Magnetism

  After the success of the party, Mom takes me after school to get my new glasses. I take off the fake pointy ears but I’m still wearing the elf outfit. No one seems to notice. Mom doesn’t say anything about it either. If I’d been a candy cane, she’d have to explain to the receptionist, and I wouldn’t have my hands. An elf isn’t very unusual but I don’t think they really exist.

  I’m in the middle of telling Mom what I’ve been thinking about this when the nurse calls us through into the dark room.

  I have to sit in the chair that’s like a throne, again. This time to let him measure how much I can see with them on. He comes up close with his light, shines it in my eyes, then adjusts the arms and the nosepiece to fit my face better. ‘There now,’ he says. Then he fetches a hand mirror. He switches on the lights and hands me the mirror to look at myself wearing glasses. I don’t know what to decide about how I look because, even though I know it’s me behind the glasses, I look different. I’m not the same me as before.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  Mom is sitting in the corner of the room. She calls over that I look like the brain of my class. She doesn’t seem to see that I’m someone entirely different from when we walked in.

  When we get outside I look up at the trees and buildings around and see things I have never seen before. There are thousands of leaves in the trees and hundreds of windows in the buildings. It’s very cold and I want to get across the road into the car, but everything looks so new and complicated, I can’t stop looking.

  I like this feeling, but there is so much to see, it’s a bit scary. When we get in the car I tell Mom that I can’t wear glasses all the time because I am seeing too much. She says she understands, that I can get used to them over the holidays.

  When Christmas Eve arrives I know that I have to go to bed on time, but it’s very hard to do because I feel bubbly inside. There’s an announcement at six o’clock on the news, that an unidentified flying object has been spotted heading south from the Canadian border. Then some new man comes on and says they’ve identified the UFO – it’s Santa’s sleigh.

  At this the bubbliness gets bigger inside me. He’s on his way.

  ‘Do you have to be asleep before Santa gets to us too?’ I ask Dad.

  He’s not sure, tells me to go in the kitchen and ask Mom. She’s not sure either, but she says to be on the safe side, they’ll go to bed early too. I relay this news to Dad.

  I am awake when Santa arrives in the night. I hear the bells of the reindeer harness right outside the window, and, even though I am not asleep, I pretend to be and keep my eyes tightly shut. I hear footsteps downstairs and then a door shutting. Finally, the bells start up again with the movement of the reindeers lifting off. I get up out of bed and go to the window. I poke my head out between the drapes.

  The moon is bright and reflecting off the thick layer of snow. The sleigh is already in the sky. It’s still climbing higher, just clearing the trees at the edge of the Jacksons’ back yard. Then it turns right and I can see the reindeer, stretched out in a line, with Rudolph in front, his red nose flashing and Santa in the back with his bags of presents.

  I want to open the window and shout, ‘Hey!’ but this would let him know I am awake which is not allowed, so I go back to bed and try to sleep.

  In the morning I am awake before Mom and Dad. Downstairs there are sparkly footprints from the fireplace to the tree and my new bike is underneath with a ribbon on it. I fetch my glasses from where I put them next to my bed. Once I’ve got them on, I look at the bike again, carefully. Wearing the glasses makes the pink brighter and the chrome shinier. It has a bell and a basket and it is just exactly what I wanted.

  Because of all the snow, I can only ride it in the kitchen, and not properly because there is not enough room.

  ‘It’s the kind of thing Santa doesn’t think about,’ Dad says. ‘The practicalities of particular presents. And this mess. The floor … ’

  ‘There’s always the mall,’ Mom says. ‘She can ride there. And meantime,’ she says to me, ‘you can play with the stamping set. Did he leave that?’

  ‘Probably,’ Dad says. ‘I bet he did.’ And it is there; I find it at the back of the tree.

  That night, Dad carries the bike upstairs to stand in the corner of my bedroom. If I wake up in the night, I will see it there, and it will be there in the morning, waiting for me, whenever I open my eyes.

  Perfect.

