Fiction '03, first place

By Elizabeth Bernstein

IT WAS THE summer the worm grew out of Alice's stomach. It was my job to worry it out, bit by bit. Every day I twirled a little bit more around a slender, bleached stick that the doctor had given to our mother. Alice cried every night as I coaxed out the oily crawler, more than two feet in all, from her overburdened intestine. Alice was nine that summer. I was eleven.

Even in 21st-century suburbia, they still work worms out the old way, just like they do in the African village where she contracted the thing the fall before. We had stayed in nice hotels and never left the tour bus, but Alice was a wanderer. Our parents used to joke that they would put her on a leash like parents used to do, if the neighbors wouldn't have stared in judgment.

As her older brother, I was supposed to watch her. Make sure she didn't roam into an uncovered swimming pool, poke a barbed-wire fence. A curious girl, she could be drawn to play in a garbage dump the way a cartoon character might be lured by the aroma of baking bread. Always lifting things up, running her fingers along the jagged edge of a can after it had been opened.

One day, I lost her. She wandered away from the tour bus, for only ten or twenty minutes. I found her out behind the makeshift picnic site, squatting in a mud puddle, drawing her hand across her reflection and talking in a sing-song voice. I led her back to the group.

They say the worm egg probably hatched that Christmas. It grew into the spring, nestled snugly in her abdomen, sleeping through its adolescence, not yet ready to emerge. When it did, it started out as a sore just below her belly button. A bump. Then a blister. It hurt, she said. In fact, it hurt desperately. Bitterly. It got nastier and nastier, red and ugly, bulbous and full of pus. She cried at night, and looked sorrowful most of the day. We thought it was an infected pimple, or a scab. My mother put ointment on it, white cream that turned clear when she rubbed it in. "Your picking at it isn't doing you any good," she would say, as Alice cradled her bloated waist with her hand. The worm inside continued to grow.

Alice did pick at her blister, Mother was right. And one day, as the air got warmer and the days got longer, she dabbed and pressed and squeezed at her sore, and the worm popped its wary head out. She showed me, that night, and we watched it pulse, guessing at what it was. The pain got worse, and Alice developed a fever. We went to the doctor the next afternoon.

Guinea worm, the doctor said. He brought interns and residents in and they all took a look at Alice, naked on the papered table. They took photographs of her, seated, lying down, standing left, standing right. They gave my mother the stick, a narrow little tongue depressor. "It could take weeks," they told us. "Maybe months."

In the car, my mother gave the stick to me. She said she couldn't bring herself to do it. Besides, she said, I had a steadier hand. The doctors told us to turn the stick just so, softly, evenly, or the worm could break in two. That would be bad.

We got drive-thru on the way home. Alice wasn't hungry. She lay down in the back seat, gently holding her belly, still thick with baby fat, and now with something else.

• • •

She lay sleeping, a little lump under the covers. Alice had lined her teddy bears and stuffed dog up against the wall, instead of clutching them like she used to. I knew it was because she didn't want them to touch the worm. Not because she thought they would bump the thing; it was fairly secure under its bandages. But because she didn't want them to be near it, to be contaminated by its watery oil. I put my hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, Bug. I have to twirl Alfie."

I had taken to calling the worm Alfie, trying to make him more like a friend.

"Don't wanna," she muttered, eyes still closed.

"The sooner we do it, the sooner we get it done. Come on, roll over."

She stayed immobile for a minute while I stood above her, and then slowly rolled onto her back and looked up at me. She lifted up her shirt. "Good girl," I said. I took the corner of the white medical tape and slowly began pulling it off of her skin. She held on to my wrist. I could see the tape tugging at her as it came up. She clenched her eyes against her tears.

Alfie straightened up a bit, as if to greet me. As I turned the stick, he curled around it, gripping it gently, making my job easier. I wondered if he knew that the end of this process would be the end of his life.

I rolled the stick in my hand.

• • •

The light came early that summer, and seemed reluctant to fade each night. Alice couldn't run for fear she would fall down; she couldn't play tag and risk getting jostled or bumped. So we went to the creek to look for salamanders. We played tetherball in the yard. We lay against the wet grass when the sprinklers finished, trying to hide from the heat.

Over time, she didn't cry anymore when I did it.

• • •

Dad left for work first, while we were still in bed. We were up, in the living room, while Mom pulled herself together. I lay on my stomach on the floor watching TV, as her feet paced from room to room and she gathered her handbag, her papers, her glasses. She turned to us before she opened the front door. "Be good," she said. The light streamed in as she opened the door, and when she closed it behind her the air sucked out of the room and followed her, like a vacuum, a whispered "whoosh."

