"Wake up, Frankie."
Sue Ellen pushed open her heavy eyelids to find, to her chagrin, that she was still staring up at the David Beckham poster through Francine's eyes.
Catherine, wearing a red dress, was waving a hand in front of her face. "It's almost time for temple," she said chirpily.
"I don't want to go to temple," Fransue grumbled.
"That's what you say every morning," said Catherine, "but you end up going anyway. Now get your butt out of bed."
As Fransue grudgingly made preparations for the morning's worship services, Francine was trying to pull off Sue Ellen's sleepwear so that she could give Sue Ellen's body a bath. The fact that she now had only one good arm made it a strenuous task, but she eventually managed to take everything off and climb into the tub.
She felt pangs of compassion when she saw the large scars that had been left on Sue Ellen's body by the plane accident. They were her scars now, although she had done nothing to earn them.
Bathing with a cast on one arm was nothing new. However, once she had washed and dried herself, and taken hair brush in hand, she had to endure what felt like the greatest test of her life. Sue Ellen's rigid locks resisted her efforts to coiffe them. No matter how long, hard, or strategically she brushed them, she was always left with a chaotic mess. It was as if all the strands of her hair were electromagnetically repelling each other. She finally gave up and laid the brush down next to the sink.
After hastily dressing herself in one of Sue Ellen's green blouses, Suefran hurried out of the Armstrong house in time to catch the well-dressed Frenskys as they were strolling down the sidewalk toward the Jewish temple. Fransue, wearing a blue dress and a sulky expression, looked at Suefran with horror when the girl came up alongside her.
"You look like you stuck your finger in a socket," Fransue observed. "Did you use the conditioner?"
"Uh, no," Suefran replied. "Just the shampoo."
"Well, go back and do it again," Fransue told her. "And when you're done, why don't you go back to the barn and look for clues? I'd go with you, but my religious freedom has just been taken away."
"Uh, sure," Suefran responded. As she turned back toward the Armstrong house, she marveled at how Sue Ellen had succeeded at styling her Francine hair so flawlessly.
She went through the laborious process of washing her hair again, but found it easier to shape after she had applied lavish amounts of conditioner. After wrapping two hairbands around her curls to keep them from wandering into her face, she gazed into the mirror and beheld a rough approximation to the Sue Ellen look that she was accustomed to.
"It's just not me," she muttered to herself. The hair puffs were crooked and unequal in size, but she didn't feel like bothering to adjust them.
As she walked along the street in the direction of the old barn, she was greeted by Arthur and D.W., who were rolling snowballs in their yard under the watchful eyes of their mother.
"Hey, Sue Ellen," Arthur called. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to look for clues...I mean, shoes," Suefran replied. She felt an urge to tell the boy that she was really Francine, but knew that she would only be met with ridicule.
"If you're looking for shoes, why don't you come to the mall with us?" said Arthur as he placed one mound of snow upon another to form the lower part of a snowman. "We're leaving at eleven."
"We're gonna see the new Mary Moo Cow!" D.W. cried with glee.
"There's a new one?" Suefran seemed pleasantly surprised.
"Yeah," Arthur answered. "New episodes and everything. Now it's called the New Moo Revue. But it's still a baby show."
"Hmph!" grunted D.W.
"Don't be so hard on it," Suefran told Arthur. "I loved that show when I was five."
"When you were five?" Arthur repeated. "But you weren't in the country then."
"Uh...right," Suefran stammered. "There was a show like it in the countries where I lived. It was called...it was called Linda the Lemur. Yeah, that's right."
"What's a lemur?" asked D.W. curiously.
"It's, uh, a little animal," Suefran replied.
"Where does it live?" Arthur inquired.
"Um...uh..."
Arthur stared at her, impatient with the display of ignorance by the girl who appeared to him as Sue Ellen.
"Somewhere in Asia," Suefran finally said. "I don't remember exactly. I was only five, you know." She started to walk away. "I'll see you at eleven."
