Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood

by Julie Gregory

  Because ultimately, what came down to being the only thing important enough to break us from the work or jeopardize our safety, was starting back up with my doctor to find out what was wrong with me.

  WHEN FIFTH GRADE BEGINS at my new school, Mom works it out with my principal so she can take me out of class if she gets a last-minute doctor appointment. When he announces over the homeroom speaker: Julie Gregory to the principal's office, please. Your mother is here, I know to gather up my stuff for the day and race up the steps to meet Mom, because we won't be coming back.

  Dr. Phillips prescribes us more migraine medicine and gives us the names of specialists who can see me for the rest of my symptoms. But Dr. Phillips is getting old. He stands against his counter and doesn't even write down the things Mom tells him anymore. He starts calling Mom Ms. Gregory instead of Sandy like he used to, even though she keeps asking him to call her by her first name. He tells us we should get a different primary-care physician, somebody who can handle a case that's as complicated as mine's getting. And then he leaves. He just walks right out before Mom is even done running down the list she brought.

  “I can't believe that. Did you see him, Julie? He just walked out on us! Well, if he's going to treat me like that, Jesus!”

  “Don't worry, Mom, we'll just go find another one.”

  “That's right, if he's going to pull that shit, we'll show him, we'll just go someplace else.”

  And we did. Sometimes clear over to other counties to try out new doctors who would do the tests Mom was starting to read about in waiting rooms. And sometimes we even venture up to Columbus, cruising the sea of anonymous two-story brick medical buildings, with their promising specialist signs and insurance-accepted window stickers of hope. It's okay as long as we can stay on the outskirts and avoid having to pop our door locks down.

  Mom rails behind the wheel, “How dare he? Call me Ms. Gregory! Tell us to go someplace else! And I'm dragging myself around all because of you!”

  When Mom spots a promising sign she huffs, “Jot that number down so we can give them a call back at the house.”

  I scan the streets, pen to paper, desperate to spot the right one that will calm my mother down. “That one looks like they'd be good, I'll get the number. Okay? Mommy?”

  “Jesus, Julie, you don't have to ask. Why don't you take initiative and help me out for once? Do I have to do everything around here?”

  At night, Dad occupies the living room until the news at 11 is over, then Mom takes over, curling up on the far end of the velour sofa, under the single floor lamp that casts a halo of light around her body. She's perfectly still, buried in a book, with her grocery store reading glasses hanging on to the tip of her nose.

  I pad out to the kitchen for water in the middle of the night and Mom is still up, licking her fingers and cornering through the pages of the thick Medical Journal for Home Use Manual.

  “Whatcha doing, Mommy?”

  “Oh,” she says, distracted, “just looking, Sis.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, you're sick again, hon, and this book is helping Mommy figure out what's wrong with you.”

  “Is anything bad wrong with me?”

  “You got a lot of the symptoms in here, babe, but there's all kinds of tests that'll help us rule out some of the more serious diseases. We got a list of doctors here so we're in good hands, ‘kay, Sissy?”

  “Nkay. Good night, Mommy.”

  “Good night, sweetie.”

  ANOTHER GRUELING SUMMER NIGHT, with the day spent laying drywall and stringing barbwire. Mom was serving up steaming pot roast from the crock pot. She'd stuck it in that morning, we worked all day, and here we were filthy and sweat-stained, having wandered like battered and confused moths to the warm glow of the kitchen screen door.

  Dad stood hunched, catching his breath, gripping the back of a yellow dinette chair, his wife-beater tank covered in lawn clippings, his leg hairs coated green from grass juice as he'd run along the walkways and trailer edges trying to get it all Weedwacked before dark.

  Mom was clanging plates down on the table. “Dan, I mean it, we had better get something else lined up here. We need to get that back bedroom done and the deck on before winter.”

  Mom was pushing to get a license to take care of old men left over from the Second World War because rumors were flying that the base was going to close down next year. And Mom still couldn't take on outside work. My migraines had come back and I seemed to always be tired and carsick. And Mom'd heard a hiccup in little Danny's chest and had started looking up his symptoms at night, along with mine.

