2
H
e was born with a big head.
Not a slightly larger head than normal, but a huge head, as if another head had been added on and then shrunk down to about half the size, without the eyes/nose/mouth features, before getting stuck on the first head. One eye was higher than the other.
Most would call it a deformity, a mistake, a handicap. In the future, they would pity him, or be disgusted, uncomfortable, mean. Oh, how mean they would be.
When my baby nephew arrived from between my sister’s shaking legs at the hospital, bluish in color, he wasn’t breathing. His head seemed to be pulsing, his veins engorged, the fontanel swollen.
I thought he was dead. I thought he’d been dead a long time and I stifled a ragged, anguished cry.
My own mother, the baby’s nana, America’s most famous soap opera actress, a woman who is ambitious, focused, and rational, cried out, “Oh my God, it’s The Curse again.”
“No it’s not—” I grabbed her arm. “Don’t even say that!”
“It is, Jaden, it is.” She sank against the wall, her slender legs giving out, her pink lace, couture dress, designed especially for her by Ruben, a new designer, wrinkled as she slid. “It’s The Curse.”
“Move, people, move!” one doctor, in blue scrubs, shouted over my sister’s piercing screams. “We’ve got seconds, make ’em count.
Move!
”
Immediately, the doctors—already sweating the difficult labor and delivery, berating my sister for not getting any prenatal care, for this should not have happened, this birth should not have happened, this bigheaded baby should not have happened—went to work.
“Shit,” I heard one of the frantic doctors whisper. “Aw, shit.”
“Baby’s not breathing!” another doctor shouted.
“Mother’s bleeding . . . oh my God, mother’s
hemorrhaging!
”
The bluish, throbbing baby and my sister were surrounded, and I was pushed aside, but those words sent panic skittering through my body, tears blurring my vision.
Brooke collapsed back on the bed, all blood draining from her face, as she screeched one more time, her green eyes rolling back in her head, neck arched, as if it were her last breath. Her auburn hair, the same color as mine, the same as my mother’s, was glued to her head from sweat.
The doctors and nurses, a wall of blue-scrubbed people, continued barking orders and shouting, some fighting to save my sister’s life, the blood gushing out, spilling from the gurney to the floor, and others fighting to save the baby’s life.
My mother was half-lying on the floor, as white as her daughter. She put her trembling hands up in the air, her perfectly polished red nails twitching as she whispered a chant, something to do with freeing the living spirits, jasmine, and love force, and when she was done she uttered, finally, a prayer, “Dear God, get in here right this minute and help us, damn it.”
I tried to get to my sister, to hold her seizing body, to bring life back to the fading green eyes that seemed to be only half with us, but they wouldn’t let me near her.
“Get out, get out!” one nurse yelled at me, pushing me toward the door as I fought.
“I want to be with my sister! Let me stay with Brooke!”
Oh no, that could not happen. No staying. “We’re taking care of them! Go, go!”
“Move the family out of the way,
out of the way!
”
The baby, his head swollen, was placed in an Isolette in seconds as the doctors whipped him out of the room and raced into the corridor.
I tried to run after the baby, my mother wobbling behind me on her heels in shock, but two nurses stopped us at the swinging white doors of the ICU, grabbing our arms, holding us close, our hands outstretched toward the baby as we cried, we pleaded. They were gentle, they were firm, both men strong and immovable. We could not go. They were sorry.
The doors slammed shut, locking, as that teeny-tiny body was rolled away into the sterility of a white corridor, more doctors rushing to meet him.
“Help Brooke,” my mother gasped, pushing me with weak hands back into the hospital room, as she tumbled straight down. The nurses lunged to help my mother and no one noticed me this time as I raced back into my sister’s room. There was blood all over. I didn’t know someone could bleed that much and still live. She was covered in doctors and nurses, an oxygen mask over her face, cloths between her legs.
“Okay,” one of the doctors panted. “We’re moving mother, on three.” Again, for the second time in less than two minutes, a family member was whipped out of the hospital room and rushed behind those swinging, locking white doors, where my mother and I couldn’t go.
We couldn’t go there.
Couldn’t go with my sister, couldn’t go with my brand-new nephew.
Why? Because they were dying. One wasn’t breathing, one was bleeding out.
A “Code This” and “Code That” were shouted over the intercom, people in blue scrubs and white jackets sprinting past me. I gathered my semi-hysterical mother up and we clutched each other on the floor, our tears a river.
My mother and I did not sleep for two full days. My brother, Caden, flew in from college. He is six foot six inches tall and has shoulders the breadth of a semitruck. As soon as he saw us, he burst into hiccupping tears, his black ponytail swaying as he hugged us close.
My mother and I traversed from the tiny crib where the baby with the big head was hooked up to all kinds of pumps and tubes, to my sister who was, initially, a ghastly white color, and not moving.
“The baby might not make it,” Dr. Rebecca Black told us the first night. “He wasn’t breathing at birth. . . .”
“There’s a chance your daughter won’t make it,” Dr. Sanjay Patel said. “She lost too much blood, we transfused her. . . .”
“Traumatic birth . . . head swollen . . . eye placement issues . . .” Dr. Black said.
“There are complications because of the drugs in your daughter’s body, we’re having trouble getting the bleeding to stop, she is having seizures, problems breathing. . . .” Dr. Patel said.
“The baby’s heart seems to be struggling, too . . . distress . . . gasping. . . .”
“Your daughter’s blood pressure is dangerously low . . . we can’t get it back up. . . .”
“The baby has . . .” Dr. Black went off on her medical-ese, the language normal people don’t understand, especially in a crisis.
