An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer Page B

first, but I yanked my arm away when he clutched it. “We need a hot water bottle,” I told him, pointing to my mother’s feet. It was something I had heard on television once, on a pioneer show where the man had lost his fingers. I frowned. “Not too hot.” My father was staring at us, openmouthed. “Where is it?” I demanded, hearing the whine of my own voice echo in the hall. He began muttering, mumbling, and for a moment I worried I had lost them both. He wanted to know what and how this had happened. I went to the phone and placed it back on the receiver. My father found the hot water bottle and I fetched blankets and wrapped her feet as he filled it. As they warmed she began to cry out in pain. My father rocked her back and forth, talking to me as she cried, silently now.
    “She took too much, or it wasn’t what she should have taken,” he said. “It’s a damn shame, Naomi. A damn shame. You shouldn’t hear me use that word, but the truth, for such a child, should be told. How can those doctors make such a mistake?” I had been wondering the same thing.
    She insisted on being treated at home that night. I slept on the couch opposite her, my father too tired to persuade me to go upstairs. But in the morning he insisted that I go to school, and by the time I came home she was in their bedroom upstairs. “Fine,” he told me. I knew better, but they wouldn’t let me say I knew, wouldn’t let me see her when she was recovering then, or anytime later when she was at her worst. I wanted to attack what was wrong, to storm it with affection, or knowledge, and the more they kept it from me the more I became like a pet challenging an unwanted barrier. I tried to get to her, but my father usually found me and sent me away, or she did. Leaving made me nervous and angry. I was cruel to him, reminding him that he had been sleeping and I was the one who saw her leaving and brought her back, but he met my cruelty with disproportionate generosity.
    “You saved her life, Naomi,” he agreed solemnly, shaking his head. “There’s no doubt about that. And her toes.” He rumpled my hair. “An incredible child.” I nearly spat my frustration. Instead, I went outside, slamming an unremarkable blue ball again and again against the side of the house, my palms soon stinging and stinking of rubber. When I came back in, I told my father I had decided I wanted to be a doctor, that I wouldn’t make those kinds of mistakes. I told him for his attention, and I got it. “A wonderful idea, my girl,” he said, pulling me onto his knee so he could look me in the eye. “Those doctors could use someone like you.” I had no idea then what he or I really meant, but I had, for the moment, what I came for: my father’s undivided love.
    I woke up suddenly, disoriented. I threw off the covers and ran to the window, peering into the dark at the Rosenthals’ house. It was completely silent. I sat back against the glass, wondering if I should go back to sleep or wait up.
    A fter the sun was fully risen I went outside. Teddy wasn’t there. He wasn’t there when my father came to call me in for breakfast, and didn’t come out until the afternoon, after I’d been shopping with my father at the hardware store for the longest hour of my life. A new screwdriver, the right screws, some twist-ties; a relic of a cash register that had to be punched with a finger.
    When we got back home Teddy was waiting for me. I walked outside casually, fearing I might disturb him if I ran too quickly, that he might startle like a bird. I wondered how his mother had learned to give the evil eye, if her mother had taught her. Teddy beckoned me to him with just the tips of his fingers. When I reached him his freckled face was red from another recent scrubbing, his hair flying away from a recent wash. I had to stop myself from leaning forward just to smell it. He smiled expansively, as though he’d been preparing for several days to tell me his news. “It’s