Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online Page B

cage!"
    Anastasia put Freud on her bed temporarily and then went to the gerbil cage under the window. Sam stood apprehensively behind her.
    There was one furry gerbil in its nest in one corner of the cage; and there was the other furry gerbil in its nest in the other corner. But surrounding each of them were numerous squirming pink creatures.
    "Sam!" said Anastasia happily. "They're not broken! They had babies!"
    Sam took his thumb out of his mouth and peered around her, into the cage. "Even the father had babies?" he asked.
    "Well, I guess I was wrong. Instead of a father and a mother, we had two mothers." She thought briefly about
her Science Project. This was certainly going to complicate her Science Project.
    "They sure had millions of babies," said Sam in an awed voice, looking at them.
    "Let me count." Anastasia leaned over the cage and checked the number of babies. "Romeo has four," she announced. "And Juliet has four. So there are eight babies. No, wait—there's one more. Juliet has five. Altogether there are nine. Good grief, we have to think of nine new names."
    "Can I name them?" asked Sam. "Because you got to name the first two."
    "Sure," said Anastasia. She went to the bed and picked up Freud. She looked around the room, decided on her desk, and placed him there, beside her schoolbooks. Sam squatted by the gerbil cage very intently. Finally he looked up.
    "Okay," he said. "I got names."
    Anastasia took a pencil and paper to write them down. "What are they?" she asked.
    "Happy is one."
    "That's a good name. What else? Eight more."
    "Sleepy and Dopey and Sneezy and Grumpy and Bashful and Doc."
    Anastasia grinned. "Terrific, Sam. But that's only seven. We need two more."
    "Snow White," said Sam.
    Anastasia wrote it down. "Good," she said. "One more."
    Sam beamed. "Prince," he said.
Science Project
    Anastasia Krupnik
Mr. Sherman's Class
    On October 13, I acquired two wonderful little gerbils, who are living in a cage in my bedroom. Their names are Romeo and Juliet, and they are very friendly. They seem to like each other a lot. Since they are living in the same cage as man and wife, I expect they will have gerbil babies. My gerbil book says that It takes twenty-five days to make gerbil babies. I think they are already mating, because they act very affectionate to each other, so I will count today as DAY ONE and then I will observe them for twenty-five days and I hope that on DAY 25 their babies will be born.
    This will be my Science Project.

    Day Three.
    My gerbils haven't changed much. They lie in their cage and sleep a lot. They're both overweight, because they eat too much, and they resemble Sonya Isaacson's mother, at least in chubbiness.
    In personality, they resemble
my
mother. They're very grouchy.

    Day Three Continued.
    People who have serious emotional problems sometimes have difficulty doing real good gerbil-observation because they suffer from inability to concentrate. I myself have serious emotional difficulties so I have this problem.
    As part of my Science Project I will talk about serious emotional problems. I will tell you what someone named Freud says about this.

    The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life, which are as common as they are important, and to find a place for them in the framework of science.

    Day Five.
    My gerbils gave birth to premature babies. Instead of twenty-five days, it took them only five days to have babies.
    Now I have eleven gerbils, and their names are Romeo, Juliet, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc, Snow White, and Prince.
    I also have a psychiatrist. His name is Freud. He is dead. But there is no need to be grossed out by that because with some psychiatrists It doesn't seem to matter much If they are alive or dead.

5

    "Freud," said Anastasia, as she lay on her