New England Daze
I’m sick again.
The expression “sickly child” fits me like a glove.
From the very beginning I’m allergic to everything; pollen, dust, wind; I’m freezing cold all the time, with an incessantly runny nose. Starting in October, I usually get my first fever from a day when I’ve been playing outside and gotten sweaty. As soon as the sun goes down, bam! Into bed for days with a fever. The Fall proceeds: a cold, a cough, strep throat, another gross cold, tonsillitis, the flu, and with a hideous flourish around February, bronchitis- which could keep me in bed for a month easy.
My parents don’t dress me warmly enough and it seems I’ve been born into a family of Eskimos, me being the token Hawaiian. They’re so hardy! Mom wears a sweater when ice skating, no socks in her boots. Me, even bundled up top to bottom, when we go sledding, I am sure to have a fever by nightfall.
So there I am, sick again.
I’ve been in bed at least a week, in that drafty freezing overly large house. Snow outside, me in my flannel nightie, ratty hair, unwashed; drifting up and down the stairs like a mental patient- bored, looking for food, books, anything to keep me from going stir crazy. TV has only 3 channels plus PBS, and I hate daytime game shows.
I’ve been reading our encyclopedias. They are on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the alcove hallway next to my bedroom: Encyclopedia Britannica World Books A-Z. Some of the letters are grouped together in one volume, others, such as the mighty C get their own volume. Gigantic, heavy books, with gold leaf edging. I would drag one of these tomes into bed with me and pore over the outside world through the pages. Strange animals, rivers of the world, the main trading commodities of Vikings in Sweden; how an Egyptian mummy is made. (they drew the brain out through the nose of the deceased!)
It seems I am wandering the earth through the Encyclopedia Britannica World Books as I am not being educated at school. Not when I’m out sick- again. No pop quizzes in 7th grade French class, no stinky chemistry lab experiments, no painting in art class, no cigarettes in the parking lot. No examining each other’s bodies in the girls locker room. Which is anyways my nightmare, having no body yet to speak of.
I’ve found some unique conditions, such as elephantiasis, which is when the Tse Tse fly bites you and your leg swells up to the size of an elephant’s leg, complete with illustrations. I am relieved I don’t have to deal with African insects. I’ve found strange Ripley’s-esque knowledge such as the highest village in the world or the largest inland sea- which is the Aral Sea in Russia, now completely dried up due to climate change, but then, still filled with boats and shipping. And I look at the way foreign cultures dress in wonder.
When you sleep all day, you don’t always sleep all night, and I’m an insomniac anyways, so around three AM I get up to go to the bathroom. I don’t go to the one next to my bedroom, because it’s my parent’s bathroom and right next to their bedroom. They might wake up. I walk down the hall to where my brother and sister’s wing is, and use their bathroom. It’s cold in there, someone left the window cracked and it’s the middle of winter. I shiver in bare feet and my flannel nightie. I wander slowly back to my bedroom, and then, in the alcove hallway outside my bedroom, about 15 feet from my bed, suddenly all the blood rushes out of my brain and I faint dead away on the floor.
Some time passes. A minute? An hour? It’s still dark, I don’t know, but when I come to, I see the Encyclopedia Britannica World Books, side view, six inches in front of my face: volumes C, D, E. Calmly, authoritatively standing there on the shelf.
On my hands and knees I crawl back to bed, and get in.
