by Jamie Sumner
We send Coralee home with the ham bone from the peas to give to Daisy, and then we play dominoes all afternoon.
“Hot diggity, I am on a roll!” Mema says after three rounds of chicken foot. This is the only game of dominoes I know. You win by making as many “chicken feet” with your tiles as you can. They look like little pitchforks scattered all over the table by the time we are done. Mema wins all our pennies and dimes and then serves everybody her peanut brittle instead of cooking an actual dinner.
It’s awesome. And nobody says a word about what will happen tomorrow. On my way to bed, I pass Grandpa in the hallway. He’s leaning up against the wall in his pajamas.
“You okay, Grandpa?”
“What? Oh yes.” He pats me on the shoulder without looking down. “Now, you all be safe on your drive home in the morning, you hear?”
He’s forgotten already that we’re here to stay. Will this be what it’s like? Every morning reminding him what day it is and that we’re not leaving? The peanut brittle hardens into a tight knot in my stomach, and when I’m finally in bed, it takes a while to settle myself to sleep.
The only way to get into the town of Eufaula from where we live on the outskirts is to take Route 9 across the bridge that runs over Lake Eufaula. I love that bridge. It’s so wide and long that if you roll down the windows, it feels like you’re heading out to sea.
The lake is why Mema and Grandpa moved here in the first place. After a lifetime working on plane engines at Tinker Air Force Base, Grandpa wanted nothing else but to sit in a motorboat in the middle of nowhere and fish. When I was little, he used to take me with him. We had a special little chair we’d strap into the middle of the boat, and I had my own fishing pole. It was red and had Big Bird on it. We got it at the general store for a dollar. We would leave before the sun came up and sit out there in the quiet. I was his favorite fishing buddy because I’d had my whole life to practice sitting still.
Catfish was the only thing we ever caught. Grandpa would pull them in for us. Their long whiskers would whip against the side of the boat when they came up, shiny and dark, from the water. I’d squeal a little if one of them brushed against my leg in the bottom of the boat.
We’d fill buckets up with lake water and take them back home alive. When I asked Grandpa why, he said, “You want them swimming until they hit the pan, baby girl. Then you clean ’em and fry ’em up right.”
But every now and then there was a little one, and he’d let me keep it as a pet, swimming around and around in that bucket, until all the others disappeared. Eventually we’d take it back to the lake.
“Live to see another day,” he’d say, and we’d salute as its tail disappeared under the water.
These are the things I want to remember. These are the things I don’t want him to forget.
It’s twenty-eight degrees out on January 2 and nobody’s fishing. The lake is big and dark and still. But if I lean over, I can still spot the red buoys, like inflated balloons in a line on the water, that mark off the swimming hole.
When Mom and I pull into the parking lot of the middle school, I see it’s almost full. The teachers had to come in to get their classrooms ready for tomorrow. Just the thought of tomorrow makes me want to hit the automatic locks. This school is tiny, like old-timey schoolhouse tiny, not much bigger than the church. It’s brick, like everything else, and there’s a playground next door because the elementary school is right behind it.
Mom clucks her tongue when the only two handicapped spaces are taken by cars without handicapped tags. She’s called a tow truck a time or two. But today she parks along the curb and hurries to get me out. She’s already got her game face on. It’s her advocate mode, the mom setting she developed from years of fighting for insurance to pay for things like new shoes to go over my braces and fighting school for extended time between classes and fighting teachers who thought CP was the same thing as a learning disability. Advocate mode accomplishes a lot. But it also landed me with a bodysuit I had to wear under my clothes for three years to help me sit up straighter. It was white with pink stars and I hated it. So there is a downside.
Today as we roll through the double doors (no handicapped button), Mom’s face says, We are the ability in disability. Hear us roar.
Oh boy.
But the problem, as I see from the get-go, is that there’s nobody to roar at. There’s only one person at the front desk when we get into the office, and she’s knitting. When she comes around to meet us, I see she is short and round and red cheeked and kind of looks like a garden gnome.
