Fig

by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

“And when they get sick,” Daddy says, “so do we.”

  I stay to watch Mama work. Today is a Sunday and there is no ordeal to be done. Sundays are turning out to be a break after all because I perform the ordeals perfectly and haven’t had to redo a single one. Everything really is getting better. The cure might take time, but this is it.

  As she slides the X-acto knife along the silver pencil lines, Mama begins to talk to me.

  “All religions parallel one another” is what she says. “Catholicism and Hinduism are strikingly similar when you think about it. They are both polytheistic and monotheistic all at once.” She pauses and lifts the piece of black paper she is turning into Saint Rita. The cutout is still hanging on by a few uncut fibers, and to free the saint, Mama gently pokes the paper with the triangular blade.

  “You see,” Mama says, “all the saints and deities can be seen as the many aspects of one God.” Saint Rita comes loose and flutters in the air before landing on the light table. Mama says that all different kinds of mythology systems suggest God has a million different faces, and I think about Uncle Billy, who says he can see his maker in the trees or in the river or in the clouds. Uncle Billy who always says, “Figaroo, we are nothing more than hairy bags full of water.”

  Mama smiles to herself as she leans forward to work on all the little details to create Saint Rita’s face, and just when I think she has nothing else to say she leans back and looks at me.

  “The saints and deities all work as a distraction,” Mama says, “because to look upon the face of God will drive a person mad.”

  And this is the first time we have ever talked about mental illness. Mama is no longer looking at me. She is looking at Saint Rita. The brightness from the light table underneath shines through all the cut-out places, which create the different features of the face. But I am most drawn to the sacred wound at the center of Rita’s brow. Mama cut the wound so it appears to be a shining star instead of the festering sore the saint received from Christ. The sore that refused to heal, and because it festered as it did the other nuns couldn’t bear to be around poor Rita—but according to the legend, after Rita died the sacred wound only omitted the sweet fragrance of fresh roses.

  * * * *

  Sign #  5: December 7, 1985

  Mama begins to lose weight.

  She spends a lot of time in the shower or soaking in the bath. She says the hot water helps her relax. She uses so much Epsom salt she turns the well water into one of the seven seas, which I will probably never get to see in person. The hot water and the salts seem to melt away her bloat, and as the bloat dissolves her smile comes back and her eyes aren’t hidden anymore.

  When evening arrives, she goes with Daddy on his walks—just the two of them. They hold hands as I watch from the day porch. I watch their bodies turn into silhouettes. Dark and outlined, they stand out against the backdrop of watercolor sunsets and the whiteness of another winter. They turn into the paper cuts Mama is forever cutting.

  It’s as if everything was on pause; and there is a sense of waiting.

  I fill time with ordeals. There are days where I cannot say verbs out loud. Days where I can’t touch anything the color brown. Days where I blink three times every time someone says an adjective. Days where I clear my throat when a person tries to look me in the eye. And there are days where I have to walk backward and days where I must laugh at everything anyone says.

  I fill time with ordeals.

  I fill and fill and fill. And I do not fail.

  * * * *

  Sign #  6: December 20, 1985

  I stop picking.

  I spend the last day of school before the winter holiday speaking entirely in whispers. No one seems to notice—that is, except for Candace Sherman. She keeps trying to get me to talk, and to talk loudly. She tells Mr. Denmar she’s worried I’m sick. “I think Fig has laryngitis,” she says, “Or maybe strep—she’s probably contagious.” Candace Sherman is obsessed with germs.

  Mr. Denmar asks me to talk. I shrug because I don’t know what to say, and I’m surprised when he understands. “Tell me your mother’s name and where she’s from,” he says, and when I answer I answer all in whispers, and then he wants to have a look at my throat. This time he’s the one who shrugs. “Looks fine to me,” he says, but Candace Sherman isn’t satisfied. “I really think you should send her to the nurse,” she says.

  Later, on the bus, Candace Sherman pinches me really hard. She has no idea how accustomed to pain I have become. She pinches me again and leans forward from the seat behind me. “Freak,” she says, only she whispers. She tries again. “Freak!” Candace Sherman says, and this time her voice is even fainter than the time before, and as Candace Sherman tries to speak louder I swear Sissy Baxter cracks a smile, but as soon as Sissy sees me see her smile she turns the other way.

