by Cathy Lamb
“I wish all the kids who teased my grandson would be expelled forever and sent to schools in Yemen without plumbing where they would be forced to squat and poop outside,” my mother said in a singsong, pleasant voice. “Or maybe Somalia, where there’s a drought and terrorist men running around with ferocious guns and the education of snails. Then they could see what a bad day truly involves.”
“Okay, Mother.”
“It’s the truth. The punks who tease my grandson should—”
“Okay, Mother.” I patted her knee. She was worse than me sometimes. She sighed heavily, tossed her auburn bob back, wrinkled that sculpted nose. She was nonchalant, but it was an act. The woman loved Tate to distraction. She had shed even more tears than me, and my tears have been endless. (True disclosure: If she could, she would have sent the bullies to Yemen or Somalia to be with snail-educated people.)
“Ms. Bruxelle and Mrs. Bruxelle, we have to figure out what to do to keep him challenged—”
“He could graduate early,” Mrs. Pops said. “He’s ready for college.”
“In college he could get laid,” my mother mused. “Have love affairs.”
Two of the teachers actually sucked in their breath.
“Really, Mother?”
She drew two fingers across her red-lipsticked lips as if zipping them, then said, “Sex makes your complexion younger. Look at my face.”
“That’s Botox.”
“A bit. And a face-lift. Or more. But the glow is there from sex. Or at least the desire for it.” She gazed meaningfully at me. There had been no other serious relationships in her life since my father, but in the last couple of years she had finally started to be open to it. “You have it, too, Jaden, the desire for it, don’t deny it.”
“I don’t think we need to discuss sex or desire at this exact moment, do you, Mother?”
“They brought college up!”
“That doesn’t mean—” I stopped, turned back to the teachers. “I’m going to keep him here. As you know, his best friends, Anthony and Milt, are here, too. He knows all these kids. They’re used to him. I still need you all to help with the bullying.”
The teachers nodded vigorously. The attorneys had already been here and they all knew it.
“I understand,” Mr. Shimolo said. “He’s a genius. We wanted to tell you about his options.”
“His brain boils with brilliance, vodka on hot rocks,” my mother said.
I turned to her. “Have you ever dumped vodka on hot rocks, Mother?”
“Yes, I have, and that’s Tate’s brain.”
“Let’s not talk about vodka right now. We’ll do it later, after some tea. Can you tell us about those options, Mr. Shimolo?”
I could tell Mr. Shimolo and the other teachers were still stuck on the vodka and hot rocks comments.
“And the options would be?” I prodded.
“Maybe he could study at the medical center?” Miss Cho said, a bit dazed by my mother, she does that to people. “An internship where we could release him from school? A private study?”
“College classes half the day, here half the day?” Mr. Shimolo suggested.
“Perhaps a local laboratory would have a mentor program?” Mrs. Pops said.
“Tate knows how to start fires and explosions in the laboratory of his Experiment Room,” my mother said, clearly impressed with Tate’s abilities. “He’s careful with the dynamite, though. He knows he has to use that outside only, back in the poppy field.”
“Tate uses dynamite?” Mrs. Pops asked.
“No, no . . .” I lied. I knew my mother had bought some for him.
“Only on Tuesdays,” my mother drawled. “He gets a thrill out of big bangs. And don’t ask him about the big bang theory or he will go off on that discussion for hours, you’ll be stone-cold drunk by the time he’s done. Don’t get him going on the complexities of the human brain, either, or you’ll start wishing you were a vodka bottle, you know what I mean?” She mocked drinking out of a bottle.
I glowered at her. “As teachers,” I redirected the group, “let’s discuss what we should do, academically speaking, for Tate. . . .”
Tate talked fluently before he was two. He was doing basic math at three. He read then, too, not a few words, but hundreds of words. He studied books all the time. We used to read together on the rocking chair. He studied thesauruses and dictionaries, and as the years went on, science and technology, quantitative physics, nuclear science, and micro- and macroeconomics. He received an A in calculus in eighth grade at the local university.
