The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo

by Darrin Doyle

  He tried, didn’t he?

  Audrey spent her entire fourth-grade year drumming. She drummed on tables, floors, walls, crutches—every surface within reach. She was determined to prove that, drums or no drums, she was going to play the drums.

  Misty was unflappable. Her halcyon grin could not be altered, and so she chewed her Gordon’s fish sticks with hardly a blink, hardly a dip into the tartar sauce, hardly a batted eye for the still-frozen middles as Audrey tap-tap-tapped.

  The drumming affected everyone else. “I swear, I’m going to make your arms match your legs if you don’t cut that noise,” Murray barked.

  But it was all bark, and Audrey knew it. Murray threatened in this way three times a week. Each time, the kids debated if he even knew he’d spoken aloud.

  In the end, Audrey lost. Her tapping faded. Her dream of playing the drums vanished. She ate the flute, but this was only a symbolic victory. Misty had won.

  Audrey had grade school friends, to be sure. There was the porker Sally Vance, who had the odd habit of not flushing. There was the pallid Mickey Leach, who sported a two-inch-wide part down the middle of her spaghetti hair. A severe case of psoriasis on her arms made her smell like tar. There was Betsy Frost, a redheaded girl freckled like a blizzard. Even her eyeballs were freckled. Audrey’s friends were the class rejects, girls who rarely ventured out of their houses and whose histories meant that they were exquisite at entertaining themselves. They didn’t visit often.

  Mostly, Audrey stayed home and painted with Misty. And ate what Misty painted.

  Undoubtedly, Grandma Pencil had saved Audrey’s legs from amputation when she’d forced Murray to throw away the Dr Pepper prosthetics. In doing so, however, she also killed Audrey’s social life.

  A girl with pop cans for feet is a curiosity, perhaps even a source of admiration and envy. As in, “Why can’t I have Dr Pepper feet?”

  But a girl on crutches, if you’ll pardon the pun, is pedestrian. There’s no sex appeal to those armpit sticks. The only thing crutches say is, “Keep your distance—you might catch it.”

  24.

  It’s the same old tragic story: Footless baby spends each day with a depressed mother who is warm to the skin but cold to the soul—a distant, distracted, touched-in-the-head mother. Footless baby’s father is either at the factory or in the basement with his hissing, clanging toys.

  Then again, maybe it’s not all sad: Footless baby reveals to her big sister an appetite for paper, wax, cardboard, soil, and other nonfood items. McKenna, captivated by this footless girl—our dear Audrey—becomes her nervous “supplier,” going to great lengths to hide her habit from the family. Afraid of being caught, ashamed of what she feels are abnormally intimate feelings toward footless sister, McKenna maintains a distance, avoids footless sister around the house.

  (There are, however, stolen moments: feeding Audrey; telling Audrey the story of “The Three Little Pigs”; brushing Audrey’s golden hair; bathing Audrey; watching Audrey sleep.)

  Overall, McKenna acts like a gutless dweeb. She follows Toby’s every lead even while her gut tells her that the only hope for a real connection in this family is with the footless girl playing alone in the corner.

  One afternoon, Grandmother catches an eighteen-month-old Audrey eating dirt in the backyard. Doctor Burger assures them nothing is wrong. A few months later, Grandmother finds Audrey eating a crayon. “Don’t have a hairy,” Murray tells Grandma. “Do you know more than the doctor?”

  When the shoddy “feet” Murray labored over for a year with such devotion are removed under threat of legal action, Grandmother becomes Audrey’s primary caregiver. Murray never quite recovers from his profound disappointment. Ignoring his bright-eyed footless toddler becomes one of his favorite weapons.

  Grandmother continues to discover evidence of sinister gob-blings. She catches Audrey chewing the cover of her father’s notebook, half of it already in her stomach. “She’s lucky it wasn’t any of the pages,” Murray growls. He begins storing his notebooks in a fireproof lockbox. Grandmother catches four-year-old Audrey with a ball of Misty’s lipstick in her mouth. “Aww,” says Misty. “She wants to look like Momma.” Grandmother pries open Audrey’s lips to find a family photograph, half-masticated.

  Grandmother says enough is enough.

  “I will not pay for this girl to go to St. Monica’s,” she announces at Sunday dinner.

