Fig (4 page)

“Don't go anywhere,” Daddy says.

There's a television fixed to the corner of the ceiling. I sit on a love seat, watching the soap opera, only there is no volume. A woman sits before a mirror, talking to herself as she brushes her long red hair. Then it's a different room, and a different woman. This woman has long black hair and has fallen asleep on a couch. A tall man is watching her. I stare until the characters turn into fuzzy little dots, and when I close my eyes my brain is filled with the same black-and-white static.

*  *  *  *

Daddy kisses me on the forehead, and his breath smells like coffee. He paces back and forth from the waiting room to the hallway with the big double doors at the end.

The doors that swallowed Mama.

On the coffee table is a stack of magazines and a blue vase full of fake flowers. Mama hates fake flowers. “They're unnatural,” she says. “Because they don't die.”

Under the television in the waiting room is a painting of a snow-covered meadow with a small house and dark woods in the background. Looking at the white snow makes me feel cold. Daddy comes back and he, too, is shivering.

“Come on,” he says. “Follow me.”

I stand and I begin to walk. But I'm not the one making my body do what it is doing. I follow my father. I follow him all the way into the painting—into the snow-covered pasture behind our house. The snow is deep—deeper than any snow I have ever seen.
Walk behind me,
Daddy says.
Use my footprints as places to step.

I step into the holes he leaves behind, but sometimes I miss.

His legs are longer than mine, and I can't always make it from one footprint to the next. I step on the snow by mistake and it holds me. It is strong and I am small. But when I try to walk on the snow, it collapses and I'm swallowed by the cold white.

Inside the hole, Mama is Snow White, and the seven dwarves have come to get her. They carry her down the stairs, through the living room, and out to the driveway. They slide her glass coffin into the back of the ambulance. “Sir,” one of the dwarves says as he takes a pen from the breast pocket of his white jacket, getting ready to write, “do you think your wife had reason to attempt suicide?”

Daddy looks at me. He says no but nods yes. And then he hands over the little brown bottle from the night before, only there is no rattle.

This bottle is quiet.

hang:
v.
1. To fasten from above with no support from below; suspend 2. To attach at an appropriate angle 3. To hold or incline downward; droop 4. To attach oneself as a dependent; cling 5. To depend:
It all hangs on one vote.

June 23, 1982

Gran doesn't have a guest bedroom, so she unfolds the sofa and turns it into a bed, but she doesn't call it a sofa. She calls it a davenport. I stand there feeling stupid as she puts the sheets on the mattress and fluffs the pillows. I should offer to help, but I don't know what to offer. I've never slept anywhere other than home—except for once upon a time, when I was born—when I must have slept in the same hospital where Mama is now resting.

When Gran is finished, she straightens herself out, only she can't stand straight—not the way other people can. Daddy says this is why I need to drink more milk. I might get Gran's back, the kind that goes crooked with age, and the reason my grandmother is shrinking. But I don't look like Gran. She has the same black hair as Daddy and Uncle Billy, only now she has to have it dyed.

I think it's strange how you can inherit one thing from a relative and not the other.

Not only does Gran get her hair dyed, she gets a permanent every month. I don't understand why it's called a permanent since she has to get it redone all the time, but when I asked, Gran said what she always says: “Fig, you are too smart for your own good.” I don't say anything to Gran about her osteoporosis or my risk of getting it. I am learning what not to say when I'm around her. I am learning how not to talk at all.

“You'll have to sleep in your underwear,” Gran says. “Tomorrow, we'll go to the farm and pack a suitcase.”

I hadn't thought of that. I want to ask how long I'll have to stay with her in Lawrence, but I'm afraid the question will upset her. I'm too scared to even tell her I don't own a suitcase. So I keep practicing silence.

“Well,” she says, “undress.”

I fold my jeans and put them on the floor. I roll my socks into a ball the way Mama showed me, and I leave my T-shirt and panties on. I get into bed, and the sheets are scratchy next to my bare skin—they are not soft like the sheets at home. Gran doesn't say, “Don't let the bed bugs bite,” and she doesn't kiss me good night the way Mama and Daddy always do. And my grandmother does not build an invisible dome around the davenport to protect me from the night.

