Song of the Shaman (13 page)

“Who’d it sound like?”

“Like a craggy old man with a bad back.”

They peeked at each other and laughed. Silence again. One stop on the train felt like four. He looked tired; the coughing and wheezing had worn him out. She didn’t mention the rest of the conversation she had with Bruce, about the Guaymí Indians he’d lived with in Costa Rica, and the similarities between their chant and Zig’s. Would she ever?

The neighborhood merriment had hushed considerably when they got home. The wicker basket of candy she had left outside her apartment door for trick-or-treaters was now bare. She pictured children sorting their goodies on the floor in apartments above and below hers, costumes trashed for the fruits of their labor. Zig came home empty-handed with a costume ravaged by the elements. Half the feathers had blown off his headdress, and many of the cloth fringes were gone, too. He tossed the headdress on his desk; his vest landed on the beanbag chair.

“What do you want for dinner, sweetie?” Sheri limped to the kitchen on aching feet. She opened the fridge, grazed the shelves.

“Z?”

Zig had dropped on his bed and fallen asleep.

This wasn’t like him. Fear gnawed at her again. She pulled off the rest of his clothes and wrestled him into his pajamas. Then she got out the nebulizer and two vials of medicine—Albuterol and the steroid Pulmicort. She poured the contents of the vials into the cup attached to the face mask, elevated his head with pillows, and put the mask over his nose and mouth. She wasn’t taking any chances. Drummers worked for him; drugs worked for her. After she turned on the machine, she dialed Dr. Breen and left a message. He usually called within the hour; she’d have to be ready for his questioning. The frothy vapor coiled around Zig’s nose and open mouth while he slept. She sunk into the chair by his bed, her appetite gone. To her, these drugs were both a miracle and a curse; a nightmare of dependency ensued and she had to be careful when she weaned him off of them; it was so easy for him to have a relapse. Dr. Breen said he might outgrow his asthma as he got older, but to her it seemed to be getting worse. Now he wanted Zig on a steroid inhaler every day. What choices did she have? He missed too many days of school last year, and she would have to keep him home tomorrow just to be sure his symptoms didn’t return. Besides, maybe when he went back in on Wednesday the rumors about him would have died down. She stared at the rapid rise and fall of his little chest. Zig slept deeply, even with the hard mask over his face, the loud drone of the nebulizer, and his mother’s watchful eyes.

IN THE MORNING Sheri made Zig’s favorite breakfast: french fries and a cheese omelet with jalapeño peppers. Usually just the scent would awaken him. She went into his room and saw that he had barely moved from the position he was in last night.

“Time to wake up, sweetie!” She took the covers from under his chin. His neck was hot and sweaty. She felt his forehead. Did he have a fever? He winced and moaned at the touch of her cool hand.

“Breakfast is ready. How’re you feeling?” She opened his night table drawer, rummaged through Game Boy gear and a tangled mass of knickknacks to find the electronic thermometer. She put it in the corner of his mouth. Seconds later it beeped—102.5°F. Good thing he was staying home.

“No school for you today, Z. You’ve got a fever.” She pulled the covers off to listen to his chest. Just a slight crinkle echoed on the exhale. He laid there listless, his eyes dull. No reaction to the thought of staying home. He was sick all right.

“Hmm, you weren’t dressed right for the weather yesterday. It got cold so quickly.” She undid some buttons on his pajama shirt. “Stay here. I’ll bring your breakfast.”

It was all her fault. Leatrice would have had made sure he dressed properly. She recalled how tentative Leatrice sounded on the phone Sunday night when she called to double-check about taking the day off. What was Sheri thinking, letting him run around in the street with that skimpy costume? Riddled with guilt, Sheri made a smiley face on a plate with his french fries, put it on a tray, and brought it to his bedside. He was sitting up, looking out the window.

“You must be hungry since you didn’t have dinner last night. Eat a little before you take a Tylenol.” He brightened a bit at his favorite breakfast, but after a few bites, he complained about a stomachache. Sheri grabbed his garbage pail just as he heaved, narrowly avoiding his throwing up on the bed. She got him to the bathroom to rinse his mouth.

