Eleven
Days
She
had managed to keep the smear of blood collected around her dry and cracked
cuticle relatively large for three days.
However, by the fourth day, it too began to flake, crack, and ultimately
shrank away.
She
wasn’t always this way, but recently, Katilyn had found herself hanging on to
things without real reason. There was no
logical or even emotional way of explaining it.
She wasn’t preparing for nuclear war; she wasn’t afraid of being alone. She had friends, and got good grades without
really having to stress about it. If any
other description is desired, she was comfortable and well-liked. One day, she simply began to enjoy knowing
things were there. So, she started
saving things.
Your
initial response will be that saving a bit of dried blood would make her dirty,
or psychotic, or both. But, really, she
wasn’t. She kept clean during those
almost four days, showering with her left hand peeking around the curtain,
carefully globing hand sanitizer on her palms after using the restroom or
before she ate, rubbing gently in a circular motion until it evaporated into
nothing, along with 99.9% of the potentially millions of microscopic
germs.
Once,
while committing her act of germicide, Katilyn was reminded of something she
once read, or saw, or heard. It involved
an ancient, or medieval, or enlightened period of history where people were
unexplainably not getting along. It was
a form of early germ warfare. Two
opposing factions or families or tribes would save dead bodies that were ripe
with disease. When a fight broke out,
they would fling these bodies through the air and over the city walls, sending
trillions of death-germs into the city, infecting their enemies.
If,
at one point, entire civilizations were saving decomposing bodies for
ammunition, surely Katilyn would be forgiven for saving some pumpkin seeds, a
pebble found stuck in her sole, or a tiny crust of blood.
“Katie!
Don’t use that stuff! It’s filled with
hazardous chemicals!” her mother’s shrill voice shot across the dinner
table. “Sure, it might kills germs, but
it also weakens your immune system!
You’re going to get stick all the time, and then you’ll infect the
entire house. That’s how disease
spreads. It starts with one person. All of these vaccinations and pills and
supplements, they’re making everyone sick! You’ve got to be strong and protect
yourself against these things, and you won’t be strong if your white blood cells
don’t know how to fight sickness.”
This
“saving,” which is the only thing Katilyn would call it, had been going on now
for almost six months. If she were
saving baseball cards, soda cans, or even old coins it wouldn’t seem so
strange. But there was nothing saleable
about her savings. That would have made sense.
It
started with an empty pen one afternoon last summer. Katilyn was writing a postcard back to her
friend, Amber, who was spending the summer with her real dad in Ohio. Katilyn thought it would be exceptionally
funny to send a postcard from home back.
Amber’s letter was filled with complaints of old bridges, expansive
landscapes, and, worst of all, nothing to do.
While writing to Amber, Katilyn’s pen died just before the second “s” in
Katilyn’s “gross.” She shook it and shook it, and even tried to suck that last
bits of ink back down towards the point, but it was hopeless; the pen was,
indeed, dead.
She
unscrewed the top and looked at the last bits of ink that refused to complete
her thought. Two days later, basically forgetting all about the postcard, she
saw it sitting on her desk next to the still disassembled pen.
As
things like this happen, she was suddenly struck with an unnerving bolt of
emotion, an emotion that she couldn’t name.
She wanted to not breathe or just cry or simply vibrate without
control. She sat at her desk and reread
what she had written. Something similar
to embarrassment or foolishness swelled through her. It was like a sneeze or a yawn she couldn’t suppress.
Without
remorse, she chucked the postcard in the trash nearby. But, when she picked up the pen that had
outlived its use, she felt, just as suddenly, calm. Katilyn was sure it was the strangest feeling
anyone had ever felt. So, for reasons as
difficult to explain as a black hole or how magnets work, she decided she would
keep the empty pen for as long as she could, which she would call forever.
Katilyn
looked up from her plate of lasagna, and across the round table to her mother’s
smiling face. “Mom,” Katilyn sighed, trying to hide her annoyance, “this stuff keeps me from getting sick. If the house gets infected you or dad are the ones that infected it, and I’ve told you, call me Katilyn. Please, I want to be called
Katilyn now.” She shoved the travel-sized sanitizer in her pocket and returned
to her plate.