“Hi, you two. I’m Mrs. Peabody, just a volunteer up here at the front while everyone’s in meetings.” She cups my face in her hand and calls me “dear.” She smells like rose soap. “We’ve been expecting you. Let me take you on back to the principal’s office.”
Mrs. Rutherford, the principal, is a tall, thin woman, and when she bends down to shake my hand, she reminds me of Olive Oyl from Popeye. A picture of the lake hangs next to her diplomas in her office, and she has one of those big old leather desk chairs that looks like a throne.
“So nice to meet you both. How are you settling in?”
“We’re fine. Just fine.” Mom gives her a firm handshake and then pulls out a folder with my name across the front in huge block letters. She bought a label maker last fall, and I am embarrassed beyond all measure that she has actually put it to use.
“Good to hear. Give your mother and father a hello from me. I didn’t get a chance to speak with them at the Christmas Eve service.”
Mom blushes, but I don’t think Mrs. Rutherford meant anything by it. She looks like someone who says exactly what she means. No more. No less.
She keeps going. “Well, as you will come to see, we’re a small establishment here. There are only forty students in the sixth-grade class. One hundred fifty in the entire middle school.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.”
Mrs. Rutherford turns to look at her computer. “And it looks like Lily—”
“Ellie,” I say.
“Ellie, don’t interrupt,” Mom says.
Mrs. Rutherford turns to me. “Ellie, is it? Well then, I’ll just put a note in your file.”
Mom opens her mouth like she’d like to add a good many more notes to my file, but Mrs. Rutherford is talking again and ignores the folder in Mom’s lap.
“Okay, Ellie. I’ve got you in homeroom with Mrs. Tilly, and then you’ll travel with the B group through class changes.”
Mom jumps at that. “Yes, how do you plan to handle class changes?”
“What do you mean, ‘handle’?”
“I mean, who will be her aide? Who will be there for bathroom assistance, and what is your plan for physical education? Is the cafeteria handicapped accessible? Are all classrooms on the ground floor, or will Ellie need to take the elevator? Is there an elevator?”
Whoa. Mom needs a little less coffee.
Mrs. Rutherford looks at her over her glasses.
Mom looks at Mrs. Rutherford over the top of her file.
I see my chance and back out of the room slowly. Neither one of them notices.
I could have told Mom after one trip down the hallway that the school is only one story. It’s that small and I’m glad. I hated having to be one of three kids waiting for the elevator. It was always me and some soccer player on crutches.
I roll along, peering into classrooms if there’s no teacher there. The bulletin boards in the hallway are already decorated for the Cupid’s Arrow Valentine’s Dance. I managed to skip my first-ever dance this year. It was part of the Fall Festival, to raise money for new locker rooms. As if I care about the locker rooms. I stayed home and made a peanut butter cheesecake instead.
At the farthest end of the hallway (there is only one), I turn right and find myself in the gym. And the smell hits me. Floor polish and sweat. Every gym in every school across America smells the same.
I’m about to back out when I hear the squeak of tennis shoes and
freeze. Across the basketball court, a man in a red tracksuit is stacking wrestling mats. He sees me, straightens, and then jogs over.
“Lily, correct? I’m Hutch, Coach Hutch.” He holds out a hand, but he doesn’t squat down next to me, which I appreciate. We shake, and I’m glad, and a little surprised, that his hand isn’t sweaty.
“How do you already know who I am?”
“Principal Rutherford wanted to let all of us, those who will be your teachers, know that we’d have a new student tomorrow.”
Yeah, I bet that’s all she said. And I bet they always have a meeting when a new student comes to school.
“So is Hutch your first name or your last?”
It comes out sounding rude, but I don’t mean it to. It’s a reflex. Teachers bring out the worst in me.
He laughs, though, and rubs the back of his head. It’s shaved in that way guys do when they don’t want people to know they’re losing their hair. “Neither, actually. Hutchinson is my last name. Jim is my first.”
