Chapter Nine: Quicksilver and Barren Fig Trees

...and the lies we tell ourselves from the earliest days.

Sorry, I’ve been away for a bit. After my mom died in June I’ve been trying to find my balance. So, (phew) picking up where I left off: this is the ninth serial release of my memoir manuscript. If you’re new here, maybe start at Chapter One.

The mulberry trees are whispering and shedding great green piles of worm-shaped seeds when Martha Ann and I sneak into Grandpa’s garage. It’s the perfect moment for forbidden activity since my mother is gone, Granny is busy making brisket and baked beans in the kitchen, and Grandpa is peering over his coin collection in the back office.

I lead this mission, having been led by Jacob last weekend. Because Martha, my childhood friend, typically assumes the captaincy of our childhood hijinks, I’m looking to impress her and savor a few moments of clout before she knocks me back into my rightful subordination. 

Finger to mouth in the classic Shhhh gesture, I slowly creak open the rusty door then shut it and the light out behind us. Momentarily blinded in the dark, my pupils widen while the scent of grease stains and rubber tires hits me. I crouch down in the corner closest to the door and as the murkiness subsides, I tap Martha’s arm and point at 5 one-gallon milk containers filled with dental mercury.

Whoa, she exclaims, which elates me, and I scoot over the oil cans and drag away the rusty barbells that lay beside this treasure so she can get a better look. I unscrew a lid and let her peer down at the gunmetal surface of poison. Wanna touch it? I whisper, looking positively devilish.

She smiles and attempts to grab a jug, but I hiss, We can’t pick it up! It’s too heavy. And indeed just one gallon weighs over 100 pounds. 

I’ll tip it into your hands, I say, and she obeys, scooting beside the container to make a little cup out of her palms.

I take the plastic jug handle in both hands, push with all my nine-year-old might, and spill a quarter-sized blob onto her flesh which then bounces into a dozen tiny balls that rain onto the floor.

A long Uh ohhh escapes my mouth and Martha looks back at me, utterly panicked. Jake hadn’t spilled it when we did this, and I have no idea how to pick it up. But I glance at her and, determined to remain in charge, I coolly dismiss the crisis. It’s okay—I’ll get it back, I boast.

Then I stare into one little ball’s silver surface and try to pinch it, but because it’s liquid it just splits further into minuscule orbs. I try scooping it with one hand into another but it rolls away like a pinball, escaping capture. It seems to have a mind of its own and that mind is repulsed by my touch.   

Oh my God! Martha shrieks. My ring! My ring! 

I turn to her, look down at her right hand, and watch in horror as the band of a gold ring her father gave her begins to evaporate before our eyes. A section of what was a four-millimeter-thick loop of precious metal seconds ago has corroded to a fine wisp of golden hair.

How do you make it stop? she asks desperately. How do you make it stop?!

And I’m dumbstruck and white-faced for a beat, then spit out of my dry, stupid mouth, You can’t. And I know this not because I’ve been schooled in mercury’s power of dissolving precious metals, but because things that evaporate only reappear in cartoons, not real life. 

***

That memory is one of very few I can resurrect from childhood. Again and again when I quiet my mind and go hunting for my younger self it seems to bloop up from greenish-black waters like the messages inscribed on a Magic Eight Ball’s triangle die. 

Along with it there’s one other from the same time period and setting. 

I’m in Barbara and Bob’s backyard again and the barbeque grill is seasoning the air with roasting meats, and adults are sitting on patio chairs drinking beer and other fizzy things. I’ve snuck over by myself to the far end of the yard where Granny’s one fig tree lives. It’s spangled with shamrock green figs and I, inspired, decide to pluck them for her and present them as a gift. There’s a pleasure I feel when I twist each leathery, bell-shaped fruit off its branch that I get lost in, picking and picking and picking until the whole tree is shorn and barren like the fig tree Jesus cursed.

I look around and find a large wash bucket by the water spigot, fetch it, toss the fruit in it, and waddle over with the harvest between my legs.  

She’s setting out potato salad and coleslaw and Green Goddess on a long picnic table, looking pretty as she always does when playing hostess. Her hair is coiffed, her lips glazed with Revlon’s Fire & Ice.

Grandma, I say, beaming with pride, I picked your figs for you so you don’t have to.

And her hand drops the serving spoon, she looks in the bucket, inhales sharply, and turns the same shade of green as the unripe bounty.

In that moment I know I’ve done something shameful but I can’t imagine what. I was trying to be big, industrious, pleasing, but again, like the quicksilver, I’ve failed and the result is a disaster.

What happens next is too far below the fog bank of my mind. I’m sure she or my mom reprimanded me for ruining her crop, but maybe they did so with some empathy since I was ignorant that my actions were so ruinous. Surely they weren’t cruel to me right then and there. After all, there was company around. 

***

I have two daughters, both bright, capable, and emotionally perceptive. My youngest, Olivia, walked early, talked early, and started asking me philosophical questions at about four. She’s the fastest reader in her grade, the exemplary student, the child who likes organizing her sock drawer. 

But damn if she’s not savage with herself when she spills a glass of water or doesn’t understand her math homework. I’ve tried and tried to temper her perfectionism and suffocate that innate self-loathing, but I’m learning that we have only so much control over our children’s perceptions and sense of self. I’ll keep placing my hands on top of hers while she’s at the pottery wheel and encourage a lighter touch, but I’m learning to resign myself to the fact that the vessel she throws will mostly be shaped by how hard she presses the earth. 

How did my own mom frame these memorable failures for me? Maybe I brought my hangdog face to her fresh with failure and she pressed it lovingly to her shoulder while I cried. Maybe she was gentle and used whatever form of Love and Logic they had back in the ‘80s. Equally possible is that she brought the Bible down on me hard, snapping my bum with a wooden rod while citing aloud that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. 

Whatever the case, I wonder how much of her reaction I internalized and how much of what this meant to me was congenital. Because what I left with—and I believe this is why these memories keep surfacing like empty life rafts—is the sense that love and approval are like quicksilver: beautiful but weighty and fleeting and possibly poisonous.  And like the emerald green figs I spoiled, if you pluck them at the wrong time what you're left with is your beloved’s face turned sour against you. 

Best, then, not to reach for them at all since your craving only hurts others. Stay small and removed, I’ve told myself wordlessly a thousand times, without realizing that this mantra is far more sickening and withering than two innocent childhood blunders.