After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away Read online

  After the WRECK, I Picked Myself UP, Spread My WINGS, and FLEW AWAY

  Joyce Carol Oates

  For Gloria Whelan

  Contents

  Prologue

  Went off somewhere and when I came back Mom was…

  I

  In the Blue

  1

  In the blue we were snow geese flying.

  2

  It was a Time of Forgetting.

  3

  …so happy, she was saying of course I love you…

  4

  …what you remember, Jenna? Can you tell us what happened?

  5

  Maria was my favorite of the intensive care nurses. Maria…

  6

  Head trauma. Brain swelling. Amnesia. Facial lacerations, cracked ribs. Visitors…

  7

  From a distance came the voice, a man’s voice. I…

  8

  In the blue I flew on outstretched wings. In the…

  9

  “Jenna, hey. You are one hell of a girl.”

  10

  People came to visit. Now that I was out of…

  11

  Tell us what you remember, Jenna.

  12

  But I saw it. It was there. I saw.

  13

  “Jenna, I thought you knew? It’s Demerol.”

  14

  Nowhere to hide! Aunt Caroline was surprised, the angry tears…

  15

  Good news: In three days I would be discharged from…

  16

  Rehab! It’s a word that sounds so good, “positive.” But…

  17

  In August Dad returned to Tarrytown to visit me in…

  18

  Nobody wanted me to know. But I wanted to know.

  II

  At Yarrow Lake

  1

  After the wreck my injuries would be secret, I was…

  2

  September 5, 2004. Yarrow Lake, New Hampshire.

  3

  Don’t speak to me don’t touch me!

  4

  “Jenna. How are you, honey…?”

  5

  …in the dream I’m running. Mom is watching me (I…

  6

  Guessing what will be in store just stepping into the…

  7

  “Hey.”

  8

  See, you walk like me. Like walking on thin ice.

  9

  “Jennifer—that’s a pretty name. People call you—Jen? Jenny?”

  10

  “Hey.”

  11

  Oh oh oh, help us

  12

  In Yarrow Lake much of my life becomes secret.

  13

  “Hey, babe, you bald?”

  14

  Never! Never tell my secrets.

  15

  Another secret. No one will ever know.

  16

  “Know what they are, those bikers? Trailer-trash meth heads.”

  17

  Here’s why it’s crucial to stay alone.

  18

  Two days later, something happens.

  19

  “See, people come into your life for a reason. They…

  20

  Hey, baby, want to hang out? After school meet me…

  21

  Cell phone rings, and it’s Trina.

  22

  Why’d I miss dinner? Why, three times this week?

  23

  “Baby, come on.”

  24

  Jenna! Come downstairs, honey.

  25

  “Jenna? We’re waiting, honey…”

  26

  I hate them. I will never forgive them. Freaking like…

  III

  New Year

  1

  Soon as she’s back from St. Bart’s, Trina checks in.

  2

  Tell me about yourself, Jenna.

  3

  Why I took Dr. Freer’s paperweight I don’t know.

  4

  Typed in suicide on the Internet, and man!—there’s like a…

  5

  In March, this happens.

  6

  March 11, 2005

  7

  “I wish.”

  8

  Chérie he called me. When he leaned across me to…

  9

  I am so ashamed.

  10

  Won’t. Can’t make me.

  11

  It’s the day after my uncle and the glass paperweight.

  12

  Here’s how it ends.

  13

  In April, this happens.

  14

  …in the Yarrow Lake Medical Center vehicle jolting and lurching…

  15

  Think of the places you aren’t.

  16

  So sorry didn’t mean

  17

  “Hello? Hello? Hello? Is that—Trina?”

  18

  April 15

  19

  Here is a surprise.

  20

  “Jenna! Good news.”

  21

  Another surprise: Dad comes to see me.

  22

  “Hang on tight, chérie.”

  23

  “Try to see, chérie. Don’t try to remember.”

  24

  I guess I want to live, Mom.

  25

  Jenna! Jen-na!

  About the Author

  Other Books by Joyce Carol Oates

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Went off somewhere and when I came back Mom was gone.

  It wasn’t my fault. Don’t blame me.

  We were crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge headed west. The sun in our eyes. The sun was this mad red eye inside a bank of sick-looking clouds. The sun was blinding, glaring off the car hood. Mom’s car on the Tappan Zee high above the Hudson River where you can feel the wind shaking the car even on days when there isn’t much wind on land, and I’m sliding a CD in and the mechanism rejects it which happens sometimes and is so damn annoying so I push “CD” again and this time the CD stays in and I’m shading my eyes against the glaring sun and suddenly I am seeing a baby deer in the lane just ahead!—or maybe a dog!—this shadow shape Mom doesn’t seem to see and I’m panicked screaming Mom! Watch out! and (maybe) I am grabbing at the wheel or (maybe) I am trying to grab at the wheel or (maybe) Mom is the one to turn the wheel (maybe) because I am screaming or (maybe) did Mom see the baby deer or the dog or (maybe) it was a large bird like a hawk, a goose…

  And the car sprouts wings and flies.

