A Different Kind of Normal (3 page)

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Authors: Cathy Lamb

BOOK: A Different Kind of Normal
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“Remember when I’m screaming, I’m surrounded by lights and cameras and handsome men, darling.”
My mother, Rowan Bruxelle, is the star on
Foster’s Village
. Her conniving, husband-stealing, scheming character’s name is Elsie Blackton. She and I have the same auburn hair, only mine is longer and wavy and hangs halfway down my back while hers is bobbed. I have a string of tiny crystals tied into my hair on the left side that Tate gave me for Christmas because, “They’re pretty, like you, Boss Mom.” She has ski-slope cheekbones, green eyes, and I have one eye that is blue, one that is green.
Tonight she was wearing a purple silky wraparound top, black velvet leggings, and four-inch red heels. I prefer jeans, some tough, stylin’ boots, hippy-ish sorts of blouses, an assortment of bangle bracelets, and dangly earrings.
I’m Earth Momma with an explosive temper meets cowgirl.
She’s firecracker meets perfume.
“Give me their names, Tate.”
“No, Boss Mom. I’ll get teased more if you get involved.”
“No, they’ll be stomped into silence. What are their names?”
“You gotta relax and flow with this more.”
“I don’t relax and I do not flow.”
My mother linked an arm around my shoulder again and poked me. “Your mother, Tate, for once, is going to try to not be quite so uptight and controlling, and so very serious but not so very fun. She has a turbulent nature that causes all sorts of storms for the people around her. It’s the Bruxelle in all of us, from our royal witch line, Tate, you know that.”
“Turbulent,” Tate said. “That’s a word for it. The other word might be interfering.” He raised his eyebrows when I wanted to interrupt. “And, Mom, I won the fight. There were three of them. The other guys’ lips were split open and two are going to have black eyes the size of Oklahoma tomorrow. I won.”
My mother clapped, her bangle bracelets clinking. “This pleases me immensely, Tate!”
He grinned and gave my mother and me a hug, and the anger, momentarily, swooshed out of me.
“Now, laaaddddiieess, I have a new project and I’m going to work on it in the experiment room. But here’s a hint: It’s not an experiment.”
“What is it, rebel child, oh my rebel child, what wild ride will you take us on tonight?” my mother sang, her voice low and husky.
“Can’t tell you. I will say that it has nothing to do with this reaction:
NaHCO
3
+ KHC
4
H
4
O
6
→ KNaC
4
H
4
O
6
+ H
2
O + CO
2
.”
“What about computer stuff that I can’t possibly understand because it’s too dreary?” She examined her manicured nails.
Tate spun the basketball on his pointed finger. “It doesn’t have anything to do with computer stuff like super-computers that will soon solve problems to three times ten to the fifteenth power. That’s in one second. And it doesn’t have anything to do with quantum electrodynamics or my interest that never goes away: brains and more brains.”
“You are so smart it makes me nauseous,” my mother said. “Shouldn’t you be sneaking out to peek in girls’ windows or writing cheesy love songs with your guitar?”
“Ha. No, I don’t peek, Nana Bird. And when I sing I sound like a raccoon being swung by its tail. Hey, Boss Mom, the guys are all getting together to practice basketball and I—”
I tensed. “No.”
“I want to practice with them, for fun, no contact, I promise—”
“No.” We’d been through this before. Tate could not play contact sports because he had a shunt in his head and the shunt needed to stay in place for him to live.
“I’ll be careful.”
“No, Tate, don’t start with me.”
“Please—”
“Forget it.”
“Mom! Come ooonnn!”
“No.”
I heard him sigh in frustration, then he turned and pounded up the stairs, his big feet thudding.
Tate was obsessed with basketball, watching it on TV and shooting by himself for hours every day,
for years,
on our court with two full imaginary teams in his head.
“He’s the best damn person on the planet, Jaden,” my mother said. “He has a golden heart and a sensitive soul. He’s a gift.”
“Yep, he is.” I turned and fiddled with my spice sets. I have sixty spices. A small obsession that has genetic roots. “He’s asking about Brooke lately.”
The atmosphere changed and became prickly and tight.
“And?”
“And I’m heading him off, somewhat.”
“He’ll want to know all there is to know. He’ll want to meet her. That child has too many brains stuck in his head, and they’re always working overtime. He has brain machines.”
“I know.”
We were quiet, the silence between us edgy with anxiety.
She took another sip of wine. “You should let the gift play basketball.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Think about it.”
“No.”
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
My name is Tate Bruxelle.
 
I am seventeen years old and I have a big head.
 
I was born this way.
 
What’s it like living with a big head, with one eye higher than the other, with a face that looks normal on one half, but odd on the other?
 
Not damn easy. I have been made fun of my entire life. In preschool, the other kids wouldn’t play with me, except for two twins named Anthony and Milton, Milt for short. Their mother is from Jamaica, she’s a doctor, their dad’s an attorney, they live across the street from me, and we have always been friends.
 
Some of the kids in my class cried when they saw my face, I remember that. I was three. One kid said I was ugly, another kid said I was scary, like a sea monster. A girl with braids told me I had a face like a person on one side, and a face like pigskin on the other. I remember going to sit in a corner and crying almost every day.
 
Now you know why I call this blog, “Tate’s Awesome Pigskin Blog.”
 
Some kids are jealous of others because they have cool hair, or cool clothes, or cool parents. When I was in preschool I was envious of people’s heads.
 
