Talking to my Angel

“Including me,” said Hailey. She had been replaying that moment over and over in her head as she lay on top of her cotton jersey pillowcase for an indescribable amount of time. She felt off, but she couldn't decide if she was bored and anxious, tired and anxious, or hungry and anxious. It was too late at night to find out she decided. She eventually fell asleep.

Earlier that evening:

Hailey set her mug of tea down on the table across from Jake, and waited for him to take a break from his phone. She had been waiting for the right kind of moment to arrive to finally tell him. She thought she would be able to do it while she was still slurping on her instant ramen noodles, but she hadn’t mustered up enough guts yet. She would wait until Jake’s attention was diverted. A moment later, Jake shifted his focus from his phone to the Styrofoam cup in front of him. Hailey inhaled a deep breath. This was it. Don’t chicken out, don’t chicken out, she told herself. 

“Did you know autism in women is diagnosed four times less than in men? And that a majority of girls are diagnosed later in adulthood?” Hailey told her roommate of three years, and also one of her few friends. She waited for her words to be acknowledged.

“Huh. That’s interesting,” said Jake, continuing to slurp the remaining noodles left in his cup, which was pretty much the reaction Hailey was expecting to get. She had a habit of occasionally telling Jake some fun fact or statistic that she had learned that day. 

“Including me,” said Hailey. That got Jake to look up from his noodles. 

“Where’d you get that idea?” he asked.

“From about three years of doing online research, mostly social media accounts.”

“Three years? And you’re just now telling me?”

“I wanted to be sure that’s what I am.” Jake let out a small chuckling sound, and was briefly lost in thought.

“Well, I guess that explains why you don’t like wearing gardening gloves when you garden.” Now it was Hailey’s turn to laugh.

“Out of all my traits to use as an example, and you chose not wearing gardening gloves as one? Not my refusal to wear pants, or my delay in processing jokes, or my meltdowns, or my afternoon naps, or why I only like to use the skinny forks in the silverware, but gardening gloves?” Jake’s eyebrows moved into a quizzical position.

“Those things are part of autism?”

“Yes!,” Hailey gave a small nod with her reply, as if reassuring herself of this fact. 

“Wow, ok.” Jake paused, then pushed his chair back, picked up his phone and his empty ramen cup, deposited the latter in the trash, then walked over to Hailey. Hailey looked up.

“Thank you for sharing this with me. I appreciate you telling me. We have a long day tomorrow, so I’m going to get ready to lay down. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Hailey echoed.

***

“The last duffle bag is in the car,” hollered Jake from the trunk of the Subaru. 

“Ok, I just need to get my water and I’m ready,” Hailey hollered back from inside the apartment complex. Hailey exited the apartment with a book and an extremely large reusable water bottle in tow. It was honestly truly amazing how much water she could consume throughout the day. And night. All the time, really.

Hailey got situated in the passenger seat. Driving wasn’t her thing, plus she wanted to read a bit on the long ride there. Jake closed the door on the car, and fished a quarter out of his jean pocket. 

“Ready?” he asked. Hailey nodded. She was always tails. Jake flipped the coin on the dashboard and it landed eagle side up. “Aw, man,” said Jake. “At least I get to pick on the ride back. What do you want?”

Hailey was already rifling through the CD choices in the center console. She pulled out one with a brown and gray cover. It was one of her favorites. She popped it in the CD player, while trying to discreetly turn the volume down to a level she found appropriate. Googling what caused her hypersensitive hearing disorder was the beginning of  how she had learned the word for what she undoubtedly had: autism. 

Jake put the key in the ignition and they hit the road. About an hour into their journey, Hailey’s favorite song on the CD started to play. She loved a lot of things about the last song on the Melissa Ethridge album, the tune, the sound in general, but in recent years, she had started to love the lyrics the best. Hailey wouldn’t dare sing along and out loud in front of Jake or anybody else for that matter, but she did follow the words inside her head. Her eyes lost focused on the book in front of her as she listened intently to the part she liked best:

“This town thinks I’m crazy / They just think I’m strange/

Sometimes they want to own me / Sometimes they wish I’d change /

But I can feel the thunder underneath my feet / I sold my soul for freedom/

 It’s lonely but it’s sweet.”  She loved that part. 