She turns off the lamp and sits in the little chair on the other side of the end table. And I can see her. The living room doesn't go black the way my room does back at the farm if there is no moon. This is a neighborhood in a city. There are porch lights and streetlights; they shine into the house even though the curtains have all been drawn.

“Fiona,” Gran says, “I spoke with your father. Your mother will be just fine.” My grandmother pauses. Then she says, “He told me to be sure to tell you that none of this is your fault. He says he'll come to see you just as soon as he can.” Gran's words come slow and sharp, as if she can see each one before she chooses what to say. But when she speaks again, her words come faster because these are words she knows by heart: “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. May He guard me through the night and wake me with the morning light.”

I wish she would leave, but when she does I wish she had stayed.

I listen to the cars driving by and watch the shadows they cast across the walls. The passing shadows are bigger than the actual cars, and the refrigerator hums, and there is a ticking that doesn't come from a clock, at least not any clock I know about. I don't know where it's coming from, and after that prayer I'm too scared to fall asleep. My parents don't believe in God, and because they don't, neither do I, and I wonder if not believing will make me die while I am dreaming.

And the ticking does not go away.
Hickory, dickory, dock  , the mouse ran up the clock . The clock struck one, the mouse ran down, hickory, dickory, dock .
Tick, tock.

I get out of bed and tiptoe across the living room, toward Gran's bedroom. I hold my breath and cross my fingers. She left her door cracked open, and when I push on it the thick carpet makes a shushing sound.
Shh!
it says as I climb into bed with my grandmother. The sheets are slippery and cold, and I am careful not to actually touch her body. I practice not really being here.

I have trespassed enough for one night.

Trapped by the covers, I do not move again. Her room is darker than the living room, but some light does creep in around the edges of her curtains. It reflects along the rectangular mirror above her dresser, where it grows and shimmers the way light does on water. The light moves across Gran's perfume bottles, and in the glass behind the bottles I see the reflections of the perfume bottles. I see the shadows of the bottles and the shadows reflected in the mirror as I focus on being still, on not moving. I hold my breath and cross my fingers. I focus on not being here at all.

In the morning, I wake to find Gran gone—her side of the bed already made. When I walk by the long mirror that's on the wall above Gran's dresser, I don't see myself in the glass.

I backtrack until I find a girl in the mirror. She turns when I turn. And when I stare at her, she stares back. Her eyes are round, a deep brown so dark, they are almost black.

She looks like me, but when I smile she frowns.

*  *  *  *

Gran is in the kitchen, already dressed, standing in front of the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil, and she is not alone.

A woman I've never seen before is sitting with her chair turned away from the table because she has a briefcase in her lap. The open case works to hide most of the woman as she bends forward, shuffling through papers. I can see the top of her head—brown hair, dull and business-like, and I can see her legs. She is wearing panty hose and beige pumps. There is a run in her stocking.

Mama always says, “Never trust a woman who wears nylons.” Mama doesn't approve of a lot things the women in Kansas do or wear. She doesn't approve of high heels, perfume, or makeup. “They test cosmetics on poor little creatures like bunny rabbits and monkeys,” she has explained. And Mama doesn't approve of shaving your legs, or even your armpits—she prefers to go “all natural,” as she likes to say.

The woman with the pantyhose pulls out a manila folder, which she sets on the table before closing the briefcase with a click. As she bends over to put the case on the floor, her glasses slip off her nose, but a special string keeps them from falling to the floor. The glasses swing in the air for a second before she grabs hold of them with long fingers and repositions them on her face. The glasses perch at the very end of her nose, and there is something birdlike about this.

Gran sets two coffee cups on the table, and even though I know she saw me she is waiting to acknowledge me. First, she spoons instant coffee crystals into both cups, and I think about Daddy, who hates instant coffee. He even calls it “absolute blasphemy,” and yet he keeps a container at the farm for Gran. That and a tall bottle of Beefeater gin.

