Title: Hamster
Island
Author: Joan
Heartwell
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Twilight
Times Books
“Bittersweet,
engagingly written, and populated by a household of strong-willed,
idiosyncratic characters, Hamster Island has, at its
core, a conflict familiar to us all: How can we be good to others while also
being good to ourselves? This is a matter of profound importance to Joan
Heartwell: her brother had an intellectual disability, her sister a psychiatric
one, and her parents were consumed by their own unhappiness. Joan’s six-decade
journey to find the answer starts in a 1950s world limited by religion and
rules, and ends in a contemporary world open to generosity and love. This tale
of caregiving and self-actualization is unique, but it abounds with insights
for us all.”
—Rachel
Simon, New York Times bestselling author of Riding
The Bus With My Sister and The Story of Beautiful Girl
————————————————-
Chapter One
Miracle Climb
Grandma doesn’t give a hoot about shrines, but if visiting some
means getting out of the house for a few days, she is all for it. She hates the
house—especially on weekends when my father is home. She hates my father. He is
loud and dirty and he pisses like a racehorse. The bathroom is centrally
located, right between the room I share with my brother and my parents’ room,
right at the end of short hall that joins both bedrooms with the living and
dining rooms. We can easily hear him pissing, and grandma is right: it does
sound like something big—as big as a horse—is in there. A worse offense, in her
mind, is that he takes the long-sleeved shirts she feels obligated to buy him every
Christmas and on his birthdays and cuts the sleeves off. Since he doesn’t
bother to hem them, the edges fray, more and more over time, and she hates him
most when she sees him wearing faded shirts with sleeves that have frayed
edges. Still, she goes on buying them, and he goes on accepting them without a
word of complaint.
It is Tyla Topal who has invited us to go to Montreal to see
shrines. Tyla is a widow like my grandmother. She lives across the street in a
tidy brick ranch-style house with her three children, the youngest of whom is
Denise, my best friend. Since it has already been decided that Denise will go
on this trip with her mother, it is all important to my grandmother that I be
allowed to go as well. That way we will be matched sets—two widows, two little
girls to keep each other company.
But when we leave the Topal house and go into our own, my mother
says no. No, I can’t take off time from school. She is sitting at the dining
room table, her face puffy and unhappy looking, her short dark hair looking
like it was cut with a hatchet. She has the appearance of someone who has been
freshly insulted. Her eyes blink out the code for her confusion. She doesn’t
get us, Grandma and me. We are a mystery to her. David, my brother, who is two
years older than me, is sitting on her lap. On the table is a checkerboard. We
have caught them at play.
My mother and grandmother argue for a while. “Why the hell…?” my
grandmother asks. That is how she starts all her questions. Grandma reminds my
mother that my grades are perfect, that taking off a few days from school will
not make much of a difference. My mother says there is not enough money for me
to go on such a trip. Grandma says I don’t need money, that she will cover my
expenses herself. My mother says it’s not fair for me to go since David has not
been invited.
Grandma stops arguing for a moment to look at him. We both do. He
is squirming on my mother’s lap, getting cranky because while she’s still
playing, still moving pieces around the board, she’s not really paying
attention anymore. David has terrible allergies, and his big beak of a nose is
red and his eyes are watery. He breathes through his mouth. His bottom lip
hangs loose, as if it weighs too much for any normal lip muscle to support it.
Sometimes a string of saliva will drip from one side of his mouth, though
nothing is dripping just now. “What the heck’s the matter with that woman,
anyway?” my mother finally asks, breaking the spell. “Doesn’t she have enough
to do with a house and kids? Who the heck does she think she is, with her
highfalutin trips? You want to go, fine, but she stays here.” And with that she
casts an angry glance in my direction.
For all that my mother’s domestic routine is based almost
exclusively on my grandmother’s guidelines, when it comes to my brother or me,
once she makes a decision, she will not budge. “I guess you’ll have to stay
home, Joan,” my grandmother says. But when I look at her, I can see in her eyes
that she is only egging me on, letting me know that she’s done what she can and
now it is my turn to go a round in the ring.
