Roll with It

by Jamie Sumner

  “I think we’re safe to discontinue all medication at this point, Lily—sorry—Ellie. It seems you have outgrown the seizures, as we’d hoped.” The doctor waits for . . . what? Smiles maybe? Claps on the back like it’s a job well done? I’m not sure, but when neither Mom nor I say anything, she stands and opens the door. Awkward. She doesn’t understand that there’s been mostly sickness and pain for us in this place. We don’t know what to do with happy news in this setting.

  “Is there anything you need?” she says, rubbing her hands with sanitizer, ready to get to the next in line.

  They have to ask this. It’s how we got insurance to help us pay for my wheels and the stander that looks like a hospital bed turned on its end. Just one note from the doctor and it becomes a “medical necessity.” I hate the stander. It takes ten minutes to get me up and strapped into it, and then, you guessed it, I have to just stand there for, like, an hour. There’s a tray so I can read or do homework or whatever, but all I ever do is watch the clock. It’s supposed to make me stronger, but I don’t buy it. I think it’s somebody’s practical joke.

  “No, thank you. We’re all right,” Mom says a little shakily, and we watch the doctor leave.

  “All right, all right, all right,” I say to her back as we roll down the hall. “Right as right can be. Right as rain, thank you, ma’am.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be snarky with the doctor.”

  “Why? She can’t hear, or if she can, she won’t remember. We never see the same one twice.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” I say as we get in the elevator to head back to the van to drive back to school to live the other half of this already long day.

  “The point is politeness. The point is courtesy. The point,” she says, then pauses, “is that we’ve just been told you are seizure-free and that is a miracle.”

  I let that sink in—the idea of a miracle. You think of it like something you’d see on one of those evangelical TV shows—like if I’d suddenly jumped up out of the wheelchair and started walking while a choir sang “hallelujah.” But I guess Mom’s right. I guess you can have invisible miracles too, brain waves finally smoothing out and leaving me on a calm sea.

  Neither of us says anything as she loads me into the van. When we hit the interstate, she runs the cuff of her sweater under her eyes.

  “Are you crying?”

  “Hush. I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road.”

  Later that night at home, I wheel out into the hall and lean way over to make sure there’s no light under Mom’s door. It’s closer to morning than night, and even though I have school tomorrow, there’s one more thing I need to do that’s more important than sleep.

  I roll as quietly as I can into the kitchen and use the light on my phone to sift through the bottom shelf of the cabinet closest to the sink. Tylenol, Advil, allergy meds, antacids, multivitamins, probiotics, and iron supplements. I have the medicine cabinet of an eighty-year-old woman. But I rattle past all that for the big, dark bottle with the childproof lid. It’s sticky around the edges, and it takes a turn or two to get the cap off. The fake grape scent hits me like liquefied Nerds. It’s why I never choose the grape Popsicle in the pack.

  I roll over to the sink and hold it up like I’m about to take a swig. It’s almost two-thirds full. That’s like a hundred and fifty bucks, almost a month’s worth of medicine. I very slowly pour it down the sink. The purple finds the drain in a thick swirl. Twice a day since I was six. Twice a day Mom had to use the dropper to feed me these antiseizure meds like a baby bird. But after today’s all clear, never again. I shake it until there’s not a single drop left and then go back down the hall, shimmying my shoulders to a Beyoncé song no one but me can hear.

  2

  Wrecked

  It’s snowing the afternoon we get the next call from Mema. It’s the kind of snow we like best down here, big and wet and so light it piles up half a foot in an hour. All the trees look like they’re wearing mittens.

  It’s a guaranteed snow day tomorrow at school, which I’m banking on, since I haven’t studied one minute for my science exam. “This is not a good start,” Mom says when she sees me in the kitchen, getting out the mixing bowls from the bottom shelf and lining the counter with flour and sticks of butter.

  But she doesn’t stop me.

