by Cathy Lamb
I used three strings of leather, braided together at the top, for Soldier. I attached a four-leaf clover, a heart, and a peace sign. “I feel more lucky and more loving and more peaceful already,” he said, and saluted.
I used black leather for Architect’s choker necklace. I found a charm in the shape of a house and lined it with black beads. He said, pointing at me, his hand close to his chest, “I didn’t even think you liked me, Jewelry Maker,” and burst into tears. “I’m so glad you do.”
Chapter 9
I continued to work on my addition skills.
Twenty plus twenty equals . . . two twenties.
Fourteen plus sixteen is twenty-nine.
Thirty-four plus six is forty-one.
Twelve plus twelve is twenty-four.
I will get better at arithmetic.
I will get better at adding and subtracting.
I will be an accountant again.
My hand shook around my pencil.
* * *
My love of numbers, math, and story problems came about because of my mother and dad’s cyclone of a marriage and, later, the pain she caused when she abandoned me.
When my mother snapped and became enraged at my dad for some tiny thing when I was a kid, I headed outside to visit the animals. Our horses, Bryan A, Mrs. Gretchen, and CQ Coyote; our cats, Lady Macy, Goofy, and Corn; our two dogs, Horse and Captain Angelique; and our goat, Mrs. Quimby. But if it was late or raining or snowing and I couldn’t go out, I reached for my math workbook. Math drowned out my mother’s harsh words and her screaming at my dad. I loved the story problems and the equations. I loved long addition and subtraction.
I thought my mother’s unhappiness and anger was my fault. Sometimes I would catch her staring at me, this shattered expression on her face, and she’d tear up, or turn away and mutter something like, “I can’t believe they did that.” I’d ask her what she meant by that and she’d snap, “I don’t want to talk about it, Natalie!”
She said she couldn’t stand living in this “flea-bitten town, this shack, this deserted piece of backwash Oregon,” saying “not even the bugs want to be here.”
She called my dad Hillbilly Scott and Scotty the Roofer Boy. She told me she had grown up in much better circumstances, a better house, better cars, and she had had no idea she was going to have to live like white trash when she married my dad. She couldn’t stand this! This was a disgrace! She was used to a better standard!
When my dad would sing to me, he asked her a couple of times to join us and she would say, her face rigid in sudden anger, “No. I am not singing, ever,” and would leave the room and slam their bedroom door.
When I was seven, she packed up her suitcases on a Saturday when my dad was working and set them by the front door. I was instantly nervous. She made me nervous. This made me nervous.
“Where are you going, Mommy?”
“I’m leaving, Natalie.” She pulled on the new red coat she had recently bought.
“Am I coming? Is Dad coming?” I went from nervous to scared.
“No.” She flipped up the collar and examined her face in the mirror, tilting it this way and that.
“Why? Why not?”
“Because you need to stay with your dad. He would be lonely without you.” She fluffed her hair.
I thought my mother was gorgeous. She always wore pretty dresses and had thick blond hair, no messy curls like mine. She wore jewelry and lipstick and lacy bras. Men always came up to her in town to talk and flirt with her. She smiled back, winked, swayed her hips. I didn’t like it.
She put on red lipstick, then smoothed her lips together.
“You’ll be fine, Natalie.”
I started to cry as I understood what was going on. My mother was leaving with her suitcases. I was not going with her. I had always worried about this. I had always known, even as a child, that my mother wanted out. It was probably why I was such a nervous, insecure kid.
I hugged her and begged her not to leave. She disentangled herself from me as if I were a barnacle. She straightened her pink dress. “Stop that right now. I have to go. I’ll call you and I’ll see you soon.” She grabbed her suitcases and turned to leave.
“Mom!” I cried. “Don’t go, Mom! Don’t go!”
“Stop crying, Natalie. Just stop. I have enough stress right now. I can’t take a temper tantrum.”
“But why are you leaving? Where are you going? When are you coming back? I’m sorry, Mom! I’m sorry!” I grabbed her around the waist again. “Mom! Mom! Please don’t go.” I was shaking, begging.
