Free Nearer Than the Sky by T. Greenwood Page A

of a thing to say and hung up the phone. I lay back down on the unforgiving sheets. Outside the tumbleweeds crackled and I perched at the edge of sleep all night, peering down at the dreams that would not come.

1972. I don’t know now if this is true or only a vaguely recollected nightmare that has lingered too long. But I do know this: cold linoleum on my bare feet, the glare of the bathroom bulb in the middle of the night, and the way my mother’s hair spilled like lemonade over her shoulder as she knelt next to Lily on the bathroom floor.
    The maze of the Mountainview house is more complicated in my dreams. The hallways are wider and the doors lead to rooms that were never there. Shades drawn reveal landscapes inconsistent with the aspen, pine, oak of my childhood. Sometimes I see night through the glass, sometimes I see California ocean, desert red and long stretches of impossible green (and I don’t know if it is grass or water or the velvet expanse of an old green dress of Ma’s I found in the closet one day). I could get lost in this dream house, while in reality there were few places to hide. Awake, getting lost was a futile task. I knew what could be found behind each door. I knew which ones to open and which must be left closed.
    Tonight, I am barefoot and wandering through this jigsaw house. This puzzle of orange daisy wallpaper, blue shag carpeting, and the fake marble countertops that peel back like stickers when I pick at the edges. I am barefoot and I will not wet the bed tonight. I will not make that dream trip down the dizzying, eagle-after-eagle-after-eagle wallpaper hallway to the bathroom only to wake up drenched in my own sour pee. It was the sound of the plastic mattress pad that woke me, reminded me that I must not do that ever again.
    The sound of my feet across the kitchen floor makes me think of rain against glass. I concentrate on the way my heels, toes, heels, toes make rain in the midnight kitchen.
    The door to Ma and Daddy’s room is wide open, not locked shut, not locked tight with yelling voices behind. It is open like the inviting lid of a toy box, like the lid on my crayon box, and it is impossible not to look inside. Daddy looks like a big bear on the bed. He is spread out across the mattress and his back is so wide I could spread my whole body across it if I wanted to. The white bedspread with the pills I can’t help but pluck off when I get sent here to nap or to cry is crumpled up at the foot of the bed. Daddy doesn’t like any covers on his feet. Not even in wintertime.
    I can feel the need to pee like a heart thudding softly in my stomach. I put my hands between my legs and push the nightie up tight, concentrating on the soft flannel on my naked skin. Eagle after eagle after eagle, and there is yellow light coming out from under the bathroom door.
    “Ma,” I whisper. “I gotta go. . . .” I hadn’t worried that I might need to wait.
    She doesn’t answer me and I put my hands on the door, lean into the door and whisper, “Ma. I don’t wanna pee my bed again. I got up so I wouldn’t pee my bed.”
    Again, I can’t hear anything inside. I push gently, knowing that if she’s sitting on the toilet like last time, I’ll get spanked. I’m certain that if I find her sitting at the edge of the toilet, leaning toward the roll of toilet paper that’s teetering on the edge of the sink instead of on the roll where it is supposed to be, then there is bound to be trouble. But not more than if I wet my bed. Not more than if I wake up with my nightie soggy around my hips.
    The door opens real slow, orange daisies orange daisies orange daisies and the yellow yellow glow of a bare bulb hanging still and bright in the center of the room. I think at first that Lily is only sleeping, sprawled across the floor like Daddy sprawled across the bed. Her nightie is yanked up under her arms, her face buried in the fuzzy orange bath mat. But I can hear her crying and Ma has got something in her