Free Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris Page A

then my chest and shoulders, until eventually, her arms wrapped around my neck and, her head towering above my own, she came to resemble a dance partner scouting the room for a better offer.
    “That’s just her way of saying hello,” my mother would chirp, handing me a towel to wipe off the dog’s bubbling seepage. “Here, you missed a spot on the back of your head.”
    Among us children, Melina’s diploma from obedience school was seen as the biggest joke since our brother’s graduation from Sanderson High.
    “So she’s not book-smart,” our mother said. “Big deal. I can fetch my own goddamn newspaper.”
    The dog’s growth was monitored on a daily basis and every small accomplishment was captured on film. One could find few pictures of my sister Tiffany, but Melina had entire albums devoted to her terrible twos.
    “Hit me,” my mother said on one of my return visits home from Chicago. “No, wait, let me go get my camera.” She left the room and returned a few moments later. “Okay, now you can hit me. Better yet, why don’t you just pretend to hit me.”
    I raised my hand, and my mother cried out in pain. “Ow!” she yelled. “Somebody help me. This stranger is trying to hurt me and I don’t know why.”
    I caught an advancing blur moving in from the left, and the next thing I knew I was down on the ground, the dog ripping significant holes in the neck of my sweater.

Me Talk Pretty One Day
    The camera flashed and my mother screamed with delight. “God, I love that trick.”
    I rolled over to protect my face. “It’s not a trick.”
    My mother snapped another picture. “Oh, don’t be so critical. It’s close enough.”
    With us grown and out of the house, my sisters and I reasonably expected our parents’ lives to stand still. Their assignment was to stagnate and live in the past. We were supposed to be the center of their lives, but instead, they had constructed a new family consisting of Melina and the founding members of her fan club. Someone who obviously didn’t know her too well had given my mother a cheerful stuffed bear with a calico heart stitched to its chest. According to the manufacturer, the bear’s name was Mumbles, and all it needed in order to thrive were two double-A batteries and a regular diet of hugs.
    “Where’s Mumbles?” my mother would ask, and the dog would jump up and snatch the bear from its hiding place on top of the refrigerator, yanking its body this way and that in hopes of breaking its neck. Occasionally her teeth would press against the on switch, and the doomed thing would flail its arms, whispering one of its five recorded messages of goodwill.
    “That’s my girl,” my mother would say. “We don’t like Mumbles, do we?”
    “We?”
    During the final years of Mädchen Two and the first half of the Melina administration, I lived with a female cat named Neil. Dull gray in color, she’d been abandoned by a spooky alcoholic with long fingernails and a large collection of kimonos. He was a hateful man, and after he moved, the cat was taken in and renamed by my sister Gretchen, who later passed the animal on to me. My mother looked after Neil when I moved from Raleigh, and flew her to Chicago once I’d found a place and settled in. I’d taken the cheapest apartment I could find, and it showed. Though they were nice, my immigrant neighbors could see no connection between their personal habits and the armies of mice and roaches aggressively occupying the building. Welcoming the little change of scenery, entire families would regularly snack and picnic in the hallways, leaving behind candied fruits and half-eaten tacos. Neil caught fourteen mice, and scores of others escaped with missing limbs and tails. In Raleigh she’d just lain around the house doing nothing, but now she had a real job.
    Her interests broadened and she listened intently to the radio, captivated by the political and financial stories, which failed to engage me. “One more word about