I lay there for a minute on the carpet, the beige strands spreading out before me like wheat. I looked up at Alice. She stared back at me for a minute, from her spot on the floor next to the ottoman, and then she brought her attention back down to the coloring book before her. She dragged a blue crayon in broad strokes across the cartoon sky, coloring over clouds, blotting out houses on the horizon. Her head was tilted to the side, as if she was merely witnessing the picture filling in, rather than doing it with her own hand.

• • •

We sat in the driveway. Alice brought out her jacks and bounced the rubber ball, swiping her hand underneath and gathering the little pronged men as she told herself a story under her breath. Long as a finger now, Alfie lay coiled against her stomach, sleeping under gauze and strips of white tape. I leaned back on my hands on the other side of the driveway and looked up at the sky. Broad swashes of clouds painted themselves against the bright blue backdrop. I lay my head down and looked for faces in the clouds. It looked flat, like a movie set. Like a tray with a thousand cotton balls in it, all arranged in sweeping patterns. And then, below the cotton, below the curving paths of blurry, white balls, I saw a swan. Long, arced neck, full, heavy breast, and a tail stretching out, fanning up behind it.

"What are we going to do?" said Alice.

"What?" I said. I sat up. She slouched over her game, having drawn all the entertainment there was to be extracted from it. She looked at me and waited.

"What are we going to do now, Joel?"

She licked her lips from the heat. A tiny pebble dug into my palm. I looked back at the sky and tried to see which way the clouds were moving, but they stayed where they were, fixed. I tried to find the swan again, but it was gone.

• • •

Alice was on the couch with one arm on her stomach and the other hanging over the side when our father came home from work. I sat in the big chair on the opposite side of the room. We were watching an old black-and-white Popeye cartoon, while my mother prepared dinner in the kitchen. He leaned his head into the den.

"Hey kids," he said.

"Hi," we answered.

"How ya doing?" he asked.

"Good."

"Whatcha watching?"

"Popeye," said Alice, rolling her eyes and stating the obvious. She looked up at him with feigned impatience.

"Oh, OK, sorry Missy. Pardon me. I didn't mean to intrude on your TV time." He disappeared from the doorway and I heard him greet my mother in the kitchen, heard the conversation pause for a kiss between them, and then continue in hushed voices, punctuated by an occasional echo of laughter. On TV, Bluto had slung Olive Oyl over his shoulder and was striding off with her as she hollered and pounded against his back.

• • •

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I leaned my head back and swished the mouthwash around, gurgling it in my throat. I tilted my chin down and watched my reflection as I pumped it between my teeth, puffing my cheeks out and letting it flow to the left, flow to the right. I held it there, suspended. I spit. My hair hung down on my forehead, falling into four sections. To me they looked like little soldiers, standing guard, standing by. On the ready, sir. At your command.

I watched my mouth as it began to form the words. "Ready, Bug?" Alice didn't answer. I turned and went into the bedroom.

Alice lay curled on the bed, a sheet tangled around her. The room was still hot and stuffy from the afternoon sun, even though now it was night. She looked at me sideways, and watched as I crossed the room and sat on the bed.

She turned her head and faced the wall. I looked down on her twisted body, wrapped in white sheets. She silently mouthed words to her stuffed animals.

"Don't be mad at me about this," I said, but before I got all the words out she answered in a voice even louder, "I'm not mad at you about this."

"You sound mad," I said, and again, she answered, "I'm not mad," before I was finished.

"Roll over, then," I said. She didn't move.

I turned her shoulder down against the mattress.

She shut her eyes and craned her head up toward the wall.

"Relax," I said. "Will you relax?"

I turned the stick but Alfie wouldn't budge.

"He won't come out tonight," I said. I leaned over her, awkwardly trying to get the right angle.

"Turn on the light," she said.

"I don't need the light, Alice," I said. "Will you let me do my job?"

I got on top of her.

Alfie didn't move at first, and then he did, just a tremble on the end.

"I got it now," I said.

Alice stared at me. We faced each other, in the moonlit room, as I rolled the stick, and wound the worm around it. Alfie strained, turning pale where he was taut, resisted. He stretched long as I pulled, clinging to Alice's tissues inside, where he had been so long embedded. I pressed her shoulder down and turned, slow and steady, turned.

Alice's animals watched me from where they stood in line against the wall, blank-eyed gawkers.

Then it was over. I let go of the stick. He was out more now, another quarter inch. Alice's small hand was still gripping my forearm. I laid the gauze back on, and pressed down strips of clean medical tape. I thought: In a few weeks this will all be over. Alfie will be dead, and we can get on with our lives.

I stroked the hair from Alice's forehead. Her gaze remained on me, steady. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed. "That's my Bug," I said gently. "My good Bug."