  1968

  Wonder Woman

  The bed is shaking. I push the button for the nurse to come, like my mommy said I should if I need anything.

  ‘The bed is shaking,’ I tell the nurse when she finally turns up. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s not shaking.’

  ‘My stomach hurts.’

  ‘See this here clock?’ She turns to point; it’s above her head on the wall. In fact, everyone who comes in here stands right under the clock to look at me. I can’t read the time. It’s too far away. ‘When it’s ten o’clock you can have another shot. Now you have to wait.’ Then she takes the button from my hand and slings it over the rails at the back of my head, where I can’t reach it, even if I have a problem. ‘Try to sleep,’ she says.

  ‘What about the bed shaking?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. It’s your condition. Your mom will be back in a minute; she’s just gone to fetch a coffee. Be a big girl, now.’

  ‘I’ll tell her about the bed when she gets back.’

  ‘You just do that, honey.’

  It is eight o’clock. It’s dark. The lights in the hall outside the room are bright, but there’s no light on in here.

  When my daddy left he said, ‘Honey, it’s tough but you’re going to need to man up to this.’ And Mommy said, ‘Shall I remind you that your daughter is an eight-year-old girl?’ That was right after the operation and she was still angry with him because in the morning when Dr Leonard said I needed the operation she tried to phone him but no one could tell her where he was. She told me she knew exactly where he was and who he was with, but couldn’t prove it.

  The bed is shaking in judders. The water in the jug on the cabinet beside me sloshes back and forth.

  Mommy doesn’t come back until nine o’clock. She gets them to give me a shot straight away, even though I’m supposed to wait.

  This is the shot: it stings for two seconds then it’s feels like a long, slow sigh or uncurling fists. My fingers grow longer and my legs grow lighter. I feel I am growing my own wings and can fly. After ten minutes, I shut my eyes and float high above me on the bed, out of the room, beyond what I can see now. Then I zoom down on to parks, and up from swings back into the sky. Then I am not zooming but sort of zinging in the clouds for a while. After a while I come back to this bed and feel that cool, smooth, melting-ice-cream-on-my-tongue feeling from the sheets, followed by the slippery before-you-fall-asleep feeling.

  And then I get the feeling that I am just a little kid again, tiny as anything and happy just to sit on my mommy’s lap. Still and sleepy and nothing else.

  The night nurse is a short fat black lady with a shape like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I like her because she’s smiley. She’s so fat I wake to hear the sound of her stockings rubbing together as she crosses the room. She tells me it’s three-thirty. I can see the water in my glass shimmering with movement, and the bed is definitely shaking. I tell her this.

  There are bars up on both sides of the bed to stop me from falling or getting out. She puts her hand on the metal. ‘No, it’s not. I can’t feel any shaking, honey.’

  ‘But I know it is.’ I feel like flour being sieved: up and down, side to side. ‘Where’s my mommy?’ I give the nurse a big smile and hold it on my face even though I am suddenly feeling really scared.

  ‘She can’t be here all the time, baby.’ She checks the tubes and bags, picks up the chart from the bottom of my bed. ‘Are you hurting? Maybe that’s the problem?’

  ‘A bit,’
I say, still smiling. ‘I’m thirsty too.’

  ‘I can just give you a little something to help the pain, but this drip,’ she points to the stuff hanging above me, ‘means you can’t be needing a drink. I’ll get hold of some ice chips, you can suck on some of those.’

  Mommy is back very soon, before the nurse returns with the shot. I tell her about how the bed has been shaking. Not all the time, but just now and then. She says that maybe it’s just being in this place. It could drive a person crazy and we’re way up high. It’s pretty unnatural. I say, ‘Well, one of the nurses is getting me a shot.’

  ‘That sounds like it’d be a good idea. Might help you sleep.’

  ‘Yes. The shots help a lot. I really like the shots. The needle doesn’t even hurt.’

