by Adina Leschinsky Levine
I might have known what Mom could do to me because of that time she threw the mudpies down the rabbit hole. My sister Mary Ellen and I were in the backyard mixing dirt with water, sprinkling magic acorns on top. I was four and Mary Ellen was almost ten. I spoke my own language then, favoring m’s and z’s and v’s. I liked the way they buzzed my lips, leaving that faint taste of cinnamon. I steered clear of p’s and s’s with their sudden pops and whistles. Mary Ellen understood me. But no one else did.
We baked our mudpies inside the box from Mom’s new microwave. When they were done, I put on my mauve oven mitts and pulled out two paper cups oozing with red-black dirt. “Vizum?” I asked Mary Ellen.
“I’ll take the Sleeping Beauty Pie.” She pointed to the one on the left. “You eat it and you wake up looking fabulous. The Prince gives you a smooch, and off you go to happily ever after: the crown, the gown, the castle, the babies, the whole shebang.”
The whole shebang. I liked the sound of that. I held that pie next to my cheek and grunted my not-letting-go sound.
“Sorry, Valerie, but I called dibs first. Besides, you can’t be Sleeping Beauty with special needs. That’s not in the story.”
I hated those words Special Needs. Mom tossed them back and forth with doctors, friends, teachers. In line at the grocery store, she patted my head, called me her “special needs kid.” The checker looked at me like I was someone’s sick muskrat.
I thought about eating the other pie. It was full of blackbirds. I wanted to make them sing. I stuck my tongue deep into the cup. Mary Ellen yelled, “Val, no!”
Mom came running. “I can’t leave you two alone for five minutes! That’s all I’m asking. Five minutes.” She snatched the cups out of my mitts and tipped them into a hole in the ground. She grabbed my arm but I twisted away and knelt in the dirt.
I scrabbled with all my might to pull those pies out of the hole. My mitts made it hard to dig. The sides of the hole fell in. There were baby rabbits inside. When I put my ear to the ground, I could hear them sleeping and dreaming. Except now I heard them kicking and screaming. I flapped my hands to make up for the sounds I couldn’t say. My oven mitts went flying.
Mary Ellen knelt beside me, her hand flat against my back. “Next time you can have the Sleeping Beauty pie,” she whispered. “I promise.”
If I’d been able to say the words, I’d have told her I didn’t care about the pie. I only cared about the rabbits. And maybe some of the other stuff. Like the castle, the crown, the gown, the babies. More than anything I wanted to save the babies.
In kindergarten I went into the “special ed” room and stayed there through fifth grade. My teacher was Ms. Fishman. She was not a fish. She was not a man. The noises inside the classroom made it hard to think. Bells rang. Lights buzzed. People yak-yak-yaked. They sang songs with words that flowed together like runny eggs. Voices you couldn’t see exploded from the PA speaker. The big hand on the clock clicked and clacked, making one circle after another, never stopping, never leaving more than a minute’s space to think about any one thing.
I taught myself to read but I had trouble saying the words out loud. I could multiply and divide inside my head. But if I stopped to show my work, I’d forget the answer.
Ms. Fishman’s favorite words were “not appropriate.” She took aim with those p’s as though she were shooting darts. What I liked about school was recess. That’s when I pushed my pal Beanie around the playground in his wheelchair. He wasn’t a talker either. But he smiled when I hummed.
One year Ms. Fishman hung posters on the walls. Above my desk a man with a mustache squinted down at me through old-fashioned glasses. He rode a moose along a path of curly script that read, “With determination, ANYTHING is possible.” But the photo was fake. The man’s shadow rode out in front, and the moose’s shadow trailed behind. That cannot happen under only one sun. The words were wrong too. I knew this because I could hear my pal Beanie dreaming about becoming a wrestler. For Beanie to stand up took more grunting and fist twisting than most people had in them. But all of that determination would never make Beanie a wrestler. That was not possible for someone like him.
