by Amanda Stern
Javier’s parents’ house is lively and festive. Music is playing and everyone is chattering affectionately in Spanish. They welcome me like an old friend. People roll in and out of the kitchen; food is cooking and Abu is sitting on the couch strumming the guitar with a crooked hand. Frankie takes out her trumpet and screeches “We Three Kings.” We all cheer.
“Frankie told us about the books you bought her and the card you made,” Abi says, coming out of the kitchen. Frankie is bobbing her head up and down, yes yes yes, and we beam at each other.
We drink, we laugh. When Javier goes outside to smoke, Frankie and I talk about how we can get him to quit and then come up with an endless stream of nicknames for each other. Dinner is a feast, and everyone is trying to teach me Spanish phrases, and everything I imagined for my family of choice is occurring right now at this moment. I feel equal. And I feel at home. I want these people as my in-laws. I want Javier and Frankie as my family. I want this.
That night, the family gathers around while Abu plays guitar and they sing Christmas carols and Argentine songs, and I’m in heaven. After some drinks, and people have gone to bed, it’s just Javier, Abi, Abu, and me in the living room.
“Javi,” Abi says to him.
“Sí, Mama?”
“I hope this is your last girlfriend ever.”
“Me too,” he says.
“Me three,” I say.
“Good!” Abu says. “You’re the one we want.”
An ecstatic glow radiates inside me. To hear how wanted I am, by all these people, two of whom I’ve just met, feels like concretized peace. The family I’ve just realized I want is saying it wants me, too. But now that I’ve identified the people with whom I want to belong, I become terrified someone will change their mind and take it all away.
Javier tucks Frankie into her bed on the couch and reads her a story, then calls me over to say good night. I perch next to Frankie’s pillow.
“I think my family really likes you,” she says. “You fit in well. Do you like them?”
“I love your family, Frankie.”
She smiles and then gives me a hug. “Good night, Amanda. I’m so glad you’re here.”
I kiss her forehead and walk back to Javier, glowing harder than I ever did at camp.
“Told you,” he says. “She’s magic.”
“You know, I think you may be right.” The whole family might be magic.
* * *
On the way back to New York, we stop at a café and Javier runs in to get us coffee and breakfast. Frankie is playing with her brand-new iPod Touch in the backseat, and suddenly a wretched, foul-garbage smell settles in front of my face. I cough, horrified.
“Oh my God. Frankie! Was that you?”
“Silent but deadly. Better get used to it.” She laughs.
I laugh, too, harder than the occasion calls for, because I know she’s telling me that she wants me to stay, and she knows I will.
Listen Carefully and Say Exactly What I Say
After ERBs and the hearing test, I get another eye test, and then my mom makes an appointment with a special doctor on the Upper West Side. I don’t know what the hearing doctor said, but I assume he played the tape of me for everyone, heard all the wrong things in me, and finally called an expert to tell us the name of what is wrong with me. Dr. Rivka is the expert. My mom says she’s a specialist who is good at solving problems. For the first time since the hearing doctor, I let myself feel hope again that someone is finally going to locate my worries and find the pill to get rid of them. I don’t even mind if the hearing doctor did find things wrong that are worse than worries, because I have a meeting with an expert and she will cure all of me.
The waiting room is small and beige. Everything is one color, and it feels like we’re sitting inside a mushroom. My babysitter, Margie, and I sit down on the couch and wait. She pulls out a pad and a pen and starts a game of hangman. I can barely contain my excitement at the new me. I know that solving my problems won’t make me look any different, but I still imagine the fixed, calm version of myself as taller, with straight, glossy blond hair that swings when I walk.
Dr. Rivka is short and bosomy, and we’re not that far into the game when she comes out and shakes our hands. I follow her down a short hall, reminding myself that when I walk back down this hall after my appointment, my worries won’t be clouding up my heart any longer. I’ll be able to hear people when they talk, and go to slumber parties, and I won’t be afraid to leave my mom. When I’m solved I’ll be able to stay an entire weekend at my dad’s without making my mom rescue me. Then I can have a life just like everyone else.