“Give
it to me Katie...err…Katilyn! Give it to me!”
Katilyn was surprised that her mother’s voice could get even more
annoying. Not wanting a fight, and knowing how it would end, she reached back
into her pocket, waving her white flag.
“And for heaven’s sake Katie, apply some lotion…your hands are as rough
as an elephant’s elbow. You’ve got to
keep them moisturized. You know, while you’re young and your skin is supple,
you might find that chapped and dry cracked hands can heal on their own. But, let me tell you, they can’t forever. The
older you get, the longer the problem lingers, until it can last right through
summer and into the next winter. You
know, I think I have some moisturizer in my purse. I can get it now if you’d
like.” Katilyn just stared at her dry,
15-year-old hands, wondering where each tiny flake of blood had ended up, and
later, wondering about the tiny cells contained within each flake.
“Honey,”
Katilyn had completely forgotten that her father was at the table as well, “why
don’t you just let her finish her dinner?
Which, by the way, is fantastic.
Did make the tomato sauce yourself?”
“Of
course I did Mike, you know I always
do.”
“Well,
it’s great. So, Katilyn, why did you decide to stop using
Katie, again?”
“I
don’t know,” Katie replied. “I just did.”
This
was a lie, something Katilyn found herself doing more and more. She was sitting in her 1st period
math class on the first day of 10th grade. There weren’t an abundance of people that she
knew, but there were enough people that she knew (and enough people that knew
her) that she certainly needn’t worry about not being known.
“When
I call your name, please reply promptly,” Mrs. Hill began, staring at a list over
her glasses at the student roster. It
struck Katie as strange that she would be looking over her glasses. Weren’t
glasses created to be looked through?
“If I mispronounce your name, or you’d like to be called by another name,
please let me know and I will make note of it. Now…Lisa An…Ann…Andertin…”
Katie
checked out. “Wade,” was at least 15 minutes away at the rate this woman was
going. She felt in her pocket for the
rubber band. It was the most normal
rubber band imaginable, beige or tan or lightish brown, with a tiny, almost
imperceptible tear at one point in the circle.
It was the kind of rubber band that you’d find most anywhere, at most
any moment of your life. It could be
used to hold a scrolled newspaper, to bind together a group of colored pencils
that had lost their box, or to get the attention of another person from across
the room. Five weeks earlier, Katie had
seen it on the ground in the parking lot of a supermarket where she had been
shopping with her mom. Somehow, and for
some reason, Katie picked it up.
Hustling to not fall too far behind her mother, she examined it closely,
as she has many times since. She noted a
bluish speck, smudges of dirt, and the tinniest tear.
She
just decided to keep it. She’d carried
it with her ever since. When she didn’t
have pockets, she’d wear it on her wrist; no one seemed to notice, and if they
did, no notice was ever expressed. Plucking
gently at the elastic in her pocket, being careful not to intensify the tear,
she heard her name finally being called. “Katilyn Wade,” her teacher announced.
This
was where Katilyn, as she had done for the last 10 years, would say, “Here! And
I go by Katie, please.” She had never
been shy about her preference in name or about anything really--not even in
kindergarten.
Others
kids were crying, pawing at the door to return to their loved ones. But not Katilyn, in fact, she had loved being
around so many new people. She had heard
all about it from her mother. “Always
say please,” her mother had explained.
“Never be mean.” Katie wasn’t exactly sure what mean was, but if it was
anything like the villains in the movies, she didn’t how it was something she
could ever be. How could she make her
eyebrows go so close together? “Make
nice friends.”
So,
when she saw the first girl her size, who wasn’t gasping between sobs, she just
walked right up, and put out her hand for a shake, as she had seen her father
do so many times before. “Take my hand,”
she explained, extending her arm to show.
The other girl, unsure, grabbed Katie’s hand. “Now, move it up and down, like this….good!
