Raising Zoeyjane

This is my first week participating in the IndieInk Writing Challenge and Cab wasn’t gentle. My prompt: Watch this video. Write a fictional story based on how you interpret the song’s meaning. No word count guidelines. Bonus points for erotica.

***

When I picked up the phone this morning, reaching through the fog of another night spent with a bottle of cheap vodka and Nicholas Sparks, it wasn’t with the trepidation I’d felt for the past six days. It had been ringing for what seemed like hours in dream-time, and before I was fully conscious, a ‘lo, wha? came out without a glance at the caller ID.

That was my second mistake. The first was less honest.

***

I want to believe that the reason I puke in between power-dialing my nail girl and my hair guy for emergency appointments is because I’m simply hung over after the last week’s coffee, liquor, pain killers and sedatives, hold the food. I gag and my hair falls in the toilet. I don’t care. Then I call Visa.

I can’t afford this, my interest rate is too high.

***

It’s so cold outside, but vanity and nerves combine to make me stand in the shadows in a flimsy silk trench, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Even my toes shiver. I never knew that toes could do that. I’m watching for them. For her.

Him.

***

Every time that she beams at him, I’m blinded by her shiny teeth first and I blink, and then her shiny ring blinds me again. It’s beautiful and it’s humongous. I can feel its weight, across the room.

This is too heavy.

***

I see them approaching, and just within ear shot, I’ve hissed Fucking Jesus Fucking Christ into my vodka tonic. She’s my best friend, and a devoted Lutheran who cannot stand ‘excessive curses about The Big Guy or His Son’. He’s nervous.

I think.

Maybe it’s just me.

She dives in to hug me and I taste her hair. She pushes me away to thrust out her hand and I appraise the ring on the outside, while on the inside, I’m trying to keep my heart from racing. I’m trying to not smell his aftershave, or notice the way that his hair curls over his widow’s peak. I’m doing whatever I can to be a normal best friend and stop remembering.

***

It was three weeks ago.

Sarah had gone home in a taxi while he and I had continued the slasher-flick marathon, upping the ante by switching from mixing Sarah’s Blood Marys in the bright kitchen to passing a bottle of vodka between us in the film-lit living room. Shortly after the fourth gulp, gravity disobeyed and I found myself slumped into Shawn’s shoulder, breathing him in.

I didn’t mean to. But how could I stop inhaling?

Wouldn’t I die?

***

He looks at me tonight with that frankness that’s always hit me below the belt. As he leans in to kiss my cheek, I hold my breath, but he still gets in. It’s a joke to pretend that he’s not already ingrained in every cell of me.

That three weeks ago, I didn’t enjoy every moment of him; his quizzical look as it occurred that he wanted to kiss me; his trepidation when he did; his searching hands, so completely interested in the terrain and lacking confidence; the clumsy way that his shirt came off he searched my eyes for permission, even though I was already topless. That after the movie had ended and my legs were wrapped around him and he had pinned my arms above my head, burying his mouth in my neck, I didn’t look at the lonely blue screen for just a second and think. Stop.

But then I moaned and turned away, tightening my thighs more. Pull pulled him right in.

Now, I breathe as I brush my lips against his cheekbone, remembering how his stubble felt against my thighs.

***

She’s so excited; she can’t stop talking. He’s silent, with a nervous smile frozen in place. Every other breath, he takes a sip of whiskey; about every thirty seconds, I gulp, until my glass empties. I pretend to listen, I nod and I smile. But I’m not there.

I can taste the tomato juice from the roof of his mouth, and the liquor from his tongue. His neck and his fingers are salty, and so are the sides of him, where muscles reside that I’ve never witnessed before and his skin is so smooth. I’m there again, on that fucking uncomfortable leather sofa, and he’s above me, fumbling with all of the contraptions that keep jeans where they should remain, and we’re starved for what comes after the fumbling’s done.

***

I didn’t know it was coming this time.

I’m racing across the club in shoes not meant to outrun nausea, with my hand clasped over my mouth to catch the evidence.

Can I really conceal three weeks ago, once I stop trying to pretend that my period came this month? My brain screams: I don’t know. I don’t know! I! don’t! know! My digestive tract threatens expatriation.

She’d make a stunning bride.

I’m going up, locked in at waist and chest, but there’s enough space between the gulf that my hipbones protrude from and protection that I’m not safe. I know this. Still, I can’t help but wonder at the blueness that surrounds me. The single seagull, swooping, as if in slow-mo, calling someone far away. He’s beautiful, graceful and in time with his sailing, I feel a smooth ascension, too.

Then, the tipping point. There is no down, only straight ahead and it seems like, for just a moment – one that seems as if split into five million moments – everything will freeze. The pure high is breath-stealing and I think, hey, maybe I could stay here forever.

But that never happens. What rises must plummet.

The problem with my recipe for madness is its overwhelming difficulty in management. Even when it seems that up is safe and down doesn’t exist, there’s still recess in the basement and the roof gets scaled at the worst possible times, in the least safe ways.

