Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  The growth doctor has X-ray machines and lots of nurses walking around. Just like all the other doctors, he looks only at my mom when he talks, not me. They put a heavy apron on my body, and my hand on a cold metal plate, and then X-ray my wrist bones to see how tall I’ll grow. We go back into his office and he lectures us about glands and pulses. He says stuff about lowering blood sugar and insulin and then a terrible thing about a seizure, but don’t worry because that’s rare. I do not want a seizure. I’d rather be short. He tells us about growth hormones, which they give to horses, and leg extension surgery, where they cut your legs off, add more leg, and then sew you back together. I don’t like how any of this sounds, but my mom is taking frantic notes and nodding. She asks questions about how long things take, and what hospital we’d use and who would do the surgery, and I do not want to do any of this. When he asks if I have any questions, I raise my hand.

  “Will I be taller than Gary Coleman?” I ask.

  He looks at my chart and says, “It looks like you’ll be five feet tall, exactly.”

  I smile. That number is good enough for me. I don’t want to take horse pills, have seizures, or get my legs cut off. My mom shakes his hand, but I am already out the door, leaving as fast as I can before my mom says yes to the horse pills. My after-doctor treat is ice cream, and as we walk I realize something that stops me in my tracks.

  “If we know I’m going to be five feet tall, then I don’t need to stay back a grade,” I tell her. “Tell Mrs. Maynard what the doctor said. You’ll see; she’ll let me continue on with my grade.”

  “Sweetie, I don’t think that’s an option.”

  “But if I’m going to be normal-sized, why would I have to stay back?” I ask.

  My mom doesn’t know what to say, although there is something she wants to say. I can see her eyes trying to figure out what to do, but she hails a cab instead. I know there’s something she’s not telling me, like the reason I’m staying back is that she knows I’m never getting my puberty and she’s just too afraid to say.

  June 1981

  Dr. Rivka Golod

  Summary of Test Results

  Amanda’s greatest difficulty in the language area was on a test of story comprehension where she failed at the 7 year to 9 year level. This stands in direct contrast to her excellent ability to comprehend verbal absurdities and pass the verbal reasoning tests given at the 14 year old levels. On another test of verbal reasoning, Amanda obtained a high average scaled score of 11. This was the same subtest on which she obtained a defective scale score of 5 only a few months ago when it was administered on the ERB. I attribute Amanda’s poor performance on Standardized Testing to performance anxiety linked to her fear of failure and difficulty extracting meaning from silent reading material. The vast un-evenness in her overall scores should be interpreted with caution.

  The Bright Side

  We’re in a car, flying up some fast highway on a drive upstate: Javier, Frankie, and me. Frankie makes a surprise attack from the backseat with the caterpillar legs of a scalp massager and I scream while she laughs hysterically. Javi says, “Look, I’m driving with my eyes closed,” and closes his eyes. I scream again, and he turns to look at me, grinning, his right eye closed, his left eye wide open. Frankie is doubled over in the back. “You’re so easy to scare!” she says. If she only knew. It feels like practice for the life we’ll have next year. I see the three of us in the car like I’m watching a movie, just a regular, happy family driving upstate.

  The relief, if only for a day or two, from being the only one in a room without the main trappings of an adult life is powerful. When we stop to get some lunch, I know that when other people look at us, they’ll see an actual family, and it feels amazing. I take Frankie to the bathroom and when we come out Javier is at the counter paying, and Frankie sits next to him and I leave them alone to have some dad-daughter time. At the magazines, a woman says, “You have such a beautiful family.”

  I look over at Javier and Frankie, who seem like they might be arguing. “Thank you so much.” I grin. Maybe Javi and I will give Frankie a sibling and one day this really will be my own family.

  I feel like an insane person. I’m being a hypocrite. In the midst of my family contentment, I’m perpetuating the very misconceptions about single people that I wish didn’t exist. No one should feel shamed or evaluated based on a single set of standards that not everyone wants, and yet here I am, not only wanting it, but acting like I have it, so I can feel like I belong. I want strangers to think I’ve been chosen by someone and I am the same as everyone else.

