by Beth Kephart
“Never heard of him,” I said.
“Abraham Lincoln, then,” Dr. G. said. “You’ve heard of him? Our sixteenth president. Long and very thin, with a narrow, narrow chest? Could have been Marfan. That’s what some have said.”
I wasn’t sure what this had to do with me in those days, back then. Maybe I’m still not sure, but I remember. I remember Mom and Dad and Hawk on the way home, because we could still fit four across back then. I remember sandwiches for dinner, glasses of water, not much that anyone said. I remember Mom telling me the next day that sometimes we don’t have a choice about what happens to us, and that what had happened to me was called “spontaneous.” That there are plenty of people diagnosed with Marfan, beautiful and smart people, geniuses and leaders, had I been listening to Dr. G.? “This doesn’t change who you are, Sara,” Mom said. “It just changes some of how you might live.” I remember her telling me that. And maybe I wished that having a word for what I had could change who I was, that having a name for this thing would bring a change to this thing, make me shorter than I was, make my teeth do what teeth are supposed to do, which is come in nice and straight, make my feet all arched and graceful.
But that’s not how it works at all.
I am seven and Hawk is six, and September to June we get up early for chores, we have our flapjacks for breakfast, we ride the school bus to school and ride the school bus back from school, Hawk sitting with me or else behind me now, so nobody on that bus can say a thing about how tall I am, am I a secret giantess, why do my fingers bend backward like my fingers do, am I a real person or a witch? They won’t say it to me when I am near and they won’t say it around the teachers, not anymore, and I feel good anyway, I’m little by little finding the pride in myself, because I get the best grades in my class of twelve, I get the As on my spelling and my numbers and my stories. I get the As on the projects we have, and Hawk is near, beside me, and I don’t think about Marfan, mostly, and I don’t let it stop me. We’re keeping a watch on it. That’s what we do. Doctor checkups and doctor check-ins, and then I pretend it isn’t true.
There are chores when we get home. There are things to do, and then work for school, and then dinner, and I am eight and Hawk is seven, I am nine and Hawk is eight, I am ten and Hawk is nine, I am eleven, and I have to tell the truth by now: I am getting tired. It sounds weak to me, it sounds all wrong, I’m just a kid, I saved my brother, once, from drowning in the pond, I saved my father, once, from falling off a roof, I saved my mother, once, from an angry cow, I saved my goats, and I saved my seeds, I saved all those seeds, I saved the future. I am not a natural giver-upper, but I cannot keep up. More and more I am not myself, until one day, I’m alone with Mom and Dad, telling how sometimes it hurts to breathe, how sometimes I cannot catch my breath, how sometimes I just don’t want to get up at all. They listen hard. Dad holds one hand. Mom runs her fingers through my hair, and I can feel the hurt in them.
They make an appointment the next day with Dr. G., a different kind of appointment, not a regular checkup. In three days, on a Tuesday. Hawk will be at school. Hawk will go home with a friend. Hawk will be mad because he wants to come too, this isn’t fair, this is family business. They drive me back to the hospital that is so far away, and we ride the elevator, and we wait our turn, and they do their tests, and it’s her heart, the doctors say, Dr. G. says it. “The aortic valve is leaking,” he says. “We’ll need to keep a watch.” After that, he says something else: “The bend of the bones in her chest is a problem. Layman’s terms: her lungs don’t have enough room to breathe.”
Dr. G. says it to Mom and Dad, and then he says it to me, and he wonders: Do we understand?
Mom nods. Dad doesn’t.
What I understand is that something big has changed. That after all the regular checkups and check-ins, the keeping an eye on it, the let me know if something’s shifted, something’s shifted: the symptoms have gotten worse. That who I thought I am is not who I now am, though Mom keeps saying, in the truck, going home, “You’re the same Sara, Sara. Don’t forget that.” Mom says we are defined by the choices we make and the goodness we are and our grace in the face of beautiful things and not the science of our genes or the quality of our luck or the money in our banks. She says I am an A plus-er, top of the class when it comes to everything that counts, and that I’m not to forget that, and we have doctors to trust, and we’re going to listen more closely to my body now, we’re going to keep a different kind of watch on this. We’re going to take care of this, and Sara, I am sorry.
