Fish Heads and Duck Skin

by Lindsey Salatka

  “No, of course we’d go with you, but it seems early to assume this is a sure thing.” I stood up again, turning back to the entrance.

  “Callie suggested you join me for the site visit, if I—”

  “Wait, who?” I stepped quickly toward the automatic doors. They whooshed open and I walked out, stepping off the sidewalk and into the grass.

  “Callie—she’s the president of the company; she holds the patent on the idea. It turns out she was in the Robotics Club that I started during Grad School. We didn’t know each other, but she says she remembers my picture.”

  “Her name is Callie?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Short for what?” I turned to look up at the hospital, noticing how big it was. So many bricks, I could never count them all.

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “Just, can you please look it up?” I squeezed the bridge of my nose.

  “Yeah, wait a sec.” Silence. “Okay, here she is—Calista Chen, recipient of the Michael Hicks Prize for Global Innovation. Why, do you know her?”

  “Holy shit.” I fell to my knees on the grass, then dropped onto all fours, and finally, slowly, rolled onto my back. I looked up at the sky, cloudless already—a clearer, more optimistic blue than the hallway paint job. I started laughing, at least I think I was laughing, except it included sounds I’d never made before.

  “What is it, Tina? Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, I just can’t believe it’s true.” I brought my legs into the air, perpendicular to the ground and then, as hard as I could, thumped them back down to earth again. “We’re moving to China!”

  9.

  “Welcome to China Eastern Airlines,” said the petite Chinese stewardess in heavily accented English. She wore a child-sized black polyester vest over a fitted white button down, a black pencil skirt, red stilettos, and a red scarf tied at the side of her neck in a bow the size of her head. “Please have happy travels.”

  I smiled at her and thought, happy travels, that’s cute. It had been three months of whirlwind preparation and anticipation since Daniel received the job offer; we were finally on our way. I looked down the aisle where she directed us and stopped smiling. “Uh, Daniel? Is it just me, or does the aisle look really skinny? As in, only small children and ballerinas can fit down it?”

  He shrugged. “The aisles are smaller, the seats are smaller, the leg room area’s smaller …” He turned sideways and hiked Piper higher onto his hip, then crab-walked down the aisle toward our seats.

  “But I’m not smaller, and you’re not smaller,” I insisted as I turned sideways to follow him. I lifted my right arm straight over my head so my giant carry-on wouldn’t knock against every seat and hoisted Lila higher until her legs were straddling my ribcage. She whimpered. I bounced.

  “You and I aren’t their target market.”

  It was true. Almost every seat was occupied by a Chinese businessman.

  “Wait, is the heat on?” I asked. “Please tell me Chinese businessmen don’t enjoy this temperature.”

  “No clue.”

  “Surely no one wearing a tie wants to sit in a flying sauna for fourteen hours,” I muttered to myself as I scooted by a man who launched into a coughing fit that morphed into a throat clearing session lasting a full minute. I held my breath and scooted faster. When I finally caught up to Daniel, I whispered, “Reason #473 why this plane shouldn’t be so warm. We’re in a flying petri dish, that guy just coughed up the tuberculosis-riddled lining of his esophagus, and this is the ideal temperature for bacterial cell division!”

  “Tina, I know you’re anxious, but we have a long flight ahead of us; can we not start the hypochondriac thing right now? Try and relax.”

  My nostrils flared, as did the circumference of my eyes. “Never tell a person to relax, Daniel! Not unless they’re getting a massage! You should know that by now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re basically instructing me to do something I’m incapable of. Be skinnier! Be taller! Be a concert level pianist! Relax! I can’t do any of these things. And you verbalizing it only reminds me of my inadequacies and ends up having the opposite effect.”

  “Telling you to relax makes you less relaxed?”

  “Obviously.”

  He rolled his eyes and pointed to the last row of four seats on our left where a female passenger was already fast asleep against the window. “You and the girls are there, and this is my seat.” He dropped his laptop bag on the aisle seat two rows in front of us.

