The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(24)

“Today you’re going to see a girl from California eat fire and drink burning gasoline like you or I would drink iced tea,” Tommy tells the growing crowd. “You’ll see the Pain-Proof Man, the Icelandic Giant, and Olga Hess, the Headless Woman,” he says. This is where I’m supposed to be pointing at the corresponding banners. Neither Tommy nor the crowd seem to notice anything amiss, and so, not knowing what else to do, I point to the banners as he ballys, keeping the bloody side of my finger away from the audience as well as I can.

My finger stings, though after the first thirty seconds, the bleeding only looks impressive when I squeeze the wound, which, when I eye it as I’m waving to a hollering baby in a stroller, does not have two deep fang holes. The snake keeps wrapping her body around me, curving her strong neck toward my face with a kind of coil that looks to me as if she’s readying to attack, so I keep strong-arming her head away from mine. My biceps are already quivering with strain.

“You got a hold of that snake?” Tommy whispers when his bally pitch is through. It does not look like I have a hold on this snake. I do not have a hold.

“The snake bit me,” I whisper, trying to keep my smile. The words come out a little garbled, like a ventriloquist. I hear the shake in my notes. I hold my finger up to his face and prepare for him to cry out in horror, but as I eye the injury myself, I realize it appears more like a scrape than a bite. A small scrape.

“What? This is a first,” he says. We both stare at my finger. It appears, really, that the snake has brushed her teeth against me more than anything else. “Sometimes the snakes scrape against things when they’re getting ready to shed to help them peel away some skin. I guess she wanted help from you. She must like you.”

“She does not like me,” I say, my eyes filling with a heat I know means they are close to tears. Again.

“Do you want to put her down? I can take her,” Tommy says, reaching over. I begin to lean toward him, to let the snake get taken from my shoulders. There are bees in my brain, maggots, spiders, a panic of pain and anger. I did not imagine fear would be such a daily hurdle here. I thought the sideshow would be a place to escape it. But here it is. Over and over.

The snake squeezes on, coiling herself around my body. Tommy’s arms reach out toward me. I want to take a deep breath, move past the fear, and let myself face the actual creature on my shoulders, so much less terrifying, really, than the idea of her. I want to be bold.

I shake my head meekly toward Tommy and, with as much courage as I can muster, keep the snake half-draped across my shoulders. I smear the tiny bit of blood on my sequined shorts and, not knowing what else to do, smile at the passing marks.





CAKE

Two months after the stroke

December 2010

Her eyes were still gray.

She’d been awake for seven weeks. My mom’s eyes opened and closed, her hand squeezed ours or a doctor’s or anyone’s. She had movement in her left leg and left arm and left hand. Nothing on the right side.

Eye color is determined by the distribution and concentration of melanin. Trauma can create heterochromia, a difference in coloration of the iris, due to excess deposits of iron from too much blood in the eye’s anterior chamber, among other causes. Nobody knew exactly why what was happening, was happening with her eyes. Her brain.

Two months, and we were desperate to understand how far she had or hadn’t come. How much she would or would not recover. We asked her to read things. Books. Cards. Writing on photos. She looked at them. Sometimes her brow furrowed. Sometimes she placed a finger on the photograph, on the letters. Then she looked away. We didn’t know if she couldn’t read them, or if she just couldn’t express that she could read them, or if she just didn’t want us to talk about any of it because she was so frustrated.

We asked her to write her name. Nope.

To draw a picture of a house. Of a circle. Of a person.

Could she nod? No. Sometimes she moved her lips or eyebrows like she was trying to talk but had forgotten which part of her face made the sound come out.

Could her tongue go to one side or the other to mean different things?

What if she held objects to express different wishes? What if she picked up this cup for no, this stuffed bear for yes?

What if we use an iPad, a laptop, flash cards? What if she does?

For weeks, then months, we try this. We try everything. The professionals try everything. All the tricks.

“Oh, she’s had a stroke?” I hear from neighbors, acquaintances. “That’s terrible. My uncle had a stroke and had to be in the hospital for almost a month before he was up and walking and talking again. I’m sure she’ll recover soon.”

It has been two months, and she has not recovered. The doctors keep telling us that she will not recover. Davy spends all his time at the hospital trying to get her to recover.

Will he find a way to get her to communicate? Yes, he says he is certain. He is goddamned positive.

Can she move her hand so that her thumb points down for no, points up for yes?

Davy sits beside her bed. “Cutie,” he says. “We want to help you communicate, so we know what you need and want. Okay?” he asks.

She is looking right into his eyes.

“I’m going to help you make a fist,” he says. He gently bends the fingers on her left hand in, straightens her thumb so it sticks up. She is making a thumbs-up.