Singing in the Ear Canal

Abstract

I faint at my first everything in medical school. First cadaver. First surgery. First autopsy. Well not everything, not the first lecture. I even blow the tour, the first day. The tour's really a test. We're in, mcat scores high enough, first semester tuition paid. Our entire freshman class files into the sub basement, bound together tight as a brownie troop. The space is gigantic, our footsteps echo, and it's so cold we all feel small. We huddle at the edge of an auditorium-sized meat-locker, in one of Philadelphia's five medical schools, in a riot quadrant of the city. Autumn, 1964. We wear short white coats, to advertise we're only students. We all live close to the school, in the ghetto, where police line rooftops with strobe lights and machine guns every night. It is hot, still Indian summer outside, but in the basement, it's so frigid we flap our arms, open and close fists, stamp our feet to beat back the chill. Our teeth chatter so we can hardly hear the instructor. My classmate's breath forms little white clouds, like thought con tainers in comic books. It's several minutes before any of us notices the overhead trolley, a sinuous steel ceiling track, like the retrieval runner in an enormous dry-cleaner. The instructor pushes a button, and a ratcheted metallic movement begins, clacking like Dad's O gauge trains at Christmas. The air is brittle glass. There are no col orful dresses or navy suits circling; instead, huge, plastic-wrapped mannequins sway in a bizarre dance, with no clear beat. Our breath fogs the amorphous figures who rotate above us. An exceedingly long minute passes. This is where they store cadavers. Each body is clasped behind the ears by huge, shiny calipers, each skull indented by what could be old fashioned ice tongs, from my childhood, Catskill summers. Mother and I stayed upstate with her parents in the cool mountains during July and August. Dad tutored summer school in the city. My Nana and Pop-Pop rented a small cottage: outhouse, water pump, tin-lined