Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  I felt trapped by him and by my anxiety, both of which I was too frightened to fight back against. I tried again: “If I told you that going to couples counseling was the most important thing to me in the world, would you do it then?”

  “No,” he said.

  I wanted to die, but I was too tired. Suddenly I couldn’t stop sleeping. It’s all I did. And it was glorious. When I wasn’t awake, nothing was wrong, and all my answers were correct.

  It would take me another six months to break up with Peter. To fill the empty space, I found a roommate, a South African psychologist named Calvin, who I thought was gay when we first met. (By the time I understood he wasn’t, it was clear we weren’t each other’s type.) Calvin, it turned out, had also recently broken up with someone. We commiserated together in the kitchen at night drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. Despite his advice, wisdom, and his vast library of psychology books, even my in-house therapist couldn’t help me get over Peter. It took me four more years to trust I’d never fall for someone like him again.

  June 1981

  Dr. Rivka Golod

  Summary of Test Results

  No problems were noted in the areas of somatosensory or visual perception. Her grapho-motor coordination is good. Her productions on the Bender Design and Drawings of a Person were excellent. The content of her drawings were childlike for the full-bodied drawings. However, she also drew a picture of just a male face, which was more sophisticated in its emotional expression. It was somewhat of a caricature image of an angry man’s face.

  My Real Family

  Even though it’s around the corner from our house, my new school feels too far for me. I know I said I wanted to switch, but now I’m not so sure. The four of us walk across Bleecker, toward Sixth Avenue, to the Little Red School House, which is waiting to swallow me into its unknown world. A streamer of squeals, racing feet, whistles, and laughing passes me: the noise I know as other people’s normal. Groups of kids collect on the steps, parents hug. Red hair, brown hair, black hair, a blond girl tips forward, gliding off her unicycle. Overalls, Pumas, and Afro picks. Everywhere, a striped shirt. I feel like I am inside someone else’s body. I want to go home. Eddie and Kara wish me luck, tell me they love me, and then sprint ahead and leave Mom and me behind. Kara calls back that she’ll come find me later and I try to nod, but I can’t feel my skull.

  Through the red doors, past the front desk woman, who waves and smiles at everyone. This school smells different from my other school. Not spaghetti sauce and finger paint, but sawdust and Elmer’s glue. When I told my mom I wanted to be with Kara and Eddie at their school for third grade, I didn’t think about leaving Melissa behind because I knew I’d see her in the garden. But then she moved out of the garden and now I worry I made a mistake because I don’t know anyone, I don’t know when I’ll see Melissa next, and my skin is jumpy. Inside, excited kids high-five and hug. Two girls huddle; how do they already have secret whisper-things? A girl passes. Her upper lip has a steep purple widow’s peak. Maybe it’s stained grape from a recent pouch of Pop Rocks, or she’s a private vampire and secretly drinks blood. Kids younger than me yell good-bye to their parents. Someone pushes his mom toward the door, wanting her to leave. At the end of the hall on the first floor is Marie’s office. She’s like the mom of the school. If you’re homesick or scared, if you don’t feel well and need Tylenol, that’s where you go. I try to memorize where it is.

  My mom goes up the steps, pulling me behind her. When I glance back, kids are jammed behind me and my breath gets trapped. If I let go of my mom’s hand and try to run home, I’ll get trampled and die.

  My teacher, Faith, has none of the warmth her name promises. Her body is low and plump. Her voice booms from somewhere down near her belly button. Her gray curls are short like mine. The long hair sticking out from her chin mole looks like a rotten flower stem. With my finger, I press against the sharp headache stabbing at the back of my eyeballs, which accidentally tips out tears. My mom spells out letters on my back. She writes, “You Are A-OK.” She is writing things that are opposite to how I feel, and if I look at her, or tell her to stop, I’ll start sobbing. I can’t bear it when my mom sees the world through a different window than I do, because that means our hearts are separating.

