Sweet Home Alabama

“Mom? Mom? Mom, please, no!”

“She can’t hear you. I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing you can do.” I glare at the nurse. There is always something to do. This is the first time I’ve seen my mother, and she’s been here for four hours. In that time, I’ve relayed vital information to various doctors, called the insurance company, who are going to pay for everything, taken the city bus to Andy’s friend’s house to pick my little brother up, left him at a neighbor’s house, called my aunt and made arrangements for Andy to stay with her, and called Grandma to make arrangements for me. This is the system we worked out years ago, just in case. The plans vary, depending on who has been hospitalized. They were designed specifically for us to always have something to do.

I look at my mother again, glare at the nurse again.

“Are you leaving, then?” Her voice rises just enough to let me know that she really wants me to leave.

“No, I’m going to stay with my mom. You never know, something might happen.” I say this in a bright, easy tone of voice, but I continue to glare. Her face falls at the thought of the angry teenager watching her work. She probably thinks I’m planning on mugging her, or something worse.

I sit down with my book of sudokus, and she leaves, wondering if she should stay. A doctor comes in. She looks like she’s just finished her residency. She looks like the kind of doctor I like, the kind who are nice to you, but not in a patronizing way. Like a friend who just happens to be saving someone’s life. A slight upward curve at the corner of her mouth suggests that she laughs easily, and it’s backed up by a friendly look in her eye. One day, I’ll be a doctor like that. I’ll do so well for the next three years, colleges will be begging to be allowed to give me a scholarship. So will the medical schools.

I’m still fantasizing about being Superdoctor when the woman starts to talk to me.

“You scared the nurse, you know.” I look up from my puzzle, and she’s smiling at me. Then she’s back to business. I close the puzzle book and look at her. I’m stuck, anyway.

“Okay. Good news is, she’s going to live, she’ll fully recover, she’ll be fine. Bad news is, she’ll be in here for a month in a full-body cast, then another month still in casts, but in physical therapy for some of the smaller things. We’ll let her go home when she’s down to arm and leg casts, and it looks like it’ll be one arm and one leg, the others will heal faster. She’ll still be coming to physical therapy, maybe every day. She won’t be able to talk to you for a month, her jaw is damaged. We’re keeping her asleep for about a week.” She smiles at me, and I smile back. Finished with her check-up, she leaves. I sigh, and go back to the sudokus, skillfully forgetting which one I was working on, so I can start over on one of the simple ones.

An hour later, she’s back. She comes so silently, I can’t hear her coming up next to me. I don’t notice until she speaks from the chair to my right, next to the door.

“I’m almost jealous of her.” I look at her, startled and confused. She understands my silent question.

“Look at her. She’s safe here. There are security guards by all the doors on the entrance floor, nothing can come get her. She’s got no worries, no problems, for a whole week. You and I are going back out into the city. Boston isn’t the safest place in the world, no matter what we think. Don’t you wish you could be in that protective plaster, shielded from the world?”

The answer is yes, I do, I would give anything to be safe like that. But this is the real world. I have to stay in the line of fire, protecting my family, whether it means taking the city bus to pick up Andy, or putting him on my back and running. So I smile at the nice doctor, and shrug my shoulders. She senses immediately that I am out of her range of experience. I can see her thinking about grabbing one of her psychiatrist friends. I’ve been through that with guidance counselors at school. They’ve tried all kinds of tricks on me, but nothing ever works. I am stronger than that.

A guidance counselor once asked me what I was. I think he may have been trying to find out what my religion is, but I didn’t take it that way.

I am what the world has made me, I told him.

He looked shocked by this unusually long answer. No one else had ever gotten so much out of me. He grinned hugely, ready to make progress, and I grinned right back, and he did not get a word out of me the rest of the year.

The doctor, who looks like she might make a good friend, sighs, and walks away. Everyone does, in the end. Except my family. We stick together, and I protect them. That’s the way it is, and the way it will always be. I will always be standing in front of my mother and brother, wishing I were bulletproof, knowing that it only takes one well aimed bullet, one skillfully placed fist, and I am down, my family unguarded. I will always be pretending that everything is fine, while inside, my soul screams for mercy as it stretches to shield my family.

After a few hours of sudokus, reading, and absent, wishful thinking, I heave myself out of my chair, having finally decided that it’s time to go, my mother is safe. I catch the city bus home, not looking at anything.

I arrive at home, pick up Andy, and prepare everything for our departure in the morning. I fall back into this routine as though no time has passed since last time.

