Fig

by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

  I’ve been reading all the results from the tests I took at Social Services. I found the manila folder in Daddy’s desk—in the drawer that is like a small filing cabinet. Inside the folder, I found the report on me, and next to mine was the one on Mama. The release papers from the hospital. Daddy put me and Mama next to the farm records and the bank statements.

  There’s a light knock on the door, and Principal White looks up from his paperwork. His glasses have thick, yellow lenses, which magnify his eyes. I look at my hands. I fold them in my lap the way some people do when they are praying. This is not the way Gran prays. She turns her fingers into a steeple—she is never soft, always stiff.

  “Mrs. Olson,” Principal White says. “Do come in—please, have a seat.” And he gestures with his arm, showing her where to sit, the way a magician does before he makes something disappear or reappear. And for the millionth time, I wonder what happened to my tooth, the one I lost at Gran’s.

  My teacher sits on one of the chairs against the wall.

  She sits on the edge of her seat, holding a bag I’ve never seen before. It looks like it was made from a blue plastic tarp, and there is a red zipper along the top. She sets it down, and her hands flutter to her lap as the slanted light from the blinds dissects her fat knees by turning them into stripes. I pick at the lint stuck to both of my knees because I am wearing cable-knit navy blue tights. I rub the scratchy material against my scabs, and once again I really want to pick, but there is no way to get my fingers inside my tights, not right now, so I press on the scabs instead.

  I press until the soreness presses back.

  A button on Principal White’s telephone lights up red, and then it makes a buzzing sound. Principal White smiles at Mrs. Olson and pushes a different button, “Yes?” he says.

  “Mrs. Johnson is here,” a woman says, her voice garbled by the intercom at the same time that I can hear the real voice coming in from the slightly open door behind me.

  I turn to watch Mama come in. Her long hair is loose around her shoulders, and her cheeks are flushed. She’s wearing her favorite wool shawl and a pair of paint-splattered blue jeans. She has thick wool socks on, which she wears with her black cloth Mary Janes—the kind her friend sends to her from Chinatown in New York City.

  I used to have a pair. Mine had a splash of embroidered red roses across the toes. I’m pretty sure I’m in trouble, and I wonder if this is making Mama snap back into reality. I hold my breath and cross my fingers.

  Principal White waves his arm again, gesturing for my mother to take a seat. And it’s just before she does that I see the rip in her jeans. I can see the curve from thigh to buttock, a flash of white skin and black cotton, and I press even harder on the scabs. Once Mama is settled in the chair next to me, the principal nods at Mrs. Olson to begin.

  “The doll was first discovered this morning,” Mrs. Olson says, and she can’t seem to bring herself to look at Mama. “This morning, the recess monitor spotted a crowd of kids behind the shed and went to investigate.” Mrs. Olson pauses, as if she’s out of breath. Mama is staring at her, and I can tell this bothers Mrs. Olson.

  “The children were all gathered round, and that’s when the monitor sent for Mr. White. Mr. White asked all us teachers to come and have a look—in case one of us could recognize it,” and when Mrs. Olson says the word “it,” she whispers the way Gran does with certain words.

  Principal White leans forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “Mrs. Olson thought she recognized the doll,” he explains.

  “Well,” Mama says, smiling cheerfully, “you either did or you didn’t.” And from the corner of my eye, I watch Mama turn into the Queen of Hearts.

  Mrs. Olson nods, looking at the bag. She tries to begin once again. “It’s just—it had been so mutilated,” she says. “But after close inspection, I decided it had to be the doll belonging to your daughter. I remembered one of the observations made during Fig’s show-and-tell in regard to the doll’s extreme flexibility. It was this very characteristic that helped me identify it as Fig’s Barbie.”

  Mama uncrosses her legs and does not cross them again, no matter how hard I hold my breath and cross my fingers. Principal White blushes and has to look away. Mama is now smiling her polite but angry smile. She says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Principal White nods to Mrs. Olson, who nods back.

  Mrs. Olson grabs a Kleenex from the box on the principal’s desk. And another tissue pops up to replace it. Mrs. Olson opens her blue bag and uses the white tissue as protection as she pulls out the fake naked Barbie. She holds the doll at a distance like she’s afraid it might be contagious.

