Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

by Dusti Bowling

  Mom smiled. “Why don’t you blog about soccer? That reminds me—did you find out when tryouts are?”

  “Not until spring, unfortunately. I kind of hoped they would have soccer in the fall.”

  “That stinks,” Mom said. “Well, you and Dad will just have to keep practicing together until then.” Dad had already set up the new goal in the rodeo arena, and we had gone out there together early one morning before the sun could cook us. Despite the ball getting all dusty while we played, it had been kind of fun.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, we will.” Dad had enrolled me in soccer when I was in second grade. Prior to that, our attempts at several “dad” activities had mostly ended in failure, or worse, disaster. The time he tried to teach me how to fish immediately comes to mind—think fishing hooks in toes and ears and everywhere else except a fish’s mouth. Then there’s the time he took me camping. The whole trip stunk—no showers, no soft mattress, smelly campfire, no TV. I know you were thinking I was going to say it stunk for some reason that had to do with me not having arms. Nope. It stunk because I hate camping.

  When Dad decided he just had to teach me a sport or he would die from never having any sort of bonding activity with me beyond watching old episodes of The Lone Ranger and eating chili together, soccer was the obvious choice. I have had nightmares about trying out for other sports at school—usually they involve people throwing various balls at me (footballs, baseballs, basketballs, take your pick) and those balls hitting me in the head or face while everyone in school watches. Not pretty. Soccer, though—that’s a sport I can manage.

  Mom let out a big sigh. “Now I’ve got to get over to that stupid gold mine and talk to Bob.” She said his name with a sneer. “You know he actually smacked a gold pan out of a four-year-old’s hand today because he kept picking the quartz out instead of the gold. Dad had to give the whole family free ice cream and T-shirts.” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

  “He’s pretty awful,” I said. “Any day now I expect he’ll hit a toddler over the head with one of those pans, and then you’ll have to give the family a whole lot more than ice cream and T-shirts.”

  Her eyes grew huge with alarm like I was Madame Myrtle and had just foretold the actual future. I giggled as she stormed out of my room, having sufficiently worked herself up to lay into Bob, mumbling something about how he better get his butt in line or she’d be putting her foot in it. I was happy Mom was working with Dad at the park. She seemed to enjoy it, and it would give her something to do while I was at school during the day.

  I turned and stared at the screen. I typed my first blog post.

  School sucks and it’s hotter outside than the dishwasher’s steam cycle. But much less steamy. And it doesn’t smell like soap. At least my arms aren’t hot, though. Ha-ha. Yeah, that’s because I don’t have any.

  I posted it and nodded at the screen with satisfaction. Then I sat on my bed and munched on the carrots while I worked on my homework. My teachers had all been nice enough, but I didn’t want them giving me special treatment. I could tell they all wanted to. The worst had been when Mr. Jeffries, my art teacher, had asked the class if someone would pair up with me to help me get my paints ready. I couldn’t have felt more put on the spot than if he had asked me to tap dance while balancing the paints on my head. I told him I didn’t need help and could get my paints ready myself.

  The whole class had watched me the entire time, trying to pretend they weren’t watching, as I had collected my supplies and arranged them at my workspace. It took me at least twice as long as most people to do things like this, and yet I still managed to be the very first person in the room to have all my paints ready. I guess the other kids had been too busy observing. I tried not to let it get to me. I reminded myself throughout the day that curiosity was normal; I shouldn’t let it bother me.

  I missed my friends back home. No one ever treated me like I was different in Kansas. Of course I’d had to deal with the usual stares when I’d go out places, but never at school. I especially missed Emily. I wished we were sitting on my bed together, working on our homework, listening to some terrible pop song Emily loved, giggling about something stupid. But it was just me.