At first I’m not sure what more can be said to change my mother’s
mind. But then it comes to me, loud and clear. “Ma,” I say, approaching. As if
he thinks I am coming to steal some of the checker pieces, my brother raises an
arm threateningly and emits a sound that is midway between a growl and a hum.
“Ma, this is not just any old trip. This is a trip about God. This is the kind
of trip God would want me to go on, because He wants me to be closer to Him.
And this is a trip He would definitely want Grandma to go on, since she’s not
close to Him at all.”
While my kickoff is dignified enough, as I continue, I collapse
into a shameless whine: “And if you don’t let me go, then Grandma can’t go
either, because Mrs. T already told Denise she could go, and she’s not going to
want Grandma tagging along if only Denise’s going, and then you’ll be
responsible for Grandma’s soul not getting saved. This is Grandma’s big chance.
If she goes to hell, it’s all your fault.”
My mother’s eyes flood slowly with tears of frustration. She
doesn’t raise her hands from the checkerboard to wipe them away. She lets them
pool there. She lets us have a good look at them. Once again I have filled her
with unhappiness, and now it is running over. It is palpable, unavoidable,
soaking through everything in the room. Her head droops. “I know God wants us
to go on this trip,” I add gravely, through my teeth.
My mother has broken. Grandma and I exchange a quick look that
confirms we both know this, but we stay quiet and wait. My mother is the most
devout Catholic on the face of the earth. She will deny God nothing. Nothing at
all. “Go ahead and go,” she snaps, lifting her head. “Go ahead. Go. I don’t
care anymore what you do.”
*
And so it is that a few days later we leave for Montreal, me and
Denise and Mrs. T and Grandma. Mrs. T drives us to the bus terminal and there
we park the car and get on a waiting bus with other people taking the tour. The
women sit behind us on the bus, and for hours and hours they talk and talk. It
surprises me to see how chummy they are; at home my grandmother says plenty of
nasty things about Mrs. T. She calls her a know-it all, a conniver, a whiner.
But now they are the best of friends, agreeable on every matter. Grandma mostly
talks about my father, about how much she despises him, and Mrs. T clicks her
tongue disgustedly in response, as if to say she totally understands. Grandma
also talks about her job, the people she works with at the garment factory;
Mrs. T talks about various neighbors in her nasal, heavily-inflected voice.
They are comfortable in each other’s company.
Denise and I take turns sitting by the window. When it is my turn,
I rest my head against the glass. I know as surely as I know my name that I am
getting sick, that I am coming down with a fever. My throat rages and I can
barely keep my eyes open. But I have never been out of New Jersey before, let
alone out of the country. And I know Mrs. T and Grandma will find a way to make
the driver turn the bus around and take us back to Bergen County if they learn
that something is wrong with me.
We reach Montreal in the evening and stay the night at a hotel
that is glorious. The halls are wide and dark and thickly carpeted. There are
alcoves on every floor, small sitting areas where you can look out the window
at the city lights. I have never been in a hotel before and I can’t believe my
good fortune, that my first one should be this one, a hotel as big and old and
dark as a castle. We put our suitcases down in our room and decide who is
sleeping in which bed—me and Grandma in one and the Topals in the other. The adults
are still gossiping. If it were just my grandmother and me, she wouldn’t let me
out of her sight. But Denise tells her mother that we are going to explore, and
when Mrs. T says to go ahead, just be careful and don’t get lost, my
grandmother doesn’t make a peep.
Then we are gone, flying down halls, soaring up through elevators,
gliding down stairs, alighting on every sofa and wing-backed chair in every
alcove, smudging every window with our noses and our breath. We are two
princesses in this fine, dark castle—one small, petite, and beautiful, with
long dark banana curls, as light on her feet as fairy dust, her laughter a
jangling of tiny bells; the other, bigger, chubby, clumsy, not incapable of
falling over her own feet, tripping over her shadow, a bowl of dark straight
thick hair gleaming atop her head like the helmet of a knight. We hide on each
other and shriek with joy when we are found. Our little girl voices echo back
to us. It seems that we are the only people in the whole castle, in the whole
world. It is the best night of my life.
In the morning we have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I order
French toast because I am in Quebec. Everyone laughs when I explain myself. I
am beet red with fever, my throat is swollen and practically closed, my breath
is insufferable, my vision is so blurry I can hardly see what the others are
eating, and my head is so thick that I feel as if I am hearing the conversation
from under water. But as no one notices, I don’t volunteer the information.