----
As Suefran scoured the inside of the abandoned barn and its surroundings, Fransue sat restlessly on a pew next to the Frenskys, doing her best to ignore a sermon on the Book of Jonah delivered by Rabbi Moncton, an elderly giraffe man with faded spots and a bowed neck.
"Blah blah blah Nineveh blah blah Jonah blah blah whale blah blah prayed blah blah," droned the rabbi. It was the most boring sermon Sue Ellen had ever heard, and she had attended almost every type of religious service in existence. She wished with all her heart that she could go back to her own body, broken arm and all. For as long as she remained a Frensky, she would have to suffer this torment every week...
At last the sermon came to an end; Fransue felt as though she had missed two birthdays and a Christmas while sitting there. As the people slowly filed out of the temple building, Rabbi Moncton approached the Frenskys and greeted them. "Good to see you, Oliver, Linda," he said, and his voice sounded as flat as it had when he was preaching. "And little Francine." He laid a hand on Fransue's head and rubbed her hair, making her feel very uncomfortable.
She decided to use this opportunity to stir up a bit of controversy. "Mr. Rabbi, sir," she said innocently, "it's not possible for a whale to swallow a man. Whales may be large, but they have small throats."
The rabbi shot her a puzzled look. "Are you sure about that?"
"I read a book about marine life," Fransue replied. "Oceanography is one of my favorite subjects."
Rabbi Moncton smiled condescendingly at her. "Well, maybe God made a whale with a big throat. A super whale."
"Maybe," Fransue went on, "but even then, there's no way a man could survive in a whale's stomach for three days. He'd be digested." Francine's parents looked at the rabbi with embarrassed and apologetic expressions.
"Not if it was a robot whale," said the old giraffe man.
It dawned on Fransue that the rabbi was not taking her seriously, but treating her like an unintelligent child. "Uh...right," she said sarcastically. "A robot whale. From outer space. Yeah, that explains it. Thanks, Mr. Rabbi."
As she departed the building with her new family, Mr. Frensky gave her a scolding look. "I don't think you should ask the rabbi questions like that, Frankie."
"You're right," said Fransue petulantly. "I should ask someone who knows more."
Mrs. Frensky flicked her on the shoulder to show her disapproval. Then Catherine spoke up. "Well, it could have been a robot whale. I mean, God could do that, right?"
Fransue rolled her eyes.
----
Having searched the old barn in vain for any clue to the identity of the masked girl (or boy?) who had deprived her of her body, Suefran joined Arthur, D.W., and their mother as they journeyed to the mall to shop and meet with Mary Moo Cow.
As they walked past the shops, Suefran's eye was distracted by the sight of a child-sized window mannequin clad in a pair of rather tight-fitting blue jeans. She wished more than anything that she could buy a pair that would fit Sue Ellen's legs, so that she could dispense with the awkward-feeling blouse and skirt, and wear something that felt natural. But her parents--the Armstrongs, that is--weren't likely to allow their daughter to waste money on trying to look like Francine. She sighed. If only she had exchanged bodies with Muffy instead...
"You've been acting different today, Sue Ellen," she heard Arthur saying. "I did an Internet search and found out that lemurs live in Madagascar. I thought you'd been there."
"I, uh, wasn't there for very long," Suefran responded.
"I saw a picture of a lemur," said D.W. "It was really cute. Mom, can I get a pet lemur?"
"Sure," Mrs. Read replied. "As soon as we move to Madagascar."
Suefran felt her left arm start to throb. It was a dull ache, no different from what she had felt in her own right arm when it was broken. She wondered what the arm would look like when the cast came off. Sue Ellen's break had been much worse than hers...
D.W. cried out with joy when she saw a line of children in the center court of the mall, standing in front of a nursery-like ring where a person in a cow costume was holding court. "Look, Mom! It's Mary Moo Cow!"
"Let's go!" Mrs. Read smiled and took her daughter by the hand.