  “Look, Dan, I got two sick kids on my hands here and there's no way I'm going to take some minimum wage job while you sit on your ass and watch M*A*S*H all day.”

  Having vets, Mom argued, was the only way we could double our income to prepare for Dad getting laid off, keep on building, and still let her be the mom.

  “Besides,” she added, “Chester was such a lousy son-of-a-bitchin' excuse for a grandfather that it'll be like having a bunch of nice old grandads. Wouldn't you like that, kids?”

  “Yeess, Mom,” we droned.

  “Why don't you tell that to your father, then?”

  “Sandy,” Dad said from right next to us, “I don't think these kids oughta be around old men like that. You don't know what could happen, it just ain't worth the money.”

  “But Dan, if you don't—”

  “Goddammit, woman, that's enough! I'm not going to talk about it anymore. Now let's eat!”

  And we all sat down for dinner, cautiously sliding our hands out on the table into one another's palms while Dad bowed his head and said grace.

  We ate in silence. Danny and I turned to our plates and set our plastic tumblers on the table without so much as a whisper of sound, while with each clank of Dollar-Mart silverware Mom and Dad jockeyed for touché in a nonverbal fencing match.

  Mom turned to me, a high bird caught in her throat. “Are you done? Is that all you're going to eat? I mean, why the fuck do I even cook around here, if you're not going to eat it?

  “Dan?”

  “Huh?” Dad said, his mouth full.

  “Dan, did you even hear me? I said look at what this girl's eating over here. Are you going to get involved here and be a man or do I have to do everything around here? Jeeesus Christ.”

  “Julie, eat your meat for your mother.”

  “Oh, is that it? Chewely, eat yor meat for yor muther. Yeah, like that really carries the weight of a man. You fairy-assed faggot, you goddamned good-for-nothing son of a bitch.”

  Dad bangs his knife down. “Dammit, Julie, eat your goddamned meat. Now eat it before I make you eat it.”

  “Dad, it's gristle.” I was sliding it around my plate, trying to tuck it under the mashed potatoes.

  “Dan, I've had it with you. You can't even make a little girl mind. You can't even get respect from a sickly little girl. Why do you think she's sick all the time? Why do you think she can't keep up with the work around here? Huuuh? Because nobody takes any authority around here to make the kid eat. And you're just going to sit there like Chester,” she twiddles her thumbs together, “‘Okay, um, now, um, why don't you eat your meat, honey.' You make me sick. You are such a poor excuse for a father. How do you think you're ever going to be a man when you can't even support your own family or make this girl mind?”

  Dad slams down his fist and the silverware trampolines up from the table. “Goddammit, Julie, it's just fat, it'll put meat on your bones.” He springs from his chair. “I said eat it!”

  Before I know it, he's behind me. My head flies back and lands in his massive palm, as he stuffs the greasy rind into my mouth, “I said eat it, girl.”

  My mother is watching, fork hung in midair, flakey pot roast dangling. Danny is staring at his own roast; soundless tears, held breath.

  “I told you, you better listen to your father, but nooooo, you don't think he's a man, do you? You think he's a wimp and you can
just walk all over him, huh? Yeah, that's what you think he is, nothing but a sorry-ass, faggot-assed bastard.”

  Dad's fingers are prying around my mouth, his huge hands fingering a lunk of gristle to the back of my throat, like the Jolly Green Giant trying to stuff a thread through a needle eye of flesh. My eyes water; I gag. By the time he gets back to his chair, I've thrown up the string of fat, along with a whole pile of other stuff.

  “Well, at least she ate it, Sandy. I'll have no child of mine disobeying me under my roof.” He shakes his fork at me. “You got that, young lady? I'm King in this house.”

  MOM HAD THE MOST BEAUTIFUL singing voice. We'd be in the car on the way to the doctor and Mom would start singing, “Dust on the Bible. Dust on God's Holy Word. The words of all the prophets and the saviors of our Loorrd. When all the other books are gone, there's none shall make you whole. Get that dust off that Bi-ble and redeem your poor soul.”

