Fig (29 page)

Mama drinks coffee with her cake. She uses cream like she always has, but now she takes six sugars per cup. She drinks so much coffee, Gran has to make another pot.

Even though Mama has been fat for a while now, the weight still looks wrong on her, like she isn't meant to be this way. The way she doesn't look like a smoker even though she smokes all the time. Gran calls this chain smoking. And Mama doesn't try to quit, nor does she apologize the way she used to. She just smokes and smokes and smokes some more.

Daddy spent the entire afternoon reminding her not to smoke inside until he finally gave up. He gave her permission to smoke in the day porch and called it “a compromise.” And this is where Mama always is. It was even hard to get her to come eat dinner with us, but Uncle Billy did something magic, and she finally agreed to join us in the dining room.

In the kitchen, I help clean but I'm also watching Mama. Through the French doors, I can see her in the day porch, smoking. “She's smoking menthols,” Uncle Billy says. “You know, those things are twice as likely to kill you.” And Gran shoots him a look to remind him not to talk that way when I'm around.
Little pitchers have big ears.

Daddy is drying the cake platter. He's been rubbing the dish towel in circles for over ten minutes now. He is watching Mama too. He looks almost catatonic, and it's not the first time I've wondered what it'd be like if both my parents were insane.

I know what Daddy's doing because it's what I am doing. We are waiting for my mother to step out of this strange woman. She'd shed her fat like a snake sheds skin. She'd step out of herself like the weight was just a jumpsuit and she'd be slender once again. She'd come into the kitchen and complain about the cigarette smoke in the house and scold Gran for the cake she made.

This mother doesn't do this. This mother just sits in my old mother's rocking chair. And she lights one cigarette off another, and the Mason jar ashtray is already half-full.

“Well,” Gran says, “I can always mix the two pots together come Monday.” She sighs, looking at the soup on the stove, and I realize everyone is planning to stay the weekend. I assumed we'd eat together—celebrate my birthday—but then Gran and Uncle Billy would leave. And the three of us could be alone again. The way it's supposed to be. With Gran here, Mama will never reemerge.

I go join Mama in the day porch, and I can feel three sets of eyes watching me. The air is silver with cigarette smoke, and I refuse to look toward the kitchen at my audience. The smoke tickles my throat, and I can hear an old echo from my other mother—the one who would warn me of all the risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke. That mother says, “Fig, it's far worse for you than smoking is.”

“Hi, Mama,” I say.

I'm sitting across from her, but she doesn't look at me. I look out the window instead. I look for the feral dog, but she is nowhere to be seen. She's been hiding. I haven't seen her forever, and I wonder if I will ever see her again. I study the orchard. The apples have fallen from the trees by now, left to rot. I can almost smell the fermentation. The trees have become infected with a blight called apple scab. My uncle showed me the black velvet lesions bruising all the fruit. He said, “The orchard can still be saved,” but he didn't tell me how.

According to the book at the library, the one Sissy Baxter was reading the first time I went to The Flower Lady, apple blossoms mean better things to come.

A flock of birds startle. They flutter into a careless splatter of black against the sunset sky, and then they settle back, ready to slumber away another night. The average person spends one third of her life asleep. These calculations are based on a person who sleeps eight hours a night. My mother doesn't sleep at all or else she falls into a coma and sleeps for days.

Mama doesn't look out the window, even though she's facing the orchard. She isn't interested in beauty anymore. She stares at the wood paneling instead, and I wonder what she actually sees. I see the ash on her cigarette. It has grown long and gray. Suddenly, Mama clears her throat and drops the cigarette in the jar, where it smolders. And she does not light another.

She is looking at me now like she wants to say something.

“You know,” Mama says, and she sounds excited. I smile at her, leaning forward—I am trying to establish intimacy, and now she seems embarrassed, but just when I think I've lost her she clears her throat to try again. She smiles at me the way Candace Sherman, Tanya Jenkins, and Sissy Baxter smile at one another whenever they are discussing boys. “I'm with child,” she says.

