Roll with It

by Jamie Sumner

  It happens to a lot of really early babies, I guess, this cerebral (“brain”) palsy (“paralysis”) that left me different from everybody else. The brain just isn’t ready to protect itself from the bumps and bruises of the outside world. It’s like a snail that hasn’t grown its shell.

  The doctors may not know what caused it, but they know what it does to me. It makes it so I can’t move my body like I want. It’s like everything is both weaker and heavier at the same time—like your leg’s gone numb, and you know if you could just shake the pins and needles out, then you could get up and walk it off. Or at least that’s what I imagine, when I imagine standing and walking on my own.

  It’s not as bad as it was in the beginning, though. I couldn’t eat or even breathe without help at first. I stayed with all the other tiny sick babies in intensive care for weeks and weeks. Mom thinks it’s luck and a blessing that I came home on what was supposed to be my actual birth date. We celebrate both every year—the day I was born and the day I came home.

  But what Mrs. Hayes is writing down now and what Mrs. Lawrence is nodding along to, thanks to Lauren’s brilliant input, is that I’m still a baby. Never mind that I worked with a physical therapist to get strong enough to wheel my own chair. Never mind that the feeding therapist let me “graduate” when I could eat and drink on my own without dribbling food down my front or choking on it. Never mind all that.

  Just one mention of the “history” and I’m back to square one.

  I nudge Mom with my elbow. She can’t let them put that on my record and stick me with an aide at my new school. I give her the say something look.

  And she does.

  She looks at all of those ladies in that room and says, “I think that’s a wise decision.”

  We do not talk all the way home.

  We do not talk over a dinner of cheese toast and milk and shriveled grapes, which are the last things in our fridge before we leave tomorrow.

  We do not talk until it is the middle of the night and I have to yell from the bathroom for her to bring me toilet paper because there’s none on the roll.

  She’s waiting for me in the hall when I come out.

  “How could you?”

  “Ellie, listen—”

  “Why should I listen to you when you never listen to me?”

  “Honey, I know you don’t want an aide, but—”

  “Of course I don’t want an aide! I don’t want an aide because I don’t need an aide!” I bump up against the wall with my wheel in that way Mom hates because it leaves scuff marks.

  She kneels down in front of me so we’re eye to eye. I stop moving.

  “Ellie, we don’t know what this new school is like. We don’t know how equipped they are to handle you.”

  “To handle me?”

  Mom rocks back and sits on her heels, and now I’m looking down at all the tiny lines around her eyes.

  “Yes, Ellie. Handle you. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh or demeaning, but it is my job to protect you. It is my job to make sure you are safe and looked after, even if you don’t like it.”

  I want to cry, but that would be babyish, right?

  “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. None of this is.” She waves her arms toward the front door, where our suitcases are waiting. “But we’re all going to look out for one another, okay? You, me, Mema, and Grandpa.”

  I know I should tell Mom how scared I am to start at a new school. That it’s not just about the aide. What if I don’t make a single friend? What if I’m just the crippled kid all over again? I’m scared about moving in with my grandparents, too. What if Grandpa gets worse, or Mema says she doesn’t want our help and we’ve already quit our whole lives to move there? But I look at Mom, and man, she looks tired, like she could curl up and sleep right here on the floor, so I just say, “Okay,” and roll back to my almost-empty room.

  3

  Road Trip

  Dear Dad,

  I’m writing from the road. Don’t worry. I’m not driving (ha, ha).

  We’re on our way to Oklahoma, as you know. Mom said I had to email you and wish you Merry Christmas.

  Merry Christmas.

  Okay, now she says I have to say more than that.

  Tap-tap-tapping because I can’t think of anything.

  Okay, how’s the weather? Just kidding, we left ten minutes ago.

  Really, though, I’m good. Wheels are good. See you in the summer.

  Ellie

  It’s already been more than three hours and we’re only just nearing Memphis. Tennessee is so freaking long.

