by Aimee Bender
Lisa shrugged. Dumb dead Ann, she said. She just thinks you’re weird.
The school was bone-silent now except for the sound of Lisa and the ticking of the clock in the hallway. Tick tick tick. Knock knock knock. I slumped there, head on my arm, listening to her be me. I tried to fall asleep and could feel myself almost drifting away, lolling off, pushing away the morning, redoing the morning in my head, trying to calm that flower of panic that was folding then re-blossoming each second, a kaleidoscope of movement and smallness, fold, blossom, a fist, a rose, but after a few minutes, the knocks on the door frame started to intensify, each a little harder than the last. The knocks became hits. Pow. This brought me back. I opened my eyes.
I don’t do it like that, I said.
She didn’t respond and I watched her pull back her elbow and pound a fist into the door frame.
Hey Lisa, stop, I said from the nook of my arm. Go to recess already. You’re really late.
No, she said, I’m keeping you company. She drew back her arm again as if to sock someone and lobbed it into the wood. Her fist made a thudding sound. KNOCK KNOCK! she yelled out. I lifted my head from the desk and half sat up. I wanted her to go away, to stop being there.
Lisa, I said again. Stop it.
She looked over, eyes shiny. We glared at each other and then she pulled back her arm and struck her fist into the door again. I could hear the skin on her knuckles grating against the wood, the way the sound absorbed instantly, no echo.
She smiled at me. I didn’t smile back.
She drew her arm back again, far.
Come on! I said, sitting straight now. STOP IT. Go away! My God, haven’t we had enough bloody children for one day? I said. Go to recess, Lisa!
The rest of the school was completely quiet, drawers and cubbies, floor and cabinets, all silent watching wood.
She nodded right at me this time, eyes bright as dimes. I slumped back down, partway to the desk.
She turned back to the doorframe.
Hands at your sides, I said.
She did that. She kept her hands at her sides. She stood still for a second and I thought we were done. I waited for her to leave the room, cawing, to run out as fast as she could. To disappear. She moved a step back. That’s when Lisa spun out.
I didn’t expect it, but I should’ve; she was standing there tighter than normal, standing with her four feet of self, that’s it, that’s all you got, said God, that’s all I’m giving you to contain it ALL, and she had this blank look on her face and I was back to my elbow, still watching, about to close my eyes again when she gritted her teeth and in the center of a second reared her head back, and before I even knew what was happening, hurtled it forward and slammed it with all her might into the hard wood of the door frame. And before I even knew what I’d seen, I heard it, heard the shatter and bash of her skin and skull, the weight of the blow, and her forehead split open, broken continents, bleeding. She had some kind of giddy dazed woozy look on her face and I stood up, suddenly, shaking, awake, heart slapping, and I might’ve done nothing but stand there and shake if she hadn’t reared back again, ready to bang forward again, crush those continents into countries, crush those countries into states, make more space in those four feet, it’s just not enough space to keep all of it in, and she started arcing forward, eyes focused, but this time I leaned in and seized her, got her by the shoulders, her body hot and slippery as a fish, closing my arms around her, tight, pinning her own arms down, one across the other, so she was hugging herself.
Let me go! she yelled.
Her hands were flailing, trying to get free. I held her down. When I spoke, my voice was sharper and clearer than I expected.
I don’t want your company like that, I said, hard.
She drew her head forward and slammed it back into my chest, ramming it hard so it clipped me on the chin, socked me with the weight of her cranium, and I could feel the breath knock out of me for a second, feel my sternum bloom open and bruise, but I held on even tighter, and she tried again but this time I clamped a hand down on her forehead, palm on her skin, wet now with blood, mashing her head into the nook of my neck.
She was kicking up her legs, thrashing around like a drowning man.
Knock knock! she yelled into the empty school. Who’s there? she yelled back. Ann! she said. Ann who? Ann Chovy, she said, and she started laughing, loud and joyless: Ha! Ha! Ha! she yelled. Ann Telope! Ann Esthesia! she yelled.
