Flying by Elizabeth Glass
Playing Kiss-n-Catchers, Rosie figured out that she could go
behind the trees with the boys and show them her panties.
Then they would chase her anyway. She sewed her sister
Madison's pink hair ribbons onto her underwear in little
bows so that the boys would think her panties were pretty
and touch them, their mouths slightly open.
Her last days in jail, almost all she did was think of her
childhood, that and go over the trial. Court went on two and
a half days before the jury went to decide what to do with
her. Her attorney, Mr. Peteprin, told her the first night of
deliberation when a decision hadn't yet been made, that he
was sure the jury would come to a decision the following
day. Mr. Peteprin and Rosie's father were in the same law
firm; her father had felt it would be better for an attorney
other than himself to represent her, so he asked Mr.
Peteprin, who had also been the attorney at the hearing
shortly after Josh's death where Rosie was found incompetent
to stand trial. She had been in the nuthouse so long by the
time the trial came, she wasn't sure what would happen if
she got out. She didn't know if she could interact with
people even if she was on medicine to regulate her behavior.
She didn't think she had done such a good job interacting
with people before. She was also afraid that they would send
her to prison. That wouldn't be like the nuthouse where she
had been for the past three and a half years. Prison would
be dark and scary like the woods behind her father's house
where she used to play Truth-or-Dare with the neighborhood
kids . . . and where Josh tried to fly. But Josh wasn't a
bird, Rosie thought. He couldn't spread his arms with violet
and aquamarine and pink wings and fly from one side of the
hill to the other. He just had arms covered with a red T-
shirt that helped him fall off the cliff.
A man dressed in blue got Rosie that last morning in jail
where she was for the trial after they took her from the
nuthouse. He took her to the courtroom to find out what the
jury had decided. The judge looked at her, at her long brown
hair she'd brushed a hundred times for good luck, and told
her to rise. He told an old man in a green vest from the
jury and Mr. Peteprin to rise, too. The old man from the
jury said, "We find the defendant, Ms. Rosalie Holly
Anderson, Guilty of Reckless Homicide."
They took a recess, then began the sentencing phase of the
trial. Rosie was surprised that her sisters and father had
to go back on the stand and swear all over again to tell the
truth. Near the end, Mr. Peteprin said, "Your Honor, you are
well aware that my client has been in custody for the past
forty-one months. I would move that the court give her
Credit Time Served." Then the judge asked the jury to go
decide on a sentence.
When everyone came back an hour later, the judge asked
the jury what sentence it recommended. The man in the St.
Patrick's vest answered, "Three years."
The judge thanked him and looked to Rosie. Mr. Peteprin
stood up and said, "I would move the court to give her
Credit Time Served." Rosie was afraid that Mr. Peteprin
would get her in trouble since he had already said that
once, especially since the judge began to lecture about what
an awful tragedy it was that a young child had to lose his
life in such a terrible accident. But then he told Rosie and
Mr. Peteprin to stand and said, "Credit Time Served."
He spoke with Mr. Peteprin after that. Rosie didn't fully
understand what was going on, because she thought that when
they said "Guilty" it meant that she would be going to
prison. But she came to understand that she was being released,
and the next thing she knew she was at her father's house.
She went upstairs to her old bedroom to take a nap. The
Tegretol and Pamalor she was on wore her out, and she was
tired and confused.
Lying on her bed at her father's, with sheets from when she
was a child, she traced Holly Hobby's blue and white bonnet
and went over the trial, over what had been said.
"What did you tell the police that day when they found you,
Ms. Anderson?" Mr. Peteprin asked.
"I said that Josh could fly. That I thought he could fly
like a bird."
"What would make you think that Josh could fly?"
"'Cause he always would spread his arms and try to fly. We
would play airplane and bird that way."
"Was this the first time Joshua fell while 'flying'?"
"Yeah. He didn't usually squirm and wiggle so much."
"What happened when he fell?"