  She'd sing about an old Indian named Kawliga, with a heart made of knotty pine, who fell in love with the Indian maiden down at the cigar store. She wore her beads and braids and hoped someday he'd talk. One day a wealthy collector came along, scooped her up and once hidden away, she was never seen again. Even then, I knew Mom was the maiden.

  “Poor old Kawliga, he never got a kiss, poor old Kawliga, he don't know what he missed. Is there any wonder, that his face is red, Kawliga the poor old wooden head.”

  There was Boxcar Willie, too, and the song Mom sang most every time we took the hour-long drive to a medical center. “Can you hear that lonesome whippoor-will? He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is com-in' home, I'm so lonesome IIIII coouuld die.”

  Sometimes Mom cries when she sings. Her voice doesn't break stride for an instant but her cheeks get shiny rivers running down. I tell her she sings so good she should be on the radio.

  “Aw, Sis, who'd ever pay to listen to my warbling voice?”

  “I would, Mommy! I'd pay a million dollars to have you sing for me! You sound just like Patsy Cline on the radio.”

  When Dad's driving, he turns up the volume on the dial or says, “Sandy, Jesus, will you sing to yourself, I'm trying to think over here.”

  But when we're alone, Mom shimmies her back to sit upright, settles her hands on the wheel, lifts her head and opens her mouth to sing so loud it fills the whole car. And I sing right along with her, songs from the days of Smokey and gospel tunes from the one-room country tabernacles we go to sometimes. Mom can yodel from her years traveling around with the Grand Ole Opry, and when she gets going it sounds like there's a yo-yo motoring up and down her throat. I try to yodel with her and even though I don't get beyond the Swiss Miss yodel-lay-he-hoo jingle, there we are, belting out our song, her looking down at me and smiling, and me— fueled by her love—raising my voice to the heavens.

  MOM HATED TO SEE any creature go hungry.

  “Oh, honey, I can't stand to see that colt starving like that. Poor thing's just penned in there, can't go anywhere.” We passed the same colt with his ribs showing every time we drove to town.

  “Julie, get a bucket and put in two scoops of oats and molasses so we can feed him on our way in.”

  And Mom was always on the lookout for cruelty to animals. If we were driving along the highway and there was a black trash bag puffed up and knotted at the top, full of trash someone'd thrown out their window, she'd pull over and have me run out and check to make sure it wasn't full of kittens. To this day, I still eye roadside garbage bags, checking for the movement of baby animals trapped inside.

  We grew up surrounded by dogs. The manged, matted, starved, and dumped all found their way into our lives and then down to the farm.

  We got Ebony when we first moved in, a black shaggy farm dog that most all rural properties have at least one of roaming around. And Mom started to breed a few purebred dogs she picked up out of the paper, just to make a few extra bucks, so we have little Pekinese and Shih Tzus living in pens out by the log cabin. I've been able to talk Mom into letting me keep my favorite Shih Tzu, P. J., inside. When she has her puppies, we pen them up in the laundry room and Mom sells the litter as soon as she can. P. J. howls and cries for days when Mom takes her babies away, pacing back and forth, trying to claw over the baby gate to look for them. And that's when I steal her away and tuck her under the covers with me, holding her tight, helping her forget. I keep her in my room for weeks at a time, hoping Mom won't notice, sneaking her outside twice a day and feeding her canned dog food under my bed.

  Our latest addition was a puppy we plucked off the highway when he was trying to eat something smashed in the road. You could count every link of cartilage in his tail. I hopped out of the car and scooped him up by the scruff of his neck. He rooted through Mom's purse and gulped down a whole pack of Velamints.

  “Oh, you stinking pup!” Mom said.

  And that's what we called him. Stink Pup.

  Our two farm dogs saw me through scary trips out to the garage to turn off the lights for Dad to walking miles of fence lines for Mom in sweltering summer heat. Ebony was easygoing and always seemed to be covered with burrs from running through the woods. Stink Pup was high-strung and as protective of food as we were of our privacy. He had an eagle eye to capitalize on any grub he could lay claim to. We once baited our fishing lines with bacon because I'd snuck out to the worm bucket and set them all free. I hated to fish now: watching Mom thread the worm on the hook and lower him to be eaten alive sometimes made me cry right there on the banks of the pond. So whenever I could, I'd dump the bucket over and blame it on a possum. But the bacon we used instead of live bait didn't work that night. We didn't even get one nibble. We propped our rods against the tack shed and come the next morning, Stink Pup was dragging a fishing pole around the yard, a hook caught through his swollen top lip, bacon fat sewn to his face.

