Kissing Doorknobs

by Terry Spencer Hesser

  “Cut it out!” she warned in a very sharp voice. And then she said, “Dammit.”

  “Don’t say ’it,’” my sister, Greta, said hopefully, trying to deflect what she knew was coming.

  “Okay,” my mother said emphatically. “Damn!”

  I said another prayer. This time it was silent. But she saw me make the sign of the cross.

  “I’m warning you,” she said, with murderous eyes.

  I nodded, but I knew I would pray for her soul the first chance I got, which was right away.

  Unpacking the groceries and already agitated, my mother caught me murmuring a Hail Mary.

  “Cut it out, Tara. Please” she begged.

  But I couldn’t. “… and blessed is the fruit of thy womb …” I made the sign of the cross.

  She swatted a dishtowel toward my face. “Cut it out, I said!”

  I cut it out. Not because she asked me to but because I was finished. Satisfied, I began putting away the canned goods. Then I noticed that my mother had seated herself at the table, in the midst of a lot of groceries, and was doing nothing. I stopped and looked at her.

  “If I see you doing that one more time,” she said without looking at me, “I’m going to punish you … severely … Goddammit!”

  By the time she said “God,” I was halfway through the sign of the cross and muttering an Our Father.

  My mother was swearing like a marine and washing down aspirin with warm beer that we had just bought for a barbecue.

  One day she pushed me up against the wall and pinned my hands at my sides. Her face, inches from mine, was a mask of terror, anger and hate. “Do you do this at school? Do you? Do the kids make fun of you? They do, don’t they? They’d have to.”

  I closed my eyes and mumbled a prayer for my poor mother’s anguish. When she saw my lips moving, she put her head on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop this.” At that moment, my father happened to walk into the room and pulled her off me. Her face was red and she was fighting tears as she fell into his arms.

  “You’re grounded!” she screamed at me. “Now get the hell out of here.”

  Did she have to say “hell”?

  I crept off to my bedroom, threw myself on my bed and prayed for her. Then I repeated the prayers again and again as I listened to my parents fighting about me.

  “She’s nuts!” my mother screamed. “And all that catechism is what’s doing it to her.”

  “I don’t know,” said my father. “You’re not Catholic, and I couldn’t vouch for your sanity right now.”

  As I finished a last prayer, my little sister came into my room. She had been standing in the doorway waiting for me to finish praying. She crawled into my bed next to me and looked into my eyes in this eerie, unblinking way of hers that made me think she saw into my soul, into my heart, into my pain.

  “Am I nuts?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she answered without blinking. I felt chilled. Even she thought I might be nuts. I briefly wondered if it was my mother’s fault. If I acted like this because she had smoked marijuana before I was born. After the chill of that fear passed, I realized how ridiculous the thought was, and for some reason, unlike so many other ridiculous fears, I was able to dismiss it.

  “I’m grounded again,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  I continued. “She’ll never stick to it, though. She thinks I’m home too much as it is. Yesterday she told me if I watched any more television I’d grow a satellite dish out of my forehead.”

  My sister burst out laughing. I loved it when she laughed. I loved her. A silent, messy little child, she lived in her head as much as I did in mine, except she seemed not to care. My mother’s voice came through the walls like a wail.

  “Do you think it’s our fault?”

  “I don’t know,” my dad answered.

  “I could take the nightmares, the weird behavior and the fears … but I can’t take this praying shit! I really can’t … I can’t …” My mother’s voice trailed off into sobs.

  “So, you can’t control yourself either?” It was a direct challenge.

  “I’m afraid of what it’ll do to her. I’m afraid she’ll start seeing herself as … a nut.”

  “If you keep calling her one, I don’t see how she can escape that feeling,” he answered.

  My mother started sobbing. My father’s tone changed. “It’s a stage,” he said. “She’ll get over it.”

  “Will she?” she asked hopefully.

