Or Not to Be

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Or Not to Be Page 11

by Laura Lanni


  They loaded me into the ambulance. Eddie came with me, looking pale. I smiled at him and said, “Don’t worry, I can move my toes.” I showed him, and he smiled back.

  “That was also November eleventh,” says my mother’s voice.

  23

  Deathday

  “Are you kidding me? How many times can a person almost die on the same day?” I demand.

  “It’s simple math,” she replies. “Once a year, so just count up the years of your life and there’s your answer.”

  “Did I almost die every year on November eleventh?”

  “Not ‘every’ and not ‘almost’,” my mom answers with a snort.

  “What is that supposed to mean? And don’t give me any of that crap about having to figure it all out for myself. If you’re my newly dead guide, sneak your way around the voids or I’m going to find another guide.” I’m about to lose it.

  “Okay, let’s start with every year,” she begins, calm as a clam. “No, you didn’t even have a near miss every November eleventh. You had one three or four times that I know about. When you were tiny and Molly bit you, that was November eleventh. Your car crash was November eleventh. There might have been others. You’ll certainly think of them yourself, sooner or later.”

  “But why November eleventh, over and over?”

  “That’s your deathday,” she states simply, as though she was telling me the time.

  “My deathday?”

  She continues, “Just like January twenty-third was your birthday, your deathday is predetermined. We all have one. My deathday was August fifth. I didn’t know it either until I died. Your deathday is a crack in space-time where your antimatter can slip through and escape from the dawdling speeds of Earth and go back to the universe. Every soul has a deathday and a birthday.”

  This makes sense. I always knew 11/11 was a special day for me. I just never knew why. “What about the rest of it? What did you say? ‘Not almost’?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. I wish I hadn’t though because it’s harder to explain than it would be for you to just reason out on your own.”

  “That’s just too bad for you, then. Tell me what you know!” I demand.

  “Anna,” she says in her soothing tuck-into-bed voice, “you did not almost die a couple of times. You did die.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Think about what you know about speed of light travel and what you know about time and space. Think about all that you have rationalized, remembered, and learned since you died on November eleventh.”

  So, I think and think. Nothing fits together, though, so I start rambling. “I saw the recent happenings after my death. I saw a lot of the past.” Then it hits me hard. “And, oh God, I saw the future with me in it. I thought they were nightmares.” This stuns me. “And you wouldn’t explain it to me. So I can travel back or forward in time ...”

  “And when you die,” she helped, “if you have lived a balanced and good life, have not hurt others, loved whenever possible, then your antimatter has choices. Choices of what your heaven will be. Choices of reuniting with your matter.”

  “Reuniting with my matter?” There are sayings in life that almost apply here, and they all portray shock as a physical blast. I was blown over. This knocked the wind out of me. I was blindsided. This blew my socks off. Yes, I know I can’t be knocked over since I have no mass; wind can’t have any effect on my bodiless self; I can’t be blindsided, and with no feet, no socks can be blown off. Yet all of these human maxims compound like a factorial to almost describe the feeling of disbelief that overwhelms me.

  Reuniting with my matter means I can go back to my body, I think.

  I can go back to my life? Incredible. Maybe I’d done it before. Why don’t I remember that?

  Mom reads my thoughts.

  “If you go back, you go to the instant when your antimatter separated from your matter and consciously will it to stay put. After such a reunion, you’d have no memory or knowledge of the conversations you had with me or any of the experiences you had on the dead side.”

  “Have I gone back before?” I’m still stunned.

  The long pause before her answer illustrates her reluctance or inability to explain this one. Maybe another one of those blasted voids. Her voice reaches me. “Honey, your memory of your car crash is not how it happened the first time. When you saw that red car coming at you and when you crossed the yellow line, you slammed on your brake and he hit you. Hard. The collision snapped your neck. When you went back, you didn’t hit your brake, and the momentum of the car pulled you across the road where you stopped in some bushes.”

  The crash was a dozen years ago. “So who was my guide then? You were still alive.”

