Krista Puttler: ORIGIN STORY • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Krista Puttler
ORIGIN STORY

Mama, where do stories come from?
They come from a dog’s ear.
No, they don’t! They come from your fingertips!
You mean fingernails.
No, I don’t. Pens, pencils, keyboards…
Blood, pain, anticipation…
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
What it takes to make a good story.
Exactly.

Sylvia planned to cut her left thumb at the knuckle. She needed to write a Western, and she knew that all of the good ones came from that joint.

On her last attempt at an original cowgirl story, she had sliced open her right thumb joint; but it didn’t work. The story never made it from her brain to her notebook. Perhaps that was because it was her right hand, and Sylvia was right-handed. Perhaps that story failed to come out because it was the first time she had attempted to write a Western, or because she was wearing the wrong color underwear, or the cake needed to come out of the oven before it burned the house down, or because of a lot of things. But maybe this time, the left thumb would be different. She had, after all, perfected the ritual.

Sylvia picked up the knife with her right hand. The old slice on her right thumb had finally healed, and the skin edges had mended into a thin pink scar. In a few weeks, that scar would look like one of the regular thumb joint wrinkles, and the story attempt would only be remembered in the cutting.

Sylvia looked at her left thumb. Before she could think too long on which thumb wrinkle to use, she held the knife blade-side down over the one closest to the nail and pressed the side of her thumb up into the cold steel. She blinked. She moved her thumb along the length of the blade, keeping it pressed there, until it gently rose up the end of the blade, past the tip, and out into the air.

She exhaled in one forced gasp.

Did she really do it? She grabbed her thumb tip; it moved freely. It was attached to the rest of the thumb by only a thin piece of skin between the nail and the knuckle. Sylvia bent the tip all the way back, and the nail rested on the wrinkled skin of the first part of the thumb. A white joint capsule poked out like the underside of a fish belly.

She moved the tip back towards the end of the thumb. As the cut skin edges relaxed, small red dots bubbled up and collected together. They tumbled over in a stream of red and down into the palm of her hand. She placed the tip back on the thumb. The blood stopped for a beat, then a red drop slipped over the cut edge, then another, and another.

Sylvia moved her hand off the table and down to her side. She shook her whole arm. The cut tip of her thumb wobbled with each shake, blood splattering the white linoleum. She had to make sure the story made it past the elbow.

No one knew why the stories stopped there. Sylvia thought it was because the elbow joint was actually made up of three bones, not two. And instead of one joint, the three bones created two: a hinge and a pivot. The three bones allowed you to hold a breakfast tray away from your body. The three bones allowed you to rest your cheek in your hand when your elbow was on the table. The three bones held such a precise location in relation to each other that if they were misaligned by just a few millimeters, a child would refuse to shake your hand, or assist in getting into and out of a coat, or pick up a fork to feed themselves.

Sylvia’s daughter had refused to give her a hug. For an entire day. Still thinking she was faking it, even after her arm hung at her side, immobile, long into the night, even after Sylvia had to secure the seatbelt over her arm on the way to the Emergency Room, Sylvia had thought her daughter would just snap out of it and start moving her arm normally again. When they had arrived at the hospital, Sylvia was shocked at the speed with which her daughter was brought back to a treatment room. Only when they were hustled and hushed behind a flower-print curtain did Sylvia realize this was actually going to be a problem. What if her daughter really would not be able to move her arm ever again? What kind of mother did that make her? What horrible surgery and prodding and rehabilitation would Sylvia have to give consent for? And all of this was surely made worse by the day-and-a-half delay.

By the time the doctor walked in, Sylvia was pacing, hyperventilating, and thoroughly ignoring her daughter’s whimpers and requests to return home. The doctor swung back the curtain and waved to Sylvia. He actually smiled a little. Then he knelt down next to her daughter, took her hand in his as if to shake it, rotated her palm up to the ceiling, and then brought her hand up to her shoulder.

