Bingo

On weekends I escaped my freshman year by skulking back to my parents’ house––a place just as hateful as college. Dad and Mother Kim always wanted to talk, which was a euphemism for their blend of interrogation and unsolicited advice. I just wanted to light a stick of incense and curl up under my covers. On campus, I shied away from the unrestricted access to liquor, sex, and parties. As much as I’d railed against my high school curfew, it had given me cover. So on weekends during my freshman year, I dragged myself home on the Greyhound. There was nowhere else to go.

Mother Kim picked me up from the bus station. She chipped away at my stoicism with questions about classes. undeterred by monosyllables mumbled in response. At home, I followed her through the front door and down our shadowed hallway to my room.

My suitcase thudded onto the floor.

She swept her hand across the closet shelf. “I cleaned out the closets and gave away that stuffed dog. You didn’t want it, did you?”

She gave away Bingo?

My head felt heavy as I raised my gaze to the spot my stuffed pooch used to occupy. A lump in my throat prevented me from speaking. Besides, it was too late. Bingo was gone.

“You didn’t want it, did you?”

“Uh . . . guess not.”

Bingo was gone.

My grandmother, Mon, had given me the Dalmatian for Christmas. She named him Bingo. His ears flopped, but his body was stiff. He was permanently posed in a standing position, ready for duty at the front of a fire engine. Feet planted. Tail pointing straight out behind him. Chin up. Black plastic nose. Glass eyes. A red ribbon tied in a bow around his neck. Alert for the first sign of a little girl who needed to be rescued.

The morning after Christmas, I was sitting at the table with Mon. We were the slowest eaters in the family, so we had the kitchen to ourselves.

She pushed her plate aside and picked up Bingo, who was standing guard beside my chair. She laid him in her lap and tapped out a tune on his side. A bell inside his ear jingled as she sang. “B-I-N-G-O. B-I-N-G-O. B-I-N-G-O. And Bingo was his name-oh.”

Mon and Bingo and me. When you have two brothers and a sister and you’re the quiet one who plays alone on the landing so nobody will tease you, and there’s only one grandmother to go around … Mon and Bingo and me. My longing stretched the memory like taffy.

All through grade school, after bedtime, the television downstairs blared creepy music from The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. I was alone, the room was pitch-black, and another nightmare was on the way. Bingo snuggled under the covers with me, my arm hooked around his middle. I sang just loud enough to drown out Rod Serling, but not loud enough to tip off my location to the monsters. “B-I-N-G-O. B-I-N-G-O. B-I-N-G-O. And Bingo was his name-oh.”

Bingo guarded my dresser all through junior high and then moved to the closet floor, somewhere among the dirty clothes. He stayed there during my high school years. And I was probably too embarrassed to take him to college, but I knew exactly where to find him in case of an emergency.

Until Mother Kim cleaned the closet.

Bingo didn’t cross my mind for thirty years, until I began composing an essay about Mother Kim. A treatise filled with the insights of a fifty-year-old. At a critical juncture in my analysis, my fingers stopped typing of their own accord. The screen pulsed iridescent light into the room.

“You gave away Bingo?” I screamed. “He wasn’t some … toy.” I threw a pencil at the wall. “He was mine, not yours.”

I snapped the laptop shut and paced around the house. How could she do that? The refrigerator offered no solace. Why couldn’t I stand up to her? A kick of the trashcan sent papers flying but did not improve my mood. How could she die before I told her off? I stomped upstairs, flung myself on the bed and pulled the covers over my head.

Bingo was gone.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye.