My mom said, “Her nickname is Betsy.”

And Lizard said, “Bumble is my nickname for her.”

My mom said, “Bumble, as in blunder?

Bumble, as in stumble? Bumble, as in fumble?

Bumble, as move in an awkward way?

Bumble, as speak in a confused way?”

My mom knows more about words

than anybody I know.

“Bumble like bumblebee,” Lizard said.

“Bumblebees buzzing around beautiful flowers.”

I could tell my mom wanted to tell Lizard not to call me that,

but she didn’t want to be mean to my new best friend.

But every time my mom hears Lizard call me Bumble,

which has been a lot of times over the last three years,

I can see her jaw tighten

with all the things she isn’t saying.

Movers and Shakers

My mother says Lizard

is a mover and shaker.

She didn’t say,

but I know she means,

I’m the one

who is

moved and shaken.

Like This One Time

Lizard was at my house,

sorting little pieces of broken tile

that my father brought from his workshop

to glue onto cheap plastic plates

to turn them into mosaic platters

for a banquet she and I were going to have.

Not a banquet for lots of people,

with roasted pheasant and cups of mead,

like in the book about the Middle Ages

we had just read together.

Just a banquet for the two of us,

with oatmeal raisin cookies and grape juice.

I was picking out some blue and silver

pieces for mine,

but Lizard said we should both make ours

with red and gold.

So I started to put the blue and silver

pieces away.

My mother was helping to cover the kitchen table

with newspaper so we wouldn’t get glue on it,

and she said to Lizard,

“Why don’t you make yours the way you want.

And Betsy can make hers the way she wants.”

“Sure,” Lizard said.

Then she added under her breath,

“If Bumble doesn’t care that no kings and queens

would ever have silver platters if they could have gold,

and red goes with gold better than blue does.”

So I made mine red and gold, too.

And I couldn’t tell if my mother was more mad at Lizard

for telling me what to do,

or more disappointed in me

for doing it.

Lizard Can Stand Up to Anybody

Lizard stands up to teachers,

like when she told Mrs. Henderson

that Columbus didn’t discover America

because America had already been discovered

thousands of years earlier

by the people who were already living there

when Columbus showed up with his ships.

She stands up to bullies,

like when she saw some bigger boys

throwing a stone at a bunny

and told them she was going to report them to the SPCA,

which she said was the abbreviation for

the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,

and they said, “Yeah, right. Go ahead and report us.”