“Look!” she almost shouts, and Mama lifts her breasts with both hands. “See?” she says. “They are so much bigger now, and I'll tell you something else. I do
not
miss getting my period.” And this mother giggles; she does not laugh. I've never heard my mother giggle; the sound is enough to awaken the scab that's on my wrist.

“The doctors tell me, ‘Any day now,' ” she says, and she drops her breasts and leans back in her rocking chair—the one my father made for her when she got pregnant with me. She touches her belly now the way pregnant women always do. And she has that same look of wonder. Like she can't believe a life is really taking form inside her.

“It's my first, you know?” she says. While her breasts are indeed swollen, her belly is not round or hard the way it was when she was pregnant with me. I've seen the pictures.
This
belly is flabby and soft, a worn-out feather pillow. She is a Mother Goose. I want to lift her dirty purple sweatshirt and pull back all the rolls of fat and show her the scar she got from having me. This is why she's forgotten. The weight of this mother conceals the mother she was before.

She's not the only one who forgets. I forget too. I forget all the rules I make about not picking—and then I forget all the rules I make to try and control the picking. And I forget where I got the wounds I perpetuate. The first rule:
Don't pick
. But I end up making compromises with myself. The second rule:
Only pick one sore at a time
. Third rule:
Only pick for a week . Then I have to heal
. But I break all my rules. I am currently attending two sores.

I open one while the other has the chance to scab back over. I prefer the sanctuary of the bathtub, but that doesn't keep me from picking whenever and wherever I might need to pick.
As long as no one sees.
This is my other rule, and the only one I never ever seem to break.

The sore on my ankle is new; it's been a part of me for fifteen days, but I'm most committed to the one on my wrist, even though it's the hardest one to hide. It is my jewel.

I switch the letters around in “sore” until I arrive at “rose.” And then I bloom. They open, red and unfurling. I hide the rose on my wrist: long sleeves, bracelets, gloves, and even the occasional bandage. I tell Daddy, “I hurt myself,” and then I pretend to heal, but he doesn't pay attention. He doesn't even ask about it later. He just assumes the wounds will go away. He doesn't see how I've been growing this particular rose now for over three months. Almost always, roses mean love.

The seed was planted when my sleeve snagged on the wall in the barn and the splintered wood stabbed me. While I remember how I got this one, I can't keep track of all of them. I get hurt all the time. So I forget. But I never forget to pick. I pick on myself:
pick  , pick  , pick .
And I will pick until there is nothing left to pick.

synaxarion: a short version of the lives of the saints, arranged by date.

November 9, 1989

Today the Berlin Wall comes down and Miss Pratt and Miss Avery come all the way from Kansas City. Part of a volunteer program aiming to bring charm to rural Kansas, Gran calls it social education—a term she lifted from the brochure. The motto of the program is “Teaching the Art of Sense and Civility.”

Each time Gran drops me at the Sacred Heart of Mary Church, she reminds me of all the strings she pulled to get me in. And I imagine Miss Pratt and Miss Avery as marionette dolls. Gran holds them above a stage and makes Miss Pratt curtsy and Miss Avery twirl—but, really, I'm the one dangling at the bottom of my grandmother's manipulation.

Gran tells me how she met her best friends for life in charm school. She is quite concerned about my lack of friends—especially now that I'm in high school. “What do you do by yourself  ?” she is forever asking. And this isn't the first time I've wondered if Sissy Baxter is my friend or not.

There are twenty-seven girls enrolled in the school, and Sissy is not one of them. Miss Pratt instructs us in proper etiquette, and Miss Avery teaches dance. I'm told it will be a long time before I work with Miss Avery. I'm placed into the class called Introduction to Social Skills. This means I'm at the table where the eight- and nine-year-old girls all sit. At fifteen, I tower above them—an awkward, clumsy giant. And I wonder if this is how my father always feels.

