Buffering

by Hannah Hart

  We landed safely, and I turned my phone back on to begin my series of apology texts to Naomi. I wondered how many times she would forgive me. I wondered if this was the last. My mental whip was finding its way back into my hand already. If she didn’t want to talk to me, that was fine. That’s what I deserved. But instead there was already a message waiting for me from her:

  “Hey boo, sorry about your flights. I know how scary that can be. I checked and there are no more departures. Wanna give me a call and we’ll get you set up with a hotel room?”

  That night I slept at my first airport hotel. Naomi ordered me a pizza, and we googled the Denver airport to find out why flights coming into it were so bad. We researched all the conspiracy theories associated with it: everything from the layout of the runway (which some think looks like a Nazi swastika) to the art within the airport seeming “a little too alien.”

  The conspiracies were radical, but I was comforted to hear what others thought. Sharing knowledge, sharing resources, gotta love the Internet for that.

  My friend once said he wasn’t scared on planes because “turbulence is just like a car driving over a dirt road.”

  Since that experience I’ve learned about where the pockets of “rough air” are in the continental United States. I’ve flown back and forth so many times that knowing this helps me understand what is “normal” over certain mountain regions and certain climates. Before, I would turn every flight into a dance with death and use it to reinforce my fear-based beliefs about the world. But now I find comfort in seeking to understand the things that scare me instead of hiding from them.

  My aunt once told me that she isn’t scared on planes because “the pilot wants to live, too.” At the time she said it I thought, “Well, why should I trust that pilot? Who knows what that guy is like?”

  But now I agree with her. Flying is a mutually agreed upon act of trust between passenger and pilot. And that’s kind of beautiful, when you think about it. So instead of filling the plane with your anxious energy, why not send out good vibes of calm and trust? Instead of distracting yourself or popping a Xanax, why not sink deep into the feelings and wade through them? If your heart is racing, slow your breathing. Don’t ignore your body just because your mind is scared. Your mind is a tool that can bring your body peace.

  These days, during scary moments on a flight (of which there are still many), I repeat in my head “safe” and “trust” and think about the pilot. I just breathe and repeat and send some good vibes their way.

  If all that sounds too hippy-dippy to you, reread the beginning of this chapter and focus on those physical comforts first. Might be less complicated once you’ve got your earplugs and your minty gum.

  1 There is a certain olfactory quality to dehydrated breath that I can always identify. Same as when somebody hasn’t eaten enough that day. Their breath just starts to smell like their empty stomach cavity: rank and nutrient deprived. People think I’m offering them snacks and water to be kind, and that’s partially true. But I’m also being kind to myself because GOOD GOD, YOUR SPIT SHOULDN’T BE SO FROTHY AND THICK. The inside of my head is a fun place. I swear.

  2 I gotta say, though, Virgin America has a PB&J on flights and it’s just delightful.

  3 Let’s not call them complaints, let’s call them “moody observations.”

  4 CAPPUCCINOS IN THE SKY!!!!

  5 No, I didn’t.

  6 That is actually how rude I can be to Naomi. She is the only person on the planet I treat with such little patience. She’s a saint for putting up with it, and I’m working on my anger. It’s a process.

  KEEPSAKE

  My mother always told us that there are no bad guys in this story. That things are more complicated than one person who was wrong or one person who was selfish. After Maggie was removed from our house, the courts said she could go and live with David, her father and my stepdad, as long as he didn’t live with my mother.

  For some reason, David didn’t fight for Maggie. He decided to stay with my mother. Maybe he thought Maggie would be better off as far away from both of them as possible. Maybe he didn’t want to abandon my mother because he knew she’d end up homeless if he did. Maybe he wasn’t done trying to get through to her.

  Sometimes it’s just easier to decide that someone is the bad guy. But the truth is never that simple. Hindsight is 20/20. Everyone has a clear view from the rearview mirror.

