Fleabrain Loves Franny (14 page)

“Indeed,” said Fleabrain. “My own kind also wore silly costumes, and tight chains of silk thread around their ‘necks.' They were deliberately frightened by loud noises so that they'd jump involuntarily, thus appearing to pull huge carts and battleships and coaches. ‘Huge' in a relative sense, of course, but still heartbreaking. They were humiliated and overworked for fun and profit by cruel humans.”

“That
is
terrible,” agreed Franny. “I'm so sorry.”

Fleabrain leaped an inch. “But that was then, and this is now! I've still got enough of the kid in me to love the circus, as long as the
participants can control the show in a humane way. So now, to the tune of ‘Entrance of the Gladiators,' by the Czech composer Julius Fučík, born July 18, 1872, died September 15, 1916, we present F and F's Fantastic Circus!”

And it began.

Fleabrain the Ringmaster waved a few tibiae, thrillingly whistling the familiar circus theme song Franny had heard a zillion times.

Scores of silverfish playfully emerged from an electrical outlet, then cavorted on the circus-ring rug in perfect musical time.

Fleabrain the Tumbler backflipped and high-jumped his way over to the silverfish. Whistling, he tapped his tarsi in a performance that put famous dancer Gene Kelly to shame.

A cockroach rode a nickel like a unicycle all around the room.

Multicolored particles bounced to the ceiling, artfully juggled by talented dust mites.

“Prepare to be amazed!” hollered Fleabrain. “Behold, the Amazing Alf!”

A thunderous earthquake shook the circus ring.

The Amazing Alf had rolled over.

“And there's more! Here she is, the Fantastic Francine!”

The Fantastic Francine lifted iron nails many times her weight, her arms strong and muscular from pushing the wheels of her chair.

The Fantastic Francine was shot through a cannon/straw, landing in Fleabrain's “arms.”

“And now, the Fantastic Francine will perform a high-wire feat never before performed in a wheelchair, big
or
small!” cried Fleabrain, helping Franny into her chair again.

He lifted Franny and her wheelchair above his head, then leaped to an impossible height, even for a flea. A previously unnoticed cobweb hung in a corner of the ceiling. Carefully, Fleabrain deposited Franny on a web strand, then jumped to another strand to watch her performance.

Franny's strong arms, her wheelie practice, and her intimate knowledge of wheelchair dynamics allowed her to scoot and swerve expertly from sticky strand to sticky strand, correctly positioning the wheels to accomplish the maneuvers.

Wriggling his limbs in delight, even Fleabrain seemed surprised by the feats of the Fantastic Francine! Franny herself was exhilarated but not surprised. She'd had a feeling she could do it, although she was surprised at what a wonderful time she was having. She swooped and turned and balanced and wheeled, a small wind blowing at her back. It was almost as much fun as flying over Pittsburgh on Lightning.

But then …

Franny heard the creature before she saw him. His cry was like the keening of a cat and the hiss of a snake, an unearthly combination. Looking up, Franny saw the huge brown spider squeezing out of a crack in the wall. His several pairs of eyes focused on Franny and Fleabrain with a ravenous fury.

“I've got him within my sights,” whispered Fleabrain. “He has no idea whom he's up against.”

The spider's long legs advanced surely and confidently toward his prey, toward the seemingly helpless flea and the creature of flesh in the wheeled contraption. The web trembled as the spider reached their strands.

“Never fear, Francine!” cried Fleabrain.

Franny
was
afraid of the advancing spider, but she also felt sorry for him. He was at an unfair advantage because of Fleabrain's unnatural superpowers, as well as Fleabrain's anti-spider bias. The spider, on the other hand, about to paralyze his prey, was just doing what came naturally. Not to mention the fact that his web had become a playground for a disrespectful circus troupe.

