The nurse nods her head in agreement. “You need to focus on the baby, Ms. Harris. You’re going to have to get yourself ready.”
And how does this happen? Even when he’s not wearing his uniform, and though there’s no way for the nurse to know that this slender man is largely responsible for nearly ninety thousand tons of bombs dropped this winter in the Persian Gulf War, my dad is giving orders and people just carry them out.
The elevator doors open again, and I’m wheeled into a dim room, muddy pink with teddy bear wallpaper only along the ceiling.
“Here, ma’am. I need you to stand up.” A technician holds one of my arms at the elbow, hoisting me out of the chair.
I feel air on my backside, and move my hand to close the gown, when the nurse says, “Hold it right there.” I feel the cold wet of an alcohol swab just above my butt. “Okay, you’re going to feel a little stick.”
“What is that?”
“This is a corticosteroid to help speed up the development of the baby’s lungs.”
“Please,” I squeak, my nose stuffy from crying. “Please, stop the labor.”
“Okay, let’s get her on the bed. One, two, three, lift your hips now.”
I don’t lift at all, but somehow I find myself on top of a bed with wheels.
She lifts my sleeve and swabs a cotton ball on the inside of my arm. “Some extra fluids for you,” she says, inserting an IV tube, then hanging a clear bag on a metal pole beside the bed.
“Would you like—is this your father? Would you like him with you?”
“No!” I shake my head so hard I’m dizzy. “Dad, get out of here! Oh, God, here comes another one.” I take a deep breath as if I’m about to get dragged underwater.
“Here, let me tie up her hair,” the nurse says, finding the rubber band on the floor.
She’s rough, snagging strands that cause me to reach for my head, but the pain returns to my back and my belly, and I don’t have enough hands to hold everything that aches. I simply moan, looking up to the tiles and the sprinkler system, hoping for any distraction from the pain. Nothing helps. I can only live through it and try to recover my strength during the few minutes in-between.
Clear liquid flows down tubes into my arm. And now they’ve attached a belt to my abdomen with wires that dangle between my legs, connecting me to a fetal heart monitor. I hear continuous clicks—like my brother opening and shutting the ashtray in our old car—as a strip of paper rolls on and on with the jagged mountains and valleys of the baby’s heartbeat on it. There are so many wires, so many different machines I’m attached to, I can hardly move in any direction without feeling a tug. I’ve lost track of who is in the room with me, and it seems like everyone here has looked between my legs and stuck a hand inside. Any sense of modesty I had is long gone.
Another contraction grabs hold and I’m too exhausted to cry. I just cover my face and feel the utter despair that the pain is inevitable, that my protests make no difference. I wonder if this was how my mother felt in her blue-lit prison, face-to-face with what she couldn’t control.
I grip the damp sheets through the next round of contractions, which come so fast, one on top of the other, that all I can do is blubber miserably. I can feel the baby moving down, pressing on my lower back, like it’s going to come out of the wrong hole. When Dr. Young enters the room, wearing a mask and blue scrub cap, I tell him this, though it comes out as cursing. He only nods, then turns on a huge round light, like an eye that swoops down from the ceiling, and I feel someone place my feet in stirrups again, and someone else breaks down the table so, without me having to move, my legs are open wide at the very end of it.
“Ms. Harris,” he says, “the baby’s ready. I want you to push as hard as you can while I count to ten.”
“No,” I sob. “I’m too tired.”
“I know. It’s tough. It’s tough,” the nurse says.
“Push!” he commands.
“No!”
“Push!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
22
The Ghost of Momma
IN THE CENTER OF the school playground, there was a tetherball pole. Just the pole. The ball and the rope it hung from were never replaced after a weekend of vandalism, and so the pole was mostly used for base during games of tag, and occasionally for boys who wanted to show how fast they could shimmy up to the top. Today it was free.
With one hand holding the pole, I walked in circles, leaning out toward the ground, watching my shadow. The pole burned, but I held on, listening to the squeak of my hand against the metal and telling myself, I got my wish. I got my wish.
