Free Circling the Drain by Amanda Davis

peel away the blur that covered Billy’s face in her mind, she couldn’t make out his features. And when Ellen faced herself in the chipped mirror on her dresser, she saw absolutely no one at all.
    15.
    At first the city’s tiny spaces with their dorm-size refrigerators and their limited passageways, all available space crammed with things, with shelves of things, stacks of things, loft beds and trundles to maximize space, at first this had been intriguing, like barely understanding a new language—getting the gist of things, missing others. In the beginning Ellen loved the dainty things people bought: quarts of milk, not gallons; pints of ice cream, not cumbersome boxes; single rolls of toilet paper, no big plastic packs. It was a concrete difference between the city and home; it seemed charming and exotic.
    Then, when she’d been living with Billy for a while, she began to see the buying of tiny things as wasteful and childish. It struck her that these sizes were purchased as though life would continue only in the moment they were now experiencing. If that moment never connected itself to the next moment no one would run out of anything. And yet one moment always bled into the next, and Billy and Ellen always ran out of things packaged too daintily to heed their rate of consumption.
    But the day Ellen jumped off the bridge, she finally understood the meaning of the small things. They were little wishes, daily prayers. They were thousands of voices, unable to speak, pleading for miracles.
    16.
    Ellen remembers words for things: I jumped off a bridge and did not fly. I am in a hospital . And she remembers things: her legs, for example, were under her when she stood and they moved independently to maneuver her around. Her arms gripped the railing while her legs climbed over it. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, felt the air buzz around her. She held her breath and, for a moment, expected to see Billy’s face somehow, to see his outstretched arms below. She held on backward with one foot over open air and then the other, one foot over the blur far below, across open paper-sharp air, and then the other.
    Ellen stepped into nothing.
    She opened her eyes, clawing the air for something to grab onto. She swung back at the bridge and touched iron, steel, before she began to tumble, before her legs flew back over her head and her body arced slowly in the air. As Ellen fell, the air sparkled all around her and she understood suddenly, forcefully, that she had made a huge, serious mistake. But then her body dropped like a speeding stone and Ellen wished for land beneath her feet or the wings to fly.
    17.
    In her dreams Ellen can sing, though only while airborne and only while circling the city, which she tries to do for as long as possible so that she can feel her voice swell and vibrate within her, can feel it dance out on the watery sky. She can see for miles when she flies, can see the brown-stones and avenues of Brooklyn, the smokestacks across the Hudson, planes circling and landing, a tugboat scooting byon Newtown Creek, a scrawl of green beyond the skyscrapers, the sharp and sooty towers of the city. The elegant arched bridges.
    She sings nursery rhymes, gospel songs and hymns, camp songs, folk songs, jingles—anything she can remember—until her voice feels sore and scraped. Until it begins to crack from the strain of it and then she starts to fall. And then she wakes up.
    This happens again and again. When she wakes she knows where she is: in the hospital, and she is always cold. Her hands sting with it, her cheeks feel flushed and icy. Her hospital gown is slightly damp.
    18.
    Ellen feels ready when the angel comes again. She waits for him, listens for him, and when he finally brushes into the room, she thrusts a hand out to stop him and hisses with all her might. She hisses like a cat—it is all she can think to do—but her pure, icy fright makes her powerful, gives her the wisdom to act