I don’t know how long it will take, or what’s going to happen. My mom didn’t tell me that part. I just know that soon, maybe even in ten minutes, I’ll be cured, the way I was those few days after camp, but this time it will last forever. My excitement feels like Christmas on the inside of me. Even if it’s two shots in the arm, I’m going to be brave. Even if it’s medicine that tastes like the Son of Sam’s diarrhea, I’ll drink it. There’s no examining table in her office, no scale or even a table with medical supplies. That’s when I realize that Dr. Rivka doesn’t have stethoscope ponytails hanging down either side of her like my pediatrician, Dr. Fine.
“Take a seat there, Amanda.” She points to a low, white table.
I sit as she unzips a soft leather briefcase with gold-embossed initials that say “WAIS-R,” which are not the initials for Rivka Golod. Strange markings cling to the dry-erase board, and a tang of worry zippers through me. How can a person who isn’t careful enough to wipe all the letters off a board find and erase all the wrong things in me? She can’t find what she’s looking for and starts emptying the briefcase onto the table. Behind her, I notice a long wooden table lined with different dolls. On the table now, she’s stacked thin navy blue boxes, a straight ruler, pencils, scrap paper, a stopwatch, and a cardboard cutout of a little boy. She settles into a chair across from me. One leg over the other, glasses on, and then she’s still, staring at me. I don’t know why she isn’t saying anything. Am I supposed to say something? Should I ask her how she is? A fever of sweat breaks out on me as I realize I’m supposed to know what to do, and I don’t. The longer I’m quiet, the more uncomfortable she’ll get, and soon waves of sweat will break on her, and she won’t know what the terrible feeling inside her means, or how to get rid of it. But I’ll know. The feeling is that she’s embarrassed for me that I don’t know something I’m supposed to know. She takes a deep, loud breath, and after she exhales she leans forward.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
Soda bubbles boil and fizz in my belly. How can I be ready? Ready for what? But she is waiting for an answer, so I make a tiny nod. My insides begin to burn as a very skinny crack splits me down the middle, peels me apart like a fingernail separating two stuck pages, making two me’s. One me doesn’t know what to be ready for; the other me pretends she does.
“Very well. I am going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you to answer them as best you can. All right?”
I nod. Leaving Mom, going to school, sleeping over anywhere, nighttime, bedtime, going to my dad’s, going on class trips, leaving New York, when my mom goes out to dinner or on vacation, getting a brain tumor, dying of cancer…Why didn’t I write all my worries down? She can’t fix ones I can’t remember. I don’t see a needle, which is good. Maybe she’ll just say magic potion words, wand a stick over my head, and poof, I’ll be normal! She opens one of the books and turns over a Boggle timer.
“Are you a little boy or a little girl?”
Surprise knocks everything out of my brain, numbing my face. Does she not know the answer or does she think I don’t know the answer? Could she be mistaking me for someone else? Should I tell her she’s made a mistake? If I say nothing, then when Dr. Rivka realizes for herself she’s been giving the wrong person a test, she’ll wonder what’s wrong with me because I didn’t correct her. But if I humiliate her, she’ll never fi
x me. What should I do? She looks at the sand timer. Oh no, she’s timing me!
“A girl,” I say.
“How many days are in a week?”
This is a school question. I’m not here for school questions; I’m here for worry questions. Did she forget that she’s supposed to take my worries out? Did my mom forget to tell her to fix me?
“Seven?” I ask. Oh no, it might be five! Maybe she’s not counting weekends!
“How many seconds in a minute?”
Wait, was seven right? She looks at the sand timer. Allegra’s time game flashes in my head.
“Sixty!” I say.
“How many minutes in an hour?”
