* — May 29, 2021
The Dog is Choking on a Chicken Bone
Hein Ko Ko, 2021

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It is my turn to try to bring the plants back to life. My brother and I take turns, and today it is his turn to feed The Dog, so he is in the kitchen. I start in the den, where there is the least light. It is musty in here, because Dad keeps the windows and blinds sealed shut. It is like the house is holding its breath, like it is trying to keep a secret.

There is only one plant in the den. It is a domesticated tree. Pretty small but sprawling, shedding its brown leaves. I hoist it up in my arms, careful to drape the dying leaves over myself so as not to crush them, and waddle-walk it over to our bedroom. I put it by the one window, then I pour the water like I always do. I make swirls in the soil and watch it darken.
Then I take the overgrown aloe plant that was sitting there, soaking up limited light, to the bathroom. The cycle goes on. We’ve been experimenting—Dylan and me—with different spots in the house, rotating them, bringing them closer to the sun.

That’s not all. Last year, second place in the science fair went to a kid who showed classical music helps plants grow. Now we play a lot of Mozart in the house despite not liking it. We turn the volume up loud enough that we can feel the violins in the floorboards.

Today the plants are looking particularly sad. We turn the volume up so high that I don’t hear Dylan when he says, “The Dog is choking on a chicken bone.”

He has to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. It is Tuesday, early evening. And we are alone in the house again.

In the kitchen, I see the half-bucket of fried chicken left over from last night’s dinner open on the counter. There are a few drumsticks in The Dog’s bowl, peeled and pale. The Dog is hunched over it, making deep gurgling sounds.

“I didn’t mean to,” Dylan says. He’s got a pile of the fried skins on his own plate, untouched. They look soggy.

We wrap The Dog in a blanket even though it is not cold outside because on the TV shows when something bad happens, the people the bad things happen to get wrapped up like babies and they seem calmer or maybe just smaller and taken care of.

“We should call 911,” I say. It is the only thing I can think of.

“Not after last time,” Dylan says.

Last time we called 911, they did not take us seriously. It turns out that not having a mom does not count as an emergency if she leaves on her own and is safe and has done no harm to us that people can see.

Last time we called 911, the paramedics came. They pulled up to the front of the house at the same time as Dad. We watched them talking from between the blinds, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. Dad talks with his hands, though. He was making wild gestures. We’d seen them before. He was telling the paramedics about our mom leaving. He tells it to anyone who will listen. He always says, “and then she just takes off!” with a right-hand gesture like a back-hand slap. They told us not to be the boy who cried wolf. After the paramedics left, Dad got mad and did harm that people could see but chose not to. Then he explained about the 911 Blocked List. We were on it now. They would never send help.

The bruises were blamed on The Dog.

The Dog is coughing a lot and still choking on the chicken bone.

We put The Dog in a stroller we found folded and tucked under Dad’s bed, and we take it to Kidzlers, the clothing shop for infants around the corner, because up until three weeks ago, it had been the Oceanside Animal Clinic. The door still chimes when you open it, but the inside looks different now. There are no more cages with kittens that you can take home to love. There are no small dishes of water that are easy to trip over and spill. There are lots of tiny socks all over the walls and dresses The Dog could probably fit into. There are real gumballs in the gumball machine, not just milk-bones.

The Dog is sticking its tongue out and making sounds like a radiator.

The man working is doing the crossword when we come in. The chime doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t even register. He doesn’t glance up, just keeps gnawing at the tip of one of those tiny golf pencils. He looks so far away. He looks like a giant.

I’m afraid to disturb him, and Dylan doesn’t say anything either. The Dog is quiet for a minute too. The obvious thought is the one that I’m trying not to think: The Dog is dead.

But then there’s a sound like gravel going through a garbage disposal.

The man at the counter clears his throat and says, “What’s a six-letter word for RED?”

Dylan shuffles his weight from foot to foot and says, “Cherry?”

“Cherry, yes, that could maybe work,” the man says, mouthing “C-H-E-R-R-Y” as he stabs each box with his pencil, counting to see if it fits.

I make eye contact with Dylan. We make eye contact with The Dog.

Dylan says, “Excuse me, we need your help.”

The man finally looks up, then down at us. “Help? Okay.”

Dylan gestures toward the stroller. I imagine The Dog turning purple under all that fur.

“The Dog is choking on a chicken bone,” I say.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” the man asks.

“Yes, a vet,” Dylan says, and the man says he is going to “check in the back,” returning with an armful of small vests on small hangers. They are maybe big enough to fit a two-year-old. He begins holding them up to The Dog. “I’m trying to determine if it’s a summer or a winter,” he declares.

This is a phrase I have heard before, with That Woman in her favorite department store back when she was still my mom. That Woman is what we call her now because that is what Dad calls her. In her favorite department store, the fitting room attendant told her she was “definitely a summer.” It made my mom very happy. In my memories, I still call her my mom. I like to remember her like that in the dressing room, cheeks all red and rounded. “Definitely a summer.” She kept whispering it to herself for the rest of the day, and she pulled it out at hard times. It became part of our house sounds: Dad like a French horn, Mom like a flute, glass meet floorboard, hand meet cheek, door slam, car rumble-rumble-cough-start, water meet soil, definitely a summer.

It is decided that The Dog is definitely not a summer. The man disappears into the back again. When he returns, there he is holding blues and greens in all sizes. He approaches The Dog, picks it up. The Dog is shaking. The man looks alarmed. “Finally,” Dylan mouths at me. “Can you help us?” he says to the man. The man shoves The Dog into Dylan’s arms. “It’s a lot bigger than I thought. None of these sizes will do,” he says before popping into the back again.

The doors chime, and a family walks in. The family looks like it is made up of a dad and a mom and a big sister and a baby brother. It is what Grace calls a “nuclear family.” Grace is the person the school made Dylan and I go see after That Woman left. After That Woman left, we no longer had a “nuclear family,” but this didn’t make it any less special, or us any less loved, said Grace.

If you start to type “nuclear” into Google, the first things that come up are about weapons and war.

I hug The Dog tight. It looks at me and its eyes go so big I think they will swallow its face. It looks like fear, or maybe understanding. Maybe it understands. In school, we learned that animals have a way of doing that. Instinct is when animals understand what is happening around them or to them and how to respond. Like, birds have an instinct to build nests for their future eggs. Wolves have an instinct to hunt. In class, I raised my hand and asked: what are people good for?

The mom and dad are picking up tiny two-piece clothing sets and holding them up to the stroller. When the man working the store resurfaces from the back, they pounce. “Do you have this set in green?” the mom asks. “Why isn’t this set machine-washable?” the dad asks. “What makes the non-machine-washable set more expensive than the machine-washable one, and do you have it in green?” the mom asks.

The man working at the store keeps “popping into the back” to see if things are in stock. It occurs to me that maybe he is hiding. The big sister is trying to squeeze into a pair of striped pajama pants. Big is a relative term like sister is a relative term. She is big to the clothes and the baby brother but not to me and Dylan. She starts stomping around Kidzlers and her sneakers light up rainbows on the sides. She is hopping around with one leg half-in the pants. She is noisy, too, and that is not a relative term because everybody can tell. Her mom is telling her to “pipe down” in a way that is quiet but her eyes get sharp so you know she is serious.

The big sister comes to our side of the store and leans into the stroller to look at a baby that is actually The Dog. It opens its mouth further like it wants to bark but more coughing comes out. It starts to get up on its hind legs like if it could just get the attention, it would be okay, so we pick The Dog up and put it on the ground.

“What’s your doggy’s name?” the big sister asks, and Dylan says, “We just call it The Dog.”

We found The Dog under a parked car in our neighborhood after That Woman left. We hid it in our room for three days, sneaking it dry cereal and letting it out after Dad passed out on the couch. On the fourth night, it ventured out into the den on its own and tried to lick the barbeque sauce off Dad’s fingers. Dad was mad at first, then he calmed down. Said we could keep it. He could be unpredictable like that. Dylan and I can’t tell what he actually thinks of The Dog yet. Sometimes when Dad’s in a good mood and brings home dinner, he has a plain dollar menu hamburger special for The Dog. But once Dylan overheard him telling Grace that we might have to get rid of it, on account of the bruises. We don’t want to name something we aren’t sure is ours.

“That’s a weird name,” the big sister says. The Dog coughs out in agreement. Underneath the cough, it sounds like it is crying. Little slobber specks land on her light-up shoes.

“There is something wrong with this dog!” the big sister screams. I am shocked. I almost forgot. The big sister has big lungs, a big voice. She doesn’t know how to keep her fear on the inside yet.

The mother comes closer to us. “Is there a problem?” It’s not so much concern as it is annoyance.

“There is something wrong with the dog!” the daughter is shrieking. There’s that joke that sometimes people hit notes that only dogs can pick up on, but I swear I can hear it all.

“Please use your inside voice,” the mother says, and the daughter starts tugging wildly at her sleeves. “Look, look!” she pulls her to our stroller, and The Dog, who is still choking on a chicken bone.

“It’s not polite to point, dear,” is all the mother says before going back to the baby. “Play nice now.”

Kidzlers, the clothing store for toddlers, has carpeted floors that look like they haven’t been cleaned in a while. Suddenly, the big sister is on the ground, fists bunched tight. She starts kicking so hard her sneakers light up.

It feels like we are all alone in the store. Her mom and dad are fixated on the baby, and the man working the store is somewhere behind the EMPLOYEES ONLY back room curtain. The Dog wheezes and the big sister cries. The man comes back with a lollipop for the girl and nothing for us. He extends it out to her. It’s bright orange. She doesn’t take the bait, just keeps kicking.

The dog keeps choking on the chicken bone.

Her dad comes over and scoops her up, and she looks so small. The nuclear family leaves the store without buying anything. The big sister is screaming, “Help The Dog!” down the street. We can hear her for blocks. “Help The Dog in the clothes store! Help!” The man working just stands there with the lollipop, like he’s not sure what to do with it. His giant hands look so awkward around it. He pinches the white stem like he’s holding something delicate. I extend my palm out to save him. I thumb the hard plastic edges of the wrapping in my pocket.

The three of us stand around for a second and The Dog’s wheezing is like something we’ve gotten used to. It is a store sound now: The Dog sputtering like a failed engine, miniature plastic hangers rattling against each other like bones, the man saying he’ll just “pop into the back,” the front door chiming.

In walks Dad. Barreling broad-shouldered down the narrow aisles.

In school, we learned about the fight-or-flight response. It’s when the body prepares. I look at Dylan, he looks back. We never know which one it’s going to be. “What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is going on here?” Dad doesn’t sound mad as much as he sounds confused.

“Can I help you with something, sir?” the Kidzlers employee asks politely through his teeth so his real feelings don’t come out.

But Dad is gunning for us. “I get home and there are those goddamn plants in the middle of the floor. Who does that? Which one of you left them there?” he goes off, into the bewilderness. “And there’s half-eaten chicken in the dog dish, and of course no one’s home!” Of course.

I look over at the man working the store who has returned to his crossword puzzle by the register. He seems to be on the same clue he was on when we walked in because he’s mouthing “RED RED RED” to himself over and over.

“Not even a note. You can’t do that. Especially not after That Woman left us. What was I supposed to think? What do you have to say for yourselves?” he is talking so fast and close that a little bit of his spit gets on my chin. I think about wiping it off with the back of my sleeve but don’t.

“The Dog is choking on a chicken bone,” I say instead and Dad hears me. Something softens around the eyes. He picks up The Dog and puts it on his knee, holds it close to chest. He makes a fist with one hand and buries it in the other, pushes up against The Dog’s small ribcage. Its eyes get so big they don’t look real.

“You’re hurting it!” Dylan cries. “You’re hurting it more!”

On the Discovery Channel, they tell you that when someone gets a poisonous snakebite, you’re supposed to cut into the leg and carve the venom out. When a bone grows back wrong, you’re supposed to break it again to re-set it. When a person gets cancer, the chemo that’s supposed to help them makes all their hair fall out.

The Dog squirms to get out of Dad’s arms at first but is too weak.

“It’s all my fault!” Dylan’s eyes fill and darken like plant soil.

“It’s not,” Dad said, real low, in a way that made you believe him.

It reminds me of one of the times the house sounds were different. Dad like a French horn, Mom like a flute, the familiar hand to cheek, and the opening of the freezer door. They thought I was asleep, but I watched Dad take out a pack of peas and bring them back to their bedroom. And I watched from the doorframe as he held them to her face like so. They sat at the edge of their bed and the lines in the sheets looked like ripples around them.

“It’s not so bad,” Dad cooed and he repeated it now.

The thing I admire most about Dad is he never looks afraid. Not when the paramedics came that day, not even when That Woman packed her bags. Not as he’s holding The Dog and doing the Heimlich but it’s still choking on a chicken bone.

“You gotta put on a brave face,” he says this to us a lot. In school, we learned that children inherit traits from their parents. Something about genes, a set of instructions for building you. A secret code their bodies whispered into yours. Black hair, brown eyes. Could you inherit courage? Or cowardice? A voice so low people believed you? Wild gestures? Am I a summer like my mother? A flute like her? A French horn like my father? Does my brave face look like his?
 

Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 9. View full issue & more.
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Katie Yee is a writer from Brooklyn and the Book Marks associate editor at Lit Hub. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Epiphany, Catapult, and No Tokens. She is delighted to be a 2021 Kundiman Mentorship Lab Fellow. You can find her on Twitter at @prepartynap.