The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (6 page)

The house is a two-story (three if you count the unfinished basement; four if you count the attic, carpeted with insulation). It was built in the 1920s. The white paint has aged to oatmeal gray. A narrow cement path connects the sidewalk to the front stoop. Climbing the four stairs, which are cratered like a teenage boy’s face, one will meet a white, universal hinge, crossbuck metal storm door. Open it and you’ll be standing inside a screen-enclosed porch. This 6' × 12' area is littered with junk—a metal gas can; a dozen empty ceramic planters; a hoe and a rake; a bucket filled with screws, nails, washers, and bolts; a ten-pound bag of salt; oil-spotted washrags piled in a corner; empty Faygo bottles; and so on. The porch screens are a dense weave and let in little air or light; a few of the bottom corners of the screens have been torn open by squirrels who want warmth, muffin crumbs, or a sniff of the oily rags.

The door shrieks when you walk into the house. There is no mat to wipe your feet on. You stand in a narrow foyer on hardwood the color of baked bread. In front of you is a staircase with a polished, peat brown banister. To your left is a coat rack mounted on the wall. Turn to your right and view the living room, which is not large and feels even smaller because of the cramped arrangement of furniture. There is a loveseat and a dumpy sofa. A glass coffee table covered with
Popular Mechanics
magazines. A mustard recliner in the shadow of a skinny floor lamp. A low bookshelf holds books and a 12
¹¹
television. To your left is the dining room, where a rectangular table is surrounded by six wooden chairs. Beyond the table are the swinging saloon-style doors to the kitchen.

Push through these doors, go to the kitchen sink, and peer out the window. You’ll see that the backyard is a 15' × 15' square, bounded on three sides—on your right by a one-car garage, badly flaking; in the middle by a six-foot wooden fence (a section of which leans precariously inward); and on the left by a row of bushes sheared roughly level with the fence.

Many are already familiar with this yard, this house (the exterior, anyway). These people hail from all quarters of the United States and the world—Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Phoenix. Athens, Georgia and Athens, Greece. Pamplona, Spain and Knob Lick, Kentucky.

In first gear, their rented Plymouth Grand Voyagers ease down the hill of Moriarty Street, two-thousand pounds of steel rivaling the top speed of a riding mower. The wife squints out the passenger window, searching for house numbers. She points, excited. Her husband parallel parks two feet from the curb and stomps the emergency brake to the floor. On such an incline, he won’t take any chances. Hesitantly, they deboard the vehicle, scoping out the surroundings, surprised at the neighborhood, surprised that
This
,
really?
is the landmark they’ve read about. They clutch their pocketbooks and cameras in two-fisted grips, “boip-oip!” the locks, and then double-check, just to be safe, by tugging on the handles.

When they spot Oscar Foster raking his tiny yard a few houses up the street, they relax a bit. Oscar is in his seventies, widowed—a nonthreatening man. Although he’s not exactly high society in his flip-flops, black socks, and ratty bathrobe, Oscar is Caucasian. His roundness, moreover, isn’t vulgar (more of a Santa-esque shape, not unlike their own). His presence assures them that although the neighborhood is not glamorous, they will probably not be jumped by dark-skinned hooligans before they snap a couple of digital photos of the infamous Mapes home.

Perhaps when they are showing these pictures at a cocktail party, an observant friend will lean in, squint, and say, “Is that a person? In the upstairs window?”

On closer inspection, it does look like a face. Or maybe it’s only a reflection, a trick of the light. Yes, it has to be. “After all,” they say, “we rang the doorbell five times.”

Long before this day, however—three presidents ago—when peering out the kitchen window at the backyard bounded by garage, fence, and bush line, you would often see Audrey Mapes, a pretty three-year-old in a yellow cotton dress, squatting near the garage, holding a plastic shovel.

She digs at the soft earth where the grass is thin. She works languidly, now and then sifting through piles of soil with her fingers, now and then taking a handful to her lips. She chews without expression. On her right, a robin has lighted atop the wooden fence. The robin studies her. Audrey imagines that the bird, with its expression, is asking, “Why eat dirt? Not even I eat dirt. Try a worm, Audrey.”