  David came into our lives when I was in third grade. He drove a vintage Mercedes just like my mom did (but hers didn’t run anymore), and he spent a lot of time working on it. He was a handsome man with almond-shaped eyes and a wide smile. “He looks like Val Kilmer” was what my mother said when they first met. Everybody who met him liked him. Except for Rachel’s mom. She said that handsome men don’t stay handsome for long. Or maybe she just said they don’t stay for long. Both turned out to be true.

  David had studied journalism. He loved the Knights Templar, and he brought books into our house. He had served in the Gulf War and was in the National Guard on weekends. The first time we met him he arrived in uniform, wearing massive combat boots. He was tall and lean muscled. He had good teeth and a burn on his cheek from a stray artillery shell that had flown out of its cartridge. His family had lived in Germany for several years when he was a teenager, and he was fluent in German. He would open beer bottles with a wrench, but he hardly ever drank. He smoked like a chimney, though. In spite of the tough-guy exterior, he was never an imposing figure. He was open and friendly and taught me the importance of doing your “I love me’s” in the mirror. He also introduced us to something called “basic cable,” and when he was around the lights hardly ever went off.

  He brought Matthew, one of his two sons, with him. I never met his older son. He also had a daughter, Rebecca, from his second marriage (Mom was his third). Rebecca would visit us occasionally. She and her mother had lived out of a car at one point, I’d heard.1

  Rebecca’s hair was platinum blond, and she had David’s dark brown eyes. She had an incredible singing voice and performed in theater. We were the same age, both seven, when we met. I felt as though I had a new sister, and the first time she came to the house I told her that what was mine was hers. That day we made a mix tape together with a tape recorder and attempted to build a teepee in the backyard. It was a wonderful first introduction and first visit, I thought, but as she hugged me when she left to go home, she said, “My daddy is going to leave you and come back to me.”

  I was used to adults being confusing. But never children.

  After that experience I kept my distance from Rebecca, and a few years later I actually did get a new sister: Maggie.

  When Mom told us that she was pregnant, I was mortified. My exact response was “We can’t have a baby in this house.” I was ten at the time and would be entering middle school the following year. I knew that our house was no place for a baby. Maybe not even a place for children. I had started to sneak out and had tried a joint for the first time that I’d gotten from my friend’s older brother. Or rather, I think it was a joint. He called it a “strawberry doobie,” and I was too scared to actually smoke it, but I did put it in my mouth unlit. So bad-ass.

  Whether or not my mom should keep the baby was a debate between my mom, Naomi, and me that we discussed at length. She and David were out of their honeymoon period, and their marriage was becoming rocky. I told my mom that she should get an abortion. She’d had an abortion once, before Naomi was born. She told us that the baby would have been named Ariel.

  A week or so later, Naomi awoke one morning, saying she’d just had a dream about being in a baseball stadium watching a child blow bubbles. The child was named Ariel. I assumed Naomi was lying. Naomi insisted she wasn’t. But true or not, her dream tipped the scales and the decision was made. We were going to have a baby.

  Once Maggie was born, our little family was renewed. The baby turned out to be a constant source of joy. She smelled like a kitten. We sang to her, smiled at her, ki
ssed her, cuddled her, and loved her the best we could. Maggie’s birth gave me a sense of purpose nothing else ever had. I stopped sneaking out after she was born. Teaching her and keeping her and protecting her from unknown hazards was a mantel I was glad to take up. But truth be told, I didn’t do the best job because I was a child, too.

  I started staying home from school a lot in those early years of Maggie’s life to make sure someone was keeping an eye on her. Annette’s neglect was worsening. If I went to school, I’d sit in class counting the seconds, and then I’d jump on the bus and scramble back home as quickly as I could.

  Once I walked into the house and found Maggie (almost a year old) sitting on the floor eating a box of cigarettes. I dropped my bag and scooped her up under one arm so I could shove my finger down her throat with the other. She was squirming and fighting my hand as she gagged. Her vomit was a thick, mucuous-y blend of tobacco and milk. Then I held her and let her sob out her snotty, tear-stained feelings of betrayal. I just rocked her and said, “I know, I’m sorry. I know, I’m sorry,” until her cries subsided.