She is so sorry.
I’m still eleven and Hawk is still ten. I’m listening to my body and it hurts to listen, hurts to hear, hurts to breathe, and now, sometimes, I’m taking a week off from school for being so tired, then another week off from school for the same excuse, then a few more days, and I’m falling behind, I’m losing track of homework and projects and grades, I’m starting to panic. Too much being sick, too much panic. Mom says maybe we should think of other options. I ask her what kind. She says what would I think if I did school from home now, if we learned mostly the same things, but differently.
“More time to rest, Sara,” Mom says, telling me how it would work. “More setting our own schedule. More choices. I think it would be fun, anyhow, could be fun, and I think I’d learn a lot, and I’d like that chance, and I wonder: What do you think, Sara? Do you think homeschooling could help?”
Homeschooling, Mom says, and I can tell she’s been giving it a lot of thought, that she’s looked into it, close, talked to my teachers, I don’t know when. She’s been watching me, but still it takes me another week to decide. Another week for me to leave all my As behind, my reputation as the smartest, the kids who had stopped teasing, the kids who maybe would have asked, if Hawk wasn’t always close, if they weren’t afraid of repercussions, how it feels to be a giantess. I’m not leaving because of any of that. I’m not leaving because of shame. I’m leaving because my heart wants me to. Because here on the farm, in my own time, I’ll find new ways to stand up to Marfan.
“I’m not going if she’s not going,” Hawk says, when he finds out.
“Hawk,” Mom says, her voice even and low. We’re sitting in the kitchen. Flapjacks done. Dad outside. Figgis, my tuxedo cat, weaving around our legs beneath the table.
He crosses his arms. He’s absolute.
“This is about Sara, honey.”
“Right.”
“Right?”
“If it’s about her, it’s about me.”
“I know you’re—”
“We, Mom. We. We’re family.”
“Hawk.”
“Nope.”
“We can’t just—”
“It isn’t fair. You can’t give her this and not give it to me.”
“We’re not giving…”
“Yes, you’re giving.”
He pushes back on his chair. He grabs Figgis by the scruff. He runs up the stairs and he shuts his door and I hear it lock and look at Mom.
“It’d be more fun,” I say, “if Hawk homeschooled too.”
“Hmmm,” Mom says. “Hmmm.” She shuts her eyes. She hadn’t expected this. Marfan makes my mother tired.
I nod a yes for Hawk, even though she can’t see me. I stare hard at her, willing her, hoping. There are shadows underneath her eyes and silks of gray I never saw before falling forward from her bandanna. My mother has a perfect turned-up nose. Her lips are pale and chewed on.
“I’ll talk to Dad,” she says, after a long, long time. Her eyes are still closed. The kitchen smells of hot syrup. I don’t know when she does decide, but it’s settled before dinner.
I am eleven, and Hawk is ten, and we are new homeschoolers. We take our lessons at the kitchen table, and in the barn, and on the farm. Lessons from Mom and Dad, from the books that come in the brown envelopes, fat and proud in our mailbox. From the history and math and science and machines of the farm. From the miracle stuff of water, birds, and trees, the clouds we can see, and
the stars. When we take our state tests, we always ace them because we are still A plus-ers, we won’t let Mom and Dad down, or each other, or the farm, and this is how the days are, this is what I remember, and my mind whirls whirls whirls whirls.
Pie
Friday is pie day and today is Friday, and no fire is getting in the way of pie, no news. Mom’s already up at the five o’clock hour, starching and sugaring and cinnamoning the berries, rolling the crust, fluting the edges.