One time I went home and told my mom, “I want a small head. Can you get me one?”
 
She told me that God had given me a big head because I had big brains.
 
That sounded good to me for a while, but when I couldn’t dress up as a cowboy because none of the cowboy hats were big enough, and I couldn’t fit a baseball batter’s helmet over my head, the brain part didn’t matter anymore.
 
I remember listening to one mother in first grade, with this white-blond hair and a ton of makeup. She looked at me with hate, that’s what I’d call it: hate. Even as a kid I could see it. I’ve seen hate a lot on people’s faces, and disgust. Anyhow, she said to my teacher, while pointing at me, “Oh my God. He isn’t contagious, is he?”
 
I grew up with people asking my mom, when I was standing right next to her, “What’s wrong with his head? What’s wrong with him? Why does he look like that? Can you cut that big part of his head off?”
 
That has to be the stupidest question: Can you cut that part of his head off? Sure, ma’am, I’ll do it right now, I have a chainsaw in my backpack, stand back or you’ll get hit with brain guts!
 
I’ve also been tripped and stuffed in trash cans. Here’s what being stuffed in a trash can says: “You’re nothing. You’re trash.” Plus, it’s humiliating when you’re trying to get out and you can’t because your legs are almost behind your head.
 
I would say I’m used to it, but it still bugs me when people are jerks. It’s not as if I go home and cry like a baby, man, that’d be weird, but when you just want to go down to the store and buy a Coke, it’s not as if it’s pleasant to be screamed at and called a retard or boggle head or for someone to throw a beer bottle at you (happened three times) or a hot dog (twice), or water bottles (can’t count, too many).
 
I’ve spent a lot of time by myself because kids are sometimes embarrassed to be seen with me, or they feel weird around me, or don’t know what to say because I have a big head so they think I can’t have a personality or feelings. I get it. I don’t like it but I get it.
 
But I have a lot of cool stuff going on, too. I like experiments and mixing chemicals and I have only had a few minor explosions and fires in my experiment room. Go, Albert Einstein, my main man!!
 
I actually like math and I have studied Fermat’s Last Theorem, quantum physics, and advanced statistics, which about explodes my synapses, but what I’m most interested in is studying the brain, like the choroid plexus, sagittal sinus, arachnoid space, the ventricles, memory, the effects of drugs on the brain, and neurosurgery.
 
Here’s a photo of a solar flare from sunspot 486. Unbelievably cool.
 
Here’s a photo of a brain.
 
And here’s a photo of three jumbo hot dogs I ate in one sitting with smiles made from Dijon mustard.
 
My name is Tate Bruxelle.
 
I have a big head. I call him General Noggin. I’m not putting a photo in yet, but trust me on the big head part.
 
This is my first blog entry.
 
I might write another one.
“Look at this, Mom,” Tate said to me the next night after a steak and blue cheese dinner, which he has named “Heaven and Blue Cheese.” “I have my own blog and it’s on the Internet. What do you think? Cool, right?”
Tate’s blog had this modern beige-and-brown-checked background with four pictures at the top: a pig, a basketball, some complicated math equation, and a brain. I knew why he called it the pigskin blog and tried not to choke on my hurt. “You set this up?”
“Yep. It’s easy. Free blog. I’ve got a voice and it’s out out out out in outer space, Internet style.”
“I love it. I love how you talk about General Noggin.” I ruffled his curls. “Are you going to write on your blog every day?”
“Every week. Or every day. Or twice a day. Or when there is a full moon, inexplicable weather patterns, two yolks in one egg, a new scientific discovery regarding the brain, a special report on eastern Indonesia, which I want to visit one day, or when politicians take up dueling.” He shook his head. “That will never happen. They’re all wimpy and they might mess their hairdos. I’ll write when I’m not playing basketball, the sport I love most in the world and want to play so bad I would give up an arm to do it. . . .”
“Many variables then, to your blog writing.” I ignored the part about basketball.
“Sure is, Boss Mom. I have to write when the mood hits. Between school, getting beat up, playing basketball
by myself,
my experiments, and more basketball
by myself,
it sure would be fun to play with other kids, I’ll write Tate’s Awesome Pigskin Blog.”
“Send it to The Brux Fam.” That’s an abbreviation for my mother and Caden and his gang.
“Yeah. And I’ll send it to Milt and Anthony, too. They’re rad.”
“You’re a busy guy. Don’t do any experiments that explode again.”
He laughed. “I’ll try not.”
He’d had fires and explosions in his experiment room several times. The last one cracked a window.
“I’m not putting a picture of General Noggin on there yet. I want people to get to know me without it.”
When Tate was three years old, one of his favorite TV shows had a general on it. The word
noggin
came from my brother, Caden, who said to Tate one day, “You’ve got a fine-lookin’ noggin, my boy.”
Hence, General Noggin.
“You know, Tate, this is a really smart idea, but don’t give out our address, phone number . . .”
“I know, Mom.” He wriggled his hands in the air and grinned. “I fear the same thing. When I post a photo of myself online, girls are going to go crazy! I’m going to have women pounding at the door, coming after me, ripping off my clothes, trying to get me to leave the country with them, so they can do with me what their passions tell them to do. It’s a risk to all of us, but”—he pounded his chest, which was quite wide and muscled—“I’m ready to take on the dangerous risk of mobs of women trying to take my virginity captive in order to get my voice out into the world.”

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