“Sorry, sweetie. I guess that wasn’t the best thing to eat with a fever.” She toweled off his face. How stupid of her. Anyone with a fever would vomit up fried food and cheese.

“Feel better now?”

“I’m ccccccold.” He shook in his bare feet on the tiled floor. She got him back to bed in a flash and wrapped him up in blankets.
Get the Tylenol in him, bring the fever down.
He managed to swallow the pill. Sheri held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t bring it back up.

Twenty minutes passed and the color returned to Zig’s cheeks. She brought him some weak tea and toast with jelly.

“What time is it?” He nibbled on the crust of the bread.

“Ten o’clock.” Good, he wasn’t shaking anymore.

“They’re either in writing workshop or history.”

“Hmm. I remember doing the same thing when I stayed home sick—guessing what everyone was doing in school. I was pretty lonesome.”

“Really? I’m not.”

“Well, you’ve never been home sick for a whole month.”

“A month! Wow, that’s a long time. What happened to you?”

Sheri shrugged. “I had a bad cold that wouldn’t go away. The doctors weren’t sure why. I couldn’t get out of bed, so I watched TV all day and drew tons of pictures.”

“Really? Can I see them?”

“Oh no sweetie—that was thirty-something years ago. Every day I gave pictures to my mom and dad as a gift; it was all I could do to keep busy. But when I got better I found out they threw them all away.”

“What! Didn’t they even keep one?”

“Nope. I found them in a bag behind the kitchen door. I started to cry and asked my mom why she didn’t want them. She said my dad signed me up for an art class at the Met after school, so soon they’d get all new pictures from me. I figured what I had drawn wasn’t very good.”

Zig looked hurt. He took her hand in his sticky palms.

“Your mom was a meanie!”

“Actually I think Mom liked my pictures. Dad didn’t. But he didn’t like much of anything.”

“Hmph! They weren’t your real parents anyway.”

“They were the only ones I had, Z. They did the best they could.”

He twisted a ring on her finger. “Do you have any pictures from the art class?”

“I never took the class.”

“Why not?”

Sheri brushed crumbs off his blanket. “I told them I didn’t want to, and I never drew any pictures for them again.”

“But now you draw at work…or used to.”

“A little. Advertising is not like fine art. Creative directors don’t do much drawing.”

He looked disappointed. “What were they like? Your pictures?”

“Back then? Oh, they were all over the place—lots of squiggly lines and circles, stick-figure people and trees and animals…”

The telephone rang. She got up to take the handset from his desk. It was easier to park her journal, BlackBerry, and the cordless phone in his room since she would be spending most of the day in there.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Judy Jacobs. Sheri?”

Judy was a top headhunter and a longtime ally, the woman who found Sheri her first job in the business.

“Hey, Judy! You got my message?”

“I couldn’t believe it! What happened at Aeon?”

“It’s a horror story.” Sheri eyed Zig. He eavesdropped on her frequently these days; the living room would give her more privacy. His Game Boy kept him busy while she updated Judy on her exit from Aeon.

“You just can’t make this stuff up, Sheri. It was time to move on.”

“So what’s it like out there now?” Sheri opened the living room blinds, revealing vivid red and gold foliage in the botanic gardens.

“Not great. It might pick up after the holidays, but things are usually slow now through the new year. What were you making?”

“One seventy-five.”

“After thirteen years! Marcus got his money’s worth.”

“Creative directors never get paid enough. It’s killer work.”

“And those jobs are hard to come by these days. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing. Far and few between. There are some senior art director positions, but you’re way overqualified. Could you stand anyone telling you what to do?”

Sheri glanced at Zig’s bedroom door. “My ten year old’s already working on that. Actually, I’m more interested in freelance.”

“Honestly, budgets are pathetic these days. Blame it on oil prices, Katrina, the war in Iraq. Everybody’s tightening their belts. I’ve got some clients who are changing careers over it. Did you get a decent severance?”

“Six months, but JetSet was a huge loss. I doubt Aeon will stay afloat.”

“You’re lucky to get six months. Marcus’s track record is shoddy. I’m still trying to collect my fee for a writer I placed there a year ago.”

She felt a twinge of concern. “So it’s not looking good, huh?”

“Send me your TV reel. I’ll see what I can do. Do you have our new address?”

