Chapter Seven – Part 2
As she put her room back in order, she thought, maybe that was it. The worst for last. She hoped that was right. The headaches, up to last night, had been growing less frequent. Maybe they would finally come to a stop.You're kidding yourself, Allison thought. Things are not going to be all right. Not the way this is leading. She had to break it to Mom, that she'd been hiding the headaches no matter what kind of weirdness it would cause. She wasn't ready to go through another night like this, even if she had to get someone to sedate her to the gills to stop it. Another night like this would probably kill her. . .
Fortunately, the only fatality of this evening was the light bulb in her table lamp.
As she started to put Taz up next to the TV, she heard Mom wake up. Allison froze, as if she was doing something wrong and was about to be caught. Is it now? Do I just run out and spill everything while Mom's still hung-over?
She'll just say it's nothing, it's stress, it'll go away. . . and she's keeping things from me. . . and. . . and. . .
"I don't want to find out something's wrong with me." Allison whispered, trying not to cry.
"Allie, you awake?" Mom's voice came from the hall, sounding half asleep. The sound made Allison feel watery inside. Mom never drank heavily, never alone.
"Yes, Mom." Allison could hear the catch in her own voice.
She heard her mother fussing in the bathroom. "We're going to have to do the laundry. Who's turn is it?"
Allison thought of the stained sheets in the hamper and lied, "My turn." Tell her.
There was a pause, and Allison thought her mother was going to correct her. "Ok, hon. Do it sometime today." Then Allison heard the bathroom door close.
"Yeah," Allison said.
The shower started.
You can't bring yourself to tell your mother that something's seriously wrong inside your head.
Allison stayed there, staring at Taz in her hand. Taz stared back with a goofy fabric smile. "What if I'm dying?" she asked in a whisper. "Is that what Mom is afraid of? Is everyone just lying because it's hopeless, inoperable, or what?"
She clutched the stuffed animal to her chest and whispered, "The doctor said there was nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Nothing." Allison repeated the word until she realized how much she sounded like her mother.
#
Mom: "Calling here again."
John: "I deserve the chance to talk to her."
Mom: "You have some nerve. Good‑bye, John."
John: "Tell her. You owe her that."
Mom: "Don't tell me how to treat my daughter."
John: "If they look they'll find out the doctor's appointments."
Mom: (goes off on the fact my headaches weren't anything to worry about.) "They cleared up after the visit. Nothing, nothing, nothing!"
John: "Did the doctor know the other possibility. . . If she's a teak(teek?), they'll—"
Mom: "Leave us alone. I don't believe any of this. They're stone insane. You're insane. Call and I drag you into court. Touch my daughter and I'll kill you."
The page sat there, on top of all her homework, christened by a few drops of Chuck's blood. Allison stared at it, knowing that it meant her headaches were something evil.
If it wasn't for that third person plural pronoun— They. Them.
Allison was beginning to hate that word. If it wasn't for that reference to "they" then all of it would make sense. If not for these unnamed third parties, and their implied activity bearing on her, the conversation was simple.
John thought she was in danger from these migraines, and Mom didn't. Or at least Mom very much didn't want to see things that way. Allison couldn't blame her mother for acting as she did. Allison managed to hold up more than half of the fiction that she felt all right.
Allison wondered who "they" were. Could they be relatives she didn't know about? Maybe someone on her father's side would want to fight for custody, declaring her mother unfit for ignoring her daughter's medical problems-
"But she hasn't. I was at a doctor the same day I mentioned the first headache. Two visits, scads of tests. . ."
No, that didn't seem likely.
She sat cross‑legged on her bed, hugging Taz, her homework stacked in front of her. She was surrounded by cats offering their feline brand of comfort. Scarlett was draped over her left leg, purring into the crook of her knee, while Rhett was intermittently stalking her hair. Meowrie had even come in, to curl up next to the radiator.
Allison right now wished she was a cat. Cats managed to understand things without having a too complex existence.
Maybe "they" were some foreign government whose exiled royalty had a genetic predisposition for adolescent migraines.
Maybe she'd been half asleep and misunderstood the entire conversation.
As she mused, the doorbell rang. Mom had left after her shower with a, "love you, be back soon," so Allison was the only one in the house— except for the cats, who stubbornly refused to go answer the door. The doorbell rang again.
Allison sighed and closed the cover of her notebook, marveling again at the straightened wire binding and the thumb-shaped tear. She got up, scattering cats, and went downstairs. Some latent paranoia made her keep the chain on when she opened the door.
Standing on the porch, waving at her, was Macy Washington. "Hi, girl, let me in? Or are you too busy reverting to infancy?"
Allison looked down and saw that she was still carrying Taz.
