Toys

 Did you know you can take somebody’s brains and put them inside your favorite toy, and the toy, in this case Bengo Action Tiger, will totally come to life? I know what you’re thinking. No way. It can’t be done. Well you’re wrong. It can. I don’t care what you say. Just ask my sister.

 Dad’s in Thailand. He doesn’t live with us anymore, but when he’s in town we spend the last weekend of the month at his house in Malibu. We get postcards from dirty-sounding places like Bangkok and Phuket. He is in the import/export business, but if you ask Mom she’ll say he’s “in the business of getting his rocks off,” and the way she says it makes that sound dirty, too.

 Mom’s in the islands. There’s a picture of her at her favorite hotel on the wall near the bar. In it, she’s wearing a bathing suit and a big straw hat. She’s got a drink in one hand and a pineapple in the other. She’s laughing, laughing so hard she’s doubled over, spilling out of the picture. Her eyes are little squints and you can see the tops of her tits coming out of her bathing suit. It’s my favorite picture of her. It’s my favorite picture period.

 First, you have to get some brains. Any brains will do, but for really rad results, you need a really cool toy, and is there a radder toy than Bengo Action Tiger?

 Bengo Action Tiger (B.A.T.) can crawl, crouch and leap, and when it leaps it makes a kick-ass growling sound as it pounces on its prey. B.A.T. has motion detectors in its eyes, so even when it’s “sleeping” -- Bam! – it springs to life and attacks. Best of all its got a KidCo Read and Response System (R.A.R.S.). That means it can analyze the tendencies of its prey and react to them, which is just another way of saying it teaches itself how to fight! How kick-ass is that?

 Unlike some action toys, B.A.T. is not covered in plastic. It’s totally soft, like a stuffed animal. I mean, it is a stuffed animal. When you pick it up, it’s heavy and you can totally tell there’s stuff going on inside, but otherwise it looks just like one of the stuffed animals my sister Lisa used to collect before her operation.

 I can’t lie. I got the idea watching Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein on DVD. This evil scientist woman wants to take out Frankenstein’s brain and put Costello’s in to make the monster more obedient. It’s pretty funny for an old black and white movie. Abbot’s always slapping Costello around, telling him what to do. I like that. Lisa fell asleep during the movie. I leaned over and whispered: “I’m going to do that to you. I’m going to take out your brains.” And I did.

 B.A.T. has its limitations, namely on the action side. I’m talking serious limitations. Sure, its eyes flash, and it can scoot down on its haunches and do the leaping thing, but to tell you the truth, it’s pretty weak. When it leaps, it doesn’t even come off the ground except for a little bit. Like enough to slide a piece of paper underneath, but that’s it.

 At first Christopher (our cat) was afraid of B.A.T. and would give it plenty of space. If you stop playing with it, B.A.T. shuts itself down and just sits there. But it’s a trick. The motion detectors are always on, and when Christopher came in for a closer look, its eyes flashed and it pounced. Christopher freaked out and me and Lisa laughed and laughed. Dumb fucking cat. Lisa scooped it up in her arms. “Poor Christopher,” she said.

 This went on for about a week until Christopher figured out that after B.A.T. attacks it takes a minute to re-position itself, locate its target, and coil for the next attack. This gave Christopher plenty of time to swat at it with its paws, knock it over on its side. I walked in on them like that. B.A.T. was thrashing around, trying to get back on its feet. Christopher left, tail in air. I got so angry I threw a shoe at him. I would have done worse if he hadn’t run away.

 Whenever Mom goes on one of her trips, her Uncle Phil moves into the guest house in the back. Uncle Phil is cool. He lets us get away with murder except he hit me once when I told him to “get a life.” He thinks he’s in charge, but he isn’t really. Pamela is. She’s the boss. Pamela’s our nanny. She also cooks and cleans. Her brother, Cheetoh, does the landscaping. They’re from the Philippines. Me and Lisa like them a lot. They’re super nice, a lot nicer than my parents. Cheetoh calls me Ray Ray and Little Man when everyone else calls me Raymond. Pamela makes great scrambled eggs. They slide down your throat all buttery and sweet. Sometimes Mom cooks but it always sucks. Always always. And she never cleans up afterward, which I don’t think is fair, but how am I supposed to tell her that? How am I supposed to tell her anything?

 When Mom’s away things are way more laid back around the house. Pamela still cooks and cleans and all, but she seems a lot happier about it. Cheetoh and Uncle Phil hang out by the pool and smoke reefer all day. Uncle Phil says when I turn thirteen I can start smoking it, too, but that’s not for another couple years, three and a half to be exact. I smoked it once with Stevo and it made me sneeze, so I could definitely use the practice.

