Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  “Rinnie … I understand, I do. But can’t you do something else to keep your mind off all of this? Something less dangerous?”

  “It’s not that dangerous. I won’t be doing crazy aerobatic stuff like Dad did, I just want to learn how to fly. I remember when Dad took me up when I was a kid. And he brought me home that time and you were so mad at him. It was the best day of my life, but then you two wouldn’t stop arguing after that so I knew it was my fault. My fault you got a divorce.” My voice hiccups.

  “Oh no, Rinnie, it wasn’t your fault! I was worried about your safety. It was bad enough when he flew, but to take you … You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother. I wanted to protect you, to make sure you were secure and happy. I wanted you to always feel safe because I didn’t when I was a little girl.”

  “I’m not a little girl anymore,” I say in a low voice. “Mom, this is something I really want to do.”

  She’s quiet for a long time, staring at me, but she’s not really looking at me, she’s seeing something else.

  “I’ll sign,” she says, and her voice is real quiet. “I’ll sign it, but you’ve got to understand. I can’t watch you fly. I couldn’t watch your dad fly at the end, and I won’t be able to watch you.”

  The next morning, I go with my mom to her first chemo appointment. She didn’t want me to go, but I could tell she didn’t want to go by herself either, so she lets me.

  “Oh good, you brought a chemo buddy,” says Sherry, the nurse.

  Mom is poked and prodded and given last-minute instructions, all of which she has already heard. Take your temperature often, your immune system will be compromised. Flush twice for a couple of days, the chemo drugs are toxic. Replace shower curtains, use gloves to wash dishes, change your toothbrush often, and slather on hand sanitizer—you must avoid germs. Drink water! Exercise!

  We are led to the large chemotherapy room, which is filled with reclining chairs like in a dentist’s office, with curtains you can draw closed if you want, though most of the curtains are open. There are figurines of angels everywhere, crowding the windowsills. A basket on a table is full of colorful yarn hats, and a sign invites patients to take one, courtesy of the Ladies Lunch Bunch.

  “As you know, you’ll have six rounds of chemo, three weeks apart,” Sherry says, snapping on her gloves. “You’ll have at least a few days after each round where you will not feel good. Keep in mind that oftentimes chemo gets worse with succeeding sessions. I want to be upfront with you so you know what you’re facing.” She turns back to hooking a bag on the metal stand beside my mom’s chair.

  It’s quiet, people softly talking or lying with their eyes closed listening with earbuds in. Everyone has water bottles, and a few patients are sipping a shake or nibbling dry toast. One woman has a strange cap on, and as I watch, a younger woman opens a cooler and exchanges the cap for one from inside the cooler.

  “It’s called a cold cap. It’s to help keep her hair from falling out,” Sherry says.

  Mom’s doctor has told her the type of chemo she will be taking could cause her hair to fall out. She had it cut short last week, and we’ve looked at wigs but she’s waiting to see if she’ll need one.

  Mom sucks on a lemon drop as Sherry threads a catheter into the port in Mom’s chest and sets up a bag. Sherry stays for a while and chats, but she’s holding a medication box and she is studying Mom closely as she talks. The doctor mentioned that some people have bad allergic reactions during their first chemo treatment. After a while, Sherry seems to decide Mom is going to be fine and moves off. I’m left holding Mom’s hand while the IV drips … drips … drips … Mom downloaded Dirty Dancing to watch on her tablet, but the medicine they gave her to help with the side effects of the chemo seems to have made her drowsy and she lies with her eyes closed.

  At one point a bell rings and I turn to see a pale, puffy-faced woman with a scarf tied over her head pulling a rope attached to a bell mounted to the wall.

  People clap, and then cheer, and Mom and I look at each other in bemusement.

  “You get to ring the bell when you’re done with your chemo,” Sherry says as she drops a goody bag on the table beside Mom.

  Inside is some hand sanitizer and more lemon drops, as well as a book called Not Now, I’m Having a No Hair Day, and Mom and I giggle over the cartoons until she dozes off.

