Up From the Blue (2 page)
“Address.”
“Um. I need to skip that one, sorry.”
“Insurance card.”
“That, too.”
“It’ll be fee for service, then.”
“I’m good for it. You don’t have to worry about me not paying.”
No change in her expression, she continues down the sheet of questions. “Date of birth. Social security.”
Finally, numbers I know.
“Next of kin.”
“My husband. Simon Williams. I kept my last name.”
She could care less. “His work phone?”
“I should know it.”
“Medical complaint?”
“I’m having pains across my abdomen, like something’s gripping me.”
“Pregnant?”
“Thirty-four weeks.”
She looks at me for the first time, and I start to tear up. “Something’s wrong,” I say quietly, my voice cracking. “I’m scared.”
“Name and number of your regular obstetrician?”
Another number I don’t know, but I give the name and city.
I see the triage nurse next, who looks over the paper full of non-answers. I tell her about my pain and when it started and how long it lasted. She takes my vitals, tells me my blood pressure’s elevated.
“Empty your bladder first,” she says. “And then I’d like you to take this paper cup and fill it up at the water fountain. Try to drink the whole thing while you wait for your name to be called.”
I’m slow to stand up, afraid to move toward the bathroom, where I may discover I’m bleeding, or find a blue arm slipping out between my legs.
When my father reaches out to help me up, I hurry to do it on my own. My wet hair has soaked the back of my dress, and I know this bothers him. Worries him. He takes out his handkerchief, and the slightest touch of it against my back makes me stomp my foot. A child having a tantrum. And this, more than anything else, is why I’ve stayed away from my father. Because when I’m around him, I am eight again, trapped in that year that scarred us all.
I find a seat in the waiting room, where patients cough and argue, and a TV hanging from the ceiling plays a soap opera at too high a volume.
Dad takes the only other chair that’s free—too far away to offer his unsolicited advice, but close enough to show his irritation at the way I’ve shredded the rim of my paper cup.
When I close my eyes, I see our old house on the air force base in Albuquerque, New Mexico—planes constantly overhead, their vibrations strong enough to start cracks in the sidewalk. I can practically taste the red dust that was always in the air, staining our walkway and our shoes. It was the spring of 1975, near the end of the school year. I’d just had a birthday, always the last one in my class, but that year, every single child I invited had an excuse for why they couldn’t come. Peeking from behind the curtain of our old house, I see Momma, just her shadow.
Our neighbors didn’t know exactly what the trouble was inside our home. I don’t think any of us understood, either. We were still of the belief that it would pass, that my dad could solve everything, that all of us would survive.
I
WAS BARRED FROM SCHOOL
for the day because I’d been biting again. Whenever I pressed my teeth into one of my classmates, my teacher stopped the lesson and called, “Tillie, Tillie.” There was always a struggle as she tried to wrestle the hand or arm from my mouth, but I held on—fighting until the last string of spit released—because I liked to leave a mark.
Although I had nowhere to go, I got up early and sat on the front steps in my nightgown, knees together, bare feet arched to keep my legs off the cold concrete. American flags rose up the poles and flapped against the Sandia Mountains, pale gray in the distance, as lights popped on inside the little square houses of our neighborhood, each the same size with their well-mowed lawns and rectangular flower beds under the front windows.
Soon, the men from each home walked tall and purposefully out their doors, one after another, in their crisp blue uniforms or camouflage jumpsuits, all with the same haircuts, the same
pair of glasses. Some, like my father, had more decorations on their uniforms. But from this distance I noticed the sameness.
There was a sense of music to the slamming car doors and starting engines, a distinct sense of order as each man backed out of his driveway. Looking from one open garage to the next, I could see that we all had bikes, silver metal trash cans, reel mowers, and rakes. Our home was like all of the others on our street. The only difference was our front door. My mother had painted it turquoise blue.
The children were the next to leave with their lunch boxes and textbooks—girls in plaid and flowered dresses that fell just above the knee, boys in jeans and short-sleeved, checkered button-ups. When I recognized another second grader, her pigtails tied in yarn, I waited for her to see me there with my face decorated in yellow smiley stickers.
At first, she seemed to pass without noticing me, but at the last moment she turned her head over her shoulder and shrieked, “You have rabies!”
I smirked until the stickers pinched my skin. “I get to stay home,” I said.
And then came Mary Beth, wearing a huge Band-Aid with my teeth marks underneath it. During yesterday’s class, while she cried and held her arm, I had to stand in the corner of our classroom with my nose to the wall. I found the exact smudge where I’d put my nose the other times, and I listened to Mary Beth’s whimpering, the whispers of her friends, and the stern voices of teachers. But there were giggles, too, because even with my nose to the wall, I could still turn my feet inward like pigeons’ toes or shake my behind.
“My dad says you should keep your teeth to yourself,” she said, suddenly gripping the hand of the girl in pigtails.
“So what?” I said, standing as they ran together toward the school. “
My
dad’s the boss of
your
dad.”
Finally, my brother rushed out of the garage door, trying to close his Scooby Doo lunch box without dropping his textbooks. He stopped beside me to see why it wouldn’t latch, opening the lid and shifting the jar of green olives and the two hot dog buns inside.
“You have to slam it,” I said.
He did, and it bent the lid but closed shut.
“Did you check on Momma?” I asked.
Phil shook his head.
Our mother had not left her bedroom in four days. The last time she’d come out was suppertime the night Dad left for his business trip. She said she felt too tired to cook and handed us a box of chocolate donuts before shutting her door. She was so tired these days, I wasn’t surprised when we didn’t see her the next morning. Phil made sure we left for school on time. And when we still hadn’t seen her leave the bedroom by suppertime the next evening, we opened the door just a crack. The room smelled strong and sweet, like rotting flowers, and Phil shut the door again, saying we should wait for Dad.