  I remember thinking of the incident with the aspirin in that moment. Looking around the house, it became crystal clear to me what Maggie’s path would be if we stayed here. It would be like my own, which was not a life I wanted for her.

  Maybe it was due to the sense of possibility that a baby can bring, but I was hopeful that we could do better with a fresh start. We’d just need a different house to do it in.

  I didn’t know they were going to tear it down.”

  I was sitting in David’s car, looking at the reflection through the passenger-side mirror at a large pile of rubble where our house had once stood. Over the summer, my mom had sold our house and moved us into a new one in a better neighborhood. Our new house was closer to the high school where I would be a freshman in the fall, and it was supposed to be a move for the better. But somehow I missed our old house, and I’d asked David if we could drive by on the way home.

  “I don’t think there was any way they could have salvaged it,” David said as he parked the car. “I’m going to go take a look.”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “Are you sure? Come on, sweetheart.”

  Our family was big on pet names. Everyone was sweetheart or sweetie or honey or my love or my little love, which is what I called Maggie.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “Okay. But you might want to take a piece of it. You grew up in that house, honey. It’d be good to grab a keepsake.” He got out and crossed the street to talk to the contractors.

  I kept staring at the pile of rubble in the mirror. The mirror’s edges created a kind of rusted vignette around the rubble. It seemed appropriate. Old. Decaying.

  I started pulling the orange stuffing through the cracks in the leather seat. I wanted David to hurry up. He was talking to a group of workers standing next to the pile. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. That was the signal that let me know we might be there for a while. David could make conversation with everyone and anyone.

  I watched their conversation in the mirror and cranked the window down. It was hot and the window stuck. David’s car was cool to look at—the exterior was in primo condition—but the insides weren’t up to snuff.

  As I sat back in my seat to wait it out, I caught a glimpse of myself. I looked angry. Was I angry? I was. No one had told me the house was going to be demolished. No one had told me I should say good-bye. I was angry with myself for not thinking of that possibility sooner. I felt like we were abandoning a family member. The house had been a wreck, but it was our wreck. There were stains on the walls and broken glass in the door frames. I’d just figured the new owners would fix it up and fill it with happy memories.

  Not tear it all down.

  David gestured back toward the car, and the workers turned to look and nodded their heads. He was probably telling them I was refusing to get out. I felt as though I was being childish. But I was also feeling too much to understand. Suddenly my throat was tightening and I had to get out of the car for some air.

  As I crossed the street, I tried to picture what the corner had looked like with the house still there. The plot of land and pile of broken wood and detritus looked so much bigger than the house had ever felt. So much space in the space left behind.

  I waved and smiled as I walked past them and across the patches of dead dry grass. The path and the red concrete steps were still there, but now they led to nothing. I squatted to look for “a keepsake” as David had suggested. Maybe there was something here worth saving.

  Some of the scraps of wood looked like paint chips. White and yellow. Our house was white when it was first built, and when we moved in—just Mom, Naomi, and me—I would sit on the front porch and pick at the paint. It came off in big chunks, taking off the wood beneath it and leaving behind strange shapes, like dragons, swords, and trees. After David and Mom got married, they decided to repaint the house. New beginnings. A fresh coat. We chose yellow because it’s a happy color. It was my favorite color and still is.

  What would make a good keepsake? A chunk of wood? Or would it just keep deteriorating? Maybe it would be better to just leave the whole pile to rot together. Then I remembered: the pepper tree. I got excited at the thought of the massive pepper tree that lived in our backyard. Its roots were like cradles. Always shady in the summer time. Seedpods all over the inside of our house because I would go and pull off its massive fronds and bring them in to take them apart. Baby botany.

  Instinctively, I moved toward the backyard, but then it occurred to me that if the pepper tree had still been standing I’d be able to see it. Because there was no house now to block my view. The pepper tree was gone, and a thickness was building in my chest and throat. I felt as though I were suffocating. Being outside the car didn’t help. Standing there wasn’t helping.

