Anastasia wailed, "He's been kidnapped! Someone climbed in the window and stole him! Look for a ransom note!"
"Don't be foolish," his mom's voice said, but it sounded very nervous.
"Here! Here's a ransom note, right here on the desk! You read it, Mom. I can't bear to. It says steak, right at the top. They'll return Sam if we give them steak. Read it, and then call the FBI immediately."
"That's my grocery list," Mom said. "Don't be ridiculous. Is your dad home? Did he come in the back door, and I didn't notice? Myron? Are you home? Do you have Sam?"
"Mom!" Anastasia begged. "Do something!"
Under the chair, Sam grinned. He had never caused such a commotion before, not even the night last week when his ear ached and he cried for a whole hour.
He watched their feet, and he listened to their voices with interest. Finally, he laughed out loud, pushed hard with his arm, leaned, and rolled out from under the chair.
Anastasia and Mom burst out laughing. Mom knelt, picked him up, said "Silly old Sam," and blurble blurbled into his neck, mixing the blur-bles with kisses.
Gotcha, Sam thought with delight.
Sam was frustrated.
He couldn't make them understand what he was saying. His mouth didn't work right. He would try very hard to call politely to them, "I want my diaper changed," or "I woke up from my nap and I am very lonely here in the pan tree," but it always came out sounding like "Waahhh."
Or he would try to say, "Another spoonful of those mushed-up peaches-and-tapioca, please," but it would sound like "Phhhhfft," and the peaches-and-tapioca in his mouth would fly out and wind up on his stomach and his feet.
He could understand what they said. Every word. At least, he could understand what his family said: his mom, his dad, and Anastasia, his sister.
Strangers were something different. They spoke another language, apparently. Strangers sometimes leaned over his crib or his carriage and said things like "Ba-ba, boo-boo" or "kootchy kootchy," and none of that made any sense at all, so he just smiled politely or stared at them with a puzzled look.
Once—only once—did it come out right. His mom had been feeding him, and it was strained apricots, one of his favorites. He wanted more. Lots more, right away. While he was trying to say that, but saying "Phhhfft" instead, she gave him another spoonful. So Sam smiled and said thank you. And it worked. It sounded like "Tattoo," but his mom understood, and she clapped her hands and called, "Myron! Anastasia! Come quickly!"
They came running, both of them, and Mom said, "Sam said 'thank you' when I gave him a bite of apricots!"
Dad and Anastasia both frowned and stared at Sam.
"Impossible," Dad said.
Sam wiggled around so that his little tilted chair bounced up and down. He waved his arms. He grinned. "I did! I really did!" he said. But it sounded like, "Blah, blah, blurb," and darn it all, he lost the whole bite of apricots, right down his bib.
"He really did," mom said.
Dad and Anastasia both laughed. "Give us a break, Mom," Anastasia said, and she poked a finger in Sam's armpit for a tickle.
"Another few months, Katherine," Dad said. "Then he'll start talking."
Now another few months had passed. He had some teeth now. Sometimes he bit his own finger by mistake and it hurt. He tried not to do that. He tried to bite other people's fingers.
And he bit toys. His teddy bear wasn't good biting, because it was too soft; but there was a hard plastic pretzel that he chewed on quite a bit. And the bars on the side of his crib were made of wood; he gnawed on them while they thought he was sleeping.
Also when they thought he was asleep, he practiced talking. He liked to do it when no one was listening so they wouldn't laugh. "Ba, ba, ba," he practiced late at night, saying it quietly to himself in the dark.
"Ta, ta, ta" was a good one. And "Ma, ma, ma."
He could say "me, me, me" and "ho, ho, ho."
He could do body parts. In the middle of the night, if he woke up and was bored, he kicked his blanket off, lifted his legs in the air, pointed with his finger, and said softly, "Knee, knee, knee." He had two of those.
"Eye, eye, eye," he said and pointed. Ouch. He had two of those, too, but he had to be careful, pointing, because if he pointed too hard at his eyes, it hurt.
