Read Online Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz - Free Book Online Page B

heels, letting them fly one at a time like champagne corks. I undo the Velcro on her blouse and slide off her jeans, and I’m surprised to find she isn’t wearing any underwear. She doesn’t have nipples or a belly button or a vagina, but she does have something resembling a butt crack.
    I stuff all her clothes into the culvert. And then I put the naked fake Barbie back into my pack, buried under my Trapper Keeper—just in case.
    Just in case I get home and find Mama feeling better. Good enough to leave her room, have dinner with us, and maybe even help me with my homework. I was wrong to think that everything would go back to how it was. Sometimes holding my breath and crossing my fingers doesn’t work.
    â€œFig, we have to be patient,” Daddy keeps telling me. “The medicine doesn’t just start working overnight. It takes a while for the doctors to find the right dose, to see what combination of drugs brings the most relief.” And this is when he always pauses. He pauses and looks at me for a long time. He looks tired every day. And finally, after forever, Daddy will finish the speech. “It will take some time,” he says.
    But he is never specific; he does not elaborate. He does not show me on the calendar how long it will take. This is because he doesn’t know. And if Daddy doesn’t know, that means no one does. “We just have to wait and see,” my father says, and I swear he tells me this every single day.
    *  *  *  *
    Mama does come downstairs while Daddy and I are eating. We’re sitting at the old oak table in the kitchen. Through the French doors, I can see the table in the dining room. The pile of broken china dolls is still there next to the coil of barbed wire, but Daddy must have used the power drill, because it’s no longer there.
    No more blinking red light.
    Gran gets after Daddy about how Mama shouldn’t use that space to work.
    â€œIf Annie is going to insist on being an artist,” Gran says, “then she should act like one and turn the attic into a studio.” But Daddy always tells Gran he doesn’t mind.
    He likes Mama out in the open—where he can see her.
    Daddy slides his chair back, like he’s going to get up. The way that men do on TV whenever a woman comes into the room. But he doesn’t get up—he watches Mama, who is standing in the doorway, her hair tangled and face as pale as a ghost. She’s wearing Daddy’s terry-cloth bathrobe, and in reaction to us staring she tightens the belt. I’ve seen Mama tired before, but not like this.
    Maybe Mama has cancer like Sissy Baxter’s mother does. Maybe she has cancer instead of schizophrenia? I was hiding in the coat closet when I heard Sissy Baxter tell Mrs. Olson.
    â€œHow is your mother?” Mrs. Olson asked, and that’s when Sissy Baxter started crying. Mrs. Olson let her cry. But then Sissy Baxter stopped crying like it was something you can just turn off. That’s when she said, “Daddy says Mom’s going to be okay after she gets the mastectomy.” Sissy Baxter didn’t trip up when she said “mastectomy.” Sissy Baxter said “mastectomy” out loud the way I wish I could say the word “schizophrenia.”
    â€œAre you hungry?” Daddy asks, and I remember where I am. Mama looks at him like she doesn’t understand what he is asking.
    â€œIt’s ham,” Daddy says. “The end of what Billy cured last year.”
    I cringe.
    I still can’t stand the idea of eating meat, but I’ve stopped feeding it to the dog. No matter how many times Mama insists nothing was actually chasing us that night, I remember all those yellow eyes. What if they really were coyotes? What if I was the one who lured them to the farm by leaving all my scraps by the ditch? Now when I pocket the meat from my plate, I bury it deep in the kitchen trash instead.
    Daddy is always