“Get ahold of yourself,” she snapped. “Let go of me, Natalie.”
She detached my hands from around her waist. I wrapped my arms around her again, choking on my sobs. She pulled my hands apart and told me to stop it this instant. “Please, Mommy! Wait. Don’t go. Can I come?” Instantly I thought of my dad. I didn’t want to leave my dad!
“No, you may not. Not now.”
She climbed into her car, the new car my dad bought her, and reversed out of our driveway. She threw me a cheery wave out the window. I chased the car as far as I could down the street, screaming at her to please come back, please, I would be good, I love you, Mom, I love you, come home, I’m sorry, Mom! I’m sorry!
I wet my pants I was so upset. She did not stop. She didn’t even slow. When I couldn’t run through my sobs any longer, I lay in the middle of the road, crying. A truck almost hit me. It was Mrs. Spanley, a teacher at our school. I remember her kindness to this day.
She held me in her arms, the dust from my mother’s car settling around us. I told her my mother had left me. She didn’t want me anymore. She didn’t love me. “Natalie,” she said, “she loves you. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know she loves you. It’s all right, dear. Let’s get you home to your dad.”
But it wasn’t all right. It never would be.
Mrs. Spanley drove me home, and we waited for my dad to get back from his roofing job. She made me oatmeal cookies.
When I told my dad what happened, crying and choking, he held his arms out and hugged me. I think I cried myself to sleep every night for a month. Then I cried every other day, at least, for months on end. Then once a week, a couple of times a month, and all holidays and my birthday when she did not show up.
I drowned myself in math. What kid drowns out pain by doing math problems? Me. Nerdy me. My dad bought me math workbooks and textbooks, and I worked my way through them. Numbers made sense.
They took me away from my tears and my hurt and this uncontrollable longing for my mother. She had often been critical, crazy, and screeching, but she was my mother. The answers to math problems were right or wrong, but there was no emotion. No yelling. No anger. No one abandoned me.
Numbers didn’t lie, as my mother did when she promised to see me the next weekend, or on a Wednesday to take me to ice cream or to meet her “new family” and then she didn’t show up.
I still do math and arithmetic problems in my head, and on paper, and in an online math group that I’m a part of, and I enjoy it all. It is amazing that a traumatic part of my childhood engendered a love of math. And my love of math turned me into an accountant, which is a huge part of my identity.
I would have to work hard to get my accounting skills back.
Thirty-two plus twenty-six is sixty. Wasn’t it? Was that right?
I started to shake.
* * *
It is difficult to forgive my mother. She deserted a seven-year-old, vulnerable, innocent little girl who loved her mommy.
Hard to get past that.
It is also hard to get past who she still is, today.
* * *
The next day Frog Lady sat down beside me in the activities room and gave me a ceramic frog. The frog was pink with blue googly eyes. She had painted numbers all over it.
“I put numbers on it because you keep writing numbers down.” Frog Lady is a caring person. Her smile is somewhat vacant, and she will sometimes get los
t on our floor and wander around. A couple of times she’s escaped from the Brain Bang Unit. They found her in the outside garden “looking for monkeys in their native habitat.”
She talks about obscure insects and rare, dangerous snakes and species in the Amazon rain forest, but then she interjects things about fairies or hopping or multiple magical monkey husbands. It’s interesting.
Architect came and sat down, too. “Today I’m building a glass tower. I have a contract to complete.” He used cardboard, straws, glue sticks, and construction paper to make a six-story building. Someone had given him Saran wrap, so he used that for the windows. He used sticks from outside to create trees inside the building. “I can’t remember what it’s called when you have trees inside a building, but it’s a forest in a building with bears and hawks.”
Soldier came by in the middle of it and said, “I hope I don’t have to bomb that place.”
“You won’t,” Architect said. “Because there’s trees in the middle of it.”
“Are there any enemies?”
Architect took the question seriously. “I don’t think so, but I’ll check behind the doors. Do you like me today, Soldier?” His eyes rounded with hope.