  Candace Sherman grabs her throat and glares at me. I think she thinks I stole her voice. As she struggles to talk, I wonder if I did.

  That night as I lie in bed thinking about the Calendar and all the Ordeals I’ve accomplished, I realize I haven’t picked at all, nor have I even had the urge.

  Last summer, I spent a lot of time peeling off the scabs that formed again and again on my elbow. It took forever to heal because of this, but I did not get an infection. I only picked in the bathroom, and when I was done I drowned the open sore in the relentless sting of foaming white hydrogen peroxide. And once, I used rubbing alcohol just to see how much it could hurt. But now I keep my fingernails cut shorter than I should. And I don’t wake up in the morning anymore to find dried blood on the sheets. I no longer find sores on my body I opened while I was dreaming.

  This is the first time I’ve even thought of picking, but this is different from before. This is not like the thoughts I used to have that weren’t really thoughts but irresistible urges. I might be thinking about picking, but I’m not thinking about how much I’d like to do it again. In fact, the idea makes me feel sick to my stomach—the way I feel when I think about eating meat.

  * * * *

  For Christmas, Mama gives me another calendar. This one is full of Hindu deities. They have extra arms and eyes—and they make me nervous, even though they’re still wrapped in cellophane. I feel like I am cheating on the Calendar of Ordeals; I worry about being jinxed, and this is why I have to hide the new calendar from my mother.

  Instead of hanging it on the wall above my desk where the other calendars used to hang, I hide the new calendar inside my Dorothy suitcase. I keep Dorothy at the very back of my closet, which means I can almost hide the calendar from myself. I will remain fully committed to the one true calendar, The Calendar of Ordeals. Then I sit on my bed. The faceless nesting doll stares at me and I have no choice but to hold my breath and cross my fingers.

  I consider throwing the Hindu calendar away, or feeding it to the fire, but I worry Mama will ask where it is even though I can’t remember the last time she came into my room. From the space between my mattress and my box spring, I slide out the water paper scroll and spread the twelve pages across my floor like the tarot cards Mama used to read. Each ordeal punctuates a day to come the way Mama’s checks signify all the words she’s looked up. I’ve been successful. I made it through every single ordeal dictated by the last few months of 1985. I closed out the days by turning the appropriate squares into squares of black-out, so why am I suddenly so worried?

  I use the same marker every time. The black one that smells like licorice. And I will do the same as I embark upon 1986, the year when I will turn eleven. I’ve grown more confident with every passing day, and I must remain this way. I will continue to blacken squares.

  I will mark the time I fill, the time I sacrifice for her—every future turned into a yesterday. Every day and every ordeal will end as a perfect square of perfect black. And each morning, I will repeat the ritual: I will speak the new ordeal out loud. One vow after another, sacrifice after sacrifice, I will continue to work toward saving Mama.

  The twe
lve pages curl and I smooth them out again. I hold my breath and I cross my fingers: I will turn these months into twelve black squares—set in ink, not stone, I will conquer time.

  And I will cure my mother.

  * * * *

  Today, the calendar dictates making physical contact with people whenever possible. I have to touch other humans if and when opportunities present themselves.

  Today is indeed a challenge.

  Douglas Elementary has borrowed televisions for the big day, and Mr. Denmar’s fifth-grade class gets one of the color sets. He puts the TV on his desk, and the tinfoil-wrapped antennas make the appliance look like a cross between a rabbit and an alien from outer space. The class sits in a semicircle on the floor, and with the special ed. kids from the blue trailer, it is crowded. I point outward with my elbows, and my arms turn into wings. And I jab each one of my neighbors.

  Alex Turner elbows me back, but Trent Wallace does not. Trent Wallace glares at me, and then he says “ow!” so loud, everyone turns around to stare at me. The popular girls all giggle, even Sissy Baxter, which hurts my feelings even more. And everyone continues to stare at me—they stare until Mr. Denmar hits the television with his fist, and then they turn back to look at the teacher. Mr. Denmar hits the TV again—really hard; he is trying to stop the screen from going in and out, and it works. The picture comes, upside down at first, then corrects itself and fills the frame.