“Nursemaid elbow,” the doctor said, “She should be good to go.”

Pivot. And then, a hinge.

Sylvia lifted her left arm and placed it on the table, palm up. The blood dripped down the thumb, down her palm, and onto the table. It formed a red sticky edge along her skin.

She wanted to start writing right away but knew that impatience was what had doomed her first Western attempt. Well, that and the simultaneous editing in her head, the censor voice that slashed sentences before they became paragraphs, words before they became sentences, ideas before they became words.

Previously, she was not so judgmental. Previously, she was meticulous, she was patient. She could write a whole story in one sitting after just a single needle prick to the fingertip. Out of that prick would emerge one drop of blood, and Sylvia would place that drop in the top right corner of the first notebook page, the one that was always fused a little too closely to the inside cover. Tenderly, Sylvia would hold back the page and write beautiful, curling prose, the ink gently seeping into the paper.

But then one of her stories got published. And then another. And then a neighbor recognized Sylvia as the author of those stories.

And a pinprick turned into a nail removal turned into a finger cutting.

Only then would the thoughts spill out of her arms. Only then was the voice in her head quieted enough for the stories to continue.

But that first Western attempt was different. She had cut the thumb like instructed, and the blood had pulsed and splattered, but even with the notebook pages thick with blood, the story remained stuck in her arm.

Sylvia blinked.

The pool of blood had seeped into the edges of her notebook pages. She lifted the book and a long thin line of congealed blood remained. She shook her head, dropped the notebook, and pushed the cut tip back against the rest of the thumb. She stood up and paused, temporarily light-headed.

When the fuzzy feeling in her head stopped, she stepped back from the table, and walked over to the kitchen sink. She washed out the cut end of her thumb, wrapped a towel around it, and retrieved her packet of gauze and tape from underneath the sink. She unwrapped the towel, bandaged her thumb, and tossed the towel in the trash.

She looked over at the kitchen table. The notebook had landed, pages side down, in the middle of the mess. The floor beneath the table was splattered with light and dark drops like the floor of a car mechanic’s shop. She would have to clean that up. But first, she would make lasagna.

Sylvia kept her left hand in her lap as she drove. The thumb tip pulsed. She bought the noodles, the sauce, and the zucchini, her daughter’s favorite. And three bags of potting soil for the backyard. And a pair of gardening gloves because she could not use her old ones until the cut on her thumb had healed. And a new pair of gardening boots. And a new pair of gardening pants. And only one two-gallon bottle of laundry detergent because she only had one reliable hand to carry it, and until the cut healed, it would be important to keep her clothes extra clean. And some more bacitracin, and more gauze, and more bandage tape. And a three hundred count bag of jumbo marshmallows to make cereal treats for the mailman and the milkman and her therapist and her therapist’s receptionist, because her daughter didn’t eat processed food.

Sylvia was sure she had driven home safely because the car alarm was not going off. Sylvia was sure she had taken the lasagna out of the oven and even probably used oven mitts because she did not have any new bandages on her hands and the smoke alarm was not going off. She was sure she had made the marshmallow cereal bars to the correct recipe because there were eight butter wrappers alternately stacked lengthwise then widthwise in a greasy pile, a mound of thirty marshmallows next to that, three nine-by-thirteen pans filled with double batches next to that, and a fourth pan empty, waiting to be filled with the final batch from the bowl that occupied the counter in front of Sylvia.

Sylvia knew her daughter was never going to come to dinner.

It was dark out her kitchen window. The lasagna dish sat cold on the stove, its top layer of marbled cheese congealed along the edges of the pan.

Sylvia looked down at the mixing bowl. As if in slow motion, pieces of cereal mixed with marshmallow stretched, then tumbled off the taller mounds, everything falling towards the center.

She dipped the wooden spoon into the bowl, truncated the highest cereal mound, lifted it out of the bowl, and then turned the spoon upside down. For a moment, the clump of cereal clung to the end of the spoon like a toddler clinging to a mother’s shoulder while carrying a baby doll and the mother carried the toddler, and a laundry basket, and three picture books, and a coffee tumbler full of coffee down the stairs to the basement.