“You moved? Hold on a sec, let me grab my notebook.”

She pressed the hold button on the phone and ran into Zig’s room. Her snakeskin journal was missing from his desk. W
here’d it go?
Zig, with his head dangling over the side of his bed, was paging through it.

“Honey, I need my notebook.”

“Mom, are these your drawings?” Flushed and excited, he opened to a page covered with her ink doodles.

“I have someone on hold! I need my
book—”

“These are Indian symbols! The kind awas use for special ceremonies!” He held it away from her. “There’re on almost every page!” Zig flipped through the notebook as if he had just discovered buried treasure.

“Hand it to me right now or you’re gonna be in
major
trouble!”

He tore a page out just as she snatched the book from him. Sheri apologized to Judy for the long hold, got her new address, and hung up. She shook the handset at him.

“That was an important call, Zig. From now on, when I ask you for
something—”

“You never told me about your drawings!” He had taken off his pajama shirt and was walking around bare-chested.

“Have you lost your mind? Put your shirt back on! Where’re your slippers?”

“These symbols are found on ulu sticks, sometimes on drums,” he said, studying the page he ripped out.

“Get your shirt on right now!”

“Listen to me!”
he screamed at the top of his lungs. Sheri froze. He held up the piece of paper, his eyes wild.

“Who were you drawing these for?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Zig. That’s just…nothing.”

He kicked some DVDs over on the floor. She tried to calm him down.

“I’m sorry, Zig. I’ve got a lot on my mind…too much. What were you trying to tell me?”

He ran into his room and slammed the door.

She let him be. They both needed some time and space. She cleaned up the kitchen. Made a couple of sandwiches for lunch. Checked her e-mail. But spinning in her head were all the things Zig said that flat out confounded her. It started to dredge up the nightmares she used to have. She was around his age when she fell sick, and every night the same dream came to her. She was standing in a shallow river. Brightly colored birds circled overhead. The birds flew lower and lower; feathers dropped as they merged into one enormous bird; its wide wings cast a shadow over the sun where she stood. She remembered being frozen with fear, staring up into the eye of the looming mystical creature. When it opened its mouth to speak she screamed in terror. Someone else was there, an old man, watching her. She would awaken in a cold sweat. Her parents didn’t know what to do. It got so she was afraid to sleep at night for fear she’d have the nightmare again. They finally resorted to giving her prescription sleeping pills. For months black, dreamless sleep swallowed her until the vision faded. She had buried the childhood memory until recently, when when the vivid dreams began to fill her nights again.

Zig was overdue for a treatment. Like clockwork, it had to be every three hours to ward off any worsening of his condition. She checked his medicine supply—there was enough to last a few weeks. What would it cost when her insurance switched to COBRA? The African drummers and their pulsating beat lit her mind.
Did he really heal himself? How could he?
She went into the bathroom to rinse out the nebulizer cup and face mask. The comforting advice of Dr. Breen echoed in her ears:
keep him on the medication through the winter unless you want to move into the emergency room.
For a pediatrician he had the worst bedside manner, and he intimidated Zig. Finding a new doctor was another task on her bottomless To Do list. Nausea and light-headedness plagued Zig whenever he took the steroids, at which point Dr. Breen would blithely remind her that it was a small price to pay to be able to breathe. Then there were a ton of other scary precautions that gave her pause. She pulled out the leaflet from inside the box of Pulmicort and read it again
. If you have switched from an oral corticosteroid (such as prednisone tablets) to this medicine within the past 12 months, your body may not produce enough natural steroids. Seek immediate attention if you experience any of the following signs: unusual weakness, sudden weight loss, vomiting, fainting, or severe dizziness…

He was still in his room with the door shut. She knocked on the door.

“Come on out, sweetie. It’s time for your treatment.”

“Go away.”

“Honey, you’re an hour late and you really need to take this stuff.” She tried the doorknob. It was locked. “Open the door, Zig.”

“You don’t care about me. You think I’m stupid.”

She pressed her head against his door. “You know that’s not true. I love you more than love itself.” Guilt poured over her. “I’m sorry for not listening, Zig. Please open the door. I’ll tell you the rest of my Indian story…”