  Murray is way into his spaghetti. Sunday dinner is the one meal that he always eats with the family. On other days, he takes a Hungry Man into the basement or grabs a bowl of Fritos from an end table. His face is submerged in the noodle pile when he says, “So what’s your point?”

  Before Grandma can answer, Misty says, under her breath, “The kids really should go to the same school.” Her words are a wet paper towel.

  There’s no sound. No chewing or clanking. Even the children aren’t speaking.

  “Exactly,” Murray says at last.

  Grandma Pencil—why has she waited until this moment to make the announcement?—speaks as if Audrey isn’t sitting across the table: “The girl doesn’t deserve to be schooled in the ways of Jesus Christ. I won’t have it.” She taps the edge of her plate with her knife—ting!—for emphasis.

  Murray looks at Misty, who wears an amused, abstracted smile. She is watching the fork gripped in her own hand as it stirs, needlessly, her potatoes.

  (Spaghetti and mashed potatoes? I told you she was touched in the head.)

  Murray clears his throat, fist over mouth. “I don’t know if anyone deserves that kind of schooling.” He waits, looking around the table for a supportive laugh. Getting none, he adds his own chuckle. “I’m glad you’re coming around, Annabelle. The twins can go to North Park. Starting next year.”

  “Yes!” says McKenna, pumping her fist.

  “No way!” says Toby. “That’s not fair! Just because Kenny doesn’t have any friends. That’s bullshit.”

  “Your mouth,” says Misty, still monitoring her fork, the tines throttled by noodles.

  Toby’s curse word lights up Murray as if someone’s tickling his toes. “Lot of good that moral education’s doing, huh, Annabelle?”

  “Enough!” Grandma Pencil shouts. Her face has gone the color of Japan’s rising sun. She scoots from the table, tosses her napkin onto the plate like a gauntlet. Her lips are quivering.

  Nobody but McKenna sees Audrey reach across to grab the cloth napkin. She stuffs it into her mouth.

  Audrey gives McKenna a wink. McKenna returns it.

  25.

  The sun has shattered.

  Late afternoon slips between the leaves, strewing shards of light upon the grass.

  The wind combs the treetops.

  Grilled meat hangs on the breeze, the last barbecue of the season for Oscar Foster.

  Toby is wearing sweat pants that match the autumn sky. A sacred color, the color of the Virgin’s mantle. Except there is nothing pure or saintly about this boy. He’s ready to crack teenhood like a can of beer. Sweat slickens his arms and neck, gives him an unhealthy shine like he’s just emerged from the womb. His red face, breathless, squinched in ferocious determination, adds to the effect. A radio on the picnic table in the southwest corner of the yard blasts Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” so loudly that it almost covers the heavy breathing and intermittent moans and grunts, the carnal noises of Toby’s free-weight lifting. These are similar to, but slightly quieter than, the noises of his masturbation, which McKenna hears every night, sometimes three times a night. McKenna hears it all and doesn’t move. Not a finger.

  It’s arms today, and upper body: Toby’s pride and joy—his “guns”—as well as his “holsters,” which McKenna can only assume means his shoulders.

  McKenna and Audrey watch their brother from the second floor window of the twins’ bedroom. Audrey is kneeling atop a pine toy trunk no longer filled with toys. Now it holds baseball cards—Topps, mostly, some Fleer. Inside this single-compartment trunk, a plywood board,
sawed to fit, has been inserted as a divider, forming two compartments. One side is McKenna’s, one Toby’s.

  Toby’s baseball cards aren’t visible. They’re filed away in narrow, white cardboard boxes, each box labeled with team name and years. Every card he owns has been painstakingly logged onto a yellow legal pad, the details written in crisp, careful (primitive-looking) capital letters—MILT WILCOX, PITCHER, 1982, FLEER, CONDITION PRISTINE.

  None of Toby’s cards are anything less than “pristine.” But still, he writes this word on the note pad.

  McKenna’s half of the trunk, by contrast, looks like it’s filled with vomit. The loose cards are scuffed, bent, and jelly-stained. Their corners are mashed, their statistics faded from merciless hours of sifting, of searching for Pete Rose only to find Johnny Bench instead, which sends her scrambling for Lance Parrish in order to compare how many attempted steals each catcher has thrown out. A few of her misfit toys—My Pretty Pony (“Brown”), three Trolls, Papa Smurf and Smurfette—hide within the pile of cards.