When he worked hard at it, he could put two sounds together and make "Nose." He had only one nose, but it was fun to point at it, because sometimes he could poke his finger into it.
Nobody knew that he was practicing talking. It was his secret. He was going to let them know when the right moment came.
And in the meantime, he was working hard on some other stuff, too, at the other end of his body. Legs and feet, those things were called (he could say "feet" already, practicing at night). Feet also had toes—which he could say: "Tose, tose, tose"—but toes didn't seem very useful. They certainly weren't as handy as fingers, which could grab stuff, and pinch, and pull Anastasia's hair.
But legs and feet were very useful because they could get you from here to there. Rolling did too, of course, but Sam had been rolling for quite a while now, and he was beginning to get bored with rolling. You couldn't aim yourself very well and sometimes you rolled into the coffee table by mistake and whacked your nose. And when you rolled, you often got a mouthful of rug by mistake.
So he was practicing legs and feet. Using legs and feet, you could get yourself upright so that you looked like a real grown-up person. Once you were upright, like a grown-up, you never had to eat rug.
Now, finally, on a Saturday morning, he was ready to give the thing a try in front of the whole family. They were in the living room, all of them. Dad was lying on the couch, reading a newspaper. He had his shoes and socks off, and his big bare feet were propped on the arm of the couch. Mom was sitting in the green chair, knitting. She knit a lot. Knitting looked like an interesting thing to do with fingers. Sometimes, when she wasn't looking, Sam rolled over to her basket of knitting stuff and tried to knit. But she always grabbed it away from him and said, "No, no, no." No was an easy word to say. Sam said it a lot to himself at night, practicing. Soon he would say it to his family. He planned to say it often.
Anastasia was there, too. She was sitting on the floor barefoot, and she was painting her toenails bright red, using a tiny brush that went into a little bottle. A minute ago she had reached over very quietly and painted her father's biggest toenail bright red. He hadn't noticed yet.
No one was paying any attention to Sam. He was sitting on the rug chewing on his plastic pretzel.
Very quietly—just as stealthily as Anastasia had painted her dad's toenail—Sam put his pretzel down.
He reached over and put both hands firmly on the edge of the coffee table. He raised himself to his knees. Knee, he told himself. Knee.
Then he said—still to himself—foot. And he raised himself to one foot.
And again: foot. And he was on the other foot. He pushed hard. Now he was upright, the way he sometimes was in his crib, holding the sides.
That wasn't enough. He wanted to be upright on his own, like the grown-ups. So very carefully, very slowly, concentrating very hard, with his face in a frown, he let go with one hand.
It felt scary. A little wobbly. For an instant he touched the table again, just to steady himself. Then he took his hand away. Finally, he let go with the other hand.
He felt very tall, very brave. He stood there alone. No one was watching. Dad turned a page of the newspaper. Mom turned her knitters around and began knitting in the other direction. Anastasia dipped her little brush into the little bottle of toe paint again.
Sam eyed the distance from the table to the TV set. He thought about how to get there. Pick one foot up, put it down, pick the other foot up, put it down; then do the whole thing again, he thought.
He took off across the room, toward the TV. Halfway there, he stopped and called in a loud voice: "SEE ME? I'M UP!"
He heard his mother call, "Look! Sam's walking!"
&n
bsp; He heard Anastasia shriek, "He's talking, too!"
He heard his father bellow, "What—in the name of— what is this on my toenail?"
Sam lost his balance. Splat. He landed on his diaper, and it was wet.
"Now," he said thoughtfully, "I'm down."
But he didn't mind being down, because he knew he could get back up. He knew he could walk to the TV, and he could reach the knobs and turn it on— loud —whenever he wanted. He could walk down the hall to the kitchen, when his mom wasn't looking, and open the cupboard under the sink and pull out the squeezy bottle of soap and squeeze it all smooshy on the floor—something he'd been wanting to do for a long
time. He could walk to the bathroom and unroll the interesting roll of paper that hung there on the wall. He could walk to Anastasia's room, and if his arms reached far enough—he was pretty certain they would—he could pull all the papers off her desk and crumple them into balls.
