Fig (23 page)

“Prayer flags,” my mother says as she steps back to admire the artwork suspended throughout the house. She is always out of breath because she has taken to smoking again. She smokes ten cigarettes a day. I'm told this is nothing compared with what other smokers smoke. Especially the schizophrenics. But Mama is also growing larger and larger.

Mama sits down amid the sloppy red spirals, the intense red circles, the bursting poppies, the smashed tomatoes, and she smiles. There are entire rectangles of paper so red, they are bleeding.

“This is a breakthrough,” she explains, but I'm pretty sure she's not talking to me. She is talking to herself. Mama's smile grows until her mouth takes over; it swallows her face, another gaping redness, and now she looks at me, and when she says “I can breathe again” I know exactly what she means. I, too, paint red breakthroughs, only I use my fingernails instead of brushes. I use blood instead of watercolors or acrylics, and skin in place of paper.

Like Mama, I paint my breakthroughs because it is the only way I can breathe.

*  *  *  *

Winter turns to spring, and I see the feral dog walking the borders of our land. Crepuscular, she only comes at dawn or dusk, and I have no evidence to prove she is female, or to know she is dog and not wolf or coyote or dingo, and yet I
do
know.

She always emerges from the woods along the ditch before she dares the open horizon of Kansas flatness. And because it's just before the sun has risen or set all the way, she is nothing more than a shadow against the canvas onto which she chooses to paint herself.

She takes her time. She wants to make sure I see her. I watch from windows, or from the porch, and sometimes I watch from the heart of the orchard from my perch in the apple tree in the row farthest from the house. She appears and disappears at the same gate of wild raspberry that curtains the ditch. And she always walks a full circle around the house. She tells time. Like the hands of a clock, she begins where she ends and ends where she began.

*  *  *  *

The sixth graders are herded into the gymnasium, where we're told to sit on the old wooden floor.

I sit inside the faded orange curve of a line that has something to do with basketball.

Mrs. Landry leans against the wall, looking at us like a mother might, like she's about to cry. I heard her tell Mrs. Jefferson she wasn't sure how much longer she could teach the sixth grade. “I can't stand sending them away,” she said.

I look at Mrs. Landry, and there is a handkerchief in her fist, the white cotton contrasting sharply with her long red fingernails.

Principal White is standing on a makeshift stage, in front of a microphone, waiting for us to settle. Mrs. Landry gets our attention and whisper-screams, “Crisscross applesauce,” and puts her finger to her lips and hisses a long “shh!” But I'm the only one watching her. Everyone else is too excited. Our time at elementary school is nearly over.

Principal White taps on the microphone, and the large room fills with the amplified sound of his tapping. I look up, drawn to the lights swinging idly inside their metal cages. Basketball hoops stand at both ends, and both are missing their white nets. Last night, Mama went after the prayer flags. She ripped all the red sheets off the string and burned them in the fireplace. I don't know why.

“The adviser from Keller is here to talk to you about junior high,” Principal White says, and everyone is quiet now. I'm not the only one wide-eyed and scared. Principal White steps aside as a woman takes the stage. I look down. Through the pale fringe of my eyelashes, I watch the woman gathering herself to speak to us.

“I am here to talk to you about the transition,” the woman says.

I scrape notches into my skin. I count the minutes as they pass, or maybe I'm counting seconds instead.

Mrs. Landry sniffles, and now she is hiccupping against her tears. When she blows her nose, she sounds like a foghorn, and the adviser says, “You will all succeed at Keller Junior High!” And Mrs. Landry begins to clap. Her clapping is muffled by the white handkerchief, and yet it sparks a wave of clapping, and now everyone around me is clapping—everyone but me.

continue: 1. To persist 2. To endure; last 3. To remain in a state, capacity, or place 4. To go on after an interruption; resume 5. To extend 6. To retain 7. To postpone or adjourn.

September 11, 1987

Seventh grade is where sex education changes from an anatomy lesson to something different, and in health class the boys and girls are no longer separated. The kids talk about sex all the time—in the halls, in the cafeteria, and especially on the bus. But during sex ed, when they're supposed to talk about it, they are suddenly quiet.

