Free The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron Page A

good girl and our family is four. I don’t want to wait here because I don’t like it but I am supposed to watch Stick when Momma is not here. I am not old enough to be a babysitter because that is a girl who has long hair and her jeans go loose around her shoe and nail polish that is pink like a pink Popsicle except dark. I want nail polish but Momma says no and I can’t babysit yet so I just watch Stick. I don’t know how long until Momma and Daddy come.
    I look at Stick and he is boring to watch and I wish that Gwen could sniff like when she is dry and in my bed and we are in a cozy snuggle under the blankets. She is wet and her fur is mussed up. I hold her arm and twist it and water drips out of her. I worry her stuffing will drip. I check her for holes like once when the part by her neck came loose. White fluff came out and I showed Momma that Gwen’s stuffing was coming out of her body and I knew she would die. Momma said no she wouldn’t die and that we needed to needle her up. We got a pricky needle and got string that was brown. We had dark brown but that wouldn’t hide on Gwen so we went to the store and then to Mrs. Buchanan’s house and then she had string that was just like Gwen. I held Gwen and Momma got the string through the end of the needle that had a surprise teeny tiny hole at the very tip. Momma stitched up Gwen and I held her and said that it would be okay because her stuffing would stay in. I look at the part on her neck and it still works.
    And so Gwen is good but she doesn’t sniff as good. I see a rock a little bit over and stand up. The rock is smooth and flat and a little away from the water like the ones we use to dry socks. I put my hand on the rock and it is warm but not hot and the sun is coming more so soon it will get hot. I stretch Gwen out on the rock and she looks happy. I stand in the sun and then I feel like Gwen too. I reach down and my pj’s can also cry out water when I bunch them up on my leg. I would like not to be in wet pj’s and I take off the top and the bottom. I twist them like Momma does and lie them on the rock.
    I hear nose breathing and Stick is behind me trying to take off his pj’s too. He copies me always. If I eat cake then he wants cake. I have a doll with pretty eyes and he wants it. I play with the smaller Lego that is for big girls and he doesn’t want his big Lego for babies but wants my small Lego for big girls. He has his pj top off but just part of the arms and the body of it is still over his head and he can’t lift up higher because his elbows are stuck.
    “Help, help,” he says.
    I stand beside him and lift the shirt up and it comes up but then gets stuck. I pull more and it goes up from his neck and I can see his chin and his cheeks and his mouth sticking out but it is stuck around his head. He pulls his arms down so they come out but his big head is stuck in the circle and I can’t get it off the top.
    “Get it off!”
    “I’m trying,” I say and I bunch all the extra pj at the top and pull up because I am taller but not tall enough and it is hard to pull when he has such a big head.
    “Get off.”
    He is mad at me now and I know that he needs a smaller head and not one like a rock. I pull and nothing. The rock head is stuck in the pj’s. And that gives me an idea and I step back to stand up on the rock and tell him to move closer. He can’t see and his arms are out and his white round belly is hanging out and it makes me laugh. The pj’s cover his eyes and he trips on his feet around the ground with his arms out. I laugh again because it’s like we are playing Marco Polo.
    “Say Marco,” I tell him.
    He doesn’t say Marco. He doesn’t go to birthday parties yet so he doesn’t know that you say Marco and everyone answers Polo and even though it is dark under the blindfold you can hear where people are and try to find them. Except sometimes I can peek under the bottom of the blindfold if it is tied up on my nose and I can tilt