That’s a hand shake.” Now both girls
were smiling. “My name’s Katie.”
“My
name’s Amber.”
“Amber,
I’m nice. Are you?” Amber just laughed.
Katie smiled and took a gigantic breath of air-- she had been waiting to
say this for quite some time. “Well,
Amber, we’re friends. Now, let go of my hand!” Katie hadn’t been shy then, and
she wasn’t shy now.
However,
this year, in Mrs. Hill’s 10th grade Geometry class, she just said,
“Here.” And with that, she became
Katilyn. She just didn’t feel like
explaining.
Picking
over the plate of lasagna, that she knew she would have to finish if she ever
planned on going anywhere, Katilyn was thankful her parents had somehow managed
to get deep into a discussion comparing the surging economy in India to the
surging economy in China. It seemed as
though they were saying more and more, while Katilyn was saying less and less. It wasn’t always like this. Strangely, it used to be completely
flipped. In the previous years of
Katilyn’s life, it seemed as though as her mother only spoke in one to three
word phrases:
“Sit
up straight.”
“Look
both ways.”
“Brush
your teeth.”
“Seatbelt
on.”
No
words were spoken until dressed with an “always” or a “never.”
But,
now, her mother words blended together until the single words, or even
syllables, were undecipherable, like the incessant humming of a refrigerator or
the buzz of an insect’s wings:
“Now
that you’re no longer a child, I know that it is not healthy for me to treat
you like someone that needs constant supervision, guidance, or approval. So, I’d like to replace my expectations that
I held when you were a child with a new dialogue about what we want and need
from each other.”
“You
need to make choices that work best for you and not to look back on them and
anguish over whether you made the right decision. Often you may feel so
overwhelmed by these choices that you may agonize over them. I’m aware that I
may make a comment regarding a choice you make.
My intention is to be helpful, or I may simply be curious. I hope you don’t get defensive about it, but
I realize that you may because you are already insecure about those choices to
begin with.”
In contrast,
Katilyn’s dialogue with her mother was once delightful and rich. A report on a single day of school would
often take longer than the day being described.
She would paint every nuance of her mystical world with adverbs,
adjectives, and interjections. From the
clap of the car door closing, to the even number of spots that she counted on
the ladybug she found, (and put back in a bush that looked like the hair of a
scientist so it wouldn’t get stepped on because she had one time found a
grasshopper that was dead because it had been smashed with someone’s shoe
because it couldn’t hop away fast enough or was looking for his lost child who
would now have to grow up without learning how to hop) Katilyn’s favorite part
of the day was telling about it. And,
the only thing Katilyn enjoyed more than the world around her, was talking
about it.
Now, Katilyn just didn’t seem to have that same
desire to share. Her words marched in a
straight line.
“Good.”
“Fine.”
“Okay.”
“Yes, that’s true,” her father was saying,
“but you continue discount the sagging infrastructure of New Delhi and Mumbai,
it simply cannot be ignored. Couple that
with a sluggish and chaotic political system, and India is clearly playing
second fiddle.” He took a decisive bite of his garlic bread, signifying his perceived
victory.
Kaitlyn’s
mother wiped at the corner of her mouth, showing her father that he had a bit
of dried tomato sauce there, which had been there for quite a while.
“I
don’t disagree with any of that, Mike.” When her mother started by agreeing,
and then used a first name, it was over. “But China’s growth is unsustainable,”
she let that final word hang in the air for a second-and-a-half to heighten the
impact, “as all growth of this kind is.
There is simply no evidence to the converse. We’ll be having a different discussion in the
not-too-distant future, I’m sure. If you
want to look at the new world champions, go back to Europe, specifically Britain,
they’ve got something going there, you’ll see.
Small is the new big.” She was finished with Father for a moment and
looked at Kaitlyn. “It’s not meant to be
eaten like that, Katie.”
Kaitlyn
was taking her lasagna apart, eating only one layer at a time. “I know, and it’s Kaitlyn.”