  Then she tells me that Daddy is going to come in the morning before he goes to work, and that she’s going to sleep right here with me, on a rollaway bed that they are fetching for her. She says, ‘I can’t leave you here alone. Someone’s got to keep an eye on you.’ This gets me back to worrying again about what she said in the emergency room before they took me for the operation. I asked Mommy what was going to happen next and she said, ‘I’ve told them we’ll sue if anything goes wrong. These people are less likely to kill a patient if they know there will be repercussions if they do.’

  ‘Am I going to die?’

  ‘No. That’s what I’m telling you. It’s not going to happen. No one is going to die, I promise you. Not on my watch.’

  Then she went to get a coffee and to try to phone Daddy again and while she was out they sneaked me out to have the whole thing done before she could come back. I don’t know what she thought about what they did, but it happened. They just put me to sleep and then I woke up in this room with Mommy next to the bed and the operation had been done and I was still alive even though she wasn’t watching.

  Daddy did finally turn up about an hour after I woke up from the operation. He was all wrapped up with a hat, scarf and gloves, which surprised me because it’s so warm in here – more like summer – that I’d forgotten that it was November outside when we came in. He said the view from the window was amazing. We are real high up and everyone says this the first time they come in, that the people and cars down below look like ants and toys. Aren’t you lucky to have such a great view of the city? Daddy asked.

  I nodded. I don’t say to anyone that the view is for people who aren’t stuck in this bed and I haven’t been out of it. If I turn my head, all I can see is the sky. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist any more, but none of them can understand that because they can look down and enjoy seeing things.

  Mommy wouldn’t look at him then because it had taken an age to find him. Then he had said the ‘man up’ thing and that he had to get back to work. He’d see me later. He bent down to whisper to me. ‘Don’t let your mom rattle you. She’s mad at me, that’s all, but be a big girl now.’

  ‘Sure, Daddy,’ I said, ‘I’ll try.’

  Then he tried to kiss Mom but she pulled away, so he was left puckered up and no place to put it. ‘Jesus,’ he said to no one as he walked out the door. ‘Jesus H. Christ.’

  Now, after a bit, the Pillsbury Doughboy nurse returns and gives me a shot. I’m asleep even before the rollaway that my mommy will sleep on arrives.

  In the morning, Daddy is there when I wake up. He tells me that Mommy has gone home to take a shower and change her clothes. The bed is not shaking. Everything is too bright and too still. The sky is still very blue through the window. The doctor comes. He’s the one with the beard. Yesterday he looked to me like a goat for a while, but he looks normal today.

  Daddy asks him lots of questions. They talk about my temperature, which is raised, and that the night nurse made a note of the bed shaking.

  ‘Hallucinations,’ the doctor says, and they both stare at me.

  I stretch my smile as big as I can until my mouth hurts. ‘I think I need a shot.’

  Daddy looks at me with a funny expression and then he turns to the doctor. ‘Have you turned my daughter into an addict?’

  ‘We don’t want her in pain,’ the doctor says.

  I try to join in the conversation by shaking my head while still grinning. ‘I really need the shots. They’re great,’ I say, but this doesn’t help, I guess.

  The doctor just says to Daddy, ‘We can’t do cold turkey. We’ll wean her off.’

  They are now looking at my stomach. The doctor lifts up the hospital gown. There’s lots of bandaging which he starts to peel off slowly. It hurts. ‘Maybe just rip it off quick, one pull,’ Daddy says, and the doctor does this.

  My belly is red and swollen. It all hurts. Using tweezers, the doctor pulls out gauze from a hole right to the inside of me and it unravels as he tugs it upwards. It’s yellowy as it hangs over me. It stinks. Daddy backs away.

  ‘It’s infected. Antibiotics. IV,’ the doctor says. ‘I’ll write it up.’

  Then he goes and fetches another shot to give me before he begins to pack new stuff inside me. The pretty day nurse is with him. She has long blonde hair and when she gets close I see she’s got thick freckles all over her face. I turn my smile on her as she pats my hand. I think that the doctor doesn’t need to be so careful now, because the drugs are beginning to work and I am completely still. I feel how all the gauze goes back into me like a backwards worm. Then he wipes over the surface of my skin with some yellow stain and puts the top bandage back on. Finally, he steps back and he and Dad watch while the nurse rolls up the top of my underpants.