Everyone is talking and laughing and having fun. We are having an adventure and
no one, not even Denise, needs to know I am as sick as a dog.
After breakfast we board the bus that will take us to the first
shrine. While we travel, the driver tells us a bit about where we are going and
what we can expect. For the most part I don’t pay attention. Just keeping my
eyes open takes enough of an effort. But then I catch something about a chapel
at the top of a hill where miracles occur. Even in my leaden state I quickly
become excited.
I know all about miracles. I go to a Catholic school and we talk
about miracles every single day, usually in the late morning just before lunch,
and sometimes again at the end of the day. We talk about sinners who have seen
the floors split open before them, who have miraculously been granted the
glimpses of hell that ultimately turn them away from sin and save their souls.
We talk about Our Lady of Fatima, Joan of Arc, statues that weep, hands that
bleed, food that multiplies…. I love miracles. I have been praying all my life
for a miracle of some kind, even a small one, but it hasn’t happened yet. I
demand that Denise explain what the driver has been talking about. Denise, who
attends the same school and has in fact experienced a miracle (she awoke one morning
to find the Blessed Virgin Mary sitting at the foot of her bed) says that this
chapel of miracles that we are going to can be gained by ascending a flight of
almost three hundred stairs on your knees. The pain is enormous, horrendous.
But if you get to the top and go into the chapel there, you can pray for
whatever you want and your prayers will be answered. St. Joseph rules over the
chapel; he’s the one you pray to. That’s all she remembers, she says.
We bounce along on the bus. I stare at her with my mouth open, in
part because I am speechless and in part because I can no longer breathe
through my nose. She stares back at me for a while, expressionless. When she
looks away, I glance at the faces of the other people I can see, a man and a
woman sitting across the aisle holding hands, and the profile of the young
woman sitting just in front of them. They all stare ahead or out the window,
their expressions too vague to read. Behind us, Grandma and Mrs. T are still
chatting, speculating now on whether an old woman in our neighborhood might be
not the mother she pretends to be but the grandmother of the child who lives
with her, and if so, what improprieties that might suggest. How is it, I
wonder, that we are not all on our knees? That we are not all holding our hands
over our hearts to keep them contained? That we are not all chanting Alleluia,
Alleluia, Gloria in excelsis Deo?
I know I am going up those stairs on my knees, even if I have to
run away from Grandma to do so and endure her nagging for the rest of my life.
I think about all the things I can pray for when I get to the top. There is
Francis Amato, the boy I am in love with. I stare at him constantly in class.
When we get up to pray or sing or do the pledge, I stare at his straight back,
willing him to turn his head and look at me. He did once. Once he twisted his
neck and turned his head and one eye fell on me, and in that instant I flushed
crazily and knew I wanted one day to marry him, only him, my Francis, my true
love. I could pray for that.
But getting married is years away—and besides, everyone in our
class knows that Francis wants to go into the priesthood—and I am only a little
kid. I am torn between ensuring my future and praying for something more
immediate. Money, maybe, money for toys, lots of toys, and then if there is any
extra, for my family. Money so that my father doesn’t have to work so many
jobs, so that we can have a nicer house, so that my mother can buy me school
uniforms that fit and not stuff I will “eventually grow into.” But then I
remember that the nuns have warned against praying for money, and while it is
great fun to imagine all the bikes and hula hoops and yo-yos and pick-up-sticks
and cut-outs and View Masters I could buy, I know in the end I will not take
the risk. I know what God is like when He is angry. I know that He can (and
does) hear my thoughts and see my every move. At the end of the world, the nuns
remind us at least once a week, each of our lives will be run on a screen of
air, like a drive-in movie, from beginning to end, and everyone will see what
everyone else did—and thought! We all stare at them, speechless, when they say
that. We all imagine how it will be to see one another in the bathroom. Peeing.
Picking our noses. Wiping our backsides. It will be awful, awful. And for me it
will be worse. Everyone will know that once, when my brother and I were jumping
up and down on the bed back at the old house, I struck out at him with a belt I
happened to be holding and the buckle made his head bleed. Everyone will hate
me for that.
