Life With Objects

Amy had betrayed me, stolen part of me, part of my childhood.

She said it broke in the move when I left North Carolina. Heartbroken, I tried to replace it with a new one, but it wasn’t the same. It had no mystery or character. And it had – glitter.

While visiting my parents, my sister and her husband, David, hosted a cookout. I ventured upstairs because their guest bath was occupied and used the toilet adjoining their bedroom. I saw the blue vintage lava lamp on the nightstand. I walked over and touched it, and my mind racing with thoughts of how I could get it back.

I returned to the party and listened to Amy’s stories about Elise’s superior preschool performance. “The teacher says she’s already reading on a second grade level and is ahead of her class… She has to find special activities for Elise to keep her from getting bored.” The kid never impressed me. She stares into space like Rain Man baby, but Mom glowed with pride at tales of her granddaughter’s prowess.

--------------------------

I used it as a nightlight when I slept at Grandma’s house. She’d died when I was 17, and, although my sister wanted it, Grandma always said I could have it. I took it to college.

It cast its glow on many hookups – applause worthy performances and times when youth and bravado couldn’t overcome the alcohol. It even spoke to me once – when I’d indulged too much. The lava stopped, formed the shape of a head and said, “Stop it! Never again!” Then it melted back into balls floating up and down in blue liquid.

--------------------------

I returned to my parents’ house for one more night before returning to Florida. I knew I needed that lamp back. I couldn’t confront Amy about it because that would reopen the rift that prompted her to steal it in the first place. But I could seize it back.

Sunday morning I awoke and loaded the car for my journey home. But I only drove about 20 miles, rented a motel room… and waited.

Amy and David left for work Monday morning, dropping Elise at preschool. I parked on a logging road near their house where I could walk through the woods. Using the duplicate key from my parents’ house, I opened their back door, snuck upstairs, wrapped the cord around the lamp and stuffed it carefully into a duffle bag. As I had entered, I grabbed the bottle of charcoal starter from the back porch. I emptied the linen closet on the bed, sprayed the towels, mattress and curtains, igniting them before running out of the house.

I walked back through the woods, got in my car and drove with the lava lamp in the seat next to me.

About the time I crossed the Georgia line, Mom called to tell me Amy’s house had burned to the ground.

That night I switched on the blue glow that cast ever-changing shadows over my bed.

Lying on a gurney, I spy my reflection in the lamp’s smooth surface. Convex, opalescent, the lamp looks like a dentist’s light, except big. Reflected overhead, my legs are distorted, disproportioned as if captured by a fisheye lens. I try to bend my knees, but in the lamp they do not so much as quiver. For now, my lower body is lost to me: bitten by an epidural, paralyzed, and hidden behind a white curtain. But I can see over that curtain, to where I’m not supposed to, because of the lamp.

‘I’m going to prick your feet now,’ the doctor says. ‘Let me know if you feel anything.”

The O.R. off maternity is wide and cluttered with carts and monitors. A team of nurses encircles me. In the lamp, their scrubs are a sea of turquoise and baby blue. I do not feel anything. No tingling. No sharpness. Even my emotions seem far away and drifting; I close my eyes.

When I open them again, I try to keep my gaze low, looking to either side. But straight above me, the scene of my wide-awake surgery plays in the lamp’s pearled surface. I thought my legs were straight, but no⎯a male nurse is lifting and bending them. The soles of my feet face the ceiling like Happy Baby pose in yoga. It is shocking not to know where your body begins and ends. Tears slide from the corners of my eyes.

Beside me, in his new-father-scrubs, Billy squeezes my fingers. I can feel this pressure: a reassuring warmth. But then Billy peers over the curtain. Our macabre doctor, friendly from nine months of check-ups, describes my surgery in real time. ‘See here, I’m slicing off her earlier scar off. Now I’m making the initial incision…’ I brace myself, horrified. “Would you mind shutting up, please?’ I say. And they do.

⎯
There are whirring noises, a rustling of the curtain, and anticipation fills the room. I look into that lamp which is not a mirror at all but a light. It throws yellow-white on my brown skin, showing every imperfection, every possibility. I glimpse the swollen seam of my belly, dark blood, and bands of fat or muscle. On cue, my view is obscured by a set of nurses bearing down in lieu of labor. When they step away, the doctor has tugged something from me⎯a boy, beautiful, like an original line of prose. They lay him on my chest, which I can still brutally feel. From this close distance, I look at every inch of him, perfect and unfurling in the light.

www.jocelynjohnson.com