Stairway to Heaven

Once when I was four I was at a playground in New York City with my new pre-Kindergarten class. I’d joined this class after my grandma died and my dad left and my mom took me to her friend’s farm because she needed to sleep for a while. I’d been at the farm for a week or a month or maybe more, I wasn’t sure, but it was a very long time, long enough that I didn’t know if I’d ever see anyone I loved ever again.

Then my mom came back and got me and we started our new life in the apartment where we’d always lived, but now my dad didn’t live there anymore. He had a new place and a new girlfriend and a bunch of other secret girlfriends who weren’t a secret to me, just to the girlfriend he lived with now, who was very sweet and even younger than my mom. I knew that because I heard my mom say it to a friend of hers on the phone and then laugh in this way that sounded like knives in her throat.

I went to my dad’s half the time and I missed my mom when I was there and I missed my grandma all the time, and I wished things could go back to the way they used to be.

I said that to my dad once and his face turned red and then purple and he sobbed in my arms and said he needed to be free and he couldn’t commit and then I felt scared because my dad was sobbing so I told him it was okay and not to worry. Then he started sobbing in my arms a lot and so I worried about him all the time, even when I was at my mom’s and even when I was at school.

I tried telling my mom I didn’t like any of this and I missed her when I was at my dad’s and I missed Nanny (her mom), and she got angry and said I should think about how she felt, and she didn’t ask for any of this. Then she did not want to talk to me for the rest of the night, which was hard because I wasn’t getting enough nights with her as it was.

I stopped telling either of them when I was sad or angry or scared. I told my doll Suzy, instead.

I hadn’t figured out what I thought about my class yet, I didn’t really know anyone. I climbed onto a rainbow-shaped metal play structure. It was the kind with bars, like a ladder that had changed its mind halfway up and decided to come back to earth. As I started climbing, I realized it was harder than it looked, the bars were further apart than they’d seemed. I was scared the higher up I got. So scared, I decided to climb back down the way I’d come, but then I saw there were two kids climbing up behind me. They were older and climbing fast, so I thought I’d better hurry. It didn’t occur to me to tell them I was afraid.

I got to the very top, and realized I had to turn my body around and back down the second half, otherwise I’d be going head-and-face-first toward the ground. I started trying to navigate the turn. The other kids had gotten to the top and now they had to wait for me and they looked at each other like I was a baby. They didn’t even hide it.

As I tried to swing my leg around, the tip of my sneaker got caught in the bar behind me, enough that it threw off my balance. I lost the grip I had with one hand, and when I tried to lunge for the bar, I lost my grip with the other hand. The next thing I knew I’d hit my nose on the bar in front of me, the one I saw as I realized I was hurtling toward the ground.

I landed with a thud on my side and rolled onto my back. I was dazed. The sky looked white like it does in the fall in New York sometimes when it’s cold and not sunny. I wished I could just stay on my back looking up at the sky for a while. This was around the time that I used to like when my mom was late in the morning, because that would mean I’d miss Circle Time.

Circle Time was a thing they’d had in nursery school and at daycare, too, but I’d been hoping maybe they wouldn’t have it at this new school. Those hopes were dashed the first day. There was always some musical component, all the kids would get drums or tambourines or maracas, and we’d have to sing a morning welcome song, and then every few bars it would stop, and we’d have to call out the name of the next kid in the circle.

If that was you, you’d have to repeat your name, or sing your name, or stand and dance and sing your name, which was the worst of the possibilities if you asked me, but no one ever did. Then after you said your name you were supposed to share something funny or interesting or talk about a thing that had happened at home or on the way to school, but all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and all I could feel were my cheeks turning pink, and all I wanted was to disappear.

The mornings my mother was late getting us out the door, I’d feel relieved, even though I hated to see her stressed. Stressed was when she said things like goddammit, Ally, grab your lunchbox, or for Chrissake, it’s always something. Her face would look tight and her eyebrows would look angry, and her eyes would somehow look darker, and it was scary.

I knew she would not squeeze my hand a certain number of times on the walk to school on mornings like that, and wait for me to squeeze back the same number. We would just walk, or really, she would walk, and I would run to keep up. But at least I would probably arrive after Circle Time. I wouldn’t have to bear the awful moment when the music stopped and twenty sets of eyes turned to look at me expectantly while I tried to think of something to say after I said my name. If I said, “I miss my Nanny,” which was really the only thing there was to say, I would have cried in front of twenty kids I didn’t know.

