Fearless (3 page)

Carla reached to free Bubble. But she couldn’t fight the plane’s roll. It was like trying to walk in water against the ocean’s undertow: her body sank into the foam cushions while her arms seemed to separate from her as they flailed for forward momentum. She struggled as hard as she could to reach her son. Bubble’s dark eyes gleamed with fear. She imagined he called to her, but the noise was too loud to hear him.

At last, with a jolt, she was unstuck from gravity’s quicksand. She yanked Bubble away from the killer seat belt. He bawled into her neck. She clutched him to her, in a rage at the plane and distrustful of allowing any part of it to touch her son.

“What the fuck is going on!” she demanded into the noise of the engines and, almost as if answering, they were abruptly quieter. Their sudden calm, like the end of a temper tantrum, was a profound relief.

But Leo was screaming without surcease or any suggestion that there ever would be. He didn’t like to get up from naps anyway, and this method of waking hardly improved his reaction. She tried to rock him from side to side, but the constraints of the seat limited her swivel. Her comforting did reduce Leo’s hysteria to sobs. While he cried she clutched the back of his sweaty head, kissing the moist skin of his neck, a hot cream she loved to taste. “Stop necking with my boy,” her husband complained from time to time. It pissed her off that he made something sexual out of what was pure and innocent love. After these two years raising Bubble, it seemed to her that was the difference between men and boys: boys understood only love and men understood only sex.

The plane fell again. Jerked backwards and then dropped. She became a cage around her baby: the long muscles of her tall skinny body felt as stiff and as hard as metal. She had a crazy belief that she could cushion him if they hit the ground, that she would die and he would live.

This drop wasn’t so bad. More like what she remembered of turbulence from the time she flew to Florida and they passed through a storm.

“Is your baby hurt?” a flight attendant asked while on the move up to the front of the plane. Her name was Lisa. She had been friendly and helpful during boarding; she figured out how to fold up Bubble’s new stroller, which seemed to get stuck just at the worst times, such as today when Carla was in the aisle trying to manage Bubble and his bag of things and answer his endless questions or notice what he was exclaiming about. Carla nodded no to Lisa, assuming that if Leonardo was able to scream then he was okay.

Bubble yawned some words through his bawling. She couldn’t understand him. She yelled back, trying to puncture his loud grief and also get through the noise of the plane’s engines, its air vents, and the overhead compartments being reclosed. “Stop crying!” she begged and scolded. “Please, Bubble. I can’t understand you. Did you get a big boo-boo? Stop crying, for Chrissake, for one second and talk so I can understand.”

He’s a baby, Carla, shut up and give him a break
.

She often talked to herself in a scolding voice to keep her temper in control. She was famous in her family for her sudden and quickly dissipated rages. From when she was a little baby to her maturity as a wife and mother, everyone who knew her had seen her stamp her right foot, flash her black eyes, and clench her fists so that the muscles and veins in her arms popped the smooth skin. “You look like Popeye with tits when you’re pissed off,” her husband, Manny, teased on their honeymoon. That answered a mystery: the wonder of Manny wanting her. Then she understood that her anger—what scared the hell out of most men—actually turned her husband on.

She hugged Bubble tighter, squashing her breasts. She distracted herself from Bubble’s assault on her right ear (he was crying right into it) by scanning what she could see of the passengers. That wasn’t much, given her angle: her sight was narrowed both by her proximity to the window and because her periphery was blocked by Leo’s bobbing red face. Nobody seemed hurt. Someone had thrown up. A couple of people must have crapped: the smell was disgusting. Out her window she saw land, a flat checkerboard of brown and green squares. The captain had come on. She heard the phrase “…emergency landing…” although Bubble continued to bawl, because the speaker was positioned just above and behind her free left ear. She was crowded by all the noise and glare from the window and the rows of pale blue fabric and the low cream-colored ceiling. Also, the whole body of the plane creaked and rattled, as if all the screws were loose. She wanted out.

“Just get us on the ground,” she answered the captain.

“That’s right,” the man in the seat in front of her said.

