After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I don’t want Aunt Caroline to see me with Crow. To see me getting out of this van. There would be too much to explain.

  Crow brakes the van to a stop. Leans across me to open the door, which is heavy and sticks. Crow is so close, I can feel his breath on my skin. His jacket sleeve has pushed up—I see the tail of the coiled green snake just above his wrist. Crow was close to Trina once, wasn’t he? Here is proof.

  “Take care, chérie, it’s a big step to the street.”

  On the sidewalk I watch the minivan move away. Within seconds it becomes one of several vans and small trucks on Mount Street. He called me chérie!

  6

  march 11, 2005

  dear dad,

  thank you for the christmas gifts.

  i am sorry not to call back.

  i dont do much e-mail here. its not like tarrytown.

  my friends in yarrow lake arent into it.

  i am happy here. thank you for inviting me to visit.

  i am busy now with classes. maybe sometime.

  jenna

  (It took me forty minutes to write this. Trying to decide if I had to say “love, Jenna.” In his cards and e-mails to me Dad always says “love, Dad.” It’s so phony, though. I hate it. I just can’t say “love” to him. Not anymore.)

  7

  “I wish.”

  At school I try not to look for Crow. Try not to stare past the others’ faces hoping to see his. Try not to hang out at the back of the school. Try not to drift through the seniors’ wing, where a sophomore is out of place.

  I was so surprised: Trina knew! Only a few hours after Crow left me off on Mount Street, I’m in my room at home and my cell rings, and Trina’s voice is reedy and sharp in my ear. “Hey baby, heard you hooked up with Crow.” I stammered telling her he’d given me a ride, that was all. Trina laughed to show this was cool with her, why’d she care if Crow gave me a ride home. I said, Crow didn’t give me a ride home, just a ride from one part of downtown to another. Trina laughed and clicked off. Yet next day at school, in the cafeteria, Trina sinks her nails into my wrist, says, “So where’s Crow? Why’re you with us, where’s Crow?” like she’s angry and sneering but smiling at me, leaning close almost like she’s kissing me. And Kiki, and Dolores, and T-Man, and Rust, and Roger, and Jax are looking on.

  “Trina, Crow just gave me a ride. A few blocks. He saw me walking, it was cold…”

  “In his dad’s truck, eh? That must’ve been warm.”

  Trina’s sitting between T-Man and Dolores, and there’s no room for me at their end of the table. I’m standing with my tray, beginning to feel anxious. (Maybe Trina is teasing? Trina is always teasing!) “Jenna, hey. Here’s a place.” Rust Haber pulls out a chair for me next to him, but I don’t want to sit with Rust. He’s a short, blunt-faced boy with muscled arms and shoulders from working out and a smirky smile, and Trina has told me Rust is “kind of into” me—thinks I’m “cute”—but his eyes on me are never friendly, always kind of taunting. Like, if I give in and sit by him, if I ever hook up with him, he’ll laugh at me afterward.

  There’s Jax Yardman. I don’t trust him either. There’s Kiki Weaver, pulling out a chair for me. “Jenna? C’mon.” I’m sitting next to Kiki, staring at the food on my plate. At the other end of the noisy table Trina is laughing, I don’t dare look at her. Kiki is a big-boned girl with long, straight no-color hair streaked with purple. Every time I see Kiki, she has added another silver pin to her face, so she’s glittering like a pincushion. Kiki has a big chest, not like Trina, who’s size zero. Kiki leans close to me, saying, “Trina’s pissed at you, but she’ll get over it if you act like you’re sorry.”

  “Crow only just gave me a ride in his—”

  “Sure. Trina knows.”

  “…it was just, like, he felt sorry for me, I guess. He…”

  Kiki makes a gesture like to signal this is an obvious fact, everybody knows. Why’d I think I should explain?

  8.

  Chérie he called me. When he leaned across me to open the door of the van. Remembering that, I felt dazed, dizzy. I wanted to cry, to laugh, to scream. I wanted to kiss his mouth, which was so close to mine.

  Chérie he called me. Take care, chérie, it’s a big step to the street.

  The pronunciation is shay-ree. Meaning dear, dear one.