  “Somebody who loved us found you on the dead side and helped you find your way back. Maybe it was Daddy.”

  I miss Daddy. He might be a better guide than Mom. I hope she didn’t hear that.

  Finally, Mom says, “Honey, you need to start thinking about your options so you can make your choice. There is no real rush. Time stops for us—but it would help to make the reunion of your antimatter and matter smoother if you work this out. You need to take over and steer and decide for yourself what to see.”

  “I feel like I have other choices.”

  “You do, Anna. You have infinite choices. You must identify them yourself and decide for yourself. No one, no force, can make the choice for you. It is the loneliest path in the universe.”

  And to emphasize her point, she leaves me. I am alone and drifting in space. It is peaceful, but not lonely. I knew the feeling of loneliness in life. There is no sense of it in death. The rush of traveling at the speed of life is gone when the matter leaves. Traveling at the speed of light feels like standing still, held as solid and safe as alternating ions, locked in the crystal lattice in a patient block of salt. And I think Mom was right. I don’t have to rush. I have eternity to think.

  I exercise my right to make a choice, and I think about Daddy and Molly.

  24

  Space-Time Cracks Open

  It was a surprising, yet welcome, warm day in November. The sun was bright. The sky was that deep autumn blue. A woman in her midthirties walked on the sidewalk on a quiet street pushing a baby carriage through the carpet of crunchy leaves. The pink-cheeked baby lounged on her back drinking a bottle of milk. She held it lazily with one arm as she watched the trees and sky go by and rubbed the fringe of her blanket with her exploring hand until the bouncing of the carriage lulled her to sleep. She dropped the bottle by her cheek.

  “That was you and me, Anna,” says my Mom. “You were nine months old, and I was pregnant with Michelle.”

  “Mom, you were old!”

  “Thanks, dear.”

  “No, I mean—why’d you wait so long after you were married to have us?”

  “Oh, you know me. I was still busy learning and trying to become me. I was certain for a long time that I’d never have babies. I was too worried about population explosion and killing the rain forests to reproduce without careful consideration. Your father worked on me for years to convince me that his obsession with his dogs might lessen if he had some kids to play with.”

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  “No. He still loved those dogs.”

  When they returned home, Mom left the carriage in the warm sun. Inside a screen door, Mom talked and laughed quietly on the telephone. She dropped the phone and came running when her baby cried out. She’d never heard me wail like that before.

  The dog, Molly, was Daddy’s favorite. The neighbor’s cat, Isabelle, jumped onto the carriage and licked the spilled milk beside the baby. Her long tail dangled over the side of the carriage and was too tempting to ignore. Molly leaped at her and jumped onto the side of the carriage. Somehow the baby’s arm ended up in Molly’s teeth. In the confusion, the poor old dog thought she had succeeded in catching the wretched feline. Instead she crushed the baby’s wrist. I forgot as I watched that t
he baby was me.

  Mom says, “That was such a sad time. Poor Molly. You probably don’t need me to tell you: that was November eleventh.”

  My first deathday.

  | | | |

  Dad held Molly in the veterinarian’s office. The chocolate lab looked asleep, but she was dead. The community uproar over the dog attack gave my Dad no choice but to put his beloved Molly down. Dad was crying.

  Later, on the swing in back of the old house, Dad sat with his two other dogs at his feet. He always had a mess of dogs around him. They walked together in the woods for no reason except to think and be outside. Daddy was happiest with his dogs. Mom carried the sleeping baby, me, out from the house to Daddy and laid the bundle in his arms. Her peaceful, long eyelashes and pouty lips projected a calmness that contrasted with the stark, white cocoon around the infant’s tiny hand and arm. Mom sat down beside Daddy. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. Daddy stroked her belly where my new sister had started to kick. Surrounded by his girls and dogs, Daddy smiled and cried some more.

  “Mom, how can I watch this? I don’t remember it.”

  “You are watching it by traveling back in time. While we watch, it is actually happening all over again, just as I remember it,” she explains.