"The whole thing?"
"What you remember, Ms. Anderson."
"Well, I wanted to rappel. . . ." She could see the whole
thing just like she was there. They had gone into the woods
behind her dad's so she could rappel. It was a day that she
had Josh, since he was usually with Sam. Rosie and Josh were
standing on a cliff, looking over it. Suddenly, a flock of
birds flew out from the valley between the hills. Josh
screamed. At first she thought he was scared, but actually
he was excited, squealing "Brd, brd, brd," and flapping his
arms. She picked him up, to help him pretend to fly. She let
him fly all around the woods that way while he shrieked and
yelled. She got tired, so they lay down in the brown leaves
covering the ground and cuddled closely. He touched her nose
with a dirty finger and said, "Brd, Mama Rsie, brd," and
tried to stand up.
"No rest. Put your head down. Rest your head," she told him.
"If you do, we'll play birdie."
"Brd," Josh said. He lay back down and put his head on her
arm. He ripped leaves with his hands and patted them onto
her chest. "Brd, Mama Rsie," he begged after a while. He had
been so good playing with the leaves that she grabbed him
up, swooped him over near the cliff. She held him, gliding
and flying him around in circles. Then he squirmed and she
dropped him. He fell on the ground right next to the edge of
the cliff. She tried to grab him, even got a corner of his
little red Louisville Cardinals T-shirt, but he rolled right
over the edge. She remembers looking down at him, but then
it's black until she was in her father's kitchen with her
older sister Sam asking her where Josh was.
Dr. Cooper from the nuthouse told her, "The stress of seeing
Josh injured brought on a seizure." That's why she doesn't
remember.
Rosie didn't see her sisters much while she was in the
nuthouse. Sam and BelAnne visited her or called sometimes,
but it just wasn't the same as before. Madison only saw her
once, and never called. Rosie's father told her what was
going on with her sisters, and always kept her up-to-date.
She missed them, but was scared because she knew BelAnne and
Sam were afraid that she would hurt their children. They
didn't say it at the trial. In court they smiled and said
they weren't worried at all since she was taking medicine.
Sam said she trusted Rosie alone with Indigo, and BelAnne
said she would trust Rosie with her baby when it was born.
But Rosie could see it in BelAnne's eyes. BelAnne smiled,
but the corners of her eyes squinted the way they did when
she used to lie to their father and say that she and Sam
hadn't had boys over while they babysat Madison and Rosie.
And Sam stared at John like it was the last time they would
ever see their daughter.
Sometimes Rosie thinks if she hadn't had Josh, maybe
everything would be normal. But then she thinks of his sweet
face, blonde hair, and she's glad she did have him, even if
it was only for a couple of years.
When she was "late," she made Madison come home from the
dorm to help her. They snuck into Rosie's closet with the
test.
"What do I do?"
"Well, first go pee in this cup," Madison told her.
She brought the warm cup back and set it on the flowered
contact paper on the shelf in front of her sweaters.
"Now you have to take that little dropper and put ten drops
of pee in that clear stuff in that tube."
Rosie felt like a chemist, mixing deadly chemicals in test
tubes.
"Now pour this in it." Madison handed her a tiny vial. "If
it changes color, you're knocked up."
They went back into Rosie's room and watched Fat Albert
reruns. When they went back into the closet, there was the
brightest blue Rosie had ever seen laughing at her from the
test tube.
"Should I tell Mike and Scotty?"
"You don't even know which one?"
Rosie shook her head and slumped onto her bed.
"Didn't you use protection?"
"I think so. I'm not sure. It was dark."
Madison paused and took a deep breath. "Whatever, Rosie. You
can't just screw the whole world."
"They love me."
"Then why do they both have girlfriends?"
"Those girls are bitches. They don't understand them. Only I
do."
"Whatever." Madison marched out the door.
Rosie sat on her bed holding the blue test tube for hours.
