Some Things That Stay Read online

  “Me,” I say, mostly because if I don’t sit down, I’ll fall.

  “Okay.” She looks at me funny. “What happened to you?” she asks.

  “I tried to fly,” I say.

  “Well, that would do it,” she says. Carefully she finds a place where there is no iodine or scraped skin to tie on the rubber band, so it doesn’t hurt at first, but by the time she carries the needle over I think my veins will burst. The needle stings more than I expect and I let out a little ohhh, but then it’s over. She explains to me all over again about the TB skin test, shoots me with the little gun, then washes her hands in the sink.

  “And now you, young man,” she says to Robert. He darts behind my father.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” His voice is high-pitched and somehow ghostly.

  “But your sisters have been so brave. I know you can too.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “It’s a very important test,” she says. “And very quick. Just come on over and sit down and it will be over in a flash.”

  “No.”

  “Can you help me?” the nurse asks my father.

  He looks around the room as if she might be talking to someone else. “What?” he says.

  “If we can’t talk your son into doing this voluntarily, we will have to call someone in to hold him down.”

  “Now, Robert …” my father says, turning his head to where Robert hides behind him.

  “No, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

  My father tries to talk him into it several more times. He grabs him but Robert kicks him in the shin. In the end, two more nurses are called in and they, and my father, hold Robert down. He screams his head off, the sound echoing off the tile floor and puke-green walls. My father bats me on the back of my head when I stick my tongue out at Robert.

  Next, we need X rays.

  “What’s that?” Robert howls.

  “Like in the H-bomb,” I say. “X rays. Radiation. Get the picture?”

  Robert gasps.

  “Oh, heavens,” the heavy nurse says. “They don’t hurt at all.” She looks at me sharply, as if I deserve all the scrapes and bruises I have. She kneels down and takes Robert’s hand. “I don’t know why your sister said that. I can’t imagine she would want to scare you, especially since this is such a serious business, with your mother sick and all. Now you listen to me, Robert. It’s just like taking a picture, except you have to hold very still, that’s the only difference. But I’ll tell you what. We’ll have your sister go first, your older sister, and you can watch through a window. Okay?”

  He likes this idea and nods. The nurse completely ignores me as she asks us to follow her. She keeps Robert’s hand in hers. My father trails behind.

  I have never had an X ray. I was exaggerating when I said they are like an H-bomb, but not by much. Every school I’ve been in has had stern talks about fallout and radiation. Radiation will make your hair fall out, your skin pucker up and die. I am not looking forward to this.

  I take off my clothes and put on a light-blue hospital gown, open in the back. They have let me keep on my underwear. Holding the gown closed behind me as best I can, I’m led into a large dark room with a bunch of huge machines. The same nurse leads me to a large black pole that runs from the floor to the ceiling. There is a flat square of black metal attached to it, about two feet square. The nurse slides it down a few inches then looks at me, sizing me up.

  “This is our chest X-ray unit, and I want you to pay close attention. Stand here.” She maneuvers me like I’m a toy truck she’s wheeling around, until I’m flat up against the thick cold whatever-it-is, my breasts pressed against it like flattened Silly Putty. She places my chin on a curved rubber rest that’s on top of the X-ray unit, then she raises the whole thing by adjusting the pole on the side. I go up on my toes. “Too high,” she says, then lowers it a millimeter. “Put your hands on your hips,” she says. No “please” for me. She grabs my elbows and pulls them back, so I’m all on one flat plane, then puts her hands on my shoulders and shifts me around for a minute, her own private mannequin. Directly behind me is this thick black tube, coming down from the ceiling. I turn to look at it, and the nurse, with a slight rolling of her eyes, cups my head in her hands, turns me around, and snuggles my chin back into the chin rest. “Please don’t move.” I get a “please” this time, but it’s like my father using my whole name. It’s not meant as a kindness.

  “Be very still now. Don’t move. When I tell you to, you will take a deep breath, blow it out, then take another deep breath and hold it until I tell you to let it out. Do you understand?” I nod. I’m willing to bet she’s going to make me hold my breath longer than most people.