  There hadn’t been four available seats together, or two sets of two seats together, when we booked the flight—only a row with three seats adjacent to the lavatory and several empty single seats. After a heated discussion, we had decided that I’d start with the kids in the row of three and he would fly solo. We’d swap places halfway through the trip. I’d agreed to the first half with kids figuring I’d feel relatively fresh and energetic for the beginning of the flight. This was not the case however; my eyes stung with exhaustion from consecutive sleepless nights pondering our enormous life change.

  The woman snoozing in the window seat in our row didn’t appear to be struggling with the same anxious feelings. The upper half of her body was mummified in a dark blue airline blanket. She’d tucked another blanket around her legs and folded a third blanket neatly on her lap over her hands. Her eyes were shielded by a pink silk mask, and her sleek, black hair was banded by white, noise-canceling headphones. The only visible skin on her body was her forehead and her mouth. I recognized that it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t in a similar state of despair, so I only begrudged her clean, slumbering presence a little bit.

  Lila started howling as soon as the wheels were sucked into the plane’s underbelly. She continued for forty endless minutes. Poor thing, her ears must have hurt. Once the seat belt light went off, I walked her up and down, up and down the aisle, rocking and humming, bending and leaning to dodge the knees and elbows of the already sleeping, suited men. At long last, she fell asleep in my arms. Once she’d been asleep for about five minutes, I crept back to our row. Piper was sitting next to the sleek snoozer, watching a Chinese cartoon on her seat screen, arms crossed, frowning. I slowly leaned over my aisle seat to lay Lila down in a makeshift bed consisting of four blankets I’d pre-arranged into a nest on the middle seat with both arm rests folded up. When I finally got her situated, her little foot flopped out, tapping Piper softly on her thigh.

  “OWWWW, LILA!” Piper screamed. She reached over, grabbed Lila’s foot, and pinched it.

  Lila startled awake and began screaming.

  “Piper! Why would you do that?” I was mortified.

  “She kicked me!” She pointed at Lila, her eyes fierce and accusing.

  “But she was asleep, and she barely touched you!”

  “Well it hurt.” She attempted to fake cry.

  “No, it didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. I picked up Lila and started walking again, up and back, up and back, until Lila’s screams turned to sobs turned to whimpers turned to moans and her blinks got longer and then, silence. I tiptoed to Daniel’s seat. His eyes were closed, his mouth open.

  I tapped his arm and whispered, “Hey, wake up! Piper just pinched Lila.”

  He blinked several times. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

  “No.” I continued rocking Lila. “She’s in a foul mood—I think from all the moving stress. Talking to her might make it worse—she could have a giant meltdown, and I don’t want to wake up the entire plane.”

  “Why’d you wake me up then?” he said, rubbing his face with his hand and turning his head away from me.

  “Because you’re their dad! And I need to talk about it with somebody!”

  “Talk to me later; it’s my turn to sleep,” he said, closing his eyes again.

  I turned to continue rock-pacing, feeling miffed.

  Back at my row, I leaned over and set Lila back in her nest. I looked at Piper. Her eyes were tightly
sealed, and her head rested at an awkward angle on the arm rest she shared with Sleeping Beauty. Once again, I wasn’t fooled. “Piper, please look at me,” I whispered. No response. “I know you’re used to having more space, but you have to share this row with your sister while we’re on this plane. You need to let her sleep.”

  There was no response until two minutes later when Lila readjusted her sleep position. She rolled over and kicked her foot out again, grazing Piper’s leg.

  “LILA! STOP THAT!” Piper screamed as her eyes popped open. She grabbed Lila’s foot and pushed it hard away from her.

  Lila hollered.

  “Piper!” I shrieked. “You have to stop this!”

  “No. Lila has to stop this,” she whimpered.

  I stood up with Lila, and walked, bounced, rocked, and shushed, straight to Daniel’s seat while Lila wailed.

  His eyes opened in alarm. “What is it? What happened?”

  “Piper can’t share a row with her! It’s not working!”