  One of Barbie’s hands is torn off, and I can see the wire inside that makes her so bendy. Someone tried to remove the red and orange lipstick, and I can see the black marks my mother made when she was pretending to be a plastic surgeon.

  Mama takes my hand, cupping it with both of hers. Her palms are sweaty, but she keeps smiling at Principal White. “Fig isn’t allowed to play with Barbie,” she says, and she says it like Barbie is another girl my age. Then she squeezes my hand, and my heart starts racing inside my chest.

  “Barbie is the ultimate icon of a male-chauvinistic society,” Mama says, and now she is an actress playing herself. A star in her own movie—everything practiced, and I’m just a prop. Mama stands. “Come along, darling,” she says. “I simply don’t have the time for such puritanical nonsense.”

  Principal White also stands. He has no idea what’s happening, and I almost feel sorry for him. He is trying to show her my backpack. Full of evidence, it would prove what they are trying to tell her. But my mother ignores them. And when she turns around, they both can see the hole in her jeans.

  Mama drags me out of the office and through the maze of secretaries, who all look up from their typewriters and telephones, covering their O-shaped mouths with their perfectly manicured hands. My mother swings the glass door open and pushes me into the hall, where our footsteps echo. I hold my breath and cross my fingers.

  Outside, Mama opens the car door and I climb in. She starts to come around to her side, but then she stops. Standing in the road, she looks at Principal White’s window, and I wonder if he’s in there watching her as well. Then Mama does something I have never seen her do before.

  She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. She puts a long white cigarette between her lips and dramatically lights it with a strike-anywhere match. She takes a long drag and extinguishes the flame on the match with her exhale.

  My mother comes around to her side of the car, opening the door and sliding into her seat. She rolls her window down and starts the car—smoking the entire time. Before she drives away, Mama turns to look at me. She smiles, but her lips are shut tight. And as she smiles two thin clouds of gray come twisting out of each nostril, and my mother is a fire-breathing dragon.

  * * * *

  October 29, 1982

  According to the man on the evening news, baby Azaria Chamberlain was not taken and killed by a dingo. Her mother is convicted for her murder and sentenced to life in prison. This time they do not show the photograph of the mother holding her baby. They just show the picture of the black dress, trimmed in red. And then a picture of the campsite where Azaria died. Ayers Rock glows red against the blue Australian sky. I watch the program all by myself.

  * * * *

  Principal White and Daddy came to a compromise and created a suitable punishment for my vandalism. According to the dictionary, vandalism is the willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property. I had to look up “malicious,” too. It comes from the word “malice”—a desire to harm others or to see them suffer. This word made me think of Barbie.

  I could see her in my head all over again. The way she squirmed inside those rubber bands and how her face responded to the nails and the hammer—how her eyes squeezed shut and her face scrunched up and she didn’t look like a doll anymore because
she was in so much pain.

  She looked like the smallest woman in the world.

  And for a split second, she looked like Mama.

  The incident will not go down on my permanent record—Principal White made this promise to my father—and unlike my grandmother’s hair, these records really are permanent. “Had the circumstances not been what they were,” Daddy said, “you would have been suspended.” My father doesn’t bother to define the circumstance. I know exactly what he means. He means Mama.

  Instead of suspension, I am benched. For two weeks straight, I have to sit on the bench during lunch and recess, where all the other kids can see me.

  And this is how everyone comes to know that I’m the girl who crucified Barbie.

  * * * *

  Halloween is always difficult for farm kids to celebrate because we can’t trick-or-treat unless we have our parents take us into town. So Douglas Elementary throws a big party every year and everyone, including the teachers, comes to school dressed in costume.

  Principal White is a fisherman and Mrs. Olson is a witch.

  The party is in the gymnasium. Set up along the walls are long tables are covered with paper tablecloths, dishes full of candy, and punch bowls with dry-ice and Hawaiian Punch. A disco ball turns, throwing fragmented light around the room. They always play the same songs: the theme from The Addams Family, the song about the “one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater,” and, for the grand finale, “The Monster Mash.”