 The best part about Mom being gone is I can totally take off and go skating with Stevo, hang out at the beach, whatever. As long as I’m back for lunch and dinner, no one asks me where I’m going, where I’ve been. Sometimes I hide in the pool shed to see if they talk about me when I’m not around, but they never do.

 It was a very simple procedure.

 First I a-nest-a-sized the patient. That’s how it always starts. You a-nest-a-size the patient. That means, knock them out. I poured Nyquil nighttime cough formula into Lisa’s tea-cup and made her drink it up in little sips until the bottle was gone. She guzzled it down like Kool-Aid. I told her to go change into her swimsuit. She went into her room and when she didn’t come back out I went in and found her asleep on the bed with her stuffed animals, a little purple puddle of drool on the bedspread.

 I put her in the laundry caddy and wheeled her out to the garage. It wasn’t easy, but I got her into the washing machine sink. I won’t tell you how I got the brains out because I told Stevo and he got sick on his shoes, but it’s not as bad as you think. All it took was a little crack. They practically came out by themselves.

 Mom’s always talking about the islands. The islands this, the islands that. We were watching “Survivor” one night and I asked if that’s what the islands are like. She got quiet for a while. “No,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to get away from.”

 When I was little I used to think she meant Catalina Island, where we went camping once before Lisa was born, just me, Mom and Dad. We drove to Long Beach and took the boat across. I almost got sick but I didn’t. We saw flying fish and dolphins.

 We had a tent near the beach. You could see buffalo walking on the ridge. Me and Dad flew a bright blue kite with a silver streamer. Mom laid out in the sand and watched us. We always talked about going back, but we never did.

 On a clear day, you can see Catalina from the deck off my mom’s bedroom upstairs. But these aren’t those islands. The islands Mom goes to are far away from this place, which, I understand, is entirely the point.

The operation was a complete success.

Sort of.

At first I thought Lisa’s brain totally fucked it up. It stood up on its legs like a person. For two days it just walked around touching things, holding on to the wall like it might fall over. It growled at me every time I came in the room.

 B.A.T. is way better now. I mean way better. It doesn’t do that stupid pounce thing anymore. It can hold things in its hands. It can watch TV. It can basically do everything a kid can do, only it feels no pain and never gets hurt. If a ball gets stuck on the roof I can throw B.A.T. up there and it will fetch the ball and throw it down. Then it will walk to the edge of the gutter and pitch itself off the roof. Sometimes it gets snared in the bushes but most of the time it just gets up and brushes itself off.

Sometimes it follows me around the house until I stop what I’m doing and play with it. It puts its hands on its hips exactly the way my sister used to do it, which is totally freaky but also kind of understandable. I mean, it looks like B.A.T. and everything, but inside it’s my sister.

Lisa? She’s sleeping in the toy chest, waiting for her brains back.

One of the games me and Lisa used to play was ragdoll. We’d be playing or watching TV or whatever and she’d say “Ragdoll!” and throw herself on top of me. This meant that she had turned into a ragdoll and couldn’t move. If I wanted her off me, I had to move her myself. If I wasn’t in the mood I’d push her off as fast as I could, not caring if she fell or slid off the couch or whatever. But sometimes I’d be a good sport and I’d move her back onto her side of the couch, and she would let me. Then she’d yell “Ragdoll!” and throw herself on me again. Sometimes I just let her stay there until she fell asleep, the breathing in her belly getting slower and slower, her dirty hair hanging over her face like a net.

Saturday was the best day, the strangest day. When Uncle Phil came into the kitchen his eyes were all scratchy and red. “I hereby declare this I-don’t-give-a-shit day,” he said. Pamela laughed. “You said it, brother,” Cheetoh said. He poured himself another bowl of Captain Crunch.

After breakfast they all went out by the pool, Pamela, Cheetoh and Uncle Phil. “Come hang out with us, Ray Ray,” Cheetoh said. So I did.

Pamela was wearing one of Uncle Phil’s beer t-shirts and her bathing suit underneath. Her hair was long and wavy and her eyes flashed.

She took off her t-shirt and splashed oil all over her dark skin. I’d never seen her in a bathing suit before. She always wore blouses and skirts and aprons. I always thought she was kinda fat, especially compared to mom, who is super skinny. But what I saw wasn’t fat, it was something else. “You’re gonna get a sunburn” I said and everyone laughed. “Don’t stare,” Uncle Phil said, “it’s not polite.” I could tell he was serious because he didn’t call me a name.

When she got up and walked to the diving board Cheetoh and Uncle Phil got quiet. Pamela went up in the air and came down, a spray of bright water in the sky, her body a brown blur skimming the pool’s black bottom.

Who was this person? Whose brains did she have in there?

