by Aimee Bender
Oh that doesn’t COUNT, said Elmer. I can do more with my 12, he said, suddenly brave now that he was done.
Nothing is a material, Ann said.
Sort of, I said. Try again. You can go next week, Ann. Look around your house for something that looks like a number. Be creative! I said.
I’m going next week, said Mimi Lunelle.
Hey Elmer, said Lisa, where do I live?
Look, Ann said, 3 − 3 = 0. Ta da! It’s magic. She twirled her ponytail with her index finger.
Lisa and Danny said, There’s nothing there! and Ann was nodding smugly, and then they were out of their desks, ready to go feel her 3 of air or break it, and someone shoved someone and I had to write three names on the board. Waited to put check marks. Two check marks meant you would have to sit out at recess, on a bench, for fifteen minutes. Ann sat, and keeping her voice flat said it counted, it was a number and a material. She told Lisa to stop staring at her. I’m staring at nothing, Lisa said.
The bell rang and most of the class ran out.
Elmer lovingly packed up his 12. He turned to Lisa. You live at the hospital, he said.
I cleaned up my room during recess and taught my next classes, head full of thoughts about how to get Ann interested in Numbers and Materials. I stayed later than usual, stacking workbooks, but when I stepped out of my classroom to leave, I nearly tripped over John Beeze, in a ball on the hall floor, rolling back and forth and moaning.
Ooohh, he said.
John, I said, hey, are you all right?
He made a groaning sound.
I knelt down. What’s wrong? I asked. Oh, you don’t look too good. Is your mom at the butcher shop? Let me go call her right now.
He groaned again and then whimpered in a reedy voice, No don’t, he said, I’m fine, he said.
I put a hand on his forehead; he felt warm. John Beeze was rarely sick and was the kind of kid who fell ten feet from a swinging swing onto cement, stood up after one second, and ran across grass to flip over the slide.
I’m calling your mom, I said.
He clung to my sleeve. Don’t, he said. It’s scurvy, he said.
I blinked. What?
Scurvy, he whispered again. His eyes were half-shut and his cheeks were reddening.
You don’t have scurvy, I said. I took my hand off his forehead. Only sailors get scurvy, I said. Who told you scurvy?
He watched me with big wet eyes and I saw a tear slide sideways down his cheek, cutting a line lighter than his skin tone down to his ear.
I stood. I’ll be right back, I said, I’ll just get her on the phone and she can take you to the doctor today.
He clung to my leg but I unpicked myself and headed to the kitchen area where the phone was. I’d never seen John like this and was thinking wash your hands, wash your hands, when I tripped over Ann DiLanno.
She was curled up in a ball too, on her side, breathing in shallow gasps.
Epidemic.
Ann, I said, what is going on? Are you okay?
Ms. Gray, she said, oooohhh.
I felt her forehead too. She, in contrast, felt all too cool.
Stay here, I said, don’t move, I’ll call your mother too. Go ask the art teacher for some water; drink water. Drink fluids.
I have croup, she said, rasping low.
You’re delirious, I said. Don’t move.
I wondered now if Ann had done that 3-of-nothing in a fit of fever, and I was feeling bad for criticizing her, and I was almost at the kitchen when I spotted two more: Elmer and Danny, flapping their bodies back and forth, heads lolling, necks too loose.
I ran into the kitchen to the phone and dialed information as fast as I could.
What city please? the operator asked.
It’s all the same town, I spat, and you know it.
She coughed. Pardon me, she said. What number please?
I said this needed to be fast and I wanted to be connected right away right now to Mrs. Eudora Beeze, at the butcher shop. Inside the kitchen, the art teacher was washing brushes in the sink from her last art class, and that science teacher with the steady back and speckled arms was stooping down, speaking softly to Ellen, the best-behaved kid in the entire school.
They’re all sick, I said, shrill, to the art teacher. Something is catching.
She didn’t hear me over the faucet. As the line connected to the butcher shop, I concentrated hard on not touching my face and spreading this thing to myself. The phone rang two times.