Arthur groaned. "Oh, great."
Dragging her mother along, D.W. hurried to the back of the line of children, who appeared to be mostly kindergarten-age. To her surprise, the child in front of her turned out to be her schoolmate Dallin Cooper.
"D.W.!" he exclaimed as he turned around.
"Hi, Dallin!" D.W. greeted him. "Isn't this great? We get to meet the new Mary Moo Cow! You know, when the old Mary Moo Cow quit, I got to see her without her costume."
"No way!" said the little duck boy in astonishment. Arthur, who was standing nearby with Suefran and Mrs. Read, looked around and saw Quinn and Odette Cooper a short distance away. The two older girls appeared rather embarrassed to be present at this event.
"She was a really nice lady," D.W. told Dallin. "She told me she would try to bring the show back, and she did."
Arthur turned to Suefran. "I never could figure out why the show was cancelled just because the woman in the costume quit," he remarked.
Suefran seemed not to hear him. She was listening raptly to the treacly sweet voice emerging from the cow outfit.
"What's your name, little girl?" Mary asked the red-haired rabbit girl who stood before her.
"My name's Marissa," said the excited moppet. "M-A-R-I-S-S-A."
"That voice," Suefran half-whispered. She turned to face Arthur. "That voice sounds awfully familiar."
Arthur strained his ears. "You're right, it does," he said after several seconds.
"What's your name, little boy?" asked Mary.
"Dallin," was the reply. "D-A-L-L-I-N."
"Dallin, can you sing the Mary Moo Cow song?"
Dallin and D.W. immediately erupted into song. "Mary Moo Cow, Mary Moo Cow, we love you, Mary Moo..."
Then Arthur, standing a few feet away from D.W., suddenly recognized the cow's voice. "Mrs. Stiles?" he said loudly. "You're the new Mary Moo Cow?"
The costumed cow stopped singing along with D.W. and Dallin, and turned her grinning face toward Arthur.
(To be continued...)
Sue Ellen pushed open her heavy eyelids to find, to her chagrin, that she was still staring up at the David Beckham poster through Francine's eyes.
Catherine, wearing a red dress, was waving a hand in front of her face. "It's almost time for temple," she said chirpily.
"I don't want to go to temple," Fransue grumbled.
"That's what you say every morning," said Catherine, "but you end up going anyway. Now get your butt out of bed."
As Fransue grudgingly made preparations for the morning's worship services, Francine was trying to pull off Sue Ellen's sleepwear so that she could give Sue Ellen's body a bath. The fact that she now had only one good arm made it a strenuous task, but she eventually managed to take everything off and climb into the tub.
She felt pangs of compassion when she saw the large scars that had been left on Sue Ellen's body by the plane accident. They were her scars now, although she had done nothing to earn them.
Bathing with a cast on one arm was nothing new. However, once she had washed and dried herself, and taken hair brush in hand, she had to endure what felt like the greatest test of her life. Sue Ellen's rigid locks resisted her efforts to coiffe them. No matter how long, hard, or strategically she brushed them, she was always left with a chaotic mess. It was as if all the strands of her hair were electromagnetically repelling each other. She finally gave up and laid the brush down next to the sink.
After hastily dressing herself in one of Sue Ellen's green blouses, Suefran hurried out of the Armstrong house in time to catch the well-dressed Frenskys as they were strolling down the sidewalk toward the Jewish temple. Fransue, wearing a blue dress and a sulky expression, looked at Suefran with horror when the girl came up alongside her.
"You look like you stuck your finger in a socket," Fransue observed. "Did you use the conditioner?"
"Uh, no," Suefran replied. "Just the shampoo."
"Well, go back and do it again," Fransue told her. "And when you're done, why don't you go back to the barn and look for clues? I'd go with you, but my religious freedom has just been taken away."
"Uh, sure," Suefran responded. As she turned back toward the Armstrong house, she marveled at how Sue Ellen had succeeded at styling her Francine hair so flawlessly.