On Friday afternoon I stood close to Ms. Fishman’s desk. “Beanie wants to be a wrestler more than anything,” I said. “And Moose Man is not helping. He is a liar pants.”
Ms. Fishman said, “I like how you are using real words today, Valerie, but it is not appropriate to call Teddy Roosevelt a liar. And I’m sure Beanie does not want to be a wrestler. Who put that crazy idea in your head?”
I could not look Ms. Fishman in the eye. So I stared at her left nostril. It was big and dark and lined with fur like the rabbit hole in our backyard. But I did not want to think about the hole or the babies screaming inside. It was enough for me to think about Beanie. I ran my fingers back and forth across the desk. “When Beanie sleeps,” I said, “I hear him dream.”
Ms. Fishman clicked her tongue like she did when she wanted you to show your work or fix your words. If I could, I would have shouted, “Yes, Ms. Fishman, if you would listen, you could hear Beanie dream.” But Ms. Fishman was already on her feet, snapping her fingers, yelling “not appropriate.” At the back of the room, Marco was licking Denise’s red and white barrettes. They were shaped like candy canes, but they were not meant to be licked.
I waited a few minutes. Then I went back to my desk and tugged at the Moose Man poster. It tore and fell to the floor. When I turned around Ms. Fishman was behind me. She dragged me to the timeout chair. She made me sit facing the wall all afternoon. I turned around during show and tell when Beanie held up his Hulk Hogan action figure. Ms. Fishman saw me looking and shook her head. I wished she had time to stop and listen to my dreams. Then she would know that what I wanted more than anything was to become a mommy one day. And I wished I could tell her I was scared no amount of anything would make that possible for someone like me.
In sixth grade I moved up to “Oasis Academy.” Still Special Ed. Only now we got assigned the big initials: PDD, MH, ED, HI, ODD, SLD. Some kids collected kite tails full of them, all strung together. They followed us everywhere. I did not care for the initials they gave me. The eel letter sizzled from side to side and would not stay put. I asked my teacher for different initials. I said anything without an S or a P would be fine. She shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s not something I can give you, Valerie.”
That same year Mary Ellen left for college. I saved my allowance to buy her a Sleeping Beauty pillowcase and three lip gloss rings. I would miss hearing her dream. But it was her time to leave, her time to get smooched, her time to get whisked away to happily ever after.
Every night Mom and Dad yak-yak-yaked about Mary Ellen. I heard them when I put my ear to the wall next to my bed.
“Do you think she’s making friends?” asked Mom. “I mean nice friends. Not riffraff. Do you think she’s studying? Do you think she’s partying?”
“Of course she’s partying,” said Dad.
“But is she being careful?” asked Mom.
“We’ve warned her a million times,” said Dad. “What more can we do?”
“I wish I had given Mary Ellen more attention. But I had my hands full with you-know-who. The school meetings, doctors, therapists.”
Mom sometimes called me “you-know-who” even when I was sitting right next to her. I asked my speech coach why she couldn’t say my name.
“When people talk about you like that,” he said, “you should ask them questions. It’s a good way to let them know that you can hear, and that you understand.”
In seventh grade we worked on sounds, then words, then questions. Coach made me cassette tapes to take home so I could practice popping and hissing. “I’m not afraid to make those sounds when no one is listening,” I told him.
“Well, you are listening, and you are not nobody, Valerie,” he said. “If you make friends with those sounds, they’ll make friends with you.” He taught me to speak in melodies because questions are like songs. You hit a high note when you ask why, or when, or who. If you ask a yes-no question, you save that high note for the last beat. Coach told me to imagine every question with a pocket underneath. That pocket was packed with answers. I could see those answers sitting there in the dark, like baby rabbits, waiting for the right question and the right melody to come scurrying into the light.
Most people will ask a question once, and then they are done. Not me. I could ask the same question over and over with a new melody each time. Every day I asked Mom and Dad to take me to Disney World. Every day I sang a different song. Every day the answer was no. Next day I asked again.