It had been one week since I was caught trying to escape with Momma. One week since we all stood in the basement with the lights on and Dad shouting, “Go to your rooms!” I ran as fast as I could in three layers of pants and Momma’s long shawl, tripping all the way to my room, where I shoved myself under the bed. It hurt, and I wanted it to. I felt hot and cramped, unable to lift my head. The perfume Momma had dabbed behind my ears was too strong, and I wanted air.
Phil came up the stairs slow and steady, as if still considering all that he’d seen. When he got to his room, I heard the first crash. He’d taken a swipe at the pyramid of beer cans he kept on the shelf over his bed, and the cans clanked against each other as they tumbled. Then there was another crash, and another, and the sound of him kicking the ones that had already fallen against the wall.
My hand squealed against the pole as I spun faster.
The woman my father brought up from the basement was a ghost of my mother. She slumped on the couch in the formal living room like a person with no bones, her orange hair brittle and knotted. The makeup she wore the night before was faded but still visible on her face—a ring of lipstick, a trace of rouge, mascara smudged below the eyes.
“Your mother hasn’t been well,” Dad said, standing right in front of her. Though his voice was calm, the veins stood out in his neck and forearms. “She wasn’t well, and I was caring for her.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. “She’s well. And I was caring for her.” I held her limp hand as she stared forward. The sunlight from the window was cruel, revealing loose skin, dull eyes. I squeezed tighter.
“Tillie,” he said, “there’s a lot you’re not understanding.”
“You’re wrong,” I told him, but under my breath and without any courage.
“She would be embarrassed if people knew she’d been living in the basement,” he continued. And then he repeated the rule I knew so well: “This is a family matter, and we won’t talk about it outside of this house.” But we weren’t talking about it inside of the house, either.
The only real sound of protest came when Phil dragged his feet through the beer cans. There were sixty-eight cans in his collection, sixty-eight cans still lying on his floor a week later. No one mentioned them, but every day, the sound of Phil going in or out of his room sent a shiver through the house.
I spun so fast, the world began to blur. I didn’t realize my eyes had been closed, but when I opened them, they stung from the brightness of the sun. Turning my head toward the pole, I saw a brown hand just above mine. I didn’t need to look behind me to know it was Shirl because she always wore a ring made of wire and shaped like a butterfly, and she had the cleanest fingernails, like she never once clawed into the dirt to pick up a worm.
“Why are you outside for recess?” I asked, still walking in circles. My jaw hurt when I talked, as if I’d been biting down too hard and for too long.
“You’ve been going around the pole for a half hour,” she said, staying with me.
“So?”
“So what’s your problem?”
I slowed and considered telling her everything. I could feel the words in my throat and in my chest—heavy as stones—but something stopped me. Maybe the habit of keeping secrets. Or maybe the shrieks of laughter on the playground, reminding me how badly I wanted to be like the other kids.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled
. “Just feel like spinning, I guess.”
Though I felt queasy, I kept on turning until the bell rang to go back to class. When I finally stood still, the monkey bars, the field, the slide all turned in circles and smashed into each other as if I were viewing them through a kaleidoscope. I let go of the pole, and my arm ached at the elbow. My hand, its palm sore from rubbing for so long against the metal, would not straighten. It stayed scrunched up like a claw, like I could grab something and strangle it.
IT WAS THE QUIET that bothered me. It was everything continuing as usual as if nothing had happened. It was walking through the hallway at school, and seeing the same kid cut in line at the water fountain, the same one do a lay-up to touch the exit sign. It was sitting in my seat, pulling one of the chewed pencils from my desk, and writing 9 × 3 = 27. How had all the screaming and crashing cans come to this? Where were the police asking if I wanted to keep my father with us or send him to jail? Where were the crowds of neighbors wondering how I survived?
