Fig
Page 2
There is a pile of broken china dolls on the table and a large coil of rusted barbed wire. The power drill is charging. The tiny red light blinks on and off in the semidarkness. There’s a spool of copper wire and a wooden box full of pliers, wire cutters, hammers, and tin snips.
Mama has been making mobiles to hang around the farm, only she calls them dream catchers. She hangs them in the barn and from the trees—wherever she thinks they’ll look pretty. They remind me of cobwebs. Caught inside the webs of copper wire are quartz crystals. They dangle amid the arms, legs, and faces of the broken dolls.
My policeman looks at the encyclopedia. It is still open from me looking up Newfoundland dogs, which is the kind of dog the Darlings had in Peter Pan. The nanny dog. The policeman picks up the magnifying glass—the one I left out. I broke the rule, and rules are important. I forgot to put the magnifying glass away. It is always supposed to go back inside the special black velvet bag to keep it from breaking into a million pieces or starting fires. Mama’s parents died in a fire. This is just one reason my birth was bittersweet. Mama never got to show me off to her mother and father.
I want to take the magnifying glass away from him, but I don’t. That would be rude. Instead, I hold my breath and cross my fingers to keep the magnifying glass safe. He brings the glass to his eye and then pulls it away. He does this again—back and forth—and as he does he never stops looking through the glass. And I have to keep holding my breath and crossing my fingers because he won’t put it down. He brings the magnifying glass to his face and looks at me. The eye behind the glass is big and bulging and no longer matches his other eye.
I hold my breath in a way where he can’t know. And my fingers are crossed inside the cave of the blanket he wrapped around my body. He looks at me through the magnifying glass, and I know he is only trying to be funny. I should laugh. I think about what it would be like to laugh right now. To be the little girl little girls are supposed to be. But he gives up just as I’m about to try.
Holding my breath and crossing my fingers works: He puts the magnifying glass on the encyclopedia, walks into the living room, and sits back down in my father’s armchair. He doesn’t pick up his hat. He leaves it on the coffee table between the two piles of Mama’s art books. He leaves his hat on top of my three new library books.
His hat hides The Headless Cupid—the book Mama let me check out even though she said I was too young for it. “The book is supposed to be a little scary,” Mama warned, but I promised not to be afraid. Mama looked at me and bit her lip. Then she said, “Okay, Fig, but only if we read it together.” And this is what we were supposed to do tonight before I went to bed. We should be upstairs in my bedroom reading The Headless Cupid right now instead of talking to the police.
* * * *
I see the look Mama’s policeman gives my policeman when he walks into the living room. Mama follows him—wringing her hands and biting her lip. She walks slow and looks confused. My policeman gets up, but then he stands the way I do when I’m waiting for a grown-up to tell me what to do. He starts for the door only after the other policeman does.
Before they leave, Mama’s policeman stops and turns around. He pulls something from his shirt pocket and hands it to Mama. He calls her Mrs. Johnson, and I hold my breath and cross my fingers because Mama hates to be called Mrs. Anything. “My name is Annie” is what she usually says, but tonight she doesn’t say anything at all. She just takes the piece of paper and looks at it.
She doesn’t seem to understand.
“If anything else happens,” Mama’s policeman says, “call that number and they’ll dispatch us straightaway.”
My policeman puts his brown hat back on and winks at me, but he doesn’t wink as well as Uncle Billy. Then he starts to turn the doorknob but changes his mind. Letting go, he squeezes his hand into a fist, and then he stretches all his fingers out again. He is watching me. Mama’s policeman looks annoyed, like he just wants to go, but my policeman turns to Mama.
“Maybe there’s someone you could call?” he asks. “Someone you two could stay with until your husband gets back?”
Mama shakes her head. “We’ll be fine,” she says, but her voice doesn’t sound like Mama. It’s too high. She apologizes for making them come all the way out here, and I’m relieved because she isn’t going to call Gran, who is the only person we have to call. And I do not want to stay with her. I never have and I never will, but just in case, and because it’s already worked twice in one night, I hold my breath and cross my fingers.
