Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood Read online

  Today, I'm back at Township, getting seen for my headaches. Mom and I sit in the examining room, waiting for the doctor.

  “How do you act when you're sick, Julie? Show me.” I slouch on the edge of the table, limbs dangling. I hang my tongue out and my bottom lip falls away from my teeth like a National Geographic pygmy with a lip plate in.

  “That's right. Now what do you think the doctor is going to say if he comes in here and you're sitting up and all smiling? Do you think he's going to believe me that you're sick? You got to show him how sick you are outside the doctor's office. We got to get to the bottom of this thing so Mommy can get some rest.” She licks her thumb and smudges dried egg from the side of my mouth. Her spit smells like rot.

  “Okay, honey?”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  “SO, YOU SAY Julie's been running a fever, Ms. Gregory, along with some sore throats?” Dr. Phillips leans easy against his sink counter, scribbling notes on my chart.

  “Well, I've caught it up at a hundred and one, but it seems to be low grade all the time and she has these, oh, I don't know what you'd call them, headaches, I guess, don't you, Julie?” She glances over, I nod. “Tell the doctor about your headaches.”

  “Do they seem related to any foods she's eating, Ms. Gregory?”

  “You can call me Sandy, Dr. Phillips. Well, I try to get her to eat but she's so finicky that she hardly eats a thing since we put her on the allergy diet. And when she does eat, she's nauseated.”

  “Is the nausea with the headaches?”

  “I don't know. Julie, is the nausea with the headache?” Mom flits back to me, pivoting her head on the L of her thumb and index finger. At the doctor's she sits up exact and straight and anchors her head into the L so that nobody sees her occasional nervous head spasms.

  “Is the headache across your forehead, like this,” he stretches his face like Silly Putty toward his ears, “or,” squishing his hands together, “around your skull like this?”

  I look between both of them. What is a headache, exactly? Is it when my eyes hurt? Is it when I'm dizzy on the bus? I'm trying to guess, hoping it's the right answer.

  “I'm not really sure.”

  “What do you mean you don't know, Julie?” Mom lashes her head around and contracts her eyes to slits. I swallow. Seconds dangle. I cannot pull away. I'm as glued to her eyes as if my arms were pinned. A crack in the air breaks the spell as she slaps her leg and turns in disgust, “Jesus, Julie, we've been seeing you sick and you've been telling me you've had headaches in the car all this week. Remember when you've been carsick?” She turns back to Dr. Phillips. “I'm sorry, Doctor, I don't know what's wrong with her that she's doing this to me. There's got to be something wrong with a kid that doesn't even remember how sick she was just yesterday. Julie, stop wasting the man's time and tell him what's going on with you. Now I mean it.”

  “They're around my forehead like the first one you said.”

  Dr. Phillips picks right back up.

  “Is it a tight band that squeezes or more of a dull, throbbing, indirect pain?”

  “Uh. A tight band.”

  “That sounds like it could be a migraine. Why don't we start her out on a sample of Ergostat, Sandy, and you can get back to me next week on how this works out.”

  “Thank you so much, Doctor.”

  AND WHEN MOM SAYS I don't have a headache, I ride my bicycle to the next road over, and curve back its empty lane, pedaling fast along the smooth winding river of blacktop that loops back onto itself in a cul-de-sac overgrown with Queen Anne's lace and lofty weeds. My handlebar tassels whiz in the wind and the colorful spoke tire pegs blur on my speed machine. My Honeycomb license plate flaps wildly with each pump of my legs straddled along a glitter sparkle banana seat. My long blond hair cascades down my back and I swing it back and forth in the breeze, swerving all over the road singing, “I can't smile without you, can't laugh without you. If you only knew what I'm going through…”

  MOM'S ELBOWS LOOKED LIKE they were full of buckshot, or wheel bearings. I used to sit in the backseat and hook my armpits over the front so I could slide the loose flesh between my fingers, transfixed by the purplish grainy pebbles moving back and forth under her skin. When I asked her how come she had rocks in her arms, she told me that Grandma Madge had sent her out one night with a carload of boys and she had to jump out the window as they sped onto the highway. The impact of her skid lodged pebbles so far under her skin that they stuck there permanently.

