The Lotterys Plus One
Emma Donoghue
THE LOTTERYS PLUS ONE
IS DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER,
FRANCES PATRICIA RUTLEDGE DONOGHUE,
WITH LOVE AND THANKS
FOR ALL THE CONVERSATIONS.
a man from Delhi and a man from Yukon fell in love, and so did a woman from Jamaica and a Mohawk woman. The two couples became best friends and had a baby together. When they won the lottery, they gave up their jobs and found a big old house where their family could learn and grow … and grow some more.
Now Sumac Lottery (age nine) is the fifth of seven kids, all named after trees. With their four parents and five pets, they fit perfectly in the Toronto home they call Camelottery.
But the one thing in life that never changes … is that sooner or later things change.
Only eight people at breakfast today, which feels weird. (Sumac’s three eldest sibs have stayed on at Camp Jagged Falls for a wilderness trip.) But she has been quite enjoying the extra space. Even though Camelottery has thirty-two rooms, you’d be surprised how often all the Lotterys seem to wind up trying to use the same toilet at the same time.
Right now, Sumac’s putting blueberries on her oatmeal in the Mess — which is Lottery-speak for their yellow-walled kitchen, because a mess is the place armies eat — and no one’s jogged her elbow yet: amazing. She’s made sure to be on the window side of the long table, facing the same way as her sister Aspen, who bobs up and down on her exercise ball so much that if Sumac sits across from her she feels seasick. Three of the parents are blah-blahing about the watermelon glut at the community garden, but Sumac’s not really listening because she’s busy planning the One-to-One Lottafun she and PopCorn are going to start today.
In May she and CardaMom spent a week on Haudenosaunee longhouses, and they built a mini one behind the Trampoline for Sumac’s dolls to camp in. But this is going to be even more excellent because (a) it’s all about the weird world of ancient Mesopotamia, and (b) PopCorn really plunges into things. Like their best One-to-One ever, when he and Sumac studied the history of weaving and how it led to the invention of computers, and they rounded up a bunch of kids to make a gigantic tapestry celebrating the Olympics all along the playground fence.
“What you making of blueberries?” Brian asks Sumac. (Her youngest sister used to be Briar, but last year, when she was three, she announced she was Brian.)
“A heptagon. That means seven sides.” Sumac nudges a berry into line.
“Did we ask what a heptagon is, smarty-pants?” At ten and a half, Aspen considers it her job to crush Sumac sometimes when her sister’s vocabulary gets too big for its britches.
“Mines be a face,” says Brian.
“With three eyes?” Sumac examines Brian’s bowl.
“Why not three eyes?”
“It’s fine,” says Sumac, “it’s just not the normal number.”
“Normal, boremal,” chants Aspen, boinging higher on her ball, “peculiar’s coolier.”
Decisive, Brian plops another blueberry into the oatmeal. “Four eyes, because I four.” Blueberries also make a straight line for a mouth; Brian doesn’t smile unless it’s a special occasion.
Her little sister’s head is a pink-white golf ball, Sumac decides — with her neck the tee it’s resting on. When the Lotterys got hair lice yet again, back in May, Brian fought off any parent who came near her with that foul shampoo, till Sumac offered to give her buzzed hair the same as PopCorn’s. (Even though Sumac’s only nine, she’s the family barber, because she’s the most accurate and undistractable.) Now Brian wants to keep her hair this short all the days because it means strangers don’t call her a girl.
Oak, lolling in his high chair, does a grunty sort of chuckle.
Aspen grins at their baby brother and stops bouncing long enough to drop another three blueberries onto the plastic plate that’s Velcroed to his tray.
Sumac holds up her spoon to see if being buzzed bald would suit her too, but of course her reflection’s upside down, because the spoon’s concave—like a cave—so it bends the light rays. She flips it around to see herself right way up on the back. Sumac happens to have more or less the same face bits as her eldest sister Catalpa, even though their ancestors come from different parts of the globe: smooth black hair and brown eyes. But it’s only on Catalpa that it all adds up to beautiful, which is unfair. Sumac sticks out her tongue at her reflection and starts on her oatmeal.