The nurse at the foot of the table slides out at the same time. “We've done it. Now see? That wasn't so bad, now was it?”
My eyes are clamped shut; sealed with sticky tears. I unpeel them to hot lights. I'm floating, slowly, back to my body. Where am I? A mound is rising up on my wet face and I touch it, then one on my arm bubbles up, another on my face. I'm itching a crop of red, pulsating hives creeping over my face, neck, arms, and thighs. The nurse leads my mother into the room. She is soft and smiling, asking her if I was good. I'm itching like crazy, tearing at the welts, swallowing my cow's tongue.
“Hmmmm,” the head nurse mutters under her breath, “must have an allergy to the iodine dye.” She marks my chart and slips out the door.
My mother flips through a magazine, popping her gum. “Get dressed, honey. The nurse says you were good for them. I'm real proud of you, Sis.”
I cannot speak. The wires in my brain are black and fried. I cannot find language, although my hands are desperately feeling in the dark for what it is I've lost. A little drool gathers in the pocket of my parted, hung mouth. I'm disconnected from my fingers, those curling sticks with skin that fumble shakily with the buttons of stiff Wranglers.
My mother stops at the desk to say her good-byes. She thanks everyone deeply for this last-minute appointment and we get in the car for the long drive home. I lean my head on the inside of the car window. Mom glances over, furrows a brow, feels my forehead.
“You feeling all right, sweetheart? You look a little sick.”
“I, have a … a headache.” So faint it barely floats over to her.
“Well, here, let me give you one of those migraine thingys.” She pats around on the floor for her purse, digs through, and pops the top off the prescription vial.
“Here, honey, we better give you a double dose. This one looks like it's the worst I've ever seen on you.”
She smiles bright, her eyes twinkle glitter into my dull ones. She is thrilled to be here, at the right place and time, to anticipate and treat my illness with the right medication.
“I'm so glad I'm here to witness this, Julie. Now I can tell them what happens at the onset of one of these nasty doo-dahs.”
I look out the window and the air between us fades as the fields gain sideways momentum and begin to blur by. I'm on a Tilt-A-Whirl in my still life. My mother drives serene and calm, her smiling head bent slightly to the side, thinking about a private funny between her and the nurse. The sun shines in on my side and without the cold spring air, it warms my head like an angel breathing hot on my scalp. I pass out in the light of her breath and drool down the window.
ITHINK JULIE NEEDS KIDS to play with, Dan.” Dad's on the couch, the TV's off. It's one of his “I'm going to be a better father-husband-person” forty-eight-hour stints and Mom is telling him that with all my missed school and the uncertainty of my sickness, if I don't get some kids my own age to play with, I'm not going to develop any social skills that will let me interact normally with others out in the real world.
IT'S TEN O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING and the caseworker will be here any second. Mom runs around the house. “How do I look? Julie, goddamn it, pick up this bathroom!”
Dad stands by the hutch in the foyer dressed in his light blue outfit and new white loafers. He waits for her command, anything that gives him direction and makes him useful. He crosses his wrists, as if tying them up would keep him from smudging the freshly lemon-waxed furniture.
A car pulls in at the top of the road. Everybody freezes, like a den of rabbits, ears perked, trying to recognize the tones under the tires. Two more seconds and we'll know if it's her.
“Okay.” Mom snaps into action. “Everybody act normal. Kids, you stay inside. If the caseworker talks to you, tell them that what you want most are little brothers and sisters to play with, to share the horses with. Dan, let's get out there. Get a move on.”
She pushes past Dad and runs out the front door of the trailer, “Dan! Come onnn.” She stamps her foot at him, like an impatient horse pawing.
Once in sight of the driveway, she walks slow and casual. Mom clasps the caseworker's hand; Dad stands in the shadow, a few steps behind. They show her around: the pool, the ponies, the pond—just stocked with trout so the kids can go fishing—yeah, a real kid haven, Mom laughs softly.
“We love kids, and can't have any more—we were foster parents in Arizona years ago and, you know— thought we might get back into it now that we're settled here.”
