The Room is Spinning

I’m spinning like a ballerina and I like the way my pink tutu poofs out as I make myself dizzy. 

“Love, you can’t wear that to school,” Mommy says from the kitchen. Her hair is curly like a lion’s mane. She tosses me a pair of jeans. 

I fall to the floor. The room pirouettes around me. 

“Daddy said I could.”

“Daddy doesn’t make the rules,” she says with a grin. “Put those on, it’s chilly out this morning. We’re going to be late again.” 

I am in second grade and I know rules are rules, so I pick up the jeans from the floor and flop onto the couch. 

I hear the trickle of the coffee pot as Mommy fills her mug. It’s the red one she made with the crack at the top. I asked her once why she doesn’t get rid of it. She said she made it that way on purpose.

The jeans are hard to get on. I pull and pull, wiggling around on the couch. 

“These are too hard to get on!” I call out. “I think I should stay home today.”

“On a Tuesday?” Mommy asks. I hear her opening the sugar she puts in her coffee. 

“Yes.”

She laughs.

“I have to be at the studio, silly. How about we play hooky Friday?” 

I sigh loudly, tugging up my jeans the final way.

“Ice cream too?”

“We’ll see,” she says, which means yes. 

“Get your shoes on,” she calls out as she walks back down the hall towards her and Daddy’s room. “I have to find my portfolio…”

I go over to the front door of our apartment. Our shoes are lined up in a row. Mommy’s have paint splotches on them. Daddy’s are missing. 

I sit on the floor and pull on my sparkly purple jelly sandals. I think Mommy might be mad because it’s not really summertime anymore, but they’re my favorites. 

When they’re on, I walk back into the living room and stand at the end of the hallway. 

“I’m ready!” I yell. 

“I’ll be out in a second!” Mommy yells back. “Do you have your jacket on?”

I walk back to the door and stand on my tippy toes so I can pull my yellow jacket off the hook. I zip it up so it covers my red Minnie Mouse t-shirt. I fluff up my pink tutu, which I’m still wearing over my jeans.

Mommy is still in her room. She’s messy. She can never find anything. She says it’s ‘cause she’s a creative genius. 

I walk over to the window and look out over the buildings. They’re so tall. Sometimes, when I’m out on the sidewalk and I look up, I can’t even see the sun or the moon or the stars or the clouds. Mommy says they’re still there though.

I can see two buildings far out. Daddy calls them twins. They look just alike and that’s where he goes to work every morning. 

When I was in kindergarten, I stayed home sick and watched cartoons on the couch. I didn’t want Daddy to leave. 

“Hey, I’ll be right there,” he said, pointing outside the window at one of the twins. “You can watch me work at my desk. I’ll wave to you and everything.”

“But that’s too far away!” 

“Well you’ve got to squint your eyes and tilt your head. Like this, see?” 

He squinted his eyes and tilted his head and held his hands up like binoculars. 

“Would you look at that! There’s my office, and my desk, and my nameplate. And there’s Ed asleep at his desk! I’d better go wake him up.”

I giggled. 

“Let me see!”

He came behind me and held his hand binoculars over my eyes so I could look through. I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and looked real hard. 

“I think I see it…” I told him. I was really concentrating. 

“See? I told you. Now, you watch me while I work, and you take good care of Mommy. Maybe you can model for her if you’re feeling better later.”

He ruffled my hair and tucked me back under the blanket. I cozied up into the couch. 

“I love you to Central Park,” I said.

“I love you to China.” 

“Like Chinatown?”

“Farther.”

“I love you farther than that!”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

That’s our game. I say I love you to and then a place that’s far. But he always knows the farthest places and I lose.

I hold my binocular hands up to my eyes now and press them against the cold window. I was still sleeping when he left this morning. I hope he’s home in time for Spaghetti Tuesday tonight. That’s my favorite. 

If I look hard through my binoculars, I think I can see him sitting at his big desk with his important papers, and Ed asleep in the next office over. Just like always. 

I press my lips against the glass so I can blow him a kiss and they leave a smudge. I smear it away so that I won’t get in trouble for making the window dirty. 

“I found it!” Mommy calls out from down the hall. I hear her throwing things around. She probably made a mess looking for her portfolio of important art. 

I do pirouettes in front of the window again. I hope Daddy has his hand binoculars up so he can see my good dancing.

Mommy comes out with her hair looking wilder than before. She holds up her case and grins, then starts laughing as she looks at me twirling. 

I stop and lean against the window for balance. 

“What?” I say. “What’s so funny?”

“Your outfit. You’ve got a pink tutu over jeans with purple sandals and a bright yellow jacket. Who taught you how to get dressed?”

“You!”

She shakes her head. 

“It’s obvious you’re the artist’s kid. Your dad really--”

Mommy stops talking all of a sudden and gets a look on her face. 

I’m scared she’s mad at me for my outfit that I know doesn’t match. 

Her mouth is open but no sound comes out, like when I turn down the volume on my cartoons and imagine what they’re saying. 

She walks over and stands beside me at the window and pushes her hands against the glass but doesn’t make binoculars. She is swaying on her feet and I wonder, Is the room spinning for her too?

I turn to look out at what she is looking at. 

One of the twins is on fire.

There’s a great black smoke cloud eating it. 

I squint my eyes and tilt my head but I don’t see Daddy at his desk anymore. Maybe he’s on break. 

“Mommy, what is that?” I ask. 

She doesn’t answer. She always answers my questions. 

Her mouth is still open and her face is the color of the canvas she paints on. There’s a strange sound coming from her like she can’t breathe and I am scared and I have never seen her look so afraid. 

She falls to the floor and I can’t catch her because I’m too small and she’s too big. She curls up into a ball like I do at night when I’m scared of monsters.

“Mommy?” 

I tap her shoulder. 

“Mommy, I have to go to school, remember?”

She’s quiet. I don’t know what to do. 

I think she is sick. 

I leave her on the floor and walk into the kitchen and pull the phone off the wall and push the numbers written on the fridge next to Daddy’s name. I think he will know what to do, but the phone only makes a beeping noise and not a ringing noise. I try Grandma’s number too, but it does the same sound.

I come back to the living room and tug the blanket off the back of the couch. I cover Mommy up with it like Daddy did that day I was home from school sick. She doesn’t say anything.

I climb onto the couch and pull my knees to my chest. I’m too scared to turn on the TV. I hear sirens outside and watch out the window for what feels like forever.

I think I fall asleep because when I wake up I can only see one twin left, but the sky is smoky and I think maybe the other is just hiding. 

Mommy is still on the floor and I can’t tell if she’s awake or not but she looks like she was crying, but maybe not because her face looks dry too. 

I wait and wait and the sky grows dark and it begins to snow and I wonder, How long has it been?  

I don’t know, but I keep waiting.

Daddy will know what to do when he gets home.