I open my door.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I understand.”
She leans into my doorway so hard you can’t tell if she is holding it up or it is holding her up. She and the house are part of each other.
“Then talk to the doctor and get help. What can I do to help? I’ll ride with you in the car if that’s what you want. Maybe we can duct-tape you to the seat or something.”
Mama eases herself down to the floor of my room and attempts to smooth the carpet out, which is as impossible as it sounds.
“Mysti, I want you to understand something,” she says. “You didn’t break me and you cannot fix me.”
“Who can fix you, then?”
Maybe Dad had been trying to fix her, too. Putting those pamphlets in the drawer.
“Who can fix you?” I ask again.
“You know, I do need to grow up,” she says. “I do. I’ve let your dad do everything for me and it felt good and safe. Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Thanks for the painting.”
“It was silly.”
“No, I like it,” I say. “I just want it to be a real photograph, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Mama says. “Someday, you’ll send me that photograph and I can paint that, too, okay? Lots of photographs.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s have some bread,” Mama says. She goes to the kitchen for butter and plates. Her answer to everything. Fresh bread.
It is not such a terrible answer.
I have to step over Larry, who is presently lying across the kitchen floor.
Mama puts a plate and a piece of plain bread in front of me. We eat in silence until the rain starts to fall outside our house. The bread is good.
“You are old enough now to hear the story we don’t speak of,” Mama says. “It might help you understand. And the pamphlets say it’s supposed to make me feel better each time I tell it.”
“Does it?”
“I don’t know,” Mama says. “Here goes. The topic we never speak of spoken out loud.”
You can feel the ground beneath our house tremble a little more. As if the house knows. As if it’s stretching out to make room for the truth.
Here is a girl listening to the rapidly unfurling story about the accident that shifted her mother’s fears into high gear.
She was out to lunch with a coworker. He drove. She was the passenger. He told her a joke and she laughed so hard she doubled over. They didn’t see the truck coming. Smash. Glass. Sirens. The smell of gasoline.
She cut her arm. They couldn’t get her out.
For an hour.
And then everything was fine. Fine. And she went back to work the next day. But she stopped wanting to go out.
No, thank you, I can’t go to your party.
And more and more staying home.
No, thank you, I won’t be going.
Going to the grocery store one day, she had a panic attack, her first, right there in the produce section. Rapid breathing. Heart racing. Out of control and feeling like death was on its way.
She could never go back to that store.
Just the thought of going back to that place let the panic creep up her back.
And other places triggered it. Her greatest fear became what could happen. A million things could happen. She’d do anything not to have a panic attack.
So there was a small square of town where she felt safe to drive. She drove that square. And then, one day, she couldn’t cross a major street. Panic at the stoplight. Fear of making a left turn. Approaching any intersection and breaking out in a sweat and a pounding heart. To avoid this, she created maps that involved only right turns. This made running a ten-minute errand turn into a one-hour chore.
The square of safety got smaller. She got married and going places was less of a problem. Someone was there to help.
And the square of comfort became smaller again.
Until it was only 1400 square feet. 4520 Fargo Drive.
And she is sad and sorry.
The End.
We are silent as rocks now. She picks at the bread on her plate and for a moment I see her hand and her whole body, not as my mother, but as a woman out in the world.
Woman in a Car Accident.
“What happened to your coworker?” I ask.
“I married him,” Mama says. “He was the funniest guy I ever met. And the most understanding.”
“But he didn’t get afraid after that crash.”
“No.”
Dad. Hasn’t he always looked at life through different glasses?
I remember a time Dad heard a rattling sound in the car just after he’d taken it to be serviced. He got home and popped the hood up. Sure enough, there was a huge black wrench just sitting right there.
Mama said, “Oh my gosh, that wrench could have fallen into the engine while you were on the highway!”
Dad wiped it clean with a rag, placed it into his toolbox, and said, “Free wrench for me!” Two people never looked at one wrench with more opposite responses.
Just like that car wreck, I guess.
People are different.
That is not an Einsteinian observation, but once you get it, once it really sinks in, it seems profound. You sort of want to run out into the street and shout it. Attention, attention! People are different! Do not expect them to be the same! If you do, your expectations may fall to earth like a balloon!
Now, Mama tugs at her hair and twists it in her fingers and seems lost in her thoughts. She needs a good laugh.
“Joke of the day?”
“I love this part of the day. Yes!”
“How does a tiny man say good-bye?”
“How?”
“With a microwave.”
We both laugh and accidentally knock heads and Larry turns up his head like we are crazy.
We both laugh when she says she’s going to have to find a solution to the topic we just spoke of.
We both laugh when I tell her I’m plumb tired of turnips.
Then we go to her room and she takes out a pamphlet. She lets it rest on top of her nightstand, which is a start.