Just the thought of David settles me down. Day-Wit, he calls
himself, because he cannot get the “v” sound right. What a shame they had to
name him something he can’t pronounce. I close my eyes and drift away, thinking
that I may never come to Montreal again, that I may never have another chance
to go to a chapel that is miraculous, where all you have to do is climb some
stairs on your knees to get your wish. For all that I was the ogre princess
last night, sister to the great and beautiful Princess Denise, co-guardian of
the ancient dark castle (and for all that I become a mermaid almost nightly,
slipping two legs in one flannel pajama pant leg, imagining long curls flowing
from my head instead of my short Buster Brown crop, swimming in a lagoon with
the other mermaids, awaiting the arrival of Peter Pan), I am a serious child.
And I know in the end I will pray a serious prayer.
Denise pokes me awake. We have arrived. We follow the others off
the bus. As much as Denise and I want to take off and explore, the adults
insist we eat again. It takes forever. I’m not even hungry. My grandmother is
astonished, because I always have an appetite. I force myself to order
something, French fries (again, in keeping with the French theme) so that she won’t
suspect I am half dead.
Finally we are out in the sun, standing on the street in front of
the church. The sky is so bright and the sun so strong that it hurts my eyes to
look up, but when I do I see that the church is built onto the side of a hill
and it features a great silver dome. Mrs. T, who has a guidebook, tells us that
while construction began initially just after the turn of the century, it is
still going on today and we will find that some areas are closed. It seems to
me that almost sixty years is way too long to complete a project, even one as
beautiful as the one before us.
We approach the stairs, which are separated into three sections by
handrails. A few people in the center section are on their knees. The people on
both the sides are walking up normally. I nudge Denise. “Joan and me want to
climb up on our knees,” she tells her mother. Mrs. T immediately grabs her by
the shoulder of her coat and drags her to her side. “You’ll ruin your clothes,”
she snaps. Denise looks back at me, over her shoulder, as she begins to climb
beside her mother. Her expression tells me nothing about how we are going to
get free of the adults.
When we get to the top, the adults huffing and puffing after the
long slow climb, Grandma and Mrs. T say they want to go into the main section
of the church, to light candles and pray for the dead. Denise’s father’s name
was Lou, and though he’s only been dead a few years, I can’t remember much more
than his fuzzy gray-brown hair, the way it separated at the top of his head.
Mr. T had a small Syrian grocery store that he would sometimes drive us to, me
and Denise and Mrs. T, on Sundays, when the store was closed. That way he could
do his paperwork in peace; Mrs. T could go up and down the aisles and pick out
canned foods to bring home and store in their basement for when the Russians
attacked; and Denise and I could pretend it was our store and carry on
conversations with phantom customers. (“I saw you steal that sugar, you thief!
You put it back or I’ll call the cops.” “Oh, yeah? Who’s going to make me?”)
Once, when I was getting in the car to make the trip with the Topals, the car
door slammed closed on my fingers and Mrs. T sent me home, crying, carrying my
bruised hand in my good one, and off they went without me, Denise on her knees,
watching me, getting smaller and smaller in the back window.
My grandmother’s husband’s name was Lou too, and I don’t remember
much more about him than I do Mr. T. Once, at the old house, where we lived
until I was five, I fell in the river that used to be our backyard, and my
grandfather, who was fishing at the time, saved me. I know from my mother, who
adored him, that he liked to sit outside under a tree when there was lightning
and that he was forever bringing home stray dogs. I know from my grandmother
that she would take his stray dogs for long walks, and then hop a bus and come
home without them. When asked where Spotty or Rusty or Snappy had gone, she
would play dumb. “How the hell should I know?” she would ask him.
I am tempted to tell Mrs. T that my grandmother never goes to
church, that she says the roof will cave in if she does, that she didn’t even
really like my grandfather and is likely to be thinking about something else
entirely when she lights her candle. My grandmother is playing along,
pretending to be interested in churches for the sheer pleasure of Mrs. T’s
company, for the chance to go on trips like this. When Mrs. T says, “Come on,
girls, let’s go in,” I hold my breath. I can only hope that Denise will tell
her mother that we have other plans. I do not talk to Mrs. T myself, at least
not to say anything contrary. I am afraid of her. With my grandmother here it’s
not so bad, but when it’s just me at their house, I don’t even lift my eyes.
