Read Online Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz - Free Book Online

crawl under the covers, and I know she’ll let me stay the night. Daddy has to sleep downstairs on the sofa with the television turned on anyway. Just in case the tornados do turn around and make the screen go all red with a million warnings. In case the newscasters say, “No school tomorrow.”
    I wrap my arms around Mama, and I hold her like I’m the mother and she’s the daughter.
    I like the way it feels, but it makes me worry, too. What would Gran say if she saw? But then I breathe in Mama, and she is warm, and my eyes can’t help but close. It is so still right here, while outside the anxious wind rifles through the farm, looking to take something away.
    *  *  *  *
    Daddy says Mama needs to rest again.
    She’s trying out a new medicine to see if it will make her feel better—but I already know what these pills do. They don’t make her better. They just make her tired.
    â€œDo you want to go for a walk?” he asks, “Maybe check for eggs?”
    But I’m mad at him. I wouldn’t bother her. I’d only give her a kiss, and then I’d leave—maybe I’d offer to get her a glass of water, or ask if I could curl up beside her and take a nap too. If she said no, I’d understand. And I’d go away.
    I glare at Daddy, which is hard to do because he’s so much taller. I give up, turning around and running down the hall like I’ve been told not to do because the sound startles Mama.
    There are new rules, and they make everything different from before. Daddy says, “Rules are important,” but Uncle Billy says, “It’s important to learn the rules so you can learn when and how to break them.” I run into the bathroom and slam the door behind me. Then I lean against it, listening. I don’t hear anything, which means Daddy is still standing guard. He is protecting Mama.
    I slide the lock over so no one can get in, and then I climb into the bathtub.
    I don’t take off my clothes. I’m not planning on taking a bath. I like the old claw-foot. The way it slopes and the plug with the chain to keep it from ever getting lost. I like touching the places where the enamel chipped and watching the daddy longlegs who lives in the drain—the one who only has seven legs now because of me.
    Alex Turner says daddy longlegs are the most poisonous spiders in the world. Alex talks about spiders all the time. Last year, he told the class everything he knew about daddy longlegs. “Even though they are superpoisonous,” he said, “they are completely harmless because they have no fangs.” When I told Mama, she said Alex was wrong. “That’s just an urban legend,” she explained. But I still like the idea: I could be poisonous like that.
    I hear Daddy walk toward the bathroom. I can tell when he pauses, listening through the door. He says, “Fig ?” but I don’t say anything, so he says, “Fig, leave your Mama be. Do you hear me?” He stands there as if I’ll answer, but finally I hear him sigh. And he walks away. I listen to his steps as he goes down the stairs.
    I listen until I can’t hear him anymore.
    I’m still in my nightgown. When I tuck my knees under my chin, the skirt part slips down and I can see my knees. I have scabs from the tornado knocking me over—the tornado that Gran insists wasn’t a tornado. “The real tornados were very far away,” she told my father. She looked at him long and hard with her dark eyes and said, “I thought they said her IQ was exceptionally high?”
    The scabs are scattered across my knees the way stars make constellations in the sky.
    I trace them as if to play connect the dots. On my left knee, I trace a sun. The kind of sun I like to draw—a circle with little triangles all around for the rays. When I trace the scabs on my right knee, I discover a volcano.
    The kids at school don’t call