  I sighed as I wrote out a math problem, nimbly holding the pencil between my toes. I loved math. After all, it was just problem-solving. From the time I was little, my parents had trained me to be an extreme problem-solver—like a problem-solving ninja. Even when it took me an hour to get a bathing suit on once when I was eight, they still hadn’t done it for me. And I never had trouble getting my bathing suit on again. They were determined I would grow up to be a totally self-sufficient, problem-solving expert. I only wished I could solve the problem of how to make friends in a sea of kids who thought I was a freak.

  The next day at lunchtime, I headed to the bathroom again to wash my feet. But this time, when I finished, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I thought about the other kids watching me while I ate, and my stomach cramped up painfully like it had the day before.

  I locked myself in the handicapped stall and sat down. I pulled out my lunch and began eating, careful not to put my bare foot on the floor or drop my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which would pretty much put an end to eating that day.

  I always ate peanut butter and jelly at school. That’s because peanut butter and jelly sticks together nicely. A turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and cheese would be a disaster for me. I’d seen people who couldn’t even eat turkey sandwiches with their hands without stuff falling out all over the place. I imagined trying to eat a sandwich like that in the bathroom, everything ending up on the gross floor except a single slice of mayonnaise-y bread I still managed to hold in my toes. I giggled at the thought.

  As I munched on a carrot, I heard a couple of girls enter the bathroom. They were talking about some cute boy who had looked at one of them. I rolled my eyes and continued crunching on my carrot, hopeful it wasn’t as loud to them as it was to me. A ton of boys had looked at me. Heck, boys were looking at me all the time, but I didn’t think this was how the boy had looked at this girl.

  When the bathroom was finally quiet and the girls had obviously left, I packed up my stuff and headed to class.

  Art went a little better that day. Mr. Jeffries had apparently learned his lesson and didn’t make any more pleas for help on my behalf.

  The day after that, I couldn’t bring myself to eat in the bathroom stall again. Besides the fact that it was flat-out gross, it was also depressing. Instead, I told myself to stop being such a coward, and I ignored my cramping stomach. I sat in the same secluded spot I had sat reading on my first day, and I ate my lunch, hoping no one would notice me. Some kids did pass by and sneak glances at me, but I tried not to pay any attention to them or to my thumping heart. At one point, a group of three girls walked up to me as I took a bite of my string cheese, carefully held between two toes. I dropped it on my napkin, not wanting them to see me eat it like that. I smiled nervously at the girls.

  “Um, hi,” one of the girls said. She had on a cute flowery tank top with spaghetti straps, and once again I felt the sting of being too afraid to wear such a thing.

  “Hi,” I said. “How are you?” I hoped desperately I didn’t have any food on my face because I wasn’t about to wipe my mouth with my foot or shoulder.

  “We’re good,” another girl said. She was also very stylish, dressed in a cute green tank top and jean shorts. “How are you?”

  “Good,” I said, hoping the girls weren’t just here out of curiosity. I scolded myself for assuming that was all that interested them. Maybe they were going to ask me to come sit with them so I didn’t have to eat lunch alone.

  “Is it okay . . . um, is it okay if we ask you what happened to your arms?” flowery-tank-top girl asked.

  Yep, curiosity. I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to tell them my arms were chopped off in a guillotine or something like that. And these girls seemed far too nervous. I would probably terrify them.
Instead, I recited, “I have an extremely rare genetic disorder that causes malformation of the limbs.”

  The girls looked alarmed. “Is it contagious?” green-tank-top girl asked.

  I gazed at the girl, searching her face to see if she was serious. I imagined passing my armlessness on to other people, their fully grown arms shrinking and shriveling and getting sucked up into their shoulders with a terrible slurping sound after I touched them. I slowly shook my head and spoke carefully so she would understand. “No, it’s genetic. That means you have to be born with it.”

  The girls’ faces all relaxed as flowery-tank-top girl said, “Oh, that’s good. It was nice meeting you.” I watched them walk away.

