Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon (18 page)

The stuffed baby toys had the sharp smell of fumigated cargo containers. I threw in a package of cotton blankets with pastel dinosaurs instead. They were made in Georgia, probably the Republic of Georgia. I added a teething ring you freeze. Meggie had never liked hers, Chance might. I hoped the gel inside wasn’t poisonous.

I added a kitchen timer, a cheap replica of the old white winder my grandmother had. The tick marks on the dial of my grandmother’s had been filled with years of good cooking grime. Unlike my digital timer with its incessant beep beep beep, Grandma’s timer sent out one great ding and trusted that you were paying enough attention to your life to hear it.           

Mom used to take Bettina and me to visit Grandma every summer for my birthday. The year I turned nine, Mom took a toothbrush to the timer and scrubbed it so hard, she scrubbed away all the tiny black tick marks of paint that showed you how many minutes. My grandmother was bewildered when she tried to use it that afternoon. She adjusted her glasses and held it up high under the light over the stove. In the end, she had to fuss back and forth with the oven door and toothpicks to make sure she didn’t burn my birthday cake. It came out lopsided from drafts.

I had taken the timer to bed with a flashlight and the indelible ink pen she used to write on canning labels. I made a blanket tent so the light didn’t wake up Bettina in the other bed, then carefully lined in all the missing tick marks. I tiptoed out and put it back by the stove, put her pen in the drawer, and the flashlight by the back door.

The next day she scolded my mother for making matters worse by trying to undo her scrubbing. My mother denied it, she sounded like a little girl. My stomach contracted with anxiety and my cheeks flamed over my failure to draw tick marks carefully enough.

“I did it. I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll save up and buy you a new one.”

I ran out of the kitchen crying. Bettina mocked, “Hannie thinks she’s an artist.”

“I’ll buy you one, Mom,” said my mother. “They have much nicer ones now.”

“It still works, Jacqueline,” said my grandmother.

My mother had it now. She’d taken it when we moved my grandmother out of her last bastion of self-rule, a one-room apartment with a strip efficiency kitchen. It had gone from being a minor player in the wooden spoon and salt shaker clutter next to her big stove, to being a lone space hog on two square feet of blue laminate.

Mom slipped it into her purse saying they didn’t make them like they used to. It was an aberration in the sleek granite kitchen Arthur designed for her straight out of his former life as an engineer. She left the grime that had refilled the tick marks, but I could still see ink where I’d drawn outside the lines. She said it reminded her of her mother. I didn’t ask which part. It reminded me of picking a scab.

I threw an assortment of wooden spoons in the cart. Meggie had liked to drum wildly on pans. Chance might too. Though I thought his drumming might have rhythm. Chance. Milk was starting to leak through my tee shirt so I cycled back and threw in a box of nursing pads to change in the car.

I was picking out an anklet when they dimmed the lights and announced that the store would be closing in fifteen minutes. All the women in India wore anklets but I’d never gotten one. Chana wore one of coral beads strung on leather. I picked a delicate gold chain, just like an Indian woman. Jon. Jon wasn’t an anklet man, I didn’t think. The tattoo was a surprise. The anklet didn’t have tiny India bells so I picked out a small teardrop shaped peridot charm. Peridot comes from lava, meteorites too. The dinosaurs might have been wiped out, but some things make it through the earth’s test of fire. Hawaiians call peridot
the tear of Pele
. She was a wild, dangerous and abundant goddess. I needed more Pele in me. Except for the whole abundance thing. I checked out with all the other Draculas.

It took some shoving to get everything jammed into my little car. I hadn’t considered how much space two hundred rolls of toilet paper and boxes of diapers take up when your car already has a stroller, two car seats, emergency baby gear, a partially inflated whale floatie and three bags of stuff to go to the resale shop.

I threw my purse on the floor in front and piled bags on top. I tore open the big package of toilet paper and stored the individual rolls in every nook and cranny in the back.

