"I don't know how." "You know how to use a broom and a dustbin. Can't you sweep it into the dustbin? You remember how!" "It smells so really badly. If I go near it I'm gonna puke." "I changed your diapers. It can't be worse than that. Plug your nose and try to do a little. I'm tired of being the maid around here." "I'm not a maid too." "It's your cat." "It's older than me. How come it's my cat?" "My dear, when it goes to the bathroom in areas it shouldn't it becomes your cat." "How come?" "Because I'd--" She stopped herself. She was ready to say, "Because if it did that and I were to own it alone I would stuff it." Instead she said, "Because it likes you better." That was a solid argument. The only thing he could ask would be why the cat liked him better; and to ask such a thing would not have been beneficial to his argument. She was eager to see if he was intelligent enough to say nothing and he was. He just paused. "I feel lonely." "I'll be out soon" He jiggled the knob. "How come you got that thing locked? I wanna play checkers." His egocentric words grated on her nerves no different than barking dogs in the trailer park. "I'm gonna ride my bike over to Chuck's." "Not this late you're not." "You gonna play checkers or am I gonna gota Chuck's?" Chuck was a neighbor boy from the trailer park who recently moved into a house three blocks away. At first she got up from her seat in a huff of anger to prune such insolence but she couldn't help feeling amused by it so she sat back down on her chair at the desk and smiled at the door. She wondered what happened to the mild natured child of a month ago--the child that was 5 but seemed like 4. This one seemed much older. She wondered if the formation of his first ultimatum was the emulation of an ultimatum she had given to him and could not remember or if it was from some innate incorrigible tendencies. She spent an additional half hour on the poem. She couldn't see that she was making any improvements. "Maybe it is perfect after all," she thought. "Are you going to clean up the mess for Mommy?" she yelled. There was no answer.