Those Feelings in Your Guts

“If I had one apple/and then I had three more/how many apples would I have?/I’d have a total of four,” I sang. In the space between my arms, a child lay nestled against me, looking into my face, and scrutinizing my singing ability with wide, unblinking eyes. Unperturbed, I continued my melody. “Four apples… four apples… four apples, all together. One plus three equals four. One plus three equals four.” I looked from right to left, gauging the satisfaction of my audience. They were not pleased. Even worse, they were both wide-awake. I had been trying to put them to sleep for ten minutes.”BC, I hate that song,” my little sister murmured. Though I constantly fought against it, my little brother and sister were thoroughly inclined to hate all songs about math or the alphabet.

“I oo oo,” which was as best my little brother could come to saying: “I do too.”

“Come on guys. It’s educational. It’s good for you.”

“Sing the song about Danny.” She was referring to John Travolta’s character from “Grease” which following “Mulan,” had become her favorite movie of all time. On the downside, the movie was full of filthy innuendo. On the overwhelming upside, however, she no longer tried to karate chop my little brother in half when he was sitting next to her on the couch.

“Karen, I’m not singing anymore songs from Grease.” I was seventeen and felt I had been emasculated enough.

“Ing uh ong abow Anny!”

“Why do you want me to sing a song from that movie anyway? John Travolta is crazy. He’s a Scientologist.” I hated Scientology before it was even cool to hate Scientology.

Karen and Jacob started to cry.

I sighed. There’s nothing worse for a young man coming into his own than being forced to sing show tunes. “Okay, I’ll do it if you guys promise to go to bed.”

“I promise,” Karen chirped.

“Me oo,” Jacob promised.

Pausing a moment, I looked at the ceiling and had the sudden sense of seeing myself outside of my own body. I was in my late teens, already the size of a grown man, and carried myself with most of the mannerisms of an adult. People at school thought I was much too serious about everything, and yet somehow here I was with two children, providing the live soundtrack from a ridiculous musical. “Summer lovin’/had me a blast,” I began, and whenever the words switched over to the female lyrics I hummed. Karen stopped me immediately, with a look like I had tried to steal food off her plate.

“BC, sing it right!” She was indignant at the effrontery.

“Karen, I don’t want to sing the girl parts. I’m a boy.” Earlier that day, my grandmother had brought them with her to pick me up from school. They had both run into my arms. While I loved them both, it had been quite embarrassing when several of my classmates had started to laugh at me. I had been feeling like a mother hen all day.

I argued with her for a few more moments, but as soon as she threatened to cry again, I immediately uttered “Met a boy/Crazy for me.” Upon hearing this, she instantly closed her eyes and quieted.

In the twenty minutes it took them to fall asleep, I had to sing about summer loving twice, drop out of beauty school three times, and tell them both that they were “The One that I Want” four times. Eventually, my words softened to a whisper. My eyelids filled with sand, as my younger siblings and I drifted off to sleep.

My mother was out of town for a week. Per routine, I was watching my little brother and sister out at my grandmother’s house. The three of us were in a plush, queen-size bed and had been sleeping there for the past three nights. Four year-old Karen slept on my right, while Jacob–barely one and a half–was nestled under my left. Generally, I would wake an hour or so after putting the children down, watch a few hours of television, and then go to sleep in the adjacent room. It had been my practice for the past few days.

When I awoke in anticipation of escaping my infant-made prison, the stench of vomit hit my nostrils. I would have vomited myself, had I not remembered at the last instant where it would have gone. Small whimpers filled my ears, like the cries of newborn puppies. Slowly, my eyes fluttered open. I craned my head to the left. Then to the right. I counted two crying children and two large pools of vomit in the depressions on either side of my body.

“Ee cee,” Jacob’s tiny eyes pleaded for comfort, “I eel…” he finished the sentence by vomiting down the side of my neck. It was a thin gruel that managed to work its way into the inside of my shirt and down my back. Liquid peas and baby carrots. Excellent.

Since the age of thirteen (after my sister had been born) and my subsequent thrust into the position of primary care-giver, the experience of being vomited upon was not new to me. In fact, at present count, I have been vomited on no less than ten times, spit-up on a thousand times, and been shat on four times. As vomit on my person was not exactly a new experience, I made sure to remain calm. “Okay guys, it’s all right. You’re going to be fine. I’m going to get out of the bed and then we’re all going to go to the bathroom to clean up.”

