Saturday Morning Short stories: The Spot in the Middle

March 11, 2012

The Spot in the Middle

Nobody but Lisa knew Shayla’s secret. But she was willing to keep her sister’s secret, since she was necessary for the success of her sister’s experiment.

Shayla was the middle child of thirteen. Her father, Wilson Baker, was a child psychologist with grand plans to become the world’s foremost expert on the effect of birth order on children. He often philosophized on how much more subtle the effects were than merely noting that the eldest was a leader, the youngest was dependent and the middle child an observer. In fact, when he and his wife were married, they determined in advance that if they could, they would have a ‘baker’s dozen’ children. “A Baker’s Dozen” was to be the title of the book Dr. Baker would one day write.

Shayla was only 10 when the Dr. Baker finally had his baker’s dozen and congratulated himself on that blessed occasion that he finally had a complete laboratory. But being the middle child of thirteen was not entirely satisfactory to Shayla. She spelled her name with an ‘Sh’ because she grew weary of explaining how it was pronounced. Her birth certificate spelled it with an ‘X’. But most people had no idea how to pronounce ‘X-e-l-a’ . But her name was spelled with an ‘X’ because ‘x’ marks the middle spot.

The weakness in Dr. Baker’s research was that even spelling Shayla with an ‘x’ didn’t make her the middle child at first. She was the youngest for thirteen months until Lisa was born. Then she was the seventh of eight, the seventh of nine and so on. So her family position was fluid as more babies crowded into the Baker’s lives. Dr. Baker failed to consider that indeed, the only child that kept their family position was the eldest. Nothing short of a murder or terrible accident could unseat the eldest from her position, but that’s another matter.

Perhaps it was this fluidity, or perhaps it was the cheerful, pragmatic and capable personality God had given to the little girl, but Shayla became invisible. Not in the visual sense, of course. She was as plainly material as the eldest or current youngest. She ably filled a place on the bench at the dinner table and she had her very own seat belt in the 15 passenger Ford Clubwagon. She didn’t even realize her own invisibility until she was left behind at gas stations twice in one month, and left at the church two Sundays in a row.

Happily, Shayla lived with a child psychologist. She found him in his home office, writing furiously on his book and asked, “Dad, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Honey,” he answered without looking up.

“I feel like I’m invisible. I was wondering if there was a reason for that.”

“Mmmm hmmmm.” His typing didn’t pause.

“I feel like nobody notices me. I never do anything that someone hasn’t already done before me. I’m not as cute as the little ones, but I’m not old enough to do things with the older ones. Even things the older ones did at my age, they say I’m too young to do now.”

Dr. Baker clicked ‘save’ on his desktop keyboard and peered over his half glasses at her. “I think that’s a function of your age, partly,” he said. “Most pubescent children want to spread their wings more than they’re really mature enough for.”

Shayla had no idea what pubescent meant, but assumed it meant ‘about 12’.  “I know that the boys had built a tree house by the time they were my age and you even bought the lumber.”

“Well, building is good for boys. It was a good bonding experience for your older brothers. But most of what you’re feeling, is just a function of being the middle child. So don’t worry. Middle children often feel unimportant or “invisible” as you say. It’s perfectly normal.”

Dr. Baker traced the mouse over the screen to activate it, and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose.

“But Dad!” Shayla stood close beside his chair and tried to obscure his view of the screen. “I don’t want to be normal. Normal isn’t that great.”

“I see what you mean,” He often said that when he meant, ‘I’m too distracted to process what you’re saying and don’t want to be bothered.’

“So Dad,” Shayla leaned further into her father’s line of vision until he was forced to hang over the arm of his chair to continue eye contact with the manuscript on his screen. “Dad!”

“Ummmhmmm.”

“It’s normal for kids in Africa to be hungry. It’s normal for dogs to have fleas. Being normal doesn’t help the poor dog or the hungry kids.”

“Very true.” The screen flickered off Dr. Baker’s glasses and the reflection made it hard for Shayla to see his eyes.

“So if it’s normal, I suppose I’ll just vanish completely and nobody will notice.”

“No theatrics, Honey.”

Shayla knew he called her “Honey” because he didn’t have to recite down the list of her older siblings names to figure out hers.

