Fig (3 page)

There's a picture of a mother dingo and her cubs. The mother's eyes and mouth are closed, and there's something about her face that makes her look like she is smiling. The same smile I've seen before; the one that is not a smile at all.

I think about the word “unique.” Both Daddy and Mama use this word a lot. They are forever telling tell me how important it is to be unique. Daddy said everyone in the world is unique, but Mama shook her head and told him she strongly disagreed. “Unique” means “one of a kind.” It means there are no dingoes in Kansas because there are no dingoes in America.

Mama sits in the kitchen at the table, and she still looks confused. The overhead light shines through her hair, turning the strawberry blond into white, and she's taken off the robe. Now it's draped over the back of the chair like a crumpled shadow. She's looking at her hands, rubbing them together. She rubs them in a way where it looks like she's trying to pull off her skin. It reminds me of when Uncle Billy skins a rabbit. After he makes all the different cuts, the way he pulls and pulls. And the fur slides off the body the way a sock comes off a foot.

I sit down at the table, across from my mother. I set
The Headless Cupid
on the table, hoping she'll remember the promise she made to me. But Mama doesn't look up. She doesn't look at me and she doesn't look at the book. She only looks at her hands, which she continues to rub away.

Marmalade brushes against Mama's leg and meows the way she does when she wants to be fed. But it's like Mama can't hear or even feel the cat, so I go to the pantry and grab the bag of Meow Mix. I fill the cat's bowl, spilling some, not that Mama notices. Marmalade makes awful noises like she is grinding bones with her sharp teeth. With my hands, I sweep up the spilled cat food, and then I make a point to change the old water out for fresh water, but Mama still doesn't notice or say thank you like she normally would. She just sits there trying to rub herself away while the cat eats.

*  *  *  *

I sit at the table with Mama for a long time. Marmalade finished eating forever ago and left the kitchen for her spot in the living room.

I pick the book up and pretend to read, but I can't concentrate. I flip ahead, hoping Mama will tell me not to. Mama still doesn't look up. I begin to read chapter six because I am six years old, and almost right away there's a word I don't know: “initiation.” I try sounding it out because I think doing this will make Mama be a mother—it will make her want to help me, only she still doesn't seem to hear me as I stutter through the vowels and trip over the
t
's, and I'm forced to give up.

I close the book harder than I should and set it down with a thump. I am loud compared with the rest of the house, and I take a deep breath, trying to take the noisiness back into myself. Then I try counting to keep from holding my breath and crossing my fingers, which my body wants to do because that's what it's been doing all night. But I worry it won't work anymore if I do it too much. Besides, I'm not sure what it is I'd be trying to stop, so instead I count all the sounds the grandfather clock likes to make. I separate the sounds into categories of high and low.

The moths fly around the kitchen light and burn themselves on the hot yellow bulb. Caught inside the glass cover, they die. If Daddy was here, he'd use the step stool to climb up and take the cover down. He'd dump the dead bugs in the trash and wash the cover like he'd wash a plate; he'd dry it with a dishcloth and screw the fixture back into the ceiling. The moth wings sizzle.

Mama finally stops rubbing her hands, and she looks at me. She looks right into my eyes, and I see how her eyelashes look like spun gold. She blinks her tears away and her whole face changes: My mother returns.

“Oh, Fig,” she says, “you must be so scared.”

She gets up and comes to me, covering my body with her body. She is a mother spider with a million arms to wrap around me. I can't see anything because my face is buried in her belly, but I wonder if she can see the book—if she is remembering. Still holding me, Mama whispers in my ear, “It's time for bed,” and when she pulls away I make sure her eyes follow mine, and now we are both looking at
The Headless Cupid
.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Mama says, and I feel bad because when I look at her again the tears are back. They are rolling down her cheeks. “Maybe tomorrow,” she says, and then she offers me her hands to pull me up, and I let her. We leave the book behind, and Mama forgets to turn off the kitchen light. On the stairs, she walks behind me like she's afraid I might fall. But then she walks like this even after we've reached the top and we are walking down the hall to my bedroom.