Mom does all the talking. The caseworker is tall, skinny, and soft. She looks like a walking, talking Holly Hobbie doll, wearing her big glasses that magnify her eyeballs and dressed in her to-the-ankle flowery skirt, and little slip-on shoes with soft soles. Too soft even for her to walk across the cheap, razor-sharp gravel in our driveway. She giggles at this as she walks around the drive and along the grass. She is taken by this shining family, this diamond in the coal mines of southern Ohio, where finding a foster family with all their teeth intact is a plus, let alone all the amenities that come with the Gregory family.
“Yes, I think this would be lovely,” she says, looking around. “You've got quite a serene place out here, so remote and quiet. Now, you can take how many of our children? You're building on how many more bedrooms?”
Mom talks, cocks her head, leans in to the caseworker, articulates with her hands, lightly touches the woman's arm. Dad follows, trying to look, to feel like a dad; capable of getting respect from his children, admiration from his wife, fixing things, getting things done in life.
The caseworker is captured in the kindness, cannot see past the fake wood paneling, cannot see past the locked door where Mr. Beck sits stiff in the recliner in his insulin-induced glaze, with his white loafers identical to my father's and his outfit of peed-in dried underwear he's had on all week. She can't see on top of the refrigerator, or in the bathroom cabinet or under the bed pillow, where the loaded guns are kept. And she can't see that the beautiful blond hair on my mother is really a wig ordered from the back of the Fredrick's of Hollywood catalogue because all girls with dark hair are sluts and baby makers.
Holly Hobbie is soft in her demeanor, too soft to notice the sharp edges that get lost in the country-time slowness of our farm. Twenty minutes is all it takes, and she is caught.
Hook, line, and sinker.
NOW THAT WE'RE GETTING foster kids, we're all going to have to do better. We load up in the wagon one Sunday morning and head for the Laurelville Church of God. We stand in the pews and sing as a family. Dad doesn't pass the plate down our row empty, and he doesn't pretend to sell Buicks during the sermon, either, trying to crack me and Danny up. On the ride home, he and Mom talk in the front seat about how we're going to start going to church every Sunday from here on out, starting right now today.
That night, in the bathtub, I think about what the preacher said, how God is watching over every one of us in everything we do. I wonder about God watching me now, down on Burns Road, sitting in the yellow plastic bathtub filled with rusty well water. I wonder if he thinks I'm spending too much time in here. I wonder if he thinks I'm using enough soap. And as I wonder about all the other things God sees me do that I'm not sure if I want him to, the crown of my head starts to heat up. The feeling is warm and slow and my eyes gently drift closed, almost like feathery fingertips have grazed down over my lids. I sit slack in the water while warmth bathes me from above, rolling over my shoulders, easing down my arms, hitting the surface and radiating in a circle around me. I squint my eyes shut and lift my face to the ceiling. I know he's up there, watching. And that warm delirious feeling is straight from God's bucket. God is up there, watching over me, pouring a bucket of pure golden light right down on top of my head. It's too bright to even open my eyes. I'm smiling to God because right then I know that everything, somehow, is going to be all right.
MOM AND I ARE AT THE NEW PEDIATRI-cian in town, the first and only female I ever see.
“Julie's been having a lot of indigestion lat
ely—I'd say the loudest belching I've ever heard outta any kid. Haven't you, Julie? And she seems to have an adverse reaction to meat, almost like her system can't tolerate it. Her father has tried to get her to eat meat and she actually throws right up. Don't you, Sis? Nobody around here can figure out what's wrong with the kid. God, I hope you can help us. These small-town doctors don't take this serious, you know? I don't think they're as competent and diligent as you'll be.”
This is our second visit to Dr. Kate in one week. The first one was for a tetanus booster when I stepped barefoot on a rusty nail. Mom's got me in today for my indigestion.
“Okay, Julie, let's just have you stand up for me now and see what your heart's doing.”
“Hmmm, do that again.”