  I’m aiming to make a fruit galette with peaches we froze last summer from the farmers market. I saw the galette in an old copy of Food & Wine someone left in the guidance counselor’s office next to copies of Parents magazine and Guideposts. The galette looked nice, homey and fancy both, like a big fruit tart dusted with glittery sugar.

  I’m elbows-deep in floppy piecrust when the phone rings. Mom is on the couch, surrounded by piles of blue books. The English exams were yesterday and she’s buried in essays. She uses a purple pen because it’s supposed to be more encouraging than red. I say an F is an F no matter the color.

  “Mom.” She doesn’t look up. “Mom, phone!”

  “What? Oh!” She digs for the phone, which she finds wedged between the couch cushions. She checks the screen and sighs.

  “Mema?” I say.

  “Mema.”

  She takes it in the other room, and I fold up my ball of dough in plastic wrap like a present and stick it in the fridge. My arms are already tired from the kneading. For the zillionth time, I wish I could stand and stretch. Because she’s not here to yell at me, I settle for cracking my neck in that way Mom hates.

  Ten minutes later and I’m sprinkling sugar over a bowl of cut peaches when she walks in.

  “What?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you look like that?” I say, dusting the crumbles off my fingertips.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’ve been hit by a bus and then backed over again.”

  “It’s your grandfather.”

  I grab a towel to wipe my hands and roll over to where she’s plopped on the couch. The blue books go sliding.

  “What now?”

  She leans over to pick them up, but then she just kind of stays there and puts her head on her knees. “He’s in the hospital.”

  Oh boy. I try to swallow, but there’s a lump of panic in there that makes me cough. This must have been a bad one.

  “What happened?”

  “He drove into Food & Co.”

  “What do you mean ‘into’?”

  “I mean, he drove the truck through the glass front windows of the grocery store.”

  Against my will, I picture his weathered hands on the wheel and see shattered glass and a tire spinning. I feel dizzy. When I was younger, he would hold me up so I could practice standing. He was always so steady. Something inside me topples over, and I wrap my arms around my stomach to hold myself together.

  “I thought Mema hid the keys?”

  “She did. He found them.”

  I put a hand on her back. It’s knobby like mine. I can feel every bump on her spine. She aims her words at the ground and they fall heavy.

  “They’re keeping him overnight in the hospital. Apparently, the airbag did some damage—abrasions to his face, your grandma said. He also fractured his nose.”

  Ohhhhhhh boy.

  We eat the peach galette for dinner. It’s a little soggy in the middle, but neither one of us cares. I don’t think Mom even knows she’s eating. Afterward she takes her exams with her to her bedroom. She works best when she’s stressed. I don’t. I spin in circles. Literally. I spend half an hour doing laps around the living room in my chair, trying to keep my body busy so my mind stops spinning. It doesn’t work. Grandpa’s hurt. Mema’s scared. Mom’s sad. It all sticks like gum and I can’t pull out of it. So I give up and head down the hallway.

  I should go to bed now. Or study. Probably should study, but my head’s too crowded.

  I pick up my phone, sneak into the bathroom, and lock the door.


  I dial area code 918 and wait.

  “Hiya, honey.”

  “Hiya.”

  It doesn’t bother me when Mema calls me “honey.” That’s what grandmothers are supposed to do. It’s a grandmotherly word.

  “How’s things?” Mema asks like we’re just shooting the breeze.

  “Really?”

  “What?”

  “You want to hear about my day?” I say.

  “Well, I don’t want to talk about things here. Honey, this place they’ve got your grandfather is a morgue. It smells like baby wipes and cigarette smoke. Lord, the amount of smoking that goes on outside this hospital, by nurses and doctors, mind you, makes you wonder all over again at the state of our health care.”

  “But you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, I do not.”

  I can hear how tired she is. It travels down the line ahead of her words, and I want to reach across the miles and hold her hand. I watch the snow still falling outside and curling up all fluffy on the windowsill like a cat. We sit together in the quiet. I want someone to take my hand too.

  “How’d neuro go?” she says finally.

  “Good. I’m off the meds.”

