YALOBUSHA COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI
(818 Miles to Go)
6
Sometimes You Need a Thing
September 1—late afternoon
Dear Isabel,
I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.
My misplaced epiglottis is Reason #3.
About a year ago, my mother took me to the hospital because I kept throwing up. After running a few tests, the pediatrician told us that my epiglottis was displaced, an uncommon issue, but certainly nothing to lose sleep over. The thing is, when he said displaced, I thought he’d said misplaced, which hit me right on the funny bone. I pictured an absentminded Creator, scratching his head and turning the universe upside down in search of Mim’s misplaced epiglottis. The doctor prescribed something, but my infantile esophagus persisted with savage tenacity.
More often than not, I have no control over where and when I throw up, but on rare occasions, I’ve been able to force the issue. Twice since the move, Dad and Kathy have left me home alone. And both times, I’ve helped myself to their bedroom. I stood on that horrible Berber carpet and observed their desks bumped up next to each other: a PC for the aspiring political blogger, a Mac for the aspiring romance novelist. Two desk lamps. One unmade bed. Two nightstands, one on either side, both with books and tissues. Half of these things, I recognized, half were foreign. And yet, there they were, mixed together as one, the familiar with the unfamiliar—the family with the unfamily.
That was usually when I threw up. On Kathy’s side of the bed. The amount of sanitizer she’s gone through, you’d think she was cleaning a gorilla cage.
But as I stated at the beginning of this entry, I am a “collection of oddities,” and one oddity doth not a collection make.
The Great Blinding Eclipse is Reason #4.
A couple years ago, there was a solar eclipse. All the teachers and parents were like, Whatever you do, don’t look directly at the eclipse! I mean, really, they were just going ape over it. Well, me being the kind of girl I am, I half heard what they said, half thought about it, half processed the information, and half obeyed it. I closed one eye and looked directly at the eclipse with the other.
Now, I’m half blind.
After the initial freak-out, I did what any rational person would do upon discovering a mystery ailment: I went online. Online gave my condition a name (solar retinopathy), a cause (what happens from looking directly into the sun for too long), and a time frame (usually, it doesn’t last more than two months). As I mentioned before, this happened a couple of years ago, so I suppose I’ve made peace with the potential permanency of my condition. (I just realized this paragraph is riddled with parentheses. I suppose I’m just feeling parenthetically inclined right now.)
(Anyway.)
So why do I mention all this? Why are my medical mysteries Reasons? I’m glad you asked. I’ve developed a theory I like to call the Pain Principle. The gist of it is this: pain makes people who they are.
Look around, Iz. The Generics are everywhere: shiny people with shinier cars, driving fast, talking faster. They use big words to tell fabulous stories in exotic settings. Take this kid at my school, Dustin Somebody-or-other. He talks all the time about his family’s “estate.” Not house. Fucking estate. His mother hired a butler/chef named Jean-Claude, who, according to Dustin, gives the entire Somebody-or-other family jujitsu lessons every morning at sunrise. (Followed by pancakes. Dustin never forgets to mention the pancakes.) Now—it would be easy for me to look at Dustin and think, God, what an interesting life! How I wish it were my own! Woe unto me!
But there’s a quality behind Dustin’s eyes when he talks, a dimness, like the slow fade of a dying flashlight. Like someone forgot to replace the batteries in Dustin’s face. This kind of emptiness can only be filled with heartache and struggle and I-don’t-know-what . . . the enormity of things. The shit-stink of life. And neither enormity nor shit-stink can be found in a pancake breakfast. Pain is what matters. Not fast cars or big words or fabulous stories in exotic settings. And certainly not some French-toasted-sunrise-sensei-servant-motherfucker.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve learned to accept my pain as a friend, whatever form it takes. Because I know it’s the only thing between me and the most pitiful of all species—the Generics.
One last thing about being half blind, because I’m starting to get on my own nerves about the whole mess: I’ve never told anyone.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
the Cycloptic Wonder
ARLENE, WITH HER wooden box and assorted bouquet of early-bird aromas, and I, with my thoughts bent on the motivations of evil stepmothers, sit by the side of I-55, watching the Greyhound shake. (Carl, after a hasty pull-over, directed us off the bus, then waded shin-deep into what must be a week’s worth of sewage.)
I stick my journal in my backpack and dare a glance around. My fellow passengers aren’t staring daggers at me, they’re staring scimitars: a trendy family of four in matching polos; a painfully ugly blonde, standing at least six-six; two Japanese men in heated argument; Jabba the Gut, his face in a starry sci-fi; the juvenile Brits; a little kid who looks like a Tolkien character; Poncho Man; and dozens of others, jabbering on cell phones, murmuring under their breath, each of them pissed at me for interrupting their super-important journey to Wherever.
“Are you keeping a diary of your travels, dear?”