A month before my thirteenth birthday, Dad slammed his fist against the wall. He said he was sick and tired of my asking, and yes, he would take me to Disney World.
Mom said, “I’m all for it if it’ll stop her pestering us. But you realize it goes against all the expert advice. I mean how is she going to learn that ‘no’ means ‘no’ if we reward that behavior?”
Dad cradled his slammed hand. “I’ll bet those experts would change their tune PDQ if they had to follow their own advice.”
The weekend of my thirteenth birthday we got in the car and drove to a motel. There was a rack in the lobby with 72 slots and 61 different brochures. I took one of each. Our room had a brown plastic ice bucket, a giant bed, and a metal cot with a blot on the mattress shaped like a giant brussels sprout. I was counting the packets of creamer and sugar next to the coffee machine when Mom told me to take a shower. I undressed in front of a big mirror. But the girl in the mirror did not look like me. I called my mother into the bathroom. “What is happening?” I asked, pointing to my big nipples.
Mom said. “I knew this was coming. Our Baby Doll is growing boobies. You are turning into a little woman.”
“Yay! I will soon be ready to be a mommy.” I jumped up and down. My big nipples bounced up and down and jiggled when I landed.
Mom stopped smiling. “Even if your body is ready, Valerie, your mind will not be ready. This is going to be hard on everyone. From now on you must be careful. Once your boobies get big, the boys will want to play with them. You must tell them to keep their hands to themselves.” She stared at my boobies in the mirror with her bad smell face.
I hated seeing that face so I put my head under a towel and asked, “Does Daddy want to play with your boobies?”
“Valerie, enough! It’s time to shower. Don’t you want to be clean when you meet Mickey Mouse?”
I could never understand those questions that began “don’t you,” or “can’t you.” Was I supposed to say “yes, I don’t” or “no, I don’t,” and was being clean something I was allowed to not want?
Another question, a new melody. “Do you let Daddy play with your boobies?”
Mom snatched the towel off my head. “Valerie, we are going to pack up and go home unless you’re in that shower by the time I count to ten.” She turned on the water.
I waited until she got to nine, then stepped into the tub and stood behind the curtain. On ten Mom left the bathroom and slammed the door. I got out without getting wet and put on my pj’s. Then I lay on the cot and listened to my mother dream about having a daughter who was a lot like me but without special needs.
Next day first thing we made wishes in the wishing well next to Cinderella’s castle. We rode a clamshell under the sea. I shook hands with Pluto, Snow White, Dopey and Bashful. Snow White looked just like Mary Ellen, and the Dwarfs were not little people. They were giants. Each one had a big pink nose with no nostrils. I asked them how they breathed. They did not answer. But Dad said they could breathe by magic because they were dwarfs. Then he handed me the map. “What’s next, Peanut?”
I led Mom and Dad to Space Mountain.
Mom shook her head. “This ride is too scary for you, Baby Girl.”
Usually, Mom pushed me to try new things. She’d tell me, “You can’t say you don’t like it, until you try it.” That’s how she got me to eat peanut butter. That’s how she got me to open my eyes under water. That’s how I learned to swim. But Space Mountain was not swimming. It was flying. “Space Mountain will make you sick,” she said. “And the line is hours long. Let’s go check out Pooh’s honey pot instead.”
“No thank you,” I said. “The honey pot is too sticky, and too babyish for me. Today is my thirteenth birthday. How about we make Space Mountain my birthday present?”
“This whole weekend is your birthday present,” said Mom, “and you’re ruining it for everyone.”
I asked to ride Space Mountain seven more times that day. Mom said no five times. Dad said no two times. The next day I asked again. Finally, Mom said, “Before we head home, don’t you want to try one of those Minnie Mouse ice cream waffles?”
“How about we try Space Mountain?” I said.
“You can either come with Mommy for ice cream, or you can ride Space Mountain. It’s one or the other.”