And then, two bits of cereal dropped from the spoon. And then six more. And then the whole clump plopped into the bowl. All that remained on the spoon were three marshmallow wisps, blown up and behind from the resultant up-rush of air, the clump of cereal splattered, absorbed, into the rest of the mess at the bottom of the bowl.

Sylvia dropped the spoon. It clattered onto the counter, then flipped onto the floor. She walked over to the oven and picked up the lasagna dish. The hardened bandage of her left thumb clinked against the blue porcelain. She looked over at the table. The bloodied notebook was gone, and in its place sat a new one, its spine not yet broken. She looked at the floor underneath the table. Spotless.

Sylvia carried the lasagna dish past the table, pressed the trashcan lever with her foot, and tossed the dish into the trash. She unfolded the edges of the bag, tested its weight, then pulled the strings tight. She carried the bag out the front door.

The porch light was off, but with the front door open, the light from the kitchen lit the stairs enough for Sylvia to keep walking. She knew the holly bush was off to her left and then the trashcans were a little way past it on the side of her house.

She stepped down the first two stairs easily. But then she misjudged her foot on the third step, the one that she should have remembered was slightly shorter than the other two. Her shoulders, upper torso, and arm carrying the trash bag, fell towards the holly bush. At the last moment, she pushed the bag against the holly bush, stepped her foot out and righted herself. She looked back at the bush. The bag hung a moment in the branches, sagged, tore, and crashed to the ground. Miraculously, the dish was still intact.

Her left thumb started to throb. She touched the tip, a cold, foreign thing, not seeming a part of her body. The gauze was gone. It was either caught in the bush or in the pile of lasagna on the ground. She brought the thumb to her cheek. The tip seemed too cold, but it was dry, and not bleeding, and seemed stuck on enough to let her get this mess in the trash first and then back into the house for a new dressing.

She gathered as many lasagna noodles and plastic bag bits as she could, tossing them into the center of the dish, and picked it up. She held the dish as if she had just taken it out of the oven, slightly outstretched from her body, left thumb in the air.

Sylvia walked on in the darkness; the lasagna dish leading. Up ahead, she saw the light through the kitchen window, and after a few more steps, the outline of the trashcans. She reached the line of trashcans, bent forward, and hooked her shoulder underneath the corner of the lid. She wriggled her shoulder under the corner, raising it a few inches. She jumped up, lifting the lid halfway, and tossed the dish into the can before the lid swung shut. She could not believe that worked! She pumped her left hand in the air, then stopped, mid-dance. The tip was off the thumb. It hung over on its side like a doll tossed down the stairs, its hair hanging over a step. The warm trickle started down her palm.

Sylvia placed the tip back into position and then held it in place with the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. She turned away from the light of the kitchen window and walked back toward the front of the house. She pictured the outline of the holly bush, the three steps, and the front porch. Holding her left thumb out front, she raised her right foot to start up the first step. But when she thought it was supposed to stop, and her brain told her to start forward with her other foot, the right foot was still moving down, seemingly through an endless, step-less space. Without her hands to break the fall, she plunged forward, the side of her head hitting the corner of the top step. A warmth, like gentle hands, cradled her chin, and Sylvia closed her eyes.

Sylvia sat in the passenger’s seat and stared at the stump of her left thumb. Her daughter stared out the windshield, hands at the ten and two o’clock positions.

Two weeks, fifteen scalp staples, and an amputated thumb later, Sylvia had been discharged from the hospital.

Her daughter had picked her up.

As the car slowed to make the last turn up Sylvia’s driveway, the birds in the evergreens seemed unusually quiet. Sylvia’s daughter stopped the car in front of the holly bush but did not turn off the ignition. She dropped her hands in her lap and looked towards her mother. Sylvia continued to stare at the four fingers of her left hand. Her daughter sighed, then spoke.

