by Gwynn White
“Yum,” I say. “I love fried chicken. I don’t know how to fry anything, but I know how to make mashed potatoes. Would you like mashed potatoes with it?”
“Splendid!” she says. “And gravy. Have you ever made homemade gravy?”
“I’ve seen it done, at Thanksgiving. Mom would let me stir in the cornstarch.”
“It’s a date, then.”
I take my daily vitamins and put a couple of pieces of toast in the toaster. Grandma hums while she frosts.
“How old are you today, Grandma?” I ask. “Or is that a rude question?”
“I’ll allow it since you’re my grandson. I was born in 1948. How old does that make me?”
“Sixty-five. That’s a milestone.”
She chuckles. “Every day at my age is a milestone.”
I study her face out of the corner of my eye. Sixty-five is not that old, at least not these days. People that age have wrinkles, yes, and their hair is turning mostly gray, but Grandma looks like she’s eighty. She’s thin, skin and bones. Her short-cropped hair is completely white. Her shoulders hunch over, and she walks as though her muscles can barely support her weight. Her hands are craggly claws covered in liver spots.
“Grandma,” I say slowly, wanting to approach this cautiously, “how come you have wrinkles? You told me that we could plump up our skin, and shift our body fat around and stuff.”
Grandma licks a bit of frosting off her wrist. “I also told you that just because we could doesn’t mean we should.”
“Is it a moral question, then?” I ask. “Smoothing wrinkles is wrong?”
Grandma sets down her knife and sits across from me and my toast at the kitchen table.
“Your grandfather Harry, you never met him, and you don’t know how much that just burns me up, what with Ray and Eddie and Earl and all his friends just parading those photos of their grandchildren out at every bridge game I went to, every week it was, going to a different friend’s house, and their husbands were all there, always home, always under foot, scarfing down the pie I brought like I brought it just for them. And I always said, don’t they play golf? Don’t they have a poker game to play? We girls had our bridge, but the men, all those damn men in Florida had nothing better to do than show off pictures of their buck-toothed, homely faced grandbabies.”
I sit mesmerized by her unexpected tirade, and I try to figure out where she’s going with this.
“Well Harry, he woulda done the same, no doubt about it, but he was already gone by the time you were born. But just you know, he woulda done the same.” She nods her head once for emphasis.
“Uh, thank you,” I say.
“Yes, well Harry just loved him the babies. Took to your dad right away and wanted ten more, the way he went at me day after day, not that I’m complaining. But anyway, I used to.”
“Used to what?” I ask her.
“I used to heal myself all the time. Gets to be something you don’t even think about. I’d start every morning eyeing myself in the mirror and smoothing any line that appeared. And one morning Harry, he’d just come out of the shower and he was all wet and drippy but he hugged me from the back and rested his chin right here on my shoulder and he squeezed and do you know what he said? Ruthie my love, you don’t look like you’ve lived thirty-two years. And I smiled and winked at him in the mirror and I wiggled just a little bit against him and I said, well isn’t that lucky for you? And do you know what that corker did? He sighed. Sighed! And kissed my cheek, and wrapped himself up in a towel and he said, we’ve been married for twelve years. You’ve suffered the death of your father, your uncle’s up the river for stealing from your mother, your niece Addy ran off with that no-good Burt character and sleeps on a bench in San Francisco, and you have a child. But I look at your face and it doesn’t show me one damn thing you’ve been through.” Grandma shakes her head. “And I started to cry. Couldn’t help it. And Harry, he just laughed at me and hugged me again and he said, the outside should match the inside.”
Grandma turns away from me and looks out the front window to the yard.
“Was the best and hardest lesson I ever learned, me being able to do what we can do. Scars and wrinkles are proof of life, Thomas. Life. I was wiping away the very record of my existence, the medals of my valor. I’ve earned these wrinkles. They are me. The aches, the pains, the stressors…God, I hate those wiry little hairs that grow out of my chin faster than I can pluck ‘em! But our body is a miracle. I learned to stop tampering with miracles.”
I close my eyes and imagine Grandma at thirty-two, smooth and perfect and plump in all the right places, and totally uninteresting and washed out.
“He sounds like a remarkable man,” I say to Grandma.
“He was. Your dad thought he was a fool.”
“Why?” I say, surprised.
“Your dad was mad that I stopped using my abilities. He thought Harry just didn’t want to grow old alone, but he was wrong. Harry loved me to death. He just wanted me to live.”
Harry sounds pretty good to me, but since I never had the chance to meet him, I guess I’ll never know his motives. But I think about doing as Grandma did, giving up my abilities to experience life as a normal person. That possibility has never occurred to me before. Sensing my body is as natural as breathing, and I don’t even know if I could stop doing it if I wanted to.
“Grandma, can you still do it?” I ask her.
She turns her head and looks at me.
“Yes.”
“How do you know, if you’re not doing it anymore?”
“I…did you ever wonder why I never came to visit you?”
I nod to myself. I had wondered. “Yes,” I say.
“Cancer,” she says, and I suck in a loud breath. “Breast cancer. I was fighting the good fight, in and out of remission. If pain is the mark of being alive, man but I was living.” She chuckles to herself, but I don’t join her.