How many questions like this is she going to ask me? Why is she asking me school questions, from way back in first grade? My mom is going to be “absolutely furious” when she finds out that Dr. Rivka did not do her job. My mom does not like when people make mistakes, which is why I try hard never ever to make a mistake. That’s why I don’t put away the dishes, or help with dinner—because I never cut the carrots the exact way she showed me. She gets very frustrated because now she has to cut them herself. I can’t do anything right. I want to do only right things. Sometimes even when I wait until I am positive I know how to do something, my mom says I did it wrong.
“Sixty?”
“What is a month?”
This is the most terrible appointment I’ve ever had in my life. This is not why I’m here. She should be draining out all my blood and giving me new, better blood, listening to my chest and giving me vomit potion to drink. She’s supposed to be fixing the feelings part of me, not the school part.
“A month? A month is like February or March.”
These questions are sounding like she thinks I’m dumb.
“What is a year?”
Does she think I’m dumb? Is that my problem?
“Do you want me to repeat the question?” Dr. Rivka asks.
“A year is like a stretched-out month. A year is a very long time.”
Does my mom? Did Zola? Do all my teachers? I am mortified. Embarrassed for myself that I didn’t know I was dumb until now.
“What time of day is p.m.?”
My butterflies turn on. I don’t want to think about the night.
“The time of p.m. is when you have to go to bed.”
“What time of day is a.m.?”
“That is when you have to leave your mom and go to school.”
I don’t want to know who thinks I’m dumb. Imogen? Did Melissa? Is that why I couldn’t tell time? I thought my worries were covering up my brain, but maybe really it was dumbness that was getting in my way.
“Are you normal or a reptile?” Dr. Rivka asks.
I’m not normal. This is why she’s asking me this question. People don’t think I’m normal. I’m dumb and abnormal. If I say I’m normal, will she laugh, slap her knee, and say, “No you’re not, you fucking idiot!”
“Do you need me to repeat the question?”
“I…I…Am I normal?” I ask, floating away so that only the body of me hears her answer.
She smiles and stifles a little laugh. My blood burns around my bones.
“No, mammal. A mammal or a reptile?” she says.
Now, instead of relieved, I’m embarrassed for mishearing her. “Oh,” I tell my laces. I feel myself lift because I know we learned this at school, but now I can’t remember what each one means because I’m so mortified and also there is too much pressure in my brain and now all I’m worried about is the pressure and making a mistake in hearing her, and hoping my body is not going to die in front of her if I make another mistake.
“Am I a mammal?” I ask.
“Let’s move on,” she says.
Am I a mammal?
The questions keep coming, and she never tells me the answer or says yes or no; she just keeps holding up cards and pulling out puzzles and mazes and asking questions. Here is the first card. Can you tell me what is wrong with this picture? I can’t believe I’m so dumb that all this time I didn’t even realize it.
I look at the clock and feel a flump of dread and fear.
“What about this one?”
How is it still 3:55?
Time is changing outside and soon the sky will grow older and darken with age, but in here with Dr. Rivka, time stands still.
“All right. Are you ready to try something new?”
I nod. Does everyone know I’m dumb, or is it just the adults?
Out the window the sky is being blinded by night and I swell with early-day darkness, that terrible late-afternoon longing. The questions come at me, one after another. What do you do with a stamp? Why do people have stoves? What do thirsty people do? Why should people take baths? The questions melt into one another, word-lava oozing without sense. Why do doctors and nurses give people shots but don’t read the newspaper about traffic signs for farmers not needed in cities who picks up the garbage at school for fire drills why people spell trouble the dictionary reason for one paper or public education for free houses in the country?
I am homesick at school, and even when I am home I ache for my mom, missing her terribly even when she’s right there. I know this isn’t normal. A person can’t miss what’s there. Something is very wrong with me. What if Dr. Rivka never lets me go home? What if Margie got fed up waiting and left? What if she went outside and got lost and now she’s dead? My worries tangle like paper dolls.
“Listen carefully,” Dr. Rivka says, “and say exactly what I say.”