  Faith claps her hands and bosses us into a circle of chairs. My mom squeezes my hand and tries to let go, but I clutch until Faith pulls me to a chair facing away from my mom. I keep turning around to make sure she’s still there. A blond girl who’s as little and skinny as I am slides into the seat next to me. I like her navy Adidas tracksuit and her dimples when she smiles at me. But smiling back is too hard.

  “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right,” the girl says. Her voice is thick and musty, like she’s talking underwater. “I already did third grade last year. This is my second time with Faith. It’s really fun.” Something about her voice sounds foreign, like the words and her lips don’t match. I try again to smile, to be polite, but I’m confused by her, and my own talk muscles are too shy to say anything. She tucks her blond hair behind one ear and then the other, revealing two tan-colored cartridges hugging her ears.

  “I’m deaf,” she explains. “But I can read lips.”

  I’ve never seen hearing aids until right now and I’m instantly envious; I wish my outside body told the story of my inside body. If I had hearing aids, everyone would know something was wrong with me, and they’d treat me extra carefully, explain things patiently. If I broke my arm or leg, I’d probably get to sleep in my mom’s room without asking. If I were deaf, I probably wouldn’t have to go to my dad’s house, ever. I give her a huge smile.

  “My name is Imogen. I’m the oldest kid in the class.”

  Everything about her is different: her name, her ears. And she’s safe because she’s older than me, like Kara.

  “I’ll be your friend,” she says.

  When she says “friend,” the empty space between me and everyone fills with the same soothing yellow comfort I feel at home. Imogen knows what to do and where to go; now that we’re friends, I can follow behind her like on a bridge.

  I turn, nod at my mom, whose eyes ask, Are you sure? I blink. I am never sure. But I think it might be all right for her to leave, although I already miss her and will feel in five minutes the mistake of letting her go. She stands quietly and leaves the classroom, while I grip the sides of the chair so that no one can see if I float away.

  Imogen’s my partner in line to gym, and we run into Kara, who hugs me in front of my whole class. I breathe in deep, taking a strong smell of her to carry me through the rest of the day. Our coach, Omar James, is waiting for us on the basketball court. He has long matted ropes for hair that are secured into a ponytail with a rubber band. Just like Imogen, he has something different: Instead of a hand, he has a hook. I need something on my outside, too, a sign that something is wrong with me, like Eddie’s casts and slings but permanent. If I had that, no one would expect the same things from me as from other kids. All I’ve ever wanted was for someone to see my inside and get it fixed, but how could they, when there is nothing on my outside to show them what’s wrong?

  I can’t wait to tell Melissa about Imogen’s hearing aids and Omar James’s hand. When I was little we were in a car accident with my dad, and glass went into my head so they shaved all my hair off and wrapped white bandages around my skull, but I don’t remember it. Or that time I was a baby and my mom tripped and spilled a pot of boiling water on me. Why did all the good things happen when I was too young to remember? We must have had so many bandages then.

  After my first day of third grade, I hurry home and wrap one of Eddie’s old Ace bandages around my wrist. It’s not bad, but it still doesn’t look like a real cast, with the white fluff sticking out like a long sleeve. I start again, rolling toilet paper around my palm this time and then wrapping the Ace bandage over it. This will help tell everyone about my insides.

  Before dinner, I unwind everything and hide it in my c
loset, excited to have something besides my sucking-fingers to make me feel secure. Over fried chicken and peas, I watch Kara fiddle with her palate expander. It’s like a music box in her mouth and turning the key makes her cry. Everyone feels bad for her, including me. But I also feel envy.

  My mom’s boyfriend, Jimmy, and his kids are always around now, and our quiet house turns loud and chaotic. At the dinner table the boys get into physical fights and yell at Jimmy, who sticks his tongue into the side of his cheek, picks at his whiskers, and ignores everyone. They tell him he’s bad at his business, that he’s too fat and needs to lose weight. He’s supposed to be on a diet, but I’ve seen him late at night from the window scurrying across the street to the gun club for steak and fried clams.