  In my French dictionary it also means beloved, precious.

  In March, I’ve begun auditing French II.

  First they told me no, it couldn’t be allowed. If I wanted to take French II, I should have enrolled back in September.

  “But I didn’t want to take it then, Mr. Goddard. I want to take it now.”

  I got excited, I guess. Just felt so frustrated!

  Finally Mr. Goddard said okay. As long as my study period was at the same time French II was taught. Highly irregular. No academic credit. I told Mr. Goddard I didn’t care about academic credit, I just wanted to learn French.

  Mr. Goddard adjusted his glasses on his nose and gave me a look like I am so totally, terminally weird it’s impossible to communicate with me. “Jenna, this is a public high school. What if everyone just wanted to ‘learn’ and didn’t want ‘academic credit’?”

  It’s a small class anyway, only fourteen students. Mrs. Laport—Madame Laport, we call her—seems pleased that weird as I am, I’ve come along to take another seat. (Most students at Yarrow High take Spanish if they take any foreign language at all.) She smiles at me like she can’t figure me out. I’m doing the homework, taking quizzes and tests, and really seem to enjoy the conversation exercises, which are the last fifteen minutes of each class. My grades, not “official” but just for me, are mostly As. Madame Laport says, “Jenna, vous vous êtes beaucoup appliquée, pourquoi?” and I tell her, enunciating each word with care like a toddler taking baby steps, “Parce que le français est une langue très belle.”

  9

  I am so ashamed.

  I am so angry.

  Dazed, like. Almost I don’t know if I am standing or sitting—sitting, I guess. Later it will seem to me unreal as a dream where things are sliding and skidding and you can’t catch your breath to figure out where you are, or why.

  My uncle Dwight McCarty is asking why, why did I take the glass paperweight from Dr. Freer’s office. “Was it to hurt us, Jenna? Or yourself?” and I can’t answer.

  Uncle Dwight and I are in his office study, which is at the rear of the house, a large rectangular room with mostly glass walls and a glass skylight. This is not a room I have ever entered by myself and only rarely with anyone else. It is not a room in which I would be welcome, as my little cousins Becky and Mikey would not be welcome. It’s a little scary. Uncle Dwight has shut the door.

  I guess he and my aunt Caroline decided that next time there was a problem with her niece, he would speak with me first. Because always it has been Aunt Caroline until now. And now it’s just Uncle Dwight speaking in his calm, clench-jawed way like a reasonable man who is trying to understand, oh, man, he is trying very hard to understand why anyone would steal from someone who wants to help her, but, like, he can’t understand.

  “…Jenna? To hurt us, your aunt and me, or…”

  The incriminating evidence, the glass paperweight with the glittery mineral mountain and swath of pure-blue sky, is on my uncle’s desk. I can’t look at anything else.

  “…must have realized, Jenna, that Dr. Freer would notice, and know that the person who took it had to be…”

  Did I? Or didn’t I care? I can’t remember.

  Poor Uncle Dwight! He’s perspiring and breathing hard like a man trudging uphill, wondering where he’s going. I wish that I could shrink into a tiny wisp of something like milkweed seed that could blow away and disappear. Earlier today at school I was feeling kind of good about myself. Gym class went pretty well (basketball, where I’m an okay player and Dara Bowen is always encouraging us), and I got a B–on my paper for history (“Child Labor in the First American Textile Mill, 1790”), so coming
home to this, to my uncle frowning and clenching his jaw, and Aunt Caroline hiding away, not wanting to see me, is a shock. There’s a buzzing in my ears that’s the pressure of blood, I remember from when I was in the hospital. I want to tell my uncle, My head isn’t right, my thoughts are confused, it was the blue sky I wanted.

  Instead I hear my voice, mumbling and sullen, saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I took it.” My nose is running, I’m wiping it with the edge of my hand the way my eight-year-old cousin Mikey is scolded for doing.

  “‘Don’t know,’ Jenna? What do you mean?”

  I mean what I said! I don’t know.

