Sunny(2)

Okay, I’m weird.

Diary, you know I’m also a winner. Wih-winner. Which, for me, is boring. Buh-boring. And sounds like snore. Snuh-snoring. My race always, always, always sounds like other people talking. Like no one really caring that I’m running a mile—1600 meters—faster than they can probably run a block. Like, chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! Chick chick chick chick chick chick chick chick, check me out! But no one does, until the last lap. Which is the part where I win. Week after week. Wih-wih winner . . . whatever.

I give the ribbons to Darryl. Whatever.

He says something about my mother. Whatever.

Your mother would want you to work harder.

What’s wrong with you?

She’d want you to tighten that form.

Widen your stride. Beat your time.

Like I always say, ROI. Return on Investment.

What’s wrong with you?

The more you put in, the more you get out.

That last lap, open up your lungs. Breathe.

Your mother would want you to breathe.

What’s wrong with you?

And then I immediately start thinking about what breathing sounds like. I can never really find it. Always just on the tip of my tongue. And then I start thinking about what not breathing sounds like. And then, while Darryl goes on and on about my mother, I start thinking about crying. Me, crying. Not me crying right then, but me crying when I was being born. And how I didn’t. Not at first. That’s what Darryl always tells me, has no problem telling me. That I didn’t cry. Because I wasn’t breathing. And my mother was crying. Then I started breathing. Then she stopped. And I started crying.

Ships passing in the night.

She’s not here because I am. Because of me. Because something is wrong with me, Diary, which made something wrong with her. Her. She has a name. She had a name. Has. You remember? It’s Regina. Regina Lancaster. Born on Rosa Parks’s birthday, delivered me on the day of a hurricane. And died.





Dear Diary,

“Amniotic embolism.”

Those words are like confetti for the tongue. Like speaking a foreign language. Hypnotic symbolism, amniotic embolism. So much fun to say, but it means “death of my mother” when you translate it into birth-giving talk. Means her blood was poisoned. Means it caused her heart to stop. Means me, as a kid, yelling all the time looking for her, searching for a beat.

Diary, I know you already know this. It’s been written in me for a long time, so I know I’ve written it in you a long time ago. Along with questions. Questions like, do you know what it feels like to feel like a murderer? I do. At least I did back then. And I still do. Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, Darryl has never called me that or said anything like that. If anything, he says it was the amniotic embolism that did it. But he’s always telling me over and over again that I owe it to my mother to accomplish her dreams of being a marathon winner. For her. Not just a runner, a winner. And he’s been pushing me from the beginning. I don’t really know if I mean that, like for real, but . . . I might, because it might be true. When I was learning to walk, soon as I took my first pitter-patter, Darryl probably pushed me. Like, really pushed me. That’s just how he is. Not hard or nothing. Just a little bump to make those steps quicker. Laps around the house by four. On the track by five. Marathon talk by six. As if not having a mother can be wiped away by a medal. Figured I’d start by mastering the mile.

But the thing is, the mile don’t have enough sound for me. Never did. There’s only the chick chick chick my feet make on the track for 1600 meters, which after a while sounds almost like nothing. Chick chick chick becomes chih chih chih becomes ch ch ch underneath everybody’s chatter about what they’re gonna do as soon as these last few long laps are over, scrolling on their phones, check check checking, refreshing, then scrolling some more.

I needed something else, something other than the stupid mile. Than the stupid win. So earlier today—three boring weeks, three victorious meets after Patty’s crazy comeback—I finally put some sound in my mile. Some pooshhh, or skweeb.

Diary, what does it sound like to stop? Like, skurrt!

I was three laps in, coming up on the fourth. Chick chick-ing around the track, zoning out. I’m on the first turn of the last lap, no one even close to me. I’m cruising, ch ch ch heading in for the win. And then.

I changed my mind.

Just pulled up, stopped running, started walking.

Sound.

The crowd goes wild! Whaaaa? Deja and Krystal and Brit-Brat go wild. Whaaaa? Ghost and Lu and Patty go wild. Whaaaa? Curron and Aaron and Mikey go wild. Whaaa? Coach and Whit go really wild. WHAAAA?

Then the crowd goes whooooop! as the other runners gallop past me, burning whatever gas they had left, barreling toward the finish line.

From the sideline, Coach scream-asked what I was doing, and I just smiled and clapped for the other runners. Then Coach yelled something else mad. His words sounded like crumpled paper. Up in the bleachers Darryl popped straight up in the middle of the crowd. Some people were laughing, some mad, some totally confused. Those were the best ones. The confused ones. The faces that looked like they were made of wax, and had been melted and remolded. Like, skwilurp bleep blurp squish. My father’s face didn’t look like that. It didn’t look melted or squishy at all. My father’s face had the look. A look I was used to, but hated. Like a stone becoming more of a stone. And what sound does that make? I think, for my dad, the same sound that breathing makes. A sound I can’t seem to find, even though it’s on the tip of my tongue.