Frogs and Feathers

Little frogs are not meant to be detectives.  

Little frogs are not meant to be anything except big frogs.  

Half are supposed to hop about ponds, lakes, and wells to give them that natural, down-to-earth, pure look. A quarter to be put in little cages and dissected. A quarter to be submerged in formalin.  For preservation, of course.  But young frogs rarely had any use.  

Tadpoles, maybe, but younger frogs were like lukewarm coffee—no longer fresh enough to wake you up, but not cold enough to be refreshing.

“Don’t play me for a fiddle; I was once young too, mister. I know what you’ve been up to!”

Mr. Young had been yelling at his students for two hours.  

It had started quite simply. It was Tuesday. Mr. Young’s favourite day. No one went to play sports before school on Tuesday; the morning assembly simply started too early for that. No sports meant no kid was exhausted. Everyone could study at their utmost capacity.  

No sports meant no kids that reeked.

He entered the classroom and said “Good morning.”  

He walked around the room, handing everyone their graded homework. He opened the windows to let in fresh air. From the window, he saw Mr. Small asking two kids in his classroom to switch seats.  

“Must be because something happened,” he murmured.

He felt he ought to tell the kids an anecdote.

“Here, kids, I think I ought to let you know about something that happened last week. I was walking home on Friday night and I saw a homeless man. I gave him no money. I gave him my takeout order. If he was an addict, the money would have done him harm, but food? Food is no man’s poison.”  

“I feel we ought to help people out. Don’t you agree?”

This reminded him of another anecdote.

“Well, that reminds me of something that happened on Saturday. I went to the hospital to visit my grandmother. She’s having such a hard time. She works in the cafeteria. On the way, I saw the nurses rushing a man to the emergency unit. It was a random addict; he had overdosed. Apparently, someone was mindless enough to give takeout to him; he sold it to kids who weren’t allowed Chinese and bought liquor.”

“Now, everyone would say, ‘Oh, what a dumb man’ or ‘Oh, what a lucrative addict,’ but here’s what I think. I think the addiction wasn’t his fault. Everyone would blame him, but really, it was his circumstances. Think: if alcohol didn’t exist, would he have been addicted to it? No, so really it was the fault of the shops for keeping alcohol. The fault of the liquor store vendors for selling it to him. The fault of the merchants for supplying them with it. The fault of the manufacturers for meeting demand. The fault of the farmers for growing barley.  

Really, I feel his life cannot be blamed on him.”

“I went to visit the man in the emergency room afterward. I knew no one would be visiting him. Everyone deserves sympathy. The man looked extremely familiar to me, like I’d just seen him the night before. I asked him about his life and his journey. I wanted to understand what leads a man to such a situation, such a pit. He sighed and began, ‘It wasn’t always like this for me. I used to be a real estate agent in Los Angeles; I had everything. I had money, I had status, and most of all, I had a lovely daughter with a woman who didn’t abhor me. But it was too good to last, I guess. It all started to go downhill the day I saw scars on my daughter’s legs. Parallel: intentional. We didn’t know what to say to her. But we lived in L.A., and if there was one thing we had, it was a bunch of star-specializing psychologists. We took her to one with the claim of, “Just in general, darling, to help make you an optimal individual.” The sessions continued for a while, and then her psychologist came to us at ten p.m. one night. We were surprised that she was at our residence; it was entirely unprofessional, but more so, our daughter was at her friend’s place. She said she knew; that’s why she came. She began, “Your daughter portrayed signs of being a healthy individual, except that it seemed like she carried a secret. I told her that you both were concerned that she might be hurting herself. She was surprised, and then she said, ‘Oh.’ I asked her what she meant. She said it might be her scars. I asked her, ‘What scars?’ She said, ‘The ones on my thighs.’  

‘How did you get them?’  

‘I cut my feathers. Their roots are big and leave marks.’ I talked to her about how humor was a good coping mechanism; however, the first step to combating such a problem was acknowledging it. She looked at me with disappointment. This had been going on for a couple of weeks, until today, when she showed up to our appointment in a dress. She said, “I am sick of you treating me like a liar, here,” and she hitched up her dress ever so slightly. There on her legs, feathers, thick as a whistling swan, rustling under the gust of the fan. I asked her what she glued them with; she looked at me with disgust on her face and then she just… ”  

Having said this, she collapsed on the floor. Her right hand had been holding her coat tight; it went limp and her coat fell open. I thought she was wearing some new-funky shirt until the smell of iron hit me. Her shirt had feathers piercing through, smeared with dried blood and fresh ones poking out just beside the feathers. “Your daughter needs to be locked in a psych ward,” was her last whisper. The ambulance showed up. In the end, so did the police, for the former failed to do any good.

We didn’t tell Julia—that was my daughter’s name then—about this. We didn’t have to. She came home the next day and just said she didn’t want to take therapy sessions anymore. Occasionally, we would see the scars on her legs. One day, cleaning out her room, I found a feather. This shook my soul. The autopsy was inconclusive, and the police were still investigating. Julia had been the last appointment that day. I didn’t know how to tell her mother, but the next day she came up to me and whispered, “I was cleaning her room, and I found a…” and she broke down sobbing. We started tracking all her whereabouts; she had to get rid of the feathers somewhere. We even started sifting through her trash. Occasionally, we would find a razor blade. The stress got to be too much for her mother. Consistent anxiety attacks left her weak. A fall down the staircase left her crippled. After a few months, we confronted Alisha—she had changed her name by then, as she felt it suited her personality more. Alisha broke down. She screamed and wailed and cursed us; she said we were the “thickest, most inconsiderate, selfish individuals to ever tread the earth.”

One morning, the police showed up at her house. They had finally solved the case. It turns out the psychologist had a camera in her office in case a convict showed up or her ex-husband.  

Dr. Andrews was schizophrenic and had fabricated the story and stabbed herself with feathers. Alisha was just depressed and used to cut herself. My wife had passed away by then. The hospital bills had piled up. I had let my business go, consumed by this ordeal. Alisha, now nineteen, sued me for emotional damages and managed to take everything away from me. I lost all ambition, and now I roam, jamming alcohol down my throat, waiting for the bottle to take me away.’

Hearing his story truly devastated me. I just kept thinking, “If a nineteen-year-old can become so wealthy just by a simple lawsuit, then was everything I invested in education a waste?”  

The professor let out a long sigh.  

“I show up to class every day, and I teach you all how to act, how to invest, how to do mathematics, and obviously tenses. But are you all secretly plotting to take me down? Is that it? To sue an innocent professor? Every day, the incomplete assignments—are those intentional? Are you all just waiting for me to get angry enough to lash out, to yell?” He yelled, “To be angry? So that I can be sued for causing emotional damages? Is that the master plan? Of course, who would opt to study literature? This is all a ploy, isn’t it, to take me down?”

The class started refuting such bizarre claims. It wasn’t that they cared much about them, but they were supposed to be graded today, and if their teacher (not professor, for he was not a professor) was in a foul mood, their grades wouldn’t look all that fresh either.

After yelling, “Don’t play me for a fiddle; I was once young too, mister. I know what you’ve been up to!” Mr. Young stormed into administration and resigned.  

The kids didn’t mind. Assessment was put off for a week.

Mr. Young paced his room consistently for days. People knew, people knew. There was no hiding, but he didn’t have to hide anymore, did he? He was no longer young.

He hopped back to Lake Balboa. He hopped, he croaked, and he reminisced.  

He croaked with joy when he saw the girl in the long dress sitting on the edge—the one who had given up her leg hair to let him become a man. He admired the whistling swan that floated past him.

***

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