“Watch me pulverize him,” sneered Fleabrain. “Watch me chew him to bloody smithereens. No. Watch me extract each leg, each eye, each hair, slowly and painstakingly, until he screams for mercy.
Then
watch me pulverize him!”

Franny was saddened to see that Fleabrain, once such a rational and compassionate creature, had become a vicious warmonger.

She rocked her wheelchair with sudden force, breaking several web strands. Falling through a gaping hole, she propelled herself downward, aiming her wheelchair carefully. The chair's speed accelerated as it neared its destination, finally splashing down into the water tray under the “Cheer up!” dracaena plant.

“Alf, come!” Franny called. Grateful to have passed her Level 3 Junior Red Cross swim test before she got polio, she swam a speedy Australian crawl through the current, using only her upper body. A short distance from the edge, she grabbed Alf's tail and was pulled from the water tray.

“Lie down, Alf,” said Franny.

Far above her, the combatants were at a silent standoff, motionless before the attack.

Franny dragged herself to the tip of Alf's tail, then reached down to grab her clarinet from the rug.

Tongue high in back at the roof of mouth. Chin flat. Lower lip over bottom teeth. Upper teeth touching top of mouthpiece, but don't bite. Tip of tongue touching tip of reed. Franny blew a G note with all her might.

It was a small sound, but it was glorious—strong and steady, neither a squeak nor a squawk. The beautiful little note filled the room, all the way up to the ceiling. Was it enough to “soothe the savage breasts,” the spider's and the flea's?

It was.

Several seconds later, Fleabrain joined her on the rug. The glorious little G note still hung in the air, like a lovely
eau de toilette
.

“Thank you. We needed that,” Fleabrain said. “I don't know what came over me, although I think I understand what was irking the spider. But how satisfying to see the spider's surprise when my superstrength allowed me to escape his sticky bonds!”

Fleabrain retrieved the wheelchair, which was floating in the water tray like a paddleboat. He dried it off with a piece of lint, then helped Franny slide from Alf into the chair.

“Fleabrain, I'd like to be my regular size again, please,” said Franny.

“Oh,” said Fleabrain. “Of course.”

Franny heard a trace of disappointment in his voice.

“It's just that I want to play the beautiful note for my family,” she explained.

Franny felt exhilarated! She was now hopeful that with practice she would progress beyond the patriotic but boring “Yankee Doodle.” She was like little Rose Goodly, who was just learning to read
those baby books about Dick and Jane. Rose complained that Dick and Jane were boring, boring, boring.
You have to start at the beginning
, everyone told her. Although Dick and Jane
were
boring, always hollering, “Oh, oh, oh!” at ordinary things—for example, their dog, Spot, running away from a frog. If they were miniaturized, Dick and Jane would probably drop dead from excitement.

But practice makes perfect. Practice would make her walk, too.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself in my world,” Fleabrain said anxiously.

“Oh, yes! I had an interesting, exciting time,” said Franny.

“I'm so glad. Hold on while I begin the maximizing process with some FB Saliva Negative #2. Kindly give me your monocle, if you please.”

Franny handed him the miniaturized Sparky's Finest, and Fleabrain squirted fluid onto its lens. “Close your eyes now,” he said, clasping the anointed bottle cap and focusing it on Franny. “Prepare to return to your natural size. It will be a slow but steady process.”

Franny closed her eyes, holding her clarinet tightly. There was that smell of firecrackers and popcorn again.

“We'll be friends forever, won't we?” she heard Fleabrain ask as he carefully returned Sparky's Finest to the pocket of her blouse.

“Of course we will,” Franny answered, already feeling herself growing larger. It was a feeling that reminded her of happiness.

Poster Child

F
ranny's mother shook the newspaper at the breakfast table.

“Listen to this,” she said. “ ‘If you lined up a bunch of dimes, you would need exactly 92,160 of them to make a mile. That's $9,216.' Whoever figured that out has a lot of time on their hands! ‘This week, mothers in Pittsburgh will be collecting money for the March of Dimes, trying to amass a Mile of Dimes like other cities in the U.S.' Well, I believe I'm going to be one of those marchers.”

