He didn’t say anything back, because he was trying to figure out how to tell me that my mother had been in that house when the tornado hit and now—she wasn’t.
It got worse. My first year in college I fell asleep studying with the window open, and a storm started up while I slept. The wind blew into my room and suddenly I could see her, green dress, yellow hair, the image from a photograph animated in my mind, her in the house during the tornado, running through rooms, grabbing on to anything stationary—the bed, the banister, the closet doors. Everything she got her hands around was ripped away from her, spiraling up and into the funnel of wind that sucked up the couch and the cabinets and the walls and her, too, all of it flying debris spinning clockwise to the sky like a drain in reverse. The wind shook my dorm room and I woke up on the floor, knees pulled to chest, head tucked to knees, hands locked over back of neck, shaking, squeezing—
“Breathe,” says Earl. “Breathe.” He rubs my back until the shaking stops, until I am quiet. “Just breathe.”
Earl is my boyfriend. I don’t get it—why he stays. None of the rest of them did. I’d go out with guys in college, and we’d sit there at the bar-restaurant-library-bookstore-club-quad-theater-coffeeshop having the first date conversation. You know the one I mean, where you ask subtle questions in order to figure out what’s wrong with one another. You say things like Do you want to have kids someday? or Tell me about your past relationships or Have you ever been incarcerated? and they say things like No, the world is too overpopulated or We just broke up or Yes, but I’m completely rehabilitated now. You ask the questions and you get the answers, it’s expected. But nobody ever expects me to lean back in my chair, cross my arms in front of my chest, and say, dead serious, deadpan, “I’m an amenophobiac.”
There is a long pause. Then, they panic, because they don’t know what amenophobia means and they are imagining crazy things, like maybe I am afraid of . . . I don’t know, chins. Or sitting. There were all sorts of triggers in my phobia support group. People afraid of pleasure. Moisture. Stars. Small things. The color yellow, bears, beef, running water, loud noises, whirlpools, loneliness; being stared at, looked at, talked to; ithyphallophobia (seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis); chiraptophobia (being touched); deipnophobia (dinner conversation); or philophobia (falling in love). So when they say, “What’s amenophobia?” there is caution in their voice.
“It’s the fear of wind,” I say, and they study me, trying to ascertain whether or not I am serious, decide I must be joking, and burst into laughter. “Ha ha,” they laugh. “That was a good one. You sure are a witty girl.”
If I’m feeling kind, I simply ask for the check and leave. But usually, I enjoy finding a scapegoat. “How dare you laugh,” I say, bitterly, and continue with a scorching lecture about tolerance towards the psychologically challenged.
As you might guess, I didn’t have a lot of second dates. Earl was different, though. When I told Earl I had amenophobia, he said, “Okay. Do you want to get a bottle or just order by the glass?”
Perhaps he needed clarification. “I am afraid of wind,” I said, careful to enunciate.
He looked around the restaurant. “You think it’s windy in here?” he asked.
I sat quietly for a moment and felt—all still. “No.”
He set the wine list down and looked at me. “Dating is hard enough as is,” he said. “Let’s just cross bridges when we come to them.”
We came to it a couple weeks later, on the fourth date. We were doing one of those hand-in-hand walks by the lake at twilight kind of things, and I was trying to figure out how I got so lucky while simultaneously holding up my end of the conversation. That’s when I felt it, on the side of my face. I tried to inhale like my yoga instructor taught me, tried to find my calm, You must remain calm, but my heart was pounding and that pounding moved up into my head and down to my toes. I gripped Earl’s hand tighter and tighter ’til he said, “Uhm, ow, that hurts,” and I said, “We’re coming to the bridge, Earl!” and shut my eyes tight, like a little kid covering her face during hide and seek—if I can’t see it, it can’t get me—but it can, it is, it’s here, it’s cold, I can’t, I’m scared—
“Breathe,” Earl said. “Just breathe.”
That’s what he always says.
One time, he tried to say something else. He said, “This is all in your head.” We were in Wilderness Outfitters and I was trying to special-order a full-body jumpsuit made out of wind resistant fabric. “I have a medical condition,” I said to the salesgirl, who insisted they didn’t manufacture such suits. “If I was in a wheelchair, would you tell me they didn’t make ramps?” Earl grabbed hold of my arm, excused us for a moment, and walked me to the front door.
He said it then, “This is all in your head.”
I didn’t react very well to that observation. “Fuck you,” I said. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, it is not all in my head.” I pushed open the door and walked outside. It was April in Chicago—storm season—and the sky was heavy, gray; in a few hours it would explode, a faucet from above, but in the meantime the wind tackled me like a football player and I tilted almost diagonal as I pushed back against it. In my chest, I felt the panic. I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone tied knots around my trachea, but I had something to prove to Earl and everyone. In my pockets, I found some scraps of paper and let the wind take them. They whipped through the air and I hurried back inside. “You see that?” I asked. My breath came in punches. “That’s reality if I ever saw it.”