I hear the pour and pop, the hot bump the oven makes when it reaches temperature, the scrape of the foil pans against the metal racks, the yap of Mom’s flip-flops. Mom was a Jersey Shore girl before she married Dad. There are some things she won’t give up. Like the polka-dotted polish on her toes and the noise of her flip-flops and the soft crush of the faded beach hat, which she prefers over a John Deere cap. Dad says he fell in love with Mom as soon as he saw her dancing to a radio song on the Wildwood boardwalk. Mom says it took her a whole lot longer to fall in love with Dad, but then she did. Then we two kids arrived, and she gave her love of the sea to Hawk and me.
Mom learned pie baking from Dad’s mother before either Hawk or I were born. She uses the same Farm Journal recipes that were passed on to her. “Goodness doesn’t need improving,” Dad will say, when he rounds the corner and takes a look at Mom’s pie-baking commotion.
Now it’s closer to dawn and Phooey’s quiet, most of the birds are quiet. Verdi the rooster has been quiet since three a.m., when he had his opera moment. It’s Mom I still hear rolling the dough, pouring the sugar, keeping her radio on with her oldies music, and now the black in my room has turned a misty blue that will soon enough be pink. The skies are big, are coming. I hear Dad’s boots downstairs, rasping the floor, I hear him rounding in toward Mom. The high and the low of their talk.
“Hawk,” I whisper to the wall between us. “Hawk?”
But when Hawk’s asleep, he sleeps.
If I stay in bed an hour more, all the pies will be in their white boxes with the lids cracked open to ease the heat. If I stay an hour and a half, Dad will be back in from the barns where now he’s gone, back from his talk with Old Moe, back from his pickup ride to the cistern, back to making flapjacks. Dad will be back from studying the hay barn, which is not a hay barn anymore. Dad will smell like cinders.
Peach Marshmallow Pie. Cherry-Mincemeat Pie. Oatmeal Pie. Pecan Puff Pie. Farmer’s Peanut Pie. I can tell from the smells that Mom’s going for broke, with her evaporated creams and egg-white toppings. She’s going to extremes like she does when she has to put her sadness somewhere. I get up and put on my jeans. The ones Mom sewed an extra three inches of flowery-paisley bell-bottom hemming to so my ankle bones wouldn’t show through my socks. I pull my light T-shirt with the three-quarter sleeves over my head. I comb my fingers through my hair. I turn my bracelet around for luck. It’s not a shower day. I use the toilet but don’t flush. I brush my teeth quick and splash some water on my cheeks, my chin.
I head to the kitchen.
“Pies are fluffing,” Mom says, snapping off the radio, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her shirt, not turning. She says it as if the pies don’t always fluff, as if she’s not the best pie baker in this whole 872-person town, in any town, probably. Mom wins the pie contest at the county fair every September. The Peach Marshmallow is cooling on the rack, the Oatmeal and Pecan Puff too. The Farmer’s Peanut is still in the oven, and there’s an Apricot Chiffon in a white box with a popped lid.
Mom says that it’s important that everybody in every life gets to choose the things they love. Mom chose pies, and when she isn’t baking pies, she can fix any tractor that Dad breaks.
I could too, if I were strong enough. I could too, if the doctors weren’t always telling me to be careful, Sara, be careful, Sara, don’t want to strain your heart.
Some things can get fixed.
Some things can’t.
I’ll tie the boxes shut with a string when all the pies are cool enough. Hawk will drive them the two country miles to Rayuda’s Diner, where Sal is already waiting for him—Sal and the early crowd, pies for breakfast, gossip for the trouble. Nobody minds Hawk out on the road in his tractor, out behind the horse-drawns, beside the lumberyard’s big wheelers. Hawk’s been driving that tractor for two years, probably more, and out here it’s not your age that matters. Out here, it’s about your skills. You drive the tractor right, they wave at you friendly. They always wave to Hawk. He drives steady so the pies won’t slide. He drives up and over to where the diner crowd is waiting. He’s just like the rest of us. He does any job he needs to do, and he does it. Scholl-style well.
I step into the kitchen. Mom gives one last pinch to the crust of her final pie and slides it into her double-wide oven.