She watched it, hoping it would change back to clear. When
it didn't, she carried it to her dad. She walked into his
bathroom where he was standing in front of the mirror
shaving, and handed the tube to him.
"What does this mean?" he asked. "Are you pregnant?"
She lay down on the floor and rolled her legs over her head,
her knees resting on the floor behind her head. He rinsed
out the tube and kept shaving. When he was done, he said,
"Well, I guess I'll make you an appointment Monday," and
walked out of the room. Rosie flipped her legs back over her
head and started reading the book titles on the stacks and
stacks of books in her father's room: The Judicial Process,
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, You and Your Baby. She picked
up the baby book and opened it.
When she went downstairs later, her father was washing
spinach. "I wanna keep it," she said. "I wanna keep it and
have a baby."
"It's not a toy. You're eighteen years old, Rosie."
"So I'm old enough to keep it."
While Rosie was asleep after the trial, she dreamed about
playing Truth-or-Dare with the neighborhood kids in the
woods behind their house. In the dream, it was just like
they used to play. They would dare each other to do things
like "Eat a slug" and "Take all of your clothes off and lay
on top of Tom." Rosie was the only girl who would take her
clothes off. The other girls would just pull their dresses
up and show their knees. Or pull their Danskin shirts up,
their belly buttons sticking out like creamy worms headed
into dark holes. Then they'd squeal and pull their shirts
over their knees. But Rosie liked taking off her clothes.
She was the only one whose chest was swollen like small
balloons filled with jelly. She liked the way Jeff would
reach out and touch her nipple with his finger like he
didn't even know he was doing it. She liked the way Scotty
would squirm, pulling and tugging his tan corduroys.
Madison got to their father's house first that night. She
walked up the stairs to Rosie's room where Rosie was asleep.
"Rosie," she said as she walked in the room. Rosie jumped,
pulled the blankets up, and rolled into a ball with her arms
around her head. Rosie had found that was the best defense
in the nuthouse against people pounding her for no reason or
trying to touch her. Once she woke up to find that a woman
from across the room had taken off Rosie's panties and was
licking her like a dog lapping water. She screamed, which
got the woman off of her, but she never did confess that
while the woman was doing that she had an incredible dream
about Scotty kissing her. Loving her. Kissing lower and
lower until he had buried his face inside her like a bee
inside a calla lily. He never did that, even though every
time they saw each other, Rosie did it to him.
When she realized she was at her father's house, not in the
nuthouse, she peeked out of the covers. "Hey!" She jumped up
to hug Madison.
Madison stiffened when Rosie hugged her, but then loosened
some and hugged back. She told Rosie about her apartment
with Billy, their dogs, her job at the Science Museum, and
her art show. She handed Rosie a drawing. "This is for you.
I didn't know if I would give it to you, but I think I
should. There's a painting of it at the show. If you want
it, you can have it when the show comes down." Rosie glanced
down at the half-sheet of typing paper and saw Josh looking
right into her eyes.
"Thanks."
Madison went down to help their father with the crescent
rolls for dinner. Rosie would go down in a while, but first
she had to look at Josh. It was the first time she'd seen
him in three and a half years.
After BelAnne got there, she and Rosie cut lettuce and
peeled carrots and cucumbers for salad. "So how's freedom?"
she asked.
"It's fine. I want to go outside."
"I couldn't imagine not being able to go outside for that
long."
"Oh, we could go into the courtyard. But it's not the same
as really being out there though." She pointed through the
kitchen window to the backyard and the woods behind it. They
were both quiet.
"Remember when we were little and Sam locked us in the
garage in our pajamas?" BelAnne asked.
Rosie nodded.
"You played and sang like it was the most normal thing in
the world to be locked in the garage with four inches of
snow outside and no shoes on."
"I guess."
"What'd you do with that tricycle?"
"Oh, the potato maker." Rosie hadn't thought about it in
years. She had turned the trike upside down and spun the
pedals with her hands, dropping potatoes from behind the
wheel onto the floor.