We lie on her bed and we watch Judge Judy tell a young man with a shiny purple tie that he better not lie because she is “like a truth machine.”
“There are so many colors in your hair, Mysti. Red. Copper. Gold. Poppy.”
“You always say that.”
And I will always let her say that, too.
“Where is my story?” It is Laura, hands on her hips, all back to her healthy brat status.
“What?”
“You said you’d find out the truth about the Woman if I survived. Well, here I am. Alive!”
Because don’t I know how much the truth can disappoint a girl, I make up a good story for Laura about the Woman. A story. A story about how I thought it should be, not how it was.
Here is a girl who wishes more than anything that her own story would have an ending that, if not exactly Happily Ever After Yellow, would be some shade of hope.
It was as I told Laura a story that involved Woman Who Goes Somewhere and the witness protection program and feral cats that the idea came to me about a new story. Two words I tried without success to bat away as I got ready for bed. Two words that insisted on being present as I lay on my bed and looked out my window. Two words.
Talent show.
chapter 42
Here is a girl trying to change her story.
It was time. Sometimes you just know when it’s time. Like when a former friend trips you in the hallway in front of his new friends.
“Nice trip, Missed-teeth,” Anibal said.
I got to my feet slowly. Then I looked at Anibal. I looked for traces of the boy I knew. The boy who was smart and funny and slept on a broken water bed and even sometimes complained about how other people teased him about his weight.
That boy was nowhere in sight. That boy was a memory.
I had neither.
So I had to be in the talent show. Not because I have any new talent since last year. Mais non, which is French for “no.”
No, not for that reason. I had to be in the talent show because kids were calling me those stupid names. It was really taking off across the seventh grade and the more Anibal did it, the more attention he got. I knew his names for me would stick until they came up with something else. That’s what they do. Wayne Kovok was known as Boy with Palindrome Name until it was Dorkvok and then Boy Who Spews Facts. And Girl Who Likes Horses was always going to be just that. Rama was still pelted with cruel comments about her scarf. And in his own warped way, even Anibal Gomez was trying to shed being Boy Who Was Extra-Extra-Large Loser and become Boy Who Was a Hipster.
If I was ever going to get a name of my own choosing, I had to do something big and memorable enough to make kids forget the other names. And if one of the side effects of doing something big and memorable was showing Anibal Gomez that he hadn’t won, well, fine. It was Ms. Overstreet who gave me the big and memorable idea the other day, even though she didn’t realize it.
“Mysti Murphy, what do courageous Texans do when they encounter an almost insurmountable challenge?”
“They take a stand, Ms. Overstreet.” This was what I could do in the talent show. Take a stand.
“A-plus, Miss Murphy!”
I wanted to tell her a lot of things. That she was easy to talk to. That it was nice to be able to tell one other person in the world about Mama. And mostly, that because of her, I would never forget the Alamo and was glad I had a small replica in my room. But I thought I’d get all mushy and cry so I just placed a gift on her desk. A sweet onion.
“The state vegetable of Texas!” Ms. Overstreet said. “I’m touched.”
I’d practiced my “talent” for a couple of days in front of Mama and it made her cry. “These are good tears, Mysti,” she’d said. “I’m so proud of you. You go do it!”
And it made Rama happy that I was going to do it, too. She even hugged me right before she went up onstage in a Sky Blue scarf, sat down, and played the violin so beautifully I thought she should give up her dreams to be a doctor. And even Wayne joined our stupid club and went onstage and performed a juggling routine that had the crowd clapping to the beat.
And then, me.
I walked up onstage feeling the hot fear race up my neck. I just floated. Principal Blakely stopped me and held up his clipboard. “Name and talent?”
“Mysti Murphy. A reading from the commandancy of the Alamo.”
He looked over the rims of his wire-frame glasses. Like he was looking at a zoo exhibit. I nodded and he nodded. People do like to look at unusual things.
And I found myself at the center of the stage. Standing. Standing still. Sweating. Heart pounding. Having a panic attack on the inside. Just as scary as being lost, but knowing it would come to an end.
I heard stupid Joe Busby call out, “Got another crazy poem for us?”
“Quiet down,” Principal Blakely said. “Next up, My-sty Murphy will read—sorry, that’s Mysti Murphy.”
We are only born with two fears. Falling and loud noises. Standing on the stage in the Beatty Middle School cafeteria isn’t one of them.
I could feel all the eyes. All that heat and energy and expectation laser-focused on me. My whole body turning red and hot and wanting to run.
I looked down and spotted Rama, smiling. And there was Wayne standing next to her, and I wanted so much for him to break the silence with some interesting fact about watermelons. But he didn’t.
I searched the room for Ms. Overstreet and there she was. She nodded and I closed my eyes and thought about what she’d just told me in the hallway. “Far into the future when everyone else has forgotten this day, you, Mysti Murphy, will remember it forever!”