  Candace, Sissy, and Tanya are in front of me. They are triplets in their Guess jeans with the little triangles on the butt and the zippered ankles tucked into their puffy white Reeboks. They take turns touching one another. One girl lies still while the others run their fingers along the insides of her arms and make her smile and shiver all at once. I stretch out my left leg and my foot touches Sissy Baxter’s back, but she doesn’t even notice. I swear she smells like lilacs.

  The broadcast begins—first an image of the shuttle; pointed at the sky, it reminds me of a shark. In white letters, JANUARY 28, 1986, CHALLENGER, KENNEDY SPACE CENTER runs across the bottom of the screen. The camera zooms in on the crowd of people watching but favors the schoolteacher’s family, although we do get to see the kids from all around the country who were invited to come as well.

  A woman newscaster in a Windbreaker smiles at us as she explains the Teacher in Space program. This is the first time a citizen passenger has been aboard a space shuttle mission. “Someday it will be normal for everyday people to go to space,” the woman says. And I swear she is looking right at me. She even smiles a different smile—a secret one to let me know I am not imagining this.

  I wonder if she is telling me that I will be one of those people. Or maybe she knows about my tendency already to float away. I want to touch her face. “Today,” she says, “will be the ultimate field trip, not just for Christa McAuliffe but for the entire nation.”

  Now it’s Candace Sherman’s turn to be caressed. Tanya and Sissy gently touch her arms. Candace has her sleeves rolled up, and even in the middle of winter her skin is a golden brown.

  The final countdown begins.

  “We have main engine start,” a man without a body announces as the shuttle lifts into the blue television sky.

  The heat from the shuttle turns the blue pink, and then the pink turns to lavender. A long, thin cloud of exhaust follows. Science is Mr. Denmar’s favorite subject. “That’s called a contrail,” he explains, and just as he taps his finger on the screen to make sure we know what he’s describing, the contrail splits and the new one slopes away to become the gentle curve of a swan’s neck.

  The reporter’s microphone picks up the muffled sound of wind. And then the sound of people screaming, muffled by the muffled wind. The camera doesn’t know where to look. For too long, we are left staring at the schoolteacher’s mother.

  It feels wrong to be watching her. This is voyeurism. I note her fur collar and how she won’t look down. She won’t look away from the sky where her daughter is, and she keeps shaking her head. Finally, the camera follows her eyes back into the sky, and we see what she sees: The television frames a square sky, now dark blue and crisscrossed with chaotic lines of white—contrails propelling everywhere like the smoke from fireworks out of control. The disembodied voice again: “Obviously a major malfunction.”

  Mr. Denmar is still standing. He never had a chance to sit down. He stands there looking as if he wants to turn it off, but he doesn’t. His hand is frozen in the air, reaching for the knob. As the television repeats the explosion, Principal White comes over the intercom—yet another voice without a body trying to talk to me. He says, “Today is a tragic day.”

  He’d like to lead us in a moment of silent prayer. “To honor the fine men and women who sacrificed their lives for our country, and for the sake of science.”

  And there’s that word again: “sacrifice.”

  * * * *

  At home, I watch the footage, and this time the seventy-three seconds last forever.

  The shuttle will never explode.

  I remind myself there were people on board, that they are there, somewhere—a part of the repeating imagery. This is not a movie.

  Daddy sits in his chair, and Mama’s on the sofa with her knees pulled to her chest. I’m on the floor, kneeling. This is the first time in a long time I want to pick. There is a scab on my right knee, and when I press this knee against the floor the pressure radiates; the wound shoots pain into my nervous system, where it detours into unexpected journeys, traveling the atlas of my body like the contrails on the TV. I am trying to resist the urge to pick.

  I’m too close to the television set, and I can see all the tiny dots. They get inside my head and make a fuzzy noise. I wait for Mama to make me move back. To say, “That will ruin your eyes,” but she doesn’t say anything at all. She is quiet. She is watching the shuttle explode. Again and again.