Ring.
Ring.
A voice picked up. Hello?
I was thinking hot water, germs, meningitis, and my eyes grazed over the science teacher, who was wearing a bright red shirt that made me feel warm, but my ears focused and this time I picked up his conversation with Ellen. I’ll keep my word, he was saying, and I promise you can do scurvy next week if you do a really good consumption today.
Hello? the voice on the phone said again. Butchery. Anyone there?
I pushed the receiver hard against my cheek. Ellen was nodding. What are my symptoms again? she asked. She leaned on the side of her foot.
He held her hands in his. Fatigue, he said, fatigue and a cough. Got it? Now … go!
Is anyone there? John’s mother asked again, loud, too close to my ear where I was pressing down the plastic.
I hung up.
What is going on? I said mildly, pointing. The words were difficult to pronounce. The art teacher, scrubbing, didn’t react. The science teacher was smiling at Ellen, who was walking out of the kitchen and smiling back. I walked over and tapped the art teacher on the shoulder.
She turned. Hey Mona, she said. She had green paint on her chin. I repeated my question. My voice was higher than usual.
You didn’t know he had a background in theater did you? she asked. She beamed at the science teacher. We’re so lucky, she said, that you’re so multitalented.
In the background, outside the kitchen, I could hear Ellen, the notoriously obedient Ellen, begin to cough.
I backed out the door and peered into the hallway. John was still fetal on the ground. Ann was writhing. Ann had no problem going full-out for this teacher.
My lips tightened into wires. I faced Mr. Smith.
You. Are. Fired., I said.
Hey, aren’t you done for the day? he asked. He raised up from his heels and pushed the hair out of his eyes with his wrist.
The art teacher pointed at me with a wet brush. By the way, she said, I think you guys live on the same block. Isn’t this the coolest way to teach science? What’s it called again?
Life Acting, he said. It helps them understand the symptoms for our Health segment. It’s hands-on. Where do you live again?
He’s fired, I said.
You can’t do that, he said, laughing, actor, jovial, funny, ha-ha, ho-ho. You’re not the boss. You’re as new as me, he said. He scratched the back of his burn-marked hand. I did not smile. He looked me straight in the eye. I’m not fired, he said.
I actually spit on the floor. They stared at me, then at it, my spit, a pearl brooch starting to disintegrate on the tile. The art teacher giggled. I backed out of the room. The taste in my mouth was so bad I wanted to spit until I filled a bucket. A dirty pail, toxic, that would kill people.
In the big room, more kids were now strewn over the floor, like miniature Civil War soldiers.
Stand up! I called out, clapping my hands. Now! Science theater stupid class is over! Let’s go!
The four I could see jumped to their feet immediately. I could hear the art teacher still giggling in the kitchen.
Ten laps around the floor, I called out. Stick to the wall. Then twenty push-ups.
They groaned.
Ellen is in charge, I said. She will make sure you do TEN laps. Now, GO, I said.
Their Velcro-tie sneakers began a steady plod around the circumference of the room.
Danny, stay close to the wall, I called again. John, that’s your job. Keep them close to the wall.
Okay Ms. Gray! John piped in, legs moving twice as fast as anyone else’s.
I opened the doors of classrooms, looking for extra fetal-balled children. The handwriting teacher, in the middle of a difficult lesson on cursive G, gave me a nasty look, but I ignored her.
I discovered one on the floor of my math room and one wilting against the wall of the spelling room; I assigned both laps. I kept looking, eyes burning, and finally, in the empty science room with Saturn mobiles turning very slowly from the ceiling, bingo, I found Lisa Venus curled in a ball underneath a table.
Uhhh, she groaned. Ow.
I walked over to her.
Get up, Lisa, I said. You are not sick.
Uhhh, she said again.
Now, I said. NOW.
She held herself up limply on her elbows. I can’t, she said. I feel awful.
Get up! I yelled it.
She pulled to a sitting position. You’re mean, she said.
You’re healthy, I said back.