  “Well, praise the Lord and pass the potatoes! Your mother must be through the roof.”

  “She cried.”

  “ ’Course she did. Her baby’s in the clear.”

  “She cried about you tonight.”

  “Well, she’s a crier.”

  I don’t tell her I want to cry too.

  “Mema, how are you really?”

  There’s a long enough pause that I have to stop and check the phone for a signal.

  “Oh, honey. You’re a child. You shouldn’t be worrying about this.”

  “Should is for suckers, Mema. You’re the one who told me that. Tell me really.”

  “Should is for suckers. I stand by that, but this kind of truth isn’t for young ears.”

  It kills me when she defaults to my kid status, because she’s one of the only people who treats me like an adult. But I know Mema’s in her own tailspin of worry, just like I am, so I stay quiet, waiting it out until she starts talking again.

  “Baby, your grandpa’s just about done me in this time. He’s okay, but I hate looking at him laid out in this hospital bed.”

  And there it is again, another picture in my head I never wanted—Grandpa in a white bed, under white sheets and white lights, looking like a shell of himself. All those age spots from too much sun mixing with the bruises. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and clear my throat.

  “I heard he found the keys.”

  “Yeah. I hid them in the pantry, but he got turned around going to the bathroom and found them.”

  I hear beeping in the background. It’s steady, which seems good. And then a man’s voice, muffled.

  “Honey, look, the doctor’s just come in and I’ve got to go. You go get some rest now. I’ll see you in a week. Christmas, baby girl!”

  She hangs up first. I stare out the window over the bathtub and try to see the snow instead of the pictures in my head. What you imagine is always worse. It’s got to be. Because if it’s not, if all the bandages and brokenness I see when I close my eyes are true, then I can’t think how a person ever fully heals after that. Will he know my name when he sees me? Will he still look like my grandpa?

  I turn to study myself in the mirror. Whenever I grumble about the freckles on my nose, Mom says I have him to thank. I tilt my head in the light. Brownish hair. Blue eyes that are sometimes green depending on the sky. And all those freckles that I will never complain about again. I look down at my chair. That’s the first thing people see anyway. I had a pink sparkly one when I was little. But this one’s black with purple racing stripes I stuck on to jazz it up. There’s really not much in between—you get either My Little Pony or the kind you see old people wheeled around in at the airport. Will Grandpa go home in one of those?

  I hit the lights and roll down the hall into my room, a Pepto pink from floor to ceiling that was awesome at eight when I picked it out and makes me want to vomit now. I don’t bother with pajamas, just heave myself out of my chair and into bed, which is harder without Mom’s help, but I don’t want to bug her.

  I try to let sleep take me. But my legs are doing that twitching thing they do when the muscles get stiff and I’m restless. Every time I close my eyes, I see Grandpa’s busted face and I twitch.

  Mom looks terrible the next morning. If she did sleep, it doesn’t show. She sits at the kitchen table and picks at the fake wood that’s flaking around its edge. It is not a nice table. Nothing in this place really is; we just like it because it’s cheap and doesn’t have stairs.

  I hand her the orange I was peeling and grab another one. She takes it and we stare at the TV. The map of the middle of the state is whited out. The weatherman says I was right. Almost every county is out of school. But the snow’s already melting, and it’s more gray than white from the grit off the road.

  “We need to talk,” Mom says, real slow like she’s about to tell me I’m adopted or something.

  “Yep,” I say, trying to keep it light even though I feel fear as hard as a peach pit about whatever’s coming next.

  “I’m worried about your grandfather.”

  “Yep.”

  “Ellie, be serious. I’m also worried about Mema.”

  “She says not to.”

  “You called her.” It’s a statement, not a question, so I nod.

  “So you think we shouldn’t worry?” she asks, but I can tell she’s really just talking to herself.

  “I think Mema’s never going to admit how bad it is,” I say, and put down my orange. I can’t get the peel started right and it’s coming off in tiny pieces.