I grabbed Dad’s arm and ran to Space Mountain. I waited in line not knowing if it would be too scary. When my turn came I jumped into the seat and held tight to the bar. The car eased forward. The music rushed around inside the mountain tasting cold and quarky. We flew higher and higher in the dark. The car slowed, and then whoosh, we dropped. My insides floated up while my outsides shot down. And then we were flying again. And each time we took off, I felt less scared.
Mom waited for us at the end of the ride. I looked into her eyes. “I did not get sick or scared except maybe a little and only at first.”
Dad said, “That’s right. She’s a champ.”
“Could we go again? Once more?” I asked.
Mom tapped her watch and shook her head. We boarded the monorail back to the parking lot. I wrote the words “champ” and “Space Mountain” in my autograph book. I never wanted to forget how it felt to fly.
On the drive home my tummy hurt. We stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom. My underwear was stained red-black. I worried that all the ups and downs on Space Mountain had mixed a mudpie inside me. I didn’t know if it was meant to ooze out. I dragged Mom into the bathroom stall to show her. “Is this mud? Is this blood? Did I go number two without knowing?”
Mom gave me her sad-eyed-sorry look. “No, Baby Doll, you did not poop. It’s a little blood. That’s all. You got your period. I was expecting this. I’ll give you some supplies when we get home.”
I remembered that word “period” because the PE teacher told us we were excused from running laps when we had a period. I guessed this was some kind of extra period for the kids who changed classes for different subjects. I’d also heard girls talking in the bathroom about their “periods” and I’d seen them buying pads from the vending machine. But I didn’t know what they were for. I decided this was probably one more thing that special ed kids like me didn’t get to do.
“I don’t want a period,” I told Mom. “It hurts. I don’t like making mud blood, and I’m scared of messing up the car seats.”
“I told you, it’s nothing,” said Mom. I sat on the toilet with my pants down while she rolled up a big wad of tissue. “It’s your body sending a message, telling you it’s time to grow up, time to stop with the made-up words.” She plugged the wad deep inside the middle crease between my legs. “Time to stop asking so many questions.”
In the car I lay face down in the back seat and closed my eyes. I slept, then woke to hear Mom say, “I’m telling you, Sam, this is going to create a pantload of problems. For starters how the hell am I going to keep her clean? You know how she squirms inside her clothes. And the bigger question is how are we going to keep her safe. Can you imagine if…”
“Don’t go there,” said Dad. “When we get home, you’ll sit down and explain things. She understands more than you think. She’s good at sticking to her routines.”
Mom said nothing more. Or maybe they kept talking and I fell asleep.
When we got home Mom brought out a box of grown-lady diapers left over from when Nanna stayed with us. I put one on inside my undies. “Am I supposed to go number one in this thing?” I asked.
“No, Baby, you take it off to pee,” said Mom, “and to poop.”
I knew that, at least the second part. “But how come Nanna got to pee in her diapers?” I asked.
“Well, because Nanna is old. That’s why.”
“How old do you have to be to pee in a diaper?”
“Valerie, enough!”
The edges of the diaper gnawed at my skin. By lunchtime the next day it felt like I had chiggers latched to my thighs. I went to the bathroom and tore off the diaper and stuffed it in my backpack. I used my lunch money to buy a pad from the vending machine. I pulled the plastic tab off the sticky strip and stuck it to my undies so it wouldn’t bunch up.
There was a new boy in class, an ODD. He sometimes took people’s things without asking. I did not see him reach into my cubby that afternoon. But he must have unzipped my backpack and pulled out the dirty diaper. Next thing, he was standing on his chair waving it over his head. He chanted, “Poopie-Pants, Poopie-Pants. Valerie is a Poopie-Pants.” Everyone clapped and cheered and stomped. Even Beanie pounded his fists on the metal arms of his wheelchair. The teacher yelled at everyone to stop. No one listened until the school police officer arrived. He made us sit with our hands and our noses touching our desks. We stayed that way until the final bell.