  Holly, Daniel, and David used to be our neighbors uptown before their mom died, which is the worst thing that can happen to a person. I feel sad for them, but having them around makes my brain hurt. Daniel and Kara are the same age, and Eddie and Holly are the same age, but David and I don’t have an age twin. Nobody plays with me because I’m the youngest. Holly doesn’t like me and I am convinced she is always trying to kill me. She was only six when her mom died, and afterward she changed. Now she’s mad all the time and I know she wants to hurt me. The other day she came up behind me in the garden and covered my mouth and nose with her hand so I couldn’t breathe.

  “Now you’ll know what it feels like to die,” she said through her two buckteeth. I thought I’d never see my mom again. The free-falling, burning, wild flapping in my chest made me bite her hand until she dropped it. When my mom and Jimmy were out to dinner, and I was standing on the banister trying to reach a book, Holly shook the bookcase so hard I was sure it would fall on me. Instead, it was just me who fell.

  Soon Jimmy and his kids will sleep here all the time because he and my mom are getting married. The original family I had with Mom, Kara, and Eddie won’t exist anymore. Now I don’t always get to sit next to my mom at dinner, and I can’t sleep in her bed because there’s no room for me. There are so many of them that I can’t hear my mom from another floor like I used to. But at least when Jimmy stays over I feel relieved from my job of having to protect everyone while we sleep. I love Jimmy, even though he’s really old and always says “What?” because he never hears anything anyone says. My mom says he’s a different generation, but he and I are alike because we both care about safety. We are interested in alarm systems and double-locking the front door. Jimmy always finds things in the house to fix, even when they’re not broken.

  After dinner, I practice limping. I drag my right foot and let it drop like a dead rabbit down the steps in heavy, delayed thuds behind me. This will probably get me orthopedic shoes, or even a wheelchair. Worst-case scenario crutches, but I don’t want a cane because then people will think I’m old. I limp past my mother. She’s on the phone, filing her nails, and she doesn’t notice, so I limp past again. Still nothing. I bolt upstairs and try limping past my siblings, who are tossed all over the place reading and doing homework. No one looks up at me, so I start to head back downstairs to my mom.

  “Wrong foot,” Kara says.

  I turn around, confused.

  “You were fake-limping with the right foot a minute ago, and now you’re fake-limping with the left. You better get your facts straight if you’re gonna fool anyone.”

  “You’re such an idiot,” Eddie says, and he and Kara laugh.

  I put my fingers in my mouth and scramble to my mom’s room, throw myself on her bed, and try not to cry. I am not trying to fool anyone, and I’m not an idiot. I’m trying to tell the actual truth; I’m just doing it through acting. I want something wrong on my outside, but I don’t want doctors to think I’m sick because when you are sick you might die, and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas. Holly, Daniel, and David’s mom was sick. She had a brain tumor and died a few years ago when they were at sleepaway camp, which is just one reason I’m never going to camp. Being afraid my mom will die if I leave is one thing, but living all the time with people whose mom actually died when they left is another. I hope it’s not contagious.

  If I die, will people forget me? Will they just go on living life the way they were?

  When I complain to Mom about all the times I think Holly tries to kill me, she says I have to be nice because she’s had a hard life. She says I’d be angry, too, if she died. She’s wrong about that, though. If she died, so would I. My mom is putting Holly’s bedroom right next to mine so the girls are all on one floor, which I don’t appreciate at all. When Holly found out she said, “Better sleep with one eye open.” I hope she doesn’t murder me in my sleep.

  * * *

  The first week of my new school I make my mom sit in my classroom every single morning and let her leave only when I feel a certainty in my belly. The certainty is Imogen and friendship, and knowing that soon I will find a way to make my inside wrong visible on the outside.

  Faith gives us an assignment to make a family tree. We have to begin with our birth certificates, but no one can find mine. My classmates’ trees are filling out; birth certificates sparkle from one end of the wall to the other like big, white teeth. Day one and I am already behind. Imogen’s family is small and she’s halfway through. On day three, I’m in knots and Imogen’s tree is all finished. Kara and Eddie suggest that the reason no one can find my birth certificate is because I’m adopted. They think this is funny, but it feels too plausible for me to laugh, and it feels just as awful as when Dad says I was hatched. I feel adopted. And now no one can show me proof that I’m not.

