Fig (28 page)

Instead, we sit in silence like we always do.

Daddy goes to get a cup of coffee from the vending machine by the bathrooms. He leaves me and Mama alone. There is a television mounted to the wall, and it is always on. People talk, and one group plays a board game, but no one laughs in here.

Mama finally looks at me. Her eyes are no longer hazel; they are now the same empty gray as the sky before the first snow of the year arrives. “You're not mine, you know?” she says. She says this as she lights another cigarette. And then she smiles. Amid the twisting smoke, she smiles at me, and then she says, “But don't worry, dear. It's not your fault.”

*  *  *  *

On the drive home, Daddy takes a detour.

He hasn't been talking much since Mama went to Saint Joseph's, and he doesn't say anything about where we're going, and I don't ask. We pass a sign that reads
KICKAPOO INDIAN RESERVATION OF KANSAS
. The name makes me wonder if there are Kickapoo reservations in other places.

Daddy pulls off the road and into the dirt parking lot of a gas station/convenience store. There is one pump, but evidently he's not here for gas. He puts the truck in park and leaves me to watch a group of Indian kids as they sit around a dilapidated picnic table sucking on Popsicles striped red, white, and blue like the American flag. When he returns, he's carrying a plastic grocery bag. He gets in the truck and tosses the bag onto the floor by my feet. He pretends to be adjusting the rearview mirror, but really he is watching me from the corner of his eye as I examine the contents of the bag.

I am trying to see to see.

Through the thin white plastic, I see green packaging, which I recognize by now. I begin counting. I count ten cartons of Salem Lights 100s. The packaging design is more suitable for mint gum than it is for cigarettes. “No tax on the reservation,” Daddy says, putting the truck in reverse. As we drive away, we pass another sign, and this one reads
NOW LEAVING KICKAPOO INDIAN RESERVATION
. It does not specify which reservation or what state.

In school, we studied the Kickapoo Indians, and Phillip Booth couldn't get over the name.

He said, “I thought Kick the Can was a dumb game, but kicking turds is even dumber.”

He didn't pay attention to what the teacher was saying, and I doubt he read the book we were assigned. Otherwise, he would have known what I and the rest of the class knew. Kickapoo comes from
kiwikapawa
, which means “stands here and there.” It refers to the migratory patterns of the tribe and means “wanderer.”

I might not actually go anywhere, but I do know how to stand here
and
there.

*  *  *  *

The next time we go to visit Mama, Daddy brings all those cigarettes and I give her a bouquet of flowers.

I picked the last blooms of Johnny-jump-up from our yard, and I bought the orange daylilies from The Flower Lady because Sissy Baxter, who is now officially employed there, said, “Daylilies are the Chinese emblem for Mother,” and the Flower Lady explained, “Probably because it's easy to make an exact clone of the parent.” In
Hamlet
, Ophelia says, “There's pansies, that's for thoughts,” and this is what I mean to say to Mama with the Johnny-jump-ups:
You are not only in my heart, but forever in my head.

Mama doesn't even say thank you. Ignoring the vase I've set on the table, she takes the bag of cigarettes from Daddy and pulls a carton out. She isn't rushed, but she is methodical.

She uses her thumbnail to cut a slit in the cellophane. She slides the cellophane off and uses the same nail to open the cardboard flap at one end, before she shakes a pack out. I think about fingernails, and I think of my nesting dolls while Mama repeats her actions—only this time she's removing the cellophane from the individual pack, and now she's shaking out a long, white cigarette.

Filter down, she taps the cigarette on the table, and I almost expect her to do this thirteen times—but she doesn't. I count three taps before she sticks the Salem 100 between her chapped lips, lighting it with a lighter that reads
COUNTRY GIRL
. The lighter is decorated with a picture of a lipstick tube and a pair of spurs. I excuse myself.

I say I have to use the bathroom, but I don't. I do this all the time. I excuse myself to go ride the elevator up and down. There are six floors if you count the parking garage down below. People get on and off the elevator, and I don't know anyone.

