Fig (18 page)

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 Daddy 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.

“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 twelve 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.