Super Five

A cat called Kankipanks awakens me by opening doors and opening seams to alternate dimensions. The northern magnolia tree tucks psalms behind my ear. Hoodlum squirrels get exasperated when my life is too orderly. 

I have known since fourth grade that ours is an enchanted universe. 

Kanki may be the mystery’s bawdiest emissary, able to open closets in the absence of opposable thumbs. He is aware that Narnia is just on the other side of my leggings. 

But Kanki joins a long litany of saints and imps. He is a close kinsman of Mrs. Mildred Norris. 

*   *   * 

Mrs. Norris, all talcumed propriety in Peter Pan collars, taught fourth grade. She had never once had ink on her fingers or breadcrumbs in her lap. Mrs. Norris was so pristine, dish soap apologized for soiling her hands. Mrs. Norris’s natural scent was that of celestial spheres and gardenias. 

Mrs. Norris was torridly in love with mud and leaves and every wolf on every mountain. 

It was 1990, and tree-hugging was accepted as an adorable pastime so long as you still showed up for pot roast. In our drowsy corner of New York, ruminants outnumbered accountants, and I assumed all backyards burbled with polliwogs. 

Mrs. Norris permitted no assumptions. 

Our green and gentle town, she told us, snuggled up to Superfund sites, ill-named horrors where villains hid toxic waste. Nail polish remover and Miracle-Gro sneaked into our brooks and creeks. Chicken nuggets landed in dinosaur shapes on our plates only after tortuous cruelty. 

We read The Lorax and wept like Old Testament prophets. We charted the life cycle of Happy Meals and lamented empty joy. We apologized to the animals and each other. 

Mrs. Norris did not intend grief. “We must not be sad. We must love the world enough to change it.” 

She must have had powerful connections among the saints and salamanders, because she brought a glowing man to our elementary school. Mr. Torring was a candle with an untrimmed wick. He made films about our blue-green marble. He changed the world on behalf of the world. His six feet, four inches flamed forth in a pillar to lead us through the toxic dusk. Earth was patient, Earth was kind, but Earth was exhausted. Would we be its tough little tendrils, prophets in Mickey Mouse sweaters? 

His John the Baptist eyes laughed often enough to make us feel safe. 

“I do not wish to call you children,” he announced at the end of his lecture. “What shall I call you?” 

I had the answer. “Young adults!” My parents had addressed me as such from the time I was five. 

“Old adults!” Mr. Torring whooped with pleasure. 

“No, I said young—” 

“Old adults! So shall it be.” He rubbed his hands together. “Shall we work together, dear old adults?” 

It was five years before I realized he had not misheard me, and many more before I understood the sanctity of mischief. But I was proud to join his team. I told my parents and my paprika-striped cat and all the bawdy backyard toads. I told the psychedelic caterpillar who looked like a Star Wars extra, and the oak tree where a woodpecker posted theses. I told the fauns and centaurs I knew were near, and I told the angels who scrunched into olive velvet pews with us on Sundays. I told God. I told my parents. 

Mrs. Norris told my parents that I had been chosen. Five members of our class were invited to make a short film with Mr. Torring. Might I have permission? 

Of course. My parents had respected my sharp turn into vegetarianism, even though this made it considerably more difficult to feed their Type 1 diabetic daughter. My mother sang “Born Free” when I returned the daily toads to the creek. My father had mercy on invasive caterpillars, peeling them off the willow like a thousand valuable souls. God’s world was good to us. Of course their daughter could be good to God’s world. 

It was ten years before I realized why the “Super Five” were chosen. Mrs. Norris and Mr. Torring spoke of us as uniquely gentle and enchanted, eloquent enough to cry with conviction. Mr. Torring exulted in our eyes “full of love, full of love!” 

But we were earth’s tiny peculiars, fragile as the watershed. We were strategic. Old adults might listen to the unbroken breakable. 

I bore the Fall in my body, river visits interrupted by insulin injections. Dennis was “different,” spectral before the world knew how to honor him. Jessamyn was an apartment-dweller among colonials, and somebody said her parents were divorced. Everett was the only African American in class and brought me all his plastic Daffy Ducks to keep. Cara was a Jehovah’s Witness who had to sit in the hall when anyone had a happy birthday. 

We knew how to be brokenhearted, and we knew how to splash in the creek. 

I wrote a terrible poem, all sympathy for the minnows, and Mrs. Norris made me read it over the loudspeaker for the school. The prettiest girl in class yelled, “Not that poem again, my GOD!” At recess, Dennis climbed to the top of the monkey bars and sang me “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha, which made me feel considerably better. 

Mr. Torring talked to a friend at the local public radio affiliate, and the Super Five spoke about the Superfund sites for an hour. On the ride home, rain fell so belligerently that my mother had to pull off the highway, praying aloud. My cayenne cat leapt like a dust devil when we came in the door, carbonated with something holy and strange. It all felt to me like some divine nod. 

Mrs. Norris believed in us so firmly, she waxed preposterous. “Please ask your parents if they would be open to your attending the United Nations Youth General Assembly.” 

The answer, from earth and power, was yes and amen. 

I loved the United Nations. They showed our movie, five gnomes galoshing through creeks and pleading for green mercies. I read my terrible poem next to children from Côte d’Ivoire. I held the tiny microphone and told the world that the world was too lovable to let go. I discussed Daffy Duck with Everett and fell asleep on my mother’s shoulder on the bus ride home. I dreamed of becoming a French translator. 

I spoke for the minnows, and I felt saints and imps patting my back. 

*   *   * 

We have swum far upstream since 1990, and vegans and vandals both have louder voices today. You can’t expect five outcasts in a creek to love the world to health, any more than you can expect a manic cat with no thumbs to access Narnia. 

Expectations are overrated. We are old adults, old enough to write bad poetry. We join a long litany. With humans this is impossible, but the earth is full of love, full of love. 

ANGELA TOWNSEND

Angela Townsend is the Development Director at the New Jersey animal rescue center Tabby’s Place. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears in Cagibi, The Razor, and Still Point Arts Quarterly, among other publications. She is a Best Spiritual Literature Award nominee. Angie laughs with her poet mother every morning and loves life affectionately.