Mama gets my nightgown from the top dresser drawer. “Put this on,” she says. “I'll be back to tuck you in.” As I pull the nightgown over my head I hear Mama in the bathroom—the sound of the medicine cabinet being opened and then the clatter of bottles being moved around. She is looking for something she can't seem to find.

With my nightgown on and my short hair full of static, I go to the bathroom. Mama looks at me in a way that makes me feel like she doesn't want me here. That she doesn't want me to see what she is doing.

“I need to brush my teeth,” I say.

Mama smiles. “Of course you do,” she says, but doesn't move out of the way. I have to stand in the doorway while she continues to look through the cabinet.

After she pulls everything out, she finds what she's been looking for—a small brown plastic bottle that looks like all the other small brown plastic bottles that are kept in the cabinet. She puts everything back but this one—this one she holds on to. With her fingers wrapped around the bottle, she steps back to make room for me to brush my teeth, and when she steps back the bottle rattles.

Mama stands in the doorway, watching me. Her face above my face in the mirror. We look alike and we don't look alike.

There is no red in my blond and I have no freckles. I am the same kind of thin as Mama, only my face is round while her features are more severe. Mama has hazel eyes, streaked with green and gold. My eyes are brown and boring. Mama is beautiful and I am something else. But Mama doesn't make me feel ugly the way Gran does; Mama makes me feel like I'm the prettiest girl in the entire world.

When Mama goes into her room, I listen to all the familiar sounds. The way the rag rug muffles her steps, and the sliding of a dresser drawer as it opens and closes. I hear the soundlessness of Mama as she pauses to look in the mirror—the one from Daddy with the two brass birds cast to look like they are ready to fly away. When Mama comes back, her hair is down and she's wearing a long white nightgown like the one I am wearing. Soft cotton and eyelet flowers. She leads me to my room, and when I get into bed she sits down next to me.

“Do you think you can sleep?” she asks.

I don't want to be brave anymore. I hear something in the yard, and I'm worried about my stuffed animals. I don't want them to be cold or to get hurt. I worry about rain.

Mama brings the quilt to my chin and tells me to breathe. I breathe the special way she taught me—where I fill my belly with air and make it as round as a balloon. While I breathe, Mama starts to build the protective dome she builds around my bed whenever I am scared. She stands to shape the air with her hands. They move like she is working with clay.

“I make it from love,” she says. “And nothing bad can get through.”

Mama calls the construction of the dome a ritual. “Rituals are important,” Mama says, and I realize this is what I've been doing. Holding my breath and crossing my fingers is a kind of ritual to make something stop or not happen. When Mama's done building the invisible dome, she rubs her hands together. She's thorough, and I can almost see it—the way light hits glass and makes it not so see-through anymore. I see the scratch marks on the other side where something tried to claw its way in but couldn't get through.

*  *  *  *

Mama is still asleep when I wake up. With the sun in the sky, the world is safe and warm again. I look at the orchard from my window. I can see the quilt, and some of my stuffed animals—the trees, and the slope of the land, hide the others.

I get dressed and go to the orchard to gather everything and take it back home with me. I walk the path that last night had to be run. What I am doing is called tracking. Uncle Billy taught me.

I track Mama. And I track myself.

The birds are singing and the sky is blue. The southern pasture is sun kissed with dandelions and buttercups, and the bright sprinkle of yellow makes me smile. A group of rabbits scatter when I come upon the remains of the picnic, but everything else is as it was.

My stuffed animals sit in their circle, and my teddy bear is still leaning against the picnic basket, the cloth napkin in his lap damp from the morning dew.

I breathe in, and the air makes me stand up straight and tall. I hold the air inside my body and I cross my fingers until I'm no longer scared, and then I head toward the woods and the farmer's ditch. I don't try to hide what I am doing. Today is one of those days when Mama will sleep in late.