The fields below were empty: it looked safe to land there. She thought about what a story this was going to make. Uncle Sal had the scariest airplane story in the family: landing in Las Vegas, his jet’s tires blew out and it had skidded off the runway a few hundred feet. There was lots of excitement in his account: sliding down emergency chutes, fire trucks, TV crews interviewing them later, their choice of a free flight home or a free night in a hotel, compliments of the airline. But if you paid attention you realized most of the danger was in Uncle Sal’s mind.

And that’s what this is going to be: just a good scary story to tell
.

But Carla’s plane rolled down…dropping without any hint of a brake…and then swooped up violently.

They all gasped. Bubble’s tears stopped, shut off totally, as if he were a toy. Someone shouted, “Oh God!” That was all there was to it: a sudden ride on a roller coaster, a fast dip down and a quick climb up. It was nothing compared to what had happened before, only it seemed to mean there was something still broken, that their troubles were far from over.

A pilot passed her, heading for the back, where the problem must be. Maybe he could fix it, she hoped, although she knew better. After all, he had no tools and how could he reach whatever was broken?

But with each shiver of fear, the scolding voice in her head told her it was ridiculous to believe that they were in serious trouble:
When planes crash they go down right away
. This was the big outside world where people weren’t hysterical or stupid like some of her relatives. That pilot who had just gone by looked like a hero; with his sandy blond hair and sharp chin he would figure out how to get them down okay.

“Mommy.” Bubble’s voice was alert. He had straightened in her arms, his heels kicking down, poking her in the stomach.

She was heartened by the clarity and strength in his voice. She was impatient with his crankiness after naps; this was the Leo she adored. “Yes, baby,” she said and squeezed the tall length of his body. Bubble stood on her lap, pressing his tiny sneakers into her, trying to peer over the seats.

“I want a drink,” he said, enunciating so clearly he could have been twenty years old.

“I got some juice. How about that?”

“No!” He disciplined her with the word, like someone instructing a disobedient dog. She recognized that tone as the way she spoke when trying to stop Leo from doing something either dangerous or very destructive.

“Hey! Don’t talk to me that way.”

“Don’t want juice.” He whined this a little.

“Baby, I can’t get you anything else right now. I got some juice in the bag. You want it?”

Bubble didn’t answer. The mess of the plane had gotten his attention. He cocked his head to study the passengers retrieving scattered bags, clothes, blankets, pillows. “I smell poop,” he said.

It happened again. Another roller coaster ride. Her stomach flipped and Bubble flopped back: his stumpy legs kicked out, his head crashed into the seat. Carla exclaimed and grabbed him. As the ride came up from the valley she tasted her breakfast at the back of her throat.
Get me the fuck out of here
, she begged.

“Bubble,” she called to his little face. His eyes were shut tight. “Bubble,” she said and gathered him.

He laughed. From his belly. The way he did when she tickled his feet, a laugh of his whole body. “Funny!” he called out between his hissing laughter.

“Come on,” she lifted him and swung him around so that he would be secure in her lap.

“Do that again,” he said.

“No, no. We got to sit still.”

“Do that again!”

“You want your juice?”

Bubble butted his head back. Carla wasn’t sure if he meant to whack her in the nose (which he did) or if it was simply his willfulness pulling against her lead. For a moment, while her sinuses tingled and her head buzzed she couldn’t talk.

That pilot passed again, heading back up to the front.

“Excuse me,” the man in front of her called to the pilot. “What’s going on?”

But the pilot rushed past, in a nervous hurry.

“Play! Play!” Bubble bucked in her lap. She had to dodge his head, which threatened her with more blows.

“Cut it out!” She hugged him close, crossing her arms in front of his chest. She buried her face in Bubble’s black hair. He needed a cut; it was curling up the back of his neck. He had her hair, or her hair when she was young: so black and shiny your eyes couldn’t accept the color and they would see velvet or glints of amber, but it was only rich black hair, dark and straight. Made Carla think of an Indian in Bubble’s case; her poppa used to say Carla was Cleopatra when she was little.

Who’s Cleopatra? she asked him.

The most beautiful woman who ever lived, he said.