“Well, I go by Ellie.”
“All right, Ellie. Good to know.”
I start to rock back and forth. It’s a thing I do when I’m fidgety. Mom hates it.
“Well, Ellie, I better get back to these mats. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Mr. Hutchinson, Hutch, turns with a wave, and I head back toward the office. PE back home meant private sessions with the school’s physical therapist—lots of stretching on yoga balls and torture in the gait trainer. What’s it going to mean here? Hutch seems nice enough and all, but do they actually expect me to change for gym? Am I supposed to play dodgeball?
When I meet Mom outside the office and we go back out into the cold, she’s shaking her head and there are now sticky notes on top of her file in a rainbow of colors.
“They’ve never had to do an individualized plan before for someone with a physical disability. Can you believe that?”
In this school, yes, I can.
“But they’re making one for you. Mrs. Rutherford’s tough, but I think she’ll fight for you.”
We get to the van and there’s a parking ticket on it. Mom looks at it for about three seconds and then she rips it in half.
“Mom, stop! You can’t do that!”
While she’s buckling me in, I add, “And not everything has to be a fight.”
She looks me in the eye. “But I need you safe. I need you healthy, happy, and safe.”
There it is again. Her favorite saying.
“I am healthy and safe.”
“What about happy?”
“TBD.”
She gets in the front seat and studies me in the rearview mirror. She looks so serious I can’t stand it.
“Just kidding, Mom! JK! JK! I’m just messing with you.”
She shakes her head and starts counting things off on her fingers. “All the classes are on the first floor.”
“I know.”
“And you are required to be present for gym class. But we’re still figuring out what that looks like. Mr. Hutchinson will be your gym teacher, and I’ve got a phone call scheduled with him in the morning after I drop you off.”
“What do you mean, when you drop me off?” I thought I was riding the bus.
We’ve left the school behind and Mom is already speeding. Because of all her negotiating, we’re going to be late for Grandpa’s doctor’s appointment.
“According to zoning codes, the bus can’t go any farther down Route 9 than the entrance to Royal Oaks.”
The main road in Royal Oaks is half a mile long and gravel, and Alcoa Drive, our street, is at the far end. She doesn’t have to say anything else, but she does. “And they don’t have a lift.”
I lean all the way over and put my head on my knees. I’ve visited this town my whole life, and this is the first time I’ve felt like an outsider. Lakeview Middle might as well be another planet.
“Hey! Put your shoulder strap on and stop moping. Coralee’s going to ride with you. I already called Dane and Susie.”
“Great.”
But I don’t lift my head again until I feel the van slow. Neurology, here we come.
Unlike in the school parking lot, there are rows and rows of handicapped spots at the hospital. As we roll toward admittance, I think how weird it is, going to see a neurologist, or any doctor really, that’s not for me.
I wish it felt nicer.
Mema and Grandpa have both dressed up in their church clothes. Every single time I see Mema in pantyhose, it makes me think of church and funerals. I can’t bear to think of either. I want to go back to the trailer and bake a giant batch of oatmeal butterscotch cookies.
When we make it past the receptionist, Mom is out of breath and her hair’s standing up like a Muppet. We are so late.
The room they lead us to isn’t like any exam room I’ve ever seen. It’s more like an office, with a big polished desk and a print of sunflowers on the wall, which beats the airplanes and train carpet at the kids’ hospital by a mile.
Mema glances up when we come in, and she looks wrung out, like someone took her by her lace collar and shook her. A doctor in a suit and white coat stands and holds out a hand. He looks twelve. Okay, maybe not twelve, but young, real young. I have no idea where Grandpa is.
“Sorry we’re late, Mother,” Mom says to Mema.
“It’s all right, honey. Your dad’s just getting dressed. Dr. Hirschman was filling me in.”
Mom turns to him. “Alice. Alice Cowan.” Like she’s James Bond. “I’d appreciate if you’d catch me up.”
