The river has washed her clean. Has washed away her bright colors, her costume, and all her features, but when I lift her from the pool I come to remember. I know her by the familiar weight and shape of her once-painted body and by the way she fits inside my palm. Faceless now, the figure reminds me of a question my uncle asked me just the other day.
“What did your face look like before you were born?”
The question bothered me, and when I told him so he laughed. He laughed, then winked at me and said, “It’s a koan,” and he acted as if this explanation was enough. A few days later, I pressed him to say more even though I knew he didn’t want me to. Finally, he sighed and said, “Sometimes the point of a question is not to find the answer but to find more questions.”
Cradled in my hand, the smallest nesting doll stares back at me even though she is now faceless; her eyelessness bores into me from her place amid my palm lines of life, love, and fortune. I know why she has returned. She is the answer I was seeking; or, rather, she is a question I didn’t know I had to ask. She looks at me and says, How do you get a mother back?
My mind begins to race. I realize I’ve been taking the easy route by only forfeiting material items. Their sentiment was not enough. I must find a way to truly give myself away—to sacrifice myself for Mama—to return as the doll returned to me. I must strip away the face I was not meant to wear and wear the face I had before I was born. Only then can Mama heal. I must sacrifice all my needs for the needs of Mama, but then I cry. I still don’t know what to do.
“Don’t worry,” the doll says. “When you are ready, I will send a sign, and this sign will tell you what you need to do.”
* * * *
Just when I’d forgotten about The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Mama gives it to me for my tenth birthday. She gives it to me just when I thought she’d forgotten my birthday was even coming. In fact, Mama orders several of Zilpha’s books from a catalog, and UPS delivers them right to our front door. This is way better than Santa ever was. I finally get to read The Headless Cupid.
Mama was right. It was worth the wait.
I hold my breath and cross my fingers, and then I ask Mama if she will read the book with me. I’m scared she will say no, but she doesn’t. She smiles at me and pats the empty bit of bed beside her body. It takes us three nights to read, tucked under the covers in her room. We’re supposed to take turns every other chapter, but Mama falls asleep every few pages. I know she can’t help it, so I read on—anything to be close to her again.
The story begins the day the Stanley family is joined by their new stepsister. Twelve-year-old Amanda steps out of her mother’s car wearing a large, colorful shawl, her snakelike braids coiled into a looping crown atop her head. Drawing emphasis to her third eye, Amanda’s forehead is adorned by a mirrorlike triangle, and to complete her costume she carries a crow in a giant cage.
Amanda announces herself as a witch and says the bird is her Familiar, and I am drawn to her. She reminds me of Mama. This is what my mother must have been like when she was twelve—that is, minus the dark hair and upside-down smile and the wild animal held in hostage. Nonetheless, this recognition lets me know I’m about to receive the sign I’ve been waiting for.
The only chapter Mama doesn’t sleep through is chapter six, and this is the second sign that I’m about to receive my instruction. Chapter six gives me the idea to make the calendar. The idea comes when Mama interrupts my reading to say, “I think the initiation is interesting.” Because she’s the one to speak, I pay attention. The sign is revealed. I know what to do. The initiation into the occult involves what Amanda calls an “ordeal.” The ordeal is an entire day where the Stanley children cannot touch any kind of metal with their skin. The ordeal is a way to perform a sacrifice, or at least this is how I come to understand it. I even hear the voice I sometimes hear—the one inside my head—and I know exactly what I need to do. But The Headless Cupid is just a children’s book, and a single day and one ordeal will never be enough to accomplish what I must accomplish. I will need to perform an ordeal every day for a very long time if I’m ever going to cure my mother.
I design the Calendar of Ordeals to begin tomorrow. What remains of 1985 will be my warm-up round. But then the handmade calendar will continue into the year to come. It envelops 1986, and 1986 will be the real test. If I can sacrifice myself every day, everything will be okay.
As I work on the calendar, the smallest nesting doll watches me from her perch upon the shelf above my desk. I like her more without the paint. Featureless, her face resembles my face before I was born. For the template, I use two calendars. For 1985, I use the one on my bedroom wall—the one I got for Christmas last year. This one features illustrations of different fairies, and all the different trees or flowers with which they are associated. I also use Daddy’s new calendar. I use my fingernail to slice open the cellophane; already printed, this calendar is for 1986. Every year, he gets these calendars for free from the feed and seed on Route 72. These calendars always have season-appropriate color photographs of life on the farm.
Taking Daddy’s yardstick from its outlined spot on the wall, I go back to my room and begin by making careful grids. I am using big sheets of Mama’s watercolor paper because they’re the closest thing I can find to papyrus scrolls. Day by day, and month by month, I create squares and columns to represent what still remains of 1985. And I do the same for 1986—beginning with January and ending with the close of December. I pencil everything in before retracing it with permanent black ink. In my best handwriting, I write the names of the months, the days of the week, and all the numbers, too.
I mimic calligraphy, making all the capital letters pretty the way they are in fancy children’s books. I drape the letters with tiny flowers and curling leaves, filling the insides of Os with night skies: crescent moons, twinkling stars, and wispy clouds.
