When the Lights Go Out(34)

And then sent us home to wait.

Aaron, as always, went to work, leaving me alone and bored, and so I drove into town and sought out that small dance studio on Church Street and sat on the park bench, watching the little ballerinas come and go, searching for the smallest one with the straw-like hair and freckles, a head shorter than the rest, who always struggled to keep up with her mother and friends.

I had to wait awhile, but eventually she came and my heart skipped a beat. My hands went numb. I held my breath.

I saw her ambling first through the double blue doors of the studio, already lagging behind before she’d ever stepped foot outside, grappling with the weight of the door because there was no one around to hold it for her. Her tiny head barely surpassed the door’s crash bar. The others were already a good five or ten paces ahead, moving down the concrete sidewalk in the direction of town, little girls gabbing merrily about an afternoon playdate while their mothers followed behind, paper cups of coffee in hand. Only once did a mother turn around to see where she was, calling out, “Snap to it, Olivia, or you’ll get left behind,” and then she turned again, facing forward, never again checking on Olivia, who brought up the rear, the caboose on some sort of high-speed train that had somehow gotten off track.

She had a name now. Olivia.

But Olivia’s mother was fully immersed in a conversation with the ladies, listening to one of the other mothers complain about her husband’s long hours and relentless travel schedule. He was in Tampa Bay this week on business, and that new admin assistant from the office had gone along too, the one her husband talked about at the dinner table, so that she couldn’t help but be concerned.

“You don’t think?” asked one of the other ladies, and Olivia’s mother piped in with “Oh, you poor thing.”

And it was decided then. This woman’s husband was having an affair.

Through all this, no one paid attention to Olivia, who had fallen even farther behind.

I had no intent of rising from the park bench as she passed by. None at all. The thought didn’t cross my mind until a single bobby pin fell from her hair, a silver sprung hairpin that dropped to the ground at such a frequency only I could hear. Little Olivia kept walking, leaving the hairpin behind. Her mother kept walking, now nearly twenty or thirty paces ahead. Only I paused to retrieve the hairpin, falling in line behind Olivia and the rest of her troupe, six steps behind and struck dumb.

I couldn’t speak.

I could have called her by name; I could have tapped her on the shoulder and handed her the bobby pin. But I didn’t. Instead I shadowed her by a mere three feet, eyes gaping at the lavender leotard and tutu, the sheer white tights, the hair done up in a bun, starting to lose its hold as strands of brown and yellow drifted through the springlike air. Beside our feet, the snow had melted, leaving puddles that returning birds paused to drink from. On the trees there were buds, tiny shamrock-green buds about to burst forth with leaves.

I never once thought about taking her, about grabbing a hold of her with my hand pressed to her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. I didn’t think of luring her away, bewitching her with the promise of a puppy or ice cream. I only wanted to watch for a while, to walk a breath behind and pretend for just this one moment in time that she was mine.

As I followed Olivia down the sidewalk, a conversation played out in my mind.

Slow down, baby girl, I thought to myself, whispering the words in my head. Come hold Mama’s hand, I urged, and in my imaginings I held out my hand as little Olivia slackened a bit, slowing down, turning to me so I could see the color of her eyes, the wealth of freckles she’d no doubt one day either outgrow or grow to hate. She slipped her hand inside mine and I squeezed tight, careful not to let go as we passed through an intersection while the traffic on either side paused to let us through. Olivia’s hand was easy to hold. Her steps fell into sync with mine.

It was the raucous laughter of the other girls that broke my trance, bringing me back to the earth, back to my physical existence. To reality. They had all turned at once, calling Olivia a snail, a slowpoke, waiting for her to catch up so they could go get ice-cream cones, and even though I knew it was all in jest—Olivia’s piping laughter was proof of this, no?—my heart ached for her for being called names, for being the poky little puppy, always lagging behind.

And then my heart ached for me when she skipped off with her friends, leaving me behind, standing alone on the sidewalk with her bobby pin in my hand.

I hoped that just once she would turn and see me and know that I was there.

I kept Olivia’s bobby pin as a token of luck.

Ten days later, my period arrived.

And now another month has come and gone without a baby.





jessie

My nighttime thoughts can be grouped into four categories. They follow the same pattern, the same predictable rotation each night. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat.

It all begins with the morbid thoughts where I obsess over death and dying, of being dead, trapped inside an urn, unable to breathe. They settle in around twilight, when the sun sinks beneath the horizon, slipping away to play with kids on the other side of the world. It’s then that I start to wonder how much time I have left on earth. I think about how and when I will die. Will it hurt when I die? Did it hurt when Mom died?

These morbid thoughts soon mutate into grieving, sinking ones where I miss Mom so much it hurts. By this point in the night, the world has turned black and I lie on my mattress in a black room, confined by blackness. A prisoner of the night. In all my life, it was always Mom and me, like Batman and Robin, Lucy and Ethel. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. We were a team. Without her I don’t know what to do. I spend half the night pleading for her back. Because I don’t know who I am without her. Because, without her, I am nothing.