Denise doesn’t let me down. “We want to wait outside,” she demands
in her little girl voice, her hands on her hips. She is so adorable that both
women break form to exchange a quick smile.
“Why?” Mrs. T asks.
“It’s nice out. We want to stand in the sunshine.”
“No no no,” Grandma butts in. “You girls are crazy. We’re in a
foreign country. Someone could snatch you and we’d never find you again.”
“We promise,” I chime in. “We won’t go anywhere. We’ll wait right
here, just stand in the sun.”
Mrs. T’s thin lips press together under her hook of a nose. She
shakes her head. “Oh, let them, Maggie,” she says to my grandmother. “They’ll
be okay.” She looks me up and down and I can’t read what she is thinking.
The women go in, my grandmother turning her head to shoot daggers
at me and Mrs. T reaching into her purse for a black lace doily to place on her
head. As soon as the big wooden doors shut behind them, Denise and I run down
the stairs we have just climbed up, quickly, skirting current climbers as if we
are skiing down an obstacle course. “What are you going to pray for?” I ask
Denise breathlessly as we near the bottom.
“Not telling,” she responds.
“Why?”
“Might not come true.”
“Did the driver say that?”
“I know that; that’s how it works.”
“Like wishing on a star?”
“Yeah.”
“I think you’re wrong. Why would God care if someone told or not?
He’s God, not some shooting star.”
She doesn’t answer. Even though I’m arguing with her, I know I’m
not telling either. Why take the chance?
Once we are on our knees, the church at the top seems very far
away. And even when we reach it, we will have no idea how to find the chapel of
miracles. We can’t ask; from what I can tell, most of the people here are
speaking other languages. And I’m not supposed to talk to strangers anyway.
Denise looks upward too. “Do we really need to go on our knees?”
she asks.
“Do you want a miracle or not? But we better move fast. When they
come out and don’t see us, they’ll throw a fit.”
“Your grandmother will. My mother will know we’re just exploring.”
“Come on. Let’s go. Three hundred steps. Three hundred prayers.”
We are only on the bottom step and already it hurts like hell. We
are wearing skirts and knee socks, and our knees are exposed. Denise is wearing
a little pale green coat that is the same length as her skirt and the same
color as her knee socks. She has a bow that color in her hair as well. Her
shoes are black patent leather with T straps. Mrs. T always likes to make her
beautiful, like a little doll. It is her greatest pleasure. Every day when I
call for her for school, I must stand at the door in the kitchen and watch
while Mrs. T, seated sideways at the kitchen table, puts the finishing touches
on Denise’s banana curls, brushing each curl around her finger until it is
perfect and then pulling her finger out so very carefully, so the curl will
hold. Then Denise must gently, gently lift her hair while Mrs. T slides her
coat over her shoulders. Only then can we leave for school.
As for me, I am wearing my brother’s reversible jacket, which
doesn’t fit him anymore. One side is solid navy and the other is a navy and red
plaid. Today I have the plaid side facing out. A pink plastic headband curves
over the top of my straight black hair. (My mother says I must keep my hair
short so it will be easier to dry. In the winter she dries it with the exhaust
end of the vacuum cleaner, and it’s not fun for her—or me.) My knee socks are
black, and I am wearing my school shoes, white and brown saddles. “Say a Hail
Mary before you climb to the next one,” Denise warns.
“HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththee,” I whisper. I say the words
so quickly they sound like a mere rustling of wind in the trees. Denise is
praying the same way. We look at each other and smile through our muttering.
Without saying a word, we have just agreed that we will race, to see who can
get to the top first. I am glad for this, glad that we will move quickly. I am
worried about my grandmother being worried, and I have to fight to keep the
thought of her worrying—and her anger—from overtaking me.
We pray so fast that we are really walking up the stairs on our
knees, not stopping to pray on each one. We shudder and tremble with suppressed
laughter. By the time we are halfway up, our knees are scraped raw, and while
blood is not yet flowing, it is visible, beneath the outermost layer of purple
skin. As we get closer to the top, we pray faster yet; watching each other’s
mouths and eyes carefully as we mutter, still racing along despite the pain,
still trying not to punctuate every Amen with wild laughter.
