The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

sea for another four months. We went to see him off at the pier. Mom looked Barbie-doll gorgeous in her white flowered sundress with its full skirt; she even had a red handbag to match her red high heels. Every man in uniform smiled at her, the beautiful dark-haired wife of their ship’s commanding officer, as the sailors intheir white uniforms poured like milk up the clanging gray metal ramp.
    It was a typical Virginia summer day, the heat so strong that it cast puddle mirages on the docks. As we waited for the sailors and Marines to board the ship, Donald, Gail, and I pelted rocks at the jellyfish that flowered blue and purple in the water below the pier. The water was a deep frothy green, like liquid spinach, and we took turns pretending to push each other into the ocean.
    Truthfully, the idea of falling into the water terrified me, for Dad’s ship rose out of it like a monolith, and it was easy to imagine being sliced in half by its giant nose. The USS
Grant County
looked like an enormous car ferry, only instead of sedans and station wagons it carried tanks and giant trucks and Marines. From Dad’s lectures at dinner, I knew that it was 446 feet long, was powered by six diesel engines, had a troop capacity of 706, traveled at speeds of seventeen knots, and had three gun mounts.
    “It’s one heck of a boat,” Dad always said, “and I’m proud to be at her helm.”
    Donald and I occasionally played onboard the USS
Grant County
that summer, trying out the hideaway beds and metal bathroom sinks scarcely bigger than cereal bowls, and banging our shins on the high oval doorways when we played tag. We sneaked into the forbidden areas, too, like the cargo hold, where we’d hide behind vehicles as big and impossible-looking as dinosaurs, their treads still harboring flattened bamboo stalks from lands I couldn’t imagine.
    On this day, though, Mom wouldn’t let us board the ship.She told us the men were busy getting ready to go to the Mediterranean, “in case there’s a little brush fire somewhere that needs putting out. Those Communists could be hiding anywhere, you know.” The way she said it made me imagine Communists as careless campers who might be thoughtless enough to toss a lighted match into dry brush.
    Dad kissed us all good-bye. As he leaned down in my direction, the brim of his hat hit my nose and we both laughed. Dad kissed my cheek then, and gave my arm a squeeze. “I know you’ll be good for your mother,” he said. “You always are. But I want you to do something for me, too.”
    I nodded, solemn and responsible despite Donald making faces at me from the edge of the dock. “I’ll do what I can, Dad.”
    “Help your mom take care of the gerbils,” he said. “She still doesn’t like them much.”
    “No, Dad. But I do.”
    “That’s my girl.” He kissed me one more time, then turned to my mother and hugged her briefly before making his way up the gangplank without us, his uniform whiter than anyone’s.



with gerbils that first year in Virginia. The true purpose of my father’s photography sessions was not revealed to us, however, until a box of books arrived one day while we were at school. Dad handed one of the books around the dinner table that night as Mom ladled creamed tuna with peas over the saltine crackers on our plates.
    The book was called
How to Raise and Train Pet Gerbils
and had my dad’s name on the cover. To my horror, Donald’s picture was on the cover, too. The photograph showed my brother balancing a pair of gerbils in the crook of his arm. He was dressed in a bright blue shirt that set off his blond hair, and the camera added so many pounds that my pickleheaded brother looked nearly handsome.
    The same portrait of Donald lovingly cradling those two gerbils appeared again inside the book, with this noble caption: “The author’s son handles gerbils without fear by either party.”
    On the opposite page, I made my own solo debut in my red-striped blouse, with a gerbil