But all I want to do is take care of Mama.
I will care for her around the clock. And the routine will imprint itself on everyone, even Daddy. Secretly, he’ll be relieved. He will see how much my mother needs me. He will need me. He won’t be able to maintain the farm without my help. Over time, he will forget what he wanted for me. Next year, I will finish high school and then I’ll turn eighteen, and since I’ll be an adult he won’t be able to make me do anything I don’t want to do.
I hold my breath and cross my fingers: Daddy will come to see how happy I am caring for the woman who gave me life. He will come to understand. We are both better suited for life on this farm than anywhere else, and with me around Daddy can continue to do as he does. Surrounded by open sky and the seemingly endless expanse of earth, he can remain where he belongs—outside, and outside he is still my hero.
I roll the tiny vial back and forth between my palms until the insulin clouds over. I fill the syringe like my father demonstrated. I use rubbing alcohol to sterilize the site for injection, and then I stab my mother.
I push the orange plunger down, and the needle disappears into the soft white fat of her belly. I do exactly as I was taught and yet I leave her riddled with black bruises. I don’t mean to. The bruises multiply; they swarm and form black storms, and these tornados punctuate the silver lightning strike of her Cesarean scar.
* * * *
Daddy leases land to Mr. Fergeson, and with the help of two yapping blue heelers the old man herds his Jersey cows across the highway. The procession is slow. Mama sleeps in her rocking chair as I stand beside her in the day porch looking out the window, keeping watch.
Even though I administered a tranquilizer for the occasion, I find myself holding my breath and crossing my fingers to keep the dogs from barking. When the dogs do bark, I hold my breath and cross my fingers that the barking doesn’t wake her, and if the barking does, I will repeat the ritual to keep the dogs from scaring her. And I will give her more of the medicine.
But Mama only sleeps. She doesn’t even stir, so I step closer to the window. I lean my forehead against the glass and study the outside world. Mr. Fergeson and his dogs walk away. They leave the cows behind. The large black-and-white animals stand in the snow looking around their new home with sad eyes as I reach for my pearl rosary.
And this is another prescription from my uncle, when I feel tempted to pick, or nervous, or sad, or even angry. “If you feel unsettled,” is what he said, “take the rosary and begin your counting.” I run the rosary through my fingers, counting pearl after pearl. One, two, three, breathe. Once upon a time, Gran told me how every prayer sequence on a rosary is called a decade. I run the rosary around and around, and my fingers swallow time. One, two, three, breathe. Made from sand, the pearls are the same substance as the time-keeping method inside an hourglass. I run the pearls through my fingers. One, two, three, breathe. With my thumb, I collect each pearl. I get lost in the waves of reaching and pushing the pearls. I keep time and time keeps me.
* * * *
“Every day is a near-death experience,” Mama says, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke. She isn’t talking to us, but that doesn’t keep me from listening. She hasn’t spoken in three days, and every time she stops talking I worry she might never talk again. So I always pay attention to what could be her final words.
Daddy grips the steering wheel like the blacktop isn’t smooth—like this highway is not a highway he’s traveled a million times over the duration of his life. He grips the steering wheel like this isn’t Kansas; like it’s a difficult road to drive instead of one so straightforward.
He’s headed for the interstate, and I hate the interstate: the rush, and the passing—the complicated loops of highways all coming together like a complex nervous system. I push the pearls through my fingers. One, two, three, breathe. I watch the oil rigs alongside the road dip back and forth like grasshoppers, and the rhythm of the rigs is in time with the rhythm of the beads.
One, two, three, breathe. Today is Sunday. Today we take Mama back to the hospital, and the next two week trial isn’t scheduled until March. All this back-and-forth is dumb. I am ready.
Daddy merges, squinting ahead, his eyes bloodshot from my mother’s cigarettes. He lets Mama smoke in here because driving makes her nervous. And now we’re on the interstate: the freeway, only there is nothing free about it. Trapped between exits, there is no escape, and this is the stretch where all the catastrophes happen: ENTIRE FAMILY KILLED. SEMI FULL OF HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS OVERTURNED. Mama’s right. Every day is a near-death experience.
