Lizzie! by Maxine Kumin Page B

down, slow down, chica . Jeb is a name?”
    â€œIt’s short for Jesús Ernesto Blanco. That’s what we Googled and we found out he owns a company called Imp-Ex—it stands for import and export—get it?”
    â€œAnd how do you know he’s a rich guy?”
    â€œHe has his own private plane, it’s a Learjet and he lands it on a dirt strip out in Henry’s cow pasture.”
    â€œAnd so you think he’s bringing in these tiny little monkeys you saw.”
    â€œWell, they had to get there somehow.”
    Digger said, “They could have come by boat also. We’ll have to find out.”
    â€œBut what do you suppose he’s planning to do with them?”
    â€œI’m not sure. Anything he does with them is illegal unless he has a permit to import them, which I doubt. I do know there are some fancy people in Hollywood and Reno and Las Vegas and so on who will pay a lot of money. Tens and tens of thousands to have a little tamarin as a pet.”
    â€œBut they’re a very . . . social species, they can’t be separated just like that. They would die of loneliness!”
    Digger sighed. “ Chica, there are crazy people who have leopards for house pets. Pumas and jaguars, you name it. And they pay a lot of money, like half a million dollars just to have an exotic animal to call their own.”
    I looked at him. I couldn’t say anything because I was trying so hard not to cry, just thinking about the tamarins so busy in their cages, climbing up and down and trilling and chuckling to each other and curling up in a group to nap in the wicker baskets and then to be taken out and stuffed in a bag of some sort and flown to a rich person’s mansion and probably put in a cage all alone. “ Chiquita , this could be a nasty business. We need to call the police before somebody gets hurt.”
    â€œOh please, Digger. Think if you break this case open what a big story it will make! Please, please figure out a way to drive out there with me just once.”

 
    Â 
    CHAPTER 10
    T his is going to be a very short chapter. I asked Mom if she thought it was possible to love and hate someone at the same time. She said yes, of course it was. “That’s what we call mixed feelings, Lizzie. There’s a word for feeling that way, ambivalence .”
    Of course I looked it up and no surprise, it comes from the Latin ambi, meaning both sides and valeo, strength or vigor. To feel strongly two ways at the same time is exactly what is going on inside me.
    I am strongly ambivalent about Henry the Huge. I love him for running his petting zoo where he feeds his animals every day and gives them freshwater whenever they need it and makes sure they have shelter from the sun when it’s burning down on them and from the rain when it pours. Especially I love him for looking after the bear cubs. I love his vegetable garden, though I know he doesn’t work in it even if he pretends to.
    But then I hate him for having those bear cubs at all. They don’t belong in a roadside petting zoo. I don’t know how he got them but I’m sure he didn’t just find them lost in the woods. I hatehim for being friends with Jeb Blanco. There is something spooky about Jeb Blanco. I hate that every time Henry’s cat has kittens he drowns them in a pail of water. This last time, though, Mom got him to let her take them to the SPCA after they were weaned. That’s how I got Tigger. And then we took the mama cat to the vet to be spayed. Guess who paid for it? Right.
    To be honest, I have a bunch of other ambivalent feelings. I love my mother but sometimes she makes me so mad that I wheel into my room and slam the door as hard as I can, which isn’t very hard because I have to turn my body halfway around to reach the doorknob, and then to give it a real whack I have to stop and lock my wheels or I’ll skid forward into my dresser. Usually it’s over doing my