The Canals of Mars: A Memoir

Home Remedies

Y ou look like something the cat dragged in,” my mother would say, meaning the parts of me that were easily repaired—a wrinkled shirt, dirty fingernails, uncombed hair. “You look a little peaked,” she would say when my problemsweredifficultenoughforthesolutionsofhomeremedies, her pick-me-up nostrums for paleness, listlessness, apathy, and the telltale look of down-in-the-dumps. She had faith in what she prepared herself, tangible things to gargle or swallow or lay upon the skin, and when I complained, asking how they could work better than drugstore remedies, she said, “These things come from the old country. They’ve always worked.” I swallowed and gargled, but I had my doubts. Boric acid in hot water was a frequent remedy, the potency of the solution I bathed my arms or legs in decided by my father’s diagnosis of the severity ofmylatestskinproblem. Most frequent and much worsewasbakingsodain warm water, mouthfuls poured down my throat by my mother until I vomited whatever seemed to be causing my current stomach distress. The worst was a razor blade held to the flames of the gas stove or a lit match by my father until my mother said it was sterilized, both of them working to open up my occasional abscess. Icouldwhimper,whine,andcry,myfatherexplained,orIcould take my medicine—because if I didn’t, I would be a pantywaist, a sissy, a Little Lord Fauntleroy who would surely accept being effeminate for life. Everyone, my parents said in unison while administering these treatments, could be better in some way, and thiswasone,lettingthemdrawoutthepoisonswithoutcomplaint. After all, they insisted, their home treatments worked as well as store-bought. We didn’t need doctors, who cost money, when most things could be helped with simple solutions. And likewise, self-improvement came to those who tried their best, not boys who cried and merely thought they had struggled. “Just you wait,” they said. “You’ll find out that bearing pain strengthens spirit.” “You’re big enough to stop all this complaining,” they quoted Home Remedies “ 22 ■ b e g i n n i n g s from the hand-me-down advice of their own parents. And anyway, what did a boy just starting school think? That my failures could go untreated? That if I shut my eyes, those failures would leave? We moved in early December. I took my place in what the teacher, Mrs. Leggett, called “the new boy’s seat,” the last desk in the last row. None of the other second graders said anything about the empty desk, third row, second seat, which, for all I knew, could have been “the new girl’s seat” in case she joined the class. Not even Mrs. Leggett mentioned Harvey Walker until two weeks later, a few days before Christmas vacation, when we were instructed to make get-well cards by the art teacher who visited each Friday. NowIknewthatdeskbelongedtoHarveyWalker,whohadwhoopingcough and had been absent for two weeks before I arrived; but I didn’t know what kind of design would please him. I tried lightning bolts and flaming arrows speeding through Get Well Harvey. I printed my name and then added “I’m new,” so he wouldn’t think a card meant for another Harvey had been mixed in with his. Harvey Walker showed up on Groundhog Day. He was short and skinny and sat down as quietly as a new boy. By then, Roy Kelman was out with scarlet fever. We didn’t make cards for him. If he had stayed absent until Easter, maybe we would have sent him a batch, but the week before he came back, apparently unharmed, a boy who’d had polio the summer before hobbled back into first grade.“RobertHutchings,”somebodywhisperedtome,eventhoughMrs.Leggett wasn’t in the room. “He was with us last year.” “ThankGodforHisfavors,”mymothersaidwhenItoldheraboutthepartial recovery of Robert Hutchings. “Dear God, please make my eyes better again,” I repeated every night after the Lord’s Prayer, which wasn’t special enough to make an impact on a specific handicap like nearsightedness. I ate the raw carrots my mother forced on me, and by the end of second grade I’d had my seat moved up to the third row so I could see the blackboard. Now I sat right behind Harvey Walker, who, I thought, would fail second grade, because we passed our math and spelling tests one seat behind us to be graded while Mrs. Leggett called out the answers. I marked twelve wrong out of...