“Yes.”
Architect’s shoulders sagged with relief and his eyes filled with tears. “I’m so glad I’m not your enemy.”
“Okay. Mission accomplished.” Soldier looked at me. “Are you going to cry today?” He asked it nicely. I told him maybe. Maybe not.
He nodded, his helmet moving slightly forward. “Yes, ma’am.”
“What time is crying session?” Frog Lady asked. “I’ll do it. Hey, Soldier. Want a frog?”
“Yes. I do. I won’t shoot it.”
“Preserve all animals,” Frog Lady said, “especially the endangered ones. This will be a friendly frog.”
For some reason that made Architect sad, and he put his hands in his lap, his helmet tilting to the side.
“What’s wrong, Architect?” I asked.
At first he didn’t answer. He shook his head, his shoulders shaking.
“What is it?” I tried to be gentle.
He tilted his head back, his helmet tilting, too, as he stared at the ceiling. He wiped his dark eyes.
“Architect?”
“I am not going to get another frog from Frog Lady,” he whispered. He held his hand close to his chest and pointed at Frog Lady. “Why doesn’t she like me? Do you know, Jewelry Maker?”
“I think she likes you.” Why would Frog Lady not like Architect?
“I like you,” Frog Lady said, nodding her head vigorously. Then she grabbed her head, as if it hurt her to nod that quick. She has a long scar under her hair. She showed me. “Don’t cry, Architect. It’s not crying session yet, right, Jewelry Maker? It’s not until midnight. We’ll climb up in the trees to do it.”
“It’s not officially on the schedule,” I told her. I try to be helpful here.
“Oh,” Frog Lady said, confused. She turned to Architect. “I sit with you all the time and talk about frogs. That’s how I show people I like them. I’ll make you a frog.”
His head shot up as fast as a helmeted head can shoot up. “You will?”
“Yes!” She croaked like a frog. “I’m happy you want one.”
“I do. I do want a frog.” His smile lit up his face.
“It’ll be special. For sure. Because you’re an architect.”
“When do I get my frog?”
That was a little pushy. But, okay.
“Soon. Really soon.”
He smiled and wiggled in his seat and held up two straws in his hands, as if in victory.
“Hey. I lost my pink yarn. Have you seen it?” Soldier asked.
“It’s in the basket by the elevators,” I told him. I was proud of myself for remembering. I still talked like sludge, my balance was bad, I had dizziness and headaches, and numbers and letters bopped around in my brain, but I remembered where Soldier’s yarn was!
“Thanks, Jewelry Maker.”
We went on like this, chatting, having important conversations. Architect built his building. Frog Lady made a frog out of clay for Architect. The frog had a happy smile. She used a toothpick to carve trees and a bear into its body, because Architect had trees and bears in his building.
Soldier made a drawing for his grandma in black pencil. This one was of two dirty, hunched soldiers carrying one injured, limp soldier between them. They were in a bombed-out village. He drew blood and smoke behind them. “I’m going to show my grandma this picture of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. She likes my fairy-tale drawings.”
I thought that Grandma would probably be upset when she saw the drawings.
I went on with my math on paper.
Two plus five. Seven.
Seven plus seven. Thirteen.
Thirteen plus thirteen. Twenty-thirteen.
Twenty plus twenty. Forty-two.
Forty plus twenty. Sixteen.
Twenty minus four. Thirteen. Fourteen.
Fourteen minus sixteen. Four.
Twenty-two plus twenty-two. Forty-four.
Forty-four plus forty-four. Eighty-forty.
I think I’m getting better.
My hand shook.
* * *
I do have to use the rails on my bed sometimes to get up and down. Worse is that I still have to use the bars around the toilet, too, and in the shower. My goal is to use them less every day. It is discouraging to hover your naked bottom over a toilet like a helicopter and then slowly lower yourself down as if you’re 110 years old.
