Saving St. Germ

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  He hung up the phone and nodded at me. Then he opened a drawer and pulled a cigarette from a leather pack, which he held out to me.

  “No thanks,” I said, though I would have liked one. I didn’t want to relax too much here. The old nervous pain in my chest was back anyway, and if I looked too long in Chairman Faber’s eyes, especially his left, wandering eye, I began chemically deconstructing the whole ocular structure. No, it was better that I didn’t smoke.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I do,” he said. “The wife goes crazy if I smoke at home, so I indulge myself once in a while here.”

  “Please go ahead.”

  I found myself staring involuntarily at his eye. It was clearly a neuromuscular problem. Maybe the nerves controlling his ocular muscles had been wired all wrong in a developmental screwup. I pictured Faber as an embryo with a huge bulging eye, sealed shut. Then his developing neurons extended, pale tendrils from the nascent brain tissue, feeling around for the bits of protoplasm needed to form ocular muscle. I noticed that the glycosylated road maps drawn glittering through the lobe (cells migrate along the sugar trails!) looked a bit askew; one or two neurons weren’t going to connect right! A microscopic mistake in the map—and here was Faber with his spinning eye.

  He lit the cigarette, popped the match in an ashtray, and in a constricted voice, as smoke rippled up, masking his face and seeping into my nostrils, he asked me what was going on between me and Donald Brandeman.

  “What’s going on between us? I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t either, Esme. I don’t know why the hell this boy would charge in here this morning all upset and ranting on about politics in your lectures, high jinks in your lab, and something about you having a sex-change operation and accusing him of being gay?”

  I laughed and Walter Faber laughed too, never taking his eye off my face.

  “The sex-change operation doesn’t look like it took to me,” he said. We continued laughing.

  “Well,” I said, “where to begin. A lot of charges there.”

  “Serious ones, too,” he said. His tone changed suddenly, all humor gone from his face, which was long with a neat but full dark beard. He actually looked a little like Abraham Lincoln, but a mildly psychotic Lincoln. His eye rolled like a security camera scanning the premises.

  “Serious?”

  “He’s complaining about politics in your lectures; he feels you’re proselytizing or something. Can you explain what’s upset him so much?”

  “Occasionally, I introduce ... moral considerations into my lectures. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I’m not sure myself what form ethical inquiry should take but I feel that I have to say something about responsibility in science: personal, social. These kids have never been exposed to that idea, no one has been talking to them about this.”

  “And?”

  “And ... that’s it.”

  “Esme. I would have to do more investigating to determine exactly what we’re talking about here, but my first impulse, being candid, is to agree with Donald Brandeman. You were not hired as an ethics specialist, a philosopher, if you will. You were hired as a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, who desired to teach organic chemistry. Period. These students pay tuition to take courses from you in Organic or Biochemistry—not Sociology or Philosophy.”

  The pain in my chest was increasing. I took a deep breath. “I know that.”

  “Then we agree?”

  “No. I don’t expect we do. I think we have a disagreement here. My problem is I’m supposed to pick up my little girl at nursery school at four-thirty and it’s three-forty-five now. Could we continue this discussion tomorrow?”

  He looked annoyed.

  “I’m booked solid tomorrow. No appointments open. I suppose I can summarize my concerns quickly here. The university has never been in favor of professors preaching special interests in our classrooms. Look, Esme. I know a lot of this is lighthearted. You’re a funny person, I get it! I appreciate a joke as much as the next guy. You’re being provocative, outrageous, but I have to request that you stop. We have a tradition to uphold here.”

  “I would like to talk more about this. If not tomorrow, some other time. I’ll make an appointment with your secretary. I’m only asking that my students think about a few things. Just for discussion’s sake. I don’t want them to just mouth politically correct positions, believe me.”

  “Esme, are you aware that there are university courses, in other departments, that speak to current questions about the environment? ‘Science and Modern Values,’ in Soc, for example. ... You have a set syllabus, with a lot of material to cover in a semester and no time for woolgathering.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said desperately. I stood up and turned toward the door.

  He called after me. “One other thing, Esme ... please don’t change your sex on us.”

