by Cathy Lamb
My mother and I did not sleep for two full days. My brother, Caden, flew in from college. He is six foot six inches tall and has shoulders the breadth of a semitruck. As soon as he saw us, he burst into hiccupping tears, his black ponytail swaying as he hugged us close.
My mother and I traversed from the tiny crib where the baby with the big head was hooked up to all kinds of pumps and tubes, to my sister who was, initially, a ghastly white color, and not moving.
“The baby might not make it,” Dr. Rebecca Black told us the first night. “He wasn’t breathing at birth. . . .”
“There’s a chance your daughter won’t make it,” Dr. Sanjay Patel said. “She lost too much blood, we transfused her. . . .”
“Traumatic birth . . . head swollen . . . eye placement issues . . .” Dr. Black said.
“There are complications because of the drugs in your daughter’s body, we’re having trouble getting the bleeding to stop, she is having seizures, problems breathing. . . .” Dr. Patel said.
“The baby’s heart seems to be struggling, too . . . distress . . . gasping. . . .”
“Your daughter’s blood pressure is dangerously low . . . we can’t get it back up. . . .”
“The baby has . . .” Dr. Black went off on her medical-ese, the language normal people don’t understand, especially in a crisis.
“That’s enough of that,” my brother said, his voice sharp as he held up a hand. “We aren’t doctors. Explain it in English.”
The doctor explained. The baby was born with a big head. If he survived, and that was doubtful due to his critical condition at birth and the drugs, the size of his head would stay as it was. He would need a permanent shunt in his head leading to his heart because of an excessive amount of cerebrospinal fluid.
“Oh my God,” my mother groaned, her face white and drained. “I told you it was The Curse. It came right down the family line. . . .”
“It’s not The Curse, unless The Curse is Brooke.” My chest was a wall of thudding pain. I touched the cross, heart, and star necklace given to me by my mother, the same one she and Brooke wore.
“The curse?” Dr. Black asked, eyebrows raised.
“Never mind,” I said.
She seemed baffled, but then composed herself. “The baby has the same drugs in his body as in Brooke’s. Cocaine, painkillers, alcohol, nicotine . . .”
“Why did she do this?” I said, grieving for the baby already. “Why?”
Why had been the question for years. The pain my sister had caused our family with her addictions had been endless.
And, for the baby, a baby I named Tate, the pain was only beginning.
Seventeen Years Later
He had been beaten up.
Again.
Tate’s face was red, bruised on the jaw and along his blue eye on the left, cut on the eyebrow, blood was under his nose, and his auburn hair was a mess.
He had a basketball under his arm and a backpack over his shoulder.
I felt my heart squeeze and expand, then squeeze again, the pain of seeing my son beaten up stabbing me for the thousandth time. I wanted to kick the kids that did this to him. I whacked the wooden spoon on the edge of the pan where I was making an orange sauce with marmalade and chives for our chicken dinners.
“Chill out, Boss Mom. Hey, Nana Bird,” Tate said, smiling, waving.
He dropped his backpack on the wood table my blue-eyed, formerly redheaded, curly-haired Grandma Violet had used for decades to heal people with her herbs and spices and “Silent Spells,” as she called them.
“I don’t think I’ll need stitches this time, which is too bad ’cause I was gonna do it myself. You know, Tate, The Tough Guy Hero, sews himself up.”
My mother put her arm around me, squeezing my shoulder, warning me not to fly into a rage. It never helped Tate to see my temper triggering after something like this happened, it only made things worse.
“I know the slinkiest of solutions to this problem, Tate,” she drawled, her tone hiding her own anguish. “Have a shot of tequila. Tip your head back and I’ll pour it down your throat.”
“Mother!” I reprimanded, but it was halfhearted, my whole body throbbing with anger. Wind whipped up against the bay windows of my yellow kitchen nook, scooting around my old white house as if it owned the place.
“Yes, darling? Tequila soothes the nerves.”
“Good idea, Nana Bird,” Tate said. He calls my mother Nana Bird because when he was little he loved birds and he loved his Nana. He tried to smile, but it hurt his mouth. “Nothing better to top off a fight than a shot of tequila.”
I have a terrible temper when it comes to Tate. Tate has named my temper Witch Mavis.
My mother squeezed my arm again, then shook her bob of hair and drawled, “Did you beat any of them up?”
“Yep.” Tate was six feet three inches tall and muscled because of daily workouts with weights. That he won wasn’t surprising. He’d won before, many times.
“Spectacular! Was there a lot of blood?” She wiggled her fingers excitedly.
“Yep.”
“What about bruising, cuts, things that will scar?” She grinned, leaning forward, all those expensive pearly whites showing.
“I think I got ’em, Nana Bird.” He grinned. Tate had perfect teeth, too.
“Did you knock any to the ground, flat on their backs? Boom, smash, clunk?” She clapped her hands, full of glee. My stylish mother has a love of violence when it comes to her grandson.
“Sent ’em flying.”
“That’s my boy.” She chortled, wiggling her shoulders. “God gave you fists. Use them.”
“I did.” He put his scraped fists up in victory.
