Method 15 33 (9 page)

You might be wondering why I would include the evil eye in a scientific lab book; isn’t such a symbol mere myth and superstition? Perhaps. But let me illustrate my motivation with a bit of a side-story.

When I was eight years old, my Ecuadorian nanny picked me up from an after-school play rehearsal. She stood by the gym door with the other mothers. Naturally, she eavesdropped on their conversations. The play we rehearsed was
Our Town
, and I was the precocious child who yells a lot. In one scene, our director had me run down a ramp and shout my lines. I have no clue why. I did as I was told since play-acting was a prescription from the child psychiatrist.

“Perhaps some theater would assist her in overcoming the harsh reality of the school shooting,” he had told my mother after I made the mistake of informing her of several machine gun nightmares over the last month. Little did Mother realize, this was no bout. I had these dreams constantly, for I invited them. Having read much about the brain from age six to eight, I learned of the brain’s work during sleep to heal itself. Grow stronger. So I forced the replay of the pop, pop shooting nearly every night to work a weaving magic and forge an even tighter coil of neurons in the folds of my amygdala. I’d lay in bed flipping through an ammo catalog and a deer-hunting magazine I’d found at the dentist office and hid in my underwear drawer, hurriedly burning the images to my hippocampus, like a teenage boy with
Penthouse
.

Still, the theater. I took the part in
Our Town
to calm my mother.

So there I was, running down the ramp, yelling my lines
like the director told me to, and apparently, a gaggle of mothers started humming like bees. “Tell her to shut up,” one whispered. “She’s the one. The freak who pulled the alarm when the shooter came,” another said. As my squat nanny turned to face them, a dainty woman with a helmet of blond hair cast me the ominous, slitted evil eye. “I won’t let Sara play with her. They should ship her off to a special school for weirdos,” so said the helmet queen.

My nanny gasped, which forced the pack to shut their claptraps quick. Before they could hurry a pitiful apology, my hired protector marched like a general announcing an act of war to the President, grabbed my arm, and whisked me out of the gym.

She drove without speaking, only muttering some prayer to herself, “Dios Mio, Ad Te Domine,” she kept saying. At home, she propped me by the refrigerator while she fetched an egg, and then rubbed it up and down and all around my arms, legs, torso, and face. Mother stumbled in on this strange act and dropped her alligator briefcase on the kitchen floor.

“Gilma, what the hell are you doing?” she yelled.

Gilma didn’t stop.

“Gilma, what on God’s green earth are you doing?”

“Lady-Ma’am, no interrupt. Blond lady give baby evil eye. Egg is only cure.”

Mother would normally not tolerate superstitions, but Gilma’s voice was firm, and if there’s one true thing about my mother, if faced with an honest conviction, especially from a stout, tough-skinned, foreign woman with gold eyes, she will listen.

“Do not worry. I take care. I give blond devil evil eye back, and she don’t know about the egg.” She winked, secure in her ancient myth.

I didn’t mind Gilma rolling her egg around on me. I just didn’t think it was very efficient. Why wait on the uncertainty of a curse? Why not take control and plot some tangible result?

A week later and it was opening night of
Our Town
. Before we took our spots, I went out to the audience to check where my
mother and father sat. Gilma had a seat too, one row up, and I hadn’t thought that she’d cared to come. I smiled, happy for her presence. Gilma nodded her head, motioning us to look across the aisle. We did. Mother flung both hands to her mouth, covering her audible awe. Gilma winked and mouthed, “Evil eye. She don’t have no egg.”

The object of our attention was the blond woman, but this time, her perfect hair held an uneven, shaved path from the base of her skull and up and over to the outskirts of what used to be full and curled bangs. The remainder of her helmet-like quaff was intact, but for that jagged scalp-road. She wore her hair disaster like a defiant badge, but her shaking, clenched fists betrayed her discomposure. I have no idea why she didn’t cover her head wound with a scarf like any normal, self-respecting woman would have.

A woman in a conservative, blue sweater set leaned over to my mother and whispered, “Her five-year-old did that to her with Daddy’s electric razor. They say she was passed out drunk on her friggin’ chaise lounge.”

Mother gave the sweater woman a warm cat smile while she winked at Gilma, my faithful governess, my hired knight, my evil-eye-curse-warding egg roller.

In any event, here is an excerpt from my jailhouse lab book:

Day 8: 8:00 a.m., arrives with breakfast
.
places something on floor outside door. Sound of keys rattling
.
takes 2.2 seconds to pull the latch and flip the lock, left to right
.
opens door with right hand, places right foot in threshold, picks tray up off floor. When
stands, he hits 5’9” on the door jamb markings
—which I had pre-marked with my twelve-inch ruler.
Both of
’s hands are full
.
opens door further with right shoulder, walks in with left foot first. From deadbolt to left foot, time calculated is 4.1 seconds
.
does not pause to check my placement; first step is on 3
^rd
floorboard; walks the 8.2 feet from doorframe to edge of bed in 3 seconds and 4 steps: left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot meets left foot. Today’s
sunlight casts a shadow beyond
to 3’3” above the uppermost edge of headboard and 3’1” beyond the side of bed, toward the door—
I eye chalked the spots, which had been marked out in pre-gouged grooves in the floorboards, again with my twelve-inch ruler.
offers more water
.
leaves to collect water in the hall bathroom. This segment takes 38 seconds from offer to
’s
return
.