  Somewhere in this hospital is my mother, lying down on crisp white sheets, someone cooking for her, bringing her magazines. It is my mother’s fault I’m here now with this sadistic nurse. And all this time Megan is playing her little angel role, with her stupid suitcase by her feet. I want to throw that suitcase out the window. Then Megan, then Robert, and then my father.

  The nurse leaves the room. Through a speaker in the wall I hear her tinny voice say, “Take a deep breath, blow it out, now another deep breath and hold it.” I am expecting a flash of bright light. I am expecting to blow up. Even though I can’t see my family because the nurse has turned me away from the thick glass window that separates us, I know they are watching me. I think of screaming out in great agony, grabbing my chest, and falling to the floor. I can imagine the look of horror on my brother’s face. I can imagine how mad I could get that nurse. But then I hear her say “Breathe,” and the chance is gone.

  Robert and Megan get their X rays taken. No one blows up. Our nurse leads each of us into separate rooms, where we will be examined by a doctor. They don’t test my father. He went through all this yesterday, he just neglected to tell us until now. He goes in a room with Megan.

  The doctor asks me a million questions.

  “Do you cough at night?”

  “No.”

  “Good, very good. Do you sleep well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, very good. Do you eat well? Have a good appetite?”

  “Yes.

  “Good, very good. Do you tire easily?”

  “No.

  “Good, very good …” This goes on for a long time. I feel like a winning contestant on Twenty-one, because I know all the right answers. Finally he looks in my mouth, my nose, and my ears, thumps me all over with a rubber hammer, and listens to my chest.

  “You seem fine to me, but we have to look at those X rays before you go. So you just wait here.”

  I wonder if my mother sat in this room. I wonder if she knew just by the thumps on her back that she would never get out of here. I wonder if she knew her answers to the questions were the wrong ones, if she even thought about lying. I wonder if she began to miss us from the moment that he closed the door and told her to wait.

  I say a little prayer. God, please don’t let me be sick. I say it like it’s just a small favor, casually, so He doesn’t think I’m asking for a lot. I hope He’s in a good mood, that Jesus didn’t do anything to get Him angry, like I did to my dad. I start thinking how tough it must be to be God’s son. You couldn’t get away with anything. A nurse knocks and sticks her head in. “Would you like a magazine?”

  Finally, it’s all over. We are declared fine. The bad news is that we have to get a shot anyway, just in case we have been very recently infected.

  Megan won’t let them give her a shot. She says she won’t leave either. She crosses her arms, sits on the floor next to her suitcase, and closes her eyes. They have to call in one of the larger nurses that held down my brother to give her the shot.

  My brother just sticks out his arm. He has survived the X ray and now feels indestructible. There is an ear-piercing shriek when the needle goes in. I’d snicker, but my father is looking at me with one of those looks that says Don’t you dare.

  But Megan still won’t move.


  His jaw clamped shut, my father picks her up off the floor. Her feet stay crossed beneath her, so it’s very hard for him to get her out the door. Robert carries her suitcase. I open the doors. The nurses wave good-bye to us. We are to come back in three days for another booster shot and to have our skin tests read. I’m sure they are looking forward to seeing us again.

  It’s not easy getting Megan in the car. My father has to turn her sideways and shove. “Please,” he says. “Please …” He doesn’t finish. Whatever it is that he wants, he gives up before he can even ask, knowing it’s more than he can expect.

  That night, as the sun begins to set, during the time we would have, as a family, walked up the hill, my father holds a frying pan, looking at it intently, as if trying to imagine food inside its hollow shape.

  I grab the pan. “Go paint something,” I say. “Go paint something pretty.” His head snaps up and his eyes blaze, like the eyes of the bull; they have a liquid hate. For a moment I am very afraid of him, and then he shakes it off, blinks, and he is just my father again, lost and guilty. “It’s not my fault,” he says.