I was holding her as hard as I could, one hand on her forehead, pressing down on the broken bloody skin, spit flying out of her mouth, my other hand clamped around her waist. She was giving off heat like a radiator. I could hear the sounds of recess growing outside, screaming kids and cement and rubber balls.
Give me some wood, Lisa said. Get me near wood. Her voice was high now, rising. Give me some Ann Esthesia, she yelled. Oweee, she said. Now you’re going to get FIRED, she said. No more math class. Her head was bucking but I kept my hand hard on her forehead, pressing down, her whole brain, her small skull. She kicked her legs up higher and harder. And by the end of the summer, no more mother, she said. And soon a new math teacher and Ann is going to be going to the school for kids with no legs.
Ann has legs, I said then, meekly.
Lisa kept kicking and thrashing in my arms and she swallowed and it turned into a gulp and I could feel her whole body starting to shake. She was twisting so hard I was getting rope burn on my inner forearm but I held her strong, I had her, she was not going to break free, and she yelled, Let me go, and I didn’t say anything back this time and she kept wriggling and thrashing and yelling: Let me go! Let ME GO! Come on! I want to be one of the bloody children, I want to have cancer too, I want cancer NOW! and she was twisting and twisting but I kept holding her as tight as I could, fierce as a vise, and she said: I wanted to cut off MY arm, I wanted to do it, how come Ann got to do it, how come Danny’s dad got to do it, how come Ann got the ax, I wanted to bleed all over the carpet, I want to have chemotherapy, I want to have no hair, I want to be in the hospital too, she’s going to have to die all by herself, and she swallowed again, ragged and raw, wheezing, and the trembling was like a whole town on fire, the shaking up to the sky, smoke over the sun, her body rabid with shaking, unstill, blurred, and her breathing was thick, and it was my turn to talk but I kept holding her close and I had nothing to say, there wasn’t much I could say to that. No matter how many times she kept her mother company, it was clear who was leaving, and who was staying put.
23
One Sunday I remember, I am standing in the kitchen, watching my father make his lunch for Monday, spooning dim hard-boiled eggs into plastic bags. Made by yellow hens, once. The day is foggy and dull but I go to the garage anyway and pull out my bike, ride down the street, ride. There are a lot of people on the block, the curbs are filling up with cars, more cars than I’m used to, red cars and blue cars, cars from all over town, people dressed in black walking slowly up to the door of the Stuarts’ house. And then I remember, of course, it’s the funeral today, today’s the day they bury the baby in a coffin the size of a suitcase.
Biking down, the wheels are moving over wet pavement, making shushing sounds, and I look at the rows of people lined up in front of the Stuarts’ house to give their condolences. I ride by, watching, turn at the end of the street, ride back. Only Mrs. Finch had died on the block so far, and she did it with the grace of an old woman, slipping off, calm and natural. Old Age on the chalkboard with Ann’s > next to it. Old Age is a whole different story; on her lawn, the 84 was a triumph. Biking past the Stuarts’ house, I look at the rows of black-coated men and black-skirted women walking up the walkway and everyone is solemn and the casseroles are covered with fogged tinfoil, steam rising through the cracks, smelling of green vegetables, of orange cheese. A row of dishes on a red-checkered table. Everyone is hungry.
I ride by and look at the faces, and all the faces are drawn, away, stricken, and this is from the going of a life most people had bare
ly even met, a baby who couldn’t speak yet, who never knew the name of her mother, who never even walked but spent her whole time on earth with her back to it. I’m riding, wheels turning, puddles spinning off the rubber, thinking that the people all stand together with their faces so death-heavy because it’s backward. Because it’s in the DNA to collapse at the sight of a coffin the size of a suitcase. You don’t want to pack your baby on a trip like that. When you walk down the street, and you happen upon a baby carriage with a baby inside it, and you peer in the blue awning, the scalloped edges, the squirmy flesh inside, there is one simple given: If all goes right, this baby will live in the world longer than you.
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness—cry and then walk—but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
I was fired that afternoon. It was swift and clean, done inside two sentences. My boss opened the door, said I was a wonderful math teacher, but she never wanted to see me again.
