Or Not to Be (16 page)

“Maybe I hit the brakes. I don’t remember.
There was a red car coming at me when I crossed the center line. Didn’t I hit
him?”

“No, ma’am. Not a scratch on his car. You
musta’ hit the brakes.”

She nodded and started to walk away, but I
stopped her. “What about the kid. Is he hurt?”

“Nope. His airbag opened up. He didn’t
feel the impact at all.”

“He’s getting a ticket, right?”

“We’ll see. I still have to check with a
few more witnesses. Thanks for your help.” She wandered away.

They loaded me into the ambulance. Eddie
came with me, looking pale. I smiled at him and said, “Don’t worry, I can move
my toes.” I showed him, and he smiled back.

“That was also November eleventh,” says my
mother’s voice.

23

“
Are you
kidding me
? How many times can a person almost die on the same day?” I
demand.

“It’s simple math,” she replies. “Once a
year, so just count up the years of your life and there’s your answer.”

“Did I almost die every year on November
eleventh?”

“Not ‘every’ and not ‘almost’,” my mom
answers with a snort.

“What is that supposed to mean? And don’t
give me any of that crap about having to figure it all out for myself. If
you’re my newly dead guide, sneak your way around the voids or I’m going to
find another guide.” I’m about to lose it.

“Okay, let’s start with every year,” she
begins, calm as a clam. “No, you didn’t even have a near miss every November
eleventh. You had one three or four times that I know about. When you were tiny
and Molly bit you, that was November eleventh. Your car crash was November
eleventh. There might have been others. You’ll certainly think of them
yourself, sooner or later.”

“But why November eleventh, over and
over?”

“That’s your deathday,” she states simply,
as though she was telling me the time.

“My deathday?”

She continues,
“Just like January twenty-third was your
birth
day, your
death
day
is predetermined. We all have one. My deathday was August fifth. I didn’t know
it either until I died. Your deathday is a crack in space-time where your
antimatter can slip through and escape from the dawdling speeds of Earth and go
back to the universe. Every soul has a deathday and a birthday.”

This makes sense. I always knew 11/11 was
a special day for me. I just never knew why. “What about the rest of it? What
did you say? ‘Not almost’?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. I wish I hadn’t
though because it’s harder to explain than it would be for you to just reason
out on your own.”

“That’s just too bad for you, then. Tell
me what you know!” I demand.

“Anna,” she says
in her soothing tuck-into-bed voice, “you did not
almost
die a couple of times. You did die.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Think about what you know about speed of
light travel and what you know about time and space. Think about all that you have
rationalized, remembered, and learned since you died on November eleventh.”

So, I think and think. Nothing fits
together, though, so I start rambling. “I saw the recent happenings after my
death. I saw a lot of the past.” Then it hits me hard. “And, oh God, I saw the
future with me in it. I thought they were nightmares.” This stuns me. “And you
wouldn’t explain it to me. So I can travel back or forward in time ...”

“And when you die,” she helped, “if you
have lived a balanced and good life, have not hurt others, loved whenever
possible, then your antimatter has choices. Choices of what your heaven will
be. Choices of reuniting with your matter.”

“Reuniting with my matter?” There are
sayings in life that almost apply here, and they all portray shock as a
physical blast. I was blown over. This knocked the wind out of me. I was
blindsided. This blew my socks off. Yes, I know I can’t be knocked over since I
have no mass; wind can’t have any effect on my bodiless self; I can’t be
blindsided, and with no feet, no socks can be blown off. Yet all of these human
maxims compound like a factorial to almost describe the feeling of disbelief
that overwhelms me.

Reuniting with my matter means I can go
back to my body, I think.

I can go back to my life? Incredible. Maybe
I’d done it before. Why don’t I remember that?

Mom reads my thoughts.

“If you go back, you go to the instant
when your antimatter separated from your matter and consciously will it to stay
put. After such a reunion, you’d have no memory or knowledge of the
conversations you had with me or any of the experiences you had on the dead
side.”

“Have I gone back before?” I’m still
stunned.

The long pause before her answer
illustrates her reluctance or inability to explain this one. Maybe another one
of those blasted voids. Her voice reaches me. “Honey, your memory of your car
crash is not how it happened the first time. When you saw that red car coming
at you and when you crossed the yellow line, you slammed on your brake and he
hit you. Hard. The collision snapped your neck. When you went back, you didn’t
hit your brake, and the momentum of the car pulled you across the road where
you stopped in some bushes.”

The crash was a dozen years ago. “So who
was my guide then? You were still alive.”

“Somebody who loved us found you on the
dead side and helped you find your way back. Maybe it was Daddy.”

I miss Daddy. He might be a better guide
than Mom. I hope she didn’t hear that.

Finally, Mom says, “Honey, you need to
start thinking about your options so you can make your choice. There is no real
rush. Time stops for us—but it would help to make the reunion of your
antimatter and matter smoother if you work this out. You need to take over and
steer and decide for yourself what to see.”

“I feel like I have other choices.”

“You do, Anna. You have infinite choices.
You must identify them yourself and decide for yourself. No one, no force, can
make the choice for you. It is the loneliest path in the universe.”