“Alice. Yes. I was just telling your mother that Jonah seems to be in peak form. Other than the nose fracture, he is in perfect health . . . physically.”
We all take in the long pause before “physically.” I am familiar with the long pause. It never comes before anything good. I grip my armrests.
“But?” Mom says.
“But,” Dr. Hirschman says, “the Alzheimer’s is progressing. Faster than we’d anticipated.” He stops and looks every single one of us in the eye. “There are some decisions that need to be made.”
Mom grabs Mema’s hand and takes a seat. I roll behind them and bump into Mom’s chair, trying to get closer. We are a sad circle.
“What kind of decisions?” Mom asks, all quiet like a little girl. I miss her take-charge James Bond voice.
“In regard to whether Mr. Cowan might need to be moved to a facility that can better meet his needs.”
A facility. I know what that means. It’s a fancy word for an old folks’ home. It’ll swap his sawdust smell with disinfectant. I want to throw something, but Mema gets there first.
“Meet his needs better than his own home? With his own family?” Mema taps the doctor’s desk with her fist on “home” and “family.”
Dr. Hirschman nods.
“Given the recent accident and the incident at the church, there are things to be considered.” He steeples his fingers. They are long and smooth. The smoothness bothers me. He’s too young to be playing with people’s lives. Like, what could he possibly know about all this? “Things like whether he is a danger to himself or others.”
Mema puts her hands back in her lap and looks down.
“Not yet.”
“What’s that, ma’am?”
Mema looks up. “I said, not yet. I am not ready to give up on him. I have been married to that man for almost fifty years, and we’ve been through the wringer, I will tell you.” She points a finger at him like he’s trying to call a bluff. “I meant it when I said ‘in sickness and in health.’ And I’ll know quitting time when I see it. This isn’t it.” Her voice breaks at the end. “I got my girl here now. My girls.”
Mema reaches back and fumbles for both our hands.
I roll forward as far as I can. I wish I could bulldoze my way right through this wall and this hospital and take Mom and Mema and Grandpa with me. We wouldn’t stop until we hit the ocean. This can’t be reality. It can’t. Doctors don’t know everything.
/> Dr. Hirschman steeples his fingers again and sighs.
“Mr. Cowan is seventy years old and healthy. There’s a good chance he could live ten, twenty more years while his mind continues to deteriorate. Are you prepared for that?”
Mema stands and puts her hand on the doorknob.
“Doctor. We are all of us deteriorating,” she says, and opens the door. “We might as well do it together.”
Mom gets up like she’s going to follow, but turns to me instead and says, “Ellie, you go with your grandmother. I’ll be out in one second.”
“Alice, what are you doing?”
“I’ll be out in a minute, Mother.”
I can’t read Mom’s face. But I can read Mema’s. It’s the angry emoji times a million. Mad is better than sad, though. At least for right now. I want to tell her that Mom’s a genius at the work-around. Maybe she’ll come up with something the doctor has never considered. I pull on Mema’s hand a little until she starts moving again.
Back out front, we spot Grandpa in the waiting area talking to a little girl wearing an Elsa dress. They’re standing in front of the fish tank. We move toward them.
“Your mother is trying to kill me, Ellie,” Mema says angrily.
“Nah. She has her methods. I bet she’s just giving that doctor a piece of her mind.” At least, I hope so.
Grandpa turns when he sees us coming. He’s neat and tidy and smiling. He looks like himself, healthy and strong. He looks happy.
“Marianne, look who I found in reception!”
We both look at the girl, and I wonder if I am supposed to know her too, but Mema looks just as confused as me.
“Look, M, it’s little Lily! Can you believe our baby granddaughter has finally learned to walk?” He claps his hands together. “It’s a miracle!”
Time stops.
And then it starts again.
And I am rolling on by now.
Past the fish and the girl.
Past my grandmother, gently taking my grandfather by the elbow.
Into the hallway where windows overlook the parking lot.
I catch sight of myself in their reflection and cannot remember when I started to cry.