The movement of the car was making her tired, and her eyes were already weary from reading. Plus Jake hadn’t brought the conversation at last night’s dinner up yet, and Hailey was afraid any conversation lasting longer than ten seconds would steer in that direction. She didn’t feel like she was in the mood to continue that conversation yet. Hailey put her seatbelt into a pillow-like position as the hum of the engine lulled her to sleep.

***

Hailey awoke to discover they had stopped at a gas station. 

“Hey,” said Jake, from outside her side of the car, “Do you want to get your flowers while I fill this up?” Hailey nodded. She was still in the afternoon nap haze where talking would take up too much energy. She got her purse, exited the car, and started walking in the direction of the flower stand on the other side of the gas station. Once she got there, she greeted the women supervising the cart, pointed to a small bouquet of orange tulips, and made her purchase. Hailey often wondered if the women ever recognized her. It would be pretty impressive to memorize someone who only made the same purchase once a year, she thought. Hailey walked back to find Jake waiting for her in the driver’s seat. She picked up her pace, and they hit the road again. Not that either of them were in any hurry. Jake stopped at the café that was only a few blocks away. 

“Alright, you good?” asked Jake.

“Yep. Bye,” Hailey added her signature little nod, picked up her purse and tulips, and waved goodbye to Jake. 

“See ya”. 

Hailey liked walking alone to the cemetery. It gave her time to think, and process her thoughts. Not that she hadn’t been thinking about what she was going to say the last month and a half. She reached the plot she was looking for, and laid the tulips on top while simultaneously sitting down in the grass in front of the square cement block planted in the ground. The grass needed to be mowed. There was nobody else around to be seen at this time of day. There hardly ever was.

“Hey Mama,” Hailey said in a voice that was just above a whisper. A memory flashed through Hailey’s head of her mother trying to tell a teenage Hailey to call her something “less juvenile than Mama,” but Hailey had been calling her Mama “mama” for the last fifteen years, and she certainly wasn’t going to change that title then or now. 

“I know you know I still think of you everyday, but it’s true. Anyway, I’ve got something I’m ready to share with you now. I wasn’t ready last time, and I wasn’t sure the year before that, and I didn’t know the year before that; but I’m autistic.” That was the first time Hailey had actually said it out loud. Sure, she had implied it with Jake, but saying “including me” was a whole lot different than actually saying it. 

“Turns out my “special quirks” are just traits. Oh, and my meltdowns. Explains that about me too. And my difficulty driving, and sense of direction. Actually, it helps explain a lot of things about me. And you know, I’ve been thinking about it, and how you would react if you knew when you were still here, and I just don’t know.” Hailey paused for a moment. She had decided to paint this in a good light. Her subconscious was still wanting to make her only parent proud. “I don’t know if you’d be glad there was a word with all these explanations attached to it, I don’t know if you’d believe me, I don’t know if you’d say I was just making excuses.” You were always kind of hard to predict, Hailey thought, but didn’t dare say aloud. “Anyway, I thought you should know. Only you and Jake know. I told him last night. By the way, you were wrong. He’s doing gigs in some pretty nice places now. I hope you would be impressed. Oh, and don’t feel bad that you never figured out me by yourself. You couldn't have known back then. It’s not your fault. That’s about it. Not much has happened since I last saw you that I’m sure you don’t already know about. And I really do miss going out to Maria’s every Saturday with you. I think of you every time I read the menu, and see the chicken soft shell taco listed.” Hailey let out a heavy sigh, and watched an ant journey from the burial plot to the side of one of the tulips. The sky had turned from blue to a slight orange. She needed to start heading back. 

“See you next year Mama.” She got up, and by the time she was halfway through the cemetery, the grass had started to make her bare legs itch. She would join Jake at the café in about twenty minutes, and share their usual soup and sandwich. Nobody had yet to appear in the cemetery, and Hailey started to softly sing the song that had been stuck in her head for the last five hours.

“Can’t you see I’m going where I can see the sun rise/ 

I’ve been talking to my angel / And she said that it’s alright.”