My finger was the size of a small breakfast sausage. I know this because Sunday morning, I had sausage with my family. Three pieces. My finger resembled a sausage. It itched like crazy and I thought my skin would explode. I had this insane desire to cut open my finger in order to let it deflate, but some small rational part of me kept me from finding a knife.
I sat in church staring at my finger. I could feel it getting bigger. Every time someone spoke to me, it took every ounce of strength not to bark my reply. I finally found some ice in the kitchen and tried to freeze my finger. It seemed like a healthier alternative to mutilating it with a knife.
I enjoyed a nice roast with my brother and my grandmother. I pushed through all the allotted tasks, knowing that to stop, was to collapse. After musing over whether to go to the hospital or not (the finger was actually bigger now) I decided to just run to a drug store and get some allergy medicine. I swallowed the pills, iced the finger, and watched it grow.
As I drove from one obligation to another, songs would play. I skipped the happy songs. For every song of anger or heartbreak, I sang out and only then did the tears race down my cheeks. I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to feel exactly how horribly lost and alone I was and I did not want to feel anything else. I felt like I had wrapped myself up in some dream of hope and that dream failed me and I wanted nothing but unadulterated reality. Raw reality. I think my favorite song was “We Do Not Belong Together” sung by Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin in Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George. In the song, Dot tells George that she’s leaving him because he doesn’t need her. As I raged with Dot, I shuddered with tears. But I always wiped my face before I got out of the car. Clearly, there was more to my pain than an allergic reaction to a yellow jacket sting, but it’s so cliché I’m loathe to share.
Monday night, I fell into bed at some ungodly hour I’m sure. I took a Claritin, two ibuprofin, covered the finger in cream and curled into my pillow. That night, I dreamed of a boy. The boy had brown curls and a pale face. He was my friend Elijah and his father had left him in my care. In the large mansion, a gregarious homeless man with a nicotine stained beard played video games with a boy with cerebral palsy. Other children with various ailments came in for sodas, played cards, or just gathered around Elijah. There was nothing formal about the evening. Everyone was having a nice, relaxed time. I noticed that here with Elijah, no one felt out of place or handicapped in anyway. Everyone just enjoyed one another’s company. Including myself. My main goal was to figure out something that Elijah could eat. I know Elijah in real life, and I knew that there were specific foods that he couldn’t eat, and in my dream I felt this overwhelming need to make sure that he was well fed and cared for. I finally decided to give him mashed up green beans. I remember mashing and mashing the green beans. I wanted to make sure that they were perfect for him. When his father came home, I was happy to tell him that Elijah had finished his grean beans. Then I woke up.
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