  “Why did you jump out the window, Mom?”

  “Because I had to, Julie.”

  “But why?”

  “I'll tell you sometime when you're older.” And she turns away, lips trembling.

  Dad snaps on the radio and leans toward his window. I keep rolling the elbow flap between my fingers, isolating each blue-black pebble to study it closer, watching her tears fall and saying, “I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm sorry you're sad today.” But still I keep on rolling.

  ANOTHER WEEK HAS GONE BY and nothing has changed. I still pee the bed and wake up in the morning soaked all the way down to my knees, my sheets and pajamas sticky and stinking. It started when we moved here. I can't help it. And I can't stop.

  Mom and I sit in the Township office waiting for Dr. Phillips and I scour the reception room for all the Reader's Digests. I speed-read the short stories and little funnies at the end of each article: “Laughter, the Best Medicine,” “Life in These United States,” “Humor in Uniform.” I hope I can distract Mom into forgetting about the wet clothes she peeled off me this morning. I'd die if my doctor asked me why I wet the bed when I'm seven.

  “You know, Mommy, my headaches I think might be worse. This girl at school got glasses and she never got headaches.”

  “Really, Sis? You noticing them getting worse?” Mom doesn't look up from her Ladies' Home Journal. “Well, let's make sure we tell that to the doctor. Good job on thinking about what might be wrong with you.”

  In the examining room, Mom says, “Now, we're going to tell Dr. Phillips about the dull pains in your head, right about,” she presses her fingers into my skull, trying to find them, “here.” She squeezes hard to remind me what they feel like.

  “Now I don't want any kind of fiasco like we had last time, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I'm the mom: I know what's going on here. So if he asks you questions, you just let me answer.”

  Dr. Phillips breezes in and apologizes for our wait. Mom gives him an update on my allergy diet and pulls out her list of new symptoms. Some he writes down, some he just listens to, moving his eyes between her and his chart. I sit in my sick pose, pretty sure that Mom's forgotten the wet bed.

  As she runs down the symptoms, I know some of them aren't all the way true. I sit on the edge of the exam table, my eyes fixed on my knees, but I feel the words rise into my throat, words to correct her, flooding my mouth, rushing to get out. They crash against one another and then pile into a dam of all the words I cannot say. I have to press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to hold them back. Little clucks and ticks swirl around the inside of my mouth and escape through my hanging bottom lip.

  Cluck. No, I don't have a sore throat every day, just yesterday. Tick. No, my fever last night wasn't way up to 102.

  Cluck, Cluck! No, I don't go to the school nurse every single day. Dr. Phillips pauses, his pen lifted mid-sentence.

  “Are you okay, Julie?”

  I nod up and down.

  “See what I mean, Doctor? Something is going on here.” When Dr. Phillips steps out to get us a sample of another trial medicine, Mom gives a Spock pinch to my knee and growls I had better knock it off.

  AFTER WE'D MOVED BACK FROM Arizona and settled into the white two-story, we'd all driven up to Columbus to see my grandpa—Dad's dad—for the first time since I'd been born. I was thrilled; I'd never met a grandpa from Mom's side, and the great-grandpa who used to write me love letters addressed to “Jewel” had passed away before I could gurgle his
name. Mom told me he'd come to the hospital to pick her up when we were ready to go home, but at the last minute, he made Mom drive so he could wind his long arms around me and hold me close. He said I was the most beautiful baby, an elfin queen, a princess, a jewel. The stories I heard about his love for me made him the man I was always waiting to meet again; the first man that got away. Dad didn't want me around Grandma Madge, and his mom had died before I was born, so Chester was my last shot at having a grandparent.

  When we pulled up to the VA housing complex where Chester lived, the place seemed deserted.

  Mom crossed her arms and said, “I'm going to wait in the car, Dan. Don't be too long.”

  Dad hadn't seen Chester since he left home for the Navy at sixteen, and I was nervous, too. I was getting a new grandpa today.