  I’ve never had a store-bought costume before, but Mama was too tired to make one this year. Daddy says the doctors are trying to regulate her medication. “For now,” he says, “we need to let her rest.” So Gran went to Kmart. One size fits all, the dress is made from tulle and silver sequins, and the costume name, Princess Cinderella, is written across the package in sparkly blue cursive. There’s a plastic tiara that’s supposed to look like silver, embellished with the same fake diamonds that adorn the matching wand—not that Cinderella had a wand. The wand belonged to Cinderella’s fairy godmother, and the fairy godmother used it to make everything better. I wish I had a fairy godmother. If Mama and Daddy both died, I’d have to go live with Gran.

  Princess Cinderella also comes with glass slippers. A pair of high heels made from clear plastic that are way too big for me. Gran wadded up toilet paper and stuffed the toes to match my white tights but it’s still impossible to walk in them.

  * * * *

  Halloween 1982

  Daddy and Gran must have forgotten about my punishment, but Mrs. Olson does not.

  “There are absolutely no exceptions,” she says. And then she tells me to sit on the bench in the hall by the party. I watch the kids walk back and forth between the gym and the bathrooms.

  I am not allowed in the gymnasium.

  Candace Sherman is also Princess Cinderella. Her blond hair falls in perfect ringlets around her tiara. She clicks across the linoleum in a pair of glass slippers that look like they were made just for her, even though our feet can’t be that much different in size.

  Candace Sherman makes it a point to go to the bathroom a lot. Each time, she brings along another girl. She brings Sissy Baxter first. Sissy is the only one who doesn’t laugh. She looks at me and bites her lip while Candace whispers in her ear, and when Sissy looks at the floor Candace pushes her so hard, she almost falls down. And I wonder if this is because of the stupid dandelions.

  When it’s Tanya Jenkins’s turn, Tanya turns hysterical. She can’t stop laughing at me; she sounds like a hyena. But Candace Sherman doesn’t just bring Sissy Baxter or Tanya Jenkins. She brings along all the girls she normally would never talk to: girls like me. She puts her arms around them—these girls who are targets of her teasing too, and parades them past. Candace points at me and whispers. She makes each girl look, and then she says something that makes them laugh.

  As soon as they have their backs turned to me, I wave my stupid wand. I turn them into toads and worms. I turn Candace Sherman into a schizophrenic, but it’s not awful enough. So I try again. This time, I turn her into me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PALINDROMES

  doll: n. 1. A child’s toy representing a human being. 2. Slang. a. An attractive person b. A woman c. A sweetheart 3. Doll, nickname for Dorothy.

  doll: v. 1. To pet, indulge 2. To dress up; to dress smartly: She got dolled up for the party.

  July 10, 1983

  Mama gets third-degree sunburns from working in the flower garden. And it isn’t because she didn’t wear her straw hat, or a pound of sunscreen like me, as we pulled the weeds and thinned the zinnias. But her new medication makes her burn no matter what: face, neck, shoulders, back.

  I stand in the doorway wearing my suit of flesh unharmed by the same sun, and I watch Daddy apply aloe to Mama’s burns. He uses a leaf from the plant in the living room to soothe her angry skin as she sits on the edge of her bed with her fingers curled into tight white fists. She is burned even where her shirt covered her, and she flinches despite Daddy’s gentle touch. And then she begins to cry. Large white blisters burst from Mama’s freckled shoulders; full of water, they, too, want to weep. Mama cries, and she doesn’t wipe her tears away.

  “I’m screwed either way,” she says. “If I take the medicine, I can’t go outside. But if I don’t—” And this is when her voice trails away. Mama looks out the window at the setting sun, and she repeats herself: “If I don’t take it,” she says, “then I can’t do anything.”

  * * * *

  I sit inside the potting shed.

  It is cold in here with the walls made from stone. The one window looks at the garden, and standing in the distance is the orchard. Mama’s straw hat hangs from a hook, and on the worktable amid the stacks of terra-cotta pots her work gloves remain as she left them; the stiff leather fingers continue to curl as if her hands are still inside. Ready to dig more holes and plant more flowers.

