DIDI WOOD
You Are a Dog
You wanted Life, The Game of Life, with cars and careers and choices and children, pink and blue pegs to pluck like dandelions and tap along a three-dimensional path. You will learn about life when you play The Game of Life. You liked the sound of that; it had to be better than this life you were learning, with your parents fighting at night after your dad got home from his second job and stacks of unopened bills shoved in the kitchen drawer and cheap polyester pant sets from Sears and having to collect your free lunch in front of all the Levi’s-garbed, brown-bag-bearing kids at school.
You had Checkers, but you were missing a red and there were no instructions, so you weren’t sure what was supposed to happen when you reached the other side, after shouting, “King me!” The grooves on the pieces fit perfectly together, so secure: a topple-proof monarchy, if only you knew what came next.
You wanted Trouble, Pop-O-Matic Trouble, with a die you couldn’t lose no matter what. That sound, that pop, so hollow and startling, plucking a string at your core, a satisfying thrum from top to toes. Your sister found trouble, a different kind, with bottles and boys, things that smash and scatter. Your role: the good girl, bubble intact, no trouble from you. Your face ached from smiling.
You had Monopoly. You were the dog. In fifth grade, Jon S. wrote in your autograph book: You are a dog. And you were thrilled, because he wrote that in all the girls’ books. You thought the Monopoly dog was a schnauzer but actually it was a terrier, like Toto, and then it was missing so it didn’t matter anyway. Then you were the shoe, or the thimble if your brother grabbed the shoe because he knew you wanted it, even though he preferred the racecar. You never won, no one won, you never finished because your brother and sister got bored and drifted off to watch The Brady Bunch, leaving you to clean up the pieces. Every time you played you thought maybe, maybe this time you’d reach the end.
You wanted Clue, with its colorful cast, its notebooks and weapons, its secret passages. You wanted to wander the rooms of the mansion – Ballroom! Billiard Room! Library! Conservatory! – collecting evidence, who did what to whom. So many ways to do something to someone. Where is the dog? You watch it all. You write it down. If you can figure it out, you win.
Didi Wood‘s stories appear in Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. “Rattle & Rue,” originally published in Cotton Xenomorph, was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2019. Find her at didiwood.com and on Twitter @DidiWood.