BANG OUT

This isn’t about the girl who died. The girl who pedaled down her best friend’s driveway, steep as a ski slope, on a dusty garage bike. She squeezed the handlebars, felt for a set of handbrakes like the ones on her ten-speed, and barreled down the driveway, her best friend looking on, curious. Why are you going fast? Why don’t you step on the brakes? What will happen when you hit the busy street below? Will you be run over? Will I look away? This isn’t about the girl who’d never used foot brakes. Or about the driver of the van she rode into, weeping, saying sorry over and over again, carrying the girl, limp, up the steep driveway. This isn’t about any of that.

This isn’t about being eleven and this isn’t about my mother, who at the time was also a God. A hospital chaplain who wore a beeper just like the doctors. She tucked it in her jeans – Levis with seams so stretched you’d think they’d tear. And even though she was on-call, we ran errands together on Sunday afternoons. We stacked groceries in the back seat of the Toyota we called Bluebell, threw shopping bags on top of her work clothes: pressed slacks, a blouse and a pair of heels. Most days her beeper never made a sound, and when it did, she’d take me home and drive to the hospital. Her beeper was black and square like a rotten tooth hanging from her jeans – a small reminder that she was not my God alone. On Sundays she could be whisked away from me – fast as a life disappearing. A heart, a liver, a lung collapsing under a force I tried not to think about.

I didn’t know the girl who died. I didn’t know her name for more than a few hours, a few days, a couple weeks at the most. And years later I can only make a guess: Jennifer, Allison, Meghan maybe. I know she was alive when she arrived at Marin General. I know that my mother, who had no time to take me home, climbed into the backseat of the car. She changed her clothes while I kept watch for people walking by, someone who might see her white thighs and panties, her flesh-colored bra with padding and lace. In the hospital parking lot her heels clicked on the pavement while she gave me instructions: Sit in the waiting room. Read magazines. Stay.

But this isn’t about my mother or about the dead girl or about Gods and doctors and Sunday shopping. This is about the waiting room. This is about the space inside the main hospital doors: upholstered chairs, ferns, magazines for expectant mothers and sports enthusiasts and men who like fishing. This is about the wooden coffee table where I propped my feet until my mom came around a corner holding the hand of a girl my age – tall and thin with hair so straight you could thread it through a needle. Her name was Sarah and she needed someone to keep her company, my mom explained. Someone to keep her occupied while her friend was being treated.

Sarah said hello like we were somewhere else: a church sleepover or a birthday party or a picnic. She smiled and rubbed her palms over her jeans, smoothing out tiny wrinkles while I looked at her purple belt and thought it was strange. She told me about her best friend, the girl on the bike. The one who wasn’t yet dead. “She didn’t know how to use the brakes,” Sarah explained and then giggled nervously. I giggled back and we decided to cross our fingers for good luck. Cross our arms and legs and eyes if we could stand it. In the waiting room we sat together for most of an hour. Sarah next to me on the couch. Sarah falling on my lap from crossing her legs twice over. “She’s going to live,” I said, knowing that I might be lying. “She’s fine,” I said, even though I didn’t see the bike crash into the traffic. I didn’t see her friend covered in blood, notice she wasn’t awake. I convinced Sarah her dying friend would be okay and she believed me because for a short time, there was only the waiting room and the two of us, thrown together to make good luck, to make deals with God and admire my new leather watch.

The waiting room wasn’t so much a place for waiting as it was a lobby. A sunny spot to sit and watch the automatic doors slide open, people rushing in, their faces drawn in panic. “Where is our daughter? Is she okay? I want to see her, now!” The girl’s parents raced past us – didn’t even see us there – and Sarah slumped next to me on the couch. I knew then the girl had died, that her parents were moments from falling to the floor, from screaming at doctors – fingers grasping shirtsleeves, knees buckling in time with my mother’s condolences – their nice Sunday clothes spreading over the linoleum like a low tide. Still, I told Sarah we were making luck. We were a luck machine, the two of us with fingers crossed, legs like pretzels. I braided Sarah’s hair so that it too was crossed, and for a few minutes she held my hand like we’d known each other forever.

The waiting room was filled with sun that day. It was hot, light pouring through windows and I was humming on the inside. My teeth chattered like they do when I’m excited or nervous, when I’m on the edge of change, when I know things are going to flip around and I’m ready and not ready at the exact same time. Let’s do this. Let’s see it. Show me something new and ugly. Show me.

Eventually my mother escorted Sarah’s parents to the waiting room and we hugged goodbye. I told her I hoped her friend would be okay. Goodbye. My mom sat beside me. She told me that the girl had died and I didn’t tell her I already knew. I didn’t tell her I lied to Sarah and that a part of me liked being in that waiting room: my insides vibrating, so close to death, a nightmare that wasn’t quite mine. I didn’t tell my mother I could picture the scene now: the girl on the bike trying to brake and failing. I could see it. I still see it.

#

That night I slept with my mother. I let her hold me even though she snored and the stubble on her legs made me itch. Before she fell asleep she said she loved me. I was a good girl. Good for keeping Sarah company. I lay in bed and thought about the waiting room. Did it look the way we left it: Two paper cups of water. An untouched bag of chips. The table pushed away from the couch?

My mother was sound asleep and I was playing that game I sometimes play where I try to memorize every image and every word so that later, I can go back. So that years can pass and I won’t forget a single thing: The couch was blue and scratchy, the cushions firm and thin. The air was warm like a million exhales. Her hands were pale like summer clouds. Two ferns climbed up wooden beams – their leaves green and waxy. The wrinkled magazines were fanned across the table. The afternoon sun shone brightly through the sliding doors.




Copyright © Amanda B. Miller, 2010