“I’m going to start an experiment.”

“That’s my little scientist.”

Shayla closed the door quietly behind herself and went to the shed for a pick and shovel.

The Baker’s lived on a hundred acres of good farm land. They had a big vegetable garden and two dozen fruit trees for the sake of fighting the lazies. Most of the open land was planted in alfalfa. On the opposite side of the property, there was a year-round stream that ran beside a low bank. A ribbon of willow thickets, blackberry brambles and cottonwoods lined the stream so that the bluff was not visible from any place on the property. It was to this bluff that Shayla carried her borrowed tools.

That night, she came for dinner with bits of leaves and twigs in her hair. Since it was Saturday, she took her turn at a shower but when Lisa followed immediately after, the younger girl asked, “Why is the tub so dirty? There are little twigs and sand and all kinds of junk in there. What have you been doing?”

“I’m digging a cave in the bluff.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to live in it.”

“Can I help?”

“Sure. But I don’t think you’ll be able to live with me. And you can only help if you keep it an absolute secret. It’s an experiment. You don’t have to lie, but don’t volunteer any information.”

Lisa had agreed, and for the next two weeks after school, the two picked and shoveled until they had a snug little cave eight feet deep and about as wide. They squared the corners and dug shelves into the back wall.

Mr. Baker noticed their dirty clothes and heard the shower running that Friday and commented to Mrs. Baker, “Shayla is really coming into that awkward age. But I’m glad she’s taken to bathing so faithfully. We had a bit of a battle with Jimmy, didn’t we?”

“No, that was Kyle. Jimmy never minded bathing,” Mrs. Baker corrected.

“Oh yes, I guess so.”

“You guess so? Don’t you think I would know? I’m the mother, after all.”

Dr. Baker kissed her with a smile.

Shayla kept up her homework and her weekly babysitting appointments with the neighbors. She had saved the twenty dollar bill she got each week, too. So when she asked to go along when her father went to Home Depot, she didn’t need to ask for money. She bought a baker’s dozen 2×4 boards and had them threaded under the bench seats in the van before her father even came out. But when he saw the five pound box of nails and the new framing hammer in the far back, he asked about it.

“I’m building a house,” Shayla answered. “Do you mind if I use your saw? I’ll cut my lumber in the barn and then carry it to my house.”

Dr. Baker laughed and told her that he didn’t mind at all.

In two months, Shayla’s new residence was finished. It had a framed front wall, sheeted with odd scraps of plywood she had scavenged with permission at a building site about a mile down the road. The inside walls were lined with heavy plastic tarp and the space in the framed wall was stuffed with old newspapers. There was even a window made of a piece of stock plexiglass hot glued into a rather crooked frame. It opened with a leather hinge she had nailed to the cross brace.

Shayla used her babysitting money to buy a dutch oven, a cast iron skillet, four heavy blankets, two chairs, a set of red curtains and a curtain rod, and an old TV tray. She had fashioned a chimney using a post hole digger and a piece of duct she bought on another trip to the home store. Her little fireplace was dug into the wall and lined with the flattest river rock she and Lisa could find.

Lisa sat beside the TV tray admiring the little bed frame with it’s woven willow bark support. Her sister had cut the willow bows and lashed and nailed them into a sturdy bed.
                “Can I lie on it?”

“Sure, try it out.”

Lisa lay a folded blanket over the willow bark and lay gingerly down.  “Oh it’s comfortable! Make one for me too!”

“There’s not room for another bed, really.”

“Sure there is. You left the poles long enough that you could make it into a bunk bed.”

Shayla sat in the chair opposite, surveying the finished bed. It did seem very lonely. “All right, if you find four willows the right length and cut them down and strip off the bark, I’ll do it for you too. I’m going to weave in some string too, just to make it stronger.” She showed her sister the large ball of heavy nylon string. “The good thing about this is that I can knot it to the frame on the ends and it should stay tight. That way, I think it will support my weight but the bark will keep it in place and be more comfortable.”

And so it was that Lisa knew Shayla’s secret. And like pulling a hand from a bucket of water, nobody else noticed the smaller volume. Shayla accompanied her mother to the grocery store and bought her own groceries. Her mother didn’t notice that she kept her own purchases on the seat so they would not be mixed with the voluminous family foodstuffs.