He has studied the brain since he was three because he was curious about his own head. I bought him books with photos and detailed information about the human brain. He wrote letters to different high-level neurosurgeons, with his questions about brains, and included a photo of himself. He even wrote to Ethan when Ethan was still in New York because he had read an article about him. They all wrote back, and he is still in contact with a number of them via e-mail.
Tate remembers things that happened to him before he was three years old in TechniColor. For example, he remembers emergencies at the hospital, including the exact order of the medical care he received. He could repeat, and he understood, what the doctors said to him, even if they spoke nine or ten sentences. He memorized a hundred words in Spanish in two days and still knows them, and he remembers a day I cried when I was wearing a gray coat and a purple hat by a duck pond. He has a photographic memory. He grasps the sciences and technology as easy as he would grasp how to light a match. Advanced math is enjoyable for him.
Tate’s utter brilliance did not take the pain away from having a deformed head, but it did help to balance out the unfairness a little bit.
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
My uncle Caden, who owns Witches and Warlocks Florist in town and recently made a four-foot-tall purple elephant in a bikini out of flowers for the manager of the zoo, reads romance novels.
Here’s a photo of the purple elephant in a bikini. Here’s a photo of him reading a romance novel.
Yep, he told me I could put this photo in. Why? Because he’s cool. Because he’s cool with himself and doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
Here’s a photo of my friends, Milt and Anthony, with bows and ribbons in their hair that my cousins Heloise and Hazel put in. They’re cool with this, too.
Here’s a photo of my Boss Mom with a bandanna around her head after she finished gutting fish for a food bank. No, she doesn’t care if she’s photographed with fish guts on her overalls.
Being on the outside of everyone else, that would be moi, you get a pretty good look on the inside and the inside isn’t always pretty.
But what’s pretty is when people are who they are and don’t hide it.
That would not be me. I’m still hiding from my own blog. Maybe I’ll post a photo soon of General Noggin and me.
But here’s more about me: I like to experiment. I have my own Experiment Room. I love science and studying anything to do with the brain. I’m interested in DNA, genetics and Bernoulli’s equations. I love basketball. Man, that is my favorite. I love to read, not romance novels—sorry, Uncle Caden—and I don’t sleep much because I have a lot of thinkin’ to do, and I love to eat.
I like thinking about the future, you know, what it’s going to look like, especially technology with brain surgery. I like gadgets. My handwriting is craggy, that’s all I have to say about that. I don’t like poetry unless it’s about farts or burps or something like that. I like geography, but I don’t like a lot of the classics. You know, I can’t get into them, they’re sloooowww sometimes with that fancy language. I don’t like cleaning bathrooms, but for some reason I like vacuuming. I like driving cars. I like driving them fast so Boss Mom takes me out to the track so I can race fast and not get a ticket.
I get lonely sometimes. I feel alone other times. I look different and that’s always been a struggle, not so much for me, but for other people, which makes it a struggle for me.
I love my family. Man, I cannot imagine life without my family. Without my Boss Mom I probably would have constructed a spaceship and flown to Uranus (Your Anus).
Now write to me and tell me about you. I really, really want to know. I won’t put it on my blog unless you tell me I can. Don’t tell me your hair color and height, that stuff isn’t freaking important, right? Tell me about YOU. The inside stuff. What you dream of or are scared of, what makes you cry. Here are my answers: I dream of playing basketball, I’m scared I won’t get to do what I want to do because of my head, and I cry about all kinds of stuff, especially when I hear about something bad happening to a kid.
Include photos of things you think are cool, or people you think are cool, or yourself if you want.
Here’s a photo of my nieces and nephews dressed as pink pigs carrying pitchforks as you can see. They are who they are and they are happy. What they think inside is on the outside. I hope they always feel free to dress as pink pigs with pitchforks.