  I’ve written my first short story in a long time, about a little girl who finds a baby on the street and her mom lets her keep it. It’s not until I’m done, and have given it to Javi, that I realize the story is about my own craving. I am embarrassed. Worse, he’s had it for two weeks and hasn’t said a word.

  Did he read it and hate it? Has he forgotten about it? Does he not care to read it because he doesn’t want to know more of me? Or is he embarrassed by how much I want a family? I remind myself that he’s slow to act on anything: His website is years out of date, and although he says he’s going to update it, he doesn’t. Months passed between when he said he wanted to read my first book and when he ordered it on Amazon. He still smokes, though he told me on our first date that he was quitting. He said he was actively looking for work that would keep him in New York, but that doesn’t seem to be happening because he keeps taking jobs that are out of town. Everything he does is languorous; he operates from the point of inertia, moving only when he’s forced. That’s not my way, but I remind myself not to judge him by my own standards.

  * * *

  When we arrive upstate I meet Javier’s friends, who are all married with kids, interesting, and smart. We sled and talk and play music and it’s fun and we cook a big meal for dinner. I’m relieved to discover how much I genuinely like them. Javier and Frankie go to the butcher for meat for the stew, and I stay behind, helping out with kitchen tasks.

  “This is the happiest I’ve ever seen Javier,” his friend Richard tells me. “I think you’re good for him.”

  I feel like a glow stick. “How so?” I ask, fishing, I suppose, for some compliments.

  “Well, you know, Javier’s a floater. He operates like he’s still moving from town to town, the way his family did when he was a kid in Europe, but with you, he seems more grounded. Maybe this time he can stay anchored. It’d be good for him to have a home base.”

  “Also good that you’re his age,” Natalia adds, then sees my face. “Shit, you don’t know about Anastasia?” I shake my head, sensing a looming threat. “Um, his last girlfriend was twenty-four.”

  “Yikes,” I say.

  “Yikes is right.”

  I had been so happy, only to suddenly be slammed with nerves. Maybe he can stay anchored, Richard said. It’s true that he lives out of a suitcase, always going between Maine, his TV shoots, and Jersey City. I have told myself this will all change when we live upstate with Frankie.

  Afterward, a group heads outside and returns reeking of pot. It bums me out that Javi has a kid and still smokes pot. What if Frankie needs him and he’s too stoned to help her? We stay up late talking, playing guitar, and telling stories none of us will remember. Soon we’re exhausted and make our way to bed. In the morning, after breakfast, Javier says he wants to talk about my story.

  “Yeah? You read it?”

  “Of course I read it,” he says. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

  We sit at the kitchen table and he tells me he thinks it’s amazing.

  “Really?” I ask. “You’re not just saying that?”

  “Seriously. I think it’s incredible.”

  “Wow. Thanks. Anything I should fix?”

  “I triple-love the ending, but it’s too upsetting. Anyone with a kid who reads this is going to find the ending too dark. It might work against you.”

  “Okay. That’s good feedback. Thanks. I’ll come up with alte
rnative endings.”

  “Great.”

  We’re quiet for a minute. Either I’m being too sensitive, or something weird has come between us while we’ve been up here, but I’m not sure which it is.

  “I like your friends,” I offer.

  “They like you, too.”

  “Are you…okay?” I ask. “You seem kind of…off.” I feel preemptively worried, and there’s only one answer I can bear to hear.

  “I’m just trying to figure some stuff out.”

  That was not the answer. “What sort of stuff?”

  “Us stuff,” he says. He glances at me and can probably see the tissue on my organs starting to crumple. I can’t hide it. “Don’t freak out. It’s nothing to freak out about,” he says.

  “I’m not freaking out. I’m listening. What are you trying to figure out?”

  “I’m not sure what I want,” he says.

  I force my face to stay even. “Meaning?”