  I mean, it’s not like I have a problem sitting. Obviously. But the DVD player broke last month, and there’s nothing to do back here but watch the river appear and disappear again. If you’ve never seen the Mississippi, you’re not missing anything. The M–i–double s–i–double s–i–double p–i is ugly. It’s murky on a good day. In winter it’s toilet water.

  At least there’s a big, beautiful lake where we’re headed. If I play it right, maybe Mom will let me do more than sit with my feet in it this summer. Water is the only place my body isn’t the enemy. In water I’m weightless. I can float free.

  “I’m starving.”

  “Let’s get past Memphis.”

  “But the barbecue’s in Memphis!”

  I saw an episode of The Great Food Truck Race where they went to Memphis. I want to go to Leonard’s Pit, get a whole pile of their barbecue pork and shoestring fries.

  I yell out the exit number at every mile marker for ten miles.

  It works.

  We’re back on the road in less than half an hour with greasy paper bags full of food. Why do barbecue joints always give you those tissuey napkins that tear to shreds when you try to use them?

  Mom’s such a pushover, but she’s good at road-tripping like this. “Let’s make it an adventure,” she’ll say whenever we have to do something half-miserable, like go for leg brace fittings or clothes shopping. Clothes shopping is the worst, with Mom following me into every fitting room and helping me try on jeans. As if anybody wants her mom to watch her try on jeans. But she somehow makes it easier. We’ll skip school, take the day, eat picnics in the park or get Auntie Anne’s pretzel nuggets at the mall, and take long drives with the windows down. She can spin anything.

  I take a bite of my lemon square from Leonard’s, and powdered sugar dissolves like cotton candy in my mouth. It reminds me of lemon cream pie. I remember that’s what won the pie contest at Mema’s church a few years ago. Every year on the first weekend in May, Bethlehem Methodist has a big fish fry and silent auction. And every year they have a Bake-Off and the best pie wins. It’s kind of a big deal: there’s a one-hundred-dollar prize and an awards ceremony, and everyone remembers who won last year and the year before, going all the way back to when the contest first started. I’ve always been stuck at home, still in school and wishing I could be there. I do some basic math—the Bake-Off is a little more than four months from now. I’ll be there and I can finally enter. And I can win. I know I can. Every famous chef has to start somewhere.

  “Shoot!” Mom says when a blob of red sauce falls on her pants.

  I look down at my wheelchair tray. I forget sometimes that other humans don’t come as well equipped.

  “I’ve got a hundred bottles of beer on the wall!”

  “Ellie. No.”

  I sing louder. We’re in Arkansas now and stuck in traffic outside Conway.

  “Take one down, pass it around, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the waaaaaaaall.”

  “Ellie, I will pull this car over right this minute if you don’t stop that.”

  “Niiiiinety-nine bottles of beer on the—”

  “All right. If you don’t like my choice of music, you can pick the station.”

  “Anything but country.”

  “We live in the country music capital of the world!”

  “Not anymore,” I say, and catch her eye in the mirror. I shoot her a th
umbs-up.

  “Not anymore,” she says, and smiles and spins the dial.

  Two years ago, when we were driving to Eufaula for Christmas, the van broke down in the middle of nowhere. It was snowing. Mom’s cell phone died. It’s the one and only time I’ve ever heard her curse. She made up for it that day, though . . . aaaall the four-letter words. I don’t think she knew I could hear. But she was standing in the gravel, kicking at the tire and yelling expletives for all she was worth.

  After she calmed down or maybe just ran out of steam, she put her hazards on and set out the little orange triangles she keeps in the back. She wrapped a blanket around me and put the iPad on the Nick Jr. app. It took her an hour and she lost her hat in the snow, but she did it. She changed that flat in the freezing-cold middle of nowhere America. When she climbed back in, we sat for a minute and listened to Christmas music while the van warmed up, and she wiped the black off her hands with wet wipes. It was nice after it wasn’t scary anymore. And then we drove on.

