“Icky. Don’t wan it.”
“No, baby, it’s just your juice. Drink up. It’s good for you.” And she, wanting to please, ready to do what Mommy said because Mommy is the sun and she is the smallest flower, listens. This is the bane of childhood, isn’t it? That the small person is entirely powerless, entirely dependent on the large person despite whatever grace the larger might or might not possess.
I watch her face in my mirror, the eyelids fluttering, the color changing, the sippy cup slipping out of her fingers, the lid coming off. I hear what’s left glug onto the carpet. In the rear mirror I see these things: her head lolling, her body twitching and shaking, a milky froth spilling out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes rolling upward once twice thrice, and then her face settling against her shoulder. She is cradled in the car seat like a nut inside its shell.
*
I don’t look in the mirror anymore. I drive along the smooth avenues, past the park. I remember the bison there, trapped in their meadow. Once not long ago they had thundered across this land in the millions; they had been the monarchs of this continent, unrivaled in strength and number. Seeing them cover the earth, in their day, you would have found it impossible to imagine an end to them. Now there are only these few shaggy outcasts in a far field like deposed kings in exile. We had visited them once. We had stood hand in hand and looked at these lone survivors. We had felt sad for all they had lost, but then we had kissed and were again reminded of luck and love. We had felt blessed. I had not known then how happy I was. Now I know. Now I know exactly how happy I had been in that moment.
I drive across the span to the other side. This is the place that has been waiting for me all along. I pull the car into the parking lot. At this time, it is not crowded. Later there will be tourists, but for now they are all tucked into their various hotels dreaming of the sights they have seen in this most beautiful of cities. I almost cry out when I open the back door and see how her head leans, her moon-silvered eyes. I unbuckle the car seat, pull her out of it, her blanket wrapped so very tight around her. I have to hold her close, so very close. She’s like a big doll now. I walk with her head cradled in my palm, held tight and steady against my breast, her sunlit curls bursting forth between my fingers, pulled this way and that by the playful wind.
There are a few people about. The famous red-orange span flies overhead, the tossed sea is below. I linger. On my left, the wide ocean flows. Asia lies that way. Asia like a beckoning glow, far, far over the curve of the earth. The water is full of ghosts; they could claim me and show me how to catch the currents all the way home. All the way to childhood, before cohesion was broken, before skin was split.
One-handed, I pull myself up and clamber across the barrier. We sit on the rim, against the edge of the world; the abyss opens under my feet, the void gapes its toothed maw and cackles. The ocean plays in the sparkling early light. There are voices behind me. I turn and look at suspicious, uneasy faces, unsure whether they are seeing what they think they are seeing, but none coming too close, none bold enough to try and catch me and risk my slipping away from between their fingers. One has pulled out her phone. But there can be no help now.
Samson is here. Looking at me with those eyes, that sad smile. But he means something else now. He’s not the one I have to run from. He nods, I turn away.
It is like being an ant on the side of a mountain. The drop beneath my feet makes my nerves tingle. The wind is pulling at her Winnie the Pooh blanket like a dog nipping and tugging at a bone. I let it go and people gasp as it sails away on the currents of the sky, dipping and rising like a kite, fondled and played with by the affectionate streams of air before it’s swallowed by the smashing waters. I look down and cry out to see her face slumped against my skin, slightly smashed at the edges, her mouth open.
A man is coming closer, trying to talk to me, trying to tell me it is okay, and I know he will soon try to grab at me. So there is nothing to do but release my arm and let her go tumbling toward the waves and then I step out like my father before me, one hand still holding on, everything else bent toward the open sky, and I unclench my hand and am instantly falling, unable to breathe, a panicked sensation of nothing under my feet, no solidity anywhere, just rushing air and the wind thrusting like needles into my skin. The water below churns like heated oil. I am sobbing and gasping against the wind.
What have I done what have I done what have I done?