A Gecko Named Jim

Green kje

Jim was my gecko. He fought kung fu. He and I understood each other. I appreciated his unusual hobby and he appreciated my hatred for almost everything else. My mom said Jim and I met only in my dreams, a kung-fu fighting gecko is not real, he was imaginary- especially after I blamed him for the grass stain in my brand new khakis and the Oreo pieces I left all over the counter. What? I thought to myself, not my fault he only likes the frosting.

Once Mom got sick I told her all kinds of stories about Jim, and she stopped trying to tell me he wasn’t real. It was also about the time that Jim and my rendezvous’ were beginning to lessen. The Doctors were invading- like an army, all at once, and Jim told me we would not last. A thin line between Jim’s Kung fu black belt and the faces of my mother’s Doctors dripped together into my dreams those days. The Christmas tree color of vomit I had to clean from the pink plastic kidney bean beneath my mothers chin as she slept were all I saw now. I held the medical profession responsible for all things this color green.

I hated the smell in this office. The perfume of this morning’s chemo disagreeing with last nights dry Special K dinner and the old man loogie left behind to rot with the walls of the plastic trashcan by the door. This was how all Doctors smelled to me. The fold of cloth beneath my armpits would start to get wet whenever the white coat reached his web of cold fingers towards the hand I just cleaned. I could only picture the tips of his fingers damp with the greenish yellow phlegm of past patients whose spit always lined that wastebasket. My mom said Doctors were the cleanest people alive. I disagreed and made her buy me anti-bacterial-no-water-needed hand sanitizer I could attach to my backpack so I wouldn’t embarrass her by scaling off to the restroom every time the doctor came out to shake my hand and call me ‘sport’.

We went to the office five times a week. I chose to wear the red Polo shirt my mother had bought me when back to school clothing was the main concern at the end of our summer. “Third grade boys should look distinguished,” she said. She always rolled my collar up, but lately she was too tired to remember.

I stared only at the old Highlights magazines littering the painted wood table in front of my chair beside the trashcan. Taunting their reader with finding all the farm equipment hidden in the picture of a crayon covered painting of a pig farm. This time I couldn’t find the hoe. I figured the circle on the answer key boasting it had been found before was aided by the watchful eye of a mother or older sister. That wasn’t fair. I didn’t have a sister and according to this office was soon to be absent of both. I should leave a note: ‘No cheating. Kids with dying parents only.’ The hoe was circled in green crayon. Figures. I decided when I grew up I should name crayons; “phlegm vomit cancer” is what I’d call that one. My mom used to tell me to stop talking about phlegm, which is hard because it’s my new favorite word. The pages of the Highlights that no one but me truly had time here to read were torn with age and boredom, most of the articles were written in words bigger than the pictures and sticking together with lollipop juice and left over snot from hands that had only seen this office once.

It was Tuesday when for the first time since we started coming here someone had taken my seat by the door. I’d never seen him before and I guessed he was in third grade at some other school than mine. I know everyone. Mom told me it was because I was so smart, but I knew that even before she said it. I smiled so she thought I was surprised. His presence took the place of the usual cancer-ridden eggshells who were balding and using scarves full of colors to somehow add life to the draining absence of a face you’d never believed once laughed at funny movies. He didn’t care about the Highlights or the puke trashcan by the door. Green fog surrounded him thumping like a vein every time he took a breath and continued watching the clock, as if at some point this would all be over. He saw me staring and told me that he told me he hated my shirt. I told him there was no such thing as Santa Claus. He said he was only sitting here because his mom was getting better and God was going to cure her cancer. I told him about Jim- that only he cured cancer, and there was no God. He said there was no such thing as a kung fu fighting Gecko. I told him his mom was going to die. God didn’t come to this office.