  When we are done, Sherry helps my mom up. “Remember, we have pretty good drugs to control the side effects of chemo. Not like the bad old days. Some people are able to go back to work the next day. But others feel it more. You need to take it easy until we see how you’re going to react,” she says.

  As I drive us carefully home, Mom gets ashen and clammy and finally asks me to pull over. She throws up and after a while we drive on.

  Then she has to stop to throw up again.

  And I see chemo isn’t going to be easy for my mother.

  Not one little bit.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The day after my mom gets her first chemotherapy treatment, I go for my first flying lesson.

  “Let’s go.” My instructor, Stewart Call-Me-Stew, points at a small tin can with wings. It reminds me of a VW Beetle, somehow, round and yellow and like maybe it was built right there in the seventies. It’s a four-seater, but it’s hard to believe that four normal-size people could fit into it.

  “Go?” I ask.

  “Flying. You thought we were maybe going on a picnic today?” Stew is bitter wrapped up in a soft taco of sarcasm. In his fifties—sixties?—he’s got short gray hair and sunglasses, and he’s dressed like he’s expecting someone to give him points on anal-compulsiveness, all ironed and buttoned tight over his substantial stomach.

  “I figured we would be … in a classroom today?” I say. “I didn’t think …” Seriously, I didn’t think we would actually be going up in the AIR already. My stomach starts doing somersaults.

  Stew is driving me in front of him, clapping his hands, like he’s Lassie and I’m the dumb sheep. My phone dings and I check to see if it’s from Trina. She knows I’m flying today, but we haven’t talked since she called yesterday to ask how my mom’s chemotherapy had gone and to ask if I was sure I didn’t mind if she went to Faith’s party tonight.

  “Are you kidding me? What’s with you kids? Can’t you go for more than two minutes without looking at your phone?”

  “Uh … sorry?”

  I slip the phone back in my pocket, but not before I see the message is from Ashley, who I’ve been e-mailing a lot this past week.

  flying high?

  The words make me smile. At least someone is excited about my learning to fly. My mother doesn’t even want to hear about it, and Trina said I was “plane insane.” Ha, ha, ha.

  Ashley thinks it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread. Somehow I’m not surprised. It sounds like something she’d like.

  “What do you think, you just jump in like it’s a car?” Stew barks at me. He’s chewing gum like he’s starving, all smacking and gnashing of teeth.

  “I don’t … no?”

  “Even before you get in a car, you’re supposed to kick a tire or two, maybe check the oil every once in a while. With a plane, it’s even more important. Up there, were you expecting to pull into the nearest service station if something goes wrong?”

  I am rapidly seeing the futility of answering any of Call-Me-Stew’s questions. They are meant solely to amuse him. He’s already told me he doesn’t like kids, never has, never will, we’re all ungrateful brats, thank you very much.

  I follow him around as he checks out the plane. He stabs a stubby finger at various mysterious things as he rapid-fires info in my direction, as well as the smell of stale beer. I stuff my hands into my pockets to hide their shaking.

  So why haven’t I already said sayonara? Why can’t I just make like a tree and leave? Here’s the thing: I want to fly that plane, more than just about anything. I like the canary yellow plane, it looks sassy and punk, like Tweety Bird. It makes m
e smile. I haven’t had a lot of giggles lately, what with Mom puking up her guts and whispering when she doesn’t think I can hear, “I think it would be easier to just die.”

  “Let’s do this,” Stew says, with an expression on his worn, lined face like this is about as fun as a pop quiz.

  “Now I can get in?” I ask.

  “Yes, get in.”

  “You sure? We don’t need to check the windshield wipers or something?”

  “Get in. Smart-ass,” he says, looking perturbed.

  I grin at him sweetly, which throws him off, and climb into the plane.

  “You got your parents stashed somewhere? Your age, they’re usually following their little chicks around with a camera.” He heaves his jiggling belly into the seat beside me.

  “Nope.”