  I turned around, waiting for the inevitable.

  “Don’t do it. We have a hell of a time from Affirmative Action as it is. We don’t want to start all over again!”

  I looked back at the peripatetic eye, rolling behind a cloud of new-blown smoke. “Thanks,” I said. “I like feeling needed.”

  I checked my watch as I ran out to the parking lot. I was going to be late picking up Ollie. The teacher would be standing at the door, Ollie beside her, holding the Princess She-Ra lunchbox her grandmother had given her, talking to herself. The teacher would be furious, she had her own kids to get home to, she had to face the traffic too, but she would not show this anger. I would apologize, over and over, and the teacher, Sasha, would say it was OK. But it wasn’t, I could see it now. This was not OK.

  Chapter 6

  IT WAS LATE morning and I was watching Ollie dance in the living room. Ollie moved from side to side, wearing her painted TV box on her head. Abruptly she took it off and set it down, patting it like a dog. Then she barked at it a couple of times. Then she began to whirl in earnest, at first turning stiffly, then picking up speed. She circled near the floor fan and her little plaid shorts and top filled with air. She kept up a soft, running commentary on her actions as she spun around: “Ollie turning Ollie turning Ollie turning Ollie turning Ollie turning Ollie tired Ollie tired sitting down Ollie sitting down Ollie up Ollie up!” She spun herself around again, then circled toward the front door, opened the screen door, went outside on the steps, and sat down. She was motionless in the bright sun, staring out at the street. For the moment, still.

  I put down my coffee cup and crossed the room, pulling aside the thin muslin curtain at the porch window. Her profile was as pale and stoical as a small household deity. Her eyes and her full lips were closed, dreamy. Then the angle of light changed; she turned reddish-gold, almost pink, her skin and hair acquired a neon quality. More cars went by. Outside it was quiet, but filled with L.A.’s silent sound, a contained momentousness, like a concert orchestra, bows raised, about to play. A pom-pom of dried palm fronds fell with a rustle. She began talking to herself again. The sprinklers had left a small leaf-filled puddle on the walk; Ollie got up and moved toward it. She picked up a stick and lifted a dollop of bird shit from the grass and dropped it into the puddle. She dropped the stick and knelt down to watch the glossy green and white guano spiral apart in the dim water. Then she returned to her seat on the porch steps.

  I dropped the thin curtain, opened the door softly, stood quietly behind her on the steps, in her shadow. Then I sat down beside her. The beagle from next door came halfway up the walk and stood staring at us uncomfortably. He always looked to me like a tiny man trapped in a dog costume.

  Ollie looked at him but continued mumbling: “Cat comes gold cat gold cat no car two cars two cars come swim trees swim leaves up side of trees gold cat cat cookie dead cookie ... Mamma, this cookie died?”

  She turned to me; her face struggled for an expression. She looked down and I followed her gaze. Someone had dropped a partially eaten chocolate chip cookie on the sidewalk. It was cov
ered with ants.

  “No, honey, it’s not dead. It’s just turning into breakfast for these ants.”

  Ollie stood up, placed herself in front of me, staring straight into her eyes, her small strong hands gripping my shoulders. I felt surprised, as I did almost every time I looked into Ollie’s eyes. How unfamiliar her expressions were, yet instantly recognizable: the real physical embodiment of thinking, a consciousness at work on its surroundings. A face that reflected thought was always mobile, rarely organized itself into expression, I thought, and Ollie’s face flickered, flickered and burned before me.

  “But where are the wheels of the cookie? And the bad ones who shoot bees and snow?”

  “The wheels?” But she was off again, a new question.

  “Mom, the air stops? It goes up to the blue and stops?”

  “No. Air and sky are the same, Ollie. Air just goes up high and is sky. It gets thinner as it goes up.”

  “No, Mom. This air in my hand, in this minute, is not blue.”

  “The sky looks blue to us because of light, the way our eyes see light.”

  Ollie stared at me, her eyes impatient, then patient, trying to understand. She continued holding my shoulders; she twitched a little.

  “I see light in you.”