  I looked down at my string cheese. The girls hadn’t met me at all. They hadn’t even asked me my name. No, what they had met were my missing arms. It was all they had seen and all that had interested them. And not just out of curiosity but because they were afraid—afraid they could catch it from me.

  I didn’t feel hungry anymore. I packed up the rest of my lunch, stuck it in my bag, and waited for the bell to ring.

  Behind Stagecoach Pass, at the center of the dirt trail where Billy and Fred lug around an endless stream of screaming children, stands a mountain. It’s a tiny mountain. Well, maybe mountain is too generous a word for it. It’s more of a hill—a mighty hill that desperately wants to be a mountain, but a hill nonetheless.

  I like to walk down Main Street in the early evening as the air starts to cool and the sky turns colors I’ve never seen before. I stop for a quick visit with Spaghetti, the poor mutant llama—Spaghetti, who understands how it feels to be ostracized by the other kids.

  If no one is in the soda shop, Henry might be sitting outside on the front porch in one of the old rocking chairs. He always waves at me and says, “Good evening, little Aven.”

  I pretend to be captivated by something way off in the distance as I pass by Bob at the gold mine, careful not to make eye contact with him.

  Though a trail winds around the hill, no trail goes up the hill, so I navigate around cactuses that look like ping-pong paddles and giant troll-doll hair to get to the top, watching the ground for scorpions and rattlesnakes. The soles of my shoes pick up lots of little cactus needles as I walk, and mom has to dig them out with tweezers when I get home.

  At the top of the hill stands an enormous saguaro cactus. It’s probably as tall as about ten of me standing one on top of the other. It has seven impressive arms reaching up to the colorful evening sky.

  Show-off.

  Dad says the saguaro is likely over two hundred years old (he had to Google saguaros to find that out). I like to sit on the hard desert dirt and think of all the things that have happened in this saguaro’s life—it stood here when Stagecoach Pass was built sixty years ago and when Arizona became a state over a hundred years ago. It stood here as the Civil War raged on the other side of the country, when women were finally granted the right to vote, and when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech. Billions of people have been born and have died in its lifetime. And, of course, it stood here on the day I was born and will likely be standing on the day I die.

  I am an entirely insignificant event in the life of this cactus. I try to remember that as the sky darkens and the lights of Scottsdale and Phoenix brighten the earth—millions of lights for millions of people. And then there’s just me, sitting in the dirt on a mighty hill being circled by a poor old donkey and a tired camel.

  So, after all, did it really matter that the kids at school didn’t talk to me? That they probably wished I wasn’t there making them feel uncomfortable? That they were afraid of me?

  It shouldn’t have. I didn’t want it to. But it did.

  I decided to spend my next lunch period in the library. I knew I could get there two different ways: the busy route, which went right past the cafeteria, and the quiet route, which went the long way around the office. I opted for the longer, quieter route—anything to avoid more stares.

  As I rounded the corner, I nearly tripped over a boy sitting on the sidewalk up against the wall. I glanced down. He was eating his lunch all by himself. I looked away and mumbled, “Sorry,” as I hurried toward the library.

  As I walked away, I heard him say softly behind me, “That’s okay.”

  I entered the library and set my bag down on a table. I glanced around—I only saw one other student and a couple of librarians. Most kids probably liked to use their lunch period to, I don’t know, eat lunch and socialize and all that.

  I felt a pang of loneliness as I scanned a row of books, searching for an exciting adventure story to take me away. I pulled out a couple books with my foot and carried them between my chin and shoulder to the table. I carefully set them down as quietly as I could.

  I sat down and opened Journey to the Center of the Earth. Back home in Kansas, my great-grandma had gotten me an e-reader for Christmas. That e-reader was like a revelation for me. No more cumbersome pages; I could just slide my toe effortlessly across the screen to turn the page. But I still liked to pick up paper books from time to time because I didn’t want to get out of page-turning practice. After all, I couldn’t get all my schoolbooks on my e-reader.

