When the Lights Go Out(78)

As I near the top, there’s a moment of calm that comes and goes so quickly I almost don’t notice it. For one split second the world is still. I’m at peace. The sun moves higher and higher into the sky, yellow-orange glaring at me through the buildings, making me peaceful and warm. My hands rise beside me as a bird goes soaring by. As if my hands are wings, I think in that moment what it would be like to fly.

And then it comes rushing back to me.

I’m hopelessly alone. Everything hurts. I can no longer think straight; I can no longer see straight; I can no longer speak. I don’t know who I am anymore. If I am anyone.

And I know in that moment for certain: I am no one.

I think what it would feel like to fall. The weightlessness of the plunge, of gravity taking over, of relinquishing control. Giving up, surrendering to the universe.

There’s a flicker of movement beneath me. A flash of brown, and I know that if I wait any longer, it will be too late. The decision will no longer be mine. I cry out one more time. And then I go, legs convulsing as I swing one leg over the edge of the building and onto the fire escape on the other side. I have to force myself to do it. It takes everything I have. All that’s on the other side is a measly shelf, an overhang, that hovers seventeen floors above land.

I make my way toward him, but he’s moving far too fast for me. And I’m scared, looking down where, beneath me, the earth tilts and sways. I’m overcome with vertigo. I feel nauseous; I feel like I could be sick. The steps of the fire escape are perforated to prevent snow and ice from forming, which does nothing for me now. I can see straight through them to the street beneath my feet. People like ants walk up and down the street, minding their own business, paying no attention to me. Cabs like matchbooks soar past.

The steps beneath me are corroded and weak. A handful are missing. In some spots, the fire escape pulls away from the building’s masonry, bolts no longer holding tight. I take the steps two at a time, though they clatter each time my feet hit, the entire fire escape bucking beneath me. I have to take long strides over the missing steps.

I make it down only half a flight of steps before my knees give.

As they do, I lurch forward, staggering. I fall down the second half flight of stairs. The railing at the end is corroded, as much of the fire escape is. It’s the red-orange of rust. As my body goes hurtling into it, the spindles give and I slip straight through, with nothing there to prevent my fall.

As I tumble off the side of the fire escape, my head swims.

I take one final look at the great distance to the ground, the distance I’ll soon fall.

All at once, I’m falling. My legs follow the rest of me, feet making a last-ditch effort to cling to something, trying in vain to tether themselves to the steel of the fire escape. I try to grab it with a hand, but it slips straight through time and again, as I soar along beside it, unable to grab hold.

My arms and legs kick. They do the doggy paddle as I soar downward. I flail and kick, my body splayed as air rushes from beneath me, wrapping my hair around my face. I can see nearly nothing. Not that there’s much to see anyway, other than the blue of the sky as I fall. There’s no air resistance. The air does nothing to slow me down. My hands make a meek attempt to protect my head, some sort of Pavlovian response, as I thrust my feet downward, knowing my only chance of survival hinges on landing feetfirst. It doesn’t work. I can’t get them down. Another fire escape landing soars past but I can’t get to it in time.

My insides scuttle to my center from the speed, from the velocity of the fall. A fall that feels like forever. Like I am forever falling. My face molded in fear.

I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.





eden

October 3, 1997 Egg Harbor

It’s become an itch that I can’t reach. A hunger that no amount of food can satiate. A drought that a thousand rainfalls can’t fix.

That unquenchable need to be a mother.

I think about it morning, noon and night.

At night I lie awake not sleeping, wondering how I will ever be a mother.

I don’t know that I have it in me to wait until Aaron’s and my divorce is complete.

There is adoption, of course, but as a single mother going through divorce proceedings and carrying an exorbitant amount of debt, I hardly think I’m a suitable candidate for adoption.

And so I must find another way.

I go to work early and I leave late, spending those extra few minutes staring at the babies through the nursery room glass. On my lunch break I eat quickly so that I have time to wander down to the labor and delivery unit and salivate over the newborns while the nursery room nurses tend to their every need, the bottles and clean diapers and the endless rocks in the rocking chairs.

I don’t want to feel the way I do.

I’m not a bad person, not by any means, and yet it’s an addiction to me. A disease. I’m unable to abstain from thinking about babies, from wanting a baby, from craving a baby as one does gambling or cocaine.

I’ve lost control of my own behavior. I don’t know what I’m capable of, what I might do, and that in itself terrifies me. Once I was very rule abiding; I always did as I was told.

But now my neurotransmitters are in disrepair and quite simply, I’m not the person I used to be. That Eden is gone, replaced with someone I scarcely recognize anymore, someone I don’t know.


October 7, 1997 Egg Harbor