Here’s a photo of the inside of an atom. (Pretty)
Here’s a photo of the inside of a colon. (Not pretty)
Here’s a photo of a six-scoop caramel sundae. I ate the whole thing. Six scoops of ice cream and I was still hungry.
“Mom Mom Mom Mom!” Tate thundered down the stairs with his laptop to the kitchen. “Look at this! Look!”
I peered at the screen. He had thirty-five messages from people of all ages, including a couple of people who worked with my mother on her soap opera, to whom she’d sent the link for Tate’s blog.
“They answered my question on my blog about themselves! Read ’em!”
I read them. Some of the letters made me tear up.
“I know, Boss Mom! They made me cry, too!”
I laughed at a couple.
“I know, Boss Mom, I laughed, too!”
This is what came out: Honesty. Sheer, raw honesty about people’s lives, hopes, dreams, fears, their successes and failures, embarrassing moments, hobbies, and interests. They enclosed photos of “cool” people from around the world, quotes, and news articles about inspiring people.
“Boss Mom,” Tate said, running an excited hand through his curls. “I finally think I’m relating to people, you know? I’m having conversations. I could be, maybe, a person that people want to talk to and get to know and share stuff and stuff. I’m writing back to whoever writes to me.” He grabbed six double-chocolate cookies. “This blog is frickin’ awesome.”
The stories kept pouring in to Tate’s blog. He posted, with permission, a lot of them.
His daily blog counter shot up into the hundreds.
I went to see my client, George Bonaparte, the next morning. Eight o’clock, on the dot. He insisted on promptness.
George is in his early eighties. He lives in a huge mansion with views of the city, bought with the money he made at the trucking company he owns. He was a poor young man, bought a truck, worked hard, bought another truck, and another. Bonaparte Trucking was born, and it’s now a nationwide company.
The mansion is on the historic register. Inside it is filled with expensive furniture, heavy brocade curtains, ugly art, half-modern, half-old, all mixed together in a truly garish way, plus framed photos of him with Important People, heads of animals he shot during guided tours in Africa where they practically parade the animal out for you to shoot, trophies, and other yuck. It makes me feel claustrophobic and the animal heads are freaky.
George Bonaparte is obnoxious. Think of a boar and cross it with a hissing possum and moonshine. That’s who he is.
His daughter, Kendra, was at the mansion that morning. She’s tall, blond, forty-one years old, and wears animal-print heels. Kendra is a CEO of a major corporation. Young, famous, and competent. I’ve seen her pictured in different magazines, in tailored suits, impeccably groomed.
She was drunk as a skunk.
“Hello, Kendra,” I said. “How are you?”
She raised a shot glass toward me and wobbled on over. “Sleeping Beauty and elephant’s knees, I say cheers to you, Jaden. I am here with my father all day today. All day! All day! You know, that man in the bed who still tells me I’m a disappointment. This is what I’ve heard all my life.” She scrunched up her face, tried to stand still, and barked out, “You are a disappointment. With a D, Kendra!” She waved her hand in the air, as if dismissing me. “Disappointment! You always have been! You could never get it together. Everything is hard for you to understand!”
Kendra took another drink and yelled, “To victory! To mice! To butterflies that do not get drunk!”
“I see you’re practicing self-relaxing techniques.”
She burped. “Glorious burp! I’m in the Disappointment House. It was Shaina’s turn yesterday, and Tony’s before her, and they left me liquor.” She tried to stand nice and tall, then intoned, “Liquor Picker Poker Rum, I’ve got room for my big fat bum!” She burped again. “Ha! I’ll bet Daddy would not click a dick with that one. How about this one? Scotch Potch Hopscotch One, I’ve got a dad that’s just about done!”
I walked over to her father’s bedroom door and shut it before Kendra trip-tropped into another rhyme. Too late.
“I’ve got tequila, I’ve got pie, I’ve got a dad who’s about to die!”
“Okay, Kendra, nice rhymes. Perhaps we should keep it down? Can it for the moment?”