The policemen close the door behind them, and Mama wanders back into the kitchen. Marmalade stands, stretching. Then she jumps off the sofa and follows Mama.
I start to follow Mama too, but then I remember the magnifying glass and the important rule about putting it away. I head toward the dining room, and that’s when I hear Mama’s policeman laughing. Through the window in the door, I can see them on the porch. They are wavy through the old glass. They’re getting ready to go down the steps, but Mama’s policeman laughs so hard, he has to stop and grab the railing. His laughter seems to make my policeman nervous; my policeman turns to check the house, then he looks through the same window I am looking through, but I am quick—I duck behind the wall, and he doesn’t see me.
Mama’s policeman stops laughing long enough to call Mama crazy. “She said there were goddamn dingoes out there.”
And I think of the program Mama watched last night. The one about the missing baby girl.
“On the eve of what would have been Azaria Chamberlain’s second birthday,” the newsman said, “we bring you the latest in the murder trial of the century.”
First they showed a picture of the tiny baby in her mother’s arms. Even though she was dressed in white, they made a big deal about a black and red baby dress.
“Not suitable,” they said. “Not for a child.” There was no baby in the dress they were discussing.
“The Chamberlains are Seventh-day Adventist,” the man went on, “And according to an anonymous tip, the name ‘Azaria’ means ‘sacrifice in the wilderness.’ ”
When they showed the baby’s mother, Mama sucked in her breath and bit her lip. The other mother had a funny accent. Again and again, they showed her saying, “A dingo took my baby.” But when I asked Mama what a dingo was, she looked at me like I had startled her, and then she said it was time for me to go to bed.
Their voices change, which means the police are walking away, so I unwrap myself from behind the wall and slide across the hardwood in my socks to crouch by the door. There is a slot in the door even though we have to get our mail from the box on the highway. I push the slot open to watch them walk toward their car, and now I can hear them better.
“Maybe it was coyotes,” my policeman says, but he doesn’t say “coyotes” the way Mama does. He makes the word rhyme with “boats” instead.
Mama’s policeman laughs again. “ ‘A dingo took my baby,’ ” he says, but then I can’t hear them anymore—just the sound of car doors slamming, the engine turning over, and a car driving away, tires crunching gravel. I listen until all I hear are crickets. I close my eyes and watch them rub their legs together until their black bodies turn into tiny violins.
I put the magnifying glass away, but before I go into the kitchen I flip back to d.
dingo: a free-roaming wild dog unique to the continent of Australia, mainly found in the outback.
There’s a picture of a mother dingo and her cubs. The mother’s eyes and mouth are closed, and there’s something about her face that makes her look like she is smiling. The same smile I’ve seen before; the one that is not a smile at all.
I think about the word “unique.” Both Daddy and Mama use this word a lot. They are forever telling tell me how important it is to be unique. Daddy said everyone in the world is unique, but Mama shook her head and told him she strongly disagreed. “Unique” means “one of a kind.” It means there are no dingoes in Kansas because there are no dingoes in Americ
a.
Mama sits in the kitchen at the table, and she still looks confused. The overhead light shines through her hair, turning the strawberry blond into white, and she’s taken off the robe. Now it’s draped over the back of the chair like a crumpled shadow. She’s looking at her hands, rubbing them together. She rubs them in a way where it looks like she’s trying to pull off her skin. It reminds me of when Uncle Billy skins a rabbit. After he makes all the different cuts, the way he pulls and pulls. And the fur slides off the body the way a sock comes off a foot.
I sit down at the table, across from my mother. I set The Headless Cupid on the table, hoping she’ll remember the promise she made to me. But Mama doesn’t look up. She doesn’t look at me and she doesn’t look at the book. She only looks at her hands, which she continues to rub away.