  If there’s one thing I know about Mom, it’s that she can do just about anything. I’m hoping that’s still true. I’m hoping she can help Grandpa. Help him in the way he needs, I mean. Fixing a tire’s not quite the same as fixing a person.

  We hit Oklahoma just as the sun goes down, and it’s everything I remember—flat as a pancake for miles and miles. The roads are bumpy with tar crisscrossing over the cracks like a zebra’s stripes. My chair rattles in its harness, and I have to put away the book I’m reading so I don’t puke.

  There’s no snow here, and I can see the red dirt edging up against the trees when we turn off the highway. It’s big pines and oaks, taller than anything we have back home, kind of like driving into Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood.

  We turn off Route 9 onto the gravel road that leads into Mema and Grandpa’s neighborhood. When they first moved here after he quit his job in Midwest City, he called it a “retirement village.” He said it wasn’t a trailer park if nothing ever moved. And he was right. People here tuck their trailers up under these trees and lock them down with cement foundations and wood porches, so you can hardly tell where the wheels used to go. They build sheds and fill them with tools for their gardens and then fence it all in.

  When we pull into 713 Alcoa Drive, the headlights snag on the smashed-up front of Grandpa’s Ford, and it’s so pitiful I look away, down at my chair, creaking as we bump over the gravel. Trailers. Trucks. Bodies. There’re so many things wanting to move that the air feels electric with it, like when the hair stands up on your arms before a lightning strike. But I’m so tired, all I want is a bed and a blanket. If Mom’s going to break the news to Mema that we’re here to stay, I’ll need to be ready and rested, because there’s sure enough going to be a storm.

  4

  Trailer Living

  The first thing that wakes me is the squirrels. They’re skittering on the tin roof and it’s loud, like they are right in this very room with their claws clicking across my brain. I always forget about the squirrels. They’re red, just like the dirt, and they’re big as cats. You’d think in December they’d find a hole to snuggle in and take a break.

  I turn my head and see that Mom’s already awake. She’s sitting up on the side of the bed and slipping a sweater on over her nightgown. Her short hair is smushed flat in the back.

  “You only brought in one of the suitcases.”

  We were so worn out by the time we pulled in, we barely said a word to Mema before falling into bed.

  “I know,” she says, and stands to look out the window instead of at me. I grip the mattress and push myself up until I’m sitting and can see out too. There’s a clear view of the Ford. The front bumper is hanging off and the hood’s bent up like a tepee.

  “And you didn’t bring in my stander.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve got to tell her.”

  Still she won’t look at me.

  “Mom, she’s going to figure it out eventually . . . you know, when we don’t leave next week.”

  Mom snaps the blinds shut and it makes me jump and sends the squirrels running.

  “Ellie, I know. I will tell her in my own way when the time is right. You’ve got to trust me to know when that is.”

  “What’s all the hollering about?”

  Mema comes in with a mug of coffee and hands it to Mom. There’s a mouse on it lifting a barbell, and it reads: LORD, GIVE ME STRENGTH. Mema’s short, but she squints at both of us so the lines around her blue eyes multiply and she looks fierce, like a tiny army general. Mom sips and eyes me over the rim.

  “Nothing, Mema. I’m just not ready to get up yet,” I say.

  “Well, you just sit tight, then, and I’ll get the food going. No one argues in my house before breakfast.”

  She claps once and then holds her hands out like she’s trying to hug the whole room. “I am just so happy to have my girls home.”

  After she leaves, Mom comes over and sits next to me and asks, “Need some help getting into your chair?”

  I shake my head. Why would I let her help me when she never lets me help her?

  “Here, mix these together.”

  Mema passes me a plastic yellow bowl and dumps in two handfuls of flour and one of cornmeal. I dig through the drawers for a wooden spoon and notice she’s moved all the bowls and dishes down to the bottom cabinets.

  She’s gotten ready for me.

  “You didn’t even measure it,” I say.

