Clown Girl - Monica Drake [32]
I marked: No Hepatitis, No AIDS, No Heavy Bruising. No Asthma or Glaucoma or Diabetes. No Jaundice, No Needle Sharing. Heart Trouble? I tailored my answer: Maybe.
Pregnant? I marked No. Newly not pregnant. ABSOLUTELY NOT PREGNANT WHATSOEVER.
I handed in the forms and sat back down. I dropped my pink prop bag on the floor, leaned my cane against the wall, put my hands in the loose pockets of my pants, and ran my fingers over clown toys: three miniature juggling balls, a tube of skin-safe glue, a wad of balloons. I pulled an orange balloon from my pocket, gave it a quick stretch, and started to blow. A nervous habit.
I let the orange balloon deflate against my palm in a squeaking fart sound.
“What’s that?” the receptionist asked. She pointed at the big sign on the wall: No whistling. I tucked the balloon back in my pocket and sat on my hands, palms flat against the sticky orange chair, until the receptionist called my name.
THE ACUPUNCTURIST WAS RAIL THIN. HIS HAIR BRUSHED the sloped ceiling of the attic room. He ran a hand through his hair, then knocked his head against the ceiling and his hair ruffled forward again. “Criminy,” he said, under his breath, and adjusted his tiny glasses. He held the papers I’d just filled out downstairs. There was a rice paper screen set up in the middle of the room, where the ceiling was highest. A portable air conditioner hummed. The acupuncturist looked at my papers, frowned, and said, “Tell me, what’s the problem, exactly?” His eyes were sad, forehead weathered by concern. He was a bleeding heart ready to save the world, the kind that gravitated to the sad streets of Baloneytown like litter blowing through a parking lot.
I’d written groin in the space on the form under “problem.” He already had that. I said, “Well, the bigger problem is money; I can’t afford treatment and can’t afford to miss work.”
He had his pen ready, a page blank. He sat on a tall stool, put his right ankle on top of his left knee, and rested his clipboard against his calf. He wore soft leather loafers with comfy brown socks. He looked ready to play a little folk guitar.
I sat on the paper-covered table and grabbed the tendon at the inside of my thigh. “I fell,” I said. “I’ve strained something.” I grabbed my thigh again and sucked in my breath.
He said, “Let me see your tongue.”
“My tongue?”
He nodded and shook his hair out of his eyes. The logic lost me. I opened my mouth, held my tongue out. The acupuncturist leaned in close, then leaned back and wrote on a blank page. He leaned close again, tipped his head sideways, and peered into my mouth like a spelunker ready to spelunk.
When it’d gone on too long, I ran my tongue over my dry teeth and said, “The problem’s in my leg, at my hip.”
He furrowed his brow, looked down, and wrote like a man deep in inspiration, a fast flurry of scribbles. “How do you sleep?”
“Little.”
“How ’s your hearing? Do your ears ring at night?”
I said again, “It’s a leg muscle bothering me.”
“Healing one part of the system involves the system as a whole. Now tell me, do you eat regularly?”
I said, “I don’t even like the smell of food. I’ve been known to faint at the first whiff of Wiggly Fries.” My brain started to hum in tune with the drone of the air conditioner.
“Smelling is ingesting, it’s all the same.” He held a flashlight to my eyes, one at a time, and moved the flashlight back and forth. “Do you know your neighbors? Are you part of a community?”
“I know some neighbors.” I knew the Baloneytown criminals, and now had made the acquaintance of a neighborhood cop, that grown-up golden boy. The acupuncturist jiggled one knee, shook his leg and shook the clipboard as he read. “How does it feel to be…”—he looked at the forms—“…a performance artist?”
“A clown,” I said. “And it’s tops, in fact. I wouldn’t do anything else. But lately I can’t think. My head is fuzzy. I’ve been wiped out, like a weak crop in a bad year.”
He held my wrist and