Audrey doesn’t want a worm. In fact, when she feels movement on her palm and looks down to see a wriggling, soil-caked earthworm, she startles.

She throws the handful of dirt against the side of the garage, where it rattles loose a few chips of white paint. Candy.

Some people—the geezers especially—have called it a destruction of Biblical proportions, like Sodom and Gomorrah or the Big Flood. That’s retrospect talking, hindsight making things 20/20 when actually a little blurred vision is exactly what we all need.

The first point of contention: Kalamazoo was no den of sin, not even in the late 1990s. So the idea that the citizens were being admonished with destruction is ridiculous. Second point: God had already cleaned house in 1980 with a tornado that danced down Main Street and decimated the city to the tune of twenty million dollars. How much sin can redevelop in less than two decades? Rebuild first, sodomize and whore later—that’s the general rule.

In short, don’t buy the Biblical punishment theory. Unless, of course, God has evolved since the days when the Bible was written, and He now cares less about sex and gambling than irresponsible pollutants and a dearth of culture, entertainment, and employment options. Which is certainly possible.

However, I prefer to think of Audrey’s feat as the slowest disaster ever recorded, the rare case of a natural force exhibiting a measure of personability. She was a tornado that lollygagged, that took extended cigarette breaks, that played Parcheesi with the folks whose lives were being erased. She was the atomic bomb, except this time the Hiroshimites gathered around the fireball as it swelled, set out lawn chairs, donned radiation-proof goggles,sipped hot sake, and commented upon the Armageddon between stifled yawns. She was the gentlest earthquake, the softest tsunami. The loveable time-lapse hurricane.

The main difference is that ultimately, Kalamazoo asked for this disaster. In writing.

Toby’s transformation was a wonder to behold.

Both twins grew, of course. Their bones stretched. Hair sprouted. Feet strained against shoes. Pencil marks on the wall beside the bedroom door crept upward like the rungs of a ladder.

By age eleven, Toby needed a longer bed. Between fourth and seventh grade, his height increased by nearly a foot. McKenna grew a “measly” five inches. Toby’s weight doubled, to 170 pounds. He was quick to point out that it wasn’t fat. It was muscle. McKenna weighed eighty-nine pounds, just six pounds heavier than she’d been at age ten.

Toby was clearly Grandma Pencil’s favorite. While she defended and babied McKenna—doted on her, pitied her, coddled her like a puppy—she worshipped Toby. Here was a fine, robust young lad who could finish three cobs of corn, two helpings of mashed potatoes, and a pile of roast beef, and still have room for apple cobbler. Grandma’s memories of Toby as a finicky child, being bribed to eat his hot dogs, had long been forgotten. At age five, around the time physical measurements became an obsession, Toby had begun to love food. Or, if he didn’t actually love food—the taste of it, the sensuality of the morsels upon his tongue, the delicate popping of corncob kernels between his canines (and McKenna was certain that he didn’t; he didn’t love these things at all)—he definitely loved what food gave him. It made his body grow.

“I’m too skinny,” he said one evening. “A bean pole.”

Briefed in cotton tighty-whities, he flexed, shirtless, in front of the bathroom mirror. McKenna brushed her teeth at the sink. Thin but noticeable striations bulged like buried cables along Toby’s rib-cage, back, and neck. He was two years away from being a teenager, but he had the body of an adult.

“Feel my thigh,” he said. He turned from the mirror and propped his left foot on the lidded toilet.

McKenna spat noisily (although if Toby had been listening carefully, he would’ve noticed that nothing came out of McKenna’s mouth) in part to make Toby think she was expelling her toothpaste, but also to show her displeasure. Every other night it was “Grab this,” “Mea sure that,” “Check out how hard this is.” McKenna was reaching some sort of resolution on the matter of her brother’s demands, although it wasn’t formulated yet in her mind. The overarching sentiment, though, was this: Toby frightened her.

