“I’m not your mom,” she states. And it’s so assertive, so firm, it gives me pause.
My eyes calibrate the image I see, the woman with the red hair and green eyes dressed in all white. Except that her hair is intact and what I saw as suture marks are instead lace.
It’s not Mom.
I drop my hands to my sides, as she asks again if I need help, if there’s someone she can call for me. I bark out no, though all at once I realize that I have no idea where I am, that the streets and the buildings are unrecognizable to me. That I’ve never seen them in my whole life.
Where am I?
How did I get here?
A siren wails off in the distance.
A car door squeaks open and then slams closed.
People push past me on the sidewalk, in a hurry to get here or there as the woman disappears into the crowds.
I cup my hands around my mouth, screaming up and down the street for my father.
And then, when I think all hope is lost, I see him. Out of the corner of my eye, somewhere in my peripheral vision, I catch a glimpse of orange as it slips behind the glass door of an apartment building on the other side of the street. I go to it, tugging on the door handle to follow him in, but find the door locked.
I press my face to the glass, staring inside. The lobby of the building is near empty. It’s dated and retro with 1970s linoleum tile, the kind that seeps with asbestos. Where are we? Does he live here? Does he know someone who lives here? The tile is partly covered with some sort of commercial carpeting, bland and gray, to disguise the ugly tile. A postal worker separates mail into a million bins and though I knock on the glass for him to let me in, he ignores me. Either he can’t hear or he doesn’t care. He just goes about sorting the mail as if I’m not here, as if he can’t see me, as if I’m invisible.
And I wonder then if I am invisible, if I am already dead.
I tug again on the tempered glass door. The hollow metal frame rattles in place. I smash the heel of my hand against the glass to no avail.
I begin to make my way around the building, in search of another way in. A freight entrance, maybe. But before I’ve gone twenty feet, a tenant comes tearing out of the building, eyes set on an incoming bus. I race back to the door, managing to slip in a hand in time to prevent it from latching. I sail inside. Behind me, the door closes tight.
My eyes look to the left just as a flash of orange disappears behind a door. A black-and-white sign beside it reads Stairs, the steps themselves explicated by a zigzag line. He’s going upstairs. I follow along, racing toward the stairwell and after him.
I press hard on the steel door’s push bar, making my way into the stairwell. I run, scaling the steps two at a time, clinging to the banister with a sweaty hand, pulling myself up the concrete stairs. The air is stuffy, suffocating, hard to breathe. There’s a notable lack of oxygen in here. It’s unventilated; there’s no access to fresh air. I choke on nothing and it takes a moment to regain my composure, to stop myself from choking on the musty air.
There are sixteen floors in the building. Above me, I hear footsteps as they climb upward at a better clip than me. He’s going too fast. I can’t catch up. I call to him, but if he hears, he doesn’t let up.
Somewhere between the eighth and ninth floors, my feet slip on the edge of the step, on some sort of tactile paving, yellow, rubbery lumps that are meant to have the opposite effect, to prevent people from falling. But not me. Rather my body keeps going, the momentum of the run thrusting me forward at a blistering pace. But, thanks to the tactile paving, my feet slow down, two things which are mutually exclusive because I can’t stop and go at the same time. And so instead I trip, feet skidding beneath me. My body jerks, my hand latching on to the banister to keep me upright. Pain radiates down my arm, into my hands, seeping into the muscles of my rib cage, my neck, my back. But I keep going. He is right there, within reach. I can’t lose him this time.
I scurry up yet another flight of stairs. I keep running, up the steps. Though before I know it, we’ve reached the top floor. The highest floor in the entire building, the sixteenth floor. The end of the line, I think at first, but not quite. Because he’s still climbing. Because there’s still one more flight of stairs, different from all the rest. More industrial, more heavy-duty. Not meant for everyday pedestrian use. It’s more of an elaborate stepladder than stairs. But I scale it nonetheless, ten feet behind him. Beside it, a sign reads Roof Access.
There’s a hatch at the top, a single slab of aluminum with a hinged lid. He pushes through it and I follow, mounting the last few steps of the stepladder and breaking free onto the rooftop of the apartment building.
At the top, the hatch door closes all on its own behind me. The wind forces it shut, the sound of it slamming closed, startling me.
I reach for the handle to tug it open again, finding it suddenly locked.
I’m trapped on the building’s rooftop.
The city surrounds me. A panorama. With arms outstretched, I can’t help but spin, taking it all in. Enjoying the view, knowing fully well this may be the last thing my eyes ever see.
The buildings and skyscrapers rise up like dominos around me and I stand on my own domino, waiting for my turn to fall. The lake is bluer than I’ve ever seen, a luminous blue that makes the blue of the sky inferior. An underling. Sunlight reflects off the glass of the buildings so that the whole world is suddenly aglow.
I circulate the building, looking for him, for my father. Now that we’re here, he’s somehow disappeared. He’s hiding from me. I call to him, but he doesn’t reply. “Hello!” I scream. “I know you’re up here!”
The roof itself is filled with all sorts of miscellany. An industrial cooling system. Exhaust vents. Access panels to this and that. It makes it hard to see. I search among various parts of the cooling system, looking for him. They’re big, boxy things that make noise from time to time, like the whirring of a fan inside. I hold my breath. I refuse to breathe. Breathing makes noise and I don’t want to make noise. I only want to listen.
A hand strokes me again, whispering into my ear, Earth to Jessie.
I pull back, drawing sharply away from the strange caress.
To the west end of the building, there’s a fire escape, one that runs from ground level clear to the top, a thing so basic, so rudimentary, it terrifies me. It’s little more than a metallic swimming pool ladder, four treads that lift you from the rooftop to the other side of the building.
That’s where my father stands. On the fire escape. Now that the hatch is closed, the only way out of here, aside from a free fall, is the fire escape.
I go there, legs shaking. I call to him, voice more subdued now that I see him. Now that I’ve found him. Now that he’s in reach. He’s climbed over the roof wall, a three-foot thing, and onto the fire escape.
My hand reaches out for the ladder’s handrail and I grab a hold of it and pull myself up. My hands are dripping and slippery. I go up one tread. It gives on me and I fall back down to the ground. I start again. One step and then two, watching on in horror as my father begins his descent without me, jogging down the steps at a steady clip, unfazed by the great height.
“Stop, please,” I beg, hearing the anguish in my voice. “Please, don’t go.”
As I near the top, there’s a moment of calm that comes and goes so quickly I almost don’t notice it. For one split second the world is still. I’m at peace. The sun moves higher and higher into the sky, yellow-orange glaring at me through the buildings, making me peaceful and warm. My hands rise beside me as a bird goes soaring by. As if my hands are wings, I think in that moment what it would be like to fly.
And then it comes rushing back to me.
I’m hopelessly alone. Everything hurts. I can no longer think straight; I can no longer see straight; I can no longer speak. I don’t know who I am anymore. If I am anyone.