The New Normal Read online

  He scooped up my bandana and stared at it. Neither of us said anything. We just stood there in the 7-Eleven, not talking or moving while the door buzzer bing-bonged loudly as people came and went. We stood there for what felt like three hours but was probably only a minute. Finally, Roy asked in a quiet, broken voice, “Tamar, are you dying?”

  I started laughing, but it turned into crying. “I don’t know.”

  We left the 7-Eleven then, without even paying for our slushies, and crossed the crowded parking lot to the field behind our school. We plunked down on the dead, khaki-colored grass. I cried. Roy ripped out grass. I told him everything. About the eyelashes, the peanut butter, the pervy doctor—everything. Because I cried so much, the glue on my false eyelashes melted, and they slid right off. It was utterly humiliating to sit there with no eyelashes, blinking like a newt.

  “Have your blood tests come back yet?”

  “Yeah, they were all normal.”

  “That’s good, I guess.”

  “But this”—I pointed to my head—“this is not normal!”

  “Did you try looking up hair loss online?” Roy asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “All that came up were ads for Rogaine and phone numbers for cancer support groups. Nobody knows what I have.”

  “You have to get a second opinion,” Roy said. “I’m going to take you to my Uncle Lung. He does acupuncture and works with chi and all that.”

  I imagined a massive pink lung hurling metal spikes at a giant bull’s-eye on my shiny bald head. “No way no how is anyone sticking anything into me.”

  “You want your hair to grow back, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it then. It’ll be okay; you’ll see.” Then he reached for my hand and held it kind of delicately for a moment, until I pretended to cough and pulled it back.

  “We can go right now,” he said.

  “What about school?”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t you have a chem test next period?”

  “This is more important. Come on.” Roy jumped to his feet and grabbed my hand. He yanked me up so fast, the world spun. For a second, I thought I might fall down. I leaned into Roy, and he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. I buried my head in his chest and hoped I wouldn’t get any snot on his hoodie. Then the bell rang, but instead of going back inside the school, we got on the bus and went downtown.

  Dr. Lung had a tiny office on 17th Avenue. It wasn’t what I had expected, but of course I didn’t know what to expect. It smelled like musky herbs and seaweed and rubbing alcohol and burnt hair. There were Chinese paintings of bamboo and poppies and trees, and brass statues of tigers and dragons and Buddha.

  Dr. Lung popped up from behind a massive wooden desk, clutching something tightly in his left hand. “Ah, Roy! You have friend.” He was a short thin man with thick glasses that made his black eyes look like beetles. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and square, stained teeth. He wore a white lab coat.

  “Yes, Uncle, this is Tamar. She needs your help.”

  Dr. Lung looked at me for a too-long minute, then pushed his glasses on top of his head. There were deep wrinkles around his eyes, and he squinted at me as he slipped the thing from his hand into his pocket. “Okay, we will help her then,” he said. He took a stubby pencil from his desk, wrote something on a sheet of lined yellow paper and gave it to Roy. “Please bring me these things from Chinatown.” He handed him a fifty-dollar bill.

  “Yes, Uncle.” Roy smiled at me and hurried out. Chimes tinkled after him in the doorway.

  “Sit down here, Tamar.” Dr. Lung rapped the pencil on the chair in front of his desk and sat opposite me. “Now, what is wrong wif you?”

  “I—I’m losing my hair.” I began to cry.

  “Shh, don’t worry. You will be okay.” He took hold of the undersides of my wrists, one in each hand, and held them firmly. I continued to cry.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why you cry?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Don’t worry. You will be okay. I will help you.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  He let go of my wrists and wrote something on a chart.

  “Tongue!” he said, and he dropped his tongue to his chin.

  I stuck mine out and he studied it.

  “Now, up.”

  I stood up.

  He laughed through his nose. “No, just yo tongue up.”

  “Oh.” I sat back down and jammed the tip of my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

  He leaned closer to me, then scribbled again on the chart. “You eat propelly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think so.”

  “Get enough exercise?”

  “Does anyone?”

  “How is yo energy level?”

  “Medium to low, I guess.”

  “Night sweats?”

  “Usually,” I said.

  “Ringing in yo ears?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “High? Low?”

  “High. I thought it was hearing damage from listening to music too loud.”

  “Nope. Any problems wif menstruation?”

  My face burned. My period had become irregular since Abby and Alia died. It had only come once in the past three months, which was okay with me because it meant less hassle. I told him this, and he wrote it down.

  “Loose stool?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Stool. Shit. Crap. Scat. Excrement.”

  “Um, sometimes.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Scared,” I said.

  “Come wif me.”

  He led me into a small white room. A white massage table stood in the middle of the room. There was a hole at one end for your face. A miniature rock fountain was plugged into the wall, and a stereo played fluty music. I smelled something sickly sweet and vaguely familiar. Incense. The same scent Mom burns when she does her yoga, which lately is all day, every day. Dr. Lung handed me a white sheet and told me to take my clothes off and lie face down, with the sheet over me, and he would come back in a few minutes. It was cold in the room, and a shiver ran through me as I stripped to my bra and panties.