  Last summer, I was helping Mama plant herbs when she suddenly sighed and smiled at me. “This is my sanctuary,” she said, and then she turned her attention back to the starts in their trays. I watched as she carefully jiggled the baby thyme from its cradle of black plastic, roots and all. I think about the other kind of time, as in clocks and calendars. And when I wonder if yesterday was the last time Mama will get to work in the garden, I hold my breath and cross my fingers that I am very wrong.

  * * * *

  Christmas 1982

  Daddy’s sitting in his chair, and Mama’s on the rug with me. We’re in our nightgowns—long, white, and soft. Marmalade watches from her spot by the fire. Mama’s long hair is trying to stand up, and Mama says my hair is doing the same thing.

  “It’s static electricity,” she says, “because we’re crawling around the way we are.”

  And I think about the static on the television—all the fuzzy black and white dots, and the way it sounds like silence even though I know silence doesn’t have a sound.

  Daddy ruffles my hair and laughs.

  I feel my hair moving; it stands up and dances, and I am Medusa. My hair is full of snakes. I don’t want electricity inside my body. I hold my breath and cross my fingers to try to make it go away. Mama says I am mostly made from water. And I’m scared I’ll be electrocuted.

  While the presents from my parents are always wrapped, the ones from Santa never are. Wrapped in blue snowflakes, the new calendar full of unicorns is from Mama. Daddy gives me every single book in the series called The Littles. Mama jokes about his masculine choice of wrapping paper: Christmas-colored plaid.

  A baby doll is waiting for me underneath the tree as if she just arrived from nowhere—delivered by the stork, she is nothing but a magic trick. I don’t believe in Santa Claus—not anymore. Not after all the teeth I’ve lost—the one that disappeared, and the ones I’ve been collecting, keeping for myself. I keep them in the enveloped marked SCHIZOPHRENIA. I keep this envelope and my teeth in the space between my mattress and my box spring. And I don’t believe in Santa o
r the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny.

  I don’t believe in anything.

  The baby doll is under the tree like she’s asleep inside her beautiful cradle made from wood the color of black cherries. A heart has been carved away at each end like the space the cookie cutters left in the dough for Valentine’s Day last year. Tucked around the doll is a tiny patchwork quilt. And I recognize the fabric. There are squares cut from all my old dresses and bits of faded denim from worn-out blue jeans. Interrupting the pattern of squares and triangles are embroidered swirling flowers and looping spirals. Drawn in bright thread, they zigzag and meander. And they trespass.

  Daddy calls it a crazy quilt. And I whisper the word “crazy,” but no one hears me.

  “Do you like her?” Mama asks. “You can hold her if you’d like.”

  The doll looks like she is sleeping, and Mama is staring at me—eyes on fire, but she is talking normal. Her words come out at the right speed, right volume. No spit. “You should call her Turtle,” Mama says, “Because her face is all scrunched up.” And Mama scrunches her face too.

  Even though I didn’t want a doll, she still had a name: Elizabeth Rose—a beautiful name with an even prettier one in the middle. I didn’t get a middle name.

  Just Fig or Fiona, just weird or old fashioned.

  Mama picks Turtle up and holds her for me to see. She shows me her dress—periwinkle blue, the color of my new favorite crayon, and then she lifts the dress so I can see her diaper. Turtle is the kind of doll that pees.

  Mama shows me all the ways to hold a baby.

  Then she settles with Turtle in her arms the way Sissy Baxter’s mother held Sissy’s brand-new little brother back in kindergarten.

  Mrs. Baxter came to show the baby to the class. She sat in the rocking chair Miss Ada always used for story time. Mrs. Baxter sat in the rocking chair but she didn’t read out loud from any of Miss Ada’s beautiful picture books. Instead, Miss Ada helped us gather around Mrs. Baxter in what she called a semicircle, which is the same shape as a crescent moon. And we were allowed to look but not to touch. And this is how I sit with Mama. She shows me all the different ways a person can hold a doll. I look, but I don’t dare touch.