Usually the teachers were nice if I said my name and looked at them helplessly. Maybe they could hear my heart pounding. They would just start the song up again and not make a big deal about it, but one time a teacher at my daycare would not start the music until I said something or did something, so after a very long time when everyone was just staring at me and some kid whispered just say anything really loudly, I said I’d just gotten back from a farm and there were pigs there — and that was good enough.

Anyway, I was hoping there wasn’t a teacher like that at this new place, but I had my pig story ready just in case.

My mom had been stressed a lot since my grandma died and my dad left the next week, and I didn’t want her to take me back to that farm. That’s what she’d done because it was all too much. My Nanny had gone to Heaven, and my dad left without saying goodbye to me, even though I saw him when he found his new apartment. When my mom got stressed, I got scared that she might take me back to the farm, so I would be very quiet and I would try to be very good.

From the ground, looking up at the white sky, I could see tree tops and birds flying way, way up in the clouds, and maybe that’s where Heaven was. Maybe my Nanny was seeing those same birds. Maybe she could see me splayed out on the ground. Hi, Nanny, it’s not fun without you. I thought it really loudly in case people in Heaven could hear what you were thinking.

Photo by Madara on Unsplash

I wished I was at the Jersey Shore with her, at the beach, early in the morning before anyone else was awake. We used to snuggle with blankets and laugh and watch the sun come up. A tear slid out the corner of my eye.

I was aware of the kids climbing down from the rainbow ladder. I knew a bunch of kids had seen what happened, so I couldn’t just stay there looking up at the trees and the clouds beyond them, wondering if birds ever visited Heaven while they were up in the sky. If I was a bird, that’s what I would do. I tried to sit up and act like I was fine, but I realized I must be crying because my nose was running. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand because I didn’t have a tissue, and that’s when I realized my nose was bleeding. A lot.

One of the kids I did not know very well, a girl named Debra-not-Debbie came running, but she skidded to a stop when she got three feet away from me, like if she got any closer she might catch something. She looked at me in horror — then she screamed, “OH, NO, YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!”

I looked down, and there was now blood all over the front of my jacket, which I knew would make my mom angry, and I looked back up at Debra-not-Debbie and she looked worried and also very sure I was dying. A little boy named Jack came up next to her nodding seriously and said it was true, if you bled that much it meant you were going to die, but he didn’t look sorry, just matter-of-fact.

It sounded like there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it, and I felt sad and scared and I wanted my mom even if she was going to be mad at me because I ruined my jacket, but I was not going to start bawling in front of these kids. Then one of the teachers came over and she had a red box in her hand with a + sign on it, and she sat down and put one finger in the air and told me to follow it with my eyes.

Then she said just your eyes, not your whole head, and I wished Debra-not-Debbie and that not-very-nice Jack would stop watching like this was some kind of show, because I could see them out of the corner of my eye just gaping at me and also following her finger, and nothing had happened to them. They were not going to die.

Then this teacher opened the red math box, but it didn’t have math things in it, it had bandaids and bandages and alcohol pads. She took out some gauze and very gently pressed it around my nose, but not on my nose. She was so gentle, it was like tiny little mice were doing it. Then she had me lean my head forward while she pressed on the top of my nose which she called a bridge for some reason, but I liked her by then so I didn’t care if she wasn’t that smart.

She asked me if anything else hurt like my arms or legs, and I realized my knee hurt a lot, and it turned out that when I landed I’d ripped a big hole in my tights and now I knew for sure my mom would be angry. I’d scraped my knee pretty badly, and it was bleeding, too, but I was cold, so I hadn’t noticed. Maybe if I was dying my mother wouldn’t be that mad at me.

The other teacher came over and they started talking about whether I should get an X-ray, and by then I was ready to do whatever this teacher — whose name was Kira I now knew — wanted me to do, as long as I got to stay with her. She was being sweet to me, the way my grandma would have been. She asked if I felt like I could stand up, and I got on my feet, but I felt a little funny, like I had jelly inside my knees.

They decided they would call my mom at work. Kira said she’d go to find a pay phone, and I asked if I could go with her. She said I could if I felt okay to walk, and I nodded that I did. I held her hand, and then at the corner, when none of the kids could see us anymore, I asked if she could pick me up. She did. She smelled like peaches. My Nanny smelled like roses.

When we got to the pay phone, she pulled out a dime and the list of phone numbers of all the parents. My mom’s name was Cathy, and I could see her there on the list, so I pointed at her, and Kira said, “Wow, you’re smart. Are you reading already?” I felt my cheeks get pink, but I didn’t mind this time.