  After a long silence, my father spoke. I could barely hear him. “Do you think it’s our fault?” he whispered. His anguished voice sent shock waves through the house. Something fell. There were footsteps. A door slammed. And then it was quiet. Too quiet. I felt sick. I shut my eyes and prayed. My sister hugged my arm. Suddenly pain ripped through my abdomen. I pulled my legs up and lay in the fetal position. I was afraid of the pain and afraid of acknowledging the pain.

  “What?” my sister asked.

  “My stomach hurts,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s just your nerves again,” she said.

  I didn’t know. I was afraid. “I’m afraid they’ll get divorced because of me,” I croaked.

  “Nah,” she said quietly. “As long as they’ve got you to think about, they don’t have to think about other stuff.”

  Something crashed to the floor in my parents’ room.

  I started to pray.

  “Want me to beat ’em both up for you?” Greta asked. We both cracked up laughing. Then I finished my prayers, which included a prayer for Greta. I hadn’t walked to or from school with her either, and she never complained. Maybe she didn’t want to walk with me. I thanked God.

  A few days later, my parents sent me to the family internist, who poked me everywhere. I had enemas, X rays and more poking. Baffled, the doctor sent me to a specialist. The specialist couldn’t find anything wrong with me either. He suggested I see a shrink. Odd when you think about it. I’d been counting cracks for almost a year, but it was the praying that I couldn’t conceal and that couldn’t be tolerated.

  The psychiatric evaluation was painless. I didn’t even know the guy was a psychiatrist. I thought he was a guidance counselor with a bad wig and long fingernails. His office was neat and I liked that. But his nose was crooked and I didn’t like that. It was also too long, so I suspected that he was like Pinocchio and told lies.

  “What are you thinking, Tara?”

  “I’m … I’m thinking about … Pinocchio.”

  “Do you like marionettes?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel like someone is pulling your strings?”

  I had to think about that one, but I didn’t really have an answer. Some one? Like God or the Devil? “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you feel like talking about, Tara? Right now.”

  “I feel like …” I concentrated on his nose. “I feel like lying about something. Right now.”

  In addition to that Pinocchio conversation, we played games, looked at pictures and talked about my family, my fears, the fire drills and the troll dolls. He asked me to finish the sentence “People think I’m …”

  I told him I really didn’t know for sure what other people thought.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do you think you are?”

  “Hmmm … odd, I guess.”

  “Odd? That’s it?” he asked while trying to wiggle a piece of dirt out from under his fingernail with a paper clip.

  “Isn’t odd enough for you?” I asked.

  He thought about it. “Yes,” he finally admitted. “One more question. Please finish the following sentence. ‘I am scared of …’”

  “Being,” I answered. The dirt wedge flew from under his fingernail and landed somewhere in the carpet. It made me kind of sick.

  The meeting with the shrink ended, and aside from the revolting black fingernail trajectory, it hadn’t been all that unpleasant.

  Diagnosis:
Insecurities and self-esteem problems.

  Because my mother and father were ambivalent about the experience and fearful of being found insufficient as parents, it was the first and last time I ever saw that doctor, though I thought about his fingernail schmutz for a long time.

  7

  Bullies, Greta and Friendship

  Iknew if I tried to control the praying by making a huge effort to pray inside my head most of the time, my parents would continue to try to act as if I was normal, and the memory of the shrink’s diagnosis would fade. During the summer between fifth and sixth grade, my life seemed to return to almost normal. I still counted and prayed and worried about stuff, but I also went to summer school at the museum, hung out with Keesha, Anna and Kristin and enjoyed sleepovers, movies and a lot of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

  I never went anywhere with my friends, though. I always met them at our destination so that I was free to count as much or as little as I needed.

  In the fall, when I started sixth grade, I left home very early so that I could avoid people I knew while counting the cracks. After school, however, it was nearly impossible not to be noticed. Even though my friends had become tolerant of my counting, my worries and my fears, I was constantly at risk for ridicule.