  When he returned, he told me to take deep breaths. “Since this is yo first treatment, I will only use a few needles, maybe fifteen, sixteen.”

  That seemed like a hell of a lot of needles to me.

  “Now relax,” he said, and he ran his hand over my back. His skin felt like paper. I stared down through the head-hole at the cracked, gray-yellow tiles that had once been white. I held my breath. I felt the cool dampness of an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, then a sharp pinch at the base of my spine. Then one in each shoulder blade. Two in the backs of my knees. I peeked around and saw that he was using a small golden hammer to punch the needles through my skin. He swiped with the cotton ball and then tapped a needle into the space below my ankle bone. Then one in the other foot. One in the center of my lower back that caused a stabbing burst of pain. “Ow!” I yipped. It took all my willpower not to reach around and yank that needle out. Instead, I whimpered into the head-hole.

  “Breeve,” Dr. Lung said. “Always remember to breeve.”

  He said that that was enough for now and that he would leave the needles in me for a few minutes, come back, take them out and do my front. He told me to lie still and relax. Then I heard the door click shut. My entire back felt prickly and hot. I felt sick. The needle in my lower back still hurt. I could feel it pulsating. The pish-pish sound from the rock fountain was making me need to pee so badly, I could feel my molars floating. The flute mu
sic had become high pitched—like a piccolo—and it was irritating the hell out of me. I stretched out my arm to turn the stereo off, but I couldn’t reach it. I tried again, straining my fingers toward the Power button. If I’d had long fingernails, I could have done it. But they were bitten to the quick, and the screechy music played on. I let my arm fall. Suddenly I felt exhausted, like I would never be able to do anything again. As if the weight of the sky was bearing down on me. It seemed like Dr. Lung had been gone for hours. I was thirsty, and my mouth was dry and tasted like sawdust. When Dr. Lung finally came back, he exclaimed, “Ah! Very good! The chi is moving.”

  I touched my arm to feel if hair was growing back. It wasn’t. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Your chi. I can see it moving.” He didn’t explain further and began taking needles out with quick flicks of his wrist. He wiped the point on my lower back with another cotton ball. It must have bled.

  “Now on yo back, please.” He selected long thin needles from a clear plastic case. I flipped onto my back, and he gave me another small white sheet to cover my chest and moved the large sheet down to my hips. My skin was goose flesh. Using the small golden hammer, he placed a needle into the center of each of my wrists; into the skin between the thumb and first finger of each of my hands; into my stomach, quite deep, below my belly button; into each of my shins; and between my eyebrows—or where my eyebrows used to be. He told me to relax, then closed the door quietly behind him.

  The CD finally whirred to a stop, and an eerie stillness filled the room. I stared at the three-inch steel needles quivering in my wrists. The needle in my belly rose and fell with each breath I took. I felt like I was floating in the center of that white room, and the walls floated around me. I felt a warm tingling between my legs. I thought about Roy. I wondered if he knew he was my best friend. I wondered how it would feel to kiss him on the lips. I thought about my sisters, wondering if they could see me right now, and how, if they could see me, they would be laughing at me.

  Dr. Lung returned and removed the needles. They made sharp sucking sounds as they came out of me. The sounds made me feel sicker. I was hot and thirsty, and the room seemed to be shrinking around me. I wanted to lie there until I felt normal again, but Dr. Lung told me to get dressed and meet him in the front room.

  When I came out, Dr. Lung was smoking a cigarette. I sat in the chair in front of his desk again. He handed me a hot white cup. “Drink,” he said. I had no idea what was in the cup, but I drank it anyway. It was bitter.

  “No swimming, no bathing for the rest of today, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Now, you take these herbs. Every day, okay?” He passed me a red bottle with Chinese characters on it.

  “Okay.” I wanted to know what the pills were, but I didn’t ask.

  “Now, you don’t pay today because yo Roy’s friend. If you come back next week, it will be fifty.”

  “Fifty bucks?!”

  He laughed. “Fifty bucks. Yes. Bucks.”

  “Should I come back?”

  “That’s up to you,” he said. “See how you feel after today.”

  I nodded. Tears blinded me and spilled onto the desk.

  “Tamar, you will be okaaay! Don’t worry!” He took my hands in his and squeezed them.

  “Thank you.”

  “Yo welcome.”

  The chimes above the door jingled, and Roy came in, smelling like cold, fresh air. He placed a brown paper bag on the desk and handed Dr. Lung some change.

  “I think I got it all,” Roy said. “Ready to go?” he asked, turning to me.

  “Yeah.”

  Roy thanked his uncle and I thanked him again and we went out into the street. The sky was drained of color; it was windy, and the air was crisp. It felt like it might snow.

  three

  A scabby old man with a shopping cart full of bottles and cans pushed up against me as he passed us.

  “Got a dollar for me, sweetie?” His putrid breath hung in the air.

  I clutched my purse and shook my head no.