The store killed the main lights, which left me in a smog of yellow sodium vapor. I took the time to put on my new anklet. It was hard to thread the chain through the mounting ring on the teardrop, in the low light. Guys were laughing in the only other car in the lot. I’d seen them inside buying cans of Hurricane malt. My phone rang under the pile of stuff. By the time I’d dug it out there was a missed call from Jon. I glanced over at the guys; the ringing phone had attracted their glittering eyes. I tried calling Jon back, but it went to voicemail, probably leaving me a message. I said I was just leaving. I put the last few things in the car.

The guys drove by, circling like coyotes. Fear prickled the skin on the back of my legs and told them to get moving. I got in the car and hit the locks. It took an eternity to find my keys and start out of the parking lot. The load shifted around inside the car, something slid off the roof. I hoped they hadn’t thrown a beer can at the car; I’d been careful to keep the paint in good shape in the salt air. I looked in the rear view mirror. They’d stopped. A guy opened his door and it looked like he set an empty can on the ground. So they weren’t can throwers. They followed me out of the parking lot and out onto the highway.

They stayed with me. They got up close and flashed their lights. I was in a pickle between the lights behind me and the sporadic oncoming traffic. I flipped the rearview mirror up but watched them in the side mirrors. They advanced and retreated on my bumper. We drove down the road like that. Sometimes it was total darkness in front of me, sometimes light from both directions. I leaned over and searched with one hand through the pile for my phone. Then it hit me. I’d set it on top of the car after I texted Jon. It was my phone that I’d heard sliding off the car. My heart clawed up my throat.

They finally got tired of the game and passed on a blind curve. I edged over to give them more room. They were so close I could see the scars on one guy’s face when he stuck his head out and waggled his tongue at me. It meant only one thing. Another guy got up behind his shoulder and stuck his hand out. He was holding my phone; the screen was lit up with one of my favorite pictures of Jon with the babies, reflections from a pastel sunrise painted across their faces.

Their taillights disappeared around a curve just as the side of my car hit the steep rock face and sent me skidding sideways across the opposite lane. I jerked the steering wheel and a box of diapers flew out of the backseat. Over Jon’s objections, I’d removed the headrests so I could reach Meggie and Chance more easily. The corner of the box stabbed me in the thigh before it dropped down into the well by the passenger seat. I was so distracted by the pain that I over steered and slammed into the rock face again. It doubled the energy for the next trip across the road. The car turned sideways and slid down the other lane, making me a fat target for anyone coming the other direction.

I couldn’t remember which way you’re supposed to steer in a spin. My father always knew. He was fine driving in the snow on family ski trips. It’s hard to understand what to do in a car going backwards. I lost track of what was happening outside the car when the load in the backseat let loose and rolls of toilet paper flew around. The car kept spinning until it hit the low guardrail on the drop side of the road. It had so much energy it flipped up and over the rail and out into space.

It is the oddest sensation when a car tumbles. The seat belt straps dug into me, then released into weightlessness. The car hit nose first and the airbag slammed into my nose. The headlights lit rocks and plants through a fog of white powder. I tumbled away from the road, rock, air, over and over. Breathing white fog. My neck and teeth snapped. I thought about Meggie and Chance. About leaving Jon the last time like that. He wouldn’t know I loved him. He wouldn’t know I was okay having the baby. I understood. It was ours. I was going to die without saying good-bye.

Where am I? I was cold. Death is cold? Would I always be cold? Cold from now on? I almost started laughing. Now on? What did
now on
mean? It means we’ll see what it means.

I was clammy the next time. Everything hurt. A smooth-haired baby was smiling at me. It wasn’t my baby. Where was my baby? It was a box. Rain came through the broken out back window, ran over the whale sitting next to me, and dripped on the box. The paper bubbled. My breasts were soaked with cold milk. Their weight pulled hard on the shoulder strap. I needed to pee. I need to go potty. Okay, Angel. Hold on.

The airbag hung limp from the steering wheel. The windshield was shattered into a million spider webby cracks. I could see water crashing on rocks below as rain washed away white powder. Daylight. Alone. Hanging from the seat belt in my car, legs caged by the steering wheel. Rolls of toilet paper wrapped in blue and white paper were everywhere.  

Dark splats landed on the webbed window and spread out to pink. Blood. My mind stored the pattern. I needed to drop blood splatters? Drop it from above? It didn’t always come from above. Sometimes we splattered it on walls. The ceiling.