My fingers push pearls, and I pause to hold Mary between my thumb and knuckle. I stamp her black heart into my skin, and then I start counting again, passing beads. One, two, three, breathe. And I’m not the only one counting. Mama is tracking every exhale exhaled, and I’m recollecting a statistic from seventh-grade health with Mrs. Gallagher: The average smoker forfeits eleven minutes of her life for every single cigarette she smokes. One pack alone equals almost four hours subtracted from my mother’s life, and I realize that Mama is literally killing time.
A silver station wagon drives beside us, and I don’t feel as anxious as I would if it were a semi. The car is full: father driving, the mother beside him with a map folded in her lap. Three stair-step kids are strapped into the backseat, and I can tell they are singing, by the way their mouths move and their heads sway. In the far back I see a red-and-white cooler, pillows, stuffed animals, and suitcases. As they pass us, I see the Colorado license plate—the white outline of mountains against the green, and there’s a bumper sticker too. It reads: WHAT IF THE HOKEY POKEY REALLY IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT?
* * * *
I go into Mama’s old room and try on her clothes—the clothes that no longer fit her. Attached to the inside of the closet door hangs a full-length mirror, and I look at myself standing here. The vintage dresses fit my reflection perfectly, including the white one that used to belong to the grandmother I never got to know.
Gran decided to remedy my bowl cut and took me to her new hairdresser at Curl Up & Dye. She turned her arthritic fingers into a pair of scissors to show the woman how and where to cut my hair. And now I have something called a pixie cut. I love my new hair, but I don’t say so. I don’t say anything. If I did, Gran might change her mind and not like my new haircut anymore.
I go downstairs and lie on the red velvet sofa. Like the bathtub, the sofa has clawed feet—only they are made from wood instead of iron and white enamel. When I was little, I used to pretend the sofa was a mythological beast and I was riding bareback, but I can’t recall where I was going.
I only know that I was going somewhere.
I lie on the sofa and look at Christina’s World where it hangs above the fireplace. I search the dark prairie grass for wildflowers and find only what might be the empty pods of milk thistle; while I don’t know the message of this specific botanical, I do know that regular thistle is used to communicate vengeance or grief.
When I look at Christina, I no longer feel like I need to crawl out of my skin, I just feel restless. I read an article about Andrew Wyeth, but despite my photographic memory, I can’t remember if Christina was paralyzed or blind. I look at her now, and I can see her internal struggle: She is trying to get to the house painted far away. Christina is trying to go home.
* * * *
Uncle Billy gives me a guidebook to North American wildflowers. Pocket-size, it is color coded and water resistant. “I’d like you to find a way to integrate the outside world with the inside one,” he says, and he reminds me how walking can be a form of meditation. And like the rosary beads, walking will give me something else to do when I feel like picking.
I’m worried he’s going to ask about the lucky rabbit foot. I worry he will say, “You can always rub the charm with your fingers,” so I break down and confess. Only I don’t tell the whole truth. I tell him I lost the rabbit foot. And I don’t say anything about the charred nesting doll hidden inside the iron maiden of
wooden mothers.
He gives me the field guide the same day I unearth all of Mama’s old books about Tasha Tudor and her lovely loping gardens. I realize this is the woman who illustrated some of my favorite children’s books—the ones by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Like I’m discovering a secret garden, I find the books at the back of my mother’s closet, and like a series of strange gifts they are wrapped in brown paper. When I handle it, the masking tape is so old and brittle, it turns to dust.
As I look at the pictures of Tasha in her gardens or wandering her estate, I come to have a deeper understanding of the word “affinity.” Affinity is a natural attraction or feeling of kinship. And I feel akin to this old woman. I feel that she is me and I am her.
She is content in her own private wilderness.
Tasha Tudor gazes back at me before she wanders away. She is barefoot, and her long skirts trail behind her as she parts a field of flowers. She cuts pussy willow and cradles the bundle in her arms to carry home and arrange. I don’t need to buy a copy of Floriography, because I’ve checked it out so many times that I’ve memorized the meanings of all the flowers it has listed. And this is how I know pussy willow means either motherhood or a recovery from illness.