  It did! Yes, it did.

  I

  In the Blue

  1

  In the blue we were snow geese flying.

  These big beautiful white-feathered snow geese flying with a flock of other geese. In the V formation we were flying and our long necks were sticking way out and our eyes were narrow slits in our weird white feather faces. And our wings!

  You should have seen our wings pumping the air. Pumping the air, riding the wind.

  A thousand feet above the river, pumping the air hard to save our lives.

  A song came into my head.

  Knew this old world would be a hard hard place

  Seeing how the snow geese fly, brave wings pumping

  2

  It was a Time of Forgetting.

  In the blue it was a long time, wish wish wish it would never end.

  You sleep a lot. You dream but don’t need to remembe
r.

  Like clicking through 101 TV channels on “mute.” By the time you click through them all and return to 1, you don’t remember a single thing you saw, so you click through them all again.

  Or not. Kick the remote off the edge of the bed.

  Lots of songs flew into my head in that time. Out of the sky these songs would fly into my head. Afterward I would forget them all. Except one.

  In the Country of the Blue

  there is no you

  3

  …so happy, she was saying Of course I love you Jenna, my little lovebug Jenna. And I forgive you.

  All the ages I’d ever been. In the blue you can choose. I was four years old and my hair was a fluffy pale blond not this darkish dirty blond and Mommy would read to me at night after my bath a picture-book story and when he was home, sometimes Daddy would read to me too, his weight heavy on the edge of the bed (but Daddy had to be in the mood Mommy warned, which was not always so) and I would see lights skimming at me like butterflies which meant I was drifting into sleep, so happy.

  There was nothing that Jenna did then that was wrong or bad.

  There was nothing that Jenna did that was evil.

  There was nothing that Jenna did that could hurt another person.

  4

  …what you remember, Jenna? Can you tell us what happened?

  On the bridge, Jenna. Before the…

  …before it happened, Jenna? The accident.

  Behind my shut eyes there was that other place. The rushing girders of the bridge overhead. Something like fire glaring in the sky. I saw my finger punch “CD” and waited for the disc to be rejected another time, which would’ve provoked me to murmur Shit! just soft enough so that Mom wouldn’t feel obliged to murmur Now, Jenna, in mild rebuke.

  I heard the sudden sharp cries of the snow geese. Where were they going? It was almost dark now, the glaring-red eye was shutting. A wet, cold wind made the bridge shudder. You understood that the wind could break any bridge, smash any structure and cause it to shatter to pieces, fall into the river and sink without a trace.

  Oh I wanted to fly with them! So bad I wanted to fly with the snow geese but could not get my arms free, my head was tight-bandaged like a mummy’s head.

  Jenna, try not to fall asleep just yet. Try to keep your eyes open and in focus. Jenna, it’s crucial for you to stay awake….

  Can you see us, Jenna? Can you see me, Jenna?

  Blink your eyes, Jenna. If you can hear us…

  One of these was a woman’s voice. A stranger’s voice. I hated it! Wanting to scream, to cry. It was not the voice I wanted.

  The wind was so strong rushing at me! I could not catch my breath. I was struggling, kicking. The other geese were flying away from me, no matter how hard I tried I could not keep up with them. Already they were far away on the other side of the river. With every beat of their wings they were becoming smaller.

  They were leaving me behind. They had forgotten me.

  Wait for me! Wait I cried but they did not hear.

  I began to know then that I’d been wrong, I had not been loved. Even in the blue I had not been loved. My mother was leaving me with the others, I would never catch up with them now.

  I had forgotten the name of the bridge. I had forgotten the name of the river. I knew that these were names familiar to me but I had forgotten them and her name I had forgotten and the name of who I am meant to be I had forgotten and when I heard the cautious voices, Jenna? Jenna? I wanted to kick, to scream, to laugh at such a ridiculous name.

  Hands were touching me. Far away, at the edge of my skin.

  Hands were gripping me, I hated it. I went very still so they would think there was no one here. I laughed inside the bandages where I was a wizened white mummy thing.

  Don’t remember. Don’t need to remember. Laughing inside the bandages nobody can make me can’t make me!