Kira got my mom on the phone and told her I’d fallen off the monkey bars. I could hear my mom’s voice through the receiver and it made me miss her so much I felt it in my belly and I had to blink a lot and try to swallow that sadness lump that pops out in your throat when you don’t want to cry. She wanted to know if I’d hit my head, or if Kira thought I had any broken bones. Kira said I’d walked a bit and seemed okay, so she didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure without an X-ray. She said my nose had bled a lot, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. I wondered if my mom knew that I was going to die.

It was decided that I’d stay at school and if I started acting strangely, they’d call her back. I wondered what that meant. I didn’t want to start acting strangely in front of my new friends, or Kira. When she hung up, Kira looked a little surprised. She’d told me when we walked to the phone that my mom would probably come get me early, but I knew my mom had to work.

I’d see her after school, and hopefully it would be a night when she didn’t have plans. My mom was trying to find a new husband, so she went on dates a lot, even on nights I was with her, which meant I might have a babysitter. I wondered if Kira ever babysat. In my head, I’d worked it out that this was probably my last day, and that I’d die in my sleep when I went to bed. I hadn’t seen my mom for a few days because I’d been at my dad’s. I missed her. Suddenly I started crying because I missed my mom so much, but I didn’t want to say that to Kira, so I said I was sorry and it was just that my nose hurt. I couldn’t even feel my nose.

When we got back to the school, Kira put me on the cot in the nurse’s office, but the nurse wasn’t there. She got me some ice wrapped in a washcloth for my nose, and a blanket, and then she said she was going to go and get some books to read to me, but I was afraid she wouldn’t come back. I thought she might leave the office and get pulled away by some other kid who needed her for something, or by the other teacher. What if I fell asleep there? Would I die anywhere I fell asleep? I didn’t want to die alone in the nurse’s office. Kira promised me she’d be right back, though, and she meant it.

She came back with Charlotte’s Web which was one of my favorite books even though it reminded me of the farm now, and also a warm washcloth — and she cleaned me up a little bit more. There was a lot of dried blood on my neck and even in my ears because I’d been on my back looking up at the sky for so long. There was dried blood in my hair.

It took her a long time to get me clean, but she was gentle and patient, she didn’t curse at all. I wasn’t sure why it was making me a little sad. She rested her cool hand on my forehead when she was done. She told me I was going to be okay, but I knew she was just saying that to be nice. She seemed like the kind of grownup I could trust.

“What time will I die?” I asked her, and I felt my lip quiver and my voice sounded a little funny, but I didn’t cry.

“What?!” she asked me, “die? You’re not going to die!” She seemed extremely confident about it.

“I’m not? Debra-not-Debbie said I was going to die, and Jack said it, too. He said when people bleed that much, they die.” I had to blink a lot.

Kira looked like she was going to laugh and cry at the same time. “You’re not going to die. You just had a bad nosebleed. Your mom might take you to get X-rays to make sure you didn’t break any bones, but you’re walking and nothing hurts too badly, right, just your knee?”

I nodded. I knew if I tried to say anything that would be it. I didn’t want to die. Maybe if my Nanny was there it would have been okay, and maybe it would make things a little easier for my mom, but I’d miss her so much. I started crying, I couldn’t help it anymore. Kira picked me up and put me in her lap and wrapped her arms around me, and she rocked me for a long time. She kissed the top of my head. She didn’t tell me not to cry, she held onto me so I could fall apart.

I don’t remember what happened when my mother came to pick me up. I don’t know if she was upset about my jacket or my tights. I don’t know if she took me to get X-rays, but I don’t think she did. I don’t know if I had a sitter that night. What I remember is feeling safe enough to cry in that room with Kira. Understanding that I did not have to keep it together or hold it in or pretend I was okay when I wasn’t.

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. I made the appointment a few months ago when I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to afford any insurance at all come January 1st. I figured I’d better try to squeeze in all my appointments before the year ended. As it turns out, I switched plans. I have what is basically catastrophic insurance for next year, so if something really terrible happens, I’ll be okay. I won’t be bankrupt thanks to medical debt if I end up in the hospital. It isn’t great, but at least there’s that. I get to keep my doctor, not that I’ll be seeing her unless I get really sick, but I love her, so I’m glad to know she’s there.

When I saw her yesterday she asked me how my health was. She’s the kind who really looks at you when she asks a question — then waits and listens. “Good, I think?” I said. “Except for the underlying relentless despair, anxiety and rage.”

We both laughed, but in the way you laugh with people who understand. People who look at the world the same way, and realize time is short. People who let you fall apart because sometimes the world is a harsh and scary place, but even when that’s true, if you look, you’ll always find someone with a magical red box. Even if it’s invisible, and they wear it on the inside.

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