I cried in the car going home. I could not tell Mom what happened, but she must have noticed I was upset. She patted my knee. “It’s normal to feel a little blue when you get your period.”
“Not blue. More like a muddy-bloody violet.”
“You want me to try to fix this, Baby Doll?”
“Can you do that?”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way.” Mom squeezed my hand. “I’ll do anything in my power to keep you safe,” she said.
I made mud-blood for a week. Mom gave me diapers every day. Every day I threw them in the dumpster outside the cafeteria. Every day I bought stick-on pads from the vending machine.
The barber buzzed my long hair and Mom bought me big black glasses. But the kids at school still knew it was me. They still called me “Miss Poopie-Pants.” I tried not to hear. I read books, counted pencils, shoes with laces, shoes with Velcro. I made a class list and marked all the people who picked their noses. I listened in on conversations, and I wrote down the words in a spiral notebook. What I discovered was that certain words will hitch a ride on a sentence and never carry any meaning. People say “you know” when they know you don’t know. They say “well” when things aren’t well, “seriously” when they are joking, “honestly” when they are lying. The sentence melodies often wander all over the page. My notebook was a mess.
“Language is meant to be messy,” said my speech coach. “It’s not like math where there’s one neat answer. Our minds are connecting many things all at once. It’s hard to keep those things separate. It’s hard to think of only one thing.”
“For everyone?” I asked. “Not just for me?”
I woke one morning with Mom jiggling my bed. The sky was still dark. She said we were going to the hospital to get my tonsils taken out. Before I could ask any questions, Mom shushed me. “When this is over, we’ll go for ice cream,” she whispered. “A cone. A scoop. Any flavor you like.”
“Coffee peanut butter mint?” I asked.
She laughed. “At least two scoops.” Then she yanked me into a sitting position. “Be sure to wear clean panties. And don’t you dare wake Dad. He needs his sleep.”
I dressed and went downstairs. Right away Mom hurried me into the car.
“What are tonsils?” I asked.
Mom described two pink baubles dangling at the back of my throat.
“Like Christmas ornaments? Are they shiny?”
“Kind of.”
“Can we save them? I want to see what they look like.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. I can’t save your tonsils.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know, because… because someone else might need them. That’s right. You remember how we donated your hair to make wigs for bald kids? Well now we are donating your tonsils.”
“My tonsils will make them grow hair?” I asked.
“Mmm-maybe,” said Mom.
“But what about me? Don’t I need tonsils?”
“Not today you don’t,” she said.
Everyone in the hospital wore green pajamas and carried a clipboard. One lady gave Mom papers full of blanks and boxes. While she filled them in, I watched a TV show about doctors and nurses playing tricks, hiding in closets, laughing it up. We went into a room with a bed and curtains all around. Another lady brought me a plastic bracelet with my name on it. “I hope the doctor is not planning to play tricks on me,” I said.
“No tricks.” The lady laughed. “Not as long as you wear the bracelet.”
She asked me if I’d eaten breakfast. I told her no, but I was looking forward to two scoops of Coffee Peanut Butter Mint ice cream after my tonsils came out. She ran her finger over the pages on her clipboard.
Mom helped me put on a paper nightgown and yellow striped socks. I climbed up onto the bed. Then a man flung open the curtains.
“Doctor, this patient tells me she’s here for a tonsillectomy,” said the lady.
The man smiled and chucked me under the chin. Then he turned to the lady. “If you’d bothered to check, you’d see we have full clearance,” he said. “This procedure is medically necessary and in the best interests of the patient and everyone concerned.”
“Of course, doctor,” she said.
After that she stuck the back of my hand with a needle and hooked it up to a plastic tube. I heard a whooshing. I felt myself falling. I closed my eyes and reached up to cover my head as clumps of red-black dirt rained down. I tried to stop thinking about the rabbit hole or the babies at the bottom. I only wanted to think about how it felt to fly.
