by Sarah Moon
Backstage looks like a construction site, all beams and hidden walkways. It smells warm and slightly dusty. There’s a table that Ms. Smith says will be the prop table; she tells me I’ll collect props from everyone and put them on the table in order of how they’ll be used by each performer. She tells me we’ll have walkie-talkies so that she’ll be able to communicate with me in the light booth if anything needs to be adjusted—because, she says casually, I’ll also be running sound.
“Isn’t that kind of a lot? I don’t know how to do any of this.”
“True, you would have learned in a performing arts class if you’d taken one. Pity.”
I open my mouth to protest but she says, smiling, “It’s okay, Sparrow. You’re a quick learner and we have two weeks before the performance.”
As we head up to the light booth, I say, “I really am sorry about class today.”
“Well, I know you wish it hadn’t happened, but, my dear, it’s not the first time. You’re almost always just on your way back from somewhere else.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You’re here, but you’re also far away.”
“I’m trying to be here more.”
“I know that too. It’s okay. It’s hard to be here sometimes.”
I feel my face getting warm, but not because I’m embarrassed.
“Let’s take a look at this.”
Ms. Smith shows me the light board and she lets me play around with the settings. I make the theater really bright, and then I make a really narrow spotlight, I make everything bright blue, I make it orange. She laughs.
“Okay, but mostly you’re going to use this one.” She shows me how to make a spotlight in the middle of the stage.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Now let’s take a look at sound.” She stands onstage with a microphone (reading selections from Gatsby, of course), and I practice getting the levels right until it’s time to go home.
“That’s a wrap!” calls Ms. Smith as she heads toward the light booth.
“Thanks for letting me do this,” I say.
“You’re most welcome. It seemed like it was even—let me see if I can find the right word—fun?”
I smile. “Maybe.”
“That’s a good start. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.” I mean it in every sense.
She’s right. It was fun. So much fun that for the last hour or more, I haven’t thought about what’s waiting for me at home. My feet move more and more slowly as I get close to the house. I wait on the steps for Mom. She’ll be home any minute now. I sit and read my Gatsby assignment, and a piece of paper falls out of the book. A small square in the same handwriting as the last one. It just says They say I’m different.… My heart skips a beat. Either they’re making fun of me or this is a clue of some kind. I want to go google it right now but I feel Mom turn the corner onto the block. So that I don’t just sit and stare at her until she turns into our gate, I keep my eyes on the page, rereading the same sentence over and over, sticking the note in the back of the book. The words aren’t even making sense anymore; it’s just a place to keep my eyes until I can look up. I hear the gate creak.
“Hi, Mom.”
“How was rehearsal?”
“Good. I know I’ve got to work to do; I’ll try to get it done.”
“Coming in?”
“Sure. There’s, um, there’s kind of something I want to talk to you about.” No turning back now.
“Okay.” I follow her into the living room and she sits on the couch. This seems like a good sign. Like what a happy family on TV might do to have a Big Talk.
“So, um, obviously, I’ve had some, um, trouble talking.”
“Right.” She seems nervous. Who can blame her? I sound like a lunatic.
“Dr. Katz … ” I can’t finish the sentence.
“We can find you someone else if you want. Or maybe you’re done?” It’s impossible not to hear the hope in her voice. Things are looking less sitcom every second.
“Um, no, it’s not that. It’s fine with her. It’s, um, it’s good. She wanted me to ask you to come to the next session. With me. Can you?”
“Of course.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Sparrow; I’m your mother. If you want me to come, I’ll be there.”
“I want you to.”
“That’s that, then.”
Okay. It’s done. I let out all the breath I’ve been holding for days. We’re not cuddling, but it’s possible I’ll be speaking with her earlier than college. Mostly all I can think is it’s done it’s done it’s done.
“Do you want to order Indian?” she asks.
“Yes, definitely, yes.”
“The usual?”
“Sure.” I turn on the TV. It’s the doctor show she loves. “Want to watch?” I ask, hoping she’ll let us watch and eat.
“Sure,” she says. “Get your backpack. You can get at least three math problems done during the commercials.”
After Indian food, an episode of the doctor show, and a full sheet of math plus homework for tonight, Mom releases me to my room. I sit at my computer and type in the words. The first result is the one I’m meant to see. Betty Davis roars into my stereo. I play what is so clearly meant to be the loudest song on earth quiet enough for Mom not to come storming into my room; I wouldn’t try to contain this voice in headphones. I fall asleep with the slightest smile on my face.
We wait in the waiting room. We. The word makes my skin crawl. Just like at my first session, we sit there, not speaking. I’m staring up at the very familiar ceiling, my mom is riffling through the same six magazines that have been here since at least February. My heart is beating out of my chest. What was I thinking? What was Dr. Katz thinking? I’ll just tell my mother, and poof, everything will be fine? We’ll be wrapped in pink fairy dust and ride away into the sunset together, mother and child reunited at last? Yeah, right, lady.
“Hi, Sparrow, Ms. Cooke. Come on in.”
