Kissing Doorknobs Read online

  They made me happy. They never changed. They always looked the same. They were always smiling.

  Troll cheer notwithstanding, my worries got worse. By January, school was becoming difficult. For the first time in my educational career, when I looked at the blackboard, I discovered that I didn’t understand most of the math problems.

  Unfortunately, my perfectly reliable, always smiling troll family couldn’t prevent my teacher’s expression from changing when she saw that my workbook page was blank.

  “All right, Miss Dizzy Dame.”

  I looked up from my trolls and examined Mrs. Prack’s frown lines.

  “Huh?”

  “If you don’t want to participate, you can just go in the closet.”

  Without so much as a glance at my classmates, I flew into the closet and hugged myself in victory. I was free! I could hear everything that was being said but I didn’t have to participate. Mrs. Prack didn’t know what to think, but my classmates thought I was funny. I could hear them laughing as I examined their coats, hats and scarves.

  Although everyone could see I had a lot of odd behaviors and was gym-challenged, I was still well liked and social. So even though I was disruptive—or maybe because of it—I managed to be popular. More class clown than crackpot. I thought everyone guessed I wanted attention, that I was getting something I needed to compensate for something I was lacking. And I was more than willing to meet them halfway.

  During a lecture on drug abuse, I tied all my troll dolls together using an entire container of dental floss that someone had left in the girls’ bathroom. I dangled them from my desk.

  “Tara!”

  “What?”

  “Why are your trolls hanging from dental floss?”

  “I think they’re high on drugs,” I said with a straight face.

  Everyone laughed. It took Mrs. Prack quite a while to restore order. I repaid her by paying strict attention for the rest of the day. It worked. She liked me, appreciated me, let me be me, even though she didn’t quite get me.

  My mother was working on her computer when I got home after school. “How was your day, honey?” she chirped.

  “Good,” I said. “We learned about drug abuse.”

  “Hmmm. What did you learn?”

  “That drugs kill your body. And that lots of people are addicted to drugs. Maybe even people we know. People who need help. Mrs. Prack asked us what we’d do if we found out our parents were addicted to cocaine. Would we call the police to have our parents arrested? Would we talk to our parents? Or what?”

  I didn’t mention that I had tied up my trolls with dental floss so that they didn’t accidentally get separated.

  “What did you say to that?”

  “I said that I’d call the police and have them talk to you.

  My mother burst out laughing. Her reactions are usually unpredictable to me, but I really didn’t expect this. “Well, then, honey, let me suggest that you make sure you’ve got some extra change to call the orphanage where you and your sister will be living after you call the police, okay?”

  I was stunned. “Did you ever take drugs?”

  My mother held out her arms and I sat on her lap. She kissed my neck. “Not enough for you to be as goofy as you are.”

  That was not a good answer. I felt sweaty and dizzy. I couldn’t catch my breath. “So … you took drugs?”

  My mother’s smile faded. “Come on, honey. I was playing with you. Trying to keep you from worrying about …”

  “You took … drugs?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this with you yet, honey.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you overreact!” My mother turned off her computer and gently pushed me off her lap. Finally she said, “I smoked pot. Marijuana. I don’t regret it. I’m not sorry about it. I don’t do it now. I believe that it is less harmful than alcohol, which is bad for you but legal. And someday marijuana may be legal too. Now, that said, it doesn’t mean I want you to do it or anything else until—”

  “Did Daddy?”

  “Ask Daddy.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this!” I ran to my room sobbing. In the comfort of my bed, I said a prayer for my mother. I worried about her drug abuse. I worried about my father as well but was too afraid of the answer to ask him the question. I wondered if my sister and I could end up in an orphanage. I wondered if my mother was secretly addicted to cocaine.

  For months after that I monitored my mother’s whereabouts. I stayed home from school to supervise her behavior whenever I could fake an illness. I surprised her on the toilet by bursting into the bathroom after her. I snuck up on her in the laundry room while she was doing permanent press. I even followed her into the pantry to make sure she wasn’t smoking or snorting or popping pills. When she started locking doors behind her, especially the bathroom door, I began listening in on her phone calls to make sure they weren’t with drug dealers.

  By February my fears showed on my face … and hers. My dark circles got blacker. Her light anger got whiter. My pale skin got thinner. The lines around her mouth got thicker. I looked tired, worried and anxious. She looked tired, worried and anxious. I could have been a poster child for iron supplements. She could have been a premenopausal villain in a fairy tale.

  “Is it Halloween again?” sang Keesha one morning as we were taking off our coats and putting them in our lockers. I made a face.

  “Leave her alone. She just needs a little blush,” said Kristin.

  “Blush! She needs full body paint,” laughed Anna. “And a nap. Maybe a year of naps.” Anna wasn’t alone. A lot of people assumed I didn’t sleep enough or had bad allergies. Both of which were accurate but not responsible for my scary appearance.

  Mrs. Prack and my parents had a lot of conversations about me. They discussed my daydreaming and my odd habits with trolls, volleyballs, basketballs and closets. But because my grades were usually good and I had a lot of friends, they agreed to do nothing and hoped I’d grow out of my worries.

