Remembering Mog - Hardcover

Rodowsky, Colby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374346631 ISBN 13: 9780374346638

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 1996

Synopsis

"Annie is about to graduate from high school, an event that intensifies all her memories of another graduation two years before, when her sister was murdered...Present-day events intermingle with Annie's recollections of the past. The shock, denial, and numbing grief are all realistically and starkly portrayed...This is an unsettling novel about an emotionally charged subject. It never falters. It will make an outstanding addition to any YA collection."-Starred/School Library Journal

About this title

About the Author

Colby Rodowsky is the author of Remembering Mog, and ALA Notable Book, Hannah In-Between, an ALA Best Book, and many other highly regarded books for young readers. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I stopped in front of the picture on the wall between the front windows in the living room. The Mizpah Picture, as we called it, was a painting on wood of two little girls, their faces turned and shadowed by sunbonnets. Underneath it were the words "The Lord Watch between Me and Thee, When We Are Absent One from Another." Which, according to Reilly, is what Mitzpah means.

When Mog and I were little we always thought the picture was of us, and even after we were old enough to read the date 1886--and knew it wasn't, we still secretly believed it was. We loved the painting, and the sound of the words, and years ago we used to torment Cricket by telling him he couldn't really be part of the family if he wasn't in the picture.

I stood there for a minute, running the tip of my finger over the Mog figure, the Annie figure. After that I went up to my room and tried to think of what to do for the rest of the day.

Mostly what I did was listen to Mog and the sounds of moving and-shoving and rearranging that came from her room. In between, I changed the sheets on my bed, took Homer for a walk, talked on the phone, and made a pan of lemon squares not from a mix. Every once in a while Mog would appear, dragging a chair, a dresser, a washstand into another room, and once, after lunch, she grabbed Cricket and had him help her carry her old oak bedstead up to the attic. She left things in the hall out side her door, and when I was sure she was otherwise occupied, I'd sneak out and sift through them, appropriating an old wire bird cage and the white wicker bed tray she'd had in her room since she'd had the mumps in fifth grade.

Late in the afternoon my father came in for a Coke, and together we sat at the kitchen table in a splotch of sunlight. "Mog's streamlining her life," I said. "She says that we live in hodgepodge heaven, only some of us grow out of it."

"Hmmmmm," said Dad, rubbing his fingers back and forth across his chin so that his whiskers made a sandpapery sound. "She may be right, but cut her some slack. It's probably senior-year angst, Sturm und Drang, and all that." He grinned, licked his index finger, and pre tended to make two marks in the air. "Two with one blow," he said.

I knew he was talking about cliches. It's part of the family lore that Dad half-seriously thinks he could've been a famous writer except that his high-school English teacher permanently damaged his psyche by dubbing him the Cliche King of 4B. Now he sells insurance instead.

We were still sitting there when Moma came in, dropping pieces of cake wrapped in birthday napkins on the table and pulling up a chair.

"How was the party?" Dad asked.

"It was really good," she said. "I used a dance theme, and instead of playing games we did improvisations, and you should've seen those kids."

Then Mog appeared in the doorway, her sleeves rolled up, her face smudged with dirt. And back to her regular self. "Okay, it's time for the great unveiling. Come on, you guys. "

As we followed her up the stairs, she called back over her shoulder, "I hope you like it. I mean, you all may want to live in the clutter capital of the world, but right now I'm going for the monastically simple.

"Ta-dum," she said, sweeping her arms out and opening the door at the same time.

And I gasped and breathed in the clean lemon smell and said, "Oh, my. Oh, Mog."

I mean, we were talking Spartan here. Her mattress and box spring sat directly on the floor, which was bare and obviously just polished. Except for a poster of Picasso's Woman in White, the walls were naked, with only ghostly shadows to show where the pictures used to be. The bookcase had been plundered, and the books that were left stood straight and unyielding. And in the closet her shoes were lined in formation on the floor.

"I thought if it was okay, maybe we could go to Ikea and get one of those plain-looking dressers," said Mog, pointing out the socks and sweaters and underwear piled neatly on the shelves.

Back in the center of the room she spun slowly around before she stopped, clearly waiting. "Well?" she said.

"It's--something," said Dad.

"Indeed," said Moma.

"Amazing," I said. Which is one of those words that can go either way.

After a while the radiator cover felt hard, and I stood up and closed the windows. I moved over and sat on the end of the bed, smoothing the crinkly material of the spread with the flat of my hand and thinking how that day seemed so long ago, and as close as today.

The day my sister Mog was killed.

The day she was murdered.

Copyright ) 1996 by Colby Rodowsky

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0374346631
• ISBN 13: 9780374346638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144