Lisa had been picked up by the second ambulance of the day, no siren. She knew the paramedic. Hi Sue, she said, as the medic walked in, tall in her blue outfit. Oh hey Lisa, Sue said. What you have there on your forehead? By that time I had her lying down, holding an ice pack to the broken skin, her face puffy and red from crying, eyes woozy from the blow. I watched as they walked to the van. Lisa settled in the front seat, strapped herself in, flipped down the mirror on the sun visor, and investigated her forehead. There was no expression on her face.
I walked home very very slowly. The few blocks took forty minutes. A man was out on his lawn with a hose, watering those iron geese which made a plinking sound. A few parents drove past me, on the way to pick up their kids; it was close to that time by now. I didn’t wave when they tried to catch my eye through their windshields. They’d find out soon enough. And stop waving. Halfway there, hanging from one of the lampposts, I saw another one of Jones’s numbers: 7. I picked it up, broke off the wax awning so it looked more like a 1, and slipped it over my head. I felt better, wearing that home. I felt clear. Once back, I took out the trash, slow, moving my body as minimally as I could. I didn’t talk to anyone. I thought only about Ann in some room with a doctor sewing up her leg like a sweater; I thought only about Lisa, the ridiculous warmth of her in my lap, heading to the hospital, another one of the bloody children now, her forehead a map of continental drift. Trying to push out of her head like my father with his circle in the backyard, push it away, push it off, break a hole in the forehead and maybe the bad stuff will just seep out, like smoke unraveling from a bubble.
I sat in front of the television unmoving for over four hours until there was a knock at my door.
Perhaps it’s the police, I thought mildly. Welcome officer of the law. Come on in. I imagined the chilly bite of the handcuffs. Right then, I loved the idea of jail. It seemed so organized. No rent. No cooking.
But instead it was Benjamin Smith the science teacher, standing on my welcome mat, looking taller than normal, face handsome with concern. His arms, as always, covered with burn residue. I felt a surge of something, seeing him. He said he’d heard the news and was very sorry. You’re a great math teacher, he said. I said thanks but I deserved it. I asked if he’d heard anything about Ann and he said apparently she was getting twenty-seven stitches (and to my own horror all I could think was that’s the first odd cube, three times three times three, and not a bad number for next year’s math class, multiplication), but he said they thought she was going to be fine even though she’d lost a lot of blood. They’re going to keep her in the hospital for a bit, he said. Tomorrow they’ll see if she can walk all right. I guess she split down the bone, he said. My chest halved, hearing that. He told me Lisa was staying with Elmer Gravlaki’s parents for the week and that she had a concussion and had gotten four stitches on her forehead and a huge bottle of pain relievers to carry around but she wasn’t staying overnight at the hospital and instead said she was going to audition for a maraca player in a band with her pain reliever bottle.
A concussion? I said. I could feel the shaking start.
She’s walking and talking, he said. She’s okay, he said.
I touched my eyelashes with my finger. They were gluing together.
He fiddled with his watchband. Really, he said.
My fingertips were getting wet. I’m sorry, I said. Thanks for coming to tell me. That was really nice of you. Sorry, I said. I wiped my finger on my sleeve.
I saw her, he said. She’s okay.
Looking up for a second to nod, I caught a glimpse of his body hidden inside his shirt, his clavicle, straight across, good bones, this man: a man.
Then it’s his lips, on my lips, I’m remembering, I can’t help it, and I’m thinking of the backyard with the bubbles, and how it smelled there, all thin soap and thick smoke, and how he caught me cheating, cheating to lose, and how when he said that, I could’ve ruined him with gratitude, tore him down, tractored him over, that he could catch me, thatIcouldbecaught.
Lisa insisted I come see you, he said. I wasn’t sure if you’d want a visitor.
I looked back at the ground. The mat on my front step was made of fake grass, and when I rubbed my foot over it the blades leaned and popped back with the vigor of plastic.
I’m glad you came, I said.
She says hi, he said.
