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By mid-afternoon the little house had settled into that drowsy, golden lull between lunch and dinner, when the light came in sideways and turned every dust mote into something to watch.
Glenda sat cross-legged on the living room carpet, her back against the couch. A soft fan hummed in the corner, turning lazily, stirring the warm summer air just enough to keep it from sticking. Toys were scattered across the rug in loose islands—blocks, a plastic tea set, a doll with one shoe off and her hair in chaos, a stuffed rabbit flopped on its side as if it, too, had decided this was a good time to rest.
On Glenda’s lap lay a big, square picture book with a glossy cover, the kind that squeaked faintly if you pressed it. The front showed a bright green hill, a crooked little barn, and a cluster of animals drawn with soft, rounded lines and smiling faces.
Jess and Toyah were pressed up on either side of her like bookends, one on each thigh, sharing space in the way only very small children could—half tangled, leaning on her, leaning on each other. Jess’s dark curls were already escaping the ponytail Glenda had wrangled them into that morning; Toyah’s hair was in two messy puffs, each one slightly lopsided because Toyah had discovered what happened if you tugged the elastics.
“Okay,” Glenda said, patting the book. “You ready for the farm story?”
“Farm stowy,” Jess echoed, tipping her head back to look at her mother upside down, eyes huge.
“Pahm stowy,” Toyah chimed in, then reached out and flattened a hand on the cover. “Animals.”
“Mm-hmm.” Glenda kissed the top of Toyah’s head, breathed in that faint mix of baby shampoo and crayons. “Animals. Cows and chickens and all kindsa noisy beasts.”
“Noisy beasts,” Jess repeated thoughtfully, as if cataloguing them. “Moo cow. Quack duck. Goatie.”
“Goatie,” Toyah agreed, already giggling at the word. “Lizzie goat.”
At that, Glenda smiled. “We might just see someone like Lizzie in here,” she said. “Let’s find out, huh?”
She opened the book. The pages made that satisfying soft crackle of fresh paper as she turned to the first spread.
“Once upon a time,” she began, letting her voice drop into Story Mode, smooth and lilting, “on a little farm at the edge of a green, green hill, there lived a whole bunch of animals. There was a big brown cow named Clover, who loved to nap in the sunshine…”
She traced a finger along the picture, tapping the cow so the girls would follow. Jess leaned forward, nose almost touching the page.
“Cow,” Jess said. “She sweep.”
“She’s takin’ a nap,” Glenda agreed. “And there was a speckly hen named Dot, who laid very speckly eggs…”
“Eggs!” Toyah crowed, jabbing her finger on a little nest of spotted eggs with such enthusiasm that the page bowed under her hand. “Dot eggs.”
“Gently, baby,” Glenda murmured, catching her wrist and guiding her hand to tap, not slam. “We wanna be nice to the book. Dot worked hard on those eggs.”
Toyah nodded solemnly, as if she understood chicken labor rights, then stroked the drawing with her fingertips. “Nice eggs.”
Glenda went on, pointing out the sleepy dog by the fence, the pink-snouted pig rolling in a mud puddle. With each new animal, she gave them a voice—Clover’s low, yawning “mooooo,” the hen’s bossy cluck, the pig’s delighted snorts.
Jess and Toyah responded in kind. Jess mooed so earnestly her voice broke in the middle; Toyah’s attempt at clucking came out like someone trilling their tongue and coughing at the same time. They both dissolved into giggles.
“You two are somethin’ else,” Glenda said, laughing softly with them. “Okay, okay. One more, then we keep goin’.”
She turned the page.
“And on this farm,” she read, “there was a very curious little jenny goat…”
She didn’t get any further. Both girls gasped at the same time, a sharp intake of breath that made their shoulders jump.
“Goat!” Jess squealed.
“Goatie!” Toyah added a half-second later, as if they were taking turns being an echo.
Glenda smiled and steadied the book, tilting it so they could see the illustration properly. The jenny goat stood in the middle of the page, all knobby knees and soft gray fur, with a bell on a blue ribbon around her neck and bright, clever eyes. Wildflowers sprouted around her hooves.
“This,” Glenda said, tapping the goat’s nose, “is Jenny the jenny goat.”
There was a beat of silence. Then both girls exploded.
“Jenny goat!” Jess shrieked, throwing herself sideways against Glenda’s chest, half laughing, half squealing. “Mama, Jenny goat!”