From the main level, a boy wearing plaid pajamas gets on the elevator with a woman who must be his mother. The boy is my age. Our eyes meet for a second before he looks down, focused on the carpeted elevator floor. There's a name-tag sticker on his chest, only it's upside down, but the word
Satan
is not. I can't help but smile, and I do everything I can to force my lips in the opposite direction. I end up holding my breath and crossing my fingers to make it stop.

Satan is wearing a pair of brown fleece slippers, and I can see his toes and what's remaining of the black nail polish he applied before he came here. His hair is dyed black, but his roots have grown long—at least three inches of painful-looking strawberry blond. His natural color is the same as Mama's.

His mother clutches one of his arms with her hand. Her grip looks tight, and her fingernails are long and red. She holds on to her son, waiting for the elevator to take them to the third floor. They both smell like cigarette smoke, and they share the same scowl, only hers is made more severe by age and all the facial lines around her mouth. The elevator dings and the doors open. She pushes Satan into the corridor, but this is when he breaks free. He turns around and uses his foot to keep the doors from closing. And then he pushes up the sleeves of his hooded sweatshirt.

He wants me to see. And I do.

I see every single sliver of thin white scar. And I can almost see what they looked like before—slender strands of fresh vibrant red. He is covered in these scars. And the scars remind me of the shading technique Mama calls crosshatching. I look at his arms, and then I look at him: His eyes are blue—blue like a summer sky, and he looks at me. And when his mother grabs his arm and yanks him back, he yells at me. “Pay attention!” he says, before he turns around to let his mother steer him away from me, to the left.

The elevator doors close, and I'm left staring at a dull reflection of myself in the shiny steel.

I ride the elevator to the fifth floor and then back to the garage. I do this three times. And only three people and one baby ride the elevator during this time. After three rounds, I ride the elevator from the garage, but this time I stop at the third floor, and I'm the only who gets off. This hall looks like the hall on the fourth floor where my mother is committed. According to the directory on the wall, if I turn right, I will go to Cognitive Therapy, but if I turn left, I'd be headed to the Juvenile Psychiatric Ward.

Because the hallway bends, I can't actually see the ward. This hallway bends like the hallway on Mama's floor, and there's the same set of vending machines by the drinking fountain and the public restrooms with the blue wheelchairs stenciled on the doors, but the fluorescent lights work better. They still buzz, but they don't buzz quite as loudly as they do on Mama's floor. I should get back to the fourth floor but I can't move. I'm thinking about those scars. And I'm wondering what it'd be like to turn left—to commit myself. Head tilted, I stand here staring at a place I can't see.

*  *  *  *

October 21, 1989

Uncle Billy gives me a set of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
for my fourteenth birthday. The volumes are stacked up in the back of his truck bed. The books are white with red lettering and remind me of Daddy's varsity jacket—the way the red is tinged with gold.

Gran and Daddy should be here soon. They went to pick Mama up from the hospital. The doctors call this “a temporary release.” They say Mama wanted to spend the weekend at home because it's my birthday. The doctors also use the term “trial.” They say, “If she can handle being home, she can visit more.” That's what they say. They say this more than once, yet they never notice the contradiction or acknowledge the oxymoron, and I want to ask,
How, exactly, does a person visit home?

“Well, they're not going to sprout wings and fly up to your room,” Uncle Billy says, and I realize I've been standing here, on the porch, staring at his truck. I've been standing both here and there, but I return. I come back.

Together, we carry the encyclopedias up to my bedroom. I kneel on the floor, lining the volumes up in alphabetical order. I don't have a shelf big enough, so we make one using some of the old wooden crates left over from when the apple orchard was still in operation.

“I'm sorry they're used,” Uncle Billy says. He's just inside my room, leaning against the wall. He is wearing a pair of black cowboy boots.

I insert the last volume into the place where it belongs—between the L and the O—and then I look up at him and smile. My smile tells him I love them just the way they are.

“I wanted to buy you a brand-new set,” he says, “But they were too expensive.”