Marmalade brushes against Mama’s leg and meows the way she does when she wants to be fed. But it’s like Mama can’t hear or even feel the cat, so I go to the pantry and grab the bag of Meow Mix. I fill the cat’s bowl, spilling some, not that Mama notices. Marmalade makes awful noises like she is grinding bones with her sharp teeth. With my hands, I sweep up the spilled cat food, and then I make a point to change the old water out for fresh water, but Mama still doesn’t notice or say thank you like she normally would. She just sits there trying to rub herself away while the cat eats.
* * * *
I sit at the table with Mama for a long time. Marmalade finished eating forever ago and left the kitchen for her spot in the living room.
I pick the book up and pretend to read, but I can’t concentrate. I flip ahead, hoping Mama will tell me not to. Mama still doesn’t look up. I begin to read chapter six because I am six years old, and almost right away there’s a word I don’t know: “initiation.” I try sounding it out because I think doing this will make Mama be a mother—it will make her want to help me, only she still doesn’t seem to hear me as I stutter through the vowels and trip over the t’s, and I’m forced to give up.
I close the book harder than I should and set it down with a thump. I am loud compared with the rest of the house, and I take a deep breath, trying to take the noisiness back into myself. Then I try counting to keep from holding my breath and crossing my fingers, which my body wants to do because that’s what it’s been doing all night. But I worry it won’t work anymore if I do it too much. Besides, I’m not sure what it is I’d be trying to stop, so instead I count all the sounds the grandfather clock likes to make. I separate the sounds into categories of high and low.
The moths fly around the kitchen light and burn themselves on the hot yellow bulb. Caught inside the glass cover, they die. If Daddy was here, he’d use the step stool to climb up and take the cover down. He’d dump the dead bugs in the trash and wash the cover like he’d wash a plate; he’d dry it with a dishcloth and screw the fixture back into the ceiling. The moth wings sizzle.
Mama finally stops rubbing her hands, and she looks at me. She looks right into my eyes, and I see how her eyelashes look like spun gold. She blinks her tears away and her whole face changes: My mother returns.
“Oh, Fig,” she says, “you must be so scared.”
She gets up and comes to me, covering my body with her body. She is a mother spider with a million arms to wrap around me. I can’t see anything because my face is buried in her belly, but I wonder if she can see the book—if she is remembering. Still holding me, Mama whispers in my ear, “It’s time for bed,” and when she pulls away I make sure her eyes follow mine, and now we are both looking at The Headless Cupid.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Mama says, and I feel bad because when I look at her again the tears are back. They are rolling down her cheeks. “Maybe tomorrow,” she says, and then she offers me her hands to pull me up, and I let her. We leave the book behind, and Mama forgets to turn off the kitchen light. On the stairs, she walks behind me like she’s afraid I might fall. But then she walks like this even after we’ve reached the top and we are walking down the hall to my bedroom.
Mama gets my nightgown from the top dresser drawer. “Put this on,” she says. “I’ll be back to tuck you in.” As I pull the nightgown over my head I hear Mama in the bathroom—the sound of the medicine cabinet being opened and then the clatter of bottles being moved around. She is looking for something she can’t seem to find.
With my nightgown on and my short hair full of static, I go to the bathroom. Mama looks at me in a way that makes me feel like she doesn’t want me here. That she doesn’t want me to see what she is doing.
“I need to brush my teeth,” I say.
Mama smiles. “Of course you do,” she says, but doesn’t move out of the way. I have to stand in the doorway while she continues to look through the cabinet.
After she pulls everything out, she finds what she’s been looking for—a small brown plastic bottle that looks like all the other small brown plastic bottles that are kept in the cabinet. She puts everything back but this one—this one she holds on to. With her fingers wrapped around the bottle, she steps back to make room for me to brush my teeth, and when she steps back the bottle rattles.
Mama stands in the doorway, watching me. Her face above my face in the mirror. We look alike and we don’t look alike.