I hate this already. I can’t sit in my chair because we have to sit on the sofa by the wall. This throws everything off. We sit on opposite ends. My mother crosses her legs and keeps her folded hands in her lap. This is formal Mom; this is Mom in a business meeting, her favorite self. She’s just come from work, still in her suit and pearls.
Let’s see what this woman thinks she can tell me about my daughter, I can hear her thinking.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Cooke,” says Dr. Katz.
“Of course,” she says, as if there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. Dr. Katz might not be able to see through it, but I can.
“How has Sparrow seemed at home?”
“She seems quiet.” Mom is pleasant, but not giving an inch.
“More than usual?”
“More than usual with me, yes.”
“Well, I think that’s why Sparrow wanted you to come here today.” Dr. Katz looks at me. This is a question disguised as a sentence. She’s waiting for me to answer. Mom is looking at me too, like a stopwatch. Come on already.
“Yeah. Sometimes it’s like, I haven’t said anything for such a long time that it just gets too hard to start.”
“You can always talk to me, Sparrow. You didn’t need to bring me here to talk to me.” Instead, I look down, the pit in my stomach growing by the second. I can feel her shift on the couch, her ankles crossed.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry, Sparrow?” asks Dr. Katz.
“I’m sorry that I dragged her out of work.”
“Talk to your mom directly.”
“I’m sorry that I dragged you out of work.” My stomach feels queasy. I think about what would happen if I just threw up right here on the rug. That would bring an end to this real quick.
“It’s okay, Sparrow. I don’t mind missing work. I just mean that if you want to talk to me, all you have to do is talk.”
; “I know, but it got too hard to just start.”
“Well, I’m glad you started.” Mom sounds like she’s all set, ready to leave. I almost feel her get up from the couch. Problem solved. Sparrow’s talking again. Thanks for all your hard work, Doc.
You wish, Mom. We’re just getting going.
“Sparrow, why do you think it’s been so hard for you to talk to your mom?”
“I feel embarrassed.”
“Why would you feel embarrassed?” Mom asks, shocked. Her eyes wide, her eyebrows reaching for her hairline. Her weight is settling down into the gray cushions. Defeated.
“Mom, come on, a kid in the mental hospital at fourteen, barely passing eighth grade—that’s not really what you had in mind, is it?” Mom looks at me and she looks just like Mom. Not like the last-three-and-a-half-months Mom. Like actual Mom. She’ll be back to her business self in a second, I’m sure, but it’s nice to see that I haven’t destroyed Old Mom.
“Sparrow, the person you are is exactly the person I had in mind.” Mom plans meals weeks ahead; she irons the shirt she needs next Tuesday last Wednesday. She has been telling me since I was six years old that I need to sit up straight, talk more, make friends, do something with my hair. Mom has very specific things in mind, and a bird-daughter with terrible shyness and a dirty hoodie was never one of them. My hands grow clammy and my cheeks are hot, but I make myself say it anyway.
“It doesn’t seem that way. I feel like … I’ve always felt like you’d rather I be … easier. Someone who has friends and goes to parties and cares about her hair and doesn’t hide under the coats on the first day of school. Someone who doesn’t care about what other people think of her, who’s confident and friendly and NORMAL. Someone more like you.”
“Oh, Sparrow.” Mom’s voice breaks just a little as she inhales. She grips her hands tighter, but not like she’s angry. Like she’s trying to keep them still. “Baby, if I tried to push you to talk to people, to have friends, to be more social, it’s not because I wanted you to be easier but because I wanted your life to be easier.”
“Easier than what?” you-know-who asks.
Mom cuts her eyes just slightly at Dr. Katz. She does not take well to being questioned by strangers, certainly not by ones who think they know her daughter better than she does.
“Well,” Mom begins, her voice even, cold to the touch, “Sparrow knows what I mean.”
“Do you?” Dr. Katz asks.
“I guess,” I say, looking down.
Mom looks at me. She draws in a breath, and I can feel her softening against her will. Her shoulders lean just slightly toward the back of the couch.
“Sparrow, who’s my best friend?”
“Aunt Joan.”
“That’s right. My twin sister. When we were in school, I couldn’t bear to talk to anyone. Joanie made all the friends. Mostly, they put up with me because that was the cost of being Joan’s friend—you had to be my friend too. Do you know what I did on the first day of school when I was little? I ran home. I hid in my closet for the rest of the day. My parents switched me into Joanie’s class after that. They didn’t know what else to do, and they couldn’t keep leaving work every time I ran away from school.”
“That’s just like me. Why didn’t you tell me?” I’m still looking down, but Mom’s hand has moved from her own grip to the pillow between us on the couch, like she’s reaching for me.
“I was terrified when you were the same way. You didn’t have a Joanie; who was going to look out for you the way Joanie did for me?”
“What about you?” I ask, trying to keep the accusation out of my voice.
“What about me, baby? I have the same problem you do, and I couldn’t send Aunt Joan with you to school. So I tried to get you to toughen up, to get past it the way I never had. I came down so hard on you because I didn’t want it to be as bad for you as it had been for me.”