  Mom, the last I saw her, was leaning over the toilet, heaving, heaving, heaving. And when I tried to put a wet washcloth on her forehead after she brought up a bare spittle of bile, she screamed hoarsely, “Just go, go, Erin, I can’t have you here right now.” So no, Call-Me-Stew, my mom is too sick right now to be able to care what the heck I do.

  He shrugs and starts rattling off another long list of information I sincerely hope isn’t vital, as I’m so nervous I’m only catching about half of it. Then he starts spitting nonsensical words into the radio like “November Six One Seven Niner Romeo” and I hear someone through my headphones answer back, “Cleared for takeoff.”

  And then we’re moving. Stew stops at the end of a runway, craning his neck around to look out all the windows. He revs the engine so hard it rattles everything in the plane. I notice my window is being held shut with a twist of clothes hanger, and a piece of tinfoil covers some gadget on the dash. Not all warm-and-fuzzy-making, but on the other hand, it makes me like Tweety Bird the Plane even more.

  I’m not entirely sure if the whole-body shaking is from the engine or coming from inside me. I debate asking Stew to take me back to the hangar.

  But it’s too late.

  We’re rolling, and the little plane is racing down the runway, and with a sudden dip in my stomach—Oh no, am I going to throw up?—we’ve left the earth. We’re in the air. We’re touching the sky.

  It is freaking awesome.

  I clutch the door handle as the ground falls away and the buildings get smaller and smaller, just like I remembered. The engine roars and we bump over pockets of turbulence as we make our ascent and it’s amazing how quickly everything below us begins to blur together. I think about all those people living life in their own little squares, and not understanding that all the squares are connected, going on and on as far as the eye can see.

  I remember a poem my dad liked.

  Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

  And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

  Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

  Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

  You have not dreamed of …

  I used to beg Dad to read the poem to me at bedtime and he would tousle my hair and say, Rinnie, don’t worry, you’ll do a hundred things I’ve never even dreamed of. Go to sleep now, and think about dancing in the sky …

  Stew steers us into a steep turn and I hold my breath because it seems like we’re going to drop sideways straight into the ground. I have this irrational fear Stew is going to fall on me because it seems like he’s hanging above me. I’m pressed against the door, hoping desperately it won’t spring open and dump me into all that air down there. I see Stone Mountain in the distance, but I can’t make out the humongous carvings of the Confederate war heroes. Then we swing around into another sharp turn and all I can see out my side window is endless sky and I claw for the handle to keep from tumbling into Stew’s lap, even though rationally I know my seatbelt is holding me in place.

  We straighten out and bounce over air bumps like a stone skipping across the surface of the water. Stew shoots me a sideways glance and I see that he’s smirking just a little. I wonder how many students he scares off this way, because I definitely get the feeling he’s trying to.

  “Well?” he says through the headphones.

  “Cool,” I say. “Very, very cool.” I try to look all nonchalant, like this isn’t the best thing I can remember doing in … well, ever.

  He nods and his expression changes, becomes less smug and more thoughtful. Maybe he was expecting me to throw up. I’m still holding the paper barf bag he shoved at me when I got in the plane. Maybe he is expecting me to be terrified. I’ve been terrified for weeks. This fear seems clean, somehow. Pure. Not putrid and creeping.

  “Your turn.” He lifts his hands off the yoke on his side.

  “Say what?” I stare at him in horror. My hands clamp over the yoke in front of me and somehow I push it forward. The nose dives, and my stomach comes to rest somewhere in the vicinity of my throat.

  “Oh man!” I snatch my hands away from the yoke. We are totally going down.

  “Pull back.” Stew grins at me. He’s enjoying this, the sick sadistic bastard.

  Since he seems content to watch us dive into the ground without lifting a finger to stop us, I grab at the yoke and pull it back.

  Too much. Too fast.

  My stomach careens as the plane yanks up toward the sun.

  “You planning on making it into orbit?” Stew says, fishing in his shirt pocket for another stick of gum. He seems completely unconcerned that a loud alarm has starting blaring. “We’re getting ready to stall.”