* * *
The next day Justine came to see me after occupational therapy and time in the practice kitchen, where I’d burned soup. We talked about the firm, which made me feel confused. Tax code is too much for me. Then we laughed about the pranks we played in high school and chatted. I love Justine. She left when I had to go to recreational therapy and gave me a long hug. Her eyes were sad. “What’s wrong?”
She shrugged.
“You. But you’re doing so much better. You talk better, you don’t need as much help walking, you aren’t forgetting things.”
“And something else, right?”
“Same stuff.”
So I knew. Jed and the secret had upset her.
I hugged her again.
* * *
Justine has always loved Jed. We were seven and in first grade when she first declared her love for him to Chick and me. We were out at recess and we were wearing our reindeer antler hats. We’d made them in art, it being near Christmas and all.
“I know what I want for Christmas,” Justine said as Chick and I held two jump ropes and she jumped over both as her reindeer antlers flopped about.
“What?” Chick said.
“I want Jed.”
“What?” Chick said, dropping the ropes. “What do you mean you want Jed?”
“I mean, I want to marry him.”
“But he’s my brother,” Chick said, baffled. She adjusted her reindeer antlers. “That’s weird. You can’t marry my brother.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s my brother.” Chick looked at Justine like, “duh, that’s all the explanation you need.”
“He’s cute and I’m going to marry him. He’s like a prince and he even has a horse.” That was true. Chick and Jed both had horses, Mr. Marshmallow and Mrs. Cracker Box.
“But we’re only seven.” I was quite confused. Only adults got married. Except for Laina Horleson, who ran off to marry a man named Jeffy Lawson who was thirty-six when she was sixteen and her mother went after them with a shotgun.
They were hiding out in the Lawson family cabin in the mountains, which was “plum donkey-butt stupid,” my dad said later. Everyone knew that the Lawsons, an old, wealthy family in Lake Joseph, had a family cabin in the mountains.
Chief Knight raced to the Lawsons’ cabin, Mr. Horleson in the car yelling at him to “go faster or my wife will blast Jeffy’s head straight off and send it r
olling into Idaho.”
Now, mind you, Mr. Horleson wanted to kill Jeffy, too, but he loved Mrs. Horleson and he didn’t want her to go to jail. It wasn’t right. The father should take on the role of protecting the daughter with his shotgun, not the mother. This was an American tradition that could not be broken.
They sped down back roads. By the time the chief and Mr. Horleson arrived at the cabin, Mrs. Horleson had Jeffy out on the front porch, on his knees, his hands up in the air, her hunting rifle pointed straight at him. Laina was cowering behind the begging Jeffy yelling, “Mama, don’t shoot. Don’t shoot, Mama!”
“Get the hell out of the way, Laina,” Mrs. Horleson ordered. “I’m going to make a new hole through this loser and then you’re grounded. You hear me? You are grounded until I know that you know how to think, because what you’re doing now doesn’t even qualify as thinking.”
Mr. Horleson and Chief Knight sprinted out of the car, and Mr. Horleson stood right in front of Mrs. Horleson with his hands up.
There was no way she could shoot Jeffy without taking out her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Horleson had been together since high school, and even last year someone said they were making out behind the drugstore, Mrs. Horleson’s bra clean off.
“Babycakes,” she told her husband, “now you get out of the way.”
“No, sweetie pie, I won’t,” Mr. Horleson said, panting from exertion and fear of what his wife would do if given a clean shot. “I want Jeffy dead, too, but I can’t have you in jail, pumpkin. You warm me up at night, you know you do, and you know I can’t sleep without you.”
“Move, darling,” Mrs. Horleson said. “Six inches to the left and I’ll take this sicko clean out so he can’t touch anyone else’s daughter again.”
“Come on, now, honeybunch,” Mr. Horleson said, determined, moving closer to his wife. “You don’t want to go to jail and then have some other woman making me my pancakes on Sundays.”
Well, heck. She didn’t want that at all.
“You would do that to me?” She kept her aim steady.
“I don’t want to, love bunny, but if you’re in jail for twenty years, that’s pressing a man too hard against a wall.”