Natural Histories by Guadalupe Nettel

Author:Guadalupe Nettel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories;family;fiction;novels;fiction books;long story short;short story collections;realistic fiction books;latino;short story anthology;books fiction;short stories collections;hispanic;essays;buddhism;spirituality;literary fiction;literary;magical realism;love;novella;spiritual;meditation;americana;drama;translation;realistic fiction;westerns;coming of age;anthologies;school;inspiration;art;inspirational;classic;environment;romance;mindfulness;nature;survival;philosophy;zen;culture
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2020-11-30T16:28:42+00:00

Fungus

When I was a little girl my mother had a fungus on one of her toenails. On her left pinkie toe to be exact. From the moment she discovered it she tried everything to get rid of it. Every morning she’d step out of the shower and with the help of a tiny brush pour over her toe a capful of iodine whose smell and sepia, almost reddish tone I remember well. She saw to no avail several dermatologists, including the most prestigious and expensive in the city, who repeated the same diagnoses and suggested the same futile treatments, from traditional clotrimazole ointments to apple cider vinegar. The most radical among them even prescribed her a moderate dose of cortisone, which only inflamed my mother’s yellowed toe. Despite her efforts to banish it, the fungus remained there for years until a Chinese doctor to whom nobody—not even my mother—gives credit, was able to drive it away in a few days. It happened so unexpectedly that I could not help wondering if the parasite itself hadn’t decided to move on to another place.

Until that moment fungi had always been—at least for me—curious mushrooms that appeared in children’s book illustrations and that I associated with the forest and elves. In any case, nothing to do with that rugosity that gave my mother’s toenail the texture of an oyster shell. However, more than the dubious and shifting appearance, more than its tenacity and attachment to the invaded toe, what I remember best about the whole affair was the disgust and repulsion the parasite inspired in my mother. I have seen other people over the years with mycosis on different parts of their body. All kinds of mycoses, from those that cause the bottom of the foot to dry out and peel to the circular red fungi you often see on chefs’ hands. Most people bear them with resignation, some with stoicism, others with genuine disregard. My mother on the other hand suffered the presence of her fungus as if it were a mortifying affliction. Terrified by the thought that it might spread to the rest of her foot, or worse, her entire body, she separated the affected toenail with a thick piece of cotton to keep it from rubbing against the adjacent toe. She never wore sandals and avoided taking off her socks in front of anyone she wasn’t very close to. If for some reason she had to use a public shower she always wore plastic slippers, and to swim in a pool she’d take off her shoes right at the edge just before diving in, so that nobody would see her feet. And so much the better; if anyone had found out about that toe and all the treatments it had been through, they would have thought that instead of a simple fungus, what my mother had was the beginning of leprosy.

Children, unlike adults, adapt to everything. So little by little, despite my mother’s disgust, I began to see that fungus as an everyday presence in my family life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.