She looks the same every time I open the toybox: head down and tilted to the side, her left shoulder slumped against the box, her head full of stuffing. Her skin is pale, pale, pale. Paler than I can remember ever having seen it before. She looks cold. I put a blanket inside the box and some peanut M&Ms--her favorite--for when she wakes up.

B.A.T./Lisa has been acting weird. I catch it doing all kinds of stupid stuff. Yesterday I found it standing in the bathroom sink, absolutely still, staring at itself in the mirror. This morning while I was looking for my flip flops out by the pool I saw B.A.T. on the diving board, its paws hanging over the edge. “No!” I shouted and it looked at me. It tensed its legs, ready to pounce into the pool. The diving board shuddered like it was alive. “No! No! No!” I screamed over and over again, and I swear it could hear me, that stupid smile stitched into its face. Stevo stuck its head over the fence, his face all “What the fuck?” I looked and B.A.T. was slumped over, a formless, crumpled-up shape on the edge of the board. A ragdoll.

Pamela wakes me up in my room. Her eyes are red. It looks like she’s been crying. “Where’s Lisa?” she asks. I shrug. “Camping,” I say. “Where?” she wants to know. “Catalina,” I say. “The islands.”

I’ve looked all over and I can’t find B.A.T./Lisa. I looked in the pantry where Pamela keeps her cleaning supplies. I looked behind the bar. I looked in Lisa’s pile of stuffed monkeys, turtles and bears, but it wasn’t there. I looked in the trash cans around the side of the house. I looked behind the end table in the living room where it jammed itself one time. I even looked on the roof and scanned the whole yard, front and back. Nothing. The wind blew in from the ocean and I could see the surfers lining up for the waves. The ocean was shiny bright like mom’s lips when she’s going out. I went inside and called her at her hotel but she wasn’t in. They asked if I wanted to leave a message. I said “No” and hung up the phone.

Something’s up with Pamela. It’s 9 o’clock and she’s still in her bathing suit. Her skin looks super dark, and when she walks by the television she looks like a model or something. She paces back and forth, chewing on a fingernail. Uncle Phil tells her to chill. “Yeah, chill out,” I chime in, and she stops pacing. “It’s late,” she says. “What do you want to eat?” “Nothing,” I say, so we don’t eat.

There is a dream that comes to me as I’m falling asleep. I am a roving eye, a secret camera searching the empty beds of our empty house in Hermosa. The eye goes outside where the pool is a misty moor, and the power lines crackle and hum. The eye goes right up to the shed. “Here,” it says. “Look here.”

I pull on my board shorts and go downstairs. The house is quiet and bone cold. The sliding glass door has been left open. I make my way to the pool shed. I put my hand on the latch and hear the sound of a metal chair-leg scraping against the concrete. I freeze. My insides turn cold, and I think of Lisa, wet and cold in the washing machine sink after I rinsed away the blood.

It’s Pamela and Uncle Phil. Pamela’s sitting on top of Uncle Phil, her legs straddling the lounge chair. She has her hair piled up in a stack on her head, and she holds it there with both hands. She’s totally naked. Uncle Phil’s white feet go from side to side, side to side. Uncle Phil grunts and says “Aaaaahhhhh.” Pamela shushes him and giggles. I look in the tool shed but B.A.T./Lisa isn’t there. This destroys me.

I’m skating with Stevo on the strand when it hits me: B.A.T./Lisa’s in the toybox. That’s where she is. I say it over and over again as I push myself along: Toy. Box. Toy. Box. The ache in my belly goes away and everything feels warm and golden. I laugh and push Stevo off his skateboard. He falls in the sand and glares at me. He isn’t hurt or anything, but he’s still mad. He picks up a handful of sand and throws it at me. “Don’t fuck with me,” I say, “or I’ll make you my robot slave.”

I open the lid and look inside. I swear to God there’s something moving around in there. I get scared, jump away. The lid comes crashing down. I can hear Pamela. “Fee-lip? Is that you?” I can hear the shower running. What’s she doing taking a shower in my mom’s room? I want to open the box again, but I wuss out. I leave the bag of M&Ms by the toy box. Just in case.

I’m in the rec room playing video games when I hear the scream, then sobs. Feet pounding all over the house. The glass door sliding open, sliding shut. Little creatures exploding on the TV. screen. Yeah, you little fuckers. I’ll kill you all.

The house gets really, really quiet. Pamela, Cheetoh and Uncle Phil have a pow-wow in the dining room, deciding what to do. Cheetoh comes in, sits next to me on the sofa. He puts his hand on my head. He smoothes my hair. I let him. Pamela cries and cries and cries. I have no idea where Uncle Phil is. “What are you doing, Ray Ray?” Cheetoh asks. “Killing monsters,” I say.