  My poor uncle is staring at me blank faced. It’s funny how you never really look at some people, especially older relatives. To be somebody’s uncle must be, like, the biggest bore, even worse than being somebody’s aunt. You aren’t really my uncle, I’m thinking. It’s just Aunt Caroline who is my aunt.

  If I’d known what was waiting for me in this house, I would’ve stayed away. Could not have faced them. So ashamed, they found Dr. Freer’s paperweight in my desk! (I wasn’t trying very hard to hide it. Every night I’ve taken it out to hold in my hand. It’s been several weeks now, I’d begun to think Dr. Freer would not notice it was gone.) It makes me angry to think of Aunt Caroline going into my room and poking in my things. Not just my desk but my bureau drawers, my closet. I have a journal I write in sometimes, but it’s always in my backpack, and my backpack is always with me, so she couldn’t look in that.

  I guess Mom looked in my room sometimes. I guess most mothers do. If you want to have secrets, you can’t keep them anywhere in the house because the bottom line is the house is not yours it is theirs.

  The bottom line is even if you love your mom (or your aunt), you can’t trust them.

  For sure, the McCartys think that they can’t trust me now. (They can’t.) They think I’m emotionally unstable. (I am!) Probably I have a cache of drugs hidden somewhere in my room. (Wish I did! But I’m too smart to keep drugs in my room.)

  All this while my uncle is saying how Dr. Freer telephoned my aunt, told her that she suspected me since the paperweight was missing after my hour with her, but she’d decided to wait until my next appointment, thinking that I might return the paperweight, but I’ve been canceling my appointments. And so…

  “Dr. Freer is disappointed, Jenna. But not angry. She has asked Caroline to come with you to your next appointment with her, when you can return the paperweight and explain…”

  What? What’s Uncle Dwight saying?

  “…in fact Dr. Freer thinks your action might be a major breakthrough, since prior to this, you’ve been severely repressed and uncommunicative….”

  The blood in my ears is pounding harder. I’m sitting with my arms folded tight, clutching at my sides. Go to hell! All of you! In another room a TV is playing. Mikey’s after-school cartoons. I wonder if when I see Aunt Caroline, she will smile sadly at me and wait for me to apologize, and if I do, she will hug me and cry over me.

  Let them love you in my place. Please, Jenna.

  “I’m not going back to Dr. Freer. Nobody can make me.”

  “Jenna! How can you—”

  “I’m not! I am not.”

  Suddenly it’s like we’re trapped together. Or we’ve fallen into the water together, flailing against each other and struggling not to drown. Uncle Dwight is scolding me, and I’m saying okay then, send me away, and he says of course no one is going to send me away, and I say, “But you don’t want me, do you? Why would you want me?” and Uncle Dwight says, “Of course we want you, Jenna, we love you,” and I’m laughing to hear this—love! we love you!—for why would anybody love me if they knew me? I’m on my feet, and Uncle Dwight is on his feet, and our voices are raised, and there’s a look on Uncle Dwight’s face like he’s wary and guarded and frightened of me, for what if I begin to scream, I’m so impulsive and emotional, so unstable, can’t be trusted. I’m saying in this really nasty voice that’s a copy of Trina’s voice when she spoke to her mother, “You aren’t really my uncle; it’s just Aunt Caroline who is my aunt,” and quickly he says, “That’s ridiculous, Jenna, of course I’m your uncle, you are my niece, I’ve known you for most of your life,” and this is a surprise to me, that Uncle Dwight would say such a thing, and I realize that it’s true: This man has known me most of my life, and I’ve hardly given him a thought and could not say the color of his eyes or guess his age. And I say, “I don’t want you to love me! If you knew me, you wouldn’t love me! I steal things, and I do worse things, you and Aunt Caroline don’t know.”

  Uncle Dwight stares at me—I’m so like Trina quivering with some kind of weird rage. I’m clumsy, colliding with a chair that I almost knock over when I turn to run out of the room.

  10

  Won’t. Can’t make me.

  Don’t love me—I don’t love you.

  The blue sky I wanted.

  Send me away then.

  (Where?)

