Carrots still scare the shit out of Helen. Not the stubby, bite-sized sort sold in packages of twenty or more, the type that resemble wet, bloated cigarette butts and are so orange they might be rejected crayons, but the really long kind with tops that appear to have formed as handles and slope to a sort of speared point. Yeah, those kind. The Bugs Bunny kind. Very well maintained tap roots. It was with one of these that Helen’s mother, grabbing the tapered thin end and using the thicker, elder section as a truncheon, cracked across Helen’s forehead. All of seven years old and Helen could not correctly scour the large pot in which her mother had boiled the potatoes. Just above the sphenoid on the frontal bone at the left side. Helen’s mother is right-handed.
“You call that cleaning the pot? Does this even look like it’s clean? Huh? Lookit! Look…at…it! Does this even remotely resemble clean to you”?
Helen was not exactly sure what remotely resemble meant. Was that one word or two? Was that English or some occult, Delphic adult-speak? Her mother had barked it all out so fast, it flashed through the air avoiding capture and interrogation. And since reason was crippled by the specter of her frenetic mother and analysis eclipsed by the eight quart stock pot pushed near her face Helen proffered the most honest answer she could mobilize at that moment… she shrugged. Helen’s hysterical mother was enraged, her dark eyes quickly devouring much of her face space. That carrot club was cocked and readied with an alacrity that would’ve made Bruce Lee raise an impressed eyebrow.
At first the wound beamed scarlet and a shard of carrot clung to the tacky spark as testimony. During the night’s solitude Helen muttered, “Ouch” fingering the celebrity on her forehead.
In school the next morning Mrs. Farmer dribbles concern. “My goodness, dear. That’s quite a lee-zhun! Class? Does anyone know what a lee-zhun is? L-E-S-I-O-N”? The class does not know what a lesion is. But there is a stunning example right here in the room. Helen considers that in a short lapse of time her vocabulary has, as the swelling on her forehead, matured.
Fat Tommy wants to know “So, what’dyado? Run inta’ a door or somethin’”? This with a snigger and Fat Tommy’s fat stomach Jell-O jiggles. That know-it-all Tiffany believes Mrs. Farmer has misspelled lesion but smugly keeps this brilliance to herself.
Mrs. Farmer is never really finished. She asks, “Helen, honey… just what on God’s good, green earth has oh-curred to you”?
For some, adulthood rides a slow wave. For others childhood is a thing dissevered by night. And chaos is not a great shrieking confusion but the total absence of this. It is an inestimable, gaping void where the vacuous poverty of isolation demands title, negates and mocks logic.
“My mom hit me in the face with a carrot”.
Mrs. Farmer, admiring Helen’s budding potential, bleats “Oh my goodness! What a tay-yel”! Then with yellow chalk makes ready babel at the board: “Tay-yel, class. T-A-L-E!”