their tank late one night when she couldn't sleep, she found a goldfish floating kind of belly-up and bloated. How lethargic this fish was.. It listed to the left. Then it listed to the right. She waited and watched for a few minutes, the house a dark hush all around her except for the percolating fish tank.

She resisted her first instinct, to flush the lifeless fish down the toilet in hopes it might revive and swim back to the sea. Better not. Something finally told her the goldfish was dead. Her father would bury it the next day, unboxed, by rhododendron, after high solemn requiem. Fish make good fertilizer, he would say, they're good for the soil.

But it was hard for Miranda to get too upset over the death of a fish, because she had never given any of them names. Wasn't it just a silly fish that swam back and forth and went 'glub glub glub' and made air bubbles and pooped underwater? So who would cry about that? If they don't have names, she decided, you don't miss them.

 

2. "Death is wasted on the dead"

Miranda had all the usual childhood fears. Her heart pounded and her palms grew wet if she imagined her little brother snipping off her nose with paper-doll scissors.

Or monsters lurking in dark closets or under the bed.

Or being swept into a swirling stream through the bathtub's drain and trapped in the sewer with tiny alligators slinking through the sludge.

Or lightning striking her while talking to her best girlfriend Lolly on the telephone during a thunderstorm, and giving her permanently kinky hair.

Or her mother secretly taking her bratty little brother Andrew away on the bus to some swell sandy seaside paradise-- they'd ride the Wild Mouse screaming, win all kinds of prizes playing SkeeBall, and capture the coolest oys in the metallic maw of the Digging Machine-- without Miranda.

Or a swarm of nightmarish bugs big as birds filling up her bedroom and stealing all the air she breathed so she would smother in her sleep.

Or her father driving off somewhere in the car and never coming back.

Strangely enough, after that goldfish passed away, Miranda noticed Death seemed everywhere around her, lurking and icky, like the crunchy locust she almost stepped on, one of those impossibly huge iridescent green insects with gauzy wings that would sing and sing and sing for 17 years until something horrible silenced it from further performance. Death was the Last Performance, impossible to avoid.

 

3. "Sometimes being dead is better than a good night's sleep"

The thought of funerals as an art form had not yet occurred to Miranda Pear.

"Funerals are no fun, and they're definitely NOT for children," Mrs. Pear declared when Granny One and Granny Two died within six months of each other.

What a relief that Miranda did not have to go kiss the Grannies' cold clammy corpses. But she couldn't help wonder what a dead person wore, and whether they smiled, and were their final thoughts forever frozen in their brain like cartoon speech balloons. "Oh Miranda, don't be so morbid. Go out and play," Mrs. Pear admonished her.

The next time her friend Lolly came over, they went straight upstairs to Miranda's room and staged a mock funeral for Janey the Doll, who clearly was old beyond her years because of all the sluttish eye makeup Miranda had applied to her rubber face.

"First we have to make sure she's really dead," Lolly urged.

"How do we do that?" replied a puzzled Miranda.

"Take her pulse," said Lolly.

"Nothing," Miranda said, "but I've always been terrible at doing that. I never could find mine, and I know I'm not dead."

Lolly snatched Janey the Doll away from Miranda, grabbed a small plastic dry-cleaners bag nearby, and placed it over Janey's head.

"What's that for?" Miranda asked.

"You know what. I want to make sure Janey is really dead," said Lolly.

"Don't SMOTHER her!! Here, use this instead," Miranda said, tearing the plastic bag off the doll and shoving a mirror under Janey's nose.

"If it gets cloudy," Lolly said, "we have a problem."

Miranda tells Lolly about sneaking into her parents' bedroom and reading in "Mother India," an old book of Mrs. Pear's, about how widows flung themselves on the flaming funeral pyres of their dead husband for an ancient ritual called "suttee."

"Hey, Miranda!! We could put Janey in the cat's four-poster mahogany bed, and, um, play a new game: "Dress Your Dead Dolls Up In Their Best Outfits, And Burn Them!!" I bet that blue brocade dress of hers would catch fire instantly and totally vanish in a puff of smoke. And I also bet Janey isn't wearing any underwear," giggles Lolly.

"No matches. Ever. I promised Ma I'd never play with matches. But let's put the bed with Janey in my brother's wagon and pull it up and down our street. Janey's Last Parade. I'll make him play his cymbals and we can do the kazoos."

And so they did, until an hour later Mrs. Pear noticed what they were up to, and made them stop. "Children!! Please!! Don't be so morbid. Careful, you'll choke on your kazoos. Come inside this instant!!!!"

 

4."Being dead means never having to say you're sorry"

But Mrs. Pear really was the morbid person, and Miranda forgave her for that. Her mom truly had her reasons. People in her family were always dying, dying.