Talking around the toothpaste, McKenna answered, “I’m sure it’s fine.” McKenna turned on the water, the hiss. She watched the foamy spittle that Toby had left in the sink being lifted and carried, swirling, down the drain.

What did the toothpaste feel, McKenna wondered, when it was so violently disturbed? What did it feel like to be devoured by the drain? Did it thrill in that moment of surprise? Or did it shudder at the horror of the unknown, the awaiting darkness?

She swallowed her toothpaste. Then she burped it back up, burning her throat.

“See if you can get your fingers around it,” Toby said. He squeezed his thigh. “I can, and that sucks. But you got normal little hands. Mine are huge. Come on.”

“No, thanks,” McKenna said.

“
No, thanks
!” Toby peeped like a songbird. “God, you’re so gay.”

“Takes one to know one.” McKenna pressed the newly regurgitated Aim under her tongue. She could smell the bile on her breath. The taste, though, was pure mint.

Toby stepped off the toilet. From behind, he wrapped his forearm around McKenna’s neck. He forced her to the floor.

“What does that even
mean
?” Toby growled. He lay on top of her, squeezing the air out of her. “Why are you such an ass?”

McKenna’s cheek was flattened against the cold tiles.

“There’s-a-cook-,” she rasped. She could see, in the slight gap between the wooden cupboard and the floor, half of a Chips Ahoy. Why was it there? From when? She suspected Audrey. McKenna knew—it was their secret—that Audrey often stashed uneaten food around the house.

Toby released McKenna’s neck. He lowered his head until his face was inches from hers, his breath heating her eyes. “You’re talking about a goddamn cookie?”

“Half,” McKenna said. “Under there.”

Toby drew the cookie out, rolled off McKenna’s back, and stood. He wiped the Chips Ahoy on his underwear before popping the whole thing into his mouth. He reached down and helped McKenna to her feet.

“Ah wu jush ki’in,” he said.

The wedge garbled his words, but McKenna knew what he was saying; she’d heard it before. She nodded, rubbed her throat.

Toby swallowed. “Friends, Kenny?” He was waiting for eye contact. “You know I just mess with you because I can.”

McKenna lifted her gaze. Looking Toby in the eyes always felt like a worse defeat than the physical domination itself. He attempted a tender expression, which manifested as strain, as something like constipation.

“It’s fine,” McKenna said. “What ever.”

Toby punched her shoulder. “See? We’re friends. My sista.”

McKenna studied the boy in front of her. What had once been a reflection of her own face and body was now a fun house mirror. Unwashed, scraggly hair that hung over his ears. Fists like massive walnuts at his sides. A bloated face. A body twice as heavy as her own. His chest thrust out like a baboon’s, showing the beginnings of hair.

The coming years would see this monster distort, bulge, and ripple in ways McKenna couldn’t have even imagined at that moment in the bathroom, at age eleven, standing under a yellow bulb in the increasingly grimy Mapes home on that early August day weeks before starting the sixth grade, weeks before Audrey began first grade at the public school, months before Misty’s first real break from reality, and years before McKenna learned the name of the disease that had made her swallow and regurgitate the toothpaste before, during, and after her brother had choked her on the floor.

“Seriously, though,” Toby said, as they left the bathroom. “Feel my thigh.”

Grandma Pencil had hands like a farmer’s. That’s what Murray said, and his tone made it clear that he wasn’t fond of farmers or their hands. But to McKenna, as a child, Grandma’s hands were beautiful.

The backs of them were soft, speckled with brown circles that McKenna called “polka dots.” Her fingers were thick like the roots of a plant yanked from the soil. Her palms and fingerpads were so calloused that they clicked on the table, a sound that drove Murray crazy.

There was no explanation for why the backs of Grandma’s hands were like fresh cookies and the fronts were like stale ones. She certainly hadn’t done any hard labor—not in a long time, if ever. Her husband, while he was alive, “discouraged” her from having a job (Misty’s word). Grandma’s life after the march had been a long series of formal education, childrearing, mental breakdowns, and meddling.