  Then, one freezing day in late winter, while waiting for the bell to ring, I heard someone on the playground say, “Steponacrackbreakyourmother’sback,” and my entire life changed.

  4

  Counting

  It was as if invisible dictators had snuck into my brain, held my real thoughts hostage and made me a slave to their whims. After days of hearing almost nothing in my head but steponacrackbreakyourmother’sback over and over again, I knew they were powerful invisible dictators. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t not think the monotonous, scary refrain … and once I began to count the cracks, I couldn’t stop.

  I made up excuses about why I couldn’t walk to or from school with my friends anymore.

  “I gotta leave early/I’m gonna be late/I need to memorize our spelling words/My mom is punishing me/I’ve given you up for Lent/I’m coming down with a cold and don’t want to sneeze on you/You have a cold and I don’t want you to sneeze on me/I need some alone time.”

  They didn’t believe me. They were confused. They were mad. Eventually, though, they stopped arguing and left me alone. I missed them. I needed them. But I was too busy being terrorized by the tyrants in my head to give any other feelings or needs much thought.

  Counting cracks was horrible, monotonous, embarrassing, unexplainable, isolating and public. Even though I tried to count quietly in my head and as quickly as possible, I knew people were watching me and listening to me. I could feel the pity and wonder on the faces of their parents and baby-sitters. When they looked at me, they saw a girl with her head down, eyes a few feet ahead, mumbling and sometimes crying. I could hear the exchanges as I was counting.

  “What’s she doin’?”

  “Shhh!”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Don’t stare; it’s not polite.”

  “But what’s she—”

  “Shhh!”

  It was a nightmare and I was awake. It was hell and I was alive. It was unbelievabl
e and yet it was happening. Over and over and over again. In the sunshine, rain and cold. If it snowed and people didn’t shovel, I’d have to check with my toe to make sure the crack was there or I’d feel very nervous. The day Mrs. Scott made me stop and talk to her, I had to go all the way home and start again. By the time I got to school, I was twenty minutes late and breathless in my apology.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Prack.” I ran across my classroom and slid into my desk without looking at the faces of my classmates and friends. Kevin threw a spitball at my face and when I looked up he smiled.

  I turned to Mrs. Prack. “I forgot my homework and had to run back for it.” That was the second lie I remembered telling in my life. The first was to Mrs.Scott. I didn’t want to tell either of them. But I was more afraid to tell the truth than I was of God’s punishment.

  Keesha sighed really loudly and then whispered, “Giirrll.” A few kids giggled. Richard and Kevin gave each other a high five. Emily looked smug.

  “That’s all right, Tara,” said Mrs. Prack with a sweet smile. “I haven’t said anything yet today that you’ll need to know for the rest of your life.”

  A couple of kids laughed at her joke. But as nice as it sounded to the others, I didn’t like it at all. Suddenly I realized that there would come a time when a teacher, maybe this one, would say something I would need to know for the rest of my life. What if I wasn’t listening? What if I wasn’t there? What if I missed it? I was so freaked out that I couldn’t look up. It was obvious. There were going to be cracks everywhere I looked from now on. I felt doomed to insane thoughts and vulnerable to knowing that they were insane. How could I be sane and my brain be insane?

  That day, even lunch with my friends was hell. Keesha came right out with it. “Awright … straight up. Whadzupwitchoo?”

  I knew Keesha wasn’t as mad as she was pretending to be. I also felt she was trying to make us all laugh, or at least lighten up a little. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Keesha continued. “An’ no b.s.’n’. We want to know why you don’t walk with us anymore. And also … what you’re doin’ by your lonely, pale, mumbling self.”

  I looked from Keesha’s kind eyes to Anna’s steady gaze and finally settled on Kristin, who looked as nervous as I felt.

  “I count,” I confessed.

  “We all do,” said Keesha, with irritation in her voice.

  “No, I mean … I really count.”

  “You count what?” asked Anna.

  “Cracks …”

  “Cracks?” Kristin looked confused.

  “In the … sidewalk.”

  “Why?” they all shouted like a Greek chorus.

  I started to cry. I was so embarrassed. My friends looked at me with sympathy but I couldn’t tell them that I was counting cracks so that I didn’t break my mother’s back. By then, I wasn’t even sure if that was the real reason. I suspected I didn’t know the real reason. I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

  Later that day Anna asked me if I wanted to keep score for her Little League games. “I just thought that if you like to count … why not?”

  The why not was that I didn’t have time. I was too busy counting cracks. I tried to explain but I just started to cry again. It was all so irritating and embarrassing. What a horrible day. Humiliated and agitated beyond belief, I counted the cracks on my way home as fast as I could. I just wanted to get the day over with. I resented having to count the cracks at all, but the urge was always more powerful than I was. Before I knew it, I was home.

  “Tara, is that you?” my mother asked with a certain edge in her voice.

  “Uh-huh.” Uh-oh.

  “Come in here, honey, I want to talk to you.”