  He paused. “There isn’t another option unless you think she can sit alone.”

  “I know, and there’s no way she can sit by herself! But this is hard, and I’m frustrated!” I stormed away to burn a deeper path in the aisle carpet while I problem solved. Daniel’s eyes were still open when I returned after a few minutes.

  “Will you please hold her for a few minutes while I try to reason with Piper?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  When I got back to our row, Piper was face-down on the floor, her front half wedged under the seat in front of her, her tiny butt in the air, and her legs folded underneath her. She was going for invisible, ostrich-style.

  I was reaching down to pull her out when I stopped myself. Hold on, I thought, this could be the fix! I’ll leave her there, and I bet she’ll fall asleep. I sat down and let my head drop back and my eyes close. This might be the solution.

  Suddenly, the man sitting in front of Piper sprung up, turned around, and glared at me, red-faced. “Hey!” he pointed his finger at my nose. I looked at him in a panic. “Tell your kid to stop tickling my feet!” he spat.

  “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” I reached down and picked up Piper. She was evil-chuckling. I heaved her onto my hip and stepped into the aisle. I sidled sideways to the first open space and spun her down in front of the lavatory. I squatted so we were nose to nose.

  “Why would you tickle that man? Why?”

  “Because his feet were in the way!” she cried.

  I paused. “They weren’t in the way; they were where feet are supposed to be. You were in his space.” I looked away from her, then blinked and looked back. “There must be a consequence for this, like Miss Amy said.” I glanced around—every seat was packed. I noticed the green lavatory light. “You can sit in this potty for a one-minute time-out and think about your actions.” I stood, reached over her head, and slid open the accordion door.

  “No, Mommy! I don’t want a time-out!” She wailed.

  I looked around. A few people were craning into the aisle to see the commotion. This didn’t deter my plan. “Then I hope you’ll show me different behavior when you get out,” I said, leading her in and closing the door from the outside by the white plastic handle.

  “Mommy, it’s dark in here!” The door started shaking as she knocked and pushed on it.

  “Just slide the knob that locks the door and the light will turn on,” I called through the door.

  “But I can’t see it, Mommy!”

  I opened the door. “Look, it’s right there.” I pointed to the lock. “Just slide it over.”

  Piper made a break for it under my arm. I grabbed her by the waist mid-run, and she howled.

  “Piper! Stop fighting me!” I yelled. She screamed louder, kicking wildly in mid-air.

  The flight attendant with the gargantuan neck bow walked up.

  “Excuse me, Madam,” she said. “I see you have trouble? I have special activity bag to help you? For your daughter. I put on her seat now, okay?”

  Piper had stopped screaming to listen to the stewardess. “I don’t want to go to the bathroom!” she blubbered. The stewardess smiled in pity and walked away.

  None of this had gone as planned. And there was no plan for the rest of the flight. Or for once we landed. Or for the rest of our lives. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. I put Piper down and pressed both hands against the wall between the bathroom and the food prep area. I took three shallow breaths. I closed my eyes and opened them again, then squatted. “I really need you to be good, Piper,” I said in a soft voice. “Can you please try?”

  She sniffed and nodded. “Yes, Mommy.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Then let’s go see what’s in the bag.”

  It was the size of a standard brown grocery bag except it was made of shiny bright blue plastic with a glittery, puffy purple airplane on the front. And it was filled, almost to the top, with candy.

  I was horrified, but Piper’s face lit up at the gold strike. “Mommy look at all this chocolate! Can I eat some, please? I promise I’ll be so good!” she begged.

  I would love to say I made the right parenting decision at that moment, but that would be untrue. Instead, I did the opposite. Less than halfway through my half of the trip, I surrendered to that bag of tooth-rotting distraction, pushing it toward her with no words. Not a, “Only have one,” or a, “Take two and hand me the bag,” or a, “Let’s save this for after dinner.” Nothing.

  She didn’t hesitate, tearing at the bag like a ravenous buzzard who’d just witnessed a giant elephant take his last breath.