  Dad and I stood at the curb. He took a deep breath; so did I. We looked at each other, then clasped hands and walked up the sidewalk, scanning the house for signs of life. The curtains were yellowing at the top and streaked with black soot from cigarette smoke; mail sprouted out of the letter box and weathered flyers stuck to the screen door and under the rubber mat in layers. But when we knocked, a gravelly voice warbled out, “Door's open.”

  We stopped in the hallway, blinded by white spots left over from the July sun, trying to adjust to the darkness. Chester had stacked cases of Bud Light up to the ceiling to block the light from the single window in the living room. Dad sat down on the ottoman between Chester and the television and I climbed on Dad's knee.

  “You can call Chester ‘Grandpa,’ Sissy. Can't she, Chester?”

  Chester nodded. “What's your name again, little girl?”

  I pointed my thumb to my chest. “I'm Julie, but Dad calls me Sissy.”

  Chester talked to us during commercials and leaned around us when his show came back on, even though Dad kept on and on; about Arizona, my school, his job at the base, Mom. Chester grunted a few uh-huhs and oh-yeah?s before he let out a great hissing sigh and began pumping his thumb up and down on the remote volume, drowning out Dad.

  At the next commercial Chester said, “Glad you could make it up, Peggy.” Peggy was Dad's sister. I knew he was telling us to get out even though we'd only been there fifteen minutes. Dad just sat there. Tears welled up in his eyes and slipped freely down his face. He dropped his head and stood slowly, and I slid off his knee like I was nothing more than a sheet of paper. I wrapped my stick arms around his waist and hugged as hard as I could, clamping one hand around my other wrist and tugging tight. I was not gonna let him go. He stood there, empty, his muscular limbs pinned to his side by the sheer strength of mine.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too, Sissy.”

  IT WAS USUALLY AFTER MOM slipped the little white pill under my tongue that my migraines got worse.

  “I can tell you've got a headache coming on. Here, open up. Lift your tongue. Gooood.”

  Sometimes I about threw up. Most times, I just needed to climb back into bed, as the pill sank into a pasty chalk under my tongue; that's how bad the headaches got. I still didn't know if they went across my head or over my face, but they burned my whole head on fire, my scalp felt nauseated, and the bottom of my throat jumped and rushed, like a watchdog snapping the leash.

  Mom could never get a job because I was so sick. She never knew when a migraine was going to creep up or a fever soar past a hundred or my throat turn red and swollen with infection and she'd have to drop what she was doing and run me into Township.

  During the day she scours and straightens each room in our big house, and on the days she thinks I might be sick, she keeps me home from school to watch me. Sometimes I hear her in the kitchen, laughing out loud. When I pop around the corner and ask what's so funny, she startles and says, “Oh, just thinking about a private funny between me and the nurse.”

  She puts me in the car one afternoon and says, “We are going to have to do something with that hair.”

  At the beauty salon, I sit in the swivel chair and she tells the lady with scissors to cut my long hair to an X-Y-Z shag, like the mom on The Brady Bunch. The woman looks down at my hair. I've been blond since I was a baby, but Mom says my hair's getting darker as I get older, just like hers did. Pretty soon it's going to be growing in dirty dishwater brown. But today I sit, with seven years of blond hair, silky straight, the ends almost white from the sun.

  “Are you sure?” the lady asks.

  “Look, I've tried and tried to get her to do something with it but this is what I get, so just cut the damn shag!”

  I've never had a haircut before so when the lady turns me around to the mirror I don't even know where my hair went; it flips up to my ears, it's brown all over— not blond like I've always seen myself in the mirror.

  “I want my hair back!” I cry.

  I look ugly, like a boy, and I know so because even Mom starts laughing when she sees me.

  MOM SAYS SHE CAN'T STAND ME, she has had it up to here, she can't get any help around here, will you please do something with her, Dan? God, she is driving me crazy.

  We're upstairs in my bedroom when Dad eases in the front door. Mom is tearing after me, clawing at my X-Y-Z shag, stinging me with her hitting hands. Dad trudges up the steps. “Hey, now, what's going on up here?” He comes in just in time to see me duck. Mom's back is to the door, her wild hair stuck to her face with spit and sweat.