There is no red in my blond and I have no freckles. I am the same kind of thin as Mama, only my face is round while her features are more severe. Mama has hazel eyes, streaked with green and gold. My eyes are brown and boring. Mama is beautiful and I am something else. But Mama doesn’t make me feel ugly the way Gran does; Mama makes me feel like I’m the prettiest girl in the entire world.
When Mama goes into her room, I listen to all the familiar sounds. The way the rag rug muffles her steps, and the sliding of a dresser drawer as it opens and closes. I hear the soundlessness of Mama as she pauses to look in the mirror—the one from Daddy with the two brass birds cast to look like they are ready to fly away. When Mama comes back, her hair is down and she’s wearing a long white nightgown like the one I am wearing. Soft cotton and eyelet flowers. She leads me to my room, and when I get into bed she sits down next to me.
“Do you think you can sleep?” she asks.
I don’t want to be brave anymore. I hear something in the yard, and I’m worried about my stuffed animals. I don’t want them to be cold or to get hurt. I worry about rain.
Mama brings the quilt to my chin and tells me to breathe. I breathe the special way she taught me—where I fill my belly with air and make it as round as a balloon. While I breathe, Mama starts to build the protective dome she builds around my bed whenever I am scared. She stands to shape the air with her hands. They move like she is working with clay.
“I make it from love,” she says. “And nothing bad can get through.”
Mama calls the construction of the dome a ritual. “Rituals are important,” Mama says, and I realize this is what I’ve been doing. Holding my breath and crossing my fingers is a kind of ritual to make something stop or not happen. When Mama’s done building the invisible dome, she rubs her hands together. She’s thorough, and I can almost see it—the way light hits glass and makes it not so see-through anymore. I see the scratch marks on the other side where something tried to claw its way in but couldn’t get through.
* * * *
Mama is still asleep when I wake up. With the sun in the sky, the world is safe and warm again. I look at the orchard from my window. I can see the quilt, and some of my stuffed animals—the trees, and the slope of the land, hide the others.
I get dressed and go to the orchard to gather everything and take it back home with me. I walk the path that last night had to be run. What I am doing is called tracking. Uncle Billy taught me.
I track Mama. And I track myself.
The birds are singing and the sky is blue. The southern pasture is sun kissed with dandelions and buttercups, and the bright sprinkle of yellow makes me smile. A group of rabbits scatter when I come upon the remains of the picnic, but everything else is as it was.
My
stuffed animals sit in their circle, and my teddy bear is still leaning against the picnic basket, the cloth napkin in his lap damp from the morning dew.
I breathe in, and the air makes me stand up straight and tall. I hold the air inside my body and I cross my fingers until I’m no longer scared, and then I head toward the woods and the farmer’s ditch. I don’t try to hide what I am doing. Today is one of those days when Mama will sleep in late.
This is where the animals come to drink. Wild and not wild. And this is where I feed the dog, but she is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, I find an owl pellet—matted and gray. Using my fingernails as tweezers, I pick out the tiny white jawbone of a field mouse. The sun shines through the trees, turning parts of the water into gold. Where the light doesn’t reach, the water stays dark: black like the reverse side of a mirror.
* * * *
It takes three trips to carry everything back to the house, and when I’m done I fall asleep on the couch. When I wake up later, I peer into Mama’s room. She’s sleeping on her side, facing the other way. She still hasn’t moved, and Marmalade is curled up by her feet. The sun shines through the curtains and turns Mama’s skin into lace.
My stomach growls and I realize I’m hungry, but I don’t want to bother Mama. In the kitchen, while I’m waiting for my toast to toast, I try reading The Headless Cupid. The book opens to chapter six again, and I find that “initiation” isn’t the only word I don’t know. But at least I can pronounce the other ones—words like “occult” and “ordeal.” I’m more than happy to abandon the book when it’s time to spread my toast with butter and homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam. I wonder if there’s a difference between “cult” and “occult.” The word “cult” had something to do with the picture of baby Azaria’s black and red dress. The picture of the dress without a baby actually wearing it.