  Not long after school started, a new girl in my class stepped into my path on the way home and began to make fun of me because of the way I walked with my head down counting the cracks. I say “began” because before she could enjoy her own performance, my sister appeared from out of nowhere, punched her in the face, knocked her down and sat on her stomach. “You still interested in how she walks? You? Who can’t even get up? Come on. Say something … say anything about her ever again … I want to kill you. I really do.” Two years younger and thirty years tougher, with a lot of unused hostility, my sister might not have had much to say, but when she talked to people they generally listened. Afterward, when the principal called her into his office and told her she would be suspended, she replied sweetly, “Cool,” and felt she had been rewarded for her loyalty.

  My parents didn’t see her suspension as a reward, but they didn’t punish her for it.

  The second, and more life-altering, incident was with Paulo, the bad boy at my school who followed me down the street with some of his friends. I knew they had been behind me for blocks but I just kept my head down and kept counting.

  “Say, Jordan … Michael Jordan, whatcha countin’, Jordan? I know it’s not baskets.”

  “Leave me alone!” I blurted out. I was instantly furious with myself for the interruption from my counting but I didn’t lose count and I didn’t go back.

  “I heard you’ve got … urges,” he said, so menacingly that my blood turned to ice. I was mute. I lost count. I stopped walking. He pushed me into the mouth of an alley and I fell against a garage door. “I’ve got urges too,” he said. A couple of his friends stood behind him and laughed.

  I didn’t try to defend myself. Instead of screaming or running, I just stood there, terrified. Paulo put an arm around my neck and grabbed at my crotch while the other boys watched. I twisted my body out of his grasp and fell to the ground.

  “Uh-oh! You’re clumsy, Tara,” Paulo said, smirking. “You’re nuts and you’re clumsy.”

  I was mortified. I got up and ran home without counting. I figured that the bad thing for that day had already happened, so my mother would probably be safe from a broken back.

  At home there was a note from my mom that she had gone to see my grandma, who was having bladder surgery. I sat home alone and cried until my sister got home from Girl Scouts.

  “Want me to beat him up for you?” she asked casually. She put a cold, wet washcloth on my forehead. It seemed funny: Greta standing there in a Girl Scout uniform giving me a compress and asking me whether I wanted her to beat someone up.

  “Is … there a … badge for that?” I asked between gasps for breath.

  “Probably.”

  She was wearing a mobile cast on her arm because of a Rollerblade accident.

  “How about your … arm?” I asked.

  She looked at the cast, looked at me and smiled. “It’s no big deal.”

  The next day Greta walked to school with me. I was counting like mad, partly to protect her. She was silent, as usual. When we got to the playground, Paulo was standing near the sidewalk with a group of boys, including the two who had witnessed what he did to me.

  My little sister didn’t let a second go by. She walked up to Paulo and said, “You got a problem?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she slapped him in the face. Real hard.

  Teachers would have paid money to see confusion replace Paulo’s normally cocky expression.

  “I heard you like putting your hands where they don’t belong,” she said. Actually, it was more like, “I”—slap—“heard”—slap—“you like putting”—slap-slap—“your hands where they”—slapslap—“don’t belong.” Punch.

  “Hey!” he said. “I’m not fighting a fourth-grade girl wearin’ a cast!”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “don’t let this bother you.” And as fast as lightning, she peeled back the Velcro, removed the soft cast with the metal stays and hit Paulo in the face with it. Before Paulo could respond, she jumped on his back and started punching him. Everyone was laughing, mostly Paulo’s friends.

  In seconds Paulo and Greta were on the ground. Within a minute Paulo’s face was bruised and bleeding and Greta had a little scratch on her leg. Although Paulo never shed a tear, Greta had done some serious emotional damage.

  She dismounted her victim like a warrior-heroine and bent down to look him in the face. “If you look at my sister again, I’ll get our baby sister to kill you.”