  The pine trunk is now closed, and atop it kneels seven-year-old Audrey. Her nose is smooshed against the window. Her breath makes a white circle. She leans back, revealing the outline of two lips on the glass. McKenna stands beside Audrey, studying her. Audrey’s profile is delicate, meaning she has soft curves of the chin and forehead, round cheeks, remnants of infancy in a head that is still slightly too large for her wiry frame. This only adds to her doll-like quality. She is utterly perfect. Her hands pressed to the glass have left the smudges of fingers and palms. And now, with the added impression of nose and lips, it appears as if a ghost is pushing through the window toward them.

  Audrey smells like a carrot. Or a potato. Some freshly unearthed legume or root. Maybe, McKenna thinks, her insides have finally turned into dirt. Then again, she’s way past eating dirt by this point. Audrey glances up at McKenna, and a smile opens on her face, revealing gray teeth. Black ballpoints are her latest kick. With her paper route money, McKenna buys bags of twenty-four at ninety-nine cents apiece. Ten bags a week.

  It’s no longer a secret from the family, of course. How could such a noise be covered or explained away, even by a resourceful big sister? The popping, grinding, snapping. Sounds that do what the Hand-Held Alarmer Bell was supposed to do—reach around corners, traverse walls, find you where you’re hiding, tap you on the shoulder.

  “Build her a feedbag,” Grandma Pencil likes to snarl.

  Murray may be doing just that. He has changed from flesh and blood into sound and motion. Months now with only glimpses, noises, speculation. A series of phlegmy coughs in the kitchen. The crinkling of Stouffer’s Salisbury steak tin foil. A blur of blue (his work shirt?) on the staircase. The slamming of a door.

  Is he crafting another pair of feet? Designing armor and a broadsword for Toby? Inventing a combination salt and pepper shaker/transistor radio? (Wait, he’s already made that one.) How about a robot Dad that will actually spend time with its kids?

  How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

  The world may never know.

  Audrey is on her knees atop the closed pine trunk that Murray built. Her dress is gauzy and loose. McKenna can see down the front of it, to her chest, like a boy’s except for the smallest hint of tightening skin, of trouble rising from beneath the two dime-sized nipples. McKenna’s own breasts have already arrived, without fanfare, unable to fill a training bra.

  “Now you do a face,” Audrey says.

  McKenna leans to the window, exhales. Through the translucent fogging, she can see Toby down there, twisting his skullcap in his hands, fertilizing the lawn with his sweat. He looks up at the window, raises his middle finger. He mouths the word “faggot.”

  In the circle of misted glass, McKenna draws a smiley face with her fingertip.

  “My face is better,” Audrey says. “It’s creepy.”

  “Of course it is. Look who made it.”

  She elbows McKenna in the ribs. “Shut your piehole!”

  McKenna wraps her arms around Audrey, drapes her over her shoulder. In the center of the room, she spins until they’re dizzy, laughing, sick to their stomachs.

  McKenna lies on the carpet, breathing. This small exertion has left her rubbery.

  Twenty minutes later, before Toby comes inside, Audrey wants to eat. McKenna opens the pine trunk. One by one, she feeds Audrey the 1978 Saint Louis Cardinals. So delicious, so pristine.

  26.

  The family knew she was a freak. They never said it aloud (okay, Grandma Pencil did) but spoken or not, it was an undeniable fact.

  And even if we are politically correct and say she wasn’t a freak, her behavior was freakish, and as we all know, freakish people are scary.

  When Audrey’s secret was first revealed to someone other than McKenna, there was no grand revelation, no “Ah ha!” It was a slow unveiling that McKenna tried her best to keep hidden.

  Each mastication noise meant the grim, unsettling task of prying open Audrey’s lips to see what was inside. With every discovery—a comb, tape measure, scissors, a handful of quarters that had been set aside for laundry—the family’s anxiety increased. Murray was confused, then angry. He couldn’t commit to a punishment plan—it stressed him to think about punishment, actual punishment. Grandma advocated a three-strike policy, or, barring that, a five-or six-strike policy. She wanted a policy, any kind of policy. But Murray and Misty could do nothing more than shake their heads and say to Audrey, “Why would you try to eat a Lego? Use your head, sweetie!” and then remind McKenna and Toby not to encourage her.

