The Memoirist

She Was Reading a Book While I Cooked on the Floor Furnace

How much is a pound of flesh?

Lenore. My dad’s mom. The strange German woman who had odd ways of showing affection and was extremely uncomfortable to be around. Not particularly warm and fuzzy. Not grandma-like at all.

I was 18 months old. I had just begun to walk well. I was a late bloomer like my daughter, who didn’t walk until she was 14 months old. My mom was taking a nap in her room. Lenore had agreed to watch me while mom napped.

Mom was suddenly awakened by my screams. Being a mother, she knew my different kinds of cries. I wasn’t upset or hungry. I was in pain. She opened the bedroom door and saw me, directly ahead. I was screaming for her, reaching for her, trying to move but my feet wouldn’t move. I was using my little hands trying to pick my feet up. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move because I was stuck.

In horror, my mom started screaming with me once she realized I was stuck to the floor furnace outside her door. My feet had sunken onto the grates. I was cooking right in the center. She said my little hands were burned from trying to pull myself off.

And where was Lenore? She was calmly reading a book in the living room, paying no mind to the horrific screams of a baby cooking on a furnace. Mom carefully pried me off. I can only imagine the smell of cooking baby flesh in the tiny house. Why wasn’t Lenore doing anything?

In a panic, mom rushed me outside to get my dad who was mowing the front yard. They raced to the ER where I was treated and bandaged up. Lenore didn’t go to the hospital to see me. She was gone by the time we got home.

I couldn’t walk for another six months. I have a single picture of myself sitting on the floor with these big bandages on my feet.

Both my mom and my dad and I have every belief that Lenore put me on that floor furnace intentionally. That she literally picked me up and set me on the center of it. And walked away. Left me there, sat back down, read her book, and let me cook. And scream for help. In agonizing pain. Why would someone do that? Neuroses come in many forms. Lenore was one of them.

The doctors told mom that my scars would fade as I grew. But they haven’t. They’ve expanded with my life as I’ve grown. These feet have carried me through some tough times. Symbolically, my very foundation is scarred as proof that I’ve been forged in fire. I stand strong and true despite my own flaws. To this day, I can walk across hot coals and run down gravel roads barefoot. I don’t even notice them until I have pedicures.

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