Audiobook - Young Adult - Ellen Archer

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
the courtship. Chapter one, Burlington, Iowa, 1963. They say that as soon as we're born, we begin to die. I hadn't spent much time thinking about death until I was eight, and a neighbor lady brought over a bunch of mushrooms. They looked like white toadstools. Some were freshly picked, with black dirt clinging to their pulpy roots. Some were fried. No other adults were around as she crouched and lowered the plate to my level. Have one. Theresa. I'm sure your mother won't mind. She smelled like soap and clothes that had just been ironed. She wore pink lipstick, yellow beachcombers and white sandals. She was so unlike the moody women in my family. I ate a mushroom. Later, my mother and aunt put their dark heads together and whispered their concerns about the food. They could be poisonous. Oh yes, they look poisonous. A book on edible and inedible mushrooms materialized, and soon the neighbors gift was declared lethal. An innocent but serious mistake. It seemed that the simple act of placing your hand to your mouth after touching one could bring about violent death. Within hours, I didn't tell anyone that my life was over Instead, I went to my room, lay down on the bed and waited to die. Waiting to die is strange. No matter your age. If I had mentioned the ingested mushroom to anyone, I'm sure I would have felt justice alone. I mentally went through the list of symptoms. Rapid heartbeat. Yes. Sweating, Yes. Dizziness? Yes. I expected to hear an ambulance come roaring up the hill to collect the neighbor and her family. But if everybody in their house had eaten the poisoned mushrooms, no one would be able to call for help. Maybe they were all unconscious or dead. And we would soon catch whiffs of their bloated carcasses. That night I didn't sleep. And when I got up the next day, I opened the mushroom book which had been left on the table and revisited the symptoms. Fear made me weak. Are you feeling ok? My mother asked more with annoyance than with maternal concern. If I told her I was dying, she would get mad because almost everything I did made her angry. Two years had passed since my father had left us once he was gone, he was gone. No phone calls, no letters, no visits. He just walked out the door and never looked back. He didn't want kids, my mother later explained. I was relieved to discover he disliked kids in general and that his disappearance wasn't caused by anything I done. I'm okay, I said, and hurried from the house. In an attempt to distract myself, I crossed the street to a friend. She got out of board game. But when my plastic game piece ended in the land of poison toadstools, I had to leave without explanation. Outside, I spotted the neighbor woman in her straw sun hat and gardening gloves and blonde loveliness. She gave me a happy wave looking very much alive. Death will occur within hours. I gave her a wave back, much happier to see her than she was to see me. What if time wasn't linear? If you were to draw a line on a piece of paper, then fold that paper the day I ate the mushroom would touch the future. Maybe the future was what I'd really felt I would live. But the mushroom incident set up a theme that would continue for the rest of my life, an acute awareness of human fragility. and the knowledge that consciously or subconsciously, we are all at the mercy of our fears and we are all waiting to die.