  “I’m going to walk to the new house. I’ll see you later.”

  David turned. “Are you sure? Come on. I’ll drive you.”

  He put out his cigarette under his boot. I wondered how many cigarette butts there were in that pile of pieces.

  We got back into the car, and David was being kind. “You okay? I’m sorry your mother didn’t tell you. There wasn’t much left in the house that they could save.”

  I suddenly felt guilty. I’d burned and broken things in that house, and I’d punched the walls and let mold grow.

  “It’s not her fault. We didn’t take good care of the house . . . but I really loved it.”

  I started to cry, and David slid across the bench seat to hug me. “You’re a good person, Hannah. You’re the best of any of us. You’ll take care of so many things.”

  David always said things like that to me. I never understood why. Things were better with David in the picture. He brought us 99-cent burgers. He brought us MREs2 from the National Guard, and I loved the tiny Tabasco bottles that sometimes came with them. I’d had a collection of them. With David there, Mom was less lonely, the house was more lively. We would sing Christmas carols anytime. David would say, “Ice cream is a food group,” buy it by the gallon, and eat it with a serving spoon while we watched The X-Files or Star Trek as a family. He loved chocolate sauce and ketchup.

  We started to drive away, and I asked him for a cigarette. He said he wasn’t comfortable giving me one but that I could take one if I really wanted to. Suddenly I didn’t want it. I appreciated the offer, though.

  “You know, I love you a lot. I think I love you more than my dad. I feel like you’re my real dad.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I know, but that’s how I feel.”

  “I’m not your dad. We’re friends. We’re family. But I’m not your dad. Your dad is a good man. He’s just not here.”

  “Yeah, but you’re here.”

  David didn’t reply. I realized that I hadn’t taken a keepsake. Maybe there was a metal “0” from the numbers on the house buried in that pile. But David was quiet now, and I felt awkward
asking him to turn back. I sighed. What was the point of keeping a fragment of something that was already gone?

  In the fall of 2004, shortly after my eighteenth birthday, Rebecca committed suicide. She was seventeen. Mom’s psychosis was worsening, and the moments when no one could understand or contain her outnumbered the moments that resembled normalcy. The spaces between episodes were growing shorter, with delusion and paranoia spreading over her mind the way coffee stains a letter when spilled—the ink blurs, but you can still see traces of the words. At that point, David had left the National Guard and had started growing his hair long and trying out different forms of holistic healing. His passion for cars continued to grow, and he went to car shows a lot, as many as he could find. He also started gambling, which ate up the last of the money from selling the old house.

  I think Rebecca’s death was the straw that broke David’s broad back. I remember my mom arriving at Berkeley and coming upstairs to my freshman dorm. I was shocked that she was there. Shocked and confused when I got the call from the door monitor downstairs, who told me there was a woman who said she was my mother there to see me.3 I went down and took her to my room, and she told me Rebecca had shot herself in the head. I was horrified. She said we needed to go to Santa Cruz to tell Naomi in person together. I skipped my classes and drove down with her.

  The reality of Rebecca’s death didn’t set in until we tried to eat. We stopped at a diner, and I ordered chicken soup because I had no real appetite. I looked down into the soup and thought, “Rebecca will never eat anything again.”4 I started to cry, and Annette said, “We don’t really know she’s dead. They do this to people, Hannah, they take their bodies—” I stopped crying and wrote what Annette was saying on a napkin. I left the napkin behind.

  When I saw David, it was after he’d gotten back from identifying her body in the morgue. He said it looked as though she was sleeping. Her button nose with its upturned tip. He described the hole in the side of her head as a perfect circle against her temple. Coming from the military and having his fair share of exposure to guns, he described the entry and exit wounds in detail. He said he could tell that she wasn’t trying to miss. As he told me this—his eyes sharp and unblinking—I thought he looked a little manic himself.