I tried to remind myself: I got my wish. I have my mother back. But she wasn’t the same person I had known in secret—handing me trinkets, whispering stories, and calling me a poet. In the week since she’d been upstairs with us, I only saw her leave the couch once, at Dad’s insistence, to join us for dinner. She took painfully slow steps to the table, the sash loose around her bathrobe, exposing the bones above her chest. She bent over a serving of chicken and broccoli, her makeup washed away so her face had become faint—lips as pale as her skin, eyes like faded blue dots. She only put food into her mouth when Dad ordered her to do it.
I knew we weren’t supposed to talk about private family matters, but the secrets felt right there at the surface. They were tangled in my mind with math problems and spelling. And when the school bell rang, they rattled inside me as I walked down the hallway. I looked toward the glass wall of the main office, where the teachers and principal stood, fighting an urge to tell.
But telling wasn’t so easy to do. I didn’t know where to begin, for one thing. Would I just blurt out that my mother was locked in our basement for almost a year? Because if I said this, they’d call home, and the only one who answered our phone was Dad. He could show them my mother sitting right there in the living room, not in the basement at all.
As I continued out the main doors of the school, Phil was ready to take the path into the woods that led to the river. I jogged beside him, but he sped up, trying to lose me. Frustrated, I simply stopped where I was, put my hands on my hips, and shouted, “Are you going to tell?”
He turned, his face stretched tight. “I’m no whiner,” he said. “And what do you think would happen if you told someone?” He dropped his book bag and put his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers. “Do you think things would just magically get better? Mom would stop being a crazy person?”
He picked up his bag again and walked fast toward the path. I didn’t try to catch him. I turned up the sidewalk toward the patrols waiting at the top of the hill. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is nothing. You just make do. Keep your mouth closed and hope all the rattling goes away. You walk home from school, pretending everything’s the same, running your hand along the hedges and fences, like there’s nothing waiting for you but your homework.
23
A Note on the Fridge
ONE OF THE TOYS that never made it to the new house was my Drowsy Doll. She had a plastic head and plastic hands and eyes that were always halfway closed, but the rest of her, the part wearing pink footed pajamas, was as soft as a bean bag. And what I liked best about this doll was how, after months of carrying her around, she got even softer and smelled like a real person.
Drowsy Doll had a pull string on her hip, and she’d say, “I’m sleepy” or “I want a drink of water.” But I wasn’t careful with my toys, and after too many times left in the rain and too many times of being carried by her string, she stopped talking.
Eventually, she sunk to the bottom of my toy box and stayed there until one day, for no reason at all, she started to say something in a slow and muddled voice. By the time I dug her out she was silent again, even after I shook her hard. Dad said I should throw her out, and I guessed that’s what he did the day he packed the U-Haul. He didn’t understand that even if she never talked again I would miss her smell, her soft belly, and the way she always fell asleep at the same time as I did. Now something was breaking inside my mother that I wasn’t sure could be fixed again. Though Dad had moved her upstairs, she didn’t become a part of our lives.
DAD CARRIED A CARDBOARD box filled with Momma’s belongings up from the basement, and I hoped this would help cheer her up. I set out her favorite trinkets and books. I set out her makeup but hid her mirror. I thought when the room was friendlier and more familiar looking, I’d see a sign of the mother I knew in private.
“Phil, why don’t you help, too?” Dad said, heading back downstairs with a bucket and sponge. “Help unload that box.”
Up until then, Phil had been sitting in a corner of the room with his Mad magazine, turning pages faster than he could read them. But when Dad gave the command—because Phil always did what he was told—he came right over to the box. At first, he reached inside and picked up Momma’s beret with just two fingers, as if it was something disgusting to touch. Sneering, he looked around for a place in our home where her things might belong. And when he didn’t see anything obvious, he simply dragged the entire box to the hallway closet, where he dumped it upside down and shut the door.