Earl sighed—he’d been doing that a lot lately. “Okay. Wind is real, but the fear of it—”
“There is reason to fear it,” I said, my words all cold. “I know there is, I know!” I went on with all the statistics I’d collected over the years, people who’d lost their lives in the wind, lost homes and towns and all sorts of catastrophe. I threw the numbers at him like bullets; it wasn’t just my mother, it had been a lot of people, I mean, in the Midwest alone—
“Okay,” he said. “Fine.”
Usually, he fought me. He’d say stuff you read in self-help books, how there’s more to life than fear—but there’s only so long you can talk when you know nobody hears it.
I didn’t hear it. I heard meteorology reports on wind patterns, websites on natural disasters, pain on the news; and then saw the world through a thin line of vision between the scarf wrapped around my face and the scarf wrapped around my head. I never left the house without completely wrapping up. Eventually, I never left the house at all.
But the thing is—it gets in.
I am sitting on the floor, in the doorway between my bedroom and the hall. My back is pressed up against the frame, my knees are pulled into my chest, my head is tucked into my knees, my hands are locked over the back of my neck to protect my spine. The wind is howling something awful and the rain is beating on the roof, my heart is thumpkicking against my chest and I jolt with every thunderbolt. I wonder if this is what she felt—this panic—this fear—this screaming in her stomach as the house whipped up around her, furniture and floorboards flying to the sky and did she put her hands over the back of her neck? Did she grab hold of the door frame? Did she remain calm? Because I really need to know what to do here, I need to know what to—
“Breathe,” Earl yells over the roar of the wind. “Just breathe.” He is running all around the apartment closing windows, and I can feel the air calm around me—except for the left side. I can still feel it on the left side, and the knots around my windpipe constrict. I gasp for air and peek out over my elbows—a window is stuck. Earl is trying to push it down. He jams at it with the meat of his palm, sinks his weight into it, nothing. The wind is getting in.
But in that last, fragile second before I lose control, I see a single paper streamer caught in the breeze. It’s yellow, left over from a birthday party last week, and it does a little dance in the wind. It dips and twists and sw
irls in front of me, and I remember the moment when I thought this was magic. And once I’ve started looking, I see other things, too, like the books on the shelf that I’ve never read, and the wine on the counter I’ve never tasted, and Earl standing by the window who maybe I could love.
I just have to get up.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis, who saw something of value in these stories and worked tirelessly and intelligently to make them better.
When I was a kid, my dad told me stories and my mom read me books. They’ve given me many gifts over the years, but I’m most grateful for those stories and books. If I can be half the parent they are, my son is lucky indeed.
Thank you to the faculty, staff, and students of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, where I learned—and continue to learn—the craft of writing and the art of teaching. Special thanks to Randy Albers, whose friendship and guidance make me a better writer, teacher, and human being.
Thank you to the staff, storytellers, and audience of 2nd Story, who’ve inspired and challenged me for the better part of a decade. Special thanks to Amanda Delheimer, whose friendship and guidance make me a better performer, collaborator, and human being.
Thank you to the Center for Teaching Excellence at Columbia College; the Committee on Creative Writing at the University of Chicago; and to Derrick Robles and John Latino at the Bongo Room, whose friendship and business supported me while I figured out what the hell I was doing.
I’m grateful to the following publications for first giving these stories, in somewhat different forms, a home: “Shot to the Lungs and No Breath Left,” Pindeldyboz; “Incredible,” Other Voices; “The Boot,” Otium; “Times Are Tough All Over,” Monkeybicycle; “Missed Connection,” Swink; “I Am the Keymaster,” Punk Planet; “This Teacher Talks Too Fast,” Toasted Cheese; “Greek or Czech or Japanese,” Bruiser Review; “Logic,” Perigee; “All So Goddamn Great,” Annalemma; “Everyone Remain Calm,” Venus.
Thanks to Dan Sinker for turning me on to digital publishing; Elizabeth Crane, Joe Meno, and Gina Frangello for the sage advice; Leif Mangelson for the room of one’s own; Scott Tallarida and Jason Lee of EXO for their music and the permission to use it; Bobby Biedryzcki, Khanisha Foster, and Deb Lewis for continuously raising the bar; and Aaron Stielstra for helping me be a working mom.
I am forever grateful to J. Adams Oaks, Dia Penning, and Lott Hill. Again and again, they told me I could do it, and again and again, they told me I could do it better.
Every day, Christopher and Caleb Jobson show me that reality is so much more amazing than my fantasies ever could be.
Everyone Remain Calm Page 14