Whenever I tried to imagine my mother at my age before, she looked exactly like herself, just shorter, more flat-chested, still wearing a suit and pearls, holding a briefcase, hair perfect, shirt starched. Suddenly the camera in my mind zooms out and I can see that she’s just a skinny girl standing alone, not so different from someone else I know. I stare at her like I’m seeing her for the first time, which I guess I am.
“I just figured that was something wrong with me and I didn’t have whatever I needed to fix it.” We sit in silence for a minute. I can feel the muscles in her jaw tighten. She swallows.
“Is that why you tried to kill yourself?” Finally. The words fly out of her mouth like they’ve been sitting there for months trying to push their way past her teeth.
“Mom.”
“Am I not allowed to ask?”
“No, it’s not that.” Can I do it? Can I say what it is?
Dr. Katz is looking at me. This is why we’re here, she seems to be telling me, you can swim or you can drown.
“Mom, I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”
“You say that, Sparrow, and I appreciate that you don’t want me to worry or to feel bad, but I know what happened. I know what I saw.”
“What happened?” asks Dr. Katz.
“They called me to the hospital because Sparrow had been found trying to jump off the roof of her school. When I got there, they had sedated her because she’d been hysterical. I only got to take her home on the condition that she see you. Since then, her denial has been so thick, all she’ll say is that she didn’t try to kill herself. I don’t know what else you would call it.”
“Sparrow, what do you call it?”
Mom is facing me again. So is Dr. Katz. What do I call it?
“I call it flying.” I thought maybe I would feel relief. But what it feels like instead is that the dual boulders that rest on top of my shoulders have lodged themselves in the middle of my throat instead. I wait for Mom to pick me up and carry me to the mental hospital herself. I wait for the floor to open and swallow me whole. I wait for the world to stop spinning. Instead, all that happens is that Mom finally says, “You think you can fly?”
“I can fly. Or at least I could.”
“Ms. Cooke, under a lot of emotional stress, Sparrow tends to check out from whatever situation she’s in. She might physically be in one place, but mentally she’s pretty far away.”
“She’s flying?” Mom asks incredulously.
“For her, yes, she is. Is she literally, physically growing wings and soaring? Not that we would notice. But for her? Absolutely.”
“She thinks I’m crazy,” I say.
“Talk to your mother directly,” says Dr. K.
“You think I’m crazy.”
She’s quiet for a few seconds that feel like years. She’s looking at the ceiling, trying to read it for the answer.
“I’m thinking that’s what you were doing on the porch. Honestly, Sparrow, I don’t know. Is this normal? What does this mean for her?”
“What are you afraid it means?” Dr. Katz asks.
“Hospitals, medications, never being able to lead a regular life.” Mom looks down, ceiling to floor, the same dance I’ve done a million times in this room.
“I don’t think we have to worry about those things with Sparrow if she continues learning how to confront the issues that make her feel like taking off. Will she be able to be a happy, independent, free adult? Absolutely. In terms of hospitals, there’s no reason for her to be in one. And according to Dr. Woo, Sparrow isn’t suicidal and doesn’t need medication at the moment. Which is a good thing since … ” She looks at me, head tilted, eyebrows arched, like, You’re not getting out of this one.
“I never took them.”
Mom looks pissed. “What did you do with those pills I gave you every day?”
“I put them in my pocket and threw them out.”
“Sparrow!”
“I know, Mom, I’m sorry. They were making me so dopey, and I was falling asleep in class and then not sleeping at night and I’d just be up for hours and it sucked.”<
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She shakes her head, not like she’s angry, but like she’s been wandering around for an hour looking for glasses that were on her head the whole time. A piece of hair has become untucked from behind her ear.
“Okay,” she says. “Is this flying still happening?”
“I can’t anymore. I haven’t been able to since I started talking about it.”
“Why did you do it? Were things that bad?”
I look my mother right in the eyes. I want to hold her hand, but it’s back in her lap, not resting in between us anymore.
“Yes.”
All the blood rushes to my face, as Mom goes very, very quiet. She closes her eyes. There are tiny tears seeping out from under her lids. She’s crying. I feel like the worst person on earth. This is not a woman who cries in front of other people. She’s not even a woman who cries in front of me. I wait for her to open them again, hoping that the tears will be gone. I want to look at Dr. Katz, to ask her what to do. But I can’t look at her, I just feel my heart threatening to break my rib cage, and wish that I hadn’t said anything, wish that we’d never come here. Finally, she opens her eyes, and the tears stream right down her face, no consideration for her privacy, for the fact that never in a million years would she choose to be sitting here, crying on a couch in front of her daughter and a stranger. She looks at me.
“Mom.” And the tears spill out of my eyes too, just a mirror for her pain. “You didn’t do this to me. You’re not the mean girls at school; you didn’t make me into some weirdo who doesn’t know how to make friends. You’re the good stuff. You’re not why I had to fly.” She stares at me that way I stared at Dr. Katz the day I told her I could fly, like if I’m lying, she’ll turn to ash. She runs a quick hand over her face and makes a grasp for Business Mom as she turns to Dr. Katz.
“And you’re telling me this is normal?”
“I am telling you that escape or checking out is a common response to emotional trauma and anxiety, like the kind Sparrow experiences in social situations, like school.”