  Grandma Pencil insisted it was Misty’s fault. The girl wasn’t eating enough at mealtimes. Grandma Pencil, like many others, mistakenly believed that Audrey received physical satiation from her habit. No. Truth is, she had no bottom. She wasn’t replacing real food as much as seeking real food. She couldn’t find it anywhere.

  Still, Misty went along with Grandma’s plan. She gave Audrey incredible portions, but the girl wouldn’t eat any more or less than she’d ever eaten. Meal after meal, Grandma Pencil seethed.

  They tried to be diligent and observant. They salvaged what they could from Audrey’s mouth, stuck the remnants in Ziplocs or Mason jars and brought them to the pediatrician.

  As the visits progressed, Doctor Burger’s nonchalance was replaced by bemusement, then professional concern, then amazement, then doubt, and then disbelief. He flat-out thought they were lying. The family could sense that each new plastic baggy was a building block to this inevitable response.

  He had started out wanting to believe. He trusted people, for the most part. Maybe not in the area of self-diagnosis, but hey, he was willing to give the patient the benefit of the doubt in the initial stages, until he’d amassed suffcient evidence that they were wrong.

  Every visit from the Mapeses tested Doctor Burger’s medical prowess in ways he never dreamed possible. For starters, there were no physical signs that Audrey’s health was anything but normal. Her height and weight were average. She bore no wounds, no abrasions, no signs of physical trauma. Her breath smelled fine, even sweet. Despite what Misty claimed her daughter had eaten, the girl passed every reflex test. Exam after exam, Audrey exhibited each developmental milestone Doctor Burger had been trained to seek as evidence of health.

  And of course, in Doctor Burger’s mind—a mind dependent first and foremost upon empirical evidence—there was simply no way a four-year-old’s teeth could punch holes in a quarter or pulverize what appeared to be genuine metal screws.

  Using tweezers, he plucked half of a mutilated Barbie doll’s head from an empty Jif peanut butter jar. He made a sour face and dropped it back inside with a hollow clink.

  He rubbed his eyes. This was the eighth visit in three years, and his patience had thinned to transparency. “If I had my ‘druthers,” he said, clasping his thick hands in front of his chest, his eyes burning with a peculiar excitement, “I’d ask you to eat my stethoscope, pretty
lady.”

  Audrey stood between her mother’s knees. Her fingers played with a loose thread on the seam of Misty’s yellow skirt. She wouldn’t look up to meet the doctor’s per sis tent stare.

  “But if I did that,” Doctor Burger continued, turning his back and walking to the counter as he withdrew a pen from his shirt pocket, “I’d be sued into bankruptcy.” He glanced over his shoulder at McKenna, Misty, and Audrey. He tried to grin but only managed to bare his teeth. “Not that Momma Mapes would ever sue me. She likes me too much.” He winked before facing the counter again. His pen clicked.

  Audrey began to drool, a thin string like a spider’s web descending, ever so slowly, to her mother’s bare knee. Misty didn’t seem to notice, even as the saliva made contact.

  “If what you have been bringing to me is real—and of course, I’m not doubting you, you know that—then I’ll need hard proof before we can proceed.” There was the sound of scribbling. “I hope you understand. Audrey’s outward appearance, her behavior, her mental capacities . . . there’s no indication that she has consumed the objects you claim.” With a squeak, he spun on his heel and handed Misty a sheet of paper. “The next time Audrey eats an unusual item, call this number. He’s a gastroentologist, a personal friend of mine. His name is Doctor Maboob. Funny name, I know. Indian, I believe. India the country. I’ll call his office and give them a heads-up. As soon as Audrey gets something like this down her throat”—he pointed to the Barbie head in the jar—“you call them and take her to see Doctor Maboob. The address is written there. The sooner you go in after she’s consumed the item, the better. They’ll be able to analyze the stomach contents, and then we’ll know how to proceed.”

  With some effort, Doctor Burger squatted in front of Misty and Audrey. He placed his index finger under Audrey’s chin. “Don’t look so sad, pretty lady.”

  Audrey reached out and yanked the stethoscope from his neck. She crammed it into her mouth, all except the tubing, which hung from her lips like a giant black noodle. She chewed and slurped. Up and in went the tubing and the round, silver chest-piece. In three seconds, the stethoscope was gone.