This is where the animals come to drink. Wild and not wild. And this is where I feed the dog, but she is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, I find an owl pellet—matted and gray. Using my fingernails as tweezers, I pick out the tiny white jawbone of a field mouse. The sun shines through the trees, turning parts of the water into gold. Where the light doesn't reach, the water stays dark: black like the reverse side of a mirror.

*  *  *  *

It takes three trips to carry everything back to the house, and when I'm done I fall asleep on the couch. When I wake up later, I peer into Mama's room. She's sleeping on her side, facing the other way. She still hasn't moved, and Marmalade is curled up by her feet. The sun shines through the curtains and turns Mama's skin into lace.

My stomach growls and I realize I'm hungry, but I don't want to bother Mama. In the kitchen, while I'm waiting for my toast to toast, I try reading
The Headless Cupid
. The book opens to chapter six again, and I find that “initiation” isn't the only word I don't know. But at least I can pronounce the other ones—words like “occult” and “ordeal.” I'm more than happy to abandon the book when it's time to spread my toast with butter and homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam. I wonder if there's a difference between “cult” and “occult.” The word “cult” had something to do with the picture of baby Azaria's black and red dress. The picture of the dress without a baby actually wearing it.

The apple juice hasn't been opened, and my fingers fumble to break the seal on the plastic jug. It's hard to pour because it's so full. I put my glass on the floor to try—something Uncle Billy taught me to do—but instead of coming slowly, the juice rushes out, spilling everywhere. It spills across the black and white tiles, square after square like a game of checkers. And this is when Daddy comes home. He is alone. I don't know where my uncle is.

“Have an accident?” my father asks, smiling.

Daddy puts his backpack down and gets on his hands and knees to help me clean. When we're done, we stay on the floor. The floor glistens, and the house takes a deep sigh. Daddy calls this settling. He tosses the used rags into the sink and wipes his fingers dry on his blue jeans. He kisses me on the very tip top of my head: According to Mama, this is my crown chakra.

“So where is my beautiful wife?” Daddy asks, and when I tell him she's still asleep I see the way his face changes. How he checks the clock on the stove.

I might read better than any kid my age, but I can't tell time.

Daddy is heading up the stairs fast, and I hold my breath and cross my fingers to make the bad feeling go away, but it doesn't go away, so I quietly follow my father. I stand in the hallway. And Daddy is saying Mama's name. He says it softly like he does when he's saying my name to wake me up for school. Each time, a whisper.

“Annie. I'm home.”

But he's too quiet, and she isn't waking up. And so he says her name a little louder: “Annie,” he says. Louder and louder, he says her name. Again and again. He says “Annie?” like it's a question, and then it's not a question anymore, and he is shouting, and her name is no longer a name.

I come to stand in the doorway, where I can see what I don't want to see. Daddy sits on the edge of the bed, and Mama is still on her side like before, but she is no longer made from lace. She is made from shadows now. When Daddy tries rolling Mama over, Marmalade hisses at him, and her teeth are sharp and blue-white. Daddy moves Mama, and Mama's arm rolls off her hip, falling in a twisted way. Daddy rolls Mama onto her back, and her body buries her arm, where it gets folded even more wrong than before.

Screaming is different from shouting.

I've never heard my father scream before. He sounds like a little girl. As he screams, my body fills with silence. And I am choking on the quiet lodged inside my throat.

Daddy is shaking Mama. Her face jiggles from side to side, and I wish he'd stop. I am worried he will hurt her. Mama is Sleeping Beauty.

Daddy grabs the phone from the bed stand and holds it between his face and his shoulder. He does this so he can still hold Mama with his other arm. One spin on the rotary, and I remember this sound from somewhere as I listen to the ringing. A woman's voice comes on the line; she is loud. “Operator. How may I help you?”

Daddy is looking at me now, and because he is, it feels like I'm the one he's talking to. There is spit on his lips, and his jaw is clenched. He asks to be connected to emergency services.

“Right away,” he says. “I need an ambulance.”

*  *  *  *

At the hospital in Lawrence, I'm not allowed to move.