  “Sandy, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Goddammit, Dan.” She swings around and grabs at the canopy post of my four-poster bed. “This girl will not pick up her room, she will not mind. I can't get any help around here. I've had it, Dan, I mean it. You are never around. I can't take it anymore!”

  My father is silent, looking at his shoes, listening. He pads across the carpet and leans against my dresser, pushing up his sleeves. “I'll take it from here, Sandy.” He turns his face to me and I think I catch him wink. Mom backs away. He yells softly at first, his eyes twinkling into mine and I stop crying, saved by my father and by the pact he's just made with me: Let's do a show and get her off our backs. But the more Mom inches away, the louder Dad gets, until his twinkle turns to black and I am crying even harder because I have never heard my father yell so loud or look so angry.

  Dad hooks his fingers around my wrist and tugs me out. He stops in the doorway where Mom's standing, “Now tell your mother you're sorry.”

  “I'm sorry, Mom.”

  “Now tell her you love her.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “Now go over there and give her a hug.”

  Mom stands bitter with a clamped jaw, looking away, fat tears rumbling down her cheeks. I wrap my arms around her folded ones and give a little, one-pump squeeze.

  Dad says, “You're coming with me today, kid, we're going to get you out of Mommy's hair.” And he yanks me down the plush steps, with Mom trailing behind. “You know, I can't take it anymore, Dan. I need help around here, you know?”

  And Dad says, “I know, Sandy, I know,” and lets the screen door slam behind us.

  When we get in the car, Dad peels out, slinging gravel at the fence and scorching tire tracks through the side grass. I brace against the dash and catch a glimpse of Mom, her forehead pressed against the door frame, her fingertips slipping down the screen as she sobs. The car spits out onto the pavement and Dad slams into drive. We burn down the road and he smacks the wheel. “We did it, Sissy, we got out today!” I'm filled with a dizzy ecstasy of forbidden and stolen freedom, as if we have zipped out of Township just as Dr. Phillips was walking in.

  But as we drive away, I lean my head to the window and tears slip from my eyes. I can't shake the vision of my mother, trapped in the house behind the heavy-gauge screen door, and us taking the only car. My father is calmer now. He reaches out for me and pat, pats my knee.

  “Don't worry, Sissy,” he says. “Mom is just in a bad mood because a baby is growing in her belly.”

  Dad and I spend our stolen Saturday sauntering th
rough the big mall, holding hands. The smacks on my skin are almost faded from memory. I've never spent a whole day with my dad before. We meander by old people nodding off on the benches, we marvel at the indoor palm trees and stand in the mist of the thundering water fountains, tossing pennies. Dad dares me to reach in there and grab a few quarters for the candy machines. I don't even care about going to a toy store: I just want to be with my dad.

  Somewhere behind us an eruption of laughter ignites and echoes through the four-level chamber of the mall. Dad jumps and spins around to face the sound, terror sweeping across his face. The roar is from a group of friends standing in front of a store, and I laugh, too, because it sure must be funny, whatever it is. Dad looks down at me, ominous. “Sissy, honey, do you know why those people back there are laughing?”

  I shake my head.

  “They're laughing,” he scoops my chin into his giant palm and lifts my face to his, “and I know this is gonna hurt, honey, but they're laughing because of your ugly hair. You're just not pretty like other little girls. I know you're not smart enough to understand that, but I'm your daddy, I'll protect you. Julie, people will screw you with your pants on. But don't you worry, baby girl, stick with me and I'll take care of you.”

  I look back at the people who laughed at me and they're not even looking at me now, just standing in a little circle facing each other, and I see how sneaky they can be to turn away so fast when they know you're going to catch them making fun of you. Dad starts strolling again and I keep looking back over my shoulder, trying to catch them in the act.

  “Love you, Sissy.” Dad gives my tiny hand a squeeze in his big one.

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  THE DAY MY BROTHER WAS BORN I hopped on the school bus shouting at the driver, “I just had a baby, I just had a baby!”