I go over the pencil with the fine felt tip of a Sharpie pen. The black ink is elegant. The thick paper seems to drink it up. I don’t include holidays, because I need the room for the actual ordeals.
ordeal: a difficult or painful experience.
The Calendar of Ordeals is my own special sequence of sacrifice—one after the other, they will take time, but they will accumulate. And grow into something sacred and profound.
I start out easy, beginning with tomorrow, November 1, 1985.
Inside the square, I write: Do not touch the color purple. For the second I write: Do not touch snow. And the days go on: Do not eat bananas. Do not smile. Do not drink milk . Do not touch any animals.
The ordeals get more difficult and painful as I go: days where I cannot drink water or eat, days when I cannot talk, and days when touching Mama is forbidden.
Sunday is the only Sabbath from the practice of ordeals. But Sundays aren’t about resting. They are days reserved for redoing any failed ordeals. Sunday is for erasing any mistakes I might make.
Sometimes it’s not about what I cannot do, but what I must. One day, I will have to count every step I take, and if I lose track, I must backtrack and start over. There are penalties. And lots of rules. Like Gran, and her need for routine, these rules are important; they create an ongoing ritual.
I can never tell anyone what I am doing. This means I cannot explain myself—even if it means being rude or having to lie or appearing to have gone absolutely crazy. The Calendar of Ordeals must be challenging or it will not work.
Every day, a sacrifice.
* * * *
Six Signs the Calendar Is Working
Sign # 1: November 9, 1985
Mama decides to quit smoking.
It’s a bitter cold Saturday, and because I don’t have school the ordeal is more difficult. Today I am not allowed to be around fire of any kind. In part, by practicing this particular ordeal, I am honoring my maternal grandparents.
I can’t go into the living room or the kitchen for risk of Daddy building a fire or someone striking a strike-anywhere match to lig
ht a burner on the stove. This means I have to stay in my room all day. Daddy doesn’t miss me at breakfast because I often sleep in on the weekends. And he doesn’t miss me at lunch because he’s fixing one of the many fences on the farm. But dinner becomes a problem. Even if we ate in the dining room like normal families, the dining room opens into the living room, where the fireplace is, and on a November night there is always a fire burning.
First he calls for me, but when I don’t answer he comes to look for me. I have to hide in the linen closet, surrounded by the smell of lint and lavender. Last week, I got to go to the library in Lawrence, and I borrowed the book on floriography Sissy Baxter was reading on Mother’s Day. According to this book, lavender means distrust, which doesn’t seem fair to the nature of this flower. I listen to the sound of Daddy checking my room and then knocking on the bathroom door. He says my name like a question. And each time he has to ask for me, he sounds more and more irritated. He doesn’t look that long, nor does he seem worried about the fact I’m missing. He just sighs a lot.
I hear him knock on Mama’s door. Mama hides in her room all the time, especially around dinnertime. He knocks lightly before he opens it. He asks if she’d like him to bring her a plate, but she says, “No.” And then he goes back down the stairs and I picture him eating all alone in the kitchen. I can see it clear as day on the television screen of my closed eyes.
And now I’m in my room again, and Daddy is knocking on my door.
I keep expecting him to open the door since I’m not answering, but he doesn’t. This time, he knocks and then he waits in the hall. My clock reads 7:59. I wait to open the door. I am waiting for the grandfather clock to begin chiming the hour, and then I wait for all eight chimes to finish chiming eight o’clock. I am practicing patience, and this is not strictly about the Calendar; like silence, it is something I’ve been practicing forever. After eight chimes, I open the door.
“You need to eat,” he says, “And the dishes are piling up.”
I can tell by the way his jaw works against his cheek that he is clenching his teeth. This is what Daddy does when he is focused, concerned, impatient, or angry. He tells me my dinner is in the oven, and this means I will not be eating, because the oven is gas and the pilot light is an eternal blue flame always visible whenever the oven door is open.
Hard work, however, is always rewarded, and I still intend to do my chores. By now the fire will be dying out in the living room, and it’s possible to veer toward the kitchen from the stairs without looking in that direction. Still, I’m worried Daddy will come into the kitchen and make a pot of tea for Mama or check to see if I have eaten, and I’m trying to find a way to ask him not to go in there at all when my mother opens her bedroom door.
She peers out at us. She’s wearing one of her long white nightgowns, and I’m relieved to see she isn’t wrapped inside Daddy’s awful bathrobe, which no one ever seems to wash anymore.
“I know you’re both aware of my smoking,” she says, and she is wringing her hands the way she does when she is anxious. “I’ve failed miserably at keeping it a secret,” she admits, “but I’d like you both to know I am quitting.” She tries to look at us, but her eyes are bloodshot—tired. “I am quitting once and for all,” she says, stepping back into her dark room, closing the door as she does.
I can tell my father is surprised. It was only yesterday he insisted on having a discussion with me about her smoking. “It’s a nasty habit,” he said, “but incredibly common with schizophrenics.” I remember his words exactly because it was the first time my body didn’t shudder to hear any form of the s word spoken out loud.