  I guess I assumed she’d stop eating at some point. That it wouldn’t taste good after a while, and then she’d push it away and fall asleep. Or maybe I thought that, at age four, she was old enough to make reasonable choices, sort of like the kind I was modeling for her.

  I turned my head away and closed my eyes.

  I nodded off, which is strange because I don’t normally sleep on planes. It seems I only make exceptions to this rule when it’s a terrible idea to do so.

  I woke with a start and a feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. I turned toward Piper. She was pale, staring straight ahead at the map on her screen. The little red dots and tiny red airplane indicated our position was over the North Pacific, near Canada. Piper held an unwrapped piece of toffee in her hand. She wasn’t putting it in her mouth.

  A clear sign of fatigue! My plan is working! I thought, like a fool. Our row-mate was still asleep when Piper suddenly sat up straight, blinking. She looked at me and then grabbed her arm rests. In what looked like slow-motion, she turned toward her sleeping neighbor and vomited all over her lap. Without a cry or any other peep of warning, I could only assume that Piper had been caught off guard, too. She dropped her head onto the arm rest and moaned.

  I flew out of my seat and ran to Daniel. He and Lila were both sleeping. I grabbed his head and shook it frantically, “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. DanielDanielDanDanDanDanDan!”

  He looked up at me, startled. “What? What happened?”

  “Piper just barfed all over the woman in our row!”

  He stood quickly and handed me Lila. I shuffled out of his way. He took two steps back and surveyed the nasty scene. I tiptoed in to review the damage, to confirm it was real.

  “Holy shit!” he said, staring at the mess while running a hand through his hair.

  “I know! What are we going to do?” I stood there, holding sleeping Lila with one arm, the other hand covering my mouth, cringing, waiting for this woman to open her eyes and start hurling abuses at me while I nodded, “Yes, YES!” because I deserved anything she had to say.

  “Wait,” he whispered, pointing at the large puddle of regurgitated candy bars. “Piper only barfed on the blanket covering her hands. Her skin’s completely clean, and she’s miraculously still sleeping. Hurry—pick up Piper and clean her off in the bathroom. Then put her in my seat with a barf bag. I’ll hold Lila. Quickly.”

  I did as I was told. P
iper, zombie-like, did not resist. Once in Daniel’s seat, she dropped her head on the aisle-side armrest and closed her eyes.

  Daniel tapped me on the back. “Go get a stack of clean blankets. They’re usually in the carry-on compartments above the seats in the front.”

  I ran back with the blankets. “Should we wake her now?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman! So we can change out her blanket!”

  “No, I have a plan.” He glanced around to see if anyone was looking. He then squatted and slowly, very slowly, pulled the soiled blanket still folded over her hands down a half an inch. No movement. He pulled again; she still didn’t move. Puke started streaming down the blanket, dripping onto the carpet by her feet, so he pulled from the sides in a containment effort. He continued until the blanket was off her lap and on top of the puddle.

  “Blanket!” he shot his hand toward me and I pressed a clean one into it. He turned and dropped it onto her lap, patting it gently into place. Then he pointed his right foot and dragged the dirty blanket backward into the aisle.

  “Put another blanket on the ground here,” he pointed next to her feet, “so she doesn’t slip when she wakes up. I’ll take the evidence to the hamper in the back.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  When he came back, I asked, “Now what? Do we sit down again? And pretend that didn’t happen?”

  “I’m sure no one would want to switch seats with us, so yes, you sit with Lila. I’ll check on Piper.”

  I lay Lila down on the seat where Piper had been sitting and sat next to her. She snuggled her head into my lap. After a few minutes, Daniel sat next to me.

  I put my head on his shoulder, my nose gravitating toward his collarbone. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s sleeping now.”

  I sighed. “You amaze me,” I whispered.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No, I mean it. You stayed so calm, cool, and collected, I could never—”

  “It wasn’t that big of a deal, I mean it worked out, right?”

  I lifted my head and looked at him. “Yeah, but it was almost atrocious, and the entire thing was my fault.”