Toyah clap-clap-clapped as fast as she could. “Jenny goat, Jenny goat, Jenny goat!” The words tumbled over each other, forming a kind of chant. Her legs kicked with excitement, heels thumping against the rug.
Glenda’s eyebrows arched in pleased surprise. “You like that, huh? Jenny the jenny goat.”
Jess pushed herself upright again and grabbed the edge of the page in both hands, eyes glued to the picture. “Jenny goat is wike Lizzie,” she announced. “She go ‘maa-aa.’” Jess attempted a goat bleat that came out more like “meh-eh,” intense and serious.
Toyah, not to be outdone, scrunched up her nose and offered her own bleat, higher and wobblier. “Meeeh-eeh!”
The two sounds together were so earnest and ridiculous that Glenda laughed, head tipping back for a moment. “That’s some professional goat talk, alright.”
Jess nodded hard, curls bouncing. “Jenny goat is Lizzie,” she insisted. “Lizzie Jenny goat.”
“Mm.” Glenda rocked them a little, letting the book rest on her knees. “You think she looks like Lizzie?”
“Yes,” the twins chorused.
Toyah jabbed her small forefinger at the goat’s bell. “She got a neck thing. Lizzie got a neck thing.” She mimed something dangling under her own chin, eyes wide and solemn.
Glenda’s smile softened. The image rose up in her mind: Lizzie on Jennifer’s little patch of land, bell tinkling faintly as she trotted toward the fence, the girls’ hands full of apple slices, Jennifer laughing as Lizzie tried to figure out if Glenda’s jean pockets contained anything edible. Lizzie absolutely did have a “neck thing.”
“Yeah,” Glenda said. “Lizzie’s got her bell too, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” Toyah nodded vigorously, still tapping the bell in the picture. “Same. Jenny goat Lizzie.”
Jess leaned closer until her nose nearly brushed the page. She studied the goat’s face with the grave intensity of a tiny art critic. “She got eyes like Aunt Jenny,” she pronounced suddenly.
Glenda blinked. “Oh yeah?” Her voice went soft around the edges without her meaning it to. “She does, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” Jess reached up and grabbed a loose curl, twisting it around her finger as she thought. “Aunt Jenny eyes. Shiny.” She squinted, as if trying to imitate Jennifer’s particular warmth. “She look at you an’ she go—” Jess flipped her head dramatically, widening her eyes and making a comically gentle “Oooooh,” sound, like an abstracted memory of Jennifer’s cooing voice.
Toyah cracked up. “Aunt Jen-na-fur goat!” she crowed, words tripping over each other. “She go ‘maa’ an’ play guitar.”
Jess slapped both hands over her mouth and squealed into them. “Aunt Jenny goat play guitar!” she echoed, barely able to get it out through her laughter. “She go ‘maa, maa, maa’ an’—” She mimed strumming an invisible guitar on her chest with stiff little arms, elbows jutting out, making wild flailing motions.
Toyah immediately copied her, though her “guitar” slipped to her belly and then down to her knees, so she was half drumming on her own legs. “Maa-aa!” she yelled, and then, thoughtfully, “An’ sing.”
The picture in their minds was so vivid you could almost see it hanging in the air: Jennifer with her guitar, but with goat ears tucked into her hair, or Lizzie standing on her hind legs with a guitar slung over her shoulder. Some impossible hybrid of aunt and goat, music and bell.
Glenda looked from the illustrated goat to her daughters’ faces, open and alight. There it was, that particular twin flicker—how they’d both leapt to a place she hadn’t thought to go. Jenny goat, Jennifer, Lizzie; to them, it all simply braided together.
She could have explained that “jenny” was just a word for a girl goat, that this Jenny goat was just a character some artist had dreamed up. She could have straightened the lines.
Instead, she shifted her weight so she could hug them both closer, one arm around Jess’s little shoulders, the other curled around Toyah’s waist.
“Tell me ‘bout her,” Glenda said, keeping her voice low and warm. “Tell me ‘bout Jenny goat. What she like?”
Jess took this very seriously. She pointed at the goat’s ears. “She… she listen,” Jess said. “Like Aunt Jenny listen. She go like this.” Jess tilted her head very slightly and softened her face, mimicking Jennifer’s attentive expression when she crouched to their level.