She blinked. At night, she said, I pretend I’m dead.
I bent halfway and stared at her underneath the flesh-toned table. Come on, Lisa, I said. All the way up. I don’t want to have to put your name on the board again.
I have cancer, she said. She dropped back down and curled into an even tighter ball. Uhhh, she said. My side hurts.
I felt like evaporating, poof, I’m gone. I’m done. Of course she had cancer. Of course.
Did he assign you that? I asked, voice raising again, high. Did he do that?
No no, she said. I asked for it special.
I dropped down on my heels and touched her clump of hair.
My mom has cancer, she said.
I remember, I said, you told me. Eye cancer. That’s very hard, I said. I thought you didn’t even get colds.
She wears a red wig, Lisa said. It’s real hair.
She flopped her hands loose on her wrists, like fish.
And I don’t get colds, she said. This is acting class.
Lisa. I kept my hand on her small head. Why would you ask for cancer?
She rolled out slightly, so that she was on her back, facing the ceiling. I like it, she said. See, this way later, she said, when we watch TV? I can keep her company, she said.
I sank off my heels and sat down completely. I kept stroking down the bumps of her hair. We could hear the thumping of the kids running laps outside the science classroom door and Ellen’s high voice, calling out: No, that’s only eight! We have two more! I made a mental note to give Ellen a sticker.
My mom’s wig is really red, Lisa said.
I know, I said.
You knew it was a wig? Lisa asked. She pulled in her knees and hugged them high up, heels nearly kicking her stomach.
No, I said. You told me.
It’s made of human hair, she said. They had ones that weren’t human hair but you could tell. My mom said it’s worth the money to get real human hair.
C’mon, I said, Come on, Lisa. Please. Acting class is over.
Hang on, she said. I have a little more cancer to do. She squeezed her eyes shut.
I sat and watched her. She rolled back and forth, scrunching up her eyes, and after two more minutes, sat up.
Okay, she said, I’m done.
She stood and gave me a spontaneous hug.
You know my dad is sick too, I said to her then.
Her face opened with interest, and she hopped from foot to foot.
Does he have eye cancer? Lisa asked, ready to drop down again and roll around some more.
No, I said, not cancer at all.
What does he have? She edged toward the door. Outside, her classmates had stopped running and were laughing about something.
I don’t know, I told her. It doesn’t have a name.
She nodded before she bolted away. Oh yeah, she said. I think I’ve heard of that.
7
That evening, I called the boss to tell her what the science teacher was doing.
Oh I know, she said. Isn’t it interesting.
I walked to my bed. No, I said, knuckles rubbing splinters off the potted tree trunk. I find it entirely uninteresting, I said.
She cleared her throat. Anything else? she asked. How’s math going?
A whole lot of people died of scurvy, I said. Tomorrow morning when you drink your orange juice—
She wished me a good night, then hung up. I knocked so hard on the potted tree, I knocked it over.
Sunday marked my twentieth birthday, and my mother called me early in the morning, singing half the song before she got bored and cut herself off. Then she said: Okay you big 20, let’s go out for breakfast for once. Like a family, she said. I pulled myself up in bed. We are a family, I told her groggily, wrapping the blankets closer around me. Her voice was solid in my ear. Well, like another family then, she said.
I took a shower with my eyes closed. I’d slept bad all weekend, knocking forever before I could sleep, pushing every disease I could name into the wood: scurvy, croup, cholera, polio, mumps, scabies, bubonic plague, eye cancer—get away from my hand, get into the roots, get out of the blood like bad water.
As I dried off, I played the one message on my machine, which was from the art teacher, wishing me a good one; she was the kind who noted birthdays down in her little book with the vigor of someone who has often been forgotten. She made no reference to the firing and spitting episode on Friday. I put on a dress with dark grassy patterns on it, and at my parents’ house, my mother held my hands out in hers and said I looked lovely. I blushed, her bashful suitor. My father was in a bad mood; he said, Happy birthday, but then muttered how earlier that morning, he’d gotten a sunburn from watering the grass, and his skin was prickly and hot.