I tell him I've always wanted a set, and how once upon a time I even asked Gran for one. But she refused. “Encyclopedias are too much clutter for a young girl's bedroom” is what she said, and what she really meant was
All that information is too much clutter for a young girl's brain.

Uncle Billy smiles back at me, and then he begins to wander around my room. He stops by my desk and picks up the Matryoshka doll, and my heart begins to pound. The burnt-black faceless one is hiding within the core of all four mothers, so I hold my breath and cross my fingers that he doesn't open the matriarch, and it works. He sets her down and strolls over to the window seat.

He stands there looking out the window with his legs spread and his hands on his hips, and he reminds me of Peter Pan—the Peter Pan who's just about to fly away: out the open nursery window. “You know,” Uncle Billy says, “this used to be my room.”

I look around as he looks around. And I try to imagine a little boy in here. I see the miniature Uncle Billy from all the old pictures lining the hall at Gran's. This little boy sits in my window seat. Captured on black-and-white film, he looks at the orchard and the sky and he fidgets.

“Yup,” Uncle Billy says, shaking his head, and there's something strange about his smile. He is smiling the way Mama sometimes does—where the smile means the opposite of happiness.

“I hated this room,” he says. “All I ever did in here was imagine the day I'd finally get to leave. I'd think: I'm going to go far away and I will never,
ever
come back.”

Uncle Billy is just beginning to go gray at the temples. Daddy's black hair is all salt and pepper now. As he looks out the window, I wonder why he broke his childhood promise. I let him read my mind. And he looks at me again.

“I did go, you know?” he says, “And I stayed away until your daddy went and had you.”

Uncle Billy is smiling for real now, “After you came along,” he says, “there was nothing in the world that could keep me away. You, little lady, officially turned this old house into a home.”

*  *  *  *

Gran makes two pots of split-pea soup for dinner. One has ham hock and the other doesn't. Mama has decided to be a vegetarian. And I wonder if this is something she has always wanted to be.

I've read about vegetarianism. How people don't eat meat because they don't want to harm animals. As much as I do love animals, this is not the reason I don't eat meat myself. I actually have no idea why I don't want to. I just don't.

Mama's new therapist told Daddy how it's important to honor Mama's choices—that is, the choices that are logical, like this one. And I wonder why he doesn't honor my choice not to eat meat. He still serves it almost every night, and he always offers me a piece.

Daddy prepared everyone this morning. When he explained to Gran what the therapist instructed, Gran said, “I don't see any logic in Annie's choice. She's just seeking special treatment.” But Daddy ignored her. “Whenever possible,” he said, “Annie should feel that she is in control.” And that's when my grandmother rolled her eyes. “Did the animals tell her not to eat them?” and that's when Uncle Billy said, “Ma, stop it!”

I take a bowl of the vegetarian soup, and Gran lets me know I chose wrong. “This is the real soup,” she says, pointing at the other pot. I shrug to let her know that I don't care. And then I think,
How is it she's never noticed me not eating meat until today?

I take my bowl of unreal soup and sit down. Everyone is busy watching Mama, who barely touches her soup even though it was made vegetarian just for her. She brings spoonful after spoonful to her lips, and then she blows on the soup like it's still hot. She blows until she thinks no one is watching and she dumps the spoonful back into her bowl. She does, however, eat four thick slices of my birthday cake.

Everyone but Mama and I sing “Happy Birthday.” And when the song is done, Mama leans forward and blows out the wax 14 my grandmother bought from Kmart. My mother blows away my chance to make my one and only wish.

Gran baked the cake to look like a wedding cake, white on white. “This is how we used to celebrate birthdays when I was in charm school,” my grandmother says. I've never seen Mama eat so much. If I took a picture of her right now, the dictionary publishers could use the image to accompany the definition for “gluttony.”

gluttony: one of the seven deadly sins.

A glutton takes from those in need. I need my mother to come back.

I miss the carrot cakes Mama used to make and the cream cheese frosting that isn't so sweet. And I miss the candied violets she used to handcraft herself. Violets mean affection, and I wonder if she knew this when she used to decorate my cakes with those tiny purple flowers, hardened by sugar and egg white.