There was a particularly horrible scene after the death of Granny One, Mrs. Pear's own mother.

Granny One, a simple Depression seamstress, had three daughters-- Aunt Jean Cherry, Aunt Dotty Lemon, and Mrs. Edie Pear. Usually, the three sisters were like some noisy Greek chorus struck with the certainty something calamitous would occur, and most of the time they were right about that.

So they're all at the Funeral Home in the Bronx for Granny One's viewing, when suddenly Aunt Jean bursts out of the chapel, ashen and sobbing, "That's not my mother."

The funeral director rushes over to comfort her. "Mrs. Cherry, Mrs. Cherry, now, now, you're not yourself, you're distraught, please calm down, of course it's your mother."

Next, Aunt Dotty goes in and quickly emerges, in an instant, weeping and wailing, too. "That's not MY mother!!"

Once again, the funeral director rushes over to comfort her. "Mrs. Lemon, Mrs. Lemon, passing on into the next world is such a mystery. Please compose yourself. How can we not recognize those we love? Death is transformation, transfiguration. Now, now, don't be upset. Please calm down. You're distraught. Of course it's your mother."

Then Mrs. Pear goes in to commune with Granny One's left-overs. Sure enough, very soon out she bolts, staggering and screaming and waving her hands and stamping her feet, 'THAT'S NOT MY MOTHER!!"

Still yet again, the idiot funeral director swoops down upon her and extends his talcumed palms, patting her shoulder in a practiced but bogus gesture of comfort that releases a cloud of powder. "Mrs Pear, Mrs Pear, how understandable in this time of your distress to feel this way. Of course it's your mother."

Well, turns out it WASN'T Granny One's body at all. Somehow the corpses had gotten switched, and they had rolled Granny One's gurney into another viewing chamber, the upshot of which was she was buried, finally, into money.

Alas, Granny One's sudden wealth was temporary. A few days later, they dug her up, and the whole commotion was played out, anew. This time it WAS their mother, but that didn't make it any easier for the three sisters.

Twelve-year-old Miranda was glad she got to stay home and watch the baseball game. Unlike death and diamonds, Baseball may feel like forever, but it's not.

 

5. "Kick it. If it doesn't kick back, it's truly dead"

The Rocket brothers, Bobby and Arthur, lived down the street from Miranda.

Though Bobby Rocket was an insufferable smarty-pants, and an adenoidal mouth breather, Arthur was the boy of Miranda's dreams. Meaning, he was the star of her night-time mind-movies, the ones she played and replayed to put herself to sleep.

Arthur had that Jimmie Rodgers folksinger "Oh-Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again" look, complete with patented patent-leather pompadour, and she didn't even hold his scowl against him one bit. Arthur was...a higher being.

This subtle form of worship went on from Miranda's twelfth through fifteenth years, until his hunting expedition. "Lo, Miranda,' Artie Rocket grinned his lopsided grin at her, "How's tricks."

Miranda nodded energetically, pointed to her throat to indicate she was sucking on a hard candy, and blushed.

"Just got back from hunting," he says, unloading his trunk, shouldering a B-B gun that looks like an actual rifle, and peering into the gunsite like he was Davy Crockett fixing on a 'ba'ar'.

Miranda didn't know anyone who hunted. Oh, every once in a while, her Daddy would get so irritated if any tiny creatures like chipmunks ever disturbed his precious strawberries, he'd take out a slingshot and lob pebbles at them while he thought no one was watching. But Miranda didn't know this yet. It would come out years later.

Meanwhile, Arthur is bragging about his hunting prowess, and Miranda could barf.

"Bagged me a squirrel, Miranda, and then made squirrel stew. Slow-simmered over the fire in a big cast iron stock pot, with onions, carrots, potatoes. Nah, it don't taste like chicken the way people say. It's tangier. Rattlesnake tastes like chicken. Frogs legs taste like chicken. Hey, my mom's thinking 'bout coming out with her own frozen food line, starting with "Ma Rocket's Squirrel Stew," watch for it soon at our neighborhood super-market. Check it out."

Nearly choking on her grape sour-ball, she stammered, "Later, Artie," and beat a hasty retreat home. Lips that tasted squirrel, Miranda vowed that very moment, would never kiss her own.

 

THE END

© 2001 Maralyn Lois Polak. All Rights Reserved. These stories and illustrations may not be reproduced, copied, reprinted, transmitted, or disseminated in any medium. Miranda Pear(TM) is a registered trademark belonging to MLPolak. All illustrations by Marlene Goodman, co-created with Maralyn Lois Polak.

(Miranda Pear main page | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter)