It's an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World
ONE BATHROOM, FOUR PEOPLE . . .
Phoebe’s always had boyfriends. Moving here, she almost immediately started going with Dave. I, who have lived here for years, am going to the concert with the Little Nerdlet.
I go out to use the bathroom, the only one in the house. There’s already someone in it. As I cross my legs, I think about the place where Jim and Phoebe used to live before they moved in with us. It had two bathrooms in the house and one in the pool cabana, and that was just for the two of them.
Now there are four people living in a house with only one bathroom.
Maybe we should assign each person certain days when they have to limit their liquid intake.
BOOKS BY PAULA DANZIGER
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
The Divorce Express
It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World
The Pistachio Prescription
There’s a Bat in Bunk Five
This Place Has No Atmosphere
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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A Penguin Random House Company
Originally published in 1985 by Delacorte Press
Published by Puffin Books,
a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000
This edition published by Puffin Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
Copyright © 1985 by Paula Danziger
Introduction copyright © 2014 by Ann M. Martin
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PREVIOUS PUFFIN BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Danziger, Paula. 1944-2004
It’s an aardvark-eat-turtle world / Paula Danziger.
Summary: When Rosie and her mother form a new family with Rosie’s best friend and her father, Rosie finds that it takes a lot of work to make a family in a world of changing relationships.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66581-7
[1. Remarriage—Fiction. 2. Stepfamilies—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction]
I. Title.
PZ7.D2394 It 2000 [Fic]—dc21 99-056194
Version_1
TO THE MENSCHES—Jane and Happy Traum
and THE MENSCHLINGS—Merry, Adam
and April (who said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”)
Contents
One Bathroom, Four People
Books by Paula Danziger
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Note From Paula
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Special Excerpt from The Divorce Express
A NOTE FROM PAULA
After a reader finishes a book, he or she often wonders, “What happens next?” It’s the same sometimes with authors. We also wonder about that. Sometimes we just keep wondering. Sometimes we write sequels.
After finishing The Divorce Express, I wanted to see how it all worked out with Phoebe and Rosie and their parents. I decided to write It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World.
For a long time, I wrote the book from Phoebe’s point of view, but she was so angry that the book was difficult to write. I was really having a problem with it.
Then a friend called. “I think I know what’s wrong,” she said. She felt that Phoebe’s anger was really getting in the way, that it was hard for me to show humor, and then she asked me, “Which girl do you like better? Which one would you rather have as narrator?” The answer was Rosie, and once I figured that out the rewriting began and the book took shape.
Relationships always interest me, and I loved exploring the changing friendship of best friends who become practically sisters. I also liked exploring the parents’ relationships and those of the girls and their boyfriends. Obviously the “blending” of the family was also important.
Once all of this was defined, I could finish the book . . . and I did.
Sometimes, I wonder, “What is happening to Rosie and Phoebe now?” . . . but I guess I’ll just keep wondering . . . and hope that the readers care enough to wonder too.
—Paula Danziger
INTRODUCTION
If a Prince Charming or a Prince Semi-Charming came up to my door and said, “Rosie Wilson, you are the most beautiful, individualistic fourteen-year-old in the universe,” I certainly wouldn’t slam the door in his face.
This is the first line of Paula Danziger’s hilarious and moving It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World. First lines fascinate me, and this one says a lot about Paula, her stories, and her characters. The author of over thirty titles for young adult readers, Paula was known for capturing her audience with her uncanny ability to tap into teenage psyches—to write realistically and unflinchingly about families, divorce, friendship, first love, insecurity, and injustice, and to do so with a wicked sense of humor. It’s rare for a reader to find herself laughing out loud, then just a few sentences later, searching for tissues in order to wipe away tears. Paula courted difficult, sometimes controversial subjects; her self-effacing characters and her love of humor made her books compelling reading.
Paula herself was as memorable as any character she created. She made friends wherever she went and was passionate about them. Somehow each of us felt as if we were Paula’s best friend. She was flamboyant and flashy. She tied colorful scarves around her head, wore as many oversize rings as possible on her fingers, and shopped with great joy for glittery sneakers and sequined purses. She liked video games and slot machines. She once managed to light one of her fake fingernails on fire. The first time I spent a weekend at her house, she offered me a breakfast of Coke, M&Ms, and Circus Peanuts.
Paula was a marvel of disorganization. I’ve never seen anything like the inside of her purse. It was a jumble of loose bills and coins, receipts, lipstick cases, candy, lint, notebooks, keys. She frequently lost her keys, or thought she had, and a dramatic search would ensue before they were located, surprise, at the bottom of her purse. Her desk was worse, overflowing with larger items.