  At school, Imogen tries to help. She stares at me from every angle. Maybe I look like my mother, she’s not sure. She’s never met my father, so she can’t say, but I definitely don’t look like Kara or Eddie. “I don’t know, you might be adopted.”

  At dinner, Holly says, “We had a substitute teacher today, he was really weird.”

  “Maybe he’s Amanda’s real father,” Daniel says.

  Eddie spits out his water and slaps the table, hysterical. Kara starts giggling and all the blood rushes to her face, tears stream down her cheeks, and her shoulders shake. Even my mom is laughing. Jimmy too. Holly’s smile gathers steam as she realizes her comment made this happen at my expense. She glares at me. See? her eyes say. You may be the new youngest, but I’m more powerful. At night Holly stands in my doorway and whispers that the homeless woman on the corner is my real mother, and either Sasquatch or Ciggy is my real father, maybe even both of them. My siblings pick the worst adults to torment me with, and the game spreads outside into the garden. Any new adult who appears is “Amanda’s real father.”

  At first I’m just fighting mad, but then a tingling begins to zap through my entire body. If I was adopted, then this isn’t my real family, and my mom isn’t my mom, and Kara isn’t my Kara, and my real mom is somewhere else and I’ve been without her all this time. I don’t like the feeling of not having a family. Of not belonging. I don’t like being in the in-between of whether or not this is true; it makes me feel like I’m lost in black space and the person I really belong to doesn’t know where I am and no one can even see me. Like I’ve been kidnapped and locked in a dark basement somewhere and no one knows to look for me. If I am adopted, then this isn’t my house. I don’t want to live in any other house, or with any other family. What if my other family changes their mind and wants me back? Will I be able to bring my mom with me?

  “You were not adopted,” my mother keeps telling me, but she says it through her own laughter, her irritation, her discomfort at my discomfort. “If you don’t believe me, call your father. He’ll tell you.”

  I turn the rotary dial carefully, pulling each number back and letting it go entirely before dragging the next one. Everything about this conversation has to go right, including the dialing. On the fourth ring my dad answers.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say. “It’s Amanda.”

  “Amanda who?” he says.

  “Your daughter!” I say, not sure i
f he’s joking.

  “I don’t have a daughter,” he says. My stomach falls. “Oh wait, yes, I remember now. What is it, daughter?”

  “Was I adopted?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Ask your mother.” Then he hangs up. I walk on shaky legs back to my mom. “I called Dad.”

  “See? I told you,” she says.

  “He said he didn’t know if I was adopted and I should ask you,” I say and start to cry. I feel like an orphan.

  “Oh, he’s such an asshole,” my mom says. “Do you want me to call him?”

  “No,” I say. I go up to my room, throw myself down on my bed, and wail. When I’m done, I wrap the Ace bandage around my wrist and secure it tightly.

  My mom is talking to her friend Lydia, another garden mom, on the phone. I can hear her Southern accent through the pinpricks. “Tho what,” I say quietly. “Theriously, I’m not mething around with you.” My voice sounds good with a lisp. My mom won’t stop talking on the phone and I want her to see my fake limp and take me to a doctor. Now I can’t remember which foot I used. I squinch my eyes at her, closing one eye then the other, so she bounces side to side like feet in Double Dutch. I squint and make her go double. Then I start closing them really hard, which feels good. I do it over and over again until I hear my mom.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” my mom asks, alarmed.

  I sit straight up. “I don’t know,” I say. “I might be going blind.”

  “Lydia, I have to call you back. Something is wrong with Manda.” She hangs up and comes closer to me, concerned. “Does it hurt? Do you want to take something?”

  “No, it doesn’t hurt,” I say, squeezing them closed again.

  “It looks like an eye twitch.”

  “Yes!” I say. “That’s what I have. An eye twitch!”

  “You sure you don’t want to take anything? Should we put ice on it? Or a heat compress? I’ll call the pediatrician first thing in the morning. Dr. Fine will tell us what to do.” My mom makes herself a note.