Some of the girls will talk about pregnancy. They talk about it like they know everything there is to know. They've had mothers pregnant with younger siblings, or aunts round with cousins. And they love to read about pregnant celebrities in the magazines Mama calls trash.

They talk about babies, too. How cute they are, or how ugly. And they all describe childbirth as “painful” and “excruciating.” They talk about it like they know firsthand.

They're obsessed with the idea, while the boys fidget—their faces hot and red. Come Monday, Mrs. Gallagher begins passing out the bags of Gold Medal flour. Even I've heard about this assignment. Everyone talked about it back in the sixth grade. This assignment is a true rite of passage into junior high, and we each receive a bag.

“I used to use eggs,” Mrs. Gallagher explains. “There was the special challenge of not breaking them, but parents complained about them breaking—they claimed they broke all the time, so I switched to flour, and really, these bags are closer in size to an actual newborn.” She jiggles a bag to test the weight while watching the girls who always sit in a cluster.

Mrs. Gallagher continues to look at them and says, “Rather, they're the weight of a premature or low-birth-weight baby.” She looks at the girls like they've done something wrong. “Teen mothers are more likely to give birth to premature or low-birth-weight babies,” Mrs. Gallagher says, and one girl turns to another girl and says, “Preemies are so precious! I hope I have one.” Mrs. Gallagher asks her to speak up. “Mary, it isn't fair when the rest of the class can't hear, and it must be important, since you had to share right this moment. So, Mary, do share.”

Mary stands up. I've seen her in the halls. Another new face from Sacred Heart. Mary clears her throat. “I said, preemies are precious. I have a Cabbage Patch preemie. Mother said she was very hard to find.” The popular girls giggle. They giggle because Mary still plays with dolls. Charity Murphy smirks. I've heard the boys talk about her on the bus. They use words like “slut” and “whore” and “loose” and “easy.” Charity also went to Sacred Heart, and from the way she's glaring at Mary right now, I think they've known each other for very a long time.

“It's not like I play with her,” Mary says, looking around. “Dolls are for little girls,” she says. She says the word “little” like it's a disease. “Mother said she'll be worth a lot of money someday. All the Cabbage Patch kids will be collectible, but especially the preemies.”

Mrs. Gallagher doesn't say anything. She shakes her head and looks out the window. The teacher looks at the tree where all the crows are perching. The cafeteria Dumpsters are below the cottonwood. Uncle Billy says scavengers are the trash collectors of the animal kingdom; he says, “We could not survive without them.”

Finally, Mrs. Gallagher turns around, smoothing her skirt with her hands. “I almost forgot,” she says, her glasses slipping down her nose, “I need your permission slips before I can continue.”

I sit at my desk, ready. Daddy signed my permission slip last night without looking. He's been distracted.

The slip is pink and rectangular, one third of an 8
¹
/
₂
x 11 sheet of paper. I watch the boys fumble for theirs—reaching into their jeans and pulling out crumpled wads of pink. They can't even look at Mrs. Gallagher when she comes to collect their permission slips. When Mrs. Gallagher takes mine, I know everyone is staring, and I wish I was invisible. I try to blend in to my desk, to turn into wood and steel and plastic.

Mary and Charity don't have permission to participate, and I can tell this upsets the teacher. “I'm afraid you'll have to spend the next two classes in study hall,” she says. “Stay after and I'll go over the alternative assignment, but for now, wait in the hall and read chapter seven.”

Mary goes to the door, stopping as if to wait for Charity. Chewing on the end of her pencil, Charity stares at Mrs. Gallagher and doesn't move—not right away. Her eyes are so brown, they are black. She takes her time sliding out of her seat and grabbing her leather jacket. And she makes a point to leave her textbook on the desk next to her orphaned flour sack. As Charity makes her way to the door, Phillip Booth coughs: “Slut.”