  “I’m not sure I want to plant roots upstate,” he says.

  I relax, my organs soften, blood flow resumes, and my heart returns to beating. “Oh. Okay. Well, we don’t have to live upstate. That was your idea.”

  “I don’t know if I want to plant roots or make a family again. I don’t know if I want to stay in one place.”

  He’s not sure about me, he means. Everything he said he wanted just a few days ago, he’s taking back. Gravity holds my body in place while the rest of me hovers to the side, just TV static in the shape of a body, waiting until it’s safe to reunite.

  “But…you said. Just the other day…”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what shape I want my life to take. I need to figure out how to have you in my life.”

  “Did something happen?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I’m a flipbook of emotions: enraged, devastated, disappointed, heartbroken, and monstrously confused. “Then why are you changing your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Well, maybe I know. I’m not sure.”

  His waffling is torturing me. I cut him off before he can say something more permanent.

  “Okay, well…we don’t have to make any decisions right now.”

  “Great,” he says and leans across the table to kiss me.

  The next day we all go for a hike. We follow behind his friends in the woods. Frankie is up ahead walking with a little girl named Eliza. Javier takes my hand.

  “Let’s do it,” he says. “All of it. Let’s be a family.”

  “Yeah? You really want to?”

  “Yes, I really do,” he says. I squeeze his hand. “At least I think I do,” he adds.

  I stop. “Oh my God. You’re killing me.”

  “What do you mean? I just said I wanted a family with you.”

  “And then you added, ‘I think I do.’”

  “Right. Right now I think I want that,” he says.

  “Which implies that tomorrow you might feel another way.” He looks sheepish and shrugs.

  I can’t live like this, but I don’t want to let go and be without him and Frankie. She shows me the sad, dark poems she writes in her journals; we play games on my iPad, watch movies, read books, and have a connection that never has to be restarted after periods apart. Frankie fills me with purpose. I’m awed by her, by the way she grapples with her own truth at such a young age. I’d happily sacrifice my own time, my precious writing time, to be with her. I’m quiet for the rest of the hike, and when we return I lie down in our room and take deep anti-anxiety breaths. I cannot endure these small breaches of intimacy. Every time Javi vacillates on our future, I am thrown out into a vast black bottomless universe. Any kind of separation has always done this to me. I can’t live with the undecided. There is no one to swoop in and fix the situation for me.

  Ten minutes pass before Javier comes in and sits down on the bed. He’s stroking my arm.

  “Everything will be fine.”

  “You say that now, but then in five minutes you’ll say something totally different.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll land on something,” he says.

  “But why do I have to be pulled through this with you? It’s like you’re thinking out loud.”

  “I am thinking out loud,” he says.

  “Well, don’t. I don’t like it. It’s not fair to me.”

  “It’s not fair to keep it from you either,” he says.

  “Yes, it is. Just make a decision. This is unbearable for me. I can’t be trapped inside this uncertainty. I can’t breathe.”

  “Try to look on the bright side. You don’t have to go right for the negative all the time.”

  “That’s not negativity, it’s anxiety.”

  “Well, I want to live my life going toward lightness and love. Not complaining and negativity,” he says.

  My stomach hardens like I accidentally swallowed a kettlebell. How does he keep mistaking my anxiety for something it’s not? I feel defensive and demeaned. At least my anxiety is honest. Aiming to only go toward lightness and love seems like the worst way to hide from who you really are. I worry that no matter what Javi and I look at, we’ll both report seeing different things. Being rejected sends me into bed and under the covers for days, but having my anxiety rejected this way is splitting me apart. For the first time, I feel the urge to fight back on behalf of my emotions, to get them the recognition they deserve after a lifetime of being ignored.

