more than an hour at a time, for nine whole months to protect her, who
wishes I could wrap my fat skin around her again and hold her close
to my ribs and nobody could see that she won’t learn how to read until
third grade and even then she’ll suck at it and that she can’t make friends
because nothing she says makes sense and she’s always singing little,
pestering songs to herself and can barely string a sentence together. I’m
her mother, standing alone on the corner in a cheap suit and high heels,
watching the corner around which she disappeared minutes ago, not
caring that it’ll make me late for work.
***
The sky is gray today and the air is thick with the murky stench
of spring flowers, those white ones that bloom on trees and look like a
promise but reek like molding bread. Jamie will have to be at the school,
somewhere. Guilt comes over me like a migraine when I realize that I
hardly take her anywhere else. She doesn’t have any other place to miss.
But what if she isn’t there? What if I pull into the parking lot and
she isn’t sitting on the curb, her chin resting sulkily in her palm? What if I
try the doors and they’re all locked?
It occurs to me that I will have to call the police, and, if that is
something that I have to do, I will have to lie to them because Jamie
has to come home to me. As I speed past the blossoming spring trees, I
concoct a frantic plan.
Here is what I will say:
Upon leaving a conference with Jamie’s teacher and principal last
night, I drove home angrily. At said conference I cried embarrassingly and
protested their assertions that Jamie suffers from some sort of intellectual
disability and would do well to attend a private school, and if not that,
should at least have an aid follow her around school during the day.
When I arrived at home, Jamie sat at the table eating Fig Newtons with
a glass of milk. I scolded her for ruining her appetite and she did not eat
dinner with me, because she wasn (