McKenna didn’t know any of these things at the time. She liked Grandma’s hands because they were warm like Misty’s. The hands communicated to her. Her own mother and father barely touched her. Grandma Pencil routinely placed a palm on McK-enna’s head, stroked McKenna’s cheek, and held McKenna’s hands when they danced.

Grandma Pencil was a vibrant woman, if slightly off-balance. She was tall—same height as Murray—and lean. Her face looked like a monkey’s, with a wide mouth and big, expressive eyes. She wasn’t pretty, not like her youngest granddaughter. Wrinkles had carved a frown into her cheeks. Her ungainly arms never could find a comfortable resting position, so they were constantly crossing and uncrossing over her chest. Her thumbs fidgeted with her back pockets. Her fingers tugged at her dry, copper-colored hair.

She was nothing like the grandmothers of McKenna and Toby’s schoolmates. Theirs were withered Q-tips—bespectacled, white-haired, storybook grannies with walkers and palsied hands. They teetered into the classroom and stared at the cupboards wearing queer, faraway smiles.

Saint Monica’s hosted a “Bring Your Grandparents to School Day” when McKenna and Toby were in fourth grade. The nuns, a feisty bunch themselves, took to Grandma Pencil immediately. She behaved more like a thirty-year-old man than a senior citizen: she sat with her legs apart, elbows propped on her thighs; she chewed gum with intensity; she wore Wranglers. Like the other grandparents, Grandma Pencil wore faraway looks, but rather than making you depressed, hers made you want to crack them open and climb inside. That gaze—her eyes (blue and crystalline like Audrey’s) twinkled in such a way that you knew she was thinking of something profound, or else recalling some moment so black and mysterious that you wanted to see everything she was seeing, even if it might kill you.

She was also a liar. Her eyes and mouth, without a doubt, lied. She never awarded a single silver train for finishing two hot dogs. She’d never been on a death march. Death marches were for POWs, not for the children and wives of private citizens. Probably her mind and soul lied, too. To herself.

She’d lived in a jungle, all right, which is where she absorbed all the compelling chimpanzee and bat details that she would later use to give nightmares to her gullible grandchildren. The truth was she was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1935. When she was four years old, her father took a job as a maintenance superintendent for a mining operation in the Philippines. The family relocated and lived happily for two years. Then the Japanese invaded. She and her mother and sisters were placed in a civilian internment camp in Los Baños. Her father was captured as a POW and sent to do forced labor. His family never received communications from him, never knew if he would die on any given day. So okay, her life was no picnic.

I’ve probably given you the impression that Grandma Pencil was some kind of ogre. If not, I’ve failed.

However, the truth is she wasn’t an ogre—not as a child, anyway, and not while McKenna and Toby were in elementary school. Sure, she lied about the death march, but who doesn’t lie now and then?

Visualize a face staring straight ahead, wearing a blank look. Expressionless.

Now position a light directly below the chin, shining upward: that face will appear ghastly, frightening.

Now reposition the light so it shines down from the top of the forehead: the person looks sad.

Same face—the only change is how the face is shown.

That’s what Grandma did. She moved the light when she thought it might do some good.

She truly cared about the twins. Her heart was very nearly in the right place; it just happened to be in her stomach.

And this makes sense. The internment camp instilled in Grandma Pencil a deep, debilitating terror of hunger, which lead to a profound understanding of the way our souls and sanities are bound to our appetites. For Grandma Pencil, love, trust, and security were all attached to food. Food represented the potential to fill, in some way, the gaping emptiness of the self.

She was stern and grumpy with Murray, but that attitude wasn’t her fault, no more than a cornered raccoon can be faulted for swiping at your eyes. With the twins and with baby Audrey, Grandma was a load of fun. She picked up the considerable slack left by Misty’s malaise and Murray’s self-centered belief that he could hammer, solder, sand, and jerry-rig a happy life.

