As a hint of daylight fills the sky, I suddenly catch a glimpse of something on the other side of the street. It’s a man in jeans and a jacket, bustling down the street with his hands in the pockets of his pants. His chin is tucked into the coat to keep warm, and there’s a hat on his head, an orange baseball cap, and for this reason I know that it’s him.
But how did he get here? How did he slip out of Ms. Geissler’s home without me seeing him?
And that’s when the answer comes to me. The balcony. The one that leads from street level up to the third floor.
He climbed down the balcony before I had a chance to go up the stairs, sneaking out as I cut across Ms. Geissler’s lawn. That’s when the light in the window went black. It went black because he’d already left. As I examined the attic with a flashlight, he was at ground level, looking in through the windows, watching me.
I rise quickly, calling for him, waving my hands to get his attention. I fall down the porch steps, all six or eight or ten of them. “Excuse me!” I scream, but if he sees, if he hears, he doesn’t look and he doesn’t wave back. He doesn’t slow down. He never stops moving. He’s in a hurry. He has somewhere to be.
I run as fast as my legs will carry me, which isn’t fast.
The twitch in my eye has gone from one eye to two, so that they both spasm and I can’t get them to stop. My hands shake. My arms ache, my legs ache, my back aches and, as I move across the street, not looking either way before I cross, a passing car nearly runs into me. The driver slams on their brakes to keep from hitting me.
I stand there in the street, three inches before the hood of the car, staring at the panicked driver, myself unfazed. Because I don’t have it in me to be scared. The driver shoots me a dirty look. When I don’t move, she douses the window with windshield wiper fluid, splashing me as she hoped to do. She screams out the window at me, and only then do I go.
By the time I turn away from the car, the man has advanced a quarter of a block or more. He’s harder to see than he was before, farther away. Every now and then I see the orange cap bobbing and weaving down the street, but then it gets blocked by a low-hanging tree limb and I can’t see him.
I panic; I’ve lost him.
But then again it returns, and I follow along.
I listen for the sound of footsteps, and though I’m a half a block away, I hear them. They’re tenacious and quick, and for this reason, I know that they’re his. I follow, having only the drum of footsteps to guide me, the drum of footsteps, steady like a beating heart.
But then, as I round the corner and pick up the pace, I hear something else too. They’re words, breathed into my ear. Earth to Jessie, I hear, and I spin suddenly on my heels, glaring at a man who follows from behind. He’s dressed in a suit and tie, an overcoat draped over him, smoking a cigarette. In the other hand, a coffee cup.
“What are you looking at?” he grills, tossing the cigarette to the ground. He grinds it into the concrete with the toe of a shoe and immediately reaches into his breast pocket for another. I turn away, saying nothing.
And then another noise comes. It’s so soft, so subtle, hardly more than a whoosh of air against my ear, as I come to a red light and stop. Psst, says the noise, like the buzzing of a mosquito in my ear. I’m at a street corner, my eyes peeled to the walk signal, waiting for my turn to cross, hoping it was soon before I lose track of the orange cap. The street is congested, early-morning rush hour dissecting me from it.
Psst. Hey you, I hear, hey, Jessie, and I jump, my eyes turning away from the street to see who it is and who’s calling me. The man with his cigarette is gone now, around the corner and out of sight, leaving a wake of smoke trailing behind. Behind me stands a corner coffee shop, the first floor of a three-story light-colored brick building. There are people milling around outside, just a small handful of them, though their bodies are turned away from me.
Jessie, I hear again, and I snap to attention. Who said that? Who’s calling me?
There’s a sudden chill in the air. I shiver. I pull my sweatshirt tighter around me, eyeing the people outside the coffee shop and taking them all in. But there’s no one here that I know.
I turn away but still can’t shake the feeling that someone is following. That someone is watching me. It’s a gut feeling and there, at the fringes of my awareness, I feel it. Eyes on me though they’re outside my field of view, burning a hole in my back.
On the other side of the intersection I pause, looking backward one last time, because I just can’t shake that sense of being watched. And then I hear it again.
Psst. Hey. Hey, Jessie, and I turn suddenly, a spinning toy top on its tip. I almost lose balance; I almost fall to the ground. The world spins on its axis and I don’t know what to blame for it, the lack of sleep or grief.
A man and woman walk behind me now, holding hands. Midthirties, pushing forty. They look slick and sophisticated, she taller than him in high heel boots, though they’re both pinched and slim. “Did you call me?” I ask, but they exchange a look and tell me no. They part ways, slipping around me, one on either side. Once they pass, they rejoin hands, looking into each other’s eyes before gazing over their shoulders at me. They laugh. I hear words giggled between them. Lunatic and crazy. They’re talking about me.
And then there’s a hand on my back. A warm hand that touches my bare skin from behind. It caresses me as every single hair on my arms and legs goes erect and I can’t help myself. I scream. I jerk away, spinning around to find no one there. There’s no one standing on the sidewalk behind me, though I hear it again. I feel it again. Lips pressed to my ear, whispering, Earth to Jessie.
I shake my head, willing it away, telling myself that it’s nothing. That it’s only the wind. I look up, coming to, realizing that I’ve lost track of the man I am sure now is my father. He’s gone. I listen for the sound of his footsteps, searching the horizon for the orange baseball cap. I start to panic—eyes desperately lurching this way and that, hoping to see that pinprick of orange way off in the distance. I stagger down the street like a drunk. I can no longer hold my body upright because it’s begun to collapse on me. I try running but I can’t run, and so it’s a shamble at best, feet dragging.
A hand latches onto my arm, a voice asks if I’m all right. I peer down at the hand on my arm, seeing a spindly hand, a bony hand. Rivers of blue veins roll across it. There’s dirt wedged beneath the fingernails, lining the edges of the nail bed, and that’s how I know. I know this hand; I’d know this hand anywhere. This is Mom’s hand.
My eyes shoot up, taking in the woman draped all in white. She looks nothing like Mom. And yet, she says, “Jessie.”
I’m so taken aback that I don’t have it in me to respond. She stands before me, a halo of sunlight bearing down on her. She wears a wispy white blouse that billows in the early-morning breeze, the top button undone so I catch a hint of the pale skin beneath. On her bottom half is a skirt, a long one, stretching clear to her feet so that I can’t be certain they’re there. She looks fragile, delicate and, as she draws her hands through her hair, strands come with it. Clumps of hair fall from her scalp just like that, getting trapped between her thin fingers. Through the thin, floaty blouse I catch sight of her breasts. The breasts flat, nipples gone. Serrated suture marks crisscrossing her chest, the way Mom’s used to be.
“Mom,” I say. As impossible as it sounds, this woman standing before me is Mom.
“Mom,” I beg this time, trembling as I reach for her, wanting nothing more than to draw her close, to wrap my arms around her shoulders and pull her in tight. I’m crying now, tears falling freely from my eyes. “Mom!” I plead, but before me she pulls suddenly back, sharply back, her eyebrows pleated. Her mouth drops open and she asks, “Do you need me to call someone for you? An ambulance, maybe?” as she stands a good three feet away and retreats a step for every step that I draw near. I grab for her again, but she tugs her arms out of reach from mine, setting them behind her back.