Finally we reach the top, and after ascertaining that the adults
are not there looking for us, we begin a wild race from door to door in search
of the chapel. I am the one who finally finds it, the door that leads into a
long hallway full of candles, more candles than I have ever seen in my life. My
head is burning with fever; every tooth in my mouth is screaming in pain; my
eyes feel like they may pop out of my skull at any time. But I know as I enter
the chapel that I am in a holy place, that I have arrived in the presence of
the Lord—or at least in the presence of Saint Joseph—and in I float on a cloud
of enchantment.
I am about to experience a miracle. I keep thinking about how so
many of the saints were made to suffer right before their miracles happened. It’s
all part of the process; I understand that now.
To our amazement, you cannot even see the walls of the chapel
because they are totally covered with crutches, canes, and braces. I have never
seen anything like it. I have to think for a minute why they would keep
crutches on the walls, but then it hits me that these are the crutches of
people who came up on their knees like us, who said their prayers and received
their miracles. But how could a person on crutches get up all those stairs? I
think about it some more and conclude that someone else must have gone up on
their knees and said the prayers for them, and when they were cured, they
carried the crutches up themselves. Some of the crutches and braces are very
small. It takes my breath away to imagine all the children whose whole lives
changed as a result of someone coming up here on their knees to pray for them.
There is only one other person in the chapel, an old woman lighting a candle
near the statue of St. Joseph. It is as quiet as a crypt.
Denise and I approach the wooden kneeler together and squeeze our
eyes closed and pray. It only takes a few seconds. And once we are done, we do
not linger. We are out of the chapel, rushing around to the front of the
building to find the adults.
They are there in front of the main part of the church, turning in
circles, shielding their eyes from the sun to look for us. When Mrs. T sees her
daughter, her hand flies to her heart. My grandmother begins to mutter under
her breath. I can see in her eyes that she is really angry. I am sure she will
smack me, but when we get close, she only grabs my arm. “Where the hell were
you?” she yells as she shakes me. I look around to see if anyone has heard her
cursing in a holy place.
“We climbed the steps to the chapel,” Denise explains to her
mother excitedly.
“What are you talking about? I told you not to do that. What about
your clothes?”
“They’re fine. We said a prayer on each step, like the bus driver
said. It was our only chance for a miracle!”
Mrs. T’s expression softens as she looks into her little
daughter’s upturned face, her banana curls, mussed now, dangling halfway down
her back. Mrs. T can’t help herself; her pressed lips part and she begins to
laugh. My grandmother’s face stays pinched and angry. The year before she
looked just like that, when I shot a suction-cup-tipped plastic arrow at her
with my toy bow and arrow set. How shocked I was when the arrow landed on one
of the lenses of her eyeglasses. And still I laughed—even though I knew what I
had done was reprehensible—because it bobbed there for a moment while she
screamed at me, making a booo-ooo-o-iiii-n-ing sound like you would hear in a
cartoon. She didn’t speak to me for a whole week.
We get back on the bus and visit a few more churches, but they
offer nothing unique and we don’t explore. Besides, now my grandmother won’t
let me out of her sight. We stay at the beautiful hotel another night, but
Denise is tired and doesn’t want to play castle. I almost never let an
opportunity to play anything pass me by, but I don’t push her because I feel so
sick. And the next morning we are back on the bus, heading for home. My
grandmother is still angry. A couple of times I hear Mrs. T say, “Oh, they’re
only kids, Maggie. That’s what kids do.”
When we are about halfway back to New Jersey, Denise asks me what
I prayed for. “I can’t tell,” I say.
But Denise is persistent when she gets going, and she will not
leave a thing alone. She tries everything. She offers to tell me what she
prayed for. When that doesn’t work, she offers to tell me some secrets she
knows about Debby, a girl who recently moved into the house around the corner.
Debby is awesome. She is bigger even than me. She has a huge mop of frizzy red
hair and she is almost always dirty. Although she is only eleven, she already
has breasts. Debby will say anything to anyone. She is not afraid of her mother
or anyone else’s mother, and, being a public school student, she only yawns
when we talk about God.