I stand at the window, looking out, and the farm appears anew; it opens and invites—it calls to me. I see everything I have never seen before, yet I also feel a sense of déjà vu.
* * * *
Today, I open Mama’s closet, and I close my eyes as I run my fingers across the dresses. My hands select by touch: Today, I will wear blue velvet. I like to imagine this dress once belonged to my soft grandmother, but I don’t know for sure. Mama can’t remember anymore, or else she doesn’t want to think about the answers.
Today, I will wear the blue velvet dress, a pair of gray tights, and Mama’s old boots. I remember the day she bought the boots from the army surplus store in Lawrence, and even then the black leather toes were scuffed.
I slip the dress over my head and pull the rosary out. I take Mama’s black peacoat from the hanger and put it on, and I button all the buttons except for the one at the very top. When I’m done, I look at myself in the mirror, and in the glass I see a young woman.
And she smiles back at me.
* * * *
Uncle Billy stays at home with Mama. Today is the third day of the third reintegration trial, and my father needs my help running errands.
Daddy parks on Main Street and sends me into Eudora Drug to pick up my mother’s Thorazine. The bells ring when I open the door, and the clerk at the register is already watching me. Pregnant, she can’t be older than twenty; she holds her swollen belly like she’s afraid it will fall off her body. Her brown hair is permed and frosted, and she’s chewing gum.
She blows a big pink bubble, which pops as I make my way through the greeting cards. In the round mirrors used to catch shoplifters, the clerk watches me as I head for the pharmacy at the back of the small storefront. I see my reflection in the curved glass, where I, too, appear pregnant wearing Mama’s white Gunne Sax dress. But when I look down, I’m just as skinny as I ever was.
I love this dress. The neckline trimmed in lace, the bodice hugs my chest—secured by a long cream-colored sash of silk tied tight around my lower ribs, it fits like me like a second skin. From there, the fabric falls—as soft as gauze, the dress is like a bandage to dress a wound. The dress flows as I walk toward the pickup window, and the movement of the material is soothing. It is hard to hurt yourself when you feel pretty.
I hold my breath and cross my fingers to summon the courage to ring the bell. I hate the pharmacist. I hate the way Mr. Edwards looks at me—and the way he looks at my family. Everyone in town might know about my mother, but Mr. Edwards knows even more. He not only understands what each pill does, he understands the reasons a prescription is prescribed.
I ring the bell, and Mr. Edwards sticks his head out from behind the white laminate shelving. Squinting at me through his square-frame glasses, he says “Ah!” and wrinkles his fat red nose. “Your mother’s prescription isn’t ready yet. Give me another fifteen minutes.”
I try sitting on one of the chairs and reading the out-of-date magazines on the table, but they stink of perfume. It bewilders me how these synthetic scents are often named after flowers, and yet they smell nothing like their namesakes. A Norman Rockwell painting of another small-town pharmacist watches me, and I can’t sit still. I begin to wander around the store—that is, I make it look like I am aimlessly meandering, but really I know exactly where I am going. I’m headed for the unattended cosmetics counter. Mrs. Sherman must have the day off, or else I’d never dare.
Displayed like candy, there is a row of lipstick next to another mirror that magnifies every pore in my face. In a vast array of reds, the unopened lipstick tubes stand erect—missiles ready to be launched—and I try to ignore Mama’s voice inside my head. She is ranting about the patriarchy and the cruelty of animal testing. She doesn’t bother to tell me I don’t need makeup; she doesn’t say, “You are pretty the way you are.” She just assumes I already know this. She forgets I never really got to have a mother. I want eyeliner, black as kohl; I want to outline my eyes—catlike or Egyptian.
Mr. Edwards rings me up. I buy Thorazine and the Cover Girl–brand Midnight Black eyeliner pencil. The pregnant clerk blows another bubble as I exit, and the bells ring again. I’m blinded by the sun and the glare of the sun on the white pavement, and I stand there blinking until I can see again. I look down the street, and Daddy’s truck is still there. Glinting in the sun, the Ram hood ornament stares forever forward as my father talks to Mrs. Sherman.