Sun lustered gold across tide pools below. Low tide. Pink. Calm pink. It felt like a swaying hammock, almost imperceptible at first, as waves concussed on the rocks below and sent gentle updrafts my way. I was hang gliding. I could time the updraft with the sound of waves hitting rock, like lightning and thunder. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.

It got less gentle the more attention I paid. I’d read that somewhere, that we attract what we pay attention to. I wished I’d written a letter to Meggie and Chance to have when I wasn’t there anymore. I’d tell them to be careful what you fear. It always comes to pass. I tried to dilute my fear with resource management, but it was concentrated on the rhythm. I braced myself after each wave broke. It made the car move more. I needed to be still in it. Stillness was my only resource. Waves broke left to right. The sound moved through my head, left to right. A big swell.

A gecko came through the broken out passenger window. The lizard dodged blood as it moved in short bursts across the windshield. He was out late; the mosquitoes had gone home for the day. I had bites on my arms and face. I tried to scratch my cheek but the movement made the car slip. Sit still. My shoulder screamed. My breasts ached. Gravity suckled, milk ran free. Magic toes crawled across my breast, up the shoulder strap and looked around my neck, tentative, like a man who is afraid of women. Jon’s not afraid.

Where am I? The car would drop to the rocks and slip into the sea. I was at that brief moment between things. Before you know you have a problem and when you discover the full extent of things. It was like that ride, Freefall. They hang you over the void just long enough for fear to set in, and then drop you. At first I liked it, not anymore. I was in that moment again. I like here or there. I don’t like the in-between moments. It’s all an in-between moment.

I waited for the drop all day. The ride doesn’t fall. It slides in a scoop and leaves you on your back looking at the sky through a metal cage. Chance didn’t look through a cage yet.

When we were kids we swam off Wind ‘n Sea beach. The sun-hot sand scorched our feet, and then slid underwater becoming a cold underwater mountain that fell away into gray, then into the abyss. There was no telling where the bottom was. Gravity grabs on at 70 feet and pulls you down. I didn’t look. It was a lot to contemplate when I was floating over it. When the water was cold, I rolled onto my back and let the sun heat the air in my lungs and blood in my heart.

Is there a bottom to the earth? Is there a top or bottom in the universe? I guess not. It keeps expanding. What’s the point of reference? I should have asked Chana. I had thought to ask her so many things, but I was thinking about myself. I was contracting over Celeste, and the expanding words never came out. I wish I’d asked more.

Eric was a city lifeguard over his college summers. One afternoon, during my father’s last summer, Eric came home from a training session and told the family over dinner that their lieutenant had said they’d find drowned bodies in one of three places: On the top, on the bottom, or somewhere in between. Everyone laughed, but me.

“Why is that funny?” I asked.

“Because it’s stupid,” said Eric. “The guy’s a jock moron.”

“But it’s true,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s true, Hannie,” said my father. “It sounds silly. He could have just said you’ll find the body somewhere in the water.”

“Sometimes they don’t find the body,” I said. “Like airplanes.”

“No,” said my father. “Sometimes they don’t.”

“Do sharks eat them?” I asked.

“Probably, sometimes, or crabs,” he said. “Sometimes they just stop looking.”

“Because they go too deep?”

“The ocean is a big place, Hannie,” said my father.

If I slid into the abyss Jon would never know what happened. I’d be lost in the big place. I decided not to be afraid of it.

My shoulder hurt, my limbs were full of blood. I wished for it to be over. Torture. I would confess. I would welcome the abyss to escape the now pain. Did my father freeze to death? They say it’s painless. How do they know? Do that many people come back from the white light and write up a report? They didn’t remember the pain; it had to hurt, like now.

The tide came in. Water worked on rock to come away with it. Don’t be so rigid about it all. I was rock. Jon had been my water. Water appears sensuous and free, but where would it be without the rock holding it? A formless sea of swells, no crashing white water with bubbles chattering across ancient grains of shell and glass. No updrafts to soar. No tension, no drama. No man, no woman. No Jon, no Hannah. No Margaret, no Chance. Birds landed over my head, scratchy talons. Beaks tapped at the metal roof. A man in L.A. had guard geese that ate the paint off his car.