“That’s enough of that,” my brother said, his voice sharp as he held up a hand. “We aren’t doctors. Explain it in English.”
The doctor explained. The baby was born with a big head. If he survived, and that was doubtful due to his critical condition at birth and the drugs, the size of his head would stay as it was. He would need a permanent shunt in his head leading to his heart because of an excessive amount of cerebrospinal fluid.
“Oh my God,” my mother groaned, her face white and drained. “I told you it was The Curse. It came right down the family line. . . .”
“It’s not The Curse, unless The Curse is Brooke.” My chest was a wall of thudding pain. I touched the cross, heart, and star necklace given to me by my mother, the same one she and Brooke wore.
“The curse?” Dr. Black asked, eyebrows raised.
“Never mind,” I said.
She seemed baffled, but then composed herself. “The baby has the same drugs in his body as in Brooke’s. Cocaine, painkillers, alcohol, nicotine . . .”
“Why did she do this?” I said, grieving for the baby already. “Why?”
Why
had been the question for years. The pain my sister had caused our family with her addictions had been endless.
And, for the baby, a baby I named Tate, the pain was only beginning.
Seventeen Years Later
He had been beaten up.
Again.
Tate’s face was red, bruised on the jaw and along his blue eye on the left, cut on the eyebrow, blood was under his nose, and his auburn hair was a mess.
He had a basketball under his arm and a backpack over his shoulder.
I felt my heart squeeze and expand, then squeeze again, the pain of seeing my son beaten up stabbing me for the thousandth time. I wanted to kick the kids that did this to him. I whacked the wooden spoon on the edge of the pan where I was making an orange sauce with marmalade and chives for our chicken dinners.
“Chill out, Boss Mom. Hey, Nana Bird,” Tate said, smiling, waving.
He dropped his backpack on the wood table my blue-eyed, formerly redheaded, curly-haired Grandma Violet had used for decades to heal people with her herbs and spices and “Silent Spells,” as she called them.
“I don’t think I’ll need stitches this time, which is too bad ’cause I was gonna do it myself. You know, Tate, The Tough Guy Hero, sews himself up.”
My mother put her arm around me, squeezing my shoulder, warning me not to fly into a rage. It never helped Tate to see my temper triggering after something like this happened, it only made things worse.
“I know the slinkiest of solutions to this problem, Tate,” she drawled, her tone hiding her own anguish. “Have a shot of tequila. Tip your head back and I’ll pour it down your throat.”
“Mother!” I reprimanded, but it was halfhearted, my whole body throbbing with anger. Wind whipped up against the bay windows of my yellow kitchen nook, scooting around my old white house as if it owned the place.
“Yes, darling? Tequila soothes the nerves.”
“Good idea, Nana Bird,” Tate said. He calls my mother Nana Bird because when he was little he loved birds and he loved his Nana. He tried to smile, but it hurt his mouth. “Nothing better to top off a fight than a shot of tequila.”
I have a
terrible
temper when it comes to Tate. Tate has named my temper Witch Mavis.
My mother squeezed my arm again, then shook her bob of hair and drawled, “Did you beat any of them up?”
“Yep.” Tate was six feet three inches tall and muscled because of daily workouts with weights. That he won wasn’t surprising. He’d won before, many times.
“Spectacular! Was there a lot of blood?” She wiggled her fingers excitedly.
“Yep.”
“What about bruising, cuts, things that will scar?” She grinned, leaning forward, all those expensive pearly whites showing.
“I think I got ’em, Nana Bird.” He grinned. Tate had perfect teeth, too.
“Did you knock any to the ground, flat on their backs? Boom, smash, clunk?” She clapped her hands, full of glee. My stylish mother has a love of violence when it comes to her grandson.
“Sent ’em flying.”
“That’s my boy.” She chortled, wiggling her shoulders. “God gave you fists. Use them.”
“I did.” He put his scraped fists up in victory.
“Mark my words, if he only wanted you to use your hands for eating, he would have had your left hand formed into a fork and your right hand formed into a spoon.”
“That would look odd, but culinary.”
“Not if we all had a fork and spoon for hands, Tate, instead of fingers,” my mother said. “Fist the fists and let ’em fly when people want to pound your soul.”
“Got it.” He smashed his fists together. “Fist thumping equals pounding of soul crushers.”
“Right. You have it! I love your violent streak! It’s so gleeful, so animalistic!”
She hugged him tight, then I hugged him, briefly pondering how gleeful and animalistic went together, my jaw tight.
“Boss Mom, I can tell that you’re all mad because you’re quivering, but I’m okay, okay? I know you want to blow up and go to these kids’ front doors and haul them out by the hair, remember you did that one time, or scare the heck out of them or their parents or threaten to call in butt-devouring attorneys, but don’t.”
Tate calls me Boss Mom because I am the boss.
“I’m okay. I can fight on my own.” His eyes pleaded with me to stay out of it.
“I want to know who did this—” I glared at him, then pointed the wooden spoon at him. “Tell me.”
“I’m not telling you, and hello to Witch Mavis. You’ll make me look like a baby. I can’t take care of myself so my mommy comes flying in to beat up the bullies.”
“You can, but they need to suffer a consequence for this. They need to be suspended just as I’ve had other kids suspended who beat you up. They need to be shoved into a wood box and have the lid of that box nailed down on their heads until they can promise to shape up and—”
“Sort of like me in upcoming shows, Tate!” my mother interjected, her green eyes giving me the look that said
shut up.
“Next year I’m going to be locked in one of those ship containers by a stalker!”
“Cool, Nana Bird. But I’m not going to be able to watch it because it’ll scare me.” He pushed his hair back. There was blood in his hair, too. “Watching you screaming gives me nightmares.”