He could tip over all the wastebaskets. He could pull books out of the bookcases and tear their pages out. And if he yanked at the cords that hung down, he thought he could probably tip over lamps and make wonderful crashing noises.
Sam sat there in the middle of the living room and thought about the wonderful things that the future held for him as a walking person. Then he shifted himself to his knees.
Knee. Knee. Foot. Foot. Push. Up. Now he was upright again, and life was not going to be boring anymore. Now he was a real grown-up, and he hoped that soon they would get him some blue jeans like all grown-ups, so that he would never have to wear dumb baby overalls again.
"Here I go!" Sam said in a loud voice, and he was off and running.
3
"Where does the water go?" Sam asked, peering into the kitchen sink. He was standing on a chair, helping his mother wash dishes. She let him do only the plastic things, but it was fun, because he got to splash water around. He watched the water go down the drain with a gurgling sound.
"Into the pipes," Mom said. She dried him with a towel and helped him down to the floor.
Sam headed down the hall. It sure was fun, not being a baby anymore. Now that he was big, he could walk anywhere he wanted. He walked to his father's desk. Dad wasn't there. He was atwork.
Sam didn't know what atwork meant, except that it meant Dad wasn't around. When Dad was atwork, he disappeared. When the door opened, and Dad appeared, carrying a briefcase, then he wasn't atwork anymore.
Anastasia was never atwork, though sometimes she was atschool. And Mom was never atwork. Only Dad.
Today, Dad was atwork, so no one was in the room where the desk was, and Sam went in. He climbed onto his dad's chair and twirled it around. That was always fun. Sometimes he twirled around so much he got dizzy, and once he had even tipped over.
But today he didn't want to do twirling. He stood carefully on the chair after it stopped twirling, and slithered across the big desktop on his tummy until he reached what he wanted. The pipes.
Dad had a whole row of pipes standing up in a rack. Sometimes he took one out and set it on fire and ate it for a while.
Mom had told Sam that the water went into the pipes.
Sam took out the first pipe and looked into the end to see the water. But there was no water there. He dropped the pipe on the floor.
He looked into each pipe, one by one. No water. He poked his fingers in the pipes. Some of them had little bits of brown stuff like cereal in them. He tasted that. Yuck.
He dropped all the pipes on the floor and went back to the kitchen.
"No water in the pipes," he announced.
Mom looked over at the sink. "No," she said. "I guess not. It's all gone."
Sam frowned. He wandered into the bathroom, twirled the roll of paper around, and decided he wouldn't unroll it right now—he had already done that once today. He pulled on the handle of the toilet.
Flush. Sam loved that sound.
Mom appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. She sighed.
Sam was watching the water rush around inside the toilet. "Where does this water go?" he asked. "Into the pipes, too?"
"That's right," Mom told him.
So he went back to look at the pipes again. This time Mom followed him. She started to laugh.
"Not these pipes, Sam," she said as she picked them up from the floor and put them back on Dad's desk. "The water goes into the special water pipes, and then it goes under the ground, and after a long, long time it ends up in the ocean, and then from the ocean it goes up into the air, and then it comes raining back down again, and into the lakes, and back into the pipes, and someday it comes back into our sink."
She picked Sam up, sat him on her lap, and tied his shoes. "Did you understand all of that?" she asked.
Sam grinned. He didn't really. But he said "Yep," and gave Mom a kiss on her neck.
Into the pipes. Into the ground. Into the ocean. Into the air. And then it rains down.
He had an idea. When Mom was back in the kitchen again, making dinner, Sam went into Mom and Dad's bedroom. If he pulled out the bottom drawer of the bureau, he could stand on it and see what was on the top. There was interesting stuff on the top, sometimes.
Today, on top of the bureau, Sam discovered a piece of Kleenex. That was boring. Then he saw a thing called a lipstick. Lipstick wasn't boring. You could open it up and then you could write with it. He had done that once; he had written with the lipstick on Mom and Dad's bedspread.
Mom hadn't liked that. She had said, "NO, NO, NO! NEVER DO THAT AGAIN, SAM!"