Daddy is leaning against the side of the truck, and Mrs. Sherman is on the sidewalk teetering in her heels, listening to him talk. I had no idea he had so much to say.
As she listens, Mrs. Sherman chews on her straw when she isn’t taking long drinks from the perspiring wax cup, and I can almost see how they used to be—two teenagers in love. Daddy keeps talking and she is nodding her head, and never once does she look away. Then she touches him. She reaches for him with her manicured fingers, and I can see her long red claws as she squeezes his shoulder. Daddy looks at her hand, and then he looks at her, and they don’t say anything.
They just look at each other forever before Mrs. Sherman steps forward and closes in on my father. She kisses him on the cheek and lingers there until finally she pulls back and walks away. She looks sad, and Daddy is staring at his feet. I see the way his fingers flutter to his face, touching where she just was, and I wonder when the last time was a woman kissed him.
Mrs. Sherman comes clicking toward me on the sidewalk, and when she sees me she looks down. Like most people, she pretends I don’t exist. She passes me, and I hear the drugstore bells on the door ring again and I feel the breeze of the door swinging shut. Across the street, I see Sissy Baxter pretending not to be watching as she waters the potted geraniums in front of The Flower Lady.
When I climb into the truck, Daddy is behind the wheel, pretending to read the newspaper.
“All set?” he asks, and when he looks at me I see the red stamp of lipstick on his cheek left by Mrs. Sherman, and the cab stinks of her perfume, but I say nothing.
Daddy turns the key, shifts into first, and pulls the truck onto the street. Shifting gears again, my father heads for home as if he’s done no wrong.
* * * *
Mama is watching me.
I feel her eyes follow me as I set her breakfast tray down on the little wooden table in front of her—and she continues to watch as I empty the ashtray and prepare to administer her morning medication. The wafers sit behind small plastic windows like an Advent calendar, and I have to use my fingernail to peel away the foil backing, and this motion alone is enough to trigger picking.
Today is the last day of the final reintegration trial. Next time my mother comes home, she comes home for good.
Mama opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue, but her eyes still wander. They wander all
over me. After the wafer dissolves, she takes a long drink of water. She hands the glass back to me, letting her fingers trail—they trail down my arm, reaching to touch my long crimson skirt.
Mama touches the skirt like she remembers, and she should; this skirt belongs to her, to my former mother, and when she searches my face her eyes fill with recognition. They fill with recognition the way I’ve seen them fill with tears, and I hold my breath and cross my fingers to keep her from wiping this away like she wipes away her tears every time she cries.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ARRANGEMENTS
commencement: n. 1. A beginning; a start 2. A graduation ceremony.
September 1, 1992
Everything is a test.
I am tested again and again, and yet I haven’t picked or cut myself in forever. Billy’s treatment plan is working, although he insists I’m the one doing all the work.
“Kiddo,” he says, “you need to give yourself a lot more credit.”
But how can I give myself credit when Daddy increasingly treats me like a little girl? The older I get, the more patronizing he becomes. I’ve been waiting and waiting for today to come, and now that it is finally here my father is refusing to let me come along. He wants to pick Mama up from the hospital by himself, even though he knows I thought we’d do this together as we should.
“Don’t you have homework?” he asks when I protest. “Or the SAT to study for?” And then he leaves, all fast; he acts like I’m going to stop him or hijack the truck—like I’m going to do something crazy. So I call Billy to calm down.
“Fig,” he says, “you’ve got to remember, Annie is his wife.”
This is what he says because he has to. After all, Billy is my father’s brother, and his younger one at that. But I know what Billy really thinks; he doesn’t always agree with Daddy, especially when it comes to me. Billy understands and appreciates the bond between Mama and me. He sees how I help her to remember who she is and all the good she has ever done. Billy tells me all the time how good I am with her, whereas Daddy never does. This is because my father secretly blames me for every single time my mother has come undone.
Fig Page 26