This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [66]
The second time we were also taken to the same small room with bright lights and paper-covered table. The same nurse as before came in, all large and white-jacketed. Her eyes were small and crinkly, reminding me of the pain she had inflicted on my behind during the previous visit. Knowing all too clearly what would happen next, I quickly stood up and opened the door.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
“Lissie . . . ,” Mama called; Heidi was on her lap, so she couldn’t grab me. I ran down the hallway to the elevator and pushed the smooth button. The nurse hustled out the door and down the hall after me, calling, her white jacket pressing against the swaying of her bosom. Another nurse came along behind her, and the people in the waiting room looked my way. The magic doors slid open.
“Hey! Stop!” the nurse yelled as the doors slid closed. Saved by the time machine.
When we got home, Mama told Papa what happened.
“The nurses had to chase Lissie up and down the floors by the stairs to try and catch her when she came out of the elevator,” Mama said. “Boy, were they huffing it. She must have gone up and down a couple times before they got her.”
Papa’s eyes went from hard to soft, and he began laughing gently.
“Not funny.” I pouted from the couch.
“She screamed and kicked when they brought her in,” Mama continued. “She was really pissed. They kept missing her butt with the needle because she wriggled away. The other nurse had to hold her by the hips. When the shot finally went in, she screamed like hell.”
It made my bum hurt just thinking about it.
“The nurse told me we could stop there,” Mama said. “She was still red and sweaty from chasing. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Absolutely!’ the nurse said. ‘You can do the rest next time.’ ”
“One smart little kiddo,” Papa chuckled, sensitive himself about doctors as he tried to diagnose what would turn out to be a hyperactive thyroid.
“Well, at least we got the tetanus,” Mama said. “Whatever everyone else thinks, that’s the most important one, with kids going barefoot around rusty nails.”
In my mind, the only good thing about the whole episode was Papa’s and Mama’s laughter together, something that I had been missing of late.
By the end of August, June’s bottomless light began seeping away from us and the trees rustled around the farm, whispering about it. Heidi and I lay under the ash tree by the house, grass thick beneath our backs, and listened. The firs, spruce, and cedar kept quiet while the birches, maples, oaks, and ashes chattered amicably. In winter when their branches were bare and gray, they didn’t have much to say because they were hibernating, like the animals, but in summer they were full of talk, full of themselves.
Gazing up at the rustling leaves, we suddenly felt as if our backs were glued to the ceiling and we were hanging above everything, looking down from the surface of the earth into space. The tree roots went up under us, and the branches went down below us. My stomach lurched, but then, just as suddenly, everything shifted, and I was lying on the grass under a tree again. The light made patterns through the leaves as they shimmered with the breeze and played across the walls of the farmhouse. Pretty soon my mind drifted with the movement, and I could hear what the trees were saying in my head, as if reading words from a book.
Change is coming, the big ash said, old and wise-sounding.
I lifted my arm over the top of my head and clasped my opposite ear with my fingers. As if on cue, the wind shivered the leaves of a distant oak and the acorns shattered the ground, their impact reverberating in my chest.
Papa told me I was old enough for school when my arm could reach over my head to grab the opposite ear with my hand. Some back-to-the-landers homeschooled their