Toyah leaned in till her cheek rested against Glenda’s arm. “She soft,” Toyah contributed. “Soft-soft. You pat her.” She patted the page delicately, fingertips sliding over the printed fur. “She smell like… like… grass.”
“Like Lizzie smell,” Jess said, wrinkling her nose with fond distaste. “A lil’ stinky. But nice stinky.”
“Nice stinky,” Toyah repeated, dissolving into giggles again.
Glenda chuckled. “That’s accurate, I’m afraid,” she said. “Goats are a little stinky. But nice stinky.”
She watched them for a moment longer, letting herself just sit in it—the way their minds had leaped from a drawing in a book to their great-aunt and a real goat, building a whole new little person-goat out of the pieces. There was something so perfectly themselves in it, the way they stitched family and story together without a seam.
“Okay,” she said gently, giving them both a little squeeze. “So we got Jenny goat, who’s a lil’ bit like Lizzie and a lil’ bit like Aunt Jennifer. Wanna see what she does next?”
“Yesss,” Jess breathed, as if she’d been waiting all her life.
“Turn, turn,” Toyah urged, tugging at the corner of the page.
Glenda smoothed their hands aside and turned the page carefully.
“Jenny the jenny goat,” she read, leaning into the cadence, “loved to explore. Every morning, as soon as Farmer Tom opened the gate, she trotted out to see what new thing she could find…”
She made Jenny’s voice bright and curious, giving the goat a slightly singsong “maa” at the end of her spoken lines. The twins ate it up, leaning closer, tracking her finger as it moved along the picture—Jenny sniffing a patch of clover, Jenny peeking into the chicken coop, Jenny climbing onto a rock.
“Jenny goat go ‘climb climb,’” Toyah narrated, bouncing a little each time the goat scrambled higher. “She brave.”
“She real brave,” Glenda agreed. “See, she’s up high. Higher than the fence.”
“Like Aunt Jenny climb on stage,” Jess said suddenly. “She go up high too.”
Glenda’s heart did that soft ache-expand thing in her chest. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Aunt Jennifer goes up on the stage. That’s her big high spot, huh?”
Jess nodded, eyes on the tiny goat perched on the rock. “An’ she play guitar,” she added, as if finishing a well-known sentence. “Jenny goat play guitar on rock.”
“In the barn,” Toyah added, feeling the need to pin the image down. “Jenny goat in barn, play guitar for Lizzie.” She paused. “An’ for us.”
“For us,” Jess echoed, the corners of her mouth curving up.
“So Jenny goat’s givin’ y’all a private concert, huh?” Glenda teased gently. “You two sittin’ in the barn, and Aunt Jennifer-goat is playin’ songs.”
“Uh-huh,” Jess said, utterly certain.
Toyah nodded so hard her puffs bobbed. “An’ she sing… the… bunny song.” She waited, eyes on Glenda, knowing there was a real song hiding behind that placeholder.
“The bunny song, huh?” Glenda grinned, tipping her head. “You mean that one Aunt Jennifer sings ‘bout Snowball hoppin’ down the hall?”
“Yeah!” Both girls answered at once.
“‘Snowball, Snowball, hop along,’” Jess sang tunelessly. “Hop, hop, hop, she so stwong…”
Glenda joined in, smoothing the melody, making it something close to the version Jennifer had made up on some long-ago evening. The twins wiggled, sang the words they knew and mumbled through the ones they didn’t, their little voices riding over her deeper one.
As they sang, Jess kept one hand resting on Jenny goat’s picture, almost like you would keep a hand on a friend’s shoulder. Toyah tapped the printed bell in time with the tune, making it “ring” on the beat.
When the song wound down, they were all a little breathless. The fan hummed. Somewhere outside, a car rolled by, its tires shushing on the street.
Glenda cleared her throat gently. “Okay, let’s see what mischief this goat gets into,” she said. “So. ‘One day, Jenny the jenny goat saw something she had never seen before…’”
She read on. Jenny stuck her nose into the toolbox and got herself tangled in string; she tried to help by “sweeping” the barn with a broom and knocked over a bucket; she followed a trail of butterflies all the way to the orchard.
With each mishap, Jess and Toyah filled in details that weren’t there, their commentary layering over the printed story.
“She say, ‘Oopsie, sowwy,’” Jess supplied when Jenny knocked over the bucket.