Gran pours the hot water into the cups, and I watch the steam rising into the air. I can't feel the thick June humidity inside the house like I can at the farm. The air-conditioning cuts it. The bird-woman begins to stir her coffee as Gran turns and looks at me. Still holding the kettle, Gran says, “Good. You're up.”

And now the other woman is looking at me too. I stand in the living room, awkward. I haven't gotten the chance to get dressed, and I feel naked in my T-shirt and underwear. My skin goose bumps as I look at the floor. And I can feel the bird-woman looking at me. Up and down—her eyes miss nothing. I tug at the bottom of my shirt, trying to make it longer.

“Hello, Fiona,” the woman says, taking a sip of her coffee. “I'm Alicia Bernstein. I'm from Social Services. I'm here to talk to you.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Gran go rigid. Her hands become tight fists, one still wrapped around the kettle handle. Then she returns the kettle to the stove, and without turning to look at us again Gran says, “I'll be outside if you need me.”

Grabbing the newspaper, my grandmother quickly exits to keep the cold air from escaping. At home, we leave all the doors and windows wide open to encourage the breezes to sweep through the old house, but here all the windows and doors are shut so tight, I can't breathe.

The davenport has been folded back into a sofa, and I find my clothes waiting for me on the center cushion. Alicia Bernstein from Social Services watches. She watches me pull my jeans on, and then she watches me come into the kitchen. Even though I'm dressed now, I still feel naked.

I look out the window before I sit down. Gran is sitting in a lawn chair working a crossword puzzle, and I can feel Alicia Bernstein's eyes watching me. A squirrel drops out of the oak tree and darts across the small square of lawn, but my grandmother doesn't look up. As she ponders a clue she fiddles with her mechanical pencil. She waves it back and forth the way she wags her finger at me when I've done something wrong. And now she is bending over to fill in another blank space.

*  *  *  *

Alicia Bernstein from Social Services asks the same questions the police kept asking the other night. She, too, wants to know what happened in the orchard.

I hold my breath and cross my fingers before I tell her I think I saw coyotes. This time I perform the ritual to make her believe me. I pronounce “coyote” the way Mama does, and Alicia Bernstein looks surprised. Then she scribbles something on a pad of yellow paper with green lines.

“I met your father last night,” she says, finally looking up again. “We talked for a long time. He told me all about how smart you are.” And this is when she pauses. She sits there with her mouth slightly open, looking at me like I'm supposed to agree with her about me being smart. But I don't say anything. I stare at my hands. My fingernails are dirty and need to be trimmed.

Alicia Bernstein makes a clicking noise with her tongue and I know she is still watching me, even though I refuse to look at her. She puts the manila folder and pad of paper back into her briefcase and focuses on drinking her coffee. She acts like this is the only reason she is here. She takes her time and she never stops watching me. She slurps every time she takes a sip and the slurping makes me thirsty. The cup she is using is from Gran's china set—the set that inspired the entire kitchen decor.

Every piece of china is so white, it is almost see-through. And so thin I can't help but break Gran's dishes all the time. The china is decorated with a simple splash of silver and aqua stars that remind me of the cartoon
The Jetsons
. The stars match the speckled Formica table and countertops. Uncle Billy tiled the wall above the stove to match the pattern on the china, and the tiles create their own repeating pattern: three white squares, two aqua, followed by one silver—again and again.

“Well,” Alicia Bernstein finally says, “because you are so smart, we'd really like to study your brain to see exactly how it works.”

I use one fingernail to scrape dirt from another, and I wonder who she means when she says “we.” I also think about Gran. Maybe she's right. Maybe being smart is a bad thing.

The bird-woman leans forward and says, “We asked your dad, and he gave us his blessing.” Alicia Bernstein continues to talk. “You will come in every day for a week,” she says, and now she is standing. “See,” she says, and I can't help but look.