Page 9 of Sending Love Letters to Animals

Without saying a word, I pointed to my ear with one hand. Juno rolled her eyes before fishing in her pocket for her phone. Two seconds later, she had paused her music and pushed her headphones down to rest around her neck. I never understood why Juno insisted on over the ear headphones. Her long curls were almost always pulled up in a pineapple updo, so headphones were not a great choice for her preferred hairstyle. Her go-to hairstyle and her “cans” were probably her way of looking casual, cool, and low-maintenance.

“It’s not even Friday,” I said.

“I can’t come home whenever I want?” She snipped.

“You just did laundry on Friday.”

“I had more,” she said with a shrug and turned back to the fridge. “I’m not lugging every bag of laundry I have over here every Friday.”

“So,” I sighed, “I gotta see you twice a week now?”

Juno snorted derisively and snatched a yogurt and an apple juice from the fridge. She twirled and stomped over to the counter where she slammed down her snack choices before opening the utensil drawer. Taking the opportunity, I stepped past her and popped open the fridge. Juno made her annoyance apparent as she rummaged around in the drawer behind me, clattering silverware together, as though finding a spoon was like taking a ring to Mordor.

Cradling the bag of pizza rolls in the crook of my arm, I closed the freezer and popped the fridge open to grab a red Gatorade with my other hand. A swivel of my hips and my butt nudged the fridge closed before I set my choices on the counter at the other side of the kitchen. Juno continued her boisterous search for a spoon as I pulled a plate out of the cabinet and served up a disrespectfully large serving of pizza rolls.

“You didn’t eat at school?” Juno asked.

“Hot dish day. I’m starving.”

Juno indicated with a grunt that she understood. However, she couldn’t leave things be.

“You won’t eat mystery meat at school but you’ll eat that crap?” She snorted.

“At least this bag tells me which chemicals and strange meats I’m eating,” I said.

Juno made another derisive sound with her tongue.

“What’s Mom making for dinner?” I asked.

“Ask her yourself. I don’t know what she’s thinking,” Juno said.

That was Juno in a nutshell. One moment she was kind of on my side and understanding, the next she was being feisty for no reason. I did my best to ignore her fluctuating mood as I slid my plate into the microwave and set it to cook my snack within an inch of its life. Without another word, I turned on my heels and marched out of the kitchen. Leaving Juno to listen to her music and eat her yogurt alone was the only way to be sure she would forget about my presence.

There was another reason I didn’t spend any more time in the kitchen than necessary, even when Juno wasn’t around to bother me. A few years back, my mom got it in her head that she liked roosters. Our kitchen was remodeled in a French Country style when I was in middle school, and a few months after, Mom found out roosters were kind of a French thing or something. Everywhere you turn, there’s a rooster on a dish towel, a rooster dust collector on a shelf, roosters embossed on the serving ware. You can’t avoid them no matter what you do.

Roosters are all right, I guess. I don’t have any particular problem with them or anything. However, I immediately think of another word people use for roosters. A word that is also used for a particular body part on a guy, and it makes me think about things. I have absolutely no luck with guys, so the last thing I want to do is think about roosters.

As I made my way upstairs, I tried not to think about the roosters in the kitchen and what roosters made me think about guys. My stomach fluttered as I ascended the stairs in the living room. Horniness and despair rose up within me in equal measure and I found myself wishing I’d asked Davud if I could hang out at his house and have dinner with his family.

Davud’s mom quit her job after his accident, mostly to be more available when he needed her, but also to focus on her family more. With a marriage and five kids and a household to run, I was glad his family had the money for her to do it. Because she was a stay-at-home mom, the dinners at their house were pretty epic most nights. I couldn’t pronounce most of the names his mom would give me for the dishes, but they were always delicious. His family never made fun of me for butchering the dishes’ names, either. They always seemed so happy when I so much as tried.

Even though he had three sisters and one older brother, none of them tried to fight with him, either. His family always seemed to get along and love spending time together. While I figured that spending too much time with my own family, no matter how well we got along, would be torture, it was still a nice thought. It would take a major attitude adjustment on Juno’s part, and quite a bit of chill from my parents, before that would work at our house.

Making my way past my bedroom, I slid my backpack from my shoulders and slung it through the doorway. I was walking away as it flew into my room, so the resulting thud let me know I’d missed my bed. It didn’t matter. It takes real skill and determination to break something in a tightly packed backpack that weighs roughly the same amount as a toddler. Stretching and cracking my back at the thought of what I’d been lugging around all day, I strolled to the end of the hall to the closed doorway.

Mom’s muffled voice reached my ears as I approached the door. Knowing it was best to not let myself in since I could hear her talking, which meant she was on the phone, I rapped my knuckles lightly on the door. Mom didn’t falter with whomever she was speaking to, but I heard the squeal of her chair and her voice grew closer. The door popped open and Mom was sitting there, holding it open as she sat in her office chair, speaking into her headset.

She smiled up at me before letting go of the door and waving me into her office, not missing a single beat as she spoke to the person on the other end of the line. As she sent herself sailing back across the room on her wheeled chair, I stepped inside and shut the door quietly behind me. Mom shoved her face into an open file on her desk top and I took a seat in the plush chair by the door.

The room at the end of the second-floor hallway had been Mom’s office for as long as I could remember. When I was born, she had been the administrator of a regional hospital system. However, it entailed long hours and lots of stress, and she worried about both her and Dad having jobs where it was difficult to drop things in an emergency. When you have two small children and not much family around, I guess that’s a real thing to worry about.

After talking about it for a while, Mom told Dad she wanted to start a consulting firm—which I’m still not sure what she does—and Dad supported her in that decision. Dad had offered to sell his auto shop and be a stay-at-home dad, but Mom vetoed that idea. One, it didn’t solve the problem of her long hours and stress. Two, she knew Dad loved his shop and being a mechanic—and it wasn’t like he didn’t make decent money, too. So, Mom worked at home, uh, consulting, and Dad was still a mechanic with his own shop.

There had always been at least one of them present for every school event, and they both always showed up for the major life events. They were both happy. Though Juno and I both would never admit it out loud, we kind of respected both of them, too. Dad was a guy from a poor family who ran his own business and worked a hard manual labor job that rarely garnered him appreciation from his customers when they saw the bill. Mom was a black woman who got paid by companies to tell them what to do. I think. It was hard not to toss a little respect at them from time to time.

“Okay. Sounds great,” Mom said into her headset. “All right. You as well. Have a good evening, John.”

I waited as Mom finished her call and jotted a few notes down in the file on top of her desk. When she finally spun lazily in her chair and sunk back comically into her chair, her jaw going slack, I chuckled.