When I don’t show any interest in Debby gossip, Denise threatens
to tell Francis Amato I’m in love with him. When I still don’t give in, she
says she won’t be my best friend anymore. I answer right away then, saying, “I
prayed that I’ll be beautiful when I grow up.” Denise sits back, satisfied. “Me
too,” she says.
I don’t believe her. Since I lied I figure she has too. Besides,
she is already beautiful. She is beyond beautiful. She is perfect.
I freeze all the way home. My teeth chatter. My grandmother
finally touches my head and exclaims, “Oh, my God, you’re burning with fever.”
Mrs. T warns Denise not to get too close to me. Grandma tells Mrs. T that
Virginia, her daughter, my mother, is going to kill her, that she didn’t want
me to come in the first place.
I don’t even listen to them after a while. In spite of the fact
that physically I am burning, dying, nearly delirious, spiritually I feel as
calm as the settling dusk. I have made the ultimate sacrifice. I have given
away my one chance for fame, beauty, an endless array of cut-out doll books and
hula hoops and other possessions—I have even given away my one chance for a
long life with Francis Amato—to pray for a miracle that is really meaningful. I
can practically see Jesus smiling down on me.
We return to the parking lot at the bus terminal and get into Mrs.
T’s car. In a short time, we are pulling into Mrs. T’s driveway. I turn my head
to look behind me, at my house.
For all that they have talked endlessly for three days, my
grandmother and Mrs. T still find more to say in the driveway. My grandmother
is thanking Mrs. T profusely for inviting us. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,”
Mrs. T says. “You’ll have to come by soon and see Virginia,” my grandmother
says, though Mrs. T almost never comes over to our house, and when Grandma and
I go to visit her, my mother never comes along. I yank on Grandma’s elbow. I
want to go home.
As we cross the street I fumble in my pocket for the souvenir I
bought my mother. It is both a plastic replica of one of the churches we
visited, and, if you turn it upside down, a pencil sharpener. Even I know it’s
a cheesy gift. But I also know that my mother is the kind of a person who
doesn’t mind cheesy gifts, who will say thank you no matter what you give her.
She will also tell me my drawings are good even when I switch them with
Denise’s.
The minute we walk in the kitchen door, I hear the TV blasting—not
a good sign. My mother is standing in the dining room, near the window. She has
been watching us, waiting for us to cross the street and come in. I rush to her
and let her give me her quick pat-hug. She doesn’t notice that I am on fire.
“We had a great time,” I cry. But then I think about how Mrs. T
likes my grandmother a hundred times more than her and I tone it down. “We had
an okay time,” I say. I give her the church/pencil sharpener. “This is for you.
It’s one of the churches we went to.”
Her face lights up as she ponders my gift. “Thank you,” she says,
turning it in her hand. “It’s beautiful.” She has a faraway look, as if it
reminds her of something wonderful that happened a long time ago.
“How’s David?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. She is still studying the plastic church.
I run into the living room to see for myself. My brother is
sitting on the floor, cross-legged, in front of the TV console. Dinosaurs are
fighting on the screen, and beyond them, a little man in a loincloth is running
from one boulder to another, trying to keep from getting hit with their
smacking tails. “David, I’m home,” I call out over the noise. He doesn’t look
at me. His mouth hangs open. His eyes are red. Even though he is only eleven,
there are dark bags under his eyes, as if on the inside he is a very old man.
I take a deep breath, then I walk to the console and turn off the
TV. “David, I need to talk to you,” I begin softly. But before I can say more
he is on his feet. He knocks me out of the way. He turns the power dial and for
a moment there is only TV snow-static and then the dinosaurs reappear on the
screen. He screams for our mother. He takes his snot rag out of his back pocket
and wipes it up and down his face, then sticks it back in his pocket again,
where it dangles half in and half out. When he sits, he is closer to the TV
than he was before. My mother comes running into the room, “Leave him alone,”
she yells. “Why do you have to tease him all the time? You know how he is.”
I look at her, aghast. “I wasn’t teasing,” I say, but there is too
much noise for her to hear me.
Nothing has changed.
My miracle has been denied me.
David, is still retarded.
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