The March of Dimes was like a great big
tzedakah
box—an organization collecting dimes for the unfortunate victims of polio and for polio research. Franny used to think of the “unfortunate” as people who were hungry or cold and very poor, like the boy in her song with blistered feet who had to wear his sister's clothes. Sometimes she'd see photographs of those unfortunates in the newspaper: children with huge eyes, wrapped in dingy blankets and holding empty bowls. Or photographs of unshaven older men eating a holiday dinner at a long table in a church hall.

But, of course, polio victims were unfortunates, too. There were posters of the March of Dimes poster children everywhere, it seemed—in libraries, stores, and banks. There was a photograph of one of them in that day's newspaper.

When Franny looked at the top half of the poster child, ignoring the bottom half showing the little boy's braces and wheelchair, he was a regular kid, laughing with joy. A kindly nurse laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. There were other children in the photo, children who didn't have polio, crowding around the poster child's wheelchair like really good buddies.

She herself would make a terrible poster child. And the only good buddy in
her
newspaper photo would be Fleabrain, who would look like a speck of dust on the page. No, not even a speck of dust. You wouldn't even see him at all.

Fleabrain. Dear, dear Fleabrain
.

As if reading Franny's mind, Min said, “If you were a poster child, you'd stick out your tongue at the camera. Or bury your head in a book, foaming at the mouth.”

That made Franny laugh, because it was sort of true. Sometimes only a sister was allowed to say something sort of true, and then it became funny.

“Or I'd play ‘Yankee Doodle' over and over on my clarinet until the photographer ran away screaming,” said Franny.

Fleabrain himself had put forth his opinion about all of this.

“Francine, those happy poster children are part of a giant marketing campaign to collect funds! Don't get me started on modern advertising! It's too unpleasant for people to open their newspaper
and see a crabby poster child. That, my dear, would be an oxymoron, like a giant shrimp. Or a wise fool.”

Now Franny's father glanced at the poster child's photo. “A photo should encourage people to donate money, and this one is doing its job. The newspapers and the March of Dimes are educating the public about polio, as well as saving the Katzenbacks from debtors' prison.” Mr. Katzenback smiled a little when he said that, so Franny wasn't really worried about her parents going to jail for their debts. Still, she was glad that some of the medical bills for her care were being paid by the March of Dimes.

And those bills included Nurse Olivegarten's.

“I fear this child isn't cooperating. Her muscles aren't loosening as fast as I'd like,” Nurse Olivegarten said at Franny's exercise session that day.

“Franny, you do need to practice your standing and walking more often,” said her mother. “Nurse Olivegarten is working hard on you, for your own good.”

“In my opinion, Muriel, she needs to buck up and cultivate a more pleasant, can-do attitude,” said Nurse Olivegarten.

Who was Nurse Olivegarten to talk about being pleasant? thought Franny, lying on the kitchen table. When Nurse Olivegarten “worked on” Franny, she never looked Franny in the eye. She always had a mustache of sweat on her upper lip and a frown on her forehead. Nurse Olivegarten made Franny feel like a broken-down car in an automotive repair shop, or a chicken about to be plucked.

“We got movement before, and we'll get it again. Believe you me,
I know what I'm talking about,” said Nurse Olivegarten. “I need you to cooperate with me and practice your walking more often.”

“Believe you me,” Franny said, “I want me to walk just as much as you do.”

Once Franny was off the list of unfortunates, Nurse Olivegarten wouldn't have to come anymore. It was worrisome that Nurse Olivegarten had started calling her parents Muriel and Sammy, like a member of the family who would be around forever.

And
, Franny thought,
I
am
a practicer and a cooperator! Ask Professor Doctor George Gutman! Ask me to play any one of three, almost four, songs on my clarinet!