Medications lose their efficacy, or cause side-effects that become unbearable, or cause damage. The single pill becomes one, twice a day; then added to that is something to help with the X; and then before you know it, every morning is started not with the restorative cup of coffee and leisurely smoke that you want, but with you standing in the kitchen, counting your day’s pills into a little cup and putting that cup where you’ll see it – because if you don’t do it right away, you will forget and if you don’t leave the cup in eyesight, you will forget. But you also have to make sure that your kid cannot reach it.

And then you give her a chewable vitamin, so that she doesn’t feel left out.

And then, doctors fuck you up, too – as if the organics and the medications aren’t enough. It’s no wonder I have absolutely no faith in physicians, yet constantly hope that they can near-cure me. It’s sadly like daddy issues, on a MD-level.

When I was younger, on the wrong medications, misdiagnosed, the high was so measurably useful. There was no absence of ability, it was go-go-go and the going was always the thing that I needed to be heading toward. Now, the map leads me into brambles and I get frequent scratches and cuts, for which there is no salve.

Besides simply seeing their marks and trusting they won’t scar too badly. They’re merely surface wounds.

Those bushes catch me at the most inopportune times: the night that I need to sleep, before the packed day ahead; the work hours that need to have every minute sucked out of their marrow; the few times when I would like to just be able to lie down next to him, when he lies down, and not have 12 thoughts and awkwardnesses spew from my mouth.

This shrubbery robs me.

But, the vegetation has been ever so scaleable lately, and because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, I’ve been standing on top of a green mound, half enjoying that pure moment before the inevitable. I was almost convinced that the inevitable might not come.

Maybe this combination of pills and success and happiness was what it might take. Maybe a remission of a sort was being had.

Yet…

That’s not my story. It never is. And the signs have all been there.

The medication has been working for the most part, but I’ve not been particularly well, just not particularly unwell. There was the point in time, in early winter, when I all but stopped eating. Initially because the addition of speed to a hypomanic bipolar’s menu causes appetite suppression and amnesia, but also because once the pants got a little baggier, I got a little fuller-feeling.

I’ve been working myself to the neural bone this month. I don’t doubt that if you lift a flap of skin, you can see the dendrites, exhausted and charred, yet still sending their rapid-fire messages over gulfs. I have to cut back, I know this, but I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t want to except for in the most ridiculous areas that I can’t resign from. If I don’t do the laundry and the dishes, there is no one else to pick up the slack, and if I can get everything done on my lists of things to be done, then there isn’t a lot of affection and loving and physical contact taking place.

I love my job. I don’t want to step away from it so much that I’m nearly counting down the weeks until Zoë’s brand-new lessons end, so that I can hire someone to watch her. So I can get away from being underneath the guilt and frustration and trapped feeling I feel, wanting to work, but knowing that I’m home, with her, for a reason. Right now, I can’t do that – exit from her days – because she’s just simply too booked up.

It takes no toll on her – preschool five mornings a week, swimming two afternoons and gymnastics one – but it’s sucking me dry. The have-tos have been added to and those are so much heavier than the job that I love doing. They’re bringing back the resentment I felt when I was little more than pillow and milk-maid.

But that’s the claustrophobia speaking, not the mother.

Because here’s the thing: as far as I know, I do my job well. Being a stay-at-home mother? I don’t. I never expected to be good at it. I never wanted to be one. I planned to return to work, three months postpartum.

And now, here I’m sitting with an ache in my heart and a churning in my guts and I can see the freedom – just eight short weeks away – and I can almost smell the change in air pressure because I’m almost at the top. This time, I might not have to get down. This time, I might get to sit there, watching that seagull swoop and I could be where I’m supposed to be.

But. That’s not my story. It never is. And the signs have all been there.

The next few days are going to be challenging. I’ll have to make decisions and harder decisions and wait and see.

I fucking hate waiting and seeing.

I also hate feeling like a victim, as if something’s happened to me, and there’s little nothing I can do or could have done to change an outcome. I detest that nearly every time everything seems to be going well, the fucking bottom falls out. And I can’t handle when the bottom falls out and some one gets pulled down with me.

I loathe this fucking rollercoaster.

I can over-simplify, and under-explain, but completely qualify my fears as Zoë’s mother into two distinct forms: I worry that I will box her into being something; I worry that I will fight so hard against boxing her in, I veer too far to the other side.

Take swimming. Today was her first lesson, ever. As she does with most things physical the first time, she was completely fearless. She jumped in twice, submerging. She blew bubbles. And by the end of that mere 30 minutes, she was floating around, becoming a starfish without her instructor’s aide.

I’ve recently downgraded from terrified of the water to not on friendly terms.

I wanted her to take lessons with her dad there – a guy who grew up having been thrown in to learn to swim and who loves it. I worried that my fear would rub off on her. I was determined it wouldn’t, so long enough being long enough, she was signed up. In between my cheering, I was cringing from my own point of experience and wondering if next time – if her typical 2nd time fear kicks in – I will veer her towards just doing it, to prevent her from being a 30 year old who doesn’t do water.