Yet out of this chaos sprang books that have resonated with readers for decades. Paula’s first book, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, was published in 1974. Thirteen-year-old Marcy, the protagonist, may wear panty hose, buy records for her stereo, and never have heard of cell phones, but it doesn’t matter because she faces the same issues contemporary kids face:
All my life I’ve thought that I looked like a baby blimp with wire-frame glasses and mousy brown hair. Everyone alw
ays said that I’d grow out of it, but I was convinced that I’d become an adolescent blimp with wire-frame glasses, mousy brown hair, and acne.
Marcy’s story continues in There’s a Bat in Bunk Five when she experiences her first love while at summer camp:
This thing with Ted isn’t a crush. . . . What if I let myself start to care and get hurt? I’m not sure I can survive a broken heart. I get hurt so easily anyway, so I’ve never let myself get too close to a guy, not that there have been that many opportunities. I’m scared. What if it turns into a real relationship and it’s as bad as my parents’ marriage?
In The Pistachio Prescription Paula tackles divorce as Cassie Stephens’s family begins to crumble. In later books, other characters face the aftermath of divorce, but this story chronicles the Stephenses’ slide from dysfunctional, a theme Paula visits often, to separation. In a scene from the beginning of the book, Cassie visits her friend Vicki:
We sit down with her parents. Nobody fights at the Norton house. At least not while I’m there. Vicki says that they do fight sometimes, but that it’s psychologically healthy to air feelings honestly. I don’t know if my family does it honestly, but if awards were given on the basis of yelling, we’d win the Mental Health Award of the century. I guess we’d probably be disqualified, though, on the basis of lack of sanity.
I smiled when I read that paragraph. But later the tone of the story changes:
[My father] walks over. “Cassie, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I guess your mother’s right. There’s no use pretending we can get along. It’s over and that’s all there is to it.”
That’s all.
As simple as that.
Three kids.
A broken-up family.
Yet the ending is hopeful. Cassie realizes her family may not be the one she wishes for, but that she’ll survive.
Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the word ENTRAPS. This’s how The Divorce Express begins. Four years after the publication of The Pistachio Prescription Paula writes about Phoebe, who shuttles between her father’s home in Woodstock, New York, and her mother’s home in New York City. Travel is the least of Phoebe’s concerns, though. Now her parents are seeing other people:
Maybe I’m a prude, but I don’t like to think about my parents having sex with anyone but each other.
Phoebe analyzes the stages parents go through when they get divorced:
. . . the fighting and anger—then the distance—and making me feel caught in the middle. After the divorce they try to be “civilized.” I know that there were even times that they missed each other. I know for a fact that after the divorce they even slept with each other once in a while. It was confusing. Now they act like people who have a past history together, but only a future of knowing each other because of me.
By the end of The Divorce Express, Phoebe’s father has fallen in love with the mother of Rosie, Phoebe’s new best friend, and their story continues in It’s an Aardvark-Eat-Turtle World, told from Rosie’s point of view. All Rosie wants is a happy family, but Phoebe doesn’t make that easy. Furthermore, Rosie, who’s biracial, faces issues that Phoebe can’t fathom, and once again, Paula writes candidly about a sensitive subject, illustrated in this scene when Rosie goes on a date with a boy who’s white:
While we look at each other, some guy comes up and says with hate, “Why don’t you stick to your own kind?”
I can’t believe it.
He repeats what he’s just said.
Jason turns to him. “We are the same kind—human. You’re the one who isn’t our kind. You’re scum.”
A year later, Paula’s next book, This Place Has No Atmosphere, was published and the setting is, of all places, the moon in 2057—a bold departure for Paula, who made the colony on the moon seem real and believable, and who drew us into the life of Aurora Williams on the first page. The book feels futuristic indeed, but Aurora’s story of adjusting to a move and finding a serious boyfriend is timeless.
Paula died in 2004, but her stories have already been passed from one generation of passionate fans to another. Her many best friends miss her, but I like to think of the hope with which she ends her books. She wrote great last lines, too. If you take the letters in the word DIVORCES and rearrange them, they spell DISCOVER.
