The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(95)

A small pile of figs sat on the kitchen counter beside matzo crackers, a plastic bear of honey, and peanuts. There were dates, too.

It wasn’t about religion, my mom and Davy said. It was about history. They wanted us to feel the spirit of Christmas by pretending we were at its moment of origin.

“Jesus didn’t have a dining table,” my mom said as I readied to set the table. I was nine and had learned some incredible napkin-folding techniques in Girl Scouts.

“Jesus probably didn’t have forks either. Or chairs,” she said, pouring some honey from the plastic bear into a little bowl. “Or napkins folded into lotus flowers. Put this on the coffee table,” she said, hand ing me two big glasses of milk. “We’re going to eat with our hands. We’re going to sit on the floor.”

My brother, five, screamed a few high-decibel notes, which meant joy. He loved the floor.

“We could use a little luck this year,” Davy said, lighting some waxy pebbles in two small bowls. “Wise men brought frankincense and myrrh to baby Jesus,” he said. “For ambiance.”

We all sat down on the floor, the air quickly overpowered by the smell of pine resin wafting from the burning nuggets of sap.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” my mom said, coughing. She smiled. Changed position on the floor. “I think historical Jesus would have wanted us to be comfortable,” she said, grabbing pillows from the couch for her and Davy to sit on.

My dad’s side was Catholic, and I’d been to church with my grandmother quite a bit, where there was also something we did that involved eating Jesus. What I knew of the Bible so far mostly had to do with eating, like the fish people had on their cars to mean Jesus, and also the PB&J sandwiches my grandmother and I made by the hundreds for homeless people. I thought it was all pretty great.

My mom reached out and took our hands, the four of us making a square around the table. “Thank you, historical Jesus, for letting us try your food,” she said.

“And thank you for the health,” Davy said. It had only been a few months since she was back. “And a wish for the coming year,” my mom said. “For a trip to Italy.”

Davy smiled at her, squeezing her hand tighter.

“You’re going to Italy?” I asked.

“Yep. One day. We’ve got to wish it into the universe,” she said, winking at Davy.

“Dear Universe,” Davy said. “Thank you for the trip to Italy that we will take.”

“Amen,” my mom said. She looked at my brother and me, cleared her throat.

“Amen?” we said. She smiled.

We wanted to be good, all of us. We wanted to eat like historical Jesus so the Universe would bless us with things, so that the mysterious forces would take over. No more sicknesses. Money. Italy.

We chewed some dates, crunched crackers. We chugged a lot of milk. We dipped our fingers in honey and brought big gooey piles of it to our tongues, filling ourselves with amber.

The bowls of frankincense and myrrh smoked and billowed, and finally my mom said it stank too much and we opened the doors and windows to let the cold air rush in.

The fruit was gone, then the honey, the crackers, the milk.

“We’re hungry,” my brother and I said.

“Historical Jesus was just fine,” my mom said.

“But we are starving,” we said.

“Have more milk,” she said, gesturing toward the fridge. We were still sitting on the floor, full only of history, and so my brother let out more high-decibel shrieks as he started spinning on his knees on a stuffed animal, and his foot kicked me as he spun, so I kicked him back, and his screaming became higher pitched and I told him to shut up and we knew, even without knowing much about Jesus, that Jesus would not have approved, but so, too, would he not have approved of a summer of sickness and an almost-gone mom, and so we kicked and slapped and screamed and finally my mom said, “FINE.”

We stopped, waiting for our prize.

“I’ll put in some fish sticks.”

We sat silent and still in our victory.

“Historical Jesus probably had fish,” Davy said to her back as she walked into the kitchen.

Maybe fish sticks would do the magic. Maybe money would rain down on us like fish. A whole entire house filling with money fish, no, health fish, those slippery bodies pouring down from the ceiling, thwacking our foreheads and shoulders as they fell, no, a neighborhood of Italy fish, the whole California sky dumping them down, our arms wide and our heads thrown back to receive them.





DR. FRANKENSTEIN’S HUSHED BLOOD LOVE SONG

Day 84 of 150

World of Wonders

September 2013

The stage collects droplets of blood. He is already on it, waiting for them.

“I must concentrate absolutely,” Dr. Frankenstein says. One hand is holding the mic. He speaks softly in a low, monotone voice.

“Now I am slowing my heart from seventy-eight to sixty beats per minute.” He is quiet. Things are slowing. The rhythm of the last drips of rain falling from the eaves. “If I don’t hit any veins or arteries, I won’t bleed much.”

He is Dr. Frankenstein for this act alone, afterward returning to Red, our sword swallower, our blockhead, our lover of cats. But for this one act, he becomes someone else.

“I don’t work strong,” Red had told me. “Learned the pincushion act, which I call Dr. Frankenstein, from Bill Hitch the Son of a Bitch. He always worked strong. He’d look for veins and arteries in his pincushion act and pierce right through them to make a bloody mess, to spray the audience. So they’d know it was real. Not me. I do deep muscle pierces. There’s blood sometimes, but I perform this act so often, I can’t do it strong. I’d bleed out and die.”