"You kept telling me, 'Bel, it'll be okay. The ghosts of the
pigs that used to live on this land will save us. We'll make
them potatoes and they'll save us.'"
Rosie smiled and looked outside. She didn't really like
talking about the things she'd made up. She felt better now.
Was taking medicine. She understood there weren't real
ghosts.
"You said they'd make a piggy spook party on Sam and unlock
the door if we made them fifty potatoes. And sure enough, by
the time we had made fifty potatoes the door was unlocked."
"Yeah, but Sam must have unlocked it," Rosie said. She
wanted to show that she was okay now, that she knew the
difference between made-up and real.
"Oh sure. I still think it was the pig ghosts," BelAnne
said.
Rosie couldn't tell if BelAnne was making fun of her or not.
Since Rosie was younger, BelAnne had always kind of picked
on her. Rosie just smiled and watched the finches on the
bird feeder outside.
"Samantha's here," their father yelled, coming into the
kitchen.
Rosie was as scared about seeing Sam as a rabbit munching
carrots in a garden while a farmer marches through wearing
big brown boots. Sam thought of Josh as her son, too, not
just Rosie's, and then he died while he was with Rosie. She
didn't know what Sam would do when she saw her. But when she
walked in the door carrying Indigo, Sam went up to Rosie,
put Indigo into her arms, and said, "Rosie, this is your
niece. Indigo, this is your Aunt Rosie."
Rosie looked at Indigo's curly light brown hair, blue eyes,
and toy flute tucked under her arm. "She's adorable," she
told Sam. Then she pointed to the flute and asked Indigo,
"What'cha got here?"
"Music."
"Can you play it?"
"Uh huh," Indigo nodded.
"Time to eat," their father called. He corralled everyone
into the kitchen where they sat in their old seats, the same
ones they sat in as children, with Indigo where their mother
sat until she died. It was the first time anyone had sat
there since their mother.
Salad, ham, cinnamon Jell-O with applesauce and maraschino
cherries in it, yams, green beans, and crescent rolls with
butter were for dinner. Rosie eyed it all. "Can you pass the
yams?" she asked. She hadn't ever eaten them before she went
to the nuthouse, but now she wanted to try everything.
"So how do you like being out of the loony bin?" Madison
asked.
Both Sam and their father shot her a look of disapproval.
"Good. I'm glad. I didn't like it there too much," Rosie
answered. She stuffed the last part of a roll into her mouth
as she did.
"I guess the food there sucks," Madison said.
Their father fidgeted with his fork, pushing around the food
on his plate. Sam pretended to be interested in helping
Indigo eat her Jell-O. BelAnne just watched her fork sitting
on her plate, her hands folded on her lap under the table.
"Yeah. It's like cafeteria food mostly. Once in a while
they'd surprise us with something pretty good, though. But
not like this. This is great." She was getting full after
eating only half of her plate, but kept eating. It was so
good, she didn't want to waste any of it.
Madison began to say something else, but Sam jumped in and
asked, "So how is your show going?"
"Swell. I've sold several pieces, which I didn't expect to
do at a coffeehouse, especially since it's my first show."
Rosie could see BelAnne breathe out, pick up her fork, and
begin to eat. She could tell Madison wanted to talk
more about the nuthouse, but that her father and Sam didn't
want to hear it. Rosie ran part of a roll around the bottom
of her plate to soak up the last bits of juice on it. She
wanted another plateful, but knew she couldn't begin to eat
it.
"Indigo, please quit playing that inside," their father
begged after dinner. But she didn't quit and when Rosie
tried to take the flute from her, Indigo screamed.
"Come on," Rosie said. She shuffled her out the back door.
They walked into the backyard and she gave Indigo the toy
back.
"Trees." Indigo pointed at the woods behind the house.
"Yep," Rosie said, glancing around.