  Mom laughed when she saw him, “Go grab the needle-nose pliers, Sis. Stink Pup's taken the bait and got caught; hook, line, and sinker.”

  SINCE SIXTH GRADE STARTED, I've missed so many days the school sent out a letter saying I'd have to be held back if I didn't get better.

  But doctor days are when we get all the shopping out of the way. Otherwise, it's a whole separate trip to town and Mom doesn't like to drive it on her own. And since the day's shot anyway, no harm in stopping in at that new discount clothing outlet that opened up. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

  Mom and I both grab carts and dart through the store, piling anything in that looks worth trying on.

  “What'ya think of this, Sis? For the beach?” Mom holds up a gold lamé cruise ship ensemble.

  “Oh, I think that'd look great on you, Mom!”

  We spend hours in the dressing rooms, hauling arm-fuls of colorful clothes in front of the three-way mirrors. Mom stands outside my door and says, “How's it going in there, Sis? Let me see when you get it tried on.” I take tremendous pride in the fact that I can still wear little girl size 6X.

  I open the door and she straightens the pants, smooths the shirt, and tells me yes or no. I toss the nos over the riser and Mom puts them all back on hangers for me. Then I get to do the same when she tries on her brimming cart. Since you're only allowed ten pieces at a time, I run out to the cart again and again to swap out the nos.

  We buy sets of different clothes for all the different things we do; clothes for school, clothes for the doctors, clothes for church, clothes for when we get the house done and can start making friends to have down. Then we load the wagon to the brim with fifty-pound bags of horse feed, twenty-five-pound bags of dog nuggets, and sacks of groceries—not to mention new concrete animals from Farm and Fleet for the yard and life-size ceramic dogs and cats, covered in calico fabric and shellacked to a shine, for inside the trailer.

  I sit in the front seat and pile the shopping spree bags between my feet on the floor. We're heading back home with new selves; from Penney's Outlet, Sears, Value City, and Kmart. As the sunlight of the city fades behind us, I rummage through the
bags, touching the fabric of my new life, starting as soon as tomorrow, imagining just how good I'm going to look and how much the kids at school are going to like me now. By the time we hit the stores, I'm so excited about what we're going to get that I don't even remember going to school that morning. And the two hours we just spent at the doctor's has all but drained from my thoughts. Each stop we make perforates my memory just a little more until the page of earlier events is torn away. All that matters is the bag of clothes between my feet, my mother content beside me, and the delicious feeling that everything's going to be better from here on out.

  As we pull into Burns Road, Mom says if I don't have time to do my homework tonight I can just do it on the bus tomorrow morning, ‘cause by the time I unload the bags of grain, dog food and groceries, feed the horses, and do all the dishes after dinner, it's going to be way past my bedtime.

  IAM SUPPOSED TO PEE in this cup. But I can't. I can't tell anybody that I forgot and went already while Mom waited at the reception desk.

  I take the cup anyway and sit in the bathroom with the cold little napkin that's folded in a packet, but nothing. I scrape the cup along myself but I can't even squeeze out one little drop. Mom'll be furious. If I can't perform for the doctor, he might not see me. I've got to get us in there. We drove all the way up here. I skipped school to see a new specialist. I have got to do it. I push the cup hard around myself until it leaves an indented ring. Then I turn the cold water on in the sink, and stretch my hand out under it, leaning my forehead on the cold white porcelain. Nothing. I've been in here fifteen minutes, and not one tinkle. I leave the cup on the sink and slink back to the waiting room.

  Mom knows. I slip next to her and she sinks her claws into my thigh. She leans over like she's telling me a secret, keeping her face relaxed. She twists a hunk of my leg and breathes mean in my ear. She clamps my elbow between her thumb and forefinger and steers me up to the reception desk.