 She learned to cook in the dutch oven and skillet and supplied herself in briquettes in case she ran out of firewood. Every morning, she caught the bus with her siblings and waited until they had turned toward their house after school before she slipped away to her own little cottage.

Shayla lived the summer through in the dugout, bathing and laundering her clothes in the stream. Her clever snares supplied her and her occasional guest with all the roasted rabbit she could want.  Rabbit hides cured on willow frames all along the sunny side of the stream.

That September, “The Baker’s Dozen” was finally published. Dr. Baker gathered his family for a group photograph for the back flap of the dust cover. The photographer counted twelve children and not knowing that a baker’s dozen is thirteen, thought nothing of it. The picture was taken and printed and burst upon the world in full force with the help of a $4000 per month publicist, without anyone noticing that “The Baker’s Dozen” was apparently false advertising.

Lisa knew that Shayla had not heard about the photo, since she had skipped Church that morning. Shayla’s Sunday school teacher asked Lisa about her sister’s absence, and she explained truthfully that Shayla was home nursing a head cold. The teacher asked if that explained why her attendance had been so spotty generally lately.

“I don’t know.” Lisa answered. “But I’ll tell her that you missed her. It will mean a lot to her.”

Dr. Baker’s second book was already under contract and half way finished by the end of November.  It was a study on how to establish a close personal relationship between parent and child without compromising parental authority and his readers awaited it’s publication breathlessly.

It was nine o’clock in the evening the last Monday of the month when the phone rang. The younger children had all been sent to bed and the house was quieting. Though house policy dictated that nobody took calls after 9:00, Dr. Baker, answered. It was Shayla’s English teacher. She explained that she wanted to meet with the Bakers and Shayla together as soon as possible.

“Is it something serious?” Dr. Baker asked.

“It could be. Yes, I think so,” the teacher answered. “I know you’re a psychologist, but I think Shayla’s developing some serious issues.”

“Why do you say so?” Dr. Baker tipped back his chair and cocked his head to the side defensively.

“I’m reading her journal. Journaling is required in my class, as you might remember from your older children.”

“What’s wrong with her journal?”

“I’d really like to meet with you and Shayla together.”

“It’s a very busy time for our family. Won’t you please just explain the issue so we can address it and move on?” Dr. Baker used his pseudo polite, measured voice that informed the teacher that she was slightly beneath his notice and her concern was in a similar position.

“I can make myself available any time you want,” Mrs. Armstrong persisted.

“Is she doing her homework? Is she turning in her assignments on time? Is it at least grade level and her best effort?” Now the doctor didn’t hide his irritation.

“Yes to all. It’s the content that disturbs me. She seems to be living in a fantasy from Little House on the Prairie. She writes of skinning rabbits and cooking beans in a dutch oven and heating her dugout house in a fireplace with a homemade chimney.”

Dr. Baker laughed. “Yes, I know about her fantasy. She went so far as to buy a pile of lumber and nails and her own hammer.” On the edges of his memory, he remembered a piece of plexiglass and a collection of odds and ends from the thrift store. Perhaps Shayla had been stricken with pubescent angst harder than most. He continued, “I can assure you that she’s perfectly normal. It’s a hard time for every girl. Maybe puberty is a little harder for her, but she’ll come out of it.”

The teacher hung up, unconvinced. Normal? Wouldn’t she know normal after teaching kids that age for fifteen years?

That was how Shayla came to have two guests for her Christmas party. Lisa proudly showed Mrs. Armstrong her sister’s bunks and the pantries. The little house was warm and charming, strung with popcorn and peppermints. Her solar lanterns glowed comfortably bright. Her school books and notebooks were stacked neatly on a little table.

Lisa kept her secret. Mrs. Armstrong kept the secret, with many misgivings. But when Shayla graduated as the valedictorian and earned a full scholarship to a great university, she felt she had chosen right.

Shayla worked in the cafeteria all four years to pay for her wedding and graduated magna cum laude. She married a man that was a year ahead of her in medical school.

The proceeds from Dr. Baker’s books easily sent all twelve of his children to college and paid for their weddings and he retired young and enjoyed a successful second career as a public speaker, renowned as the foremost expert on sibling relationships in the world.

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