"Play with trees," Indigo told Rosie, pointing again. Rosie
hadn't been there since that day. She guessed it was time to
go back. She held Indigo's ivory hand, soft as satin, and
walked down the hill that Rosie and her sisters used to roll
down until they got headaches and Sam doled out little
orange Johnson's baby aspirin to each of them. There were no
leaves on the trees, same as that day, so Rosie figured that
the family would be able to see them and not worry too much.
At the trial, Scotty admitted that he saw Rosie and Josh
that day. Through the trees with no leaves. Saw Josh swoop
like a bird, then fall.
"Yes, I saw him fall," Scott told the prosecutor. "No, she
didn't push him or throw him," he said. "I didn't know he
died until a lot later," and "I didn't know what to do about
it, so I just kept quiet until lawyers were bugging my
parents asking for witnesses, that's when I came forward."
Rosie and Indigo crossed the creek bed that rarely had any
water in it and walked into the woods. She sat Indigo on a
fallen log, her chubby legs sticking out from under her
dress. Rosie could smell the log breaking down, the bugs
underneath it. It was a warm March evening, the wind blew
and lifted leaves off of the ground like Halloween. She took
Indigo's flute and tried to play "Mary had a Little Lamb,"
but didn't do very well, so she handed it back. "Play me a
song, Indigo."
The flute bellowed and screeched like birds at night in the
woods. After a minute, Indigo hopped up and started walking
further into the woods.
"Hold my hand," Rosie told her.
Rosie imagined what went on in her father's house then.
"Where's Indigo?" someone would ask. "Where's Rosie?"
someone else would ask. They would run around all three
floors of the house hunting for Rosie and Indigo, but they
wouldn't find them. They would look in
closets, the attic, to see if they were hiding. When they
still didn't find them, someone would yell, "She took her
outside." Sam would be the first one out, with their dad and
Madison right behind her. BelAnne would look in the yard
since she was so pregnant. Their dad and Madison would look
around the neighborhood, and Sam would run to the woods. All
along Rosie and Indigo would be in the woods. Alone.
They went downhill. Indigo picked violets and snowdrops
until she had a bouquet of purple and ivory flowers blooming
from her hands. They sat in the dry creek bed on big mossy
rocks. Rosie could smell dirt and flowers whirling around
them.
"This is boat," Indigo said. "Sharks eat you feet." She
tucked her legs under her.
"Okay." Rosie tucked her legs, too. "Me and your mom used to
play boat." Rosie watched Indigo. She thought she looked
just like Sam did in her baby pictures, except she was in
color, not black-and-white. And that she looked kind of like
Joshie, too. She looked around, realizing they were about a
quarter mile from where he fell, right in the same creek
bed.
That's when Rosie imagined that Sam began climbing down to
follow the creek bed.
"Oh no, fall in." Indigo bounced off of the rock.
"Sssswwsshh." She made water noises with her mouth. "Fall
in," she demanded.
Rosie jumped off the rock and "fell in" the water.
"Go to the bottom. I mermaid princess."
Rosie kneeled behind the big rock where she had been
sitting.
Indigo lay down in the dry creek bed. "Evil witch made me
plant. Stuck by witch."
Sam came around the bend in the dry creek bed. "God," she
yelled. Rosie watched her run to Indigo screaming "My baby"
and "Oh dear God." When Sam got to Indigo, she popped her
two-year-old head up and said, "Get down, Mommie. We
plants."
Sam grabbed Indigo into her arms. "Where's Aunt Rosie? Is
she with you?" She smoothed down Indigo's brown curls.
"She plant. Get down, Mommie. Witch made plants."
Rosie was still behind the rock, not sure how to come out.
She knew Sam would be mad that she took Indigo into the
woods, so she stayed where she was. Sam saw her and crawled
over the rock to hug her. "Rosie, you bitch. God you scared
me."
