Original microfiction/found in my iPhone’s Notes app:
Child takes shower that’s too long.
Fingers get pruney.
Child turns into a prune.
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Multimedia??? experience: http://spamtams.tumblr.com/
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Analog children’s literature story below (~10 min. read):
Pruning
by Jessica Tam
I met my brother today.
We were learning about the colour wheel when I was pulled out of the class. Ms. Thomas taught us that red and green are complementary colours. They are opposites, but when we put them together, they complement each other because they are so different. This is the same with black and white, blue and orange, and another pair I can’t remember.
I held Baba’s hand as we walked into the enormous hospital. It was cold. We took the elevator to the Maternity Ward and everything was white – from the chairs to the walls to the funny dresses the patients wore. Baba says they’re called gowns, but I don’t think every patient is a princess. Baba laughed at me and said you don’t need to be royalty to wear a gown. Ro-yal-ty. I think that is such a grown up word. I should like to know more of them. Sometimes I wonder how Baba’s head can fit so many words, while I fail to remember how to tie my shoelaces most days. But Baba says I am just growing, and often points to Mama’s belly.
Mama’s belly wasn’t the same. But she was beaming. That was the first thing I noticed when we were let inside. And her hands, which used to rest atop her hilly belly, were wrapped around a tiny, wrinkly pink blob. I thought my brother might like a snack after being cooped up for so long, but Mama and Baba just laughed when I reached out my hand to offer him my box of raisins. He giggled, and then I did too, because to be honest, he kind of looked like a raisin on the first day, warm and wrinkly in the palm of my hand.
– – –
The pink blob is called Nathan. Nathan requires a lot of Time and Attention. This means I get to do grown-up things, like bathe all by myself. I once mentioned this to Ms. Thomas and she called it “re-spon-si-bi-li-ty,” when adults let and trust you to do grown-up things. But I do not think it takes a grown up to turn on the tap and sit in hot water. I turned the H-handle as far as it would go, the way Baba taught me. As a treat, Mama let me use her bath salts – the ones that colour the bathwater turn pink, while still allowing me to see my toes through the water. Don’t ask, I don’t know where the bath peppers are. Mama says those don’t exist, but that just makes me feel sorry for the lonely salts, so I try to use them when I can.
Usually Baba only lets me bathe for a while, but today, I stayed in the water for a very long while. No one thought to bother me because of Nathan, the raisin wrapped in blue downstairs. The Adult Friends think our names are adorable together, “Nelly” and “Nathan.” I don’t see how a name can be adorable, but my brother kinda is. For a raisin baby anyway. It’s easy to get comfortable in the tub. The white porcelain is firm, but it cradles your bum. My back settled into the cool curve of the tub as my eyes focused and unfocused on the bubbles that stuck and dissolved on my knees and hands. I breathed in the sickly warm scent of the salts. And as I exhaled, I felt my body relax, and I closed my eyes.
– – –
What happened next was truly pe-cu-li-ar. My eyes shot wide open as I realized I had fallen asleep in the tub. This was not a grown-up thing to do, I think. The fan was still humming, but otherwise, the bathroom was quiet, interrupted only by the swish-swish of the now-cold water that lapped around my… … … wait, where were my legs, my arms!? My skin! There was dark purple, everywhere I looked. It cast fierce dark shadows in the tub as the pink water fought to remain pink. In fact, there was hardly any pink water left, like something had swallowed it all up.
Dear Grown-Up Reading This, it is difficult to explain what I saw without simply telling you. I think that would ruin the story, if you found out too soon. For if you found out too soon, you would stop reading my story seriously because your eyes would turn to the back of your head as you’d say, “Oh Nellie, that was just a dream!” and then you’d turn to your Adult Friends and laugh at my Creative Mind. But this story is true and certainly, not a dream. I know this because, you just know. Five minutes out of a dream, you might confuse your dream with your real life, but it’s been much longer than that, so I know.
I no longer had limbs so I could not pinch myself to check, but instead, I bumped myself, hard, against the tub. Nothing happened. But this is when I realized that my skin was no longer smooth and taut, but thick, wrinkly, and full, with long deep grooves, thin and thick, running through the purpleness. I had a certain softness to myself I didn’t have before, for when I hit the side of the bathtub, my skin gave into its firmness.