And to emphasize her point, she leaves me.
I am alone and drifting in space. It is peaceful, but not lonely. I knew the
feeling of loneliness in life. There is no sense of it in death. The rush of
traveling at the speed of life is gone when the matter leaves. Traveling at the
speed of
light
feels like standing still, held as solid and safe as
alternating ions, locked in the crystal lattice in a patient block of salt. And
I think Mom was right. I don’t have to rush. I have eternity to think.

I exercise my right to make a choice, and
I think about Daddy and Molly.

24

It was a surprising
, yet welcome, warm day in November. The sun was
bright. The sky was that deep autumn blue. A woman in her midthirties walked on
the sidewalk on a quiet street pushing a baby carriage through the carpet of
crunchy leaves. The pink-cheeked baby lounged on her back drinking a bottle of
milk. She held it lazily with one arm as she watched the trees and sky go by
and rubbed the fringe of her blanket with her exploring hand until the bouncing
of the carriage lulled her to sleep. She dropped the bottle by her cheek.

“That was you and me, Anna,” says my
Mom. “You
were nine months old, and I was pregnant with Michelle.”

“Mom, you were old!”

“Thanks, dear.”

“No, I mean—why’d you wait so long after
you were married to have us?”

“Oh, you know me. I was still busy
learning and trying to become me. I was certain for a long time that I’d never
have babies. I was too worried about population explosion and killing the rain
forests to reproduce without careful consideration. Your father worked on me
for years to convince me that his obsession with his dogs might lessen if he
had some kids to play with.”

“It didn’t work, did it?”

“No. He still loved those dogs.”

When they returned home, Mom left the
carriage in the warm sun. Inside a screen door, Mom talked and laughed quietly
on the telephone. She dropped the phone and came running when her baby cried
out. She’d never heard me wail like that before.

The dog, Molly, was Daddy’s favorite. The
neighbor’s cat, Isabelle, jumped onto the carriage and licked the spilled milk
beside the baby. Her long tail dangled over the side of the carriage and was
too tempting to ignore. Molly leaped at her and jumped onto the side of the carriage.
Somehow the baby’s arm ended up in Molly’s teeth. In the confusion, the poor
old dog thought she had succeeded in catching the wretched feline. Instead she
crushed the baby’s wrist. I forgot as I watched that the baby was me.

 Mom says, “That was such a sad time. Poor
Molly. You probably don’t need me to tell you: that was November eleventh.”

My first deathday.

| | | |

Dad held Molly
in the veterinarian’s office. The chocolate lab
looked asleep, but she was dead. The community uproar over the dog attack gave
my Dad no choice but to put his beloved Molly down. Dad was crying.

Later, on the swing in back of the old
house, Dad sat with his two other dogs at his feet. He always had a mess of
dogs around him. They walked together in the woods for no reason except to
think and be outside. Daddy was happiest with his dogs. Mom carried the
sleeping baby, me, out from the house to Daddy and laid the bundle in his arms.
Her peaceful, long eyelashes and pouty lips projected a calmness that
contrasted with the stark, white cocoon around the infant’s tiny hand and arm.
Mom sat down beside Daddy. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head
on his shoulder. Daddy stroked her belly where my new sister had started to
kick. Surrounded by his girls and dogs, Daddy smiled and cried some more.

“Mom, how can I watch this? I don’t
remember it.”

“You are watching it by traveling back in
time. While we watch, it is actually happening all over again, just as I
remember it,” she explains.

“I want to see more.”

“Just think of the people you want to be
with and try to pick an age and see where it takes you.”

I think: Daddy and Michelle and me. Little
girls.

We were on a green, wet baseball diamond
on a shiny spring day. Michelle stood way out in left field wearing a too-big
baseball glove pulled up her arm and hanging in the crook of her elbow like a
purse. Her big ears stuck out under the sides of one of Daddy’s old caps. She
alternated between hopping on one foot in circles and picking dandelions to
poke into the buttonholes of her blouse. Twin braids framed her freckled face,
and her high-pitched humming of “Jingle Bells” reached me at home plate.

Daddy pitched softball after softball at
me, and I wailed them into the outfield. Michelle didn’t make a move to
retrieve them. Daddy just kept smiling and encouraging me to swing.

“Wow, look at that one go!”

“I want to try to switch hands, Dad,” I
said as I swung the bat right-handed for a change. “I think I can hit this way,
too.”

He squinted in the sunlight and said,
“It’s tough, Anna. Not many boys are good switch-hitters.”

“I bet I can do it. Throw me some heat.”
And he did. The first few swings were awkward, but then I got the hang of it,
and I smashed one right toward Michelle, who was bent down studying a line of
black ants. She never saw the ball. It rolled by fast, not three feet to her
left, and went all the way to the fence.

Daddy roared a
laugh and yelled, “That’s my girl! You
can
do
it!”

Mom’s voice: “Before Molly bit you, you
were right-handed. Even though you were so tiny, I knew. You held your bottle
and grabbed my hair with your right hand.”

“It’s so odd to see these things. It’s
like part of me remembers, even though I was so little. I miss Daddy.”

Mom is quiet before she answers, “Your dad has been waiting
for a turn. Why don’t you go to him?”

25

I was only five years old
, and I knew to be quiet in the mornings. I knew how to
get my own breakfast and let the family sleep. When I was alive, my kids still
woke me up for food each day. Why did I allow this? Likely because I remembered
how lonely it was to eat breakfast by myself as a child.