  I felt her wholeness—nothing moved away from me, irretrievable, in Ollie, knew Ollie shored herself up against me, Ollie rose and swelled in the rhythm of my breath. Yet Ollie could fly, could leap suddenly and reappear light-years away, on a branch over a ravine, and I could not cry out, or run to her, extend a hand—I had to wait, breathing quietly, for her to return intact. I waited, asking myself how I dared to know what I knew about Ollie—that she was sound, odd but sound. My own certainty about this somehow made me doubt myself: maybe 7 was bad, a bad mother, visiting my own failures on my child? Maybe I was lying to myself. But how was it possible that Ollie could have been hurt without me knowing it—or that I might have hurt her myself, without intending to? It was not possible, I knew this. Then how had nature touched Ollie, marked her? How had nature intended that I see Ollie’s strangeness, in what context? Gifted genetically, wounded genetically, transfigured by the mind or devoured by it? I felt tears suddenly on my face, and began to cry softly as Ollie stood, facing me, her hands on my shoulders. Then I bent forward, Ollie murmuring; she climbed into my lap and we rocked, rocked slowly together for a long time on the step, Ollie humming her little song, me crying as if the tears, once they’d started, would blot out everything—a flood that sprang up from the beginning of my life.

  Jay came home early that day and we all piled in the car and took off for the beach. It was one of those slow-building hot days, patch-smoggy but mostly hazy. A smell of dry herbs, rosemary and sage, filled the air.

  Jay wore cutoffs and a Dodgers baseball cap. He drank a Bud as he drove, the can warming between his hairy thighs.

  “N-nice day, huh?”

  He smiled at me warily. I nodded.

  “H-how about I try out a routine on you as we drive?”

  I reached over and touched his leg.

  “Jay. It’s a beautiful day.”

  He looked abashed, then philosophical.

  “H-how you doin’, Ollie?” he asked softly, his eyes in the dashboard mirror.

  “Two dreams. Three dreams.”

  “Way to g-go.”

  The jeep tooled along—we didn’t speed. The Santa Monica Freeway wasn’t full, just a few cars, and the ocean appeared on our left in record time—that breathtaking curve of horizon and sea.

  “Look, Ollie, look. The sea!”

  She put her nose to the glass and smiled. She liked the ocean.

  “It is never too hot to be the sea.”

  “Huh?”

  “Wait, Jay. What do you mean, Pickle?”

  “It is never too hot. So Ollie is hot.”

  “Is Ollie hot?”

  “I am very hot, I am talking in the red language.”

  “The red language?” Jay sat up straighter, worried. “Sweetheart, can you tell Daddy what you m-mean by the red l-language?”

  “All the very hot words.”

  “Oh. What’s a hot word?”

  “Hot. And wind-without-corners. A red bite which grows and grows over your tummy. When I cry bird that’s very hot too. I fell down.”

  There was another silence.

  I poked Jay again, smiling.

  “Nice view of that old not-so-hot sea, huh?”

  He shook his head and we turned into a parking area.

  We carried blankets to the flat sand by the waves, along with a cooler and the beach bag loaded with suntan oil, zinc oxide, sunglasses, Handi Wipes, vitamin C, spray-on Evian, Matchbox cars, pop-up books, and Ollie’s dragon. Jay set up the big striped umbrella and we all lay down, half in and half out of the shade, and listened to the tide coming in, the big thundering rolls. They didn’t quite reach us, but every once in a while, cool spray settled on us. Ollie would scream and jump up and run away to dig in the sand for a while.

  Jay was lying on his stomach, half asleep. After a while he rolled over and stared at me.

  “Do you understand her when she talks?”

  I shrugged. “Not always.”

  He shut his eyes.

  “I almost n-never understand her when she talks.”

  I waited.

  “Last week she told me she couldn’t eat her food because it was tired.”

  Again I waited, expecting the stand-up shoefall, but Jay wasn’t, for once, being funny.

  “I asked her what she meant and she just kept repeating that it was t-tired, tired food. Finally I said, trying to get into the spirit of this, should we put the l-lamb chop to bed? And she looked at me like I was nuts and basically said, ‘Dad, it’s a lamb chop, why would you p-put it in a bed?”