  There was no Jenna, only just this kicking, laughing thing. Foam rubber hands jabbed a needle into my arm. The soft flesh at the crook of the arm. There were needles that stung because liquid dripped through them into my veins and there were needles that stung because they were drawing blood from my veins. Inside the bandages I was laughing, this was so stupid. Who cares about Jenna? Let Jenna die. Jenna is to blame for the wreck, let Jenna die. But no one was listening. I could hear them speaking to one another across my pathetic strapped-down body but they did not hear me.

  One of them was the woman whose voice wasn’t the right voice. I would learn that she was Dr. Currin. The neurologist. I would learn that Dr. Currin-the-neurologist made a crucial decision to go into my skull to reduce the swelling in my brain, and in that way my life was saved.

  Saved for what, don’t ask.

  5

  Maria was my favorite of the intensive care nurses. Maria liked me.

  It was a confused time. I was floating in the blue and frankly not paying that much attention. Balloon faces hovering over me. I guess I was supposed to know them. In the blue it’s easier to float happy and serene and smiling at how silly people are, to care about the things they care about, to look worried, to wipe tears from their faces, hey, it’s no big deal, you want to tell them.

  In the blue that was how I felt. I was never sad.

  But when I wakened, the air was so raw. I was a raggedy old cloth doll battered and banged and wrung and tossed down. I was so tired and so old. Wanting only to return into the blue forever.

  Maria called me Jenna but did not know who I was or was supposed to be. I wanted to think that Maria did not know about the Tappan Zee Bridge. Maria did not blame me for the wreck.

  Maria, who wore a small gleaming gold cross on a gold chain around her neck. Maria, who smelled like sweet hand lotion. Maria, with the thick beautiful eyebrows. Soft dark down on her upper lip. A way of smiling and calling me Jenna that made my heavy eyelids lift.

  Jen-na. Time for breakfast.

  Oh, I was hungry!

  Maria laughed, I was so hungry. You could see that she liked me for being hungry and eating the way I hadn’t been able to eat in a while. Maria gave me extra orange juice to suck through a straw. Ohhh, the orange juice was delicious. And lukewarm bouillon, not so great. But the slick quivery strawberry Jell-O so delicious.

  The kind of food that before the wreck would’ve made me gag.

  Before the wreck was my old, lost life. Before the wreck was the other side of the bridge.

  6

  Head trauma. Brain swelling. Amnesia. Facial lacerations, cracked ribs. Visitors came to peer at the weird wizened mummy thing in the dazzling-white bed. Ohhh, Jenna.

  In the blue I could hear every word. In the blue I could hear every thought. In the blue I smiled at Mom’s sisters looking so shocked and so sad and silly, like any of it had any meaning, but I could not laugh, such an effort would have torn me open.

  Jenna! Oh, honey.

  A voice I recognized. Not the voice I wanted.

  I wasn’t going to hate Mom’s sisters. It wasn’t their fault Mom was missing from them.

  She’s asleep. Poor child, look at her….

  But she can hear us.

  …should those containers be emptied? The blood is almost to the top, looks so dark…

  Her face is so swollen. Oh what if she’s scarred!

  She will not be scarred. Those are just abrasions. It was the top of her head that struck the windshield.

  Jenna? Can you hear us?

  This is Aunt Caroline, honey. And Aunt Katie. You’ve been a very brave girl, honey. And now you’re mending, and healing, and you will be all right.

  I wanted to laugh. Floating in the blue it all seemed so silly.

  A wizened mummy thing in a white nightie, who cares? There’s a flamy red eye, but it’s shut. There’s an eye swollen and blackened like a rotted plum, but it’s shut. There’s an IV tube dripping liquid into the crook of the white-skinned arm. You can’t see it, but the mummy thing’s head has been shaved. All over the scummy-looking scalp are blac
k stitches over which gauze has been mercifully swathed for the sexy mummy look.

  What’s really weird is: what looks like two insect antennae dangling from the bandaged ears. Two five-ounce plastic containers fixed to the sides of the mummy thing’s head so that blood draining from the stitched wounds in the head and face can drip into the containers through plastic tubes.

  Gross! Except in the blue it’s just funny.

  The voices went on. Sad voices, cheering-up voices. Foam rubber hands, face. I loved my aunts, I guess, but maybe I resented them, for who was missing from them.

  …he’s due to arrive, when?

  …tomorrow, I think. If I see him…

  …no. That can be avoided.

  I didn’t want to hear this. I shook my head, made the blood containers rattle. I yanked my arm free of the IV tube. I laughed at the looks on my aunts’ faces. Suddenly I was flying above them. In the blue I’d lost the beautiful snow geese, but I could fly high enough to get away from my aunts and the wizened mummy thing in the bed. In the blue I could breathe, almost.