  Mom sucks on an orange slice. She looks weirdly better. Relieved maybe? She stands and grabs bowls and Frosted Flakes from the cupboard, then pours the cereal in without milk. We always eat our cereal dry, an old habit that’s hung around from my early years, when I was allergic to just about everything, including dairy. They say it’s normal for kids like me who were born super early to have allergies. I say, no, it’s still weird, but weird is my normal.

  After a minute or so of crunching that’s louder than the TV, she says, “What would you say to making our Christmas vacation a little bit longer?”

  I want to yell “Yes!” because extra time with my grandparents always feels like a second dessert. Maybe this will be enough to really help Grandpa. But I’m trying to keep it cool, so I ask as calm as can be, “How much longer?”

  “The spring semester?”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “So I can quit school?” Dreams really do come true.

  She raises an eyebrow at me. She can do this. Her eyebrows are like a cartoon character’s.

  “No, you can transfer to the middle school in Eufaula.”

  Oh. New school. New people who get to stare at the new kid in the wheelchair. The cereal turns to sawdust in my throat. If a kid can’t talk well, I’ve seen parents hang a sign on the wheelchair that says, “Hi, my name is _______ and I have _______ and my favorite color is _______.” It’s like a CliffsNotes version of a person. Maybe I’ll pretend I can’t talk at the new school and do that. Nobody’d know the difference.

  “Would you teach at the high school?”

  “I called this morning. There’s nothing available, but they’ll have me on as a substitute.”

  “Do I have to finish my exams?”

  “You mean start your exams?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes, you have to start and finish, and then we leave.”

  Brakes squeak outside. The neighbor in our duplex is heading off to who knows where. Every week he pulls in with a new delivery sign on his car. This week it’s THE SNAPPY TOMATO. I wonder if he’ll give us free pizza. I think of who I’ll eat lunch with at this new school when I can’t sit with Emma Claire. Probably no one.

  �
��Mema’s never going to go for this.”

  “That’s why we don’t tell her until we’re there.”

  “So lie?” I try to raise my eyebrow as high as Mom’s but can’t quite make it.

  “No, not lie. Delay the inevitable.”

  “So stall.”

  She takes both of our bowls to the sink.

  “Yes, stall.”

  “I like it.”

  The counselor’s office looks like an ad for PBS Kids—there’s a painting on the wall of a face with a nose on the forehead and eyes where ears should be. Every angle I try, it won’t come out right. The room itself is all bright pastel, if that’s even a thing—purple and peach and green everywhere, and a little lamp with a peach shade. It’s like ’90s Barbie became a school counselor. But Mrs. Lawrence is nice and always remembers to move the chairs so I can roll right in. She’s sitting behind her desk, while Lauren and the special ed coordinator, Mrs. Hayes, sit on the couch along one wall and Mom stands next to me by the door. Fast exits are key.

  “We understand your special circumstances, Ms. Cowan, and we are sorry to lose Ellie halfway through the school year, but our job today is to make sure we have a competent assessment of her current needs to send on to her new school in . . .” Mrs. Hayes looks down at her notes. Her purple glasses hang on the tip of her nose, and I wait for them to topple off, but they don’t.

  “Oklahoma,” Mom says.

  “Yes, Oklahoma.” Now Mrs. Hayes looks at Lauren, and I have to shut my mouth so I don’t actually sigh out loud. “What are your observations, Ms. Osborne?”

  “Well,” Lauren says from the depths of her turtleneck, “I think given Ellie’s history, I would recommend her continuing with an aide at her new school.”

  We all know by “history” she means “medical history”—the thing I can’t outrun. Cerebral palsy is like the “Go to Jail” card in Monopoly: No matter where you are, it always shoots you back to zero. In my case, that’s birth, day one of CP.

  Nobody knows what went wrong, exactly. Mom’s water broke at a Fourth of July picnic right as she was taking a bite of egg salad. How much less prepared could you be if you’re eating a sandwich in the middle of a field when you go into labor? You can’t blame her, though. She was supposed to have three more months before I showed up.