She went through the laborious process of washing her hair again, but found it easier to shape after she had applied lavish amounts of conditioner. After wrapping two hairbands around her curls to keep them from wandering into her face, she gazed into the mirror and beheld a rough approximation to the Sue Ellen look that she was accustomed to.
"It's just not me," she muttered to herself. The hair puffs were crooked and unequal in size, but she didn't feel like bothering to adjust them.
As she walked along the street in the direction of the old barn, she was greeted by Arthur and D.W., who were rolling snowballs in their yard under the watchful eyes of their mother.
"Hey, Sue Ellen," Arthur called. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to look for clues...I mean, shoes," Suefran replied. She felt an urge to tell the boy that she was really Francine, but knew that she would only be met with ridicule.
"If you're looking for shoes, why don't you come to the mall with us?" said Arthur as he placed one mound of snow upon another to form the lower part of a snowman. "We're leaving at eleven."
"We're gonna see the new Mary Moo Cow!" D.W. cried with glee.
"There's a new one?" Suefran seemed pleasantly surprised.
"Yeah," Arthur answered. "New episodes and everything. Now it's called the New Moo Revue. But it's still a baby show."
"Hmph!" grunted D.W.
"Don't be so hard on it," Suefran told Arthur. "I loved that show when I was five."
"When you were five?" Arthur repeated. "But you weren't in the country then."
"Uh...right," Suefran stammered. "There was a show like it in the countries where I lived. It was called...it was called Linda the Lemur. Yeah, that's right."
"What's a lemur?" asked D.W. curiously.
"It's, uh, a little animal," Suefran replied.
"Where does it live?" Arthur inquired.
"Um...uh..."
Arthur stared at her, impatient with the display of ignorance by the girl who appeared to him as Sue Ellen.
"Somewhere in Asia," Suefran finally said. "I don't remember exactly. I was only five, you know." She started to walk away. "I'll see you at eleven."
----
As Suefran scoured the inside of the abandoned barn and its surroundings, Fransue sat restlessly on a pew next to the Frenskys, doing her best to ignore a sermon on the Book of Jonah delivered by Rabbi Moncton, an elderly giraffe man with faded spots and a bowed neck.
"Blah blah blah Nineveh blah blah Jonah blah blah whale blah blah prayed blah blah," droned the rabbi. It was the most boring sermon Sue Ellen had ever heard, and she had attended almost every type of religious service in existence. She wished with all her heart that she could go back to her own body, broken arm and all. For as long as she remained a Frensky, she would have to suffer this torment every week...
At last the sermon came to an end; Fransue felt as though she had missed two birthdays and a Christmas while sitting there. As the people slowly filed out of the temple building, Rabbi Moncton approached the Frenskys and greeted them. "Good to see you, Oliver, Linda," he said, and his voice sounded as flat as it had when he was preaching. "And little Francine." He laid a hand on Fransue's head and rubbed her hair, making her feel very uncomfortable.
She decided to use this opportunity to stir up a bit of controversy. "Mr. Rabbi, sir," she said innocently, "it's not possible for a whale to swallow a man. Whales may be large, but they have small throats."
The rabbi shot her a puzzled look. "Are you sure about that?"
"I read a book about marine life," Fransue replied. "Oceanography is one of my favorite subjects."
Rabbi Moncton smiled condescendingly at her. "Well, maybe God made a whale with a big throat. A super whale."
"Maybe," Fransue went on, "but even then, there's no way a man could survive in a whale's stomach for three days. He'd be digested." Francine's parents looked at the rabbi with embarrassed and apologetic expressions.
"Not if it was a robot whale," said the old giraffe man.
It dawned on Fransue that the rabbi was not taking her seriously, but treating her like an unintelligent child. "Uh...right," she said sarcastically. "A robot whale. From outer space. Yeah, that explains it. Thanks, Mr. Rabbi."