I worry about the body stuff and the eating stuff, so while I emphasize the healthy foods and serving sizes and recommended amounts, we are a chocoholic family that celebrates her minute weight gains. I don’t use language that describes people solely by their physical characteristic with her, and my frequent, critical looks in the mirror don’t take place when she’s watching.

But that won’t be much of a protectionism, will it?

I worry about her in school. She’s already doing some of the curriculum. I, her dad, and a few of my friends had similar experiences with being the ‘ahead’ kid at school – being relegated to the boring corner because it’s a pain that you’re already done your work. But that might not be the school system she experiences.

More so, I worry about being that parent. The one who comes equipped to do battle over her child’s intelligence, social aptitude or other abilities. Who declares her daughter’s specialness and thus becomes the butt of jokes and judgment. I don’t want to be looked at like that. But how selfish am I, if Zoë does warrant special interventions, if I don’t bring it up because I’m worried about my own reputation?

I worry about her attention span. If sitting in a classroom for eight hours – with a total of one hour off for free-time and nourishment – will be too much for her. She  has a great attention span, as long as it’s within a predictable, controlled, organized environment, she’s given long transition times, she’s interested in the task(s) at hand, and whoever she’s with recognizes when she’s hyper-focused and can gently rouse her. This doesn’t seem like the school systems I’m aware of.

Lastly, I worry about her becoming labelled. With the strong genetics in my family and her subtly different behaviours, it would be a stretch, but not a long one to stamp attention issues on her permanent record. Maybe if it was, she would be given those extra transition times and get to sit at the front of the class with her own book once she finished her assignments. Maybe she’d get that tap on the shoulder with a ten-minute warning, instead of a two-minute one said from across the room when she’s so focused on the drawing of eyelashes, she can’t hear the sounds around her. Maybe, instead of being labelled a talkative class-disruption, she would be seen as someone who processes things verbally, emotionally and kinesthetically – all in extreme ways.

And then, I think that maybe I should enrol her cross-border, in a school with extra funding, newer teachers and a French immersion program. There’d be a practically certifiable lack of cynicism from the newbie teachers, who just want to help children learn; French would be a challenge, whereas at this moment, it seems like she’ll be repeating stuff in September that she learned six months ago; the funding available (and the school’s relatively smaller class sizes due to lower registration rates) would make it much more enriching for Zoë – instead of PE 2-3 times a week, it could be daily, and the library could be staffed daily, and the class resources could be grander.

But. Putting her in that new school would mean an extra challenge for her (French), when eight hours a day would be enough of one. We’d also have to get a lot better at rising during normal family hours – no more waking up 10 minutes before we have to leave – because to get there, it’d take at least 30 minutes on the bus. And the area… it’s not my neighbourhood. There’s no illusions of safety there, and it’s merely a hop away from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side.

But. The school gets great reviews.

Sometime in the next month, Zoë will be visited in her preschool class by a rep from the school board. She’ll be observed for issues and then said rep will meet with her dad and I to discuss what we can do to make Kindergarten easier on, not necessarily for, Zoë. I’ve made it clear that I am in no way prepared to have her officially assessed for any anachronism, and that I’m simply concerned that Kindergarten will take this little girl who fucking loves to learn, socialize and be part of a classroom, and drive her into I’m not good enough.

Sadly, this is a concern that her preschool teacher hasn’t argued me away from – and I believe she would, however tactfully, if she thought there reason to. She’s spoken with the rep already, explained why preschool works for Zoë and that she likely won’t see much of anything during a two-hour class – but that eight hours would be quite different for my kid who has no off switch until it’s very much required.

I’m worried about all of this. I worry that I’m painting her in a light she’s not worthy of: that I’m using too much charcoal, when there should be more cornflower blue. I worry that my worries and issues with being labelled will be the brushstrokes that tint not only her own self-perceptions, but how others appreciate her image, too.

I worry that I, quite simply, am a liability for her normalcy, and that I want normalcy for her merely because I don’t have it for myself. I worry that average is not good enough, yet I want it sometimes – and is that wrong, too?

I don’t want her labelled because that would be putting her in a box. And I do, sort of because it would be taking her outside of a box that she doesn’t quite have enough room to move around in.

Here’s what I worry about: she will be so much like me, and the bomb will explode in her brain. Maybe I’ll know that it’s gone off, and I’ll be the best person to help, and she’ll still be amazing and beautiful and all of the brightness she is now. But it’ll still mean trying to breathe through the fumes.

Worse, I worry that the bomb’s never going to go off, and I’ll spend the majority of my life waiting for it to.

At EverythingMom:

• Fill out a survey, head to Mexico?
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• 3 things men want for Valentine’s Day (hint: not a tie)

At MamaPop:

• Christina Aguilera got the lyrics right, but can’t fight gravity at the Grammy Awards
• Grey’s Anatomy recap – Season 7, Epsiode 14
• Justin Bieber got a Super Bowl commercial with Ozzy, despite dropping fake digits on his blog

At Off Our Chests:

• Me, in 20 years
• Numbers add up
• What choice?
• And you are?
• Mutant
• Her parents
• When I grow up
• Compliments accepted
• Bling
• It’s broken?