Momma turned her head away—never willing to fight with Phil or tell him what to do—but I knew she didn’t want to see him hurting her, either. I scooted close beside her, patting her leg. I was happy with the display I’d made of her favorite things and waited for her to feel better. I waited for her to tell me one of her stories or pass me some object we could admire. I sat till the edge of the couch dug grooves into the backs of my legs. The whole time she hardly moved.
I sat with her like this each day—after school and after dinner, sometimes with the TV on, though we didn’t really watch it, and sometimes with a book opened in her lap, though she didn’t look at the words. I often passed time by flipping my eyelids inside out, which made the room blur and darken. It was like the fade-out of a TV show, and I could roll my eyelids back down if something started to happen again.
It was another night eating dinner in the front of the television—the easiest way to bring us together. I liked listening to Walter Cronkite, who was always calm, just sitting with us in the living room and telling stories. He told about a peanut farmer who wanted to be president and a high school football team that didn’t like the bused kids joining it. Phil sat on the floor because there was no room on the couch, and Dad, rather than watching TV, spent dinner glaring at a dirty fork Momma had dropped on the floor.
“Dad,” Phil said, “isn’t that your research they’re talking about?”
The TV showed protesters on college campuses, waving signs that said: stop the war machine. books not bombs. no classified research on our campus.
“Zealots,” Dad muttered. “Why wouldn’t they want more accurate missile strikes?”
He grabbed his plate and Momma’s fork and took them into the kitchen. “Am I the only one who cleans up after myself in this house?” he yelled, like he’d been in the middle of an argument with someone. “I work all day, and then I come home and work some more—dinner, dishes, trash. And now we’re practically out of groceries, and I suppose I’m the one who has to go shopping.”
He came back into the room and turned off the TV in the middle of a story about porpoises who died tangled up in fishing nets. “Phil. Tillie. In the car,” he announced. “And Mara, I don’t want to see you lying on the couch when we get back. I’m not kidding about this.”
We drove to the commissary, though there was a grocery store not five minutes from our house. Dad always made the thirty-minute trek to shop at the local base, not just for the military discount, but because the world there was
orderly. Customers moved through the aisles in a quiet, disciplined fashion. Unlike Safeway, parents at the commissary didn’t open a box of cookies before they paid for them, just to quiet a baby’s crying. And here, no child dared to put one foot on the bottom metal rack of the cart and push off with the other.
Phil strolled the cart down the aisle with excellent posture, stopping whenever Dad found something from his list. He was as polite and distant as a stranger since Momma had come back.
“Colonel Harris?” A soldier slowed his cart near ours in the produce aisle and saluted. “I’ve been following your research, sir,” he said, and they shook hands.
While they talked, I searched a nearby apple bin, turning each one to see which was best.
“Leave those alone,” Phil said. “Don’t put your fingers on everything.” But I kept touching them until I found one that was huge, without a flat side or a soft spot, and so red it looked painted.
I walked over to Dad as the soldier said, “Now tell me, what part of the missile are you actually involved with? The payload?”
“No. It’s a navigation system that will be accurate to within a few hundred yards.”
“Spare some lives?”
“It will be more efficient.”
“Well, keep up the good work, Colonel Harris. Don’t let the critics stop you.”
I held up the apple. “Dad, can I get this?”
“Sh. Don’t interrupt.”
I mouthed, Can I get this? And he nodded.
Phil would never have gotten away with the same thing, and to show he noticed, he turned the cart just enough so I ran into it. But I held tight to the apple, all the way to the checkout. I even requested for it to be put in its own bag, ignoring Phil’s groans.
We left the store, past the salutes, past those who smiled as if congratulating me for being Colonel Harris’s daughter. When we were on the road again, I rolled down the window and let the wind blow my hair. The sun had almost set, and in the towns between the commissary and our house, flyers stapled to trees and telephone polls seemed to glow in the dark: stop busing. save our neighborhoods! I’d seen these signs pinned to the bulletin board at the library and at Robertson’s Five and Ten.
Up from the Blue Page 17