She told Sylvia about the phone call from the police. She told Sylvia about how the mailman could not deliver the mail because there was a body in the way. She told Sylvia about the pieces of lasagna found on the steps, the shredded pieces of plastic billowing out from the holly bush. She told Sylvia how she had hoped it was just lasagna sauce that had pooled around Sylvia’s face and neck. She told Sylvia how she had walked backwards, away from the stairs, and waited in her car while the policeman decided if he should call a coroner or an ambulance.

When the ambulance finally arrived, the EMTs rolled Sylvia over and confirmed she still had a pulse, confirmed that she was still breathing. They attached a collar to her neck and an IV to her hand. They put an oxygen mask over her face. They maneuvered her onto a stretcher and then rolled her over to the back of the ambulance. Only after Sylvia was inside, and the back doors to the ambulance were closed, did Sylvia’s daughter get out of her car. She stood and walked over to the ambulance, confirmed her relationship to Sylvia. Then she returned to her car, sat in the driver’s seat, and cried as the ambulance drove away.

Sylvia turned to look at her daughter’s face. Her profile was dry and motionless. Sylvia searched the face for the daughter whose stories she knew. They seemed to be in there somewhere, beneath the layers of makeup, beneath the layers of time.

Her daughter switched off the car, walked around to the passenger’s side, and helped her mother out. A plywood ramp was fashioned over the left half of the steps. Attached to both sides of the ramp was a slanted railing, like parallel bars in a rehabilitation center. Her daughter held Sylvia’s right elbow as they walked over to the ramp. Sylvia went to grasp the left rail, but without a thumb, her palm slipped outward, and she fell sideways over the railing, caught by the crook of her elbow. Sorry, Sylvia mouthed, then she pushed her left palm flat on top of the railing and stood up. Sylvia pulled her right arm away from her daughter’s grip, held tight to the right railing, and proceeded up the ramp.

Her daughter unlocked the front door, and Sylvia walked inside. Her daughter returned to the car and retrieved Sylvia’s hospital bag. She walked up the steps, leaned through the doorway, and placed Sylvia’s bag on the entryway bench. Sylvia stood next to the bench, hands at her sides. Her daughter took one step inside the house, grabbed the doorknob, stepped back outside, and shut the door.

The car started. Tires crunched over gravel.

Sylvia turned and walked into the kitchen. The rice cereal bowl was still on the counter; the wooden spoon was still on the floor. The clumps of cereal and wisps of white melted marshmallow were replaced, smothered, with a layer of black mold, blooming in clumps and fuzzy tuffs, and tumbling over the lip of the bowl.

Sylvia looked at her left hand. The skin over the stump was covered with a jagged purple scar, stretched tight over the end. She held her hand up to the light, the light that always filled the kitchen on quiet, spring afternoons. She saw the blood pulsing beneath the scar, as taunting to Sylvia as a fresh scab to a child. Release me, release me, release what lies beneath. The good stuff, the good stuff, the stuff that needs to be released.

Inside the stump was the same stuff that had flowed out of her head and onto the stoop. It was the same stuff that had dried and crusted on her scalp. It was the same stuff that her daughter had dutifully cleaned from Sylvia’s hair, one strand at a time, between surgical staples and ventilator breaths. The stuff that stories are made from.

Sylvia stared at the purple scar. The light flashed through the window, little purple lights danced on her ceiling, danced on her walls, as many different lights as stories, and she sat down at her table, and she began to write.

Krista Puttler has been fortunate to call many places home including Norfolk, Virginia, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Japan, and a stateroom on an aircraft carrier. Her nonfiction has appeared in As You Were: The Military Review, Collateral, Cagibi, and The Wrath-Bearing Tree. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Intima, Door is a Jar, and HeartWood Literary Magazine. A medium-roast coffee gal at heart, she is pleasantly surprised by how much she loves Italian espresso. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters.