“The principal called us yesterday!”
This is my alarm clock on my last day. It’s Mama and she’s saying things too quickly. It is 5:34 a.m. Mama has been watching morning news since five.
“She said you skipped school. She said you were in trouble. Maybe that you sent these bomb threats,” she says.
I sit up and wipe the sleep from my eyes. It’s still not late enough to be light. She’s standing in my doorway and is about to switch on my light and I say, “Please don’t turn on the light,” but she turns it on anyway.
“Did you?”
“Of course not,” I answer. “I know who’s sending the bomb threats, I think. I’m still investigating.”
“I mean skipping school,” she says.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Where did you go?”
“With China. To see her boyfriend,” I say.
Mama looks suddenly happy. “She has a boyfriend? That’s nice,” she says. “Good for her.”
“Can you go now?”
“Who do you think is sending the bomb threats?” she asks.
“I can’t tell you until I know for sure,” I say.
“Where does China’s boyfriend live?”
“Philadelphia,” I lie.
“Did you drink alcohol?”
“No.”
“Did you smoke marijuana?”
“Of course not.”
“Did he have guns in his house?” she asks.
“I didn’t ask. I wasn’t really in his house. I was at some kind of restaurant.”
She thinks for a minute. “You let her go to a boy’s house alone?”
“Yes. She made me.”
“She’s going to end up in the looney tunes with that other friend of yours, I swear it.”
“She’s saner than you’d think,” I say. She’s saner than you, I think.
“There was a shooting last night in a movie theater in Florida,” she says.
“What did you eat in the restaurant in Philadelphia?”
“Kale/kiwi juice smoothie thing. It was nice.”
Mama makes a face. This is finally what pries her from my doorway and back to her television. Green food.
I put my blankets over my face to block the light and realize this could be the last day I see Mama. There are no departures. I expected to feel some deep pull, as if there is a maternal elastic band attached to my stomach; I feel nothing but sadness for her.
You can see it in our family picture albums—her decline. Her face fell. Her eyes went dark. The morbid outings started. The master list was made. The peanut butter and jelly crackers, the picnic blankets. The emergency plans for everything imaginable. Fire, intruder, explosion, gas leak, sinkhole. I’m a trained escapist.
Today will be easy for me.
I have been practicing for as long as I can remember.
When I finally get up, I remove the granite M from my backpack and put it on my desk. I pack (no schoolbooks, all clothing and other things I want to take with me) and take a shower. I hear them talking in the kitchen on my way from the bathroom back to my room.
Pop says, “Maybe we should call the counselor again.”
Mama says, “He always said it would catch up with her.”
Pop says, “I wish she’d take off that damn coat.”
Mama says, “I think it’s getting bad now. She lied to me. She never lied before.”
Pop says, “I can make an appointment for tomorrow, I bet. He always saw us last minute when she was little.”
Mama sighs. “God.”
Pop says, “She’s alive, Mama. It’s a blessing. We just need to help her.”
Mama says, “I can’t help. I don’t want to think about it.”
Pop says, “I don’t, either. But it’s the only way we can help her.”
Mama says, “You take her.”
Pop says, “I’ll get an appointment for as soon as we can.”
Mama says, “She needs help.”
Pop says, “He’ll talk to her. He remembers us. He’ll help.”
Mama says, “I think she’s the bomb threat. I think she’s the one.”
I close my door then—loudly enough for them to hear. Mama is wrong about the bomb threat. We are all the bomb threat.
The doorbell sounds and I know it’s China because she told me we’d walk to school together today.
I’m not even close to ready.
Ready for school, or ready to tell her I’m not coming to school, or ready to tell her I’m going away with Gustav today.
I tell Mama to let her in and I get dressed and let my hair dry itself. It gets curly when I let it dry naturally. As I get ready, China looks at my new letter M. She doesn’t ask me about it.
I heave my backpack onto my back and China asks, “What’s in that thing?”
I tell her it’s my books, even though she knows my books are still in my locker from before we skipped yesterday. I reach into my lab coat pocket and retrieve the poem.
“I finished my poem. For English,” I say.
She reads it to herself.
There is a tiny hole
and if you unbend a paper clip
and insert it into the hole,
the world resets.
It becomes a giant liver
three lobes
wrapped around a heart.
It filters.
It regenerates.
We grow grass on it
eat our picnics on the grass
we make love on it
never knowing
that we are the filter.
“It’s good for a first poem,” China says.
“Thanks.”
“I hope she gives you an A,” she says.
“She can give me any letter she wants,” I say.
When we walk out of my room, Mama and Pop are still sitting at the kitchen table, half glued to the TV morning shows and half talking about how they’re going to make an appointment for me. I see Pop attempt to get my attention, but I ignore him.
I don’t say good-bye. Not even to my cat.
When I close the door, something shivers in me as if I know I’m colder now.