Grandma laughed with a whistly “Hoo hoo hoo hoo.” The “hoos” were so clearly enunciated that they sounded phony. Her laugh annoyed Misty and Murray. McKenna and Toby loved it. The twins did everything they could to hear that laugh. Toby did pratfalls off the couch. McKenna did impressions (the mailman yelling at Snoodles to “Keep away, Mister Pesky!”; Bob Hope saying, “
This
is what I get for fifty dollars?”). McKenna sang the “A-B-C Song” using all “oo” sounds: “Oo boo soo doo oo oof joo, ooch oo joo koo ool oom oon oo poo, coo oor oos, too oo voo, doo-booyoo oox, woo oond zoo. Noo oo noo moo oo boo soos. Nooxt toom woont yoo soong wooth moo?” The twins danced with Snoodles, lifting him by the front paws and jiggling him until great ropes of drool swung from his mouth. They tickled Audrey. They tackled Audrey. They tackled each other. Grandma laughed. Grandma played records. She showed the twins the cha-cha and the fox trot. She helped them build a fort out of couch cushions. When the air was unbreathable from the stench of burning paper or formaldehyde, Grandma took the kids into the backyard, where McKenna and Toby kicked the basketball, and Audrey crawled in diapers across the grass.

That’s where Grandma first saw Audrey eat something that wasn’t a food item. Audrey was eighteen months old.

“No, no, no,” Grandma said, sticking her finger into Audrey’s mouth to dislodge as much soil as she could. “I ate dirt, and no granddaughter of mine will do that again. Not while I breathe.”

“She
likes
it,” Toby said. He ran up to see the action. “She’s crazy. I’ve seen her eat dirt before. Is she crazy?”

“Never call a girl crazy,” Grandma told him. Her tone was sharp.

Later that night, the twins lay in their beds.

“
Don’t ever call a girl crazy
,” Toby said for the tenth time, his voice mocking. “
Never, never, never
. Stupid Grandma.”

“She’s not stupid. She’s just old.”

“Dad thinks she’s stupid.”

“But Audrey isn’t
crazy
. She’s a baby. All babies are crazy.”

This is how it went.

Grandma told Murray and Misty about the dirt-eating. Misty took Audrey to the pediatrician. McKenna and Toby tagged along.

“It’s not uncommon,” Doctor Burger said.

He had checked Audrey—had seen that she was able to make eye contact and that her pupils dilated properly; had poked the otoscope into her ears; had pressed his fingers into her belly and found her organs to be well-situated and unswollen; had found that she could clap and could hold two objects at once; had checked her stumps for proper circulation (this was before the Dr Pepper cans). When the exam was finished, Doctor Burger pronounced his double-negative judgment: “It’s not uncommon.”

He probably would have left it at that and scuttled his bulky, white-coated body out the door—obliqueness and terseness were his trademarks—if Misty hadn’t still looked so worried. Or was it sad? Spaced-out from the pills? Take your pick.

Her expression touched Doctor Burger; it made him uncomfortable. Standing in the center of the examination room, he lifted his glasses, massaged the bridge of his nose, and squinted. Then he took off his glasses, folded them, and pinched them between his fingers at his side. As if hearing a voice no one else could hear, he nodded. Then he sat on his stool and cleared his throat. He put the glasses back onto his face. He sucked in a profound breath in preparation for giving Misty more information.

Doctor Burger hated giving more information. Or else he liked to give the impression that he hated giving more information.

We should assume the best about Doctor Burger. We should assume he was only being codgerly, that deep down he loved every one of his patients. We should assume nice things about dead people. Reserve your scorn for the living, if you please.

“There’s nothing harmful about eating dirt,” he said, “despite what common sense might tell you.” His neck wattle thrummed above his tight collar. McKenna imagined popping it with a safety pin, air whistling through the hole like a leaking balloon. “Like I said, many babies go through this phase. Dirt, sand, soap, paint chips, and so on. Keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t choke, don’t let her eat any cleaning products.” He handed Misty a roll of puke-green stickers of round faces drawn to resemble the famous
Have a Nice Day
Happy Face. Except these faces weren’t happy. They grimaced, Xs for eyes, and stuck out their tongues. “Slap one of these on every poisonous item in the house.”

Doctor Burger made his way to the door. He opened it, broadcasting a pleasant, official smile to Misty. He gave Audrey one last sidelong glance. The door closed.