Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz Read Free Book Online Page B

fire.”
    Uncle Billy doesn’t actually explain how Mama was mistaken, how they all were. He said enough when he said, “Your mother has a disease called schizophrenia.” He assumes I understand. “Sometimes the disease goes dormant,” he says. “It hides for a while before it resurfaces.” My uncle makes the sickness sound like a monster—and I can see it. Lurking in the shadows, hidden somewhere in my nineteenth year, ready to jump out and get me. Was this what was chasing me and Mama? Does this disease have yellow eyes and sharp claws and hungry teeth? Is it going to try and scare me to death?
    Uncle Billy tells me how my parents asked him to talk to me about the disease. He explains how hard it is for them. “Your mother wanted me to tell you how sorry she is,” Uncle Billy says. “She didn’t mean to scare you like she did. She wanted me to make sure you knew there was nothing chasing you that night.”
    We’re standing where I stopped to spit, and I can still see the red. I know my uncle wants to walk all the way out to the river, because the Silver River is his favorite place in the world. My favorite place was being inside my mother, where I felt safe because I didn’t feel anything. Where I was safe before the scalpels cut me out like I was a piece of meat and not a baby. Sometimes Mama takes me to the Silver River too, and we play in the wading pool. When we go, she almost always sings, “Take me down in the river to pray,” which is weird because she doesn’t believe in God.
    I look at Uncle Billy. His eyes are a lighter shade of brown than mine, and as I study them his pupils turn into pinpoints because the sun is coming out. I push again at my loose tooth. I use my tongue like I did before, but this time I do not spit. This time, I swallow the blood.
    Uncle Billy starts to walk again, and I follow, half running just to catch up with his long strides. We cross the ditch using a different bridge than the one by the orchard. This one is wider, not just a plank of wood thrown across the water. And now we are walking without talking. We walk until we reach the Silver River.
    This is where the water is still calm and shallow, but if I followed it downstream, I would arrive at the place where it begins to rage. At this place, the water rushes forth so fast, it runs white. There, the white water crashes over the big rocks into a waterfall, and the waterfall fills the pool below with deep underwater chambers.
    From the waterfall, the river splits: On the McAlister side, the river remains a river—wide and rushing onward, but our side is different. On our side, when the river resurfaces, it is channeled by curving walls of rock. Here the water calms and forms the shallow pool where Mama takes me to play. This is where Uncle Billy finally pauses. Here where the water turns white before it leaps over the rocks. The waterfall is loud, and when my uncle speaks, he almost shouts.
    â€œYour grandfather made that pool,” he says, pointing at the wading pool below, farther down from the falls. “He hauled all those rocks and piled them into dams and walls to tame this river. He turned chaos into a place of peace.” My uncle stands there looking at the quiet pool, so I do the same. The stone wall circles out from a weeping willow that slants across the water. Uncle Billy shakes his head and sighs, and then he gestures for me to follow him down the stone steps embedded in the side of the steep hill.
    When I reach the bottom, my uncle is already sitting on a rock by the pool, skipping stones. I stand on the last step to listen to the waterfall, which now sounds different from how it did when I was above it. Mama’s shown me pictures of the gorges in Ithaca, where she used to live. She’s in the photographs too, tiny compared with the gigantic waterfalls behind her. This is how I know how small our waterfall really is. I try to see