Yes, I was absolutely purple, squishy, and truly, without a doubt, I think I turned into a prune. Without the help of legs, I rocked back and forth in the tub, hoping to propel myself out onto the bathroom floor. I needed to get a good look in the mirror before I could fully understand my transformation. When I was successful, I rolled onto the tile and then lay still for a moment. I was tired, and not used to rolling. But I needed to stand, to see over the sink and into my reflection. After a few failed attempts to stand without arms or legs, I found that if I squeezed my new body real tight, the top of my body would slowly lift off the ground until I was standing, or the closest thing to standing. And if I relaxed, my body would droop back down and I’d lay flat on the ground again. I thought of the car store I passed everyday on my way to school, the way the Wacky Waving Inflatable Guy, deflated, would look before he was pumped full of air and standing tall, arms waving senselessly.
Now standing, I could confirm what I had become. I was an enormous prune, simple as that. My eyes, nose, mouth, and ears remained, but everything else that made me, me, was gone. My skin was so wrinkled, and I didn’t have long hair anymore; but I don’t suppose long hair suits a prune. And I was so round, oval-shaped, and full in the middle. Then I wondered, was a prune a fruit or a vegetable? Because I reminded myself so much of Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato, perfectly content to be a living thing inside a produce body. It really wasn’t so bad. I couldn’t help but smile a little.
Maybe this was a part of growing up – you had to experience something extraordinary, and maybe no grown-up would believe you, but what happened to you would change you and help you grow. And I am just growing, so this is my Veggie Tale. I decided that it was time to show my family my new body. Because I was the same person on the inside (and Mama says that’s what really counts), I knew Mama and Baba would be pleased to know that I was the same Nellie, just a little wrinklier now.
I faced the bathroom door and lowered myself so I could turn the handle with my mouth. My mouth was squishier now, with the same grooved-in wrinkles the rest of my skin had, so it was easy to grip onto the knob and turn it sideways. The door gave way, and I was able to slip out of the door. I head towards the stairs, rocking in a rhythm from side to side to inch myself forward. As I reached the stairs, I relaxed so that my body could lower itself into the lay of the stairs. I slid down the stairs the same way one might play on a slide, and I reminded myself to do that again later because it was awesome. I could hear Nathan gurgling to himself, humming happily. I rocked over to him, yet my parents were nowhere to be found.
“Hullo?” I said to the room. There was no response; only Nathan’s eyes, fixated towards me.
“Hullo?” I offered once more. “Mama? Baba?” Nothing. I thought to myself, what kind of parent leaves a baby alone? What about the Time and Attention? Poor Nathan. But he didn’t look upset. He was smiling, toothless grin open wide, and the tiniest wrinkly arm reached out towards me. I lowered myself, looking at him through the bars of the carriage, and made faces at him as he petted my pruney skin and giggled some more. It was true, what Ms. Thomas said. Red and green do make each other even more red and green. Nathan’s red face of content, nestled in his green hood, gave him the jolliest Christmas image. Babies are simple. My brother is simple to please. I hope I am too. What are sisters for? What kind of sister would I be? Whatever I was doing, I was enjoying it, making the raisin baby happy. And if the raisin baby had any worries or troubles that made his smile escape his face, I could help him. I could tell him, “You’re just growing up,” and then point to myself, and he would nod and understand. If he turned into a raisin, or a prune, or any other wrinkly thing, I’d believe him.
– – –
When I went to sleep in the tub (I was far too big for my bed), after hours upon hours of playing with raisin baby, I kind of expected to wake up in my boring body again. I had stretched out the day so I could enjoy it for as long as it lasted, but towards the end, it was like there was a voice remarking on my pruneyness, telling me to wake up, and how could they have left me for so long.
Ever since the experience, I can’t hear things the same way. I found out that a prune was a dried plum, so I guess I told a Fruit Tale, but let’s not get too picky. You know when you learn a new word, and soon after, you hear it all. the. time? It is the same with being a prune. Once a prune, always a prune. Once a fruit, always a fruit. I hear about produce everywhere I go –
“You bruise like a peach,”
“He’s pea-brained,”
“You’re the apple of my eye,”
“Go bananas,”
“That’s small potatoes.”
It makes me wonder why grown-ups talk about and compare themselves to food so often, yet shake their heads in disbelief when I tell them I was a fruit not too long ago. But Ms. Thomas, I think she might be different.
Today, we learned how to write a haiku, a Japanese poem about nature. I raised my hand to ask if prunes were part of nature. Ms. Thomas said why yes of course, Nellie. So this is what I wrote:
“Nellie, take a bath”
But the bath just takes too long!
Turned into a prune
Ms. Thomas smiles as if she understands.
And everyone else? “Haha,” they laugh, but they don’t know.