“Do you…are you in pain now?” I ask carefully.
“Oh, Thomas,” she says. “I healed myself when I made the decision to come out here and take care of you.”
Wow. Grandma gave up the life she’d been living for thirty-three years for me. And how have I repaid her?
I retreated to my own world for a month, barely communicating with her and certainly never expressing any gratitude for what she’d done. I cut myself, scared her half to death, and ended up in a psych ward. I threw tantrums and refused to heal my relationship with her son, who’s now gone, and it suddenly occurs to me that it can’t be any easier for her having him gone than it is for me.
Dad is her son. Of course I always knew this, but I never really connected the emotional components of that fact. Dad was the one she gave all her knowledge to, the legacy of her abilities. The only one in her world just like her. And Mom was her daughter-in-law. How much has she been grieving, so oblivious I’ve been in my own grief?
I walk to school with heavy footsteps, careful of my sculpture and also juggling the weight of all my feelings, all my regrets. I want to do something for her, but I know there’s little I can do except be a good boy and try not to add to her burdens. That much I can do.
And I vow to carve out some time today to write her a poem for her birthday.
Autumn’s Child
Summer is done
Playtime’s over
No more shining sun
Or fragrant clover.
The sun has set
It’s golden time
Harvest the bet
Hoard the lemon and lime.
It’s a few months more
‘Til winter shows his face
You know the score
You ran the race
Still time, my child
For life’s great glory
Savor the miles
And finish the story.
Chapter Sixteen
As I walk into the classroom, Mrs. Gardener jumps on me and gives me a giant hug.
“Thomas,” she whispers int
o my hair. “We’ve missed you so much.”
I hug her back, and it’s not as awkward as I might have imagined.
“Thanks. I’ve missed you, too.”
She beams.
We all settle into our seats, go through the roll, and then Mrs. Gardener beckons us all to sit in a circle on the carpet.
“We’re going to do something a little different from now on,” she says. “Every morning, we’re going to start the day out with our friendship circle. It’s where we sit in a circle and tell each other what we love about our friends. I want each of you to know how special you are.”
We’re all a little confused, but we sit in a circle and wait patiently for further explanation.
“Let’s start. We’ll go around, and each of you is going to say something nice about the person to your left.”
I look to my left. Colton is picking his nose. Tessa is on my right.
“I’ll go first,” Mrs. Gardener says. She is sitting in the circle directly opposite me, and she turns to her left. “Destiny, I love the way you keep your desk so clean. You are a very organized person.”
Destiny giggles. “Thank you. Katie has the longest most beautifulest hair I ever seen,” she says.
Katie smiles. “Um…Daniel…uh…Daniel has the loudest voice in the class.”
Everyone laughs. Daniel speaks. “Do I hafta?”
Mrs. Gardener glares at him.
“Abbey likes to color,” he mumbles.
“That is a fact, but please give Abbey a compliment,” she says.
Daniel sighs. “She works really hard at coloring.”
I slap a hand over my mouth before a guffaw escapes.
We work our way to Tessa. She looks at me. “Thomas is the bravest kid I ever knowed,” she says.
I feel tears stinging the corners of my eyes, and I wipe at them roughly. “Thank you, Tessa,” I say. “Colton, you were very interested in the brain I brought to school. You have a very curious mind.”
“Just like a monkey,” he says, and he starts to hoot like an orangutan. He actually leans into my face, scratching his armpit and pursing his lips with an “ooooh ooooh ooh, aah, aah, aah.”
I laugh. Everyone laughs. And just like that, I know it’s going to be okay. Mom was right—my place was here all along.
I think I might be in love.
We’re on the playground at recess, climbing on the jungle gym. No one bothers me. It’s like I’m just another kid.
I give Tessa credit for this. She took my hand as we exited the classroom, and though I tried to tug her over to the soccer field to wander around and sit in the shade (my usual activities), she gently pulled me in the opposite direction.
“I want to climb,” she said.
So we climb. And as the playground noise enfolds me, and I watch Tessa giggle and smile and call encouragements out to me, I realize I love her. I mean, how can I not? She’s lightness and sunshine and cheer and friendship and everything I’ve never had. I want to be worthy of her.
She called me brave. “The bravest boy I ever knowed.” I want to be brave for her.
So I climb as fast as my legs will allow, and I clamber over a railing, intent on the apex of the structure.
“Whoa,” she says. “Thomas, we’re not allowed over the rail.”
I smile down at her. “It’s fine. I want to get to the top.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed,” she says.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not scared.”
Tessa bites her lip and watches me.
It’s January in Southern California, but it’s a sunny day. I hadn’t counted on that. I haul myself up to the roof of the jungle gym and burn my hand on the metal shingles. No problem. I cut off the nerves sensing temperature in my hands and continue on.
But my foot slips. The metal roof is smooth, and there’s nowhere to get a grip with my feet. I slide backwards on my belly, digging in vain with my fingertips to try to get purchase.
Someone screams. I grip harder, but the effort’s futile. I slip right off the edge of the roof, my dangling legs tangling in the railing below, and I’m pitched headfirst over the rail to the blacktop below.
