NEED to BREATHE

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Mick and Manda’s home, Glenn Hollow, 1977.

AFTER THE SWIMMING POOL incident, Manda becomes a couch-sleeping, sale-seeking, coupon-clipping pill popper who thinks, “If one Ativan is ‘good’ for you, then two must be great.” And Mick becomes a shift working biscuit sopper who pulls for the Cowboys, a risk-taker who licks knives clean. Manda takes a few risks of her own, like swallowing four pills one Saturday before dusting off her high school annual, before page-wading through yesteryear.

She might as well dive into shark-infested waters, I think, or walk over shattered glass.

While Mick’s at work, she remembers the Senior Superlatives, being voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” earning her varsity letter in cheerleading. Wearing Daisy Dukes and lip-syncing to Mother’s Finest.

Maybe it’s the Ativan. Maybe it’s the penis-shaped blossoms on yonder torch lily that’s got her feeling hornier than a brass ensemble. Or, maybe it’s the number “22” itself that incites folly. But it’s today that Manda conducts her very first Birthday Scavenger Hunt.

After all, no one else is doing anything to celebrate her special day.

So I stand beside her and sing happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.

Manda slips off her skivvies and