Next thing I knew, Mom was sitting beside my bed watching TV news. My body was on fire from my tummy to my throat. Breathing hurt. Not breathing hurt. All I could do was lie still and wish the pain would go away.
“Ouchy-wah-wah,” I whispered.
Mom picked up the remote and changed the channel. “Don’t worry. The doctor says you did great. He says you’ll heal in no time.”
“Could you please tell the doctor to make ‘no time’ right-now-time?” I asked.
Mary Ellen came home from college at Christmas with holes in her jeans and green streaks in her hair. She came home at Easter with a heart charm next to her belly button. In the summer Mom made her sign up for community college to retake two courses she failed last year. Halfway through the summer she switched to cooking school and got a job at a restaurant that served noodles shaped like strings, bows, pipes, curls, stars, and mouse ears. The menu had five different spaghetti sauces. The salad bar had 32 trays. I told Mary Ellen that from 32 trays you could make more the 906,192 different salads.
“Good to know,” she said.
I loved having Mary Ellen home, but I could no longer hear her dream. One night I asked if she still wanted to be Sleeping Beauty. She laughed. “I don’t even know anymore.” Then she stood in front of my dresser opening and closing drawers. “Mom always had big plans for me. But they were her plans, what she would have done if she hadn’t had a baby so young.” Mary Ellen opened the closet and rummaged around. “The thing is, I keep messing up. Sometimes I envy you. If I had special needs, I’d have an excuse. Maybe then Mom would leave me alone.”
“You would not want special needs, Mary Ellen. People think you’re dumb. They think it’s funny when you struggle with stuff they find easy. The worst part is that no one tells you what’s going on.”
Mary Ellen sat down next to me on the bed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t say that. But I have the opposite problem. People look at me and think I should be smarter than I am. They’re always disappointed. Mom especially.” Then Mary Ellen asked me where I kept my tampons and pads.
“I don’t have any,” I said. “I got my mud-blood one time. It was because I rode Space Mountain when Mom told me not to.”
Mary Ellen pressed her palm flat against my back. “Space Mountain? Really? Weird.”
Mary Ellen made friends with the bartender at the noodle restaurant. His name was Reinier. You could read that name frontwards or you could read it backwards, and it would sound exactly the same. After a few months Mary Ellen packed most of her clothes and moved in with him. But on Mondays when the restaurant was closed, she and Reinier came over to do laundry. One night they arrived with trays of turkey takeout, foam cups full of beans in gray gravy, plus cornbread and apple pie. They arranged the food on the counter and the five of us squeezed in around the kitchen table.
Everyone had firsts and seconds, except Dad and I had firsts, seconds, and thirds. Then Reinier cleared the dishes. I brought out the Monopoly board, but no one wanted to play. Mom kept eyeing Reinier with her bad smell face.
Suddenly he got up and stood behind Mary Ellen’s chair. He cleared his throat. “We have big news.”
Mom leaned forward. “Tell me you’re finally taking my advice. Tell me you’re going back to college.”
Mary Ellen reached up and touched Reinier’s cheek. “Mom, can you listen? This is important.”
Reinier made a drumroll with his fingers on the table. “Buda-buda-buda-buda,” he said.
“We’re having a baby,” said Mary Ellen.
“Ba-dum-tss,” said Reinier.
“You got her pregnant?” said Mom.
“You serious?” asked Dad.
I ran to hug Mary Ellen. “This means you’re going to be a mommy.”
Mary Ellen stayed pregnant for almost a whole school year. Then she surprised everyone with twin boys. We visited them in hospital the day they were born. They did not have names yet. They lay side by side in big meatloaf pans, two bobbleheads with matching faces. Dad clapped Reinier on the back. “Buy one. Get one free,” he said.
Mom frowned. “This is no time to joke. These babies are going to be a handful. And that’s assuming…”
Dad waved his arms to stop Mom from saying what she was about to say. “These little guys are mighty cute,” he said. “Mighty cute.”