  Her performance was brilliant down to her exit line. We didn’t even have a baby sister! People stopped laughing at Paulo and started cheering for Greta. Keesha, Anna, Kristin and I made a nest out of our hands and threw her in the air a few times to celebrate her victory as she was putting the temporary cast back on her arm.

  I read about this Italian dictator who said that it’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred days as a lamb. Greta was a lion. And not just that day.

  Greta and Paulo were both suspended. And Greta’s arm took more time to heal than it would have if she hadn’t taken off the cast and beat up Paulo. But it was clearly worth it.

  Both their reputations were changed forever. As a result, Paulo transferred to another school the next year. The rumor was that he had become a ballerina.

  Greta, on the other hand, found her place in the sun. If she had to take a back seat to my quirks at home, she was definitely in the driver’s seat on the outside. If I was a slave to my thoughts, she was a master of the universe. If I was a victim of my quirks, she was a victor over bullies and evil.

  So even with my problems, life seemed good. My parents still loved me. My sister was willing to fight for me. And my friends were loyal to me. With all that incentive, I tried to fight my quirks as best I could. And I stayed very, very busy.

  Because I didn’t like being away from home too much, Keesha, Anna and Kristin came to my house after school once or twice a week, and usually they’d stay for dinner and after. We’d look through magazines and talk for hours.

  “Ohhh! Look! She’s so beautiful,” groaned Kristin while examining a model wearing more makeup than clothes.

  Keesha grabbed the magazine out of Kristin’s hands. “She look like she been starved and beaten about the head.”

  “She does not!” Kristin grabbed the magazine back and touched the glossy page lovingly.

  “Then how come her eyes are so black?” Keesha responded. “She’s been battered.”

  Anna and I laughed. Kristin didn’t.

  “She’s beautiful and you know it,” moaned Kristin, who was every bit as beautiful, without the black eyes.

  “Why?” mocked Keesha. “Why do you think starved, skinny and bruised-lookin’ is beautiful?”

  “Forget it!” Kristin wa
s sulking. “You don’t get it and I can tell you never will.”

  “Actually,” Anna said seriously, “neither do I. I mean, so what if she’s beautiful? What is she beautiful for? For someone else to look at? What’s the point?”

  “That is the point!” said Kristin defensively. “Beauty is the point. What’s wrong with that?”

  “She hun-gry! That’s what’s wrong with that,” said Keesha. And we all laughed, except for Kristin, who was on a diet.

  “Maybe they’re not hungry,” Kristin said. “Or just a little hungry.”

  “But again,” said Anna, “why do it? Why be hungry so that somebody else can take pleasure in looking at you? Why deprive yourself of anything so that someone else will like you better? I mean, what do those models get in exchange for their discomfort?”

  “Victimized and probably hospitalized, but what the hell,” said Keesha. “They’re thiinnn!”

  “Oh, come on! They get to feel special. I’d die to be a model,” said Kristin.

  “Well, I’m special because I’m alive,” said Keesha. “And I don’t have to do anything special to feel it …least of all starve myself and paint bruises around my eyes.”

  “Laugh now, but when I’m rich and famous and—”

  “—hungry and tired and married to your seventh husband …” Keesha had gone too far and she knew it as soon as she saw the color drain out of Kristin’s face. Kristin’s mom is married to her third husband.

  “I’m sorry, Kristin. I really didn’t …” Keesha was hugging Kristin.

  “That’s okay. I don’t think I’m getting married.” Kristin brightened. “After all, I’ve been to enough weddings … mostly Mom’s!” We all laughed, and I felt happy that she had made her first joke about something that made her sad.

  “Hey, let’s make a pact,” I said. “Let’s never get divorced.”

  “Unless we want to,” said Kristin, and we all shook hands.

  “What kind of a pact is that?” asked Anna.

  “The flexible kind,” said Keesha. We all licked our thumbs and pressed them against each other’s thumbs.

  “Saliva sisters,” I said, laughing.