There is a loud crack, like a rifle shot. A few thumps. Warm liquid runs down my forehead and into my eyes. I hear voices, shouts, running feet. I’m dizzy. I know that I have a concussion, a cracked skull, a broken arm, a sprained wrist, two broken ankles, my right leg is cracked in half at the knee and all the tendons and muscles torn.
My body threatens to shut down and I fight it. I heal the cracked skull first, so I don’t bleed to death, but there’s nothing I can do about the blood that’s already escaped. The blood loss slows me down, and I’m sure it looks ghastly.
I heal my brain next. It’s not a critical section, thank goodness, but a brain bleed or aneurysm could negate my abilities. I know that my life depends on my abilities.
Two adult women are hovering over me, calling out to each other. One cradles my head in her lap. Someone needs to teach her about first aid—never move the victim’s head—but it’s too late. Something in my neck snaps, a vertebrae, pinching my spinal cord. My body from the neck down goes limp.
I abandon my brain to heal my spine. It pops loudly and the woman holding me jumps and starts to cry silently. I’m sure she fears I’m dying.
With my spinal cord repaired, I finish the brain. Blood has seeped into my left eye from the brain, and I heal the blood vessels that have burst there.
Next comes the knee. It hurts the worst of all my injuries, so badly that I have trouble concentrating. I turn off all my nerve endings, and my body goes limp again, this time with relief. I lift my head slightly to stare down the length of my body. My right leg is twisted underneath me where my knee snapped and is hyperextended about ninety degrees so that my calf is pointing the wrong direction. Ouch.
“Don’t move, honey,” the woman at my head says in a tear-strained voice. “Don’t move. Help is coming.”
But I have to move to heal. I straighten my right leg out and it kinda flops around since it’s only connected by skin at the knee. I can’t get it straight enough to mend the bone, so I heal my left arm, my sprained wrist, the muscle bruises in both arms, and I reach out and place my leg the way I want it. I have to dig my fingers into the skin of my leg, pulling and massaging all the inner parts to connect. The two women are leaning over me, hands across their mouths, murmuring prayers and obscenities both.
“I’m oway,” I try to say, but I realize I’ve bitten my tongue nearly in two and the words come out garbled. I heal my tongue and speak again. “I’m okay.”
I finish with my leg. I try to stand, but my muscles shake uncontrollably and I don’t have the strength to stop them. I reach out to the women to help me, but they don’t move.
And suddenly Tessa is there. Her eyes are wide green pools and her mouth trembles but she is there, solid and bright, and she puts her hand in mine and falls to her knees beside me.
I let myself pass out in her arms.
No one believes the two women on playground duty. No one believes I was close to death with broken bones and a severed spine.
I suppose that’s a good thing, for now. If I’m going to be a miracle of science, paraded before the world, I want it to be my choice.
Grandma met me at the emergency room, where the baffled doctor had nothing to do but clean off the blood. Grandma promptly got me released and drove me straight over to Dr. Morley’s office. We only waited long enough for the receptionist to inform Dr. Morley that I fell thirty feet onto asphalt, and then the doctor himself ushered us into an exam room.
Dr. Morley is thorough, though I tell him I’m fine. He is examining me a second time from head to toe, urging Grandma to allow x-rays be taken, when an unbelievable thing happens.
Dad walks in.
He’s wearing his dress whites. I’ve only seen him wear them a couple of times, so I immediately know that something’s up. But even more unsettling is the look o
f guilt plainly written on his face.
The doctor’s office suddenly seems claustrophobic.
“I’ll be taking my son,” Dad says.
Grandma, who’s been sitting in a chair silently watching my exam, nods at me behind the doctor’s back.
“Thank you, Dr. Morley, but I’m really fine,” I say, hopping off the table and scooting around him to take my shirt from Grandma’s hands.
“Your son was injured very badly,” the doctor says to Dad. “He really should finish his exam.”
Dad nods. “I’ll take care of it.”
Dr. Morley sighs. “I guess you will.”
Dad reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. He produces a wad of hundred-dollar bills and holds them out to Dr. Morley. “We appreciate all you’ve done for Thomas.”
Dr. Morley stares at the money, then stares down my dad. “Keep the money,” he says. “Go to hell.”
Dad’s jaw tightens. “I’m doing what’s best for him. No one will stand in the way of what’s best for my son.”
“On that, we agree. But if you’re taking him to the Attic—”
“What do you know about the Attic?” Dad says.
Dr. Morley glares at him. “It’s no place for a six-year-old boy.”
Dad turns to me. “Out. Let’s move.”
I move to the door, but Dr. Morley steps in front of me and holds out his hand. I shake it firmly.
“Take care of yourself, Thomas. Please. I…I’ll be praying for you.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Michael, please don’t do this.”
“It’s already done.”
“What’s done?” I ask from the back seat.
I can hear Dad gnash his teeth together.
We pull into the driveway, and Dad’s barking orders before the car is even in park.
“Out. Pack. Both of you. Now.”
I open my door, but Grandma says, “No.”
I stop and look at them. They’re glaring at one another.
“Michael, this is beneath you.”