Miss Pratt has a conductor's wand and walks circles around each table, only she seems to favor ours. When she isn't pointing out a misbehaved child or piece of misplaced silverware, she taps the wand against her palm, and her constant circling reminds me of kindergarten. I keep expecting her to say,
Duck  , duck  , goose!
And I am ready to run.

We role-play how to meet someone. We meet one another again and again. I meet all six of the little girls at my table. I meet each one at least ten times, but according to Miss Pratt I never properly introduce myself. Or show appropriate interest in others. She tells me this while tapping the wand against her palm for emphasis. She wears the same white gloves we all have to wear, and her lips are red and sharply outlined with darker red. While she smiles at all the other girls, she never smiles at me.

The girls my age sit at the table designated for the advanced version of my class. It's called The Power of Good Social Skills. They've been in the program for seven years, since the third grade—the age a girl typically begins charm school and cotillion—with the exception of Candace Sherman. Candy, as Miss Pratt and Miss Avery call her, has been studying since kindergarten. And I wonder if they'd even bother to come all this way if it wasn't for her.

They use Candace Sherman as an example all the time. “See how Candy stands?” Miss Pratt will ask, and Candy will stand for all of us to see. Miss Pratt's smile softens as she assures us that someday we'll all be that poised. “Candy's been working at this longer than the rest of you,” she says, scanning the girls and making eye contact with everyone but me. Who will never learn to stand or flutter my pinkie when I sip tea.

“You girls mustn't compare yourselves with Candy too much,” Miss Avery interjects. “Candy plans on being a model. In fact, she's already had a job.”

I wonder if Candace has done anything besides the pictures in their brochure, and that's when Miss Avery looks at me. She frowns like she knows what I am thinking. Then she looks away and continues, “But remember, my future debutantes of America, techniques for proper sitting, standing, walking, and pivoting aren't just for models! They're for all young ladies who wish to be sophisticated and graceful.”

I tell Mama about the class when I visit her. I hope she'll understand the severity of the situation. And come to her senses. Get discharged, withdraw me from the program, move back home and take charge. But Mama doesn't always hear me. On the one good day this month, Mama looked at me and said, “Good sense can't be taught.” She said it like she didn't understand why she'd have to tell me something so simple. Then she lit another Salem, to hide in the blue cloud of smoke where she knows I can't get to her.

The girls at my table make faces whenever Miss Pratt is busy at the two other tables. The second table is Developing Social Intelligence, which I'll take next, before I can finally move on to the appropriate age bracket.

Having met the girls at my table so many times, I know all their names by heart. Katie, Wilma, Mary, Lizzie, Tatiana, and Sara. But I do not like them. They stick their tongues out and sneer at me, pushing their noses into pig snouts using white-gloved fingers. When Miss Pratt comes floating back, so do their smiles. They flash wet pearly teeth and bat their eyelashes like frantic butterflies. Tucking their hands into their laps, they are little praying angels.

Miss Pratt looks at them as would any adoring mother and says: “So much of charm school is learning one's place.” And then she looks at me—long and hard.

*  *  *  *

November 30, 1989

“Today, we have a surprise!” Miss Pratt exclaims. Her cheeks are round, made rosy with a generous application of pink blush.

She has us stand in rows. One on each side of the large basement room so we are facing one another. Miss Pratt and Miss Avery pace the wide-open space between. They look like china dolls, made from rigid porcelain—yet, they don't seem to touch the ground, especially Miss Avery, who glides across the coffee-stained beige carpet. This is where everyone gathers after church services to eat and spill.

“You future debutantes of America have been working so hard,” Miss Avery says, and her blond hair curls around her face like a frame. It bounces ever so slightly as her head bobs up and down with enthusiasm. “We thought you deserved a little treat!” And as she talks she walks back and forth the way the Miss America contestants walk across the television screen back home. The catwalk. The runway. She looks like my fake Barbie. And this is when I crucify Miss Avery: I nail her to the wall amid the collection of donor plaques. Her tiny high-heeled feet wriggle about as she tries to be graceful without any footing. I watch her slowly bleed to death.