  He walks into the living room and stands in front of the naked picture of my mother. “It’s not my fault,” he says to the picture.

  But we all feel guilty, and that, as much as my mother’s absence, is what’s making us tense. So we stay away from each other. My father should have known. We should have said something. And it’s my mother’s fault as well. She should have asked for help earlier. I think maybe she got so tired of moving around she found her own way of staying by leaving us.

  I break eggs, grate cheese, chop a green pepper, mix it together, then cut up an onion, which nobody likes but me. My eyes burn. I picture my mother coming in the kitchen, seeing my tears, and trying to comfort me. Then I will tell her I’m not really crying, it’s just the onion.

  No one likes the eggs. They all complain about the onion. I tell them they can cook for themselves from now on and I open the door to call Kip inside. He looks hesitant, but a plate of eggs does the trick. He doesn’t mind the onions. Afterwards, I let him stay inside. He curls up in a corner of the living room, his tail thumping lightly against the wood floor. The house sounds like it has a heartbeat.

  In the morning, Helen comes to our door and knocks. I open up the screen, but she doesn’t come in, so I keep it propped open with my body. She’s holding a pie, a pretty pie with crimped edges and symmetric slashes in the crust to let the steam out. None of the top crust has separated from the bottom. My mother has never been able to do this, although I know she’s tried.

  “It’s apple,” Helen says. She stands on the top step. Brenda and Rusty stand a few yards back, on the grass. Robert comes up behind me and just watches. Megan is in her room, sulking, and won’t come out. My father has walked up to the top of the hill to paint. My mother is gone. No one moves. I am suddenly wary of the way Brenda and Rusty stand so far away, of the fact that Helen doesn’t come in. I don’t want to accept this pie. I have a choice. The pie or the pretense that my mother will walk into this room. There is still the chance that the last two days have been a bad dream. The pie in Helen’s hands says it’s no dream. It says, Sorry about your mother. I can smell it.

  No one says a word. We all look at the pie because it is easier to look at the pie than at each other. No one would understand it if I told Helen to take the pie back.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Come on in.”

  Helen looks down at her feet, then turns slightly and looks back toward her house. Then she looks at me. Then back at her feet. She is sometimes slow in answering, like my father, but there is something more going on. I wait.

  “We can’t,” she says. “Mother and Father think we should stay out of this house. Because of germs. Outside is okay, though.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Your house is bad luck!” Brenda shouts. “I wouldn’t go in if you paid me.”

  “Brenda!” Helen says. “That’s not true!”

  But it might be. It’s worth thinking about. But I can’t let her say that. “The house is not bad luck. That’s stupid!”

  “Well, I ain’t going in it ever again,” says Brenda, her hands on her hips.

  “No one’s asking you to,” I say.

  Helen moves the pie closer to my hands. “It’s warm right now. Just right for eating.”

  “Fine, we’ll have it for breakfast.” I take the pie from Helen. It’s a very heavy pie. “Thanks.” I go inside, leaving her on the porch. I watch as they walk off across the road.

  “A pie for breakfast!” Robert says. “Oh boy!”

  He thinks we’ve won something.

  Eight

  Robert is doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a field of orange poppies, and he spends his days arched over the dining room table. He says when he finishes it, our mother will come home. I saw Kip eat a puzzle piece that fell on the floor. When he licked it, the puzzle piece stuck to the surface of his wide wet tongue and then disappeared into his mouth. Kip looked surprised when he began to chew, but he didn’t spit it out.

  It’s hot. There is a slow warm breeze like a dog’s breath. I go outside.

  “Hey! Tamara!” I hear from across the road. Rusty waves me over. I start to cross the road but I have forgotten I’m barefoot and when my feet hit the melted hot asphalt I yell out. “Oh shit!” I turn and jump back to our grass, now facing my father, who has just come around the house.

  “Come here,” he says. The wrinkles on his forehead deepen. Glancing behind me I see Rusty disappear behind his house.

  “You can’t talk like that, Tamara. I won’t allow it.”