Mrs. Gallagher distributes our homework. We are given a handout on infant care and a calendar for keeping track of feedings and diaper changes, only the teacher calls it a log. “You are to go everywhere with your babies,” Mrs. Gallagher says. “This is your life for the next forty-eight hours. Welcome to teen parenthood!”

“Technically,” I want to say, “we are either twelve or about to be.” But I don't. I don't say anything at all.

On Wednesday, the completed log, a five-paragraph essay, and the flour are all due for us to receive credit. The flour is not to be damaged. “Not only do you need to prove to me that you can keep a tiny human alive,” Mrs. Gallagher says, “we donate the flour to a charity that helps unwed mothers.” And then the bell rings and it is time to go to my next class.

In the hall, the boys throw their flour babies in the air and catch them. They punch one another and say, “Dude,” and call one another “Mr. Mom.” The girls giggle, forming into small groups, holding their flour like they're actual newborns. The girls are making fun of the assignment, yet there's something serious about the way they're overacting motherhood. The girls compare babies and make-believe what each one looks like.

“Mine has curly blond hair,” Candace Sherman says. Sissy Baxter says her baby looks just like the Gerber baby. They name the babies: Barbara, Jack, Melody, Connor—and talk-whisper who the fathers are. This makes them really giggle. They pick off the popular seventh-grade boys. Trent Wallace is picked again and again, until one girl claims her baby was fathered by a ninth grader. But she's outdone by Tanya Jenkins, who confesses: “I have no idea who my baby daddy is.” Laughing, Tanya loosens her hair from a ponytail, and the burst of blondness turns her into a movie star, or model.

I am not like them. I don't want to have a baby. I've already decided. I will not have kids. I will stop the bloodline. I will stop the schizophrenia.

*  *  *  *

“What is that?” Mama asks when I come in through the kitchen door. She is looking at the flour.

The table is littered with shredded magazines, and there are mannequin heads all over the room—on the table, the counters, the step stool, and the floor. This is what happens when Mama runs out of space.

I'm carrying the flour sack. It is sweating a fine white dust. I've checked the bag for tears, but the packaging is intact and the top folded over, still sealed. I have no idea where the flour is coming from, but my shirt is white from carrying it and my arms are tired. I'd put it down but there isn't a bare surface left, so I shift the bag to my other arm.

“It's supposed to be a baby,” I tell her. “It's for health class.” I wonder if Daddy would have signed the permission slip if he'd bothered to read it.

Mama is plastering a mannequin head with human eyes torn from
National Geographic.
Last night, Mama tried to tell Daddy about the evil eye, but he wasn't listening. He does that a lot these days. And sometimes he does it to me. He forgets who I am, and who I am not. He'll be ignoring me and then all of a sudden he will realize it's me, and he'll snap out of it and start asking questions. He will ask one question after the other—too many to ever answer. He doesn't listen like I do. I listen to everything.

Surrounded by all these eyes, I feel like I am being watched. Mama has a paper eye stuck to her cheek, upside down and starting to curl. She holds her hands in the air the way surgeons do after they've scrubbed in for surgery. Sticky with clear glue, they look webbed, and her long hair is coming undone—strand by strand, it escapes the spiral bun held in place with only a pair of chopsticks.

“You mean
your
baby,” Mama says, and she has that look, the serious one. And I wish I'd come in through the front door instead. It's getting harder to know which door to use.

I look at the flour sack. “Okay,” I say. “
My
baby.”

“You know, Fig, it's true I wasn't feeling well when it was time for orientation, but your father still filled me in. Junior high is a big deal.
You're
a big deal. This project is for sex ed, right? Your father wasn't sure, but I think it's absolutely brilliant—especially with all those damn pro-life billboards popping up across Kansas like burning crosses. No wonder teen pregnancy is skyrocketing. I say pass out condoms with the milk, but this at least is a good start.”

Her cheeks are flushed and her pupils big and black, two holes to fall into.

“Okay, Mama.”

“You have a schedule for the baby, right?” she asks.

I nod my head.

“Well?” Mama says, looking at me. She wants to see the log book. The last time she even looked at my homework was in the third grade. The pop-up book.
Little Red Riding Hood
.