Sam rocked Rosie's head so much that she thought she was
going to be seasick. She felt the same way she used to when
they would roll down the hill, and she wanted Sam to give
her some baby aspirin.
"Sorry." Rosie knew it wasn't enough, but how did she say to
Sam all that she was sorry for.
"It's okay, sweetie."
Rosie was crying by then. Sorry that she scared Sam about
her baby. Sorry that she took her baby from Sam . . . from
herself. "We were playing."
"Playing boat!" Indigo screamed with one arm up in the air
while she ran toward the rock to play boat again.
Sam looked at Indigo and smiled, then looked at Rosie. "You
really held up, didn't you?"
Rosie shrugged.
"You're really something the way you can go through all that
and then come out so . . . so Rosie."
Rosie watched her, not sure what to say.
"I didn't want Madison to ask you about the mental health
facility at all because I didn't know what it would do to
you. I didn't know if you could handle it. But you're so
strong. Remember when you always wanted to play 'fort on a
boat' and I said you could only play 'fort' or 'boat' but
not both?" She was still rocking Rosie's head.
Rosie nodded.
"I guess you know how to do both. It's me that can only do
one."
They looked at each other for a long time after Sam finally
quit clutching Rosie's head. "I was really upset with you,"
Sam eventually mumbled. She was looking at the rocks and
twigs and leaves on the ground.
"I know." Rosie didn't want to talk about then, about Josh,
about before she was better.
"I was afraid you did it on purpose."
Rosie looked down. She thought about how for years she
hadn't realized that Josh was dead, that she would ask Sam
to tuck him in and kiss him goodnight.
"I'm glad you didn't do it on purpose."
"I couldn't," Rosie told her. "He was my baby. I love him."
She took the picture Madison had given her out of her back
pocket and looked at it.
"I know."
"Play boat," Indigo demanded.
Sam rumpled Rosie's hair and pulled her legs up "out of the
water."
When they got back to their father's yard, Sam was carrying
Indigo who was "too ti-ired" to walk anymore.
"Oh God, what happened?" BelAnne asked.
"It's okay. She's just resting." Indigo plopped down and ran
to her grandfather carrying the fossil of a brachiopod
they'd found.
"Paps, brakey." She held her hand and fat fingers out for
their father to see. He looked at Sam, who nodded the secret
"it's okay" nod their mother used to give him when she
didn't want him to say anything else.
BelAnne's baby was born about a week after that. A boy named
Garnett. He didn't have fair features like Josh and Indigo.
His hair was black and his skin was dark, Antonio's Hispanic
look. When Garnett was three months old, BelAnne and Antonio
took him to Sam's so that they could all go to The Bristol
and Actor's Theater to see a play. They asked Rosie to
babysit. She was glad that Garnett didn't look like Josh,
that she didn't have to be reminded of Josh going off the
cliff. Of his inability to fly.
When Rosie was little, she fit in like orange in a blue-green painting of the sea.
She thought it was because she
was taller than the other kids -- clumsy and big and
awkward. That and her seizures. Nobody liked her, so she
went inside her head for playtime. She wished the kids would
like her awfully bad. In first grade they played Kiss-n-Catchers.
She was always a Catcher, never a girl the boys
chased. After she caught somebody and was in the group to be
caught, she ran and squealed and pretended to dart from the
boys. But they chased other girls whose pink tights flashed
like ballerinas under their lacy Polly Flinder's dresses.
She pretended not to mind, jumping high into the air to keep
her invisible friend Timmy from grabbing her ankles, since
he would chase her even if the other boys wouldn't. She
hated the girls whose blonde curls bounced in red satin
ribbons, their shiny black patent leather shoes skimming
through the sandbox while the cutest boys in the class
chased them.
He had been so good playing with the leaves that she
grabbed him up, swooped him over near the cliff. She held him, gliding
and flying him around in circles.
All contents copyright © 1997, 1998
The Blue Moon Review, All Rights Reserved.