Reinier came over and showed me how to cup one hand under the baby’s head. He placed Little Boy One in my arms and I fell in love with his twisty lips.
I told Mary Ellen. “Mom is right. You will need more than two hands, and more than two arms to hold these babies. How about I lend you some of mine? How about you be mommy to one and I be mommy to the other?”
“Sure thing, Val. We’re going to need all the arms we can get.”
“Mary Ellen, don’t you give your sister any ideas.” Mom took a deep breath. “Valerie, being a mother would not be fun. Not for someone like you. Once you are a mother, you never get another carefree moment. You have to be ready for anything 24/7. That’s for the rest of your life. No days off. No sick leave. No holidays.” Her voice was loud. Little Boy Two howled. Reinier lifted him from Mom’s arms and walked out of the room.
I graduated high school with a special diploma. My counselor helped me find a job. An animal clinic needed a cage cleaner. I tried on a yellow raincoat and rain pants and white boots. I hosed down the kennels and cages in the alley behind the clinic. Between hosings, I helped the groomer. He let me hold the dogs and cats while he buzzed their fur and cut their nails. He sometimes yelled at the animals. But I didn’t. I always talked nice to them. The groomer called me the “cat whisperer” because I could keep a wet cat purring if I rubbed its ears a certain way.
I memorized the different breeds of dogs and cats from the chart in the waiting room. “You have a good memory,” said the vet. She loaned me an anatomy book. I studied the names of the bones and muscles and organs. I learned what each organ did. I learned that different animals get sick in different ways.
One of the assistants was on vacation the day a black and white kitten arrived at the clinic. She had swallowed a shoelace and she needed an emergency operation. The other assistant showed me how to wash my hands up to the elbows and soap my nails. Then we washed everything twice more. When we were three times clean we put on gowns and masks and gloves.
I held the kitten on the surgery table while the assistant gave her a shot and the vet inserted a needle with a plastic tube. She marked the slit where she planned to cut. I shaved around the mark and then stepped back to see what came next.
After that I kept asking questions and learning new things. I watched the vet take out teeth, tumors, and bladder stones. I saw pets get neutered. I felt sorry for the way those animals got cut up just because the world wanted fewer babies, fewer strays.
I learned that cats and dogs have tonsils, and that Mom was right: they look like little Christmas ornaments, only more slimy than shiny. I told the vet, “The doctor took out my tonsils and we donated them to bald children.”
The vet asked me to open my mouth so she could look inside. “Valerie, your tonsils are right where they should be. Both of them.” She laughed. “I think someone was pulling your leg.”
“My leg? Can you see all the way to my leg when you look down my throat?”
“Aaah, Valerie. When I say someone’s pulling your leg, it means they’re playing a joke on you.”
“Oh,” I said, “like the pull-my-finger joke.” I never laughed at that joke, and I could not think of anything ha-ha about my tonsils being taken out, especially if that’s not what happened.
I rode the bus home after work. I found Mom in her TV chair. For a long time I watched her watch a chef bake a wedding cake. She nodded off before the layers were iced. When the show ended, I turned off the TV and pulled my chair close to her chair. “What did you do to my tonsils?” I asked.
I ran my fingers back and forth across her arm. She didn’t stir. I asked again. Louder this time. I took her hand and squeezed it. “What did you do to my tonsils?”
Her eyelids opened and she pulled her hand away. Then she threw her head back and yawned herself awake. I asked again. “What did you do to my tonsils?” But I did not want an answer. It was enough for me to think about the mudpies and the screaming babies. And terrible as that was, I did not want to think about anything else.
Adina Leschinsky Levine (pen name) is a Miami-based writer whose work spans the gamut from straight news and analysis to children’s books. She teaches literature and creative writing in a maximum security prison and has facilitated learning/letter exchanges between incarcerated students and undergraduates at Coe College in Iowa.