Limbo by A. Manette Ansay Read Free Book Online

broad, flat stones. Sometimes I’d choose a song from one of her old music books. “Spinning Song” or “Tarantella” or selections from The King and I .
    â€œPlay this one,” I’d say, pointing to a measure. “Play this one.” And I’d play back what I heard.
    When I was seven, I started formal lessons. My first assignment was a series of rhythmic variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The most difficult one went da -da-da-da, da -da-da-da—Think of rutabaga, rutabaga , my teachersaid—and when I finished, my wrists ached all the way up my arms. I remember my surprise. I’d never guessed, watching my mother, that playing the piano hurt .
    â€œShake it out,” my teacher told me in her lovely alto voice. “Thatta girl. Shake it all out.”
    I rode my bike home through a canopy of elm trees, weaving between the puddles of sunlight scattered across the sidewalks. That night at the piano, my mother listened to what I’d learned.
    â€œThe rutabagas hurt me,” I explained, holding out my hands. My mother cupped them in her own, studied them very seriously. Then she covered them with kisses the cold, clear color of ice.
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    In my family , no one complained about a cut, a bump, a bruise. “Anything broken?” the nearest adult would say if you tripped and fell. “No? Then what are you crying for?”
    Illness was something to be hidden. If it was discovered, you still went to school or to work, of course, but when you got home you were quarantined in your room, so whatever you had wouldn’t spread. All it took was a sneeze to rouse my father’s suspicions. “You catching schnupe ?” he’d say. My brother and I would deny it fiercely—who wanted to be isolated from the family room TV? At school, kids ran the water fountain twice, to kill the germs, before taking a drink; in the bathrooms, we put toilet paper on the seatsbefore we sat, the way that our parents had taught us, so we wouldn’t catch some sex disease. Cleanliness was next to godliness. The moment we got home, we washed our hands with hot water and soap. We washed them again before meals, and one last time before bed. You just couldn’t be too careful.
    Ringworm, on the other hand, wasn’t so serious. Everybody had that. You just soaked a couple of Band-Aids in kerosene, plastered them on, and left them there as long as you could stand it.
    Pinworms passed with enough castor oil; pinkeye with saltwater flushes.
    Doctoring people wasn’t much different than doctoring livestock, and anyone could do that.
    Sore throat? Take a hydrogen peroxide gargle.
    Head cold? Hot whiskey punch with lemon and sugar.
    Fever? Ice bath, if it got high enough. Otherwise, drink lots of water and for Chrissake sake, don’t eat anything .
    Toothache? Chew on the other side of your mouth and see if it don’t get better.
    Earache? Lie on a warm heating pad, or else ask Uncle Artie to blow a little warm cigar smoke in there.
    Sprain something? Well, don’t step on it, silly. Keep your mind off it, keep busy, forget about it. At night, make up a plastic bag of ice, wrap it in a towel, and take it to bed.
    Headache? “Stick your head in the toilet for ten minutes, my father would tease. “I guarantee you won’t feel a thing after that.”
    There was no such thing as mental illness. There was craziness , of course, but there really wasn’t any cure for that. Character flaws such as moodiness or laziness could be easily relieved by doing something nice for somebody else, getting your mind off yourself, thinking about those less fortunate. A smile’s just a frown turned upside down. Nobody saw a psychiatrist, except on TV.
    My mother accidentally dislocated my shoulder once while she was playing with me, swinging me in circles by my outstretched arms. When I cried, she scolded me for acting like a baby—my arm looked