That was supposed to make me feel good. As if I could change my destiny by taking a stand.
And I began.
Letter To the People of Texas And All Americans in the World—
Fellow Citizens and compatriots—
I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment and cannonade for twenty four hours and have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country—Victory or Death.
Signed,
William Barret Travis
February 24, 1836
When I stopped speaking, Ms. Overstreet was standing on a chair, waving the flag of Texas. This was when I really, really believed I was a character in a story. I mean, if I hadn’t been there myself and you had told me some red-haired seventh grader with bad teeth and too-short jeans read this letter to her nefarious middle school enemy while her teacher waved a flag, I would have said you were full-moon crazy, that does not happen in real life.
But it did.
There was silence. That loud silence I have come to hate.
But Rama and Wayne smiled at me. And even Anibal stood there blank-faced and I shot him a look of cool courage. A look that communicated, Back off.
Wayne shouted, “Did you know that wasn’t Travis’s last letter before the Alamo fell? He actually sent four more letters after this one.”
And I said, “Yes, I did know that, Wayne.”
I hurried off the stage and Sandy Showalter bounced up to me. “I like your friend, Mysti.”
Oh brother, I thought, it’s happening. Anibal gets the girl anyway. Justice isn’t served. If Judge Judy was here, she would shout out, That’s baloney! I do not want to be a mushy girl, but Anibal getting what he wants almost frustrated me to tears. I do not want to see them in the halls. I do not want to see him smile a victory smile at me in the hallways. Mostly, I do not want Sandy, who has really turned out to be nice, to be stuck with the kind of jerk who does not have much going on beneath the surface. Who is all ice and no berg. Nothing substantial lurks underneath except a certain kind of social-climbing, middle school nefariousness. I tried thinking of ways to tell her how he sleeps on a broken water bed full of stuffed animals—Can you believe it, Sandy, stuffed animals—and really break it to her that he might not like Taylor Swift.
But then Sandy spoke the best words to end the story. “Will you let Wayne Kovok know for me? Tell him I like him, okay? It’s okay to give him my number if you want.”
And I thought, Oh, sweet justice, you do exist in small corners of Texas.
chapter 43
We haven’t even eaten the free Thanksgiving turkey yet, but the radio thinks it’s Christmas tomorrow. Every other song or commercial is about cheer or snow or how you should be surrounded by presents.
Today I get up and make coffee for Mama. When I return to my room, I catch Laura shoving marbles under my sheets.
“I wondered when you’d grow up and try to get me back,” I say.
“Oh.”
“Let me brush your hair. It’s a rat’s nest.”
“Why are you being nice?”
“Can’t I just be in a good mood?”
“It’s not normal.”
Laura lets
me brush her hair anyway. “I wonder how Christmas will be,” she says.
So over breakfast, I tell Laura a story.
Laura, right as we sat down to eat a delicious dinner in which you made nice, creamy macaroni and cheese…
Ding, dong, ding.
Larry looked up at me as if to ask, Should I bark?
“It’s okay, Larry,” I said, and he went back to lounging.
“Who could that be?” Mama asked.
“No one nefarious, I hope,” said Laura.
We all went to the door and found the Jenningses dancing on our porch.
“We’ve done it! The next big thing!” Mr. Jennings announced. He described in lengthy fashion how he had just that minute received the patent for the Amazing Multimeasurer and that the Home Shopping Network wanted them to sell it on TV.
“Please be our official spokesperson, Mrs. Murphy?” Mrs. Jennings asked.
“You know, when I cook, I feel so relaxed and calm,” Mama said. “This is really the job for me.”
Soon enough, everyone, including Mama, went to a studio in the SS Frozen Tundra, which Mama said made her feel a little less scared because we filled it with her paintings. They filmed the first-ever segment to sell the Amazing Multimeasurer. Mama wore her pretty Cerulean Blue scarf and talked to the camera about how to mix the ingredients for the perfect bread.
“This is the cooking tool I’ve needed all my life!” she exclaimed with a beautiful smile.
I stood offstage watching, and then my friends Rama and Wayne showed up in a hot-air balloon because I asked them to and that’s what good friends do.
Poof! They appear.
“See how good my mother is at this?” I asked them.
“I’m so glad that she wasn’t doing anything else,” Mr. Jennings piped up.
“Mr. Jennings, this is my friend Wayne Kovok, future inventor,” I said. “He is also a fan of Steve Jobs and science.”
“Did you know that sound travels about four times faster in water than air?” asked Wayne.
“Yes, I did,” replied Mr. Jennings. “So, Kovok. That’s a palindrome name, right?”
Woman Who Goes Somewhere strolled across the Home Shopping Network set wearing brown boots, a pink sweater, and leopard-print leggings.
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