Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain (8 page)

“I can't afford to pay you, not all at once,” Mother said.

I sat down on the floor because Doctor Steenwycks's chairs reminded me of the ones the men were burning in the streets. Last time the Sons of Liberty marched through the streets, I tried to explain that the figures they held aloft were not really men, but bundles of straw that would never burn like people. Straw burns bright and quick, and once the fire fades, the black dust makes your insides dark and sore so that even breathing hurts. The Sons only swept me along to the docks, where they threatened to burn stamps in addition to their straw governors, and I thought about my ax and wished I'd brought it with me so that I could chop some of the dock posts down and bring them home to Mother.

“You drill a small hole in the skull,” the doctor was saying, “an acorn-sized hole.”

“Won't the bone shatter?”

“No, no.”

Doctor Steenwycks's parlor had striped paper on the walls, and gold-framed mirrors hung on every side so that we appeared inside the walls: Mother in her mourning black and fancy hat, Doctor Steenwycks, and me, tremendous me, with my back to the others, peering into one mirror while trying to catch myself in another through the corner of one eye. I still believe that if I'd done it, seen myself in two places at one time, I would have disappeared. I would have joined my father in the place behind the glass, where
I'd be seen, as I saw my father, only in the thick lines of my nose or in the mossy brown color of my hair. Mother would have nothing if I disappeared. It was selfish of me to try.

“Next week,” Mother said. “I can bring him next week.”

Both Mother and Doctor Steenwycks stood, and in the mirror I could see them staring down at me. The room was large and the ceiling high, and for a moment I couldn't move. I'd remain forever in this one grand room of Doctor Steenwycks's grand house, which smelled sweet like honeysuckle and old like the docks.

“You take care of your mother now.” Doctor Steenwycks extended an arm to help me rise, but when I turned from the mirror to take his hand, he'd moved it to the other side. He was backward, like everything since Father died and cart seventeen stopped arriving for my chopped kindling because the British were bad people. Perhaps the king's soldiers burned their furniture, too, though the only time I'd seen polished wood chairs in flames, the furniture had been stolen. If Mother and I had chairs like Doctor Steenwycks's, I think we would have preferred the cold to burning them.

I
REMEMBER THE WEEK
before my operation because everyone was angry. Miss Willett yelled at her sister because the milk had soured; her sister yelled back because she'd been robbed in the street and lost a dozen eggs and
two pounds of butter; Mother complained that the neighbors had ceased to care for her and her plight; the Sons of Liberty rioted in front of the mayor's house; and the British hauled cannons from their ships to our streets, which they dragged to the walls of Fort George. Since I no longer worked, I walked down to look at the cannons — heavy, like me, only made of dark metal. I would have touched them, but as soon as I neared, the soldiers ordered me away.

The moon was growing smaller each night, and I was angry, too. I wanted to be cured. I lay on my sleeping mat and imagined Miss Willett. In her long brown dress she danced beside me, only this time, instead of patting my back, she kissed me as I've seen Mother and Father kiss. Miss Willett was there when I closed my eyes, when I opened them, when I woke, when I dreamed. Doctor Steenwycks had promised to make me a man Miss Willett might love, and when I saw her outside — hanging laundry or carrying an ordure tub to dump in the river at night — I stared. I saw her hips move and imagined the skin under homespun fabric. I imagined the undergarments I'd seen on her line. I watched her, and Mother saw me watching and told me I'd best go pray to God for forgiveness, and I was angry, but all I could do was drink a bowl of soap water hoping to cleanse my soul.

I spoke with her only once that week, as she was folding bed linens into the basket she'd used for as long as I remembered.
Mother tells me I have no memory, that things change and I don't even notice, but I'm certain that Miss Willett's basket is the same one she brought over to our house the day I was born, filled with fresh apples she'd picked that weekend.

“How is your mother?” she said.

She was wearing black, too, and I thought she might be mourning Father, but she explained that her brother had died, that's why both she and her sister dressed in dark colors. He'd passed quietly in his sleep. Sixty-five to the day, she said, and healthy till he closed his eyes and began to dream. “It's dreams that kill us,” she said. “And dreams that keep us alive.”

I nodded, because I was pleased by her smile and couldn't think of anything beyond the line of her chin, which reminded me of a perfect log — rounded and firm.

Sunday, the minister spoke about loyalty — to our country, our God, and our king. I counted fifty-six women, fifty men, and three dozen children attending, along with seven odd persons: girls who had breasts, boys who had men's bodies, and one child who might be either boy or girl. I found the last most troublesome. When the minister asked us to dwell upon the things we held dear, I watched the boy-girl hoping it might become clear — or rather that it might be neither male nor female but something special, like dog or pig or cart horse. Mother cried, and I took her
hand. When she prayed, she asked God to make me sane, to guide Father to heaven, and to give her strength in these dark times.

After church, she scolded me for staring. It wasn't proper for a man my age to be looking at children, especially girls.

“Lubbert,” she said. “I need you to help me.”

I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away and I saw she was trembling. The wind slapped us both, and I wished Father were there to put his arm around her. I stood straight as I could, though my shoulders rolled forward. I stared at the ground. Cobblestones passed, forty-seven, before we turned right and the streets became dirt again.

At our doorstep, Mother told me she prayed to God every day that I would get better. I nodded, though I was watching Miss Willett, who was tending to her Indian herbs. She'd explained them all to me many times, one for the stomach, one the head, one the throat. All of them had to do with health, though she told me she liked to flavor soup with cat's foot and roast meat with master wort.

Mother took some parsley, which she baked into johnnycakes that night. We sat side by side on the floor and devoured them one at a time. We finished them all, even without Father's help.