I lean toward her so that I can hear even the pauses between letters. I worry I won’t hear her, even though she’s not far from me. What if my ears break off when I need them?
“The string on my kite is broken.”
“The string on my kite is broken,” I say.
“Big horse,” she says.
“Big horse,” I say.
Go to the store. See the funny clown. The circus came to town. I am a mother. These are my children. Dr. Rivka closes the book, looks down at the thin boxes and scrap paper, and when she does that, I know she cannot cure me.
“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” she says. “I’ll see you next weekend.”
Next weekend? I have to do this again? How many tests like this do I have to take? Dr. Rivka stands and walks to the door. Maybe next weekend comes the fixing part. Maybe this was just the appetizer of things. Or maybe there is no fixing me.
Normal-Sized
Like real superheroes, the girls in my class are turning into women overnight. We’re in sixth grade now, and everyone except Imogen and me is getting their puberty. Dr. Rivka couldn’t fix me. I saw her for four entire weekends in a row, and then I never saw her again. My mom didn’t say a word to me about it, so I know it’s true that I’m too broken to fix. Only I don’t know what part of me is the broken thing; maybe it’s all of me. What I do know is that I’m an incurable jinx who exists outside time and space, which explains why I’m not growing out of my tomboy phase and still can’t figure out how to care about Jordache jeans, Secret deodorant, shopping, halter tops, or wearing lip gloss. During recess the girls won’t play sports anymore. Instead, they sit on the bench braiding each other’s hair. Now it’s just the boys and me. Omar James says I’m talented at sports, so I show off for him.
Imogen and I keep a journal charting the growth of our breasts. After school she comes over and we lift our shirts and I measure myself, then her, record the numbers, and then next to the numbers draw the levels of bump that are there, which in our case is none. Maybe she won’t get boobs either because she’s deaf. But unlike me, she has hope. Nuar says that people who are tall get their puberty first. Also people who are fat. I’m not either of those things, but maybe when I’m taller. Only I’m not getting any taller. What if I never get my puberty? I’ll have to sit on the sidelines of life forever.
But it’s happening to my friends, and they’ve turned into people who wear flowered spaghetti-strap summer dresses and hair ba
rrettes, which is not who I am. Kara’s at a new school, and it’s fancy. There, they get to wear uniforms, which means everyone matches and no one is wrong. I want to be with her, but she says it’s not a good school for me; that it’s really hard, and there’s a lot of pressure and I wouldn’t like it. It takes her four hours to do all her homework; sometimes she cries. But if I got to wear a uniform, none of that would matter. Maybe nothing would bother me ever again. Besides, I do my homework really fast. Sometimes I don’t even do it at all, and my mom writes a note saying why I couldn’t do my homework. Other times, when it’s just too hard, and I’m crying and hyperventilating, she just does the homework for me. I have the best mom.
People are having more slumber parties, and because I am too afraid to sleep over, I’m getting left out of more things, even with Imogen, who isn’t afraid to sleep over. My siblings ignore me, so I’m left out at home, too. Sometimes Vito cheers me up by making me fun drinks, which is why I sometimes go in there after school. Vito wasn’t there a few weeks ago, but Tony was. He said he had a surprise for me in the back and I followed him, but then he just sat down.
“It’s a pony ride,” he said, slapping his knee.
A pony ride is not a surprise, it’s a dumb thing uncles do. But you have to do what adults say, so I climbed on his knee, which he jumped up and down. The surprise happened when he put his hand down my pants, trembled, and something made my lower back sticky and wet. He pushed me off him and yelled, “Look what you made me do.” I went home and changed my clothes and tried to forget.
Now when we go across the street to eat at Joe’s Restaurant, if Tony is our waiter I fall asleep at the table. Everyone loves it there, and I don’t want to ruin it by telling. Also, I didn’t make him do it, but I know no one will believe me because everyone says I’m overdramatic.
Most days I come home from school crying.
“No one talks to me anymore,” I tell my mom.
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because I’m never at the sleepovers!”