“She clean up,” Toyah added sternly. “No mess.” Glenda had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at how much Toyah sounded like a miniature, stern auntie.
“And Farmer Tom said…” Glenda read, “‘Oh, Jenny goat, you sure are curious!’”
Jess shook her head. “He say, ‘S’okay, honey,’” she corrected softly. “Like you say.”
Glenda paused for a heartbeat, the words catching in the sweetest way. “Yeah,” she said. “He probably does say that, huh. ‘S’okay, honey.’”
She kissed the top of Jess’s head, then Toyah’s. They smelled faintly of peanut butter and the sun.
Page by page, they followed Jenny goat through her day. Sometimes Glenda stuck close to the text; sometimes she let it blur and bend to whatever the girls were imagining. When the written story said Jenny climbed the hill to look at the sunset, Jess decided she must be looking for Lizzie, and Toyah insisted Aunt Jennifer was already there, sitting cross-legged with her guitar.
“So she go up, up, up,” Jess narrated quietly, “an’ Aunt Jenny goat say, ‘Hi, babies.’”
Glenda could see it—Jennifer silhouetted against a painted sky, a little cartoon bell peeking from under her collar, reaching her arms out to these two small humans who already adored her. The softness in her chest spread, filling her whole ribcage.
“Sounds like a good day,” she murmured.
When they reached the end of the book, Jenny goat curled up under the stars, Glenda slowed her reading, letting the last sentence stretch.
“…and Jenny the jenny goat,” she finished softly, “fell fast asleep, dreaming of all the new things she would discover tomorrow.”
She closed the book gently. The cardboard covers came together with a quiet thump.
For a moment, there was silence. The fan hummed. Somewhere in the kitchen, the refrigerator gave a half-hearted rattle and then settled.
Then Jess sighed, a big, content toddler sigh. She leaned back against Glenda’s chest, tipping her head to look up.
“‘Gain,” she said.
“‘Gain,” Toyah echoed automatically, already trying to pry the book open with both hands.
Glenda laughed under her breath. “You want Mama to read the whole thing again?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
“Mm-hmm,” Jess said, nodding so hard her head bumped Glenda’s chin. “Jenny goat ‘gain. Aunt Jenny goat ‘gain.”
“An’ Lizzie,” Toyah added. “Lizzie Jenny goat.”
Glenda shifted the book so they wouldn’t bend the cover in their enthusiasm. She could feel their small weight pressing into her, warm and solid; could feel the way their excitement hadn’t dimmed at all, even after the last page.
“Tell you what,” she said, brushing a curl off Jess’s forehead with the side of her hand. “We’ll read it ‘gain. And then, maybe this weekend, we’ll go visit Aunt Jennifer. See Lizzie for real, huh?”
Both girls froze for a half second, processing. Then they squealed in stereo.
“Lizzie!” Jess yelped.
“Aunt Jen-na-fur!” Toyah cried.
The idea of it—of real goat fur under their hands, of Jennifer’s arms, of seeing this strange Jenny-Lizzie-Jennifer hybrid in their minds meet the real pieces it was built from—only made Glenda’s chest fuller.
She could picture it already: the twins on the farm, their faces flushed with heat and joy, Jennifer laughing as Lizzie’s bell chimed. She wondered if Jess and Toyah would secretly look for a guitar slung over Lizzie’s back, or for a bell tucked under Jennifer’s shirt. Maybe they would ask Aunt Jennifer where her horns were, or why she didn’t say “maa” the way they expected.
Glenda knew she wouldn’t correct them when they did. The world would flatten and tidy itself all on its own soon enough. There was no need to rush it.
For now, let the goat and the aunt and the picture on the page all blur together into one bright, impossible creature. Let their minds stay as wide open as a field under summer sky.
“Alright, scootches,” she said, wriggling a bit until they settled more comfortably against her. She flipped the book back to the first page, the farm on the hill waiting for them again. “Once upon a time, on a little farm…”
Jess exhaled, already smiling, eyes fixed on the page. “Jenny goat,” she whispered to herself, like a promise.
“Jenny goat,” Toyah agreed, snuggling closer into Glenda’s side.
Glenda wrapped her arms around both of them as she began again, her voice steady and gentle, carrying them back into a world where a goat could be two people they loved at once, and nobody had to tell them that was impossible.