“Nope,” she declared. “Not now. He already hates me, what’s a teeny more hate? Hey! I’ve got another one.” She snapped her fingers. “He’s been mean, he’s been sly, I won’t shout, but I won’t lie. He’s rung my bell, and he’s going to hell!”
“Did you study poetry in college?”
“No! No poetry. I went to Yale and I studied economics and finance and business and I was a Rhodes scholar and I married the right guy, the guy that Daddy picked, and he ended up being a gay guy, and the gay guy was cutthroat and nasty and ambitious, a younger him, and now we’re getting divorced and I did what Daddy told me to do in the futile hope he would approve of me and I am”—she tipped her head up toward the ceiling and started plucking through the air with her hand, as if she was trying to find words—“I am pissy wissy! And screwy wrewy! And not happy!”
“You’re not screwy wrewy, Kendra,” I said softly. I had spent a lot of time with her, her sister, and brother, all who were struggling with their father’s death. Not because they would miss him, but because he was miserable as a father emotionally, and physically abusive when they were young, with a fondness for spanking them with his belt. Sometimes, in my experience, the people whose grief is the worst are the ones who lose someone with whom they have unfinished business, or with whom the relationship has disintegrated.
When the relative dies they’re left with broken glass, emotionally speaking. It cannot be resolved. The ones with the strong relationships, there’s nothing there but clean grief, as I call it. Clean grief. Tears, but no regrets, resentments, or fury.
That was not the case here. The disappointed daddy was dying and there was no resolution, no needed apologies, no forgiveness.
“See here, Jaden. I believe the circus has come to town and there is a lion in the pantry.” Kendra took another swig, then clicked her teeth together. “Also, there is a mean monkey in that bedroom. Don’t go in unless you want the monkey to bite you. Don’t get bit. The monkey’s name is Dad. Dad is bad. Dad bad. Bad Dad.”
“Kendra, how about if I make you a sandwich?”
“A sandwich! Ha and ha. That would be dee-lish-us. I’ll have a sandwich with popcorn and tequila with a side of a Mona Lisa and Les Misérables, because I’m miserable. You want a bite?”
“No, thank you. Come on, Kendra. Bring yourself to the kitchen. I’ll check on your dad and then make you your tequila and popcorn sandwich.” I would not be making her a tequila and popcorn sandwich. Turkey and ham would do. Maybe mayo if we wanted to live on the edge.
“Yum!” she said, rubbing her stomach. Her hand stopped abruptly and she said, ever so clea
rly, “I believe I am now going to puke.” She stumbled to the bathroom, crashed into a wall, then hit the toilet, possibly with her head.
“See ya in a minute,” I called to her.
“Yuck duck!” she said. “Ew yucky!”
I entered the bedroom.
The bad monkey was in a bad mood. He threw a pillow at me.
“Good morning, Mr. Bonaparte.”
“Not a good morning, Jaden. I’m dying,” he wheezed out. “How can it be good?”
“Hello, Mrs. Bonaparte.”
Mrs. Bonaparte looked worse than her daughter, but she was not drunk as a skunk. She was only sixty-two. She married him at twenty, had Kendra at twenty-one. For an inexplicable reason, she allowed herself to be stuck. The woman didn’t leave. Verbal abuse scrambled her brain, smashed her self-esteem, and locked her up as if she were in prison with a bloodsucking gargoyle standing guard.
“Hello, Jaden.” Her platinum-blond hair was all over her head, her mascara smeared, her lipstick smudged. She’d lost about ten pounds in the last month off her skinny frame. Mr. Bonaparte despised fat women and hammered the mother and daughters with that degrading fact.
“Don’t hello Mrs. Bonaparte,” Mr. Bonaparte snapped from the bed. “It’s me you need to be talking to, missy. Me. She can’t do anything. This medication isn’t doing shit. The doctors know nothing. Now you get me something that works, or I’m going to get your ass fired.”
“Some days I think that would be a fine, freeing event.”