  Christa McAuliffe submitted her application on the last day, just before the deadline. “Deadline” is a word I never thought about until right now. Deadline. Deadline is like a finish line, only different. The dead teacher was thirty-seven years old. The same age as Mama is now. As the newscaster tells us how old Christa McAuliffe was I turn to see how Mama will react. I think I catch the end of a flinch, but with the medication it’s hard to know anymore. Some of the pills make Mama’s face twitch, twist, and contort. Side effects may include. And she must be taking more of these particular pills because her face has been twitching, twisting, and contorting all the time.

  The newscaster explains how no one there expected NASA to go through with the launch because of how cold it was. “It was thirty-eight degrees outside,” he says, “thirteen degrees colder than the coldest liftoff in history.” Then he offers his microphone to one eyewitness. The stranger looks at me. He looks at America, and he says, “It felt like limbo waiting for the shuttle to leave the ground.”

  In theological terms, limbo is the abode of souls excluded from heaven but not condemned to further punishment such as hell. According to Gran, limbo is where I will go because I wasn’t baptized. Limbo was derived from the Latin word limbus, which means “border,” and limbo is a region or condition of oblivion, neglect, or prolonged uncertainty.

  A place of nowhere. “Nowhere,” a compound, as in “no where,” or “now here.”

  Daddy suggests turning off the television, but Mama says, “No.” She says it too fast—almost as if she anticipated his asking. “No,” she says, and she spits a little without meaning to.

  I know Daddy is worried. I can feel him watching me. “Hey, Figaroo,” he says. “I sure could use your help making banana splits.” As I follow him into the kitchen, I make it a point to bump into his body three times. “Walk much?” Daddy asks, and I know he is trying to make a joke, but it doesn’t work because he is looking at me in a way that isn’t even close to funny.

  Today, I didn’t do nearly as much touching as I should have. The scab on my knee wants to be touched. It’s practically screaming. I cut the bananas down the
middle with a paring knife. I cut them with their skin still on and then I peel it off. I peel off the thick yellow skin instead of peeling off the red-brown scab on my knee as Daddy scoops out ice cream. He drizzles chocolate syrup on the bananas and vanilla-bean ice cream. And then he adds a generous plop of homemade whipped cream, finishing off all three desserts with a handful of salty chopped peanuts.

  We don’t get maraschino cherries anymore because the red dye might make Mama worse, according to something Daddy read. He is always reading books about schizophrenia and how to make Mama better. He keeps the books under his bed in the guest bedroom that is also his office. This is where I go when I have questions I need answered. Like with a koan, I often find more questions, though.

  I don’t miss the cherries so much as I miss how Mama could tie the stems into knots using her tongue. She can’t do it with the regular cherry stems—we’ve tried. The flexibility has something to do with the sweet red marinade. I pause to look at Mama before I bring her a banana split. With her knees still pulled to her chest, Mama is hugging herself. And she is rocking back and forth, her eyes fixed on the television. Her lips move, but I can’t tell what she is saying.

  * * * *

  Daddy asks Mama if she’d like to join him for a walk, but she barely answers. She mutters something about how cold it is outside.

  “Fig ?” Daddy asks, and now he is looking at me. He has only ever asked me along one time, and I declined then, just as I decline now. It makes me feel sick to my stomach because of the thought my action brings to mind: If I had to, I’d choose Mama over Daddy.

  I try to erase the thought by holding my breath and crossing my fingers, and I blame the nausea on the banana split. Mama is still sitting on the sofa, holding the remote in her hand, but her knees are no longer pulled to her chin. Her feet are on the floor and she is staring at the television. The volume has been muted. Without sound, the explosion is all the more frightening.

  I sit beside her and I lean my head into the hollow of her shoulder. Just me touching her makes her relax. She falls back, supported by the red velvet couch. Mama’s body is hot to touch like she has a fever, and compared with this old house, which never gets warm, she feels good. Her sleeves are bunched at her elbows, her long arms exposed, revealing she has skin the color of milk, soft as silk, and splattered with pink star freckles.