So he didn't do it again. He didn't even open the lipstick. But he took it from the top of the bureau and went to the bathroom.
Carefully he dropped it into the toilet. When he pulled the handle, he knew, it would go into the pipes, into the ground, into the ocean, into the air, and then it would rain down. Lipsticks would rain down. And that would be interesting.
He almost pulled the flushing handle. But first, he decided, he would add more stuff.
He dropped in his plastic pretzel. Now it would rain lipsticks and pretzels. But that wasn't enough.
Sam looked around. He could see something interesting on the side of the bathroom sink—Mom's earrings. He stood on tiptoes, reached the earrings, and added them.
One of his sneakers had come untied again and he pulled it off. Would it be interesting if sneakers rained down, with lipsticks and pretzels and earrings? Yes, Sam decided. So he dropped the sneaker into the toilet.
Now he was ready to flush.
Maybe, Sam thought suddenly, Mom would like to watch.
He went back to the kitchen. Mom was just putting something into the oven. "Hi, Sam," she said. "Are you getting into mischief?"
"Nope," Sam said.
"What happened to your shoe?" Mom asked.
Sam grinned. "Come see," he said. He tugged at her hand.
Mom followed him to the bathroom, and Sam pointed, showing her the wonderful flush he was about to make.
"Oh, nol" Mom said in a loud voice. She reached in and pulled out the dripping sneaker. She pulled out the pretzel. Then the lipstick. Then the earrings. She dropped all of the wet things into the sink.
She knelt on the floor beside Sam. She gave him a kiss. "Sam," she said. "None of those things likes to be in water. Not shoes. Not toys. Not lipsticks. Not Mom's earrings. They don't want to be wet. Do you understand?"
Sam nodded.
"Promise you won't do it again?"
Sam promised, and Mom went back to the kitchen. He did understand. What he needed was something that did like to be wet.
He thought about Dad's big black umbrella. But he knew it wouldn't fit.
Then he thought of the perfect thing. He went to Anastasia's room and turned the wastebasket upside down so that he could stand on it and reach her goldfish bowl. Anastasia's goldfish was named Frank.
And Frank loved water. Sam knew that for sure, because once he had dumped Frank out, and Anastasia had screamed and grabbed Frank and filled the bowl with water again even
before she mopped up the floor. "Frank needs water," she had explained to Sam. "Frank is very frightened and unhappy if he doesn't have water."
Carefully Sam dipped his plastic clown cup into the goldfish bowl. "Frank," he said, "you will be very happy."
He wished that Anastasia were home, instead of outside riding her bike, so that she could see how happy he was making Frank.
Frank floated very happily in the clown cup all the way to the bathroom.
He loved it in the toilet, because the toilet was bigger than the goldfish bowl. Sam watched him swim in the toilet for a long time.
Now, thought Sam, you get to go in the pipes. Under the ground. Into the ocean. Up to the sky.
And then you will rain back down.
He pulled the handle. "Yaaayyyy!" Sam shouted happily as he watched Frank spin and swirl.
He ran to the kitchen.
"I flushed Frank!" Sam announced.
He couldn't figure out why Mom wasn't happy about it. Dad, when he came home from atwork, wasn't happy, either. Worst of all, when Anastasia came in, Mom and Dad told her about it in very sad, quiet voices. And Anastasia began to cry.
That night, from his crib, looking through his window, Sam watched the sky. He waited and waited for it to rain goldfish so that he could give Frank back to his sister. But it never, ever did.
4
"Sam, I do wish you would be trained," his mother said one day as she was changing his diaper.
"No," said Sam. He said it very sweetly and smiled.
He didn't know what she meant. But he said no anyway. Sam liked saying no. It was an easier word to say than yes. And it always had a more interesting effect. When he said no, people sighed and frowned and scrunched their faces up. Sometimes his sister, Anastasia, got so mad that she shrieked when Sam said no.
Once, when Anastasia was getting Sam dressed for bed, she asked him, "Do you want to wear these pajamas, Sam? The ones with teddy bears on them?" She held them up.
"No," said Sam.