  Before I had finished the first page of my book, I heard a dog barking. I looked around, wondering why a dog would be in the library. I didn’t see one anywhere, but I did see a boy watching me from the far side of the room. He looked away when our eyes met. I felt my cheeks grow hot as I turned my attention back to my book. He was probably staring out of curiosity like everyone else.

  I heard another bark. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the boy. I glanced that way. I still didn’t see any dog, but then the oddest thing happened: the boy barked at me. I didn’t know whether to make eye contact with him or look away. I didn’t know if something was wrong with him, like he was insane and could attack me at any moment, or if he was making fun of me in some completely bizarre way.

  I decided to go back to my book. I excelled at ignoring people. I read for a couple of minutes before he barked again. Maybe I wasn’t so good at ignoring people after all. I got up from my seat and walked toward him. He stared down at his book as I came closer. When I was finally standing in front of him, he slowly raised his eyes to my face, his lightly freckled cheeks blazing red, much like mine. “I’m sorry,” I said slowly, “but are you . . . barking at me?”

  I hadn’t thought the guy’s cheeks could get any redder, but they did. “Yeah,” he stammered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Oh, no.” He barked again. “I can’t help it. I have Tourette syndrome.”

  I stared at him. “You have what?”

  “Tourette syndrome,” he repeated.

  “What’s that?”

  The boy cleared his throat, barked and then said, “Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary motor or oral tics.” He tugged on his messy, light brown hair in a nervous way.

  I couldn’t believe it—he had just recited his well-rehearsed explanation of his disability like I had done a hundred times before.

  The boy looked from my face down to my non-arm area and exclaimed, “Whoa! You don’t have any arms,” in a Were you aware of this fact? sort of way.

  His response to my missing arms was so direct, I had to smile. I glanced down and shrieked, causing him to jump a little. “Oh my gosh! I knew I was forgetting something today.”

  He sat there expressionless for a little while like he didn’t know what to make of my bad joke. “How did you lose your arms?” he finally asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m always misplacing stuff. Probably left them in the fridge when I got the milk out this morning. Really, they could be anywhere.”

  He grinned, then barked. “Were they amputated for some reason?” Usually people pretended they didn’t notice my missing arms at all or acted all weird about it like those girls at lunch yesterday. It was a relief to have someone
be so honest about the thoughts in his head.

  I sat down at the table and leaned in close to him. He did not lean away from me. Instead, he leaned closer. “Have you ever been to the circus?” I asked before beginning my newest story—one I hadn’t gotten to try out yet.

  “No.”

  “Well,” I said, “I used to be a trapeze artist. You know what that is, right?”

  “Don’t they, like, hang from ropes and stuff? Like acrobats or something?”

  “Oh, they do a lot more than that. They do all kinds of tricks—like swinging from the ropes and doing flips in the air before grabbing another rope. They often work in pairs with one person holding the other person and swinging them up in the air or catching them after they’ve done a flip. Supercool stuff like that.”

  “Awesome.” He was clearly impressed. “How did you do that with no arms, though? Did you, like, use your legs? Like a monkey?”

  “No, I used the arms I used to have.”

  His light hazel eyes grew wide. “Used to have?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. You see, my partner and I were trying out this new routine. I was going to flip three times in the air before he caught me by the arms. But the speed I needed to do such an amazing stunt was just too much. When he caught me . . . ” I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply for drama. “When he caught me, my shoulder sockets came loose and my arms tore right off.”

  He gaped at me. “What?”

  “It was awful,” I went on. “Him just hanging up there holding some arms, blood showering the screaming audience. It was all over the news. Didn’t you see it?”

  We continued staring at each other, like we were in a contest to see who would blink first. Finally he grinned a little. Then a lot. Then he started laughing. “You’re totally joking,” he said and laughed even louder. I was happy he found my story funny.

  “Keep it down, Conner,” a librarian said as she walked by with a stack of books. “This is still a library.”