As I sat up, the vomit pools by my neck and armpits drained into the depression left by my retreating back and thoroughly soaked what little of my shirt was still clean. I felt like a sponge, dipped into a sick-bucket.

As both children cried, I scooped one up in each arm and quickly ran to the bathroom, where I set both of them down in the bath-tub while I searched for a pair of scissors. Remembering my own childhood I wanted to spare them the indignity of having their own vomit dragged across their faces. I finally found some in the kitchen, and in short order I cut off Karen and Jacob’s clothes and threw them into the garbage. Finally, I washed my hands with a warm wash cloth and cleaned Karen and Jacob.

I carried them, away from my body to make sure that I would not get them dirty with my still contaminated shirt. In the span of five minutes, I put them in new clothes, in a new bed, with large bowls for vomiting. Not wanting to leave them alone for too long, I ran back to the bathroom as quickly as I could.

I took stock of myself in the mirror. I looked like chewed hell. My eyes were red and lined by bags. My hair curly-cued to one side of my head, and I was drenched in puke-cap pie. For a moment, I contemplated cutting off my shirt, but I didn’t have a replacement, and so I decided against it. Sighing heavily at the long night ahead, I grabbed the bottom of my shirt and lifted it up over my head. The acidic stench of vomit surrounded my face from every angle as I prepared to take it all the way off.

Something stirred from inside of my guts. It was a tickling rumble, a faint fluttering of bowel and stomach. It was like the butterflies of love… only it was not love for my little brother and sister. It was something else entirely.

Inside the pocket of cloth I had so conveniently erected around my head, I threw up more ferociously than I have in my entire life. It was not peas and baby carrots, but half digested hamburger and pink, gastro-soaked eggs. I threw up again as the vomit inside of my shirt-pocket flooded back into my mouth, raping my esophagus with acid. Before I hastily removed my shirt, the vomit level reached my earlobes, covered the back of my hair, and engulfed the insides of my nostrils. I threw my shirt, heavy with bile, to the ground. It landed with a wet slap like a ship sailing in a rainstorm. I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with the vomit stench in my nostrils, then wretched so powerfully that I fell to my knees, quivering like a feral cat from the force.

At long last, my grandmother appeared, stepping out of the darkness like a phantom. In the relative night, her small features and nightgown made her look like a human skull with a blanket tacked to its jaw. I honored her presence by heaving.

“Oh my God, BC! What happened!?” she shrieked.

Naked from the waist up, on all fours, and soaked with puke, I responded by falling to the side and turning myself inside out through my throat. After that, I twitched for a moment, trying to draw breath enough to say something profound. When I couldn’t figure out anything face-saving to say, I weakly told her that the kids were sick and that I had tried to take my shirt off. “Can you take care of them while I clean up?” The skull and blanket were already retreating down the dark hallway, as though attached with a string to a fishing rod and suddenly jerked back.

After she left, I ran a hot stream of water over my index finger and picked both of my nostrils to a semblance of cleanliness. Next, I stuck my head in the shower and washed out my hair. A damp towel cleaned the rest of me. In my grandmother’s dresser, I found a small, pink t-shirt with a kitten playing with a ball of yarn on the front. I put it on. It left my navel exposed and was so tight it caused my arms to rest at nearly perpendicular angles to my torso. Wearing it made me want to hurl for entirely new reasons.

Dressed, I waddled to the children’s bedside. They were crying, even as my grandmother tried to comfort them. I tapped her on the shoulder, signaling her to move aside. I sat down on a nearby chair and wearily folded the top of my body onto the bed. I looked more ridiculous than ever, but somehow had forgotten all about it. The children were crying, and they needed me.

Clearing my throat, I put my hand on each of their foreheads and rubbed them soothingly. They were so tiny… so fragile. “Where were we?” I asked. They cried in response. Smiling weakly I began, “Summer lovin’ had me a blast….”

They paused, listening to every word. When I finished one song I began another without having to be prompted. I sang till I was weak, and felt like being sick again. Then I sang some more. Somewhere in the middle of the night, they found rest. I left them sleeping soundly and walked to the bathroom… because it seemed I had also caught a very bad case of diarrhea.

Over the course of the next three days I lost twenty-five pounds of fluid.