“We haven’t talked about you,” she says. “We need to talk.”
“Hay barn burned,” I say. “We’ve got other worries.”
“We still need to talk about you,” Mom says. “We don’t forget one thing because of the other.”
She makes a quick rinse of her hands and turns. The shadows underneath her eyes don’t move when she moves. The knuckles on her hands are red with ache. The polka-dotted paint on her toes could use a fixing. “We can’t keep putting it off, Sara. We have to talk it through.”
“Don’t feel like talking about it,” I say. “Okay?”
“Sara.”
“Mom,” I say. “It can wait.”
“We are not waiting.”
“Fire’s worse than some root.”
“No, Sara. Actually—”
“Fire’s just as expensive.”
“Actually—”
I hear Hawk on the steps and turn. I see his crease-y Doc Martens with the laces untied, his skinny black jeans, his belt pulled to the last notch, his yellow T-shirt like a caution sign. His eyes are two moons, day or night.
“What were you talking about?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say. Mom gives me a look.
“Were so,” he says. “Heard you.”
“Not everything’s your business, Hawk.” Mom looks like she could cry. Mom hates more than anything to cry, and I hate, even more than that, when Mom cries and she’s crying over me. If you love someone, you shouldn’t hurt them. I know I’m hurting Mom. Mom isn’t answering Hawk.
“Peach Marshmallow Pie. Cherry-Mincemeat Pie. Oatmeal Pie. Pecan Puff Pie. Farmer’s Peanut Pie. Apricot Chiffon,” she says, like everything’s fine. “One more in the oven, and we’re done.” Her pretend-fine voice isn’t so great at pretending.
Hawk touches the key he wears around his neck, the key to the John Deere he unbuilt and built beside Dad, Mom supervising. It’s 9,585 pounds of ding and rust and you’d think it couldn’t run, but Hawk makes it do what he needs.
“Twenty minutes till breakfast,” Mom says. “An hour till the pies are cool enough for travel.”
Hawk stands there. Stuck.
“Sourdough and jam,” Mom says. “We’ll heat it in the oven. Hawk?”
He shakes his head, stares hard at me. I read his eyes better than anybody living on this planet, and he’s the last thing from pleased.
“I’m going outside,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m looking for Dad,” he says. “And for Phooey.”
“Stay away from the hay barn,” Mom says, like the black stub of what’s left could burst into flames again. Like he’d go in there to sulk.
“I’m looking for Dad,” Hawk says again. “I want to ask him something.”
“We can talk, if you want,” Mom says. “Later, we can talk.”
“Whatever.”
The back door opens and then it slams. A cat meows. The breeders squawk.
Ask Me
Ask me if I can help it.
Can’t.
Ask me if I’m sorry.
Am.
Ask me how I’m supposed to explain to Hawk that the news is bad. My bad news is his bad news. How am I supposed to say it?
Won’t.
Ask me how Mom is still standing here, baking her pies like it’s just another Friday, like the hay shed isn’t gone and the whole place doesn’t smell like smoke, like Dr. G. didn’t say what Dr. G. said.
“Hawk?” I call out after him. “Hawk!”
But when I open the back door and see him out near where the hay barn used to be, I see him holding Phooey, crying.
Dad’s truck is gone, but it will come back.
“Hawk?”
T in the Road
I hear the John Deere rumbling up the last hill, and now it hits our drive.
I crush a few more dried basil seed heads over the threshing screen, then stop, shake the bowl below, blow the chaff away. In a few days I’ll take these seeds and slide them into a plastic sleeve and put them in the freezer to kill the tiny pests that could mess them up. A few days after that, I’ll move the sleeves to the darkest shelf in the cellar corner that I call (everybody calls) Sara’s Museum of Seeds. Basil seeds are black as pepper. They live inside dried flower heads. You have to wait until they’re dry as death before you can rescue them for a new round of living. Basil seeds can live a whole five years of doing zero in the dark and still be ready to come to life again. You just have to crack the earth at the right time.
Crack the earth.