  “How ’bout yer fella?” He turned to Roy. The man’s jaw hung slack, showing his brown, rotted teeth.

  Roy dug a dollar out of his pocket and held it out.

  “Much obliged, sir.” The man bowed and lifted his cap, showing a scaly, bald head. Then he clattered on down the sidewalk, whistling “Ring-Around-the-Rosie.” I felt as if somebody was walking over my grave. If I’d had any hair left on the back of my neck, it would’ve stood up.

  My sisters and I used to hold hands and dance around in a circle, singing that song:

  Ring around the rosie

  A pocket full of posies

  Ashes, ashes

  We all fall down!

  Then we’d pull each other down to the ground as hard as we could. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wipe the image out of my head. I could still hear the man with the cart, whistling down the sidewalk.

  “Want to go for a bubble tea?” Roy asked, turning to me.

  “A what?”

  He laughed.

  I had never had it before. Roy insisted that I try it, so we walked to a little bubble-tea café. Roy ordered, and I sat down at a small round table, rubbed my palms together and stared out the window at two thin brunettes sharing a cigarette.

  “Earth to Tamar!” Roy said, placing a cup with a straw in it on the table in front of me. “Do you read?”

  I rolled my eyes and drew a sip of tea through the straw. It was squidgy and lukewarm and actually pretty nasty, but I told Roy I liked it because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and you should never look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “So, do you feel any different?” Roy asked.

  “I always feel different.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I guess I feel…a sort of relief.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know, like when your bike tires are too full and then you let a little bit of air out and it’s a better ride?”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it even does anything. I mean, how could it? Really.”

  “Well, that’s the great thing about acupuncture. Uncle Lung says you don’t have to believe in it for it to work.”

  Some grade-twelve girls from our school came in then, and Roy craned his neck to watch them as they flounced up to the counter and ordered their disgusting teas. They were chatty and giddy and talking too loud. They tossed their perfect hair over their perfect shoulders or tucked it behind their perfect ears. I hated them all.

  “Let’s go.” I got up and dropped my still-full cup into the garbage can and stood by the door, buttoning my coat. Roy’s gaze lingered on the girls as we left.

  The sky had darkened to a leaden gray. We said nothing. Our breath formed silver clouds in the air between us. We walked to the C-train and stood on the platform with our hands jammed in our pockets. The platform was full of businesspeople in suits, carrying briefcases, looking pinched and worried, checking their watches every three seconds. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I don’t want to be one of them.

  We got on the next southbound train. There were some idiot punk kids on the train, swinging from the poles and hollering obscene jokes at each other. Blue-mohawk girl from school was there. She nearly kicked me in the face when she did a backflip over the top handrail. I wished the C-train cops would come and bust her stupid ass. Roy and I didn’t bother talking over the din of the punks.

  When we got off at Anderson station, Roy’s bus was just pulling away from the curb. We both ran to stop it, waving our arms wildly. The driver shook his head but opened the door for Roy to get on.

  “Roy,” I yelled. “Thank you!” The door banged closed.

  Roy pressed h
is palm against the glass window as the bus lurched away.

  I waited alone in the cold for the bus to Canyon Meadows as the sky turned from gray to black.

  When I stepped off the bus, it was dark.

  “There you are,” said a male voice from the bench at the bus stop.

  I peered through the darkness at the guy. I didn’t know him. I pressed my lips together tight and speed-walked away.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you.” Suddenly he was at my side, tall and beefy with a pug face and a shaved head. He wore a black leather jacket, with spikes on the shoulders, and Doc Martens.

  “I’m sorry. I think you have me mixed up with someone else.”

  “You’re Tamar Robinson aren’t you?”

  I kept walking fast. Looking straight ahead. My heart exploding in my throat. “Who wants to know?”

  He chuckled. “Let’s just say I’m a friend of your sisters.”

  “They’re not…”

  “I know, I know. Condolences and all that. But debts don’t die when people do, girlie. Sorry to say.”

  “Look, I don’t know anything about—”

  “Listen.” He grabbed my arm, hard. “They owed me a thousand dollars, all right?”

  I stopped walking and tried to pull my arm back, but he had a vise-like grip on me.

  “Maybe I could’ve let it slide if it had been less than that, but I have to pay people too, you know? And this is putting a BIG hole in my profit margins. Sorry, girlie, but the weight falls on you. Unless you think I should ask your parents for it…”

  “No.”

  “I need it a week from today. In cash. Got it?”

  I ripped my arm away and took off down the street.

  “I know where you live!” he yelled after me.

  I hoofed it home as fast as my legs would carry me. When I slammed through the door, the parents were sitting at the kitchen table. Dad had his head on the table, resting on his forearms, and Mom had this look on her face like she’d been punched in the stomach. They couldn’t help me. They couldn’t even help themselves. I didn’t say hi or take off my coat or anything. I went straight up to my room, closed the door and shoved my dresser in front of it, just in case Pug Face broke in. My hands were shaking. My heart was thudding so hard I could feel it inside my skull. A thousand dollars. In cash.