  “I want to see more.”

  “Just think of the people you want to be with and try to pick an age and see where it takes you.”

  I think: Daddy and Michelle and me. Little girls.

  We were on a green, wet baseball diamond on a shiny spring day. Michelle stood way out in left field wearing a too-big baseball glove pulled up her arm and hanging in the crook of her elbow like a purse. Her big ears stuck out under the sides of one of Daddy’s old caps. She alternated between hopping on one foot in circles and picking dandelions to poke into the buttonholes of her blouse. Twin braids framed her freckled face, and her high-pitched humming of “Jingle Bells” reached me at home plate.

  Daddy pitched softball after softball at me, and I wailed them into the outfield. Michelle didn’t make a move to retrieve them. Daddy just kept smiling and encouraging me to swing.

  “Wow, look at that one go!”

  “I want to try to switch hands, Dad,” I said as I swung the bat right-handed for a change. “I think I can hit this way, too.”

  He squinted in the sunlight and said, “It’s tough, Anna. Not many boys are good switch-hitters.”

  “I bet I can do it. Throw me some heat.” And he did. The first few swings were awkward, but then I got the hang of it, and I smashed one right toward Michelle, who was bent down studying a line of black ants. She never saw the ball. It rolled by fast, not three feet to her left, and went all the way to the fence.

  Daddy roared a laugh and yelled, “That’s my girl! You can do it!”

  Mom’s voice: “Before Molly bit you, you were right-handed. Even though you were so tiny, I knew. You held your bottle and grabbed my hair with your right hand.”

  “It’s so odd to see these things. It’s like part of me remembers, even though I was so little. I miss Daddy.”

  Mom is quiet before she answers, “Your dad has been waiting for a turn. Why don’t you go to him?”

  25

  Daddy’s Love

  I was only five years old, and I knew to be quiet in the mornings. I knew how to get my own breakfast and let the family sleep. When I was alive, my kids still woke me up for food each day. Why did I allow this? Likely because I remembered how lonely it was to eat breakfast by myself as a child.

  It was a weekend morning, so early it was still dark gray with fringes of light around the curtains, and I was the only one awake in the house I grew up in. I was a tiny thing with long hair and a chubby face. I wanted peanut butter for some bread, but the jar was closed tight. Way back then, peanut butter came in glass jars. Everything came in glass jars because humans hadn’t yet discovered how to turn petroleum into plastics, but we sure knew how to melt silica. It was a full, new jar, and it was heavy.

  I carried the peanut butter jar, cradled it tight to my chest with both arms, while I walked in my nightgown and bare feet to my sleeping Daddy. I didn’t wake him up. I just sat on the cold wooden floor with the jar in my lap and my belly grumbling and watched him sleep—for a really long time. He snored a little. Finally, he opened one eye and tossed a sleepy smile to me. I held up the jar. I didn’t even have to ask; he just took it and cranked it open. He wasn’t even grumpy. I kissed his cheek, and, as I walked away with my open jar, he whispered, “Anna, don’t drop it.”

  “I won’t,” I whispered back.

  Then, I did.

  It crashed to the wooden floor. I stood frozen amid the shards of peanut butter-covered glass. Daddy jumped out of bed and rushed to me, gaining consciousness, swearing under his breath, “Goddamnsonofabitch.”

  I thought he was mad at me for dropping the jar after he told me not to. I thought he was mad at me for making a mess. I thought he was mad at me for waking him up.

  Daddy picked me up in my nightgown and bare feet. I tried not to cry. In his arms I understood, in my five-year-old mind, that he wasn’t mad. He was just being my daddy and protecting me.

  When he put me down far from the glassy mess and knelt on the floor, he let me cry on his shoulder for a while. Then I wiped my nose on my sleeve and whispered, “Sorry, Daddy, for making you swear.”

  “Sorry I swore, punkin’,” he whispered back.

  “Good thing Mommy didn’t hear, huh?”