It was a horrible day, I said. Tell her hi back. She’s all right?
She’s not even staying over at the hospital, he said.
He shifted his weight to the other foot. He was still standing at the doorway. I asked him in but he said that was probably a bad idea. He congratulated me on getting fired first, and we both laughed sad short laughs.
I could feel, almost against my will, the magnets beginning to charge, to circle around each other, each magnet spying the other magnet. I see you, one body says to the other. He was standing there and I was still staring at the plastic mat, Ms. Gray the math teacher, destroyer of children, and I told him then that I was sorry about the other day. You were right, I said, I was lying. He nodded. I thought of Lisa, heavy in my arms, heavy with the weight of everything, like layers of lead slid carefully under her skin in a new epidermal breakthrough, and I took a breath and told Benjamin the science teacher that next time, if there ever was a next time, if I said I was going to the bathroom, he shouldn’t let me go. He coughed a little. The words were out, floating around the air. Words so big to me they blocked out the sky. I rubbed my foot over the grass mat. I felt like I was praying. He said: Ms. Gray, I am not your bathroom monitor. I smiled a little at that. I know, I said. You’re right, I said. But just once, I said. I could hear him breathing. On the street, someone honked. I said too, louder, that maybe it was good if Lisa pretended to have cancer some of the time because otherwise she pretended to have cancer all of the time. When can I see you again? I asked, down to the floor. The sentence knocked around in my mouth like a hard candy. My magnet was moving forward but my body kept still. I could feel the pull, dark and thick, and he said he’d come by to check on me in a few days. Really? I said. Yeah, he said. That would be really great, I said. Come before Sunday, I told him, it has to be before Sunday. I think I can come Saturday, he said. And please tell Lisa, I said, that I’ll check on her soon. Okay, he said. I lifted up my head. I had been talking mostly to the floor the whole time. It took every bit of myself that was there, slogging up from the depths, but I put a hand on his arm. Good, I said. He looked at my hand. We both looked at my hand.
24
I spent the next two days in bed. I knew the school schedule by heart and on the minute, imagined the kids shifting from class to class, facing their math substitute, Elmer back under the table, Danny coated with rubber bands. No Ann. A zero next to her name in the roll book. Absent. Lisa with angry stitches all over her forehead, telling the younger kids she got them by banging against the wall as hard as
she possibly could because she wanted to see what it felt like to break open your head. Shaking her maraca of pills, and dancing.
The art teacher called to say it was too bad, some parent called to yell, my mother called to remind me that we were all going to dinner that Sunday night for my father’s fifty-first birthday. I almost laughed out loud, that she’d told me which birthday it was, just in case I’d forgotten. Ah, I said. 51.
I stared at the 50, unfolded on my bed.
On day three, I tucked the 50 in my pocket, picked all of Jones’s numbers off their nesting spots inside my towels and hung them carefully off my arm, in order.
I left my apartment and walked downtown.
The movie theater was still playing BANK ROBBERY! which made me walk even slower, and the hardware store remained OPEN but empty. I didn’t see any more loose numbers, but by now lots of merchandise had been stripped from the aisles. I counted twelve missing hammers and a bunch of missing buckets and one of the clocks on the wall was gone. There was a trail of red licorice on the floor of Aisle Three. I asked some pedestrians on the sidewalk if they’d seen Mr. Jones, but they seemed preoccupied and all of them had shovels or pliers in their pockets.
Isn’t he from the stationery shop? asked a woman with two wrenches poking out of her purse.
I shook my head and held up my arm, but she didn’t stay long enough to see. The wax numbers hit against each other, friendly.
I wandered until the shadows turned my skin aquamarine, which meant I was at the foot of the biggest building in town, and it occurred to me that maybe he was in there and that’s where he’d been the whole time: sick. Pulling open the glass doors, I entered the lobby, air tinged from the tint of the transparent walls. The pale fishlike nurse at the front station told me there were five Joneses in the hospital, but three were women, one was a child, and the fifth, she said, was a visitor from Nebraska who’d stepped on a nail.