  I walked into the kitchen, where she was making soup. I looked at the carrots she had chopped and felt sad. Dead wads of orange in complete disarray on the brown, gouged chopping board. Like little redheads after the guillotine. I mourned the vitamin-rich innocence that condemned them to this state of servitude to humans. Unconsciously I began to rearrange them into their original uncut positions.

  “What the hell happened with Mrs. Scott?” My mother was not one to mince words—even swear words.

  “Don’t say Mrs.” I said weakly. I was echoing my mother’s ongoing joke. Whenever anyone swore, she’d scold them, but not for the swear word.

  She didn’t laugh. She just waited silently for my explanation. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t burden her with something I didn’t understand. I was still shaky after telling my friends about it. And I knew that my mother had been tense since discovering me going through her garbage looking for cocaine mirrors or heroin needles. “Nothing,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what she said. No hello. No answer to her call. No idea which way school is. What’s going on?

  “I was walking along …” I stopped to examine the carrot pattern on the chopping board. Instinctively, or maybe knowingly, my mother put her hand on top of mine and messed them all up again. I felt queasy.

  “And …” my mother prompted.

  “And I was thinking my thoughts when I realized that I forgot my homework! So I didn’t hear her when she called me at first and then I came home to get my … homework….”

  “But I was here,” she said. “You didn’t come back.”

  This is the problem with not being a latchkey kid. For the first time, I wished my mother worked in an office instead of as a freelance writer in our house.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, I didn’t come all the way back because I checked my bag when I got to our porch and realized that I had it after all,” I said. I was lying like crazy that day and getting used to it too. I checked my nose to see if it felt longer.

  My mother put her hand on my shoulder. “Mrs. Scott hinted that you might be on drugs,” she said slowly.

  I didn’t even exhale. Drugs! I was afraid to take vitamins!

  “I didn’t tell her that you’ve been trying to have my urine tested for months!” my mother added.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Suddenly my mother burst out laughing and kissed me. “The nosy, presumptuous busybody. Suggesting that my scared, protective, spaced-out baby is on drugs! I told her I couldn’t even get you to take allergy medicine!”

  I loved my mother so much. She loved me, trusted me and was always eager to find all sorts of stuff funny. No wonder I went through so much trouble to keep her back unbroken. As soon as she walked out of the kitchen, I straightened the carrots and went to my room to reorganize my underwear drawer. I was very neat and getting neater all the time.

  And keeping me company while I was straightening the carrots, reorganizing my drawer, eating dinner, doing my homework, talking to Keesha on the phone, brushing my teeth, kissing my parents good night and falling asleep was the continual sound track in my mind of: Step on a crack, break your mother’s back! over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I thought I must be going nuts.

  5

  Impure Thoughts

  Keesha and I were the only Catholic kids in my class who went to catechism classes. We’d been walking to and from St. Francis together on Wednesday afternoons since first grade. We made out first communion together. We planned to take each other’s first names as confirmation names. We were sisters in our faith. And even though she said that she, Kristin and Anna were “afraid a my thoughts,” I knew she was kidding. She never minded my doubts and consistently reassured me that I was not going to hell. She did mind that I tried not to walk to catechism class with her anymore, though. She minded that a lot.

  “So … Count Taracula … you ready?” she asked, handing me my jacket.

  “Can’t you just walk by yourself?” I begged. “Please.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Nope. I can’t.”

  “Why?” I begged.

  “I don’t know why. I just can’t. Maybe I’m scared.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re making fun
of me, and that isn’t very nice!”

  “Prove it,” she said with a sickeningly sweet smile.

  “Dammit!” I swore out loud for the first time. And I was going to have to go to confession for swearing and she knew it.

  “Don’t go cussing at me. It’s not my fault you’d rather count cracks than talk with me.”

  I had an impure thought. Keesha is an asshole. And then I had another one for no reason that I could think of. Sister Margaret is an asshole. And then I had an unthinkable impure thought: God is an … I instantly broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Tara?” I heard Keesha’s voice, but it seemed far away.

  I was freaked out. Where did such terrible ideas come from? Did they come from God? Was God sending me terrible thoughts about Him? In tears I turned on my heels, away from our catechism class, and ran toward the church. I had a lot to confess.

  6

  Saving Souls

  To compensate for my new and frustrating sinful thoughts, I studied my catechism with a God-fearing piousness and memorized details about the fabulously self-mutilating saints. I scratched my eczema and waited for my calling to the convent from God. It never came. The only voice I heard in my head was my own, and it usually said: Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

  Spiritually frustrated but energetic, I decided to save as many souls as I could in my own small way. From that moment on, anytime anyone swore or took the Lord’s name in vain, I said a prayer for their soul and punctuated my plea with the sign of the cross.

  My family found my new quirk very irritating. Actually, my father tolerated it as another in my series of what he referred to as stages. My mother wasn’t so philosophical. And after a few months of it, she was pretty hostile whenever she saw me do it.

  Like the time she kicked the car door shut because she had groceries in both arms and got her skirt stuck in the door. “Son of a bitch already!” she said in frustration. I instantly came to her aid.

  “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name …”