The Girl on the Billboard
I love food. Always have. So it’s not surprising that most of my memories include it one way or another. People gather to share it, cook it, buy it. We’re consumed by the purchase, preparation and fuss over it as we consume it. So many memories. It even permeates those about Lisa.
Lisa was younger than me and lived a few houses down on the other side of the street. Just far enough down not to be really convenient. But that wasn’t the only reason my friends and I didn’t go to her house much. It was a sad place. Once in a while, we would go and make Fizzies in her kitchen with her older brother. We’d pour ourselves a glass of water, drop in the flavored tablet and watch the sizzling begin. Just like Alka Seltzer only, thankfully, with flavor that was good. My favorite was Root Beer. What I really loved was that it was like drinking a root beer, only we got to make it ourselves instead of opening a can.
So my friends and I would sit around Lisa’s kitchen with her brother drinking Fizzies. Only sometimes Lisa didn’t join our Fizzie joy. That was when she couldn’t leave her bedroom. Or her bed. Or the oxygen tent under which she slept.
The clear plastic apparatus hung like a hulking monster from a steel brace hooked at the ceiling. And it was connected to some kind of steel machine that my sister explained helped her breathe. Apparently Lisa couldn’t exert herself much without losing her breath and even collapsing. But it was so spooky as the tent hung there suspended, waiting for its inhabitant when empty; sealing Lisa in from the world when full.
But what made it even worse was that her twin bed — and tent were on one side of the room. These were for Lisa’s older sister Pam, who was a little older than me.
There wasn’t much room left for the usual girl stuff after all that equipment filled the room. There were no lace curtains, frilly bedspreads or cute furniture for little girls and dolls. There were a few toys, the best being a Magic 8 ball. I don’t remember who all spent time in that room with me and the girls, but I do remember us asking their Magic 8 Ball every question we could think of, as if it had all the answers life was asking in this haunting room where death hung in the air. Where fear permeated but was never spoken of. Where two little girls tried to be two little girls as long as they could.
Lisa had become somewhat of a celebrity. She was the poster child for cystic fibrosis and her face was everywhere in town. As my family and I drove down the main boulevard to the grocery store, or to the beauty shop, or to play miniature golf, there she’d be — high above on a black and white billboard, her tiny little body in braces and her sweet face framed by straight blonde hair looking down, pleading for help from everyone who drove by to send in money to end her suffering. I sometimes couldn’t quite understand that the little girl down the street from me was literally standing out, standing up, for her life. I also didn’t understand how devastating was her disease; I didn’t really realize it could kill.
When I was 11 we moved far enough away that I no longer saw Lisa and her family. I heard that both she and Pam died. Lisa never became a teenager, Pam made it to about 16. And that was that. No more billboards. No more Lisa. No more oxygen tents. And making Fizzies ceased being so much fun.