She forgot the plane, didn’t see the humps of blue fabric, the cave-like ceiling, or the recessed lights glowing from its curves. The sun warmed her face and she smelled Bubble’s hair (she had shampooed it this morning so that her mother wouldn’t right away criticize) and remembered her father:

She saw Poppa’s coarse face, round and pockmarked; his nose was small and curved like a thumb, his tiny teeth were yellowed from the cigars he liked, his hair was all gone. He smiled at her, welcoming…

Carla gasped and shunted the image away. Her father was dead.

He’s calling to you
.

“No,” she answered.

“I want it now!” Bubble told her; he thought she was answering one of his demands.

“Okay, baby,” she said dutifully, too scared to be amused by their misunderstanding.

Carla bent down to reach around her feet for her bag. She held Bubble in her lap while bending over, and the strain on her back made her groan. Luckily, the disposable juice carton was on top, bright yellow with slashing red letters, easy to spot and somehow exciting. All the new stuff for babies was great. Manny often complained enviously that when he was little toys were crummy compared to today. There was so much to buy, much more than they could afford, but she wanted to get all of it, not only so that Bubble wouldn’t be deprived, but because she liked the looks of the stuff, all the brilliant new gadgets; and she enjoyed the feeling, the excitement of giving him a new toy.

But she wasn’t thinking of consumerism then. With her head lowered she could better hear sounds from the plane’s injured structure. The noises it made were scary. The thin floor rumbled, the seats creaked, and the sides seemed to roar, as if there were tigers behind the panels. Was that normal? Had to be, she told herself.

“I want it,” Bubble said, grabbing for the juice container as soon as she brought it into view.

“Let me open it,” she yanked the carton away.

Poking the straw through the designated hole, she punctured the membrane of foil too hard and a jet of juice splashed her cheek. Fear and her baby made managing everything awkward. She had a squirming Bubble on her lap, her feet were unwilling to put their full weight on the floor for fear it would give way, and her squeezed legs were reluctant to rest against the sides because those roaring tigers might tear through any second. After she gave Bubble the carton, she glanced out the porthole window. They were low, close to the ground.

Good. You see? Everything’s going to be all right. No problem
.

The flight attendants were suddenly on the move: wobbling in the aisles, talking and picking up…shoes? Lisa appeared a couple of seats ahead:

“Take off your shoes if they have hard heels or soles. Remove all sharp objects from your pockets and stow them in the seat pocket. Eyeglasses also.”

This is nuts, she thought, and kicked off her shoes, one of her best pairs. She tried to decide if her house keys were considered sharp objects.

“Ma’am, baby better go in the seat.” Lisa took Carla’s dressy shoes and added them to the armful she was carrying.

“Don’t want to!” Bubble stiffened his back.

“We’re going to be landing soon,” Lisa said.

“At an airport?” the man in front of her asked.

As if he heard, the captain came on: “We’re cleared for landing at…” She couldn’t hear the airport’s name. “Flight attendants, prepare for emergency landing.”

Right away Lisa began to yell at them. Carla could see two other flight attendants forward of Lisa do the same as her, shouting with their arms full of shoes—red, black, brown, white, yellow—like a bathtub full of Bubble’s toy boats. Lisa shouted: “Bend over, put your head in your lap. Stay down until the plane comes to a complete stop and then find the nearest emergency exit.”

The plane took another dive down. Recklessly down. Carla yanked the squirming Bubble against her and winced at the proximity of the earth: “Too close!” she pleaded to the porthole.

They swooped up from the land. But that was sickening also. Her stomach levitated up from her pelvis to her throat, while the rest of her was pinned down, paralyzed.

“Cut it out!” Carla said, addressing her advice to the captain. She couldn’t help feeling that he was behaving like a macho teenager, intentionally doing crazy stunts in his souped-up car to scare the girls in the backseat.

Lisa was almost flipped by the plane’s action. Her knees gave out. She stayed on her feet by grabbing the headrests. The shoes spilled all over, under and around the nearby rows.

“Come on, baby,” Carla said and pulled at Bubble, trying to get him off her and into the empty seat. His hands and sneakers clung to her clothes like pasta drying on the edges of the boiling pot. There was no one available to help. Lisa and the passengers nearby were preoccupied by picking up the scattered shoes. People made their motions in a quick and jerky manner, nervous that the plane was about to take them for another dip on the roller coaster.