Flying Toward Morning

Anne and I sat wide-awake on our beds, watching our Peter Pan VHS for the fourth time that week. From the next room, Dad’s voice ricocheted off the walls.

“Yes, yes, you can pick it all up tomorrow. I’ll have the boxes outside.” A pause. “Do we get a tax write-off for this?”

I turned up the sound on our TV set.

After a few minutes, Dad burst in the room, phone pressed to his chest—“Quiet down, girls, you’ll wake your mother, and I’m on the phone.” He closed the door gently, but firmly.

I lowered the volume as Anne giggled, pressing her face into her Pillow-Pet to suppress her laughter. We had reached the scene where the mermaids splashed Wendy, inconveniently trying to drown her. I tucked my legs together on the bed, and flapped them like a mermaid’s tail. Through the thin walls, Dad was asking the Salvation Army if they also take furniture. Then his heavy footsteps left the office, and plodded downstairs.

Anne said, “I’m bored. I can quote this whole thing in my sleep.”

We flipped off the TV. The fuzzed glow was erased from the room.

I lay down, surrounded by the stuffed animals and toys that adorned my bed. One was a Bitty Baby. Sometimes at night, I stuffed a pillow under my shirt and placed my hands across my stomach. I’d spread my legs, and Anne would play midwife saying, “Push, push!” and out would come Bitty Baby. I’d croon, “Hush little baby, don’t you cry, mama’s gonna feed us sweet moon pie!”

But tonight, I couldn’t look at Bitty Baby.

I rolled over and stared at Anne through the dark. Her eyes were milky moons in the adjacent twin bed.

“Do you want to talk to Natalie?” I said.

She hesitated, then shrugged, “Sure.”

I reached into my pillowcase for the laser pen. The pen was a gift Dad received from a client, then passed along to me. It was also the source of Natalie’s secret light.

I shined the pen, moving the beam along the wall.

“Oh why, hello there, Anne and Tess! Hello, hello, how are you?”

“Good,” said Anne, kicking back her comforter. “Fine. How’s Fairyland?”

I made a figure eight on the wall.

“Very well, very well. I got caught in the rain today. The rain got my leaf dress all wet. Gross! It’s hard to fly with wet leaves. So I had to make a new one, but that’s okay.”

I cupped my hand around my mouth, trying to throw the sound across the room. Natalie’s voice needed to be high and airy, with a distinguishable squeak.

“How was your day, Anne?”

She sighed.

“I took my favorite snow globe to class for show and tell and broke it,” she said. “I forgot it was in my backpack.”

“Boohoo. That’s too bad. Maybe I can fix it for you. Leave it by my fairy door tomorrow morning!”

“Sure,” said Anne. But I knew she wouldn’t do this.

I jiggled the light, darting Natalie around the room.

Then Anne said, “This is stupid. I know it’s you, Tess. Just stop.”

“Why, it’s me, your friend Natalie!”

“I said, just stop it already.”

Anne huffed and rolled over. I flipped off Natalie’s light, and slid the laser pen back inside my pillow.

Anne believed in Natalie, that she lived in a matchbox house in our closet—that I alone could translate her silent language—until Mom came home from the hospital last week. She looked pale, skin translucent like paper, her stomach still swollen.

She said nothing to us but “Oh—girls,” as though surprised to recognize herself in our faces, and then went to her bedroom. Dad sent us upstairs, said she needed quiet. We watched Peter Pan.

But after a few hours, we crept down, stood outside her room and listened. We tapped on the door and waited. Then we slipped inside and watched her sleeping, open-mouthed, with a whispering shallow breath.

How like Sleeping Beauty she looked, stoic on the bed. I wanted to stand close, place my hand over her nose and feel her moist breath. Wake up, I thought. I didn’t understand that she was hiding in the sheets, willing time to unspool, that she couldn’t look at me or Anne just yet.

Days passed and I feared she would sleep forever, that the hospital had put her under a sleeping curse. I told Anne my theory that some doctors were witches and some were fairy godmothers, but she didn’t believe me.

Dad took sick leave from work and watched us, which meant we ate cereal or mac and cheese for every meal. He told us to be patient, and that Mom would emerge when she was ready.

Meanwhile, we watched as he poured out mugs of un-drunk tea and dumped her trashcan of wadded tissues. She didn’t leave the room.