  “You and who else?” I say, shocked at the words that come out of my mouth. My father’s face goes limp, as if it has just forgotten its own shape. His lips move about, looking for a word, a reaction, something significant to say. Then his mouth snaps shut and he just stands there, his nostrils flaring in and out. He looks at me closely, squinting, as if he is trying to figure out who I am.

  I squirm under that look. I want him to stop looking at me that way. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Finally he nods. “Why don’t you go to your room now. Write a letter to your mother. Ask her how she’s feeling. Tell her what you’re doing with your time.”

  No, I think. “Fine,” I say. “But you can’t read it. It’s private.” I shove my hands in my pockets, tight fists against the fabric.

  “All right,” he says. “I’m going to talk to her tonight on the phone, before they move her. I won’t waste her time with reports of your language, or your attitude. Besides, I’m sure this is only temporary, a reaction to too much too fast. If you feel the need to let off steam, go back by the pond and scream your bloody lungs out. No one will hear you. It might even do some good. But no more profanity. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good then. Go write your mother.”

  An hour later I hand him an envelope with two sheets of paper inside. The envelope is sealed. The pages are blank.

  A hard rain pelts my window with a bright loud noise and a wail of sad wind. I think I will never sleep for the racket, but that thought is my last before the dream of God comes. He’s very angry at me, shaking a large knuckly fist. The sound in my dream is turned off, or there is static, like crinkling tinfoil, so I don’t hear what God says but I get the message anyway. “Write your mother, you heartless child, you despicable daughter. Write!”

  The dream, my room, and my heart explode in a shock of light and a crack of thunder that is so loud it rattles the glass in my window. A deep, earth-shaking crash follows. Then it is darker than black ink, darker than is possible, and there is only one explanation. I am dead. But I can hear the rain pounding on my window. I don’t think it rains in hell, or is this dark in heaven. I tell God I will write my mother right now if He will turn on a light.

  The whole outside lights up again, a light so bright I can see every detail in my room for a brief second, then it’s gone. B
ut I saw where my notebook lay, and the pen, and I understand. I start to write, in the dark, knowing it will be illegible in the morning. But only with my pen moving across the page do I feel safe.

  Megan and Robert yell. “What happened?” “Daddy!” “Mommy!” “Where are you?” “What happened to the lights?” I write. “Dear Mother, I am so sorry about …”

  In the morning, we find that the maple tree ten feet from our house has been split in two, half still standing, half lying on the lawn; not even a twig touches the house. Of course, God is not mad at the Burns. He just wanted to scare me. My letter to my mother is four pages long.

  My mother writes back.

  Dear Tamara,

  I was so happy to receive your letter today, especially after the confusion of opening your letter of yesterday. I understand how angry you are. There is no need for dramatics.

  I am not allowed to do much of anything, only lie in bed or sit in bed, but at least I don’t feel trapped inside, since the windows are large and always open. They are big believers in fresh air. It is absurd, of course, that they have taken me from where I got plenty of fresh air, but the nurses just smile and nod if I mention this fact. They treat us like children, not very bright children at that.

  They take my temperature every hour and give me two shots, twice a day, every day. Streptomycin and isoniazid. I must admit, I am a big coward about it. This is the price I must pay to be cured, so I grit my teeth and pretend I am somewhere else. The important fact is that these medicines are new, and now tuberculosis is curable, you must believe this. We are living in a modern age. I will get better and come home. Just tell your father not to move away until I do.

  It is a war, they say, a war against tuberculosis, and they will wipe out this horrible disease from the face of the earth by rounding up everyone who has it, now that there is a cure. I am a private in this war and must do as I’m told. I am also a prisoner. I miss you terribly, but I must do my part. If I came home, I could spread this to you (I am thrilled to hear you have passed the test), and you in turn would pass it on to your friends. The word tuberculosis sends shivers up my spine, since it is exactly this disease that stole my father from me. But I, and my fellow inmates, will be the last to suffer. When you are my age, tuberculosis will be all but forgotten.