I'M WINDED. I'M HUNGRY. It's two o'clock and I haven't eaten yet today. I was going to school without breakfast, not getting any lunch money, and when I got off the bus at home, I had to do all the farm work: feed the horses, haul three bales of hay from the barn to the manger, chop the ice in the trough with a mallet, feed the horses buckets of grain, and put an extra one in the car for that colt we fed on the way to town, then feed and water all the little dogs that lived with matted and muddy coats out in the pens. Once the animals were done, I had to load up the rug inside with enough firewood to last the night and the next day and dump out the tray of ash from the bottom of the wood-burning stove. Sometimes Dad would get up and hold the door open while I teetered, bearing the weight of the full ash pan against my chest. Then I had to chop wood with an ax to replace what I'd put in the house and then lug in five-gallon buckets of coal I had to shovel off the pile. When I came in, I had to set the table for dinner and clean up afterward. Mom said Danny was too little to be out there around the horses and besides, all that hay and coal dust was bad for his asthma and she'd just got him well enough that she didn't have to run him to the doctors anymore. The foster kids were usually hiding in their bedroom, doing homework. I could only do my homework after I did everything else and that usually wasn't until late. And sometimes the next morning Mom kept me home anyway because she was trying to get me in to see a doctor that day.
And just today I got busted for stealing mixed fruit from a kid's tray in the school cafeteria. As a sixth-grader, you could work in the lunch room for a free meal if you signed up in homeroom early enough. Most days my bus got me to school way too late to get on the list, but today I'd got lucky. I was washing dishes; spraying off the leftovers and stacking the trays on the conveyer belt. I knew the kid; he was the little brother of a girl in my class. He handed me his tray and asked if I wanted his fruit cup. It was against cafeteria rules to take food off the trays when they got handed over but it looked so good, and who was going to see me? I bent down and just scooped it off into my cupped fingers and let the syrup of canned fruit flow down my throat. I swallowed the peaches whole and sucked on the pear cubes until they became grainy in my mouth. It was delicious.
But the kid in the cafeteria told on me. He said I could have his fruit and when I gorged on it, he trotted straight over to tell old Ms. Sweeney that I stole his food. I was two years older. I knew the cafeteria rules. And Ms. Sweeney made me read an apology to him out loud in front of the whole class. I trudged to his classroom after lunch, a lunch I didn't get because I wasn't allowed to work in the cafeteria anymore. I read the letter while my stomach growled so loud half the class laughed. And when I started crying half way through, Ms. Sweeney let me off the hook.
How could I tell Dr. Kate that I didn't have lunch money? That since the foster kids got state lunches, Mom said I should, too. Why waste a dollar twenty when the school should be paying for me to eat? But Mom said I must have lost the first set of vouchers I brought home for her to sign, and the second set sat tucked in the kitchen cabinet, waiting for her to fill them out. I stole bits of change out of her purse, but Little Debbie snack cakes were all I could get. I sneaked table-spoonfuls of Cool Whip from the fridge for breakfast and ate the junk my coins got me at lunch.
I was the one popping the change from the Franklin Mint coin collector books Dad had started for Danny and kept tucked away in the bottom of the hutch: punching out dimes and clawing out a quarter at a time. God help me if he found out.
“THERE'S A SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE in Julie's heart rate when she stands up from when she's at rest, Ms. Gregory. “
Mom nods furiously.
“And just in watching her, she seems to have difficulty breathing when she stands. How does it feel upon rising, Julie?”
“Tell her how out of breath you are, Julie. She's always out of breath around the farm, Dr. Kate. Jesus,” Mom slaps her knee, “this explains everything.”
“My heart beats fast and I feel maybe a little dizzy.” “You look like you're about ready to pass out, hon,” Mom says. “Don't you feel like you could pass out?”
“Well, Ms. Gregory, I think we might have something for the hospital here, something that could be detected with a simple EKG, EEG, or a heart exam. They might even want to attach something called a Holter monitor on her overnight to see the longer rhythms of her heart. I'll call over to the cardiac unit and get you set up. Is that all right with you, Sandy?”
“YESS-YEEESSSS.” MOM'S THUMPING the steering wheel. “Finally, we're getting somewhere. I knew that Dr. Kate was a good one. These stupid good old boys wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. I knew there was something major going on with you.”