The airport is a confusing place, but Andy and I are used to it. I guide him through security, and walk him over to where a stewardess is welcoming passengers. She takes one look at Andy’s sweet little boy face, and promises she’ll take care of him. I tell him I love him, Mom loves him, everything will be okay, like I always do. He nods in his serious ten-year-old way. I remind him to look for Aunt Claire when he gets off; he nods again. He’ll be safe with Aunt Claire, I know. But every time we have to split up, I worry.

Finally, Andy has been ushered onto his flight, I have passed through my own security, and I am settled in a plane seat, ready to sleep. I plug myself into my iPod, smiling at the song that comes on.

Sweet home Alabama

Where the skies are so blue

Sweet home Alabama

Lord, I’m coming home to you

The plane lands, and I scan the crowd, looking for Grandma.

“Hi, Grandma.”

“Hey, darlin’!” Grandma wraps her arms around me, and she smells like cookies, the same smell she’s had for as long as I can remember. I inhale, and a cloud of childhood memories swarms up to greet me, to say Welcome home, Isabella. I shake off the memories, of flipping pancakes with Grandma’s hand on mine, of Christmas morning, long ago, opening presents, crawling onto someone’s lap. That one especially I thrust down into the depths of my soul, back where it belongs.

Grandma asks me something, and I work my way back into the real world, asking her to repeat herself.

“Did you have a good trip?” Her accent takes me back to that other town in Alabama, the one we lived in, when I was small. I love the way it sounds, I always have. Words gain syllables. “Trip” becomes “tree-up,” and all the vowels have a beautiful open sound, nothing at all like the way my friends mock stupid people and country music. I answer Grandma’s question, and, who knows why, maybe because of the cookie smell, or the accent, or simply the knowledge that I am in Alabama, I am picking up my bags in Alabama, I am getting into a car in Alabama, but for some reason, my voice takes on that beauty, that lilt, accent, whatever you call it, that has always meant home to me.

“Yay-us, Ah dee-ud.” More syllables, gentler vowels. The sweet sound of home. Printed it looks cumbersome, slow, and stupid, but floating on the air, it is the most beautiful sound in the world, the sound of safety, security, love.

Grandma smiles at me, and turns back to her driving. We pass Larry Mitchell on his big brown horse, and Grandma slows down. They greet each other, and then he looks at me.

“Larry, you remember my grandbaby, Isabella.” He and Grandma exchange a look, and the person they’re thinking about isn’t me.

“Wey-ull, Miss Isabella. Last tahm Ah saw you, you were thi-us bee-ug.” I love the way my name sounds, rolling gently out of his mouth.

“It’s nahss to see you agay-un, Mistuh Mitchell.” The beauty of the short “i” sound is a wonder lost on the northern world. Like a grace note, there’s just a slight touch of a long “e,” and then up to the “i.” Much better than the northern way of clipping off all the vowels, lest they take over your speech. If only they knew how much more beautiful it is when the vowels are in charge. Almost all southern vowels have that little grace note, that first sound that blends gently with the second.

Grandma rolls up the window as Mr. Mitchell says goodbye. Five minutes later, we are pulling in the driveway.

“I remember the drive being longer,” I yawn. The sweet vowel sounds have implanted themselves in my speech, for which I am grateful. I hate northern accents, and I’m afraid I might have developed one since that man chased us all out of Alabama.

“The drive is longer, when you’re awake the whole time.” We laugh together. It’s much easier to laugh when long “i” sounds have been transformed into more of an “ah” sound.

We walk in, Grandma carrying a few of my bags, leading the way to my room. Recognizing the paintings on the walls, the old-house-smell, everything, I close my eyes, still keeping pace with Grandma. Even after ten years, my body knows exactly where to step. I’m hyperventilating by the time we get to my room. Grandma vanishes into the kitchen. By the time she gets back, I am frozen on the bed, the silent, pent-up tears of ten years soaking my cheeks, remembering the man I’ve hated for so long, who is once again threatening my family with his drunken violence, just as he used to do.

My cell phone rings, and I check the caller ID. Andy. Wondering what he wants, I answer.

“Andy?” There is a muffled struggle going on somewhere in Ohio.

“Andy?” I’m scared. What’s going on? The horrible truth begins to unveil itself.

“Hello?” Grandma comes in and freezes with the water in her hand. Someone on the other end of the line has won the fight. I wait nervously for the victor.

“Hello, Isabella. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” My father’s maniacal, drunken laughter echoes around the bedroom as the phone slips from my grasp and I fall, into the endless darkness of my first-ever faint.

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It's short, because I was entering into a contest with a 2,000-word count limit. Pooey. Maybe I'll make it longer...