  Mommy says it’s ten-thirty when she comes back. Daddy is gone. She feels my head with her cheek to check my temperature. With her I don’t have to try to smile. She smells clean and she’s wearing her red and blue striped dress that I like a lot. I tell her that the bed has stopped shaking.

  She sighs and settles back in the chair. I ask if she wants to put the TV on. She says no and we are quiet together.

  After a while I remind Mom that I should have another shot and she goes to get the nurse. They’ve changed over and the new nurse looks grumpy. She takes my temperature and feels my wrist. When she asks how I feel I tell her the truth, that I don’t feel good. I smile and ask if maybe I’ll feel better when I’ve had the shot. She shakes her head and then tells Mom she’s going to page the doctor because she’s not authorised to give me another shot. He’s not written me up for one. They want me off the shots, so I’ll have to wait. Mom follows her out of the room.

  When they leave I feel like I did when Dr Leonard told her that I had to have an operation. They’d left me alone in the examination room and went across to his office. He’d made me take off my clothes except my underpants in order to take a look at my stomach, and he hadn’t said I could get dressed so I was cold lying there on the examination table. The door was open and I heard Mom ask to use his phone. Then she started crying and he got his secretary to fix them coffee and to get a Danish. He said that Mom had had a shock and I could hear them talking about what was going to happen next.

  The doctor eventually arrives and Mommy is behind him, followed by the nurse. He checks the drip, gets the nurse to take my temperature again and finally he asks how I’m feeling. ‘Not good,’ I say. ‘I’m sure I need a shot.’ I tilt my head to the nurse to alert him to the fact that she, and only she, can account for the hold-up in this regular delivery. He will understand and fix the situation.

  ‘You’re being very brave, aren’t you?’ he says.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I need you to go on being brave.’

  Mommy starts crying. She sniffs as she tells me that they’ve got to do something else to try to fix me. The infection has got worse.

  Ten minutes later I am watching a tube disappear up my nose. While he feeds it in, the doctor explains they are emptying my stomach before they do another operation. I want to tell him I haven’t eaten anything for three days now, but he must know this. He says I don’t have to keep grinning. I can relax; it’ll b
e over in a minute. Maybe he’s realised that I’m not happy, that I am not brave, that I don’t really like any of them and I’m just doing what they say so they don’t kill me while I’m here.

  Mommy holds my hand, but she turns her head away so she can’t see what’s happening. He tells me to swallow and I want to, but it hurts. I wish they’d given me the shot.

  After the second operation, I don’t feel any better, but Mommy says it was a success. She tells me that at the first operation there was a mistake; that’s why I got infected. She says that the doctors won’t admit anything but I’m not to worry. She was here the whole time. She’s got her eye on the situation.

  They add another drip.

  When I wake up the shaking starts again. Mommy is with me. It’s the middle of the afternoon.

  ‘It’s shaking. The bed is shaking.’

  ‘Try to relax, honey.’ She stands up and puts her hands firm on the mattress on the left side of me. Then suddenly the whole room, not just my bed, is shaking and I see that she can feel it too because Mom’s face changes and then the clock falls off the wall.

  There are screams from the hallway. Mommy shouts, ‘It’s an earthquake.’ She begins to unhook the bags above me and lays them down beside me on the bed. The room is going from side to side and she’s struggling to keep her balance. People are rushing around outside the room but no one comes in to help us. I hear Mommy grunting with effort as she goes around to behind the head of the bed and begins to push it. She is making it move. As the room continues to shake from side to side we’re picking up speed, rolling right through the door and out to the nurses’ station, where we take a right turn and head straight on. And then, as suddenly as it started – though people are still screaming and shouting – the terrible shaking stops.

  Mommy, though, keeps going and doesn’t stop until we get to the elevator and we have to. She presses the button. There is an old lady with a stick who is sitting on the floor. I wonder if she fell or if she sat down.