  “Measure, shmeasure. I’ve been doing this long enough, I don’t need a number to tell me if it’s right.”

  Her gray hair is up in a braid as usual and then twirled in a bun. She looks like the grandmother in a fairy tale. Except her sweatshirt has a drunken Santa on it with Christmas lights that flash. It says GOD GRANT ME THE SERENITY in big capital letters.

  I roll over to the table and stir. Everything in this kitchen is yellow. The table, the chairs, the curtains, the rug. Even the floor, cracked plastic tile, is kind of yellow. I love it. It’s like sitting on the sun.

  Mom perches on a barstool, also yellow, across the counter in the “dining room.” This place is so small, every room just runs into the next.

  “Dad!” she says when Grandpa walks in, still buttoning his shirt. She jumps up and gives him a gentle hug, the kind you’d give a kitten. His hair is wet and combed, and there are pleats in his pants. Standing alongside him, Mom looks like the crazy one, in her sweater and nightgown and troll hair. Except for the fat bandage across his nose, Grandpa looks almost dapper.

  He comes over to me and squats.

  “How’s my little lady doing, hey?”

  Up close, though, I can see the burns on his face and arms from the airbag. It looks like a really bad rash, and now I, too, want to hug him like he’s a kitten.

  “I’m good, Grandpa. Real good.”

  “That thing holding up okay?” he says, and pats the armrest on my chair. He always talks about it like it’s a car or a horse.

  “Yeah, it’s good. Mom just let me take the stabilizers off. Want to see?”

  I pull back from the table and rock backward so my feet are up in the air. It’s not for more than a few seconds, but Mom and Mema gasp like I’m about to drop a tray of dishes.

  “Ellie, that is not why we took those extra wheels off the back!” Mom says, and I drop down again.

  “Honey, do not be doing tricks in my kitchen,” Mema says, and swats me with a towel.

  “You two stop fussing over her.”

  “Thanks, Grandpa.”

  “Here.” Mema hands me the buttermilk to stir into the batter. Biscuits on my first morning beats dry cereal any day.

  Grandpa walks back toward the bedroom again, still fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, and Mom leans against the counter and crosses her arms.

  “He seems okay this morning,” she says.

  “Seams are for clothes. You just wait,” Mema says. “Lord, I love that man, but he is set to give me a heart attack.” She shakes flour
off her front over the sink and takes the bowl back. “Now, twenty minutes to breakfast. You all get out of my kitchen so I can finish up.”

  There may be no snow here, but it is free-zing out. It’s going on night now, and I’m sitting out by the front door waiting for Mom to bring the van around because there’s no ramp off the porch out back. The wind hits full force because there are no hills to cut it, and my dress isn’t long enough to pull down over my knees.

  Let’s not even talk about the fact that I have to wear a dress, with lace, to the Christmas Eve service at church. Mema insisted.

  I don’t mind church, really, but it’s awkward when everybody stands up to sing and then sits down again. Up and down. Up and down while I just sit. And then there’s the “Please take a moment to greet your neighbor” weirdness. There’s always one mom or grandmama who talks at me like I’m two: “Oh, hellooooo. And how old are you?” (really loudly, two inches from my face). “The things you do for family,” as Mom would say.

  “Psssst.”

  I whip my chair around. It skids on the front walk. I swear the sound came from the bushes.

  “Psssssssssst.”

  “Who’s there?” I don’t know why I’m whispering.

  A girl around my age in a bright red velvet dress steps out from behind the holly tree. Her hair’s so blond and big, it looks like a wig.

  “How y’all doin’?”

  “Who’s y’all?” I look around, like maybe there’s a crowd behind me waving back at her. When she takes a step forward, I shrink down a little in my chair.

  “Aw, you know what I mean. Hiya, I’m Coralee.”

  She holds her hand out and I make myself do a quick shake. I wonder how old she is and if her mother did that to her hair on purpose.

  “Coral Dee?”

  “Ha! Nah. Cora-LEE.”