M
OTHER GAVE
D
OCTOR
S
TEENWYCKS
a sugar cake, and she wore a new hat — a bright blue one that
matched her eyes — the day she brought me to him. I knew the way to the doctor's house and wanted to go alone, but I had trouble explaining, as I always do, and so we went together, she holding my hand. I'd washed my neck and behind my ears, and my skin was still rough where bits of soap adhered. I'd looked for Miss Willett before we left, but she'd not yet risen, or had risen and already left.

Doctor Steenwycks greeted us at the front door. He held a metal can in one hand, which he said he'd used to water the flowers. I looked at all the flower beds across the front porch, but I saw nothing blooming. Not the season for it, but I didn't say anything. I didn't see the old doctor or the Negro girl, but I looked for them, too.

The doctor smiled his horrible red smile and asked Mother to wait in the sitting room while he performed the operation. Mother refused, and so the three of us prepared for my sanity. I sat in one of the chairs this time, Doctor Steenwycks stood over me, and Mother knelt on the floor by my side, her head bent in prayer. She had not removed her hat, and it troubled me, a giant blue eye regarding me without expression. Or perhaps it had expression, but I didn't care for it: a spiral of blue wrapped in ribbon pulled tightly.

“Beneath this surface is the cranial vault,” the doctor said. He'd shaved my hair with a straight razor and was running his fingers over my head. I found them comforting,
warming. He had soft skin that smelled of lavender oils — more like Mother's than Father's, though Mother never wore perfume. “Do you want to feel?”

“No,” Mother said. “Just remove the obstruction.”

He showed me his surgical instrument — an obsidian knife he promised could cut through my bones. Again I thought of my ax, though I didn't care for the thought of the doctor touching it. I watched him in the mirror on the far wall. He looked bigger than me, though I outweighed him by at least three stone, and he fussed over my scalp just as the milliners fussed over wooden heads with felt and tulle.

When Doctor Steenwycks cut through my skull, the sound troubled me, the scrape of the knife on bone. It hurt, but not as bad as the time I sliced open my thumb chopping wood. Mother cried out at the blood, which stained her hat badly enough that she could never return it. I'd delivered one very like it to an officer's wife, and I was thinking that perhaps I could return to the barracks and steal it when Doctor Steenwycks declared the operation a success. He recommended bed rest and sent us home after kissing Mother's left hand.

“How do you feel?” Mother asked when we reached the street.

I nodded because I felt much as I had that morning, only cooler, exposed, and a little dizzy. My skin stung where the
doctor had cut it, and I thought I might fall down and that everything was moving extremely rapidly: the sea gulls, the people, and street carts. I wished for a hat, as I'd forgotten to bring one, and in the excitement of the morning not even Mother had noticed.

A pair of man-boys were walking toward us with their arms raised in fists. “We've won! We've won!” they called.

I wondered how they knew of my appointment and how, without asking, they guessed I'd been cured.

The man-boys were abreast of us now, and I recognized them from the day on the docks, and I believe they recognized me, too, because they smiled and spoke to me — not Mother, which is what people usually do: King George repealed the stamp tax. We are free. Somewhere nearby, a musket fired, and the man-boys cheered again and wished us well.

“That's wonderful news,” Mother said. “Truly wonderful. Hat sales have been so low, and no one wants imported satin or, well, anything fashionable.”

I wondered if cart seventeen would come for my firewood again, though it was nearly April and soon New York would be so hot that no one — not even British soldiers — would want heating fires.

“I feel —” I began again, and Mother grabbed my hand. She'd forgotten the blood on her hat, which had darkened to a brownish color.

“Oh, what a glorious day. What a glorious, glorious day,” she said.

I'
VE HAD A HOLE
in my head for nearly three months now. The skin has healed, but not grown smooth. Miss Willett likes to run her finger over the opening, which is as big as the tip of her pinky. She says it's wonderful to be so close to a human brain. And she marvels that I've been saved. She says “saved,” not “cured,” though I've always gone to church and said my prayers before bed. I brought her a bouquet of purple irises I found growing in Bowling Green. I go there after work sometimes to look for the statue of King George that the Common Council promised after the stamp tax was repealed. The king must be large, like me, only made of dark metal. The flowers would look pretty beside his foot. I thought of Miss Willett, and she smiled when I handed her the stems.

“No one's brought me flowers in years,” she said. I waited for her to kiss me like I imagined she would, but she never leaned forward. Instead she turned to her sister, who was helping her hang clothes, and they laughed.

I wanted to tell her that she was beautiful, that I'd loved her since the day I was born, that I remembered her face as it was then, because of the stone in my head. I know it was the stone that held her image, because now that it is gone, I can't quite remember whether her dress was brown or gray
that day, or whether she carried apples in her laundry basket or in the metal can in which she stores extra soil.

“I love you,” I said, and she patted my back and told me I was cured and shouldn't waste time with old women like her. I could start a family, a business. I pulled her close to me, but she still did not kiss me, and though I tried to find her lips with mine, she turned her face so that I tasted only hair. I never planned to let her go, but the constable arrived and I heard screaming and now I may not speak to Miss Willett or the law will take me away.

I work with Mother at the millinery now, delivering hats and crates of fabric from the docks. The milliners say I'm good-natured, that I look like my Mother, that I have a kind and generous heart. Mother seems happier. She's hung Father's broadcloth coat on a peg, and now that it is warmer, she never wears it. Only I take it down from the wall. The coat is far too small for me. But I want to remember it as it is.

Doctor Steenwycks calls on us every few days, even when I'm not home. I have nightmares about him, and I think he loves Mother, and when I tell her, she laughs and tells me I know nothing of love. But I have a hole in my head, where Doctor Steenwycks removed my stone. And I know I have been cured.

H
YSTERIA