  I laughed. He didn’t. He sat up, opened the cooler, and took out another Bud. He popped it, then rolled up a beach towel behind his head and lay back.

  “Why can’t she talk the way the rest of the world does? Why doesn’t she say ‘Hi, Daddy’ or ‘I want a cookie’?”

  “Is that the way you want her to talk?”

  He shot me a look. I noticed that he was tired. Daytime tech directing and stand-up nights were wearing him down. His Oxford-undergraduate look had given way to a wan, strained expression about the mouth and eyes. He pursed his lips as he looked at me, the unconscious pout of a man older than he, a prim, orderly man.

  “Yes, I’d like it if I c-could understand my own daughter. A simple declarative sentence with a normal insight or t-two—‘The sky’s up, the earth’s down’—would be a relief. I admit it.”

  I watched Ollie, who’d dropped her orange sand shovel and was following a huge seagull on scavenger duty—and sighed. As always, she whispered, a running account, in the third person, of what she was doing. “Ollie dig. Ollie dig. Ollie run. Bird going up. Ollie is big.” She picked up handfuls of sand and piled them up, smoothed them. “Core,” she said. “Mantle.”

  “I don’t want anyone to hurt her,” I said.

  “Who’s hurting her?”

  “Nobody. I didn’t mean that anyone is hurting her. I mean I think ahead to ... possible situations in her life and I ... just don’t want them forcing her into some pattern.”

  “Esme, is she retarded?”

  “Jesus, Jay. How can you ask that? Listen to the questions she asks. She’s thinking all the time!”

  “But her thoughts don’t m-make sense! Ever!”

  “Her thoughts make sense to her.”

  “Well, that’s as g-good a definition of ‘nuts’ as I’ve ever heard.”

  “But look. She thinks along unexpected lines. She’s escaped somehow a lot of the patterns that are imposed so early on kids. I mean, we never taught her accepted responses to things ...”

  “We never t-taught her anything.”

  “I’ve taught her things.”

  “What things?”

  “I teach her some science. Some
things about gravity, the planets. I show her when we water the plants how osmosis works, I explain the vacuum ...”

  “No wonder she’s like this. I wish you’d just let her develop n-normally.”

  “You mean watch TV all the time?”

  “I would prefer that to a weirdo who b-builds a TV and lives inside it.”

  We turned away from each other, avoiding a fight.

  Ollie shuffled up, covered with sand, and I handed her a fruit-juice packet. Together we worked at inserting the straw and getting it to draw up the juice.

  When the juice was functioning, Ollie rubbed her nose and then began to rock a little on her heels. Back and forth. She sang a song about the bird she’d been following. Jay sat up.

  “Hey Ollie. Wanna take a walk with Daddy?”

  “Daddy legs are dark and away.”

  “What?”

  I laughed. The umbrella shade had cut off his legs at the thighs. His lower body was lost in darkness. I pointed to the shadow. Jay nodded, relieved.

  “Let’s g-go, Ollie.”

  He picked her up and she sat solemnly on his shoulders, bobbing a little as he plodded along through the sand. I lay back, letting the sun seep through me, watching the two-tiered person grow smaller and smaller as it headed up the beach.

  There were a few people around. Nearby a young couple on a Ninja Turtles towel tended a huge radio, a ghetto blaster. The radio generated a steady bass that reverberated for a while dizzyingly in the air, but the regularity of its beat made it inaudible finally—it erased itself. There was an occasional sharp noise: a car horn. Children arguing over a pail. Gull cries. I started to drift off.

  Jay shook me gently awake. The sun was low and I felt a chill.

  “You know what Ollie said to me?”

  “What?” I sat woozily up and brushed sand from my legs.

  “We were just drifting up the b-beach, wading, picking up shells—and I started trying out a few very very basic routines on her ...”

  “Jay.”

  “Come on. You know I tried one of my ... I don’t know what to c-call them exactly—my weird Kiddie Stories? You know how I do the one about Santa Claus wearing fur, smoking, being overweight, b-breaking and entering ...”