  He shook his head and smiled before he began to clean up the mess. Mommy was still asleep in a lump on her side of the bed. Over his shoulder he said, “I think Mommy heard. But it’s okay to swear sometimes if you have a good reason.”

  “Like that time you stepped in the poop in the living room?”

  “A very excellent example, my dear. A lesson to remember: if you step in dog poop in the dark in your living room in your bare feet, it is okay to swear.”

  “Can we get some more peanut butter today?”

  “Of course, sweetie, and I’ll remember to crank open the jar for you before I go to bed so it’s nice and loose in the morning. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  For the rest of my life, I never again asked for help in opening a tight jar.

  Now, however, I feel like I’m stuck inside the jar of death. Daddy, I need help.

  26

  Driving a Car

  I was sixteen, invincible, on top of my game and learning to drive. Why was this car so damn long? It was like a boat on wheels. The lane was impossibly narrow. If I tipped up my chin and craned my neck, I could just see over the dashboard. It was my first time on the highway. Actually, it was the first time I ever drove faster than thirty miles per hour. I was busy calculating in my head how fast sixty miles per hour would be in feet per second, and I almost had it divided down to the hundredths place when Daddy’s voice interrupted from the passenger seat.

  “Anna, why don’t you pass this guy?” How odd to hear his voice from over there. I, the new Queen of Sheba, was in the driver’s seat.

  “Okay.” I hit my left turn signal, checked my mirror; the lane was clear, so I swung the wheel left and then zipped it back right, and somehow the car was in the left lane.

  Daddy made gasping noises.

  “Don’t have a heart attack, Daddy. I did it.” Jeez, he was so nervous.

  When he recovered his breath he said, “Stay calm, Anna. I need to give you some advice. Now, don’t take this as you would the daily advice you get from your mother—not at all like a suggestion to be briefly considered and then discarded. Take this as advice from your dad. Consider it an order. Got that?” This was quite a long speech for my dad. I just nodded.

  He continued, “In a minute you’re going to have to get back in the right lane. From here on, you should not consider a lane change as a succession of two opposing turns. Ever again. Are you with me on this? There should not be a sharp right followed by a sharp left. It should be a s
light turn of the wheel in the direction of your desired lane. Kind of ease into it. Do you see the difference?”

  I nodded. I tried not to smile.

  He said, “Okay. Right lane is clear. Blinker on. Good. Eeeease over.” After I steered the boat-car back into the safer and slower right lane, he heaved a heavy sigh and said, “Good. That’s enough practice on that. No more lane changes for this trip.” We had an hour to go, so I guessed we’d be spending the whole ride behind the chicken truck.

  I drove for about ten more minutes in silence as the chicken feathers wafted down on us like snowflakes. My dad was a quiet person. Silence and thinking were his normal modes of operation. So when a spider spun a string and dangled from the roof of the car in front of my face and I started waving my arms and screaming, the silence shattered like glass. Daddy was lightning quick. He grabbed the steering wheel with one hand and killed the spider with the other. So much like a superhero: mild mannered, ordinary guy springing into action to save my life. But after that episode, he was breathing heavy again. I hoped he didn’t intend to have a heart attack while I was driving.

  Once the spider was dead, I asked to turn the radio on. Daddy said, “No, Anna. Just concentrate on the road, please.” Then, under his breath, I heard what sounded like, “Please, God.” We had about twenty more miles until our exit—the horrible chicken truck was still pooping white feathers and a nasty odor at us—and then fifteen more minutes on the back road. Though I was getting tired, I knew I couldn’t complain or he’d never let me drive again. I concentrated on staying awake, keeping my eyes wide open for the elongated minutes until we reached our exit. I pointed to a hitchhiker with a backpack on the exit ramp, and once again, Daddy started that pained, heavy breathing when I slowed down. I opened Dad’s window with the cool power controls that the driver gets to use. I leaned across Daddy and yelled out his window to offer the guy a ride. He hopped in the back and we drove him about five miles down the road.

 

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