- •Breathing Underwater
- •I was still a girl and Daddy still needed courage. The tall city buildings didn't belong to Someplace Else; they belonged
- •I also knew Peanut, a tiny old man with black spots on
- •I breathed again. I thought Rae was crazy—and her Daddy, too—for that.
- •I was right. Mama came back a couple of hours later,
- •I was scared and looked down at the rug, the way the
- •I just stood there until it hit me—you don't slap your
- •I wasn't about to close my eyes. Mrs. Miller stood next
- •I cut my hair short and Mama smiled as if she'd finally gotten the girl she wanted. She brushed her hand across
- •I had asked for that bike, and Mama had shoved me
- •I found myself being pulled into the crowd of regular kids.
- •I walked along behind James, lugging my red-plaid book satchel. The feeling from the dream kept rippling through my stomach, Rae beneath me, Mama hovering above
- •I walked out of the house and flopped down in the front
- •I knew Daddy was just saying that. Mama was crazy and
- •I didn't know what was worse, waiting for Mama to go crazy or knowing she'd finally done it.
- •I rode my bike past her house, hoping to get a glimpse
- •I couldn't understand how a person could change so quickly in one year, how she went from choosing me to
- •I could see her sitting at the kitchen table, running her
- •I sat on the porch steps and waited to see if maybe Daddy would come back out and get the ice chest. Maybe Mama was having another breakdown. Maisey sat beside me, sniffling and blubbering.
- •It on to my other ear. I laughed out loud, thinking how funny I must've looked. I walked slowly onto the porch, the green
- •I turned carefully so the lizards wouldn't fall, but one
- •I hadn't had a crush on anyone since Rae, but I told myself that didn't count because she was a girl and nothing ever happened between us. My memory of her had faded until
- •In our backyard, and that I'd spent the afternoon smoking reefer with a boy. But I didn't care. That was it. That was the feeling. I was tired of caring what she thought of me.
- •I was stoned. Images flitted through my head. The naked woman. I never told Ronnie about her, although I know
- •It was getting dark. James and Daddy's voices echoed by
- •I wondered where she read this, if she looked it up or 195
- •Visible in the shadow she made. She was the dark, black center of the starry Milky Way.
- •I didn't say anything. I noticed a small tear in the seam on the back of the passenger seat.
- •I watched as the Lincoln pulled away, Mr. Kaufmann
I didn't know what was worse, waiting for Mama to go crazy or knowing she'd finally done it.
The hospital seemed like a fortress to me, all white and straight up high. Tiny black windows like a hundred beady eyes. I didn't want to go in, and I don't think James or Maisey did, either, but Daddy pulled us all along. The air inside felt
old, used-up. We passed a waiting room full of ordinary people and I relaxed a little. This was a regular hospital. The bell rang for the elevator. When the door joggled open, a man with a broken leg was pushed out by an orderly. The broken-legged man held a bouquet of yellow daisies on his lap.
The hall Mama was on smelled like a regular hospital,
too: alcohol and Pine-Sol and cafeteria food smells swirled together. Mama glanced up when Daddy opened the door to her room. She didn't look crazy at first, just tired. She was sitting up in bed in a regular hospital room, eating cubes of red Jell-O out of a yellow plastic bowl. Her hair was flattened against the back of her head, and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she didn't seem to care. Then she spoke to Daddy: "And are these your children? My gosh, you've been busy, haven't you?"
None of us said a word. For a minute I thought she was playing a game with us, the way she'd done with Maisey and me when we were younger. She'd pretend not to see us even though we were huddled on the couch in full view. She'd walk around the room, looking for us, talking out loud to herself: "Where are my children? Hmm. I wonder if they went out to the blackberry patch. Oh lord, I wonder if a bear ate them." And then Maisey and I would squeal with laughter and pop up off the couch and beg her to do it again. Now Mama was
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simply gone. The face she had wasn't pretending. This face really didn't see us, really didn't know who we were. It hurt to look at her. When she rearranged her sheets I saw that she was wearing one of those ugly hospital gowns that open all down the back. Her hip stuck out and I could see the white of her bone beneath her dark skin. I wanted to cover it. Daddy talked to her for a few moments, then backed us
out of the room. It wasn't until later that I realized she had been zapped like Mrs. Miller had been and that she hadn't recognized Daddy, either. He'd decided to bring us over to see if our presence could jog her memory. Never mind that we were the cause of her breakdown. Never mind what effect seeing her would have on us. We were always being used one way or another. This time we were being used to gauge the treatment. Daddy told me later that he'd made the doctors stop the shock treatments after our visit. He said he'd rather have Mama crazy than lost in a haze.
Her being gone was hard; the house felt as if a big hole had been shot through it. Even though I knew it was silly,
I almost expected Mama's voice when James turned on his radio to listen to a ball game. When I closed my eyes, I saw her with a radio head: knobs for eyes, a silver face pocked with holes, an antenna shooting out of the top of her head, radio waves zigging out of her ears at the speed of sound.
I wondered if maybe we should get rid of all the radios in the house, maybe all the radios in the neighborhood; their shiny silver speakers and wandlike antennas spooked me. Everywhere I looked I saw radio waves shooting through the air like thin, black wires.
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While Mama Was in the hospital I was so lonely I
got an overwhelming urge to see Rae, maybe because her mother had had a breakdown, maybe because something had broken between us and I wanted to see if I could fix it. I wanted to fix something. I couldn't leave well enough alone. Maybe I wanted to hold her in my arms again, pretend to
be Harley Tucker so she'd let me kiss her. I wanted her to see me, not look past me as if I were invisible. I wanted her to say, "You were sweet to me, Lily, sweeter than that boy ever was." I wanted her to swing me in circles, to tap-dance across the dirty floor of our shack. I wanted her to laugh. I wanted us to be friends again.