Nature Study by Leela Dutt
This one got an honorary mention in the Five Stop Story competition
Oliver squirts the hose straight up into my mouth, full force, and the glorious water splashes my face and down my chest, tickling me over and over. Wonderful! Just what I wanted… The smell’s good too: not that this clean antiseptic water has a smell, but it reminds me of ancestral pools with the tang of jungle and heat and some tasty insect larvae to eat.
“Cut that right out, Oliver!” Billy is always the one to control things, stop the fun. Billy’s the boss, and he knows it.
I stretch my arms and legs out, begging young Oliver to continue.
But wait – the lads have got someone new here today.
It’s a female, clearly. A young one, no older than Oliver, with a lithe body that she’s poured into some fetching black jeans and a tight-fitting black tee-shirt. She’s got long curly blonde hair, and they are calling her Laurel – what a pretty name, Oliver has lost no time pointing out. She claims she’s a zoology major.
“He loves it - he always points to ‘water’ on the lexigram,” Oliver protests.
“That’s so cute.” Laurel smiles engagingly at me, and all at once I feel warm all over. “I need to take some photos for my project – I’ll just get my camera.”
“Hey, you realise they are our closest living relatives, Laurel?” Oliver goes on. “So I guess you’d like a bit of water too, wouldn’t you?”
And abruptly he turns away from me and squirts the hose at the girl’s face instead. Not fair, my turn! My turn!
“Oliver, what the heck are you doing?” Billy erupts with fury, his face red, his eyes blazing.
Would you believe, the young lady seems to like it! She’s howling with laughter, bending over as the jet of water splashes her face and runs all over her tee-shirt and jeans. Her hair is getting soaked too, and her curls hang in straggles down her face, making her look wild and enticing, Oliver seems to think.
But Billy is still furious, the veins standing out on his neck. They are weird, these creatures; I don’t know why Laurel doesn’t just defuse the situation by taking Billy off for a quickie, as my own folk would do. But these guys are too repressed for that; wearing clothes must be a drawback.
*
Next morning Laurel is still here – that’s good. She’s dried her jeans and found another top, this time a crisp white cotton blouse with three-quarter-length sleeves. She’s got a lovely scent about her today.
There are more visitors, a boy and a girl who have come because there’s no one else to look after them. Billy is filling them up with boring facts about where my family came from in the Congo and how we know how to climb a tree and make a bed out of the branches, but they aren’t a bit interested in all that – they just want to play with my lexigram.
“Where’s the banana?” the boy asks me, and they fall about with amazement when I point to the right picture. You know what, it works every time; heck, it’s not rocket science.
“So where are the peanuts?” the little girl asks me. That’s a no-brainer – they are in the top row. Obviously. But let’s put some new ideas into their heads – I point at ‘strawberries’ and ‘blueberries’ but sadly no one takes the hint. Marshmallows are another of my favourites; I once made a fire with some twigs, when Billy left the matches lying on the ground, and toasted some marshmallows – heavenly!