“Mark my words, if he only wanted you to use your hands for eating, he would have had your left hand formed into a fork and your right hand formed into a spoon.”
“That would look odd, but culinary.”
“Not if we all had a fork and spoon for hands, Tate, instead of fingers,” my mother said. “Fist the fists and let ’em fly when people want to pound your soul.”
“Got it.” He smashed his fists together. “Fist thumping equals pounding of soul crushers.”
“Right. You have it! I love your violent streak! It’s so gleeful, so animalistic!”
She hugged him tight, then I hugged him, briefly pondering how gleeful and animalistic went together, my jaw tight.
“Boss Mom, I can tell that you’re all mad because you’re quivering, but I’m okay, okay? I know you want to blow up and go to these kids’ front doors and haul them out by the hair, remember you did that one time, or scare the heck out of them or their parents or threaten to call in butt-devouring attorneys, but don’t.”
Tate calls me Boss Mom because I am the boss.
“I’m okay. I can fight on my own.” His eyes pleaded with me to stay out of it.
“I want to know who did this—” I glared at him, then pointed the wooden spoon at him. “Tell me.”
“I’m not telling you, and hello to Witch Mavis. You’ll make me look like a baby. I can’t take care of myself so my mommy comes flying in to beat up the bullies.”
“You can, but they need to suffer a consequence for this. They need to be suspended just as I’ve had other kids suspended who beat you up. They need to be shoved into a wood box and have the lid of that box nailed down on their heads until they can promise to shape up and—”
“Sort of like me in upcoming shows, Tate!” my mother interjected, her green eyes giving me the look that said shut up. “Next year I’m going to be locked in one of those ship containers by a stalker!”
“Cool, Nana Bird. But I’m not going to be able to watch it because it’ll scare me.” He pushed his hair back. There was blood in his hair, too. “Watching you screaming gives me nightmares.”
“Remember when I’m screaming, I’m surrounded by lights and cameras and handsome men, darling.”
My mother, Rowan Bruxelle, is the star on Foster’s Village. Her co
nniving, husband-stealing, scheming character’s name is Elsie Blackton. She and I have the same auburn hair, only mine is longer and wavy and hangs halfway down my back while hers is bobbed. I have a string of tiny crystals tied into my hair on the left side that Tate gave me for Christmas because, “They’re pretty, like you, Boss Mom.” She has ski-slope cheekbones, green eyes, and I have one eye that is blue, one that is green.
Tonight she was wearing a purple silky wraparound top, black velvet leggings, and four-inch red heels. I prefer jeans, some tough, stylin’ boots, hippy-ish sorts of blouses, an assortment of bangle bracelets, and dangly earrings.
I’m Earth Momma with an explosive temper meets cowgirl.
She’s firecracker meets perfume.
“Give me their names, Tate.”
“No, Boss Mom. I’ll get teased more if you get involved.”
“No, they’ll be stomped into silence. What are their names?”
“You gotta relax and flow with this more.”
“I don’t relax and I do not flow.”
My mother linked an arm around my shoulder again and poked me. “Your mother, Tate, for once, is going to try to not be quite so uptight and controlling, and so very serious but not so very fun. She has a turbulent nature that causes all sorts of storms for the people around her. It’s the Bruxelle in all of us, from our royal witch line, Tate, you know that.”
“Turbulent,” Tate said. “That’s a word for it. The other word might be interfering.” He raised his eyebrows when I wanted to interrupt. “And, Mom, I won the fight. There were three of them. The other guys’ lips were split open and two are going to have black eyes the size of Oklahoma tomorrow. I won.”
My mother clapped, her bangle bracelets clinking. “This pleases me immensely, Tate!”
He grinned and gave my mother and me a hug, and the anger, momentarily, swooshed out of me.
“Now, laaaddddiieess, I have a new project and I’m going to work on it in the experiment room. But here’s a hint: It’s not an experiment.”
“What is it, rebel child, oh my rebel child, what wild ride will you take us on tonight?” my mother sang, her voice low and husky.
“Can’t tell you. I will say that it has nothing to do with this reaction:
NaHCO3 + KHC4H4O6 → KNaC4H4O6 + H2O + CO2.”
“What about computer stuff that I can’t possibly understand because it’s too dreary?” She examined her manicured nails.
Tate spun the basketball on his pointed finger. “It doesn’t have anything to do with computer stuff like super-computers that will soon solve problems to three times ten to the fifteenth power. That’s in one second. And it doesn’t have anything to do with quantum electrodynamics or my interest that never goes away: brains and more brains.”
“You are so smart it makes me nauseous,” my mother said. “Shouldn’t you be sneaking out to peek in girls’ windows or writing cheesy love songs with your guitar?”
“Ha. No, I don’t peek, Nana Bird. And when I sing I sound like a raccoon being swung by its tail. Hey, Boss Mom, the guys are all getting together to practice basketball and I—”
I tensed. “No.”
“I want to practice with them, for fun, no contact, I promise—”
“No.” We’d been through this before. Tate could not play contact sports because he had a shunt in his head and the shunt needed to stay in place for him to live.
