To Cure Pink Eye

I was a very sickly child. Born with a pretty weak immune system (or what I now prefer to call Sympathy Sickness), I was hospitalized several times and housebound for a pretty big chunk of my first year of school. I not only had the chicken pox, but I had scarlet fever twice that year. I also was diagnosed with a bleeding stomach ulcer, a problem that, according to my doctor, stemmed from unnecessary worrying found in a 5 year old boy.

As a child I was obsessed with supernatural powers. I watched every afternoon as Prince Adam and Princess Adora turned into He-Man and She-Ra, those twins separated at birth that would rid the world of Skeletors and Evil-Lynns, that depended on their trusty Tiger and Falcon sidekicks. I yearned to live in Castle Greyskull or Crystal Castle. I wanted so much to be a MerMan or a Teela. But despite my aspirations to be The Prince of Power, I knew that I was too weak and too fragile to find the superhero that dwelled in my little boy soul.

I was a particularly brave kid at school. I was a smart kid. A Red Ladybug, the title given to each child in the advanced reading group. But, I missed a lot of school. I was sick. A lot. Afraid that someone would call me out—the superhero whose proverbial Achilles’ Tendon was his own immunodeficiency.

My aunt Zina once came to our house from California. She brought with her toys for me and my siblings. But the prized possession—the ultimate gift—was a custom-made cape she fashioned out of an old scrap piece of material complete with a clasp at the neck. She explained to me that “all heroes need a cape.”

I became very attached to this cape, wearing it most all day everyday. It gave me powers of imperviousness. I would be the hero that languished to break free from the depths of my mortality.

Without my cape, I would have to find a way to brave kindergarten. My mom wouldn’t let me carry it to school. So, I sat next to the oldest girl on the school bus. Her name was Misty Wilson; she was in eighth grade; she was pretty; and she gave me attention. She always told me “Good morning!” and asked me about my day when I got on the bus in the afternoon. Lucky for me, she was one of the first students picked up in the mornings and one of the last ones dropped off in the afternoons. I became very fond of Misty. She helped me with my homework, she let me sleep with my head on her lap. She was a very nice lady. Then one day, she didn’t get on the bus.

I walked up and down the aisle on the bus with my Gremlins lunch pail and my Gizmo backpack until I finally, disappointedly, sat next to my brother. I began crying. He kept telling me to knock it off, elbowing me in the ribs with his pointy joint. I cried until I thought my eyes were bleeding. And they were swollen. My brother, in exasperation, declared that I had….conjunctivitis. That’s right, folks. My brother told me (and everyone else he came into contact with that day) that I had PINK EYE!

I was 5. I didn’t know what pink eye is. I cried most of that day, thinking someone was going to beat me up because I had a pink eye. I always thought my eyes were blue. I mean, even my teacher, Mrs. Dunavant, told me what pretty, blue eyes I had. I thought to myself, “Could it be? No…wait. No! I’m not…turning into a girl!” I decided that even though I, like most other 5 year old boys, didn’t really use my penis for reasons other than excretory purposes, I really didn’t want to part with it. So, like the little girl I evidently was becoming, I cried. All day. When I got home, my dad asked me why my eyes were all pink. “Eyes?? Plural? Oh my God! It’s spreading!” I cried harder. I started heaving. I fainted from high blood pressure.

My dad scooped me up and rushed me to the emergency room. He explained to the doctors that I had been crying all day— he mentioned the note my teacher put in my backpack, letting my parents know that “Jeremy was unruly in class today. He didn’t want to jump rope with the other kids. Or play leapfrog with the other kids. He preferred instead to sit by himself and cry. He will not be able to enjoy recess tomorrow. Please explain this to him.”—- he didn’t know what was wrong. He told the doctors that I looked pitiful. That I cried. Then I started breathing funnily. And then I “passed the hell out.”

The doctors put me on an IV and set up some meds that would cause my blood pressure to decrease and would stop my ulcer from hemorrhaging. I lied there, weak, destroyed, frail. My father paced around the room. He was panicking himself. I wanted to apologize for being such a sissy all day. I wanted to explain how I just couldn’t make it through the day without my nice lady friend on the bus to comfort and protect me. Instead, I cried. More.

A few days later, having been ordered to stay in bed, my mom came into my room. She was really scared. She pulled the Bambi comforter and matching sheets back and crawled into bed next to me. I didn’t sleep very well, you know, after hearing that there was a volcanic hole in my emaciated stomach that could cause me to bleed to death. My mom knew the trick to get me to sleep. She would get in bed with me, roll over and face the other direction, and let me twirl her thick, curly brown hair around and around my fingers until I, regaining a sense of security, felt comfort and protection and gently nodded off to sleep.

When I woke up, I got out of bed, put on my Teela shirt (you know, Teela, from He-Man), and adjusted the purple, velvet cape my aunt Zina made for me, the cape that my mom always let me wear in bed when I wasn’t feeling well, or when I was sad or scared, the cape that like the magician or superhero that wore it, was magical. I trudged through the house, trying to find my brother. He was in school, unfortunately. Finally, I chanced upon my momma sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in one hand, unpaid hospital bills in the other hand, her head low.

“Hey, momma,” I started. She looked up at me. My mom’s eyes, whose greenness was not unlike Kryptonite, were sad.

I understood immediately.

I ran and sat in my mom’s lap and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, baby,” she said to me, her breath the combination of stale cigarette smoke and black coffee, her skin the scent of Tone soap and Gloria Vanderbilt perfume. “You are just the best boy a mom can have. And you have the prettiest blue eyes in the world.”

I didn’t like the way my mom’s eyes looked. I took off my cape and put it around my mother’s neck. “There, momma,” I said, “That’ll get rid of the pink eye.”