As she departed the building with her new family, Mr. Frensky gave her a scolding look. "I don't think you should ask the rabbi questions like that, Frankie."
"You're right," said Fransue petulantly. "I should ask someone who knows more."
Mrs. Frensky flicked her on the shoulder to show her disapproval. Then Catherine spoke up. "Well, it could have been a robot whale. I mean, God could do that, right?"
Fransue rolled her eyes.
----
Having searched the old barn in vain for any clue to the identity of the masked girl (or boy?) who had deprived her of her body, Suefran joined Arthur, D.W., and their mother as they journeyed to the mall to shop and meet with Mary Moo Cow.
As they walked past the shops, Suefran's eye was distracted by the sight of a child-sized window mannequin clad in a pair of rather tight-fitting blue jeans. She wished more than anything that she could buy a pair that would fit Sue Ellen's legs, so that she could dispense with the awkward-feeling blouse and skirt, and wear something that felt natural. But her parents--the Armstrongs, that is--weren't likely to allow their daughter to waste money on trying to look like Francine. She sighed. If only she had exchanged bodies with Muffy instead...
"You've been acting different today, Sue Ellen," she heard Arthur saying. "I did an Internet search and found out that lemurs live in Madagascar. I thought you'd been there."
"I, uh, wasn't there for very long," Suefran responded.
"I saw a picture of a lemur," said D.W. "It was really cute. Mom, can I get a pet lemur?"
"Sure," Mrs. Read replied. "As soon as we move to Madagascar."
Suefran felt her left arm start to throb. It was a dull ache, no different from what she had felt in her own right arm when it was broken. She wondered what the arm would look like when the cast came off. Sue Ellen's break had been much worse than hers...
D.W. cried out with joy when she saw a line of children in the center court of the mall, standing in front of a nursery-like ring where a person in a cow costume was holding court. "Look, Mom! It's Mary Moo Cow!"
"Let's go!" Mrs. Read smiled and took her daughter by the hand.
Arthur groaned. "Oh, great."
Dragging her mother along, D.W. hurried to the back of the line of children, who appeared to be mostly kindergarten-age. To her surprise, the child in front of her turned out to be her schoolmate Dallin Cooper.
"D.W.!" he exclaimed as he turned around.
"Hi, Dallin!" D.W. greeted him. "Isn't this great? We get to meet the new Mary Moo Cow! You know, when the old Mary Moo Cow quit, I got to see her without her costume."
"No way!" said the little duck boy in astonishment. Arthur, who was standing nearby with Suefran and Mrs. Read, looked around and saw Quinn and Odette Cooper a short distance away. The two older girls appeared rather embarrassed to be present at this event.
"She was a really nice lady," D.W. told Dallin. "She told me she would try to bring the show back, and she did."
Arthur turned to Suefran. "I never could figure out why the show was cancelled just because the woman in the costume quit," he remarked.
Suefran seemed not to hear him. She was listening raptly to the treacly sweet voice emerging from the cow outfit.
"What's your name, little girl?" Mary asked the red-haired rabbit girl who stood before her.
"My name's Marissa," said the excited moppet. "M-A-R-I-S-S-A."
"That voice," Suefran half-whispered. She turned to face Arthur. "That voice sounds awfully familiar."
Arthur strained his ears. "You're right, it does," he said after several seconds.
"What's your name, little boy?" asked Mary.
"Dallin," was the reply. "D-A-L-L-I-N."
"Dallin, can you sing the Mary Moo Cow song?"
Dallin and D.W. immediately erupted into song. "Mary Moo Cow, Mary Moo Cow, we love you, Mary Moo..."
Then Arthur, standing a few feet away from D.W., suddenly recognized the cow's voice. "Mrs. Stiles?" he said loudly. "You're the new Mary Moo Cow?"
The costumed cow stopped singing along with D.W. and Dallin, and turned her grinning face toward Arthur.
(To be continued...)