  11

  It’s the day after my uncle and the glass paperweight. It’s the day after my aunt tried to speak with me, but I shunned her and ran to my room. It’s the day after the night I decided I could not run away because maybe I did love them, maybe they loved me. Somehow Crow would know this. Crow would say, Chérie! Take care, it’s a big step to the street. I’ve been watching for Crow from inside school. From my hidden place. Even if Crow glanced in my direction when he left the building alone, headed for his motorcycle parked in its usual place against the rear chain-link fence, even if he turned to stare toward me, sensing that someone is watching him, even then he wouldn’t see me because I am not visible.

  “I wish.”

  12

  Here’s how it ends.

  My aunt and my uncle say okay, I can return the paperweight to Dr. Freer by mail.

  I tell them THANK YOU.

  (I am sincere, not sarcastic.)

  (I mean I am truly sincere, not sarcastic.)

  In the kitchen, where Aunt Caroline can look on (if she wishes, I’m not trying to hide anything), I wrap the beautiful glass paperweight in tissue paper so it can’t crack. There’s a gift box Aunt Caroline has given me out of a closet. This also has tissue paper in it. Carefully I place the paperweight in the box. I ask Aunt Caroline if I can have three lemons out of the refrigerator, and Aunt Caroline is surprised but says, “Why, certainly, Jenna. I wasn’t planning on using lemons tonight.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Caroline. I really appreciate it.”

  By this time Becky and Mikey have joined me. So curious about what Jenna is doing!

  The lemons are bright yellow, just the right size to fit in my hand. Somehow, you never look at lemons. (Who looks at lemons?) But these lemons are beautiful, I think. Crow would wonder what I was doing the way my aunt and my little cousins are wondering, but he wouldn’t judge me, the way he doesn’t judge his father.

  From Crow I am learning (I am beginning to learn) it isn’t perfect people you love but people you know, you love.

  It’s a long way to loving my dad, though. For sure.

  Upstairs in my room I tried to write an apology to Dr. Freer, but it sounded so phony, I hated it. This is a better way, I think. On one of the lemons I print, with a red marker pen, “SHAME.” On another lemon I write, with a black marker pen, “SORRY.” On the third lemon I write, with a green marker pen, “DON’T KNOW WHY/ JENNA.”

  These three lemons I place inside the box. More tissue paper; then I shut the box and wrap it in tinsel-colored paper (left over from Christmas, but you can’t tell, the paper hasn’t been torn or wrinkled), place it inside a larger, brown mailing box, and address it to “DR. MEGHAN T. FREER” at her office on Summit Street.

  My little cousins are utterly mystified. Why lemons, why am I mailing lemons, who is Dr. Freer? Aunt Caroline shakes her head, says, “Why, Jenna! What a strange way of…” then changes her mind and says, “What a good idea, Jenna. Thank you.”

  I mark the box “
FIRST CLASS PRIORITY MAIL.” It will be expensive, but I’ll pay for the postage myself.

  13

  In April, this happens.

  Early April there’s still snow. Broken slabs of bluish ice at the lake. Trina Holland is friends with me again—I guess—kind of hurtful, pinching my arm to make it bruise: “Baby, lookin’ good.” Sure I’ve been anxious. Trina hasn’t called me much, so when she does, one night when I’m in my room doing homework, saying there’s these really cool older guys who want to hang out with us, at somebody’s grandparents’ lodge at Yarrow Lake, where they broke in, these are “fantastically cool” guys Trina has met through T-Man, “so, Jenna, come outside, and we’ll pick you up in, like ten minutes, is that cool?” quickly I say, “All right,” I hear myself say, “All right,” and Trina says, “Okay, baby, but know what? You can bring something, like, for the party, like I am,” and I don’t know what Trina means, Trina clicks off, so I can’t ask her. Then I’m laughing I’m so excited, unless I’m panicked, thinking, I can’t do this, can’t sneak out except I’m thinking, Maybe Crow will be there—Crow is an older guy. I’m throwing on clothes, washing my face and slapping on makeup like Trina’s, makeup that comes in a tube, and lipstick, midnight plum, which is Trina’s totally cool/sexy lipstick that completely changes my face, because without makeup my face is washed-out and plain and I hate it, but with makeup I’m okay-looking, I guess.