  “Oh my God!” I yell, and push down again.

  Now we’re diving toward the earth faster and faster, and I start wondering if this is the end.

  “Slow and easy,” Stew says, popping the gum into his mouth.

  I pull back slightly and the plane starts leveling out. I pull back some more but somehow I’ve twisted the yoke and we’re flying tilted to the right.

  Stew shows me a gauge on the dash that shows how far off center we are, and I turn the yoke back to the left a little. I experiment, back and forth, fascinated by how responsive the plane is to my touch. I’m controlling it, I’m in charge as we careen through the sky at over a hundred miles per hour. I manage to get us level and turn a big, delighted grin toward Stew.

  “Now you’re flying straight,” Stew says, chomping on his gum in satisfaction.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I get home, Mom is sitting at the table with a glass of water in front of her. Her face is white and her hand shakes as she takes a determined drink, but she is dressed and her hair is damp. Shower. Good.

  “How was the flying lesson?” she asks tightly.

  “Out of this world,” I say. “Stew says I’m a natural. Okay, he didn’t say that, he asked if I’d flown a plane before, and when I said no, he acted like he didn’t believe me, but still. I think I did good.”

  She smiles, but it looks more like a grimace. She doesn’t like this. I know it, and I feel bad. How can I explain that flying makes me feel brave, when nothing else does?

  “I want you to know I appreciate all your help,” she says. “I know this is … hard. I love you, Rinnie, you know that, right?”

  My throat is closing up and I nod. She holds out an arm, and I go to her. We hug clumsily, me standing, her sitting. It almost feels safe again, like it used to, but she is shaking and smells funny.

  Upstairs I put on some music and write in my journal. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but until Ms. Garrison’s class, I didn’t think I was any good at it.

  The little test tube I got in the mail from the gene-testing place is sitting beside my computer. All I have to do is spit in it and mail it back. I play with the cool, smooth tube, rolling it between my fingers. I take the top off it and put it up to my mouth.

  I put it back. Not yet. Not yet.

  I check and I have a text from Ashley. We exchanged phone numbers last week, so we could text. So far, we haven’t talked on the phone. I’ve thought about calling her a couple of times, bu
t it feels awkward, so I don’t.

  Ashley’s fishing with her dad, and I text her back that I just finished flying and it was beautiful.

  Nothing from Trina. I know she must be thinking about what to wear to Faith’s party at the abandoned school. Trina said I should come, that the school wasn’t Faith’s, she couldn’t kick me out, but, really?

  Michael might be there.

  I fall asleep with my phone clutched in my hand. When I wake up, my mom is vomiting again. I put my pillow over my head, but I can still hear her. It goes on and on, and after a while I get up to go check on her.

  The door is locked. A first. I stand outside and listen to her try to bring up a lung.

  I knock tentatively. “Mom? You okay?”

  Like she’s going to call back, Just fine, honey! No worries. My new recreational activity is seeing whether I can bring up the lining of my stomach. You should try it!

  She doesn’t answer. I jiggle the handle. “Mom?”

  “Erin, I need to be alone for a little bit,” she says, and groans softly.

  I stand outside the door for a while longer listening to her retch.

  “I’m going out, okay?” I call. “I’ll be back later.”

  She heaves, and I imagine her hanging her head over the toilet, maybe laying her face on the cold rim.

  “Okay … that’s fine.” No Where are you going? When do you expect to be back?

  I go to my room and look in my closet. The white lacy dress, the one with the heart on it and the Cyndi Lauper–retro feel, is unlike anything in my wardrobe. I throw it on and go.

  It should take twenty minutes to get to the John B. Gordon School. It takes me thirty because I get lost, but I finally find Metropolitan Avenue and the church across the street from the school. A bunch of cars huddle together in the church parking lot, and I can smell smoke, though the school looks dark and deserted.

  I pick my way around to the door, clutching my flashlight. I want to sneak in and find Trina or Michael without anyone else noticing me. No need to make a big entrance.