My brother gripped the handle of his lunch box, sitting too straight, the way Dad taught him, as students continued to stream past our house on their way to school.
I pulled a piece of hair from underneath one of the smiley stickers. “Do you think we should tell someone?”
His head shook slowly back and forth. “Dad will be home tonight,” he said. “We should just wait.” He kept his eye on the passing students, and when he spotted a fifth grader from his class, he jogged to catch up, the jar of olives banging back and forth inside his lunch box.
• • •
My father’s business trip came up suddenly, just after the local newspaper did a feature on him. Copies of the paper, with photos of the men who’d flown from Washington to meet him, were posted at the PX and in the lobby where he worked. I understood almost nothing of what he did, only that he designed missiles. When I visited his office at the weapons lab, with its long blackboard full of formulas and diagrams, he always saved an area for me in the right-hand corner, where I was allowed to draw with chalk.
The children had all passed our house and started down the hill to school, my brother walking in a perfect line on the right side of the sidewalk, eyes down in case he found something to put in his pocket. Our side of the street was the last to get sun, and even this close to summer vacation the steps froze the backs of my legs right through my nightgown. When I could no longer see the back of Phil’s perfectly combed hair, I went inside, entering the house through the garage. I stepped over dirty dishes, crumpled napkins, empty bread bags, t-shirts, apple cores, and pieces of board games, stopping outside my mother’s bedroom.
Some days she sang and twirled through the house in sleeves like angel wings, wearing frosted eye shadow and matching nail polish. I remembered the day I sat on the kitchen floor as she poured a can of mushroom soup over chicken. It was the only meal she cooked. She fried it up, shouting at the oil that popped out of the pan. I laughed and began singing military songs real loud:
Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder
At ’em boys, give ’er the gun!
I swung my head back and forth, letting my braids hit the lower cupboards so my ponytail holders went
click click.
Momma banged her spoon against the frying pan, and I thought we sounded like a marching band. Then, just like that, it stopped. I’d seen it happen before, how she could change moods so quickly, how anything could cause it—a plane flying overhead, an oven mitt that was missing right when she needed it, me asking one too many questions. That day, she closed her eyes and squeezed the handle on the pan. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I can’t. I just can’t.” And she left the grease-spattered room, left the chicken soaking in oil and soup.
I pressed my nose and lips against her door, felt the wood dampen with my breath while I gradually turned the handle. The blinds were drawn, the smell overpowering, as I felt my way through the sticky air to her bed. She lay there pale and beautiful, as if drowned and washed back ashore, her face blank. She’d covered the bed in books, five of them spread out across Dad’s side. She once told me she liked to read the first chapters and then dream the rest. Perhaps she was dreaming right then.
In the quiet, I heard the gurgle of steam moving through the pipes, and the
swoosh swoosh
of blood in my ears. My fingers touched the sheet, and I considered saying her name, but suddenly feared she’d open her eyes, blue as robins’ eggs, the fat black pupil tracking me. And which mother would she be?
Backing out of the room, I slowly pulled the handle until there was a near-silent click, and then continued going backward
all the way to the kitchen, where my shoulder slammed into the doorframe.
We’d eaten most of the snack food. Phil tried to cook spaghetti one day, but didn’t realize he was supposed to boil the water before he added the spaghetti to the pot. It came out stuck in one large clump, like a tube—too crunchy to eat, and even worse when he tried to recook it. Scouring the counters, refrigerator, and the very backs of the cupboards I could reach, I found Chiclets gum, pickles, and crumbs at the bottom of a Charles Chips tin. I left a trail of crumbs showing the path I took to the living room, and, later, I would pretend this was not on purpose.
I made a game of trying to touch everything in the living room without waking her: fabrics from her sewing kit, pine cones from a basket, every record in the hi-fi.
The front window rattled as a plane roared overhead, and I stopped to listen, remembering how Momma had once thrown a plate against the kitchen cabinet, angry that the noise had interrupted her. Once it passed, I waited to hear if she was awake, but there was only quiet. And bored of touching everything, I climbed onto the sofa and bounced up and down, surprised to see a woman approaching our blue door. Her blond hair stayed perfectly stiff as she walked closer, and behind her a child pushed a baby carriage filled with dolls and carried a shiny red pocketbook.
We rarely had visitors. Usually when the doorbell rang Momma would instruct us to hide in another room, telling us she didn’t want to play with the other mommies and she didn’t want to buy their products, either.
When the doorbell rang, I stopped jumping and pressed my forehead against the glass, enjoying our staring contest. She
rang the bell again, and I sang “ding-dong” right back at her. When I remembered my face full of stickers, I smiled until I broke into a laugh. “Ding-dong,” I sang again, and she held her daughter close like she knew I was a biter.
I was never able to explain to my teachers how I could be sorry for biting but come right back to school and do it again. The feel of my teeth sinking into something so soft was only part of it. There was something comforting about that first yelp when I went deep, something about the crying, and the teacher shouting my name as she pulled us apart, asking,
Why, Tillie? Why did you do it?
I liked how everything happened the same way each time, right up to me walking home with a note pinned to my shirt that proved the things I thought had happened were the very same things my teacher thought had happened. Everything made sense.
The woman rang the bell again, and after a long wait, she led her daughter and the carriage full of dolls back toward the sidewalk, looking over her shoulder all the way. She didn’t know that I couldn’t have opened our blue door even if I’d wanted to. Momma had painted it shut.
When my brother returned from school, he entered the house through the garage. “What’s with the crowd?”