“You
know,” Kaitlyn’s father had had enough time to think and was ready to resume
the conversation. “It’s interesting that you mention Britain as an ideal
economy for right now. The pound does have a real opportunity to surge in value
with the struggling euro. I mean, with
Greece in a downward spiral, someone’s going to need to come to the rescue and
bail them out.”
Peeling
her lasagna like layers of paint, Kaitlyn was reminded of the story of the
Gregorian calendar in Britain. The
Calendar was originally proposed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, thus the name
“Gregorian.” Kaitlyn was very pleased
with herself that she was able to remember the exact year, and the name of the
Pope, who sounded like a teenager. That same year, many of the European
countries adopted the calendar as well.
However, Britain, a country that had recently had certain discrepancies
with the Catholic church, saw no reason to change their calendar. They
continued using the same calendar, who’s name escaped Kaitlyn (it was the
Julian calendar), as did a few other nations.
As years went by, more and more countries began adopting the Gregorian
calendar. Eventually, Britain saw that
it was hopeless to keep up with everyone else. They were going to have to conform to the
Gregorian calendar. So, in 1752, another
date that Kaitlyn remembered, they adopted the same calendar that is used
today.
But,
there was one minor problem, or so it was thought to be minor. The calendar that Britain was using did not
line up with the Gregorian calendar.
They would have to change their calendar mid-year to ever catch up. So, on a day in September, which specific day
Kaitlyn could also not remember, (It was Wednesday September 2, 1752) they made
the change. Citizens of Britain went to
sleep one evening, and when they woke up, it was eleven days later (Thursday,
September 14, 1752).
There
was a cry of outrage from the streets!
Citizens, oozing with anger and angst, joined hands across the country
chanting, “Give us our eleven days! Give us our eleven days!”
But there was nothing that could be done. It just happened one night.
“Katie!
Err.. Katilyn! What’s wrong?” Her mother’s face was fixed upon Katilyn’s,
chiseled with great and sincere concern.
Katie’s
chest was heaving, her stomach ached. The
air was entering her lungs in stabs that were in sync with the clock in the
kitchen, but the oxygen didn’t seem to be making it to her brain. Her world blurred into a pool of tears, that
barely glistened at the edges of her eyes. “I…I…I feel…strange…I’m…just…all
mixed up.”
“Katilyn,
are you sick? Are you ill?” Her mother
was standing, hovering over her now sweating daughter. She placed the back of her hand on Katilyn’s
forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”
“I
want my eleven days.”
“What?
Katilyn? You’re not making sense. What do you mean? Now, just control yourself.
That’s it, deep, full breathes, not those shallow ones that you were
taking. The lungs need at least one
liter of oxygen per breath.”
Katilyn
patted at the side of her jeans, feeling for the pen. She composed herself. “Mom, dad, I’m sorry,
I’m not feeling well, may I please be excused?”
“Well,”
her mother began, “you know I don’t like you not finishing your meal, and I
hate to see this food go to waste, but it’s clear that something is wrong. If your father agrees, then you may be
excused.”
“Yeah,
sure Katie, you can be excused,” her father said, staring at Katilyn, bewildered
by her most recent display.
“Ok,”
Katilyn wasn’t sure if she was visibly shaking, “I’m just going to wrap this up.
I’ll eat it later.”
“Katilyn,
no. You’ve picked it all apart… there’s nothing worth saving. Just go ahead, leave your plate. Go lie down, I’ll come check on you after
I’ve cleaned the kitchen.”
“No!”
Katilyn snapped, surprising both the parents. “No. I want to save it!”
The
eyebrows on Katilyn’s mother could not have gone any higher. “Alright, alright, I’ll wrap it up for
you. It will be in the refrigerator when
you wake up.”
“Thank
you.” Katilyn almost whispered as she turned around to leave. “And good night,”
she added when was half way up the stairs.
“Good
Night!” her parents hollered back in unison.
They gave each other a concerned look, which could have easily been
confused with confusion, shook their heads, and, finally, shrugged their
shoulders, helpless.
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