  June 1981

  Dr. Rivka Golod

  Summary of Test Results

  Amanda’s fine motor movements of her fingers are excellent. There was some mild awkwardness, by contrast, in the area of speech praxis (eg in repeating multisyllabic words). Laterality is well established. She is right sided for handedness, footedness and eyedness, although she has trouble distinguishing left from right, and is equally as comfortable writing with her left hand as she is her right. Orientation is not entirely secure; she must think carefully before she locates body positions and must reposition her body in order to locate positions in space.

  She has a poor understanding of spatial and temporal concepts. It is difficult to understand history, or read a map, without a spatial and temporal framework on which to anchor ideas. She specifically needs to understand geographical relationships, and can only do so if taught visually and kinesthetically. For instance, instead of asking her to follow directions on a map, she needs to first experience the route by taking it.

  The Drainpipe Man

  The first day of sixth grade for the second time is cold pins and needles. I wake up damp on my mom’s couch, eyes burning. It’s chilly and dark outside, and I soft-walk past Mom and Jimmy, climbing the stairs back to my room to glance at my new uniform, drenched in regret. By the time I discovered the fast one they pulled, it was too late to stay at my old school. It’s not until seventh grade that the good uniforms kick in. Until then, it’s tunics. The kind of uniform Little House on the Prairie kids probably wore. Had I known from the beginning, or at least paid better attention when I was visiting, I would not have agreed to stay back. Even altered, the uniform is too big. It goes past my knees, and the straps keep slipping off my shoulders. Tunics are for babies.

  I love the blazer, though. While it doesn’t signal that I’m broken and they better take care of me, it does something better. It says they need to take me seriously, that I’m important. I get dressed, pull my socks to my knees, and slip on my new L.L.Bean bluchers. In the kitchen, the table is set for breakfast with notes from Mom and Jimmy: “GOOD LUCK! WE LOVE YOU MORE!” The dark, quiet kitchen reminds me of being awake after lights-out, and my body lances with boiling worry that something will happen to my mom while I’m gone. My brain sizzles, too, with the dreaded realization that I’m too old to still have this fear. I look at the clock: 7 a.m. The school bus will get here at 7:15.

  I can’t eat the cereal; I don’t even try. But I force a slab of white bread into my mouth, realizing on my rush to the bathroom what a terrible mistake I’ve made.
I brush my teeth, but it doesn’t take away the smell of vomit. I spray myself with something I find under the sink. Now I smell sticky and sweet, like an old lady. I go outside and wait for the bus, hoping to air myself out.

  Vito stands across the street, outside Joe’s, arms crossed and ready to watch us kids go to school. Jimmy Alcatraz is long gone. Where the mafia hangout was is now the Figaro Café. The air is fresh, the slight coolness in front of each breeze carrying the smell of change and beginning, except I’m not changing; my worries keep repeating themselves, just like the rest of my life. If I were going into seventh grade the way I should be, Kara would be four grades ahead of me instead of five, and I’d be one floor below her at school instead of three. Now she’s a junior. We’ll overlap for only two years before she goes to college, and then I’ll never see her again. I wish Kara and I were going to the first day of school together, but high school doesn’t start as early.

  I’m the only one on the school bus, and I watch carefully to make sure the driver doesn’t trick me and drive to a secret location where he’ll chain me to a furnace in the dungeon and feed me to alligators, but I recognize the route. It’s the way to my father’s house. As we near the Pan Am Building, and the “Karen Silkwood was murdered” graffiti, my body goes into countdown. When will this feeling ever go away? Why haven’t I outgrown it? We pass it, and the countdown subsides. Soon my new school comes into view, and I realize I’ve been holding half my breath and my shoulders are at my ears.

  In front of the school, chauffeurs in suits release uniformed girls from the backseats of Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces. Nannies wave before strolling their carriages to the boat pond. The street is clogged with girls hugging, shrieking, and jumping up and down. I overhear girls talking about European vacations, au pairs, exchange programs, new dogs, and boyfriends. No one speaks to me. Mrs. Maynard is standing at the front doors, shaking all the girls’ hands. Everyone is wearing a blazer, and whatever authority I felt it gave me disappears in this surge of sameness.