“I’ll be careful.”
“No, Tate, don’t start with me.”
“Please—”
“Forget it.”
“Mom! Come ooonnn!”
“No.”
I heard him sigh in frustration, then he turned and pounded up the stairs, his big feet thudding.
Tate was obsessed with basketball, watching it on TV and shooting by himself for hours every day, for years, on our court with two full imaginary teams in his head.
“He’s the best damn person on the planet, Jaden,” my mother said. “He has a golden heart and a sensitive soul. He’s a gift.”
“Yep, he is.” I turned and fiddled with my spice sets. I have sixty spices. A small obsession that has genetic roots. “He’s asking about Brooke lately.”
The atmosphere changed and became prickly and tight.
“And?”
“And I’m heading him off, somewhat.”
“He’ll want to know all there is to know. He’ll want to meet her. That child has too many brains stuck in his head, and they’re always working overtime. He has brain machines.”
“I know.”
We were quiet, the silence between us edgy with anxiety.
She took another sip of wine. “You should let the gift play basketball.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Think about it.”
“No.”
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
My name is Tate Bruxelle.
I am seventeen years old and I have a big head.
I was born this way.
What’s it like living with a big head, with one eye higher than the other, with a face that looks normal on one half, but odd on the other?
Not damn easy. I have been made fun of my entire life. In preschool, the other kids wouldn’t play with me, except for two twins named Anthony and Milton, Milt for short. Their mother is from Jamaica, she’s a doctor, their dad’s an attorney, they live across the street from me, and we have always been friends.
Some of the kids in my class cried when they saw my face, I remember that. I was three. One kid said I was ugly, another kid said I was scary, like a sea monster. A girl with braids told me I had a face like a person on one side, and a face like pigskin on the other. I remember going to sit in a corner and crying almost every day.
Now you know why I call this blog, “Tate’s Awesome Pigskin Blog.”
Some kids are jealous of others because they have cool hair, or cool clothes, or cool parents. When I was in preschool I was envious of people’s heads.
One time I went home and told my mom, “I want a small head. Can you get me one?”
She told me that God had given me a big head because I had big brains.
That sounded good to me for a while, but when I couldn’t dress up as a cowboy because none of the cowboy hats were big enough, and I couldn’t fit a baseball batter’s helmet over my head, the brain part didn’t matter anymore.
I remember listening to one mother in first grade, with this white-blond hair and a ton of makeup. She looked at me with hate, that’s what I’d call it: hate. Even as a kid I could see it. I’ve seen hate a lot on people’s faces, and disgust. Anyhow, she said to my teacher, while pointing at me, “Oh my God. He isn’t contagious, is he?”
I grew up with people asking my mom, when I was standing right next to her, “What’s wrong with his head? What’s wrong with him? Why does he look like that? Can you cut that big part of his head off?”
That has to be the stupidest question: Can you cut that part of his head off? Sure, ma’am, I’ll do it right now, I have a chainsaw in my backpack, stand back or you’ll get hit with brain guts!
I’ve also been tripped and stuffed in trash cans. Here’s what being stuffed in a trash can says: “You’re nothing. You’re trash.” Plus, it’s humiliating when you’re trying to get out and you can’t because your legs are almost behind your head.
I would say I’m used to it, but it still bugs me when people are jerks. It’s not as if I go home and cry like a baby, man, that’d be weird, but when you just want to go down to the store and buy a Coke, it’s not as if it’s pleasant to be screamed at and called a retard or boggle head or for someone to throw a beer bottle at you (happened three times) or a hot dog (twice), or water bottles (can’t count, too many).
I’ve spent a lot of time by myself because kids are sometimes embarrassed to be seen with me, or they feel weird around me, or don’t know what to say because I have a big head so they think I can’t have a personality or feelings. I get it. I don’t like it but I get it.
But I have a lot of cool stuff going on, too. I like experiments and mixing chemicals and I have only had a few minor explosions and fires in my experiment room. Go, Albert Einstein, my main man!!
I actually like math and I have studied Fermat’s Last Theorem, quantum physics, and advanced statistics, which about explodes my synapses, but what I’m most interested in is studying the brain, like the choroid plexus, sagittal sinus, arachnoid space, the ventricles, memory, the effects of drugs on the brain, and neurosurgery.
Here’s a photo of a solar flare from sunspot 486. Unbelievably cool.
Here’s a photo of a brain.
And here’s a photo of three jumbo hot dogs I ate in one sitting with smiles made from Dijon mustard.
My name is Tate Bruxelle.
I have a big head. I call him General Noggin. I’m not putting a photo in yet, but trust me on the big head part.
This is my first blog entry.
I might write another one.
“Look at this, Mom,” Tate said to me the next night after a steak and blue cheese dinner, which he has named “Heaven and Blue Cheese.” “I have my own blog and it’s on the Internet. What do you think? Cool, right?”
Tate’s blog had this modern beige-and-brown-checked background with four pictures at the top: a pig, a basketball, some complicated math equation, and a brain. I knew why he called it the pigskin blog and tried not to choke on my hurt. “You set this up?”