We're going to the hospital! It is all pretty exciting, we're this close. In the cardiac ward they lay me out on a table and hook little soft white pads to my chest. These are wired into a machine, and I just lie there, quietly breathing, while the machine does what it's supposed to do. I'm hooked up, staring at the ceiling. At last, I'll just take one medication that will fix everything. I'll have friends, be in sports, go to movies. Mom'll be happy; she won't have to stay at home or clean up after old men or foster kids. And I'll be a real kid and not miss school anymore.
That was what I wanted the most; to do good in school like I used to after Danny was born, before I got sick again.
Since we moved to Burns Road, I've been demoted to the lowest reading level. I got paddled by my teacher
for getting a D on a science test. Mom says this school is harder, but it's not. The teacher is fat and stupid and I get problems wrong because I'm looking for the clever answers in what I think are trick questions. I blurt out the advanced answer, but it's always the simple one.
And I'm failing at school because I'm sick; because there's always something wrong with me.
WELL, MS. GREGORY, we've got good tff news. The Holter monitor shows no significant findings that lead us to believe Julie has a heart condition requiring further tests. Nothing outside a normal parameter.” The hospital doctor is following the zigzags on my chart, showing us what he can't find. Mom slaps her leg.
“What? What do you mean, you can't find anything?” She counts on her fingers the number of things leading up to this moment. “Dr. Kate called you, she told you this kid had a racing heart, was out of breath all the time. She told me we were going to get helped here, that we'd finally be able to get to the bottom of things. What are you trying to tell me here, that this kid is normal? That I'm making this up?”
“No, we didn't say any—”
“Well, let me tell you, let me tell you. I'm going to find a doctor competent enough to find out what's wrong with her, you understand me? I'm going back to Dr. Kate and tell her that you people just don't give a rat's ass about this kid.”
MOM DOESN'T TRUST THE SMALL-TOWN HOSPITAL; not with their country manner, their outdated equipment, and their normal test results. We drive to Dr. Kate's, an emergency walk-in. I stand up. I sit down. Dr. Kate hears the same race, the same shortness of breath, the same exertion from effort.
Mom rails while Kate presses her stethoscope to my heart. “I mean she just can't keep up. You know? I mean you'd think I was working her to death or starving her or something. I fix go
od meals, she doesn't eat. I mean what am I supposed to do, force her to eat, shove food down her throat?”
“Ms. Gregory, I'm sure you're doing the best you can. Some kids are just finicky. And if it's a heart condition, it'll explain a lot of your anxiety. Stand up for me again, Julie.”
“I mean I try to get her into 4-H, she's tired. We get in the car, she's carsick, has a headache. I mean, I'm a good mother, what did I do to deserve this? Why am I being punished?”
“Sandy,” Dr. Kate rolls her little button chair over to Mom, “I have every intention of finding you another cardiologist to take Julie to. I've got one in mind associated with one of the best cardiac units in the country, Ohio State University. I'm sure you're doing a great job with Julie.” She turns to me in kiddie talk: “Isn't she, Julie. Tell Mom she's doing a great job. Say, ‘Hey, Mom, don't worry, we'll get it all straightened out!’” She turns back to Mom. “When you have a sick child, it can really test your wits. I'll do my best to get through to the right person that can help find out what's wrong with Julie.”
Mom unburies her head from her hands, dabs an eye. “Thank you, Dr. Kate. I just have so much guilt, that it's something I'm not doing right, that I should do more, but I just can't, I can't be good enough. I'm bending over backwards here and we just aren't getting anywhere. Nobody's listening. Nobody's doing anything to help me, you know?”
“Sandy, you're a great mother and I think you're doing a terrific job with Julie. We're all in this together. I'll help you get to the bottom of this. I promise.”
IALWAYS WANTED TO BE ONE of those clean, pretty girls, whose clothes stayed jelly-free and unwrinkled, with long shaped nails, no dirty rind underneath from shoveling coal or hauling in wood.
But instead I was long and lanky and everything about me was greasy and stringy, tangled and tired. I tried out for cheerleading but couldn't even do a measly banana split. Once I got down, I couldn't quite get back up.
Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood Page 8