Thank you, Paula, for showing us captivating beginnings, hopeful endings, and in between, how to look at life with laughter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND THANKS TO
THE WRITING CONNECTION
Annie Flanders, June Foley,
Patricia Reilly Giff, Francine Pascal
THE ARIZONA CONNECTION
Sandra, Charles, and Susan Nelson
THE METUCHEN CONNECTION
Jackie Owen, Bill Contardi
THE CANADA CONNECTION
Jerry and Leona Trainer,
Hy, Judy, Tema, and Jojo Sarick,
Barb Issett
CHAPTER 1
If a Prince Charming or a Prince Semi-Charming came up to my door and said, “Rosie Wilson, you are the most beautiful, individualistic fourteen-year-old in the universe,” I certainly wouldn’t slam the door in his face.
There’s something even more important to me than that, though. What I really want more than anything is to be part of a family, all living happily under one roof.
My parents divorced soon after I was born, a fact that I have tried not to take personally.
I used to beg my mother for a baby brother or sister.
She’d say, “Bite your tongue.”
For a long time, I thought that was how babies were made.
By the time I found out how babies were really born, I had permanent tooth marks on my tongue.
My mother—Mindy—and I get along really well, which is good because we live together in Woodstock, New York.
Until recently I used to ride a bus that is nicknamed the Divorce Express. Almost every weekend I would go down to Greenwich Village, this really great area of New York City, to see my father. Then he and his second wife and her two kids moved to California. Actually, I was glad that his wife and her two kids went. I’m just sorry that my father left with them.
So it’s not as if I’m an orphan or anything. I do have a family . . . just not one that’s living all together, in the same place.
It’s all changing now. I’m finally going to get my wish. In one week I’ll be part of a family. My mother and my best friend’s father have fallen in love and are going to live together. Mindy and Jim. Phoebe. Me.
Once before, Mindy and I lived with someone, Andy. It didn’t work out for them, for us.
This time I hope it does.
I want this to start out with “ . . . and they lived happily ever after” and get even better.
CHAPTER 2
The Donners’ dog just ate the pet of the month, and I’ve called Phoebe to come right over.
The Donners are the people I baby-sit for. They have one three-year-old kid, Donny, whom Phoebe and I refer to privately as the Little Nerdlet.
They also have a dog, Aardvark. Aardvark is the one who just ate the pet of the month.
The Donners joined this club that sends some little pet to kids each month. Last month it was a goldfish. It died in two days. The Little Nerdlet and I held a burial at sea, actually down the toilet.
So today the new pet arrived. I took the package out of the mailbox and brought it inside. The Little Nerdlet had to go to the bathroom. I went with him. He likes company while he’s sitting there.
Aardvark got the package off the table, and by the time I came back the paper was shredded all over.
From the torn feeding instructions and the little pieces of shell, it seems obvious that the pet of the month was once a turtle.
As I wait for Phoebe to arrive at the Donner house, I think of something my father always says about life: “Rosie, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.”
In Phoebe’s and my lives, I guess, it’s an aardvark-eat-turtle world.
CHAPTER 3
The pieces of the turtle are in a Crayola box awaiting burial.
Aardvark is hiding out somewhere under the porch.
The Little Nerdlet is eating a chocolate-covered yogurt pop and talking to Phoebe about turtle heaven.
I’m feeling a little worn out.
“I think we must bury the turtle,” the Little Nerdlet says. He has chocolate all over his face.
“I think we can wait.” I try to clean him up.
“No.” The Little Nerdlet backs away from me. “Don’t take it off. I want to be the same color you are.”
I look at him and then at Phoebe.
We both start to laugh.
“It’s not funny.” The Little Nerdlet starts to cry. “I want to be the same color Rosie is.”
I pick him up, hugging and kissing him. “Donny. I’m this color because my father’s black and my mother’s white. You can’t be this color. You’re white.”
“You’re brown. Not black. Not white.” He puts more chocolate on his face. “So now I’m brown too.”
“He’s got a point.” Phoebe smiles.
He puts a grubby hand on her face. “Now Phoebe is our color too.”
Phoebe doesn’t even take the gunk off her face, although she’s usually really careful about looking good. In fact, she puts even more gunk on.
“The turtle went to heaven,” the Little Nerdlet informs me as I put him down.
I decide not to get into it with the kid. With a white Jewish mother and a black Protestant father, I try to stay out of religious discussions.
I wonder what the turtle was. Protestant. Jewish. Catholic. Muslim. Hindu. Maybe Unitarian.
He probably was shy and didn’t come out of his shell easily.
Maybe he was a she.
Thinking about these earth-shattering questions is too overwhelming, so I decide it’s time to bury the turtle.
We take the Crayola box outside and put the deceased into the ground.