We drove the six blocks over and parked. The coffee shop turned out to be packed because this was the Sunday of the annual fall marathon and lots of people were out and about. A troop of runners passed, leg muscles taut and curved in the back of the thigh, and a cheer went up from the sidewalk.
After ten minutes, the host called our name and we sat down.
The booth by the door was drafty. The booth in the back was dirty. The booth in the middle was right under the air conditioner.
It’s cold, said my father. His face was small.
I wanted to go home and go away.
My mother was steady and firm. She liked to make these situations the best possible for my father so that he would come back for the next birthday. She waved down the waiter and had him turn down the air conditioner, although he himself was sweaty from work. She asked for hot tea. I drank my juice and thought of dead bodies on big ships, how one sip of this powdered mix from concentrate in its small bumpy diner glass might’ve straightened their spines, revived them in minutes, eyes blinking and new with miraculous C.
We ordered and talked but the whole meal was spent checking on my father, who was shivering inside a mysterious chill that neither my mother nor I could feel. She tasted the tea for him, like a courtier testing the food of the king for poison, and she, zealous courtier, thought the lemon tasted funny. We sent it back. They brought a second pot of tea, with no lemon at all. My mother said this one was not very hot. I shrank in the booth, my dress a receding meadow.
More marathon people clapped by outside. The morning was dry and I knew just how the sweat felt on their skin, air crackling in the nostrils like popcorn. I hated being near running events with my father: he used to run; I used to run.
At the end of the meal, my father remembered he needed plant food for the backyard from the hardware store. I leapt at the chance; my pancakes were done and I needed to get out of there.
My father pulled a twenty from his wallet. That’s a big help Mona, he said. Thanks. Get a good kind, he said. Ask Jones what works.
I hadn’t set foot in the hardware store in years.
My mother pulled a fifty from her wallet. For your birthday, she said. Buy yourself something good. Just promise me you won’t put it in the bank.
/> The bank is closed, I said.
All the better, said my mother. She turned to my father. Since when do you garden? she asked.
I’ll meet you at home, I said, standing, leaving them with their cooling tea and irritable waiter. Outside, the air was warm and the streets bright with orange cones, but lucky for me, there was no sign of runners anywhere.
The sprinklers turned on in the park, shush. I was jittery from the breakfast, so as I walked down the block, I considered my new number 20. XX. Twenty is a score. An icosahedron has twenty faces. The sum of some of its own factors: 1, 4, 5, 10. The wholeness of that zero, the brand-spanking-new two. Welcome to the next decade.
I passed the movie theater and the bank. I walked by the bookstore, the post office, the drugstore, the candy shop, all the way to the very end of the block, to the brick and glass building that housed the one and only hardware store in town. When I pushed open the glass door, stomach jerking, and entered, the store was empty of customers. Which felt surprisingly right. These minutes were mine.
The bells rang my entrance but everything else was quiet except for the rustle of a newspaper turning at the counter. Mr. Jones was perched on a stool at the cash register, wearing green, reading. He barely glanced up. I barely glanced at him. I saw the familiar lump underneath his shirt, but I didn’t feel like asking him what it was. Instead, I drifted down Aisle One. Here were screens, faucets, outlets, hinges—everything you forget isn’t just organically part of a house. I picked up a doorknob of blue glass and twisted it in the air. Open. I could hear Mr. Jones flutter his paper at the counter.
I had said something about his number necklaces for the first time when I was nine. It’d been one of his months of 2, a very bad time, and for a while I’d just watched as he took out the trash with that wax 2 around his neck, then trundled back inside his house, head low and silent. I petted his hedges with my hand, hoping to make him somehow feel better. I hadn’t seen him for a few days and was getting increasingly worried when one afternoon, as I was riding my bike around the block, Mr. Jones came outside with his car keys jingling, wearing an 18.
Hi Mr. Jones! I’d said, riding down the sidewalk toward him, eager.
Hey there Mona, he said.