I no longer deny my mother’s disease, but I do deny the idea that there is no cure. Sometimes science is not enough. Uncle Billy has a friend named Chuck who lives in Boulder and is a Buddhist too. Chuck was in a fire, and his burns were so severe, he spent months in the hospital and then a year in full-body bandages. The doctors said he’d be scarred for life, but Chuck didn’t want to be, so he meditated for hours and hours every day. He visualized the thick white tissue melting away until his body was the same glowing pink of a newborn baby.
And when the time came to remove the bandaging forever, there was not a single scar on his body. Even the scars he had from before the fire had all healed, his body once again a blank slate. His face the face he had before he was birthed into this world. The Calendar of Ordeals is my meditation, a practice in sacrifice and a different way to be reborn.
* * * *
Sign # 2: November 15, 1985
Mama starts coming downstairs for dinner.
Daddy made meatloaf, and I made the mashed potatoes and the green-bean casserole. While Daddy is aware of my choice to abstain from meat, it doesn’t stop him from preparing it. “After all,” Daddy says, “I do raise pigs solely for the purpose of eating and selling the meat.” And at every meal, he is sure to offer me a serving of whatever flesh is being served; he does this even though I always politely say no.
Today’s ordeal dictated never being still. If there was room to run, I had to run. If I was doing something where I would ordinarily stand, I had to jog in place or perform some other exercise. This meant doing leg lifts and ankle rolls while sitting at my desk as Mr. Denmar taught long division. And during language arts, I pointed and flexed my toes instead.
Principal White issued me a warning when he caught me running in the halls. And he did not appreciate all the motions I was making while he lectured me. But I lied and told him I was under strict instruction to keep my heart rate elevated at all times. “My heart has a murmur,” I explained, and this is true. I was born this way. “It’s in my file,” I said, but I was running out of breath.
I was careful to use fancy words like “cardiologist” and “echocardiogram” as I began to jog in place instead. It helps sometimes to have a high IQ. Adults like Principal White worry I am smarter than they are. I continued to slowly run nowhere as Principal White wrinkled his forehead and stammered. “Go back to class,” he finally said, and then he yelled after me, “But slowly!”
So I turned into a speed walker like the women Mama and I used to see when we would go to Mirror Lake to feed the ducks or paddle around in the paddle boats. I speed walked to class, my motions exaggerated. I didn’t dare look back.
* * * *
Sign # 3: November 17, 1985
The big dictionary returns to the cabinet with the glass door in the living room.
The brown cover is completely covered in tape, as is the spine; the silver duct tape works to hold the book together, completely bound. The dictionary is bandaged like a mummy now.
Today certain actions had to be performed three times in a row. This included actions such as turning a light on or off, tying my shoelaces, or brushing my teeth. Each ritual was to be done thrice—three times in a row and as quickly as possible. The point was to make the repetition of three as smooth as the action of one.
This is easier said than done.
After dinner, I teach Mama a new word: “sesquipedalian.” It’s the first time I’ve ever known a word she didn’t know. I spell it out loud, only I have to do so three times in a row, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She looks “sesquipedalian” up and reads the definition out loud once I’m done spelling it the third time.
sesquipedalian: noun, a long word. 1. Given to the use of long words. 2. Polysyllabic.
“That’s a good one,” Mama says, and smiles at me.
She checks it off with a pencil and puts the dictionary back. She does not acknowledge that it’s been missing or that it’s been repaired. I hold my breath three times in a row, crossing my fingers each time. I decide it really doesn’t matter where it was or why it seems to be a secret. I focus on what matters instead.
The dictionary is back and the ordeals are working. Mama is still coming down for dinner every night, and even helping to prepare it. She no longer smells of breath mints and amber and myrrh oil, which means she is no longer smoking. And Da
ddy is starting to smile more and more—he is turning back into the father I used to know.
Before I go to bed, I kiss both my parents on the cheek—first Daddy and then Mama. I have to make a total of six kisses because each gesture must be done three times. And when they return my kiss, they too perform the act in a series of three without understanding why. One after the other after the other. Three times three is nine. Nine kisses. I am ten years old. Nine plus ten equals nineteen. And I think everything is working out.
Everything is going to be okay.
* * * *
Sign # 4: December 1, 1985
Mama starts waking up earlier, usually around ten in the morning.
And she doesn’t spend all her time locked away inside her room. Instead, she sits at the dining room table drinking coffee and working on a new project. I like this mother—the one who grows quiet and focused.
She calls them Victorian paper cuts, and I can’t help but remember the Flower Lady, Sissy Baxter, and the secret language of flowers.
Mama uses her light table to cut the black paper after she draws on it with a special drawing pencil. The X-acto knife strips the paper away, and what is taken works to reveal the images. “I’m going to do portraits of all the saints,” she says.
“Well,” Daddy says, “that certainly is ambitious.” He kisses the top of her head. I have to hold my breath and cross my fingers to make the look on Mama’s face go away. And it works. She shakes her shoulders like she is shaking out the condescending tone of my father’s voice, which he probably didn’t even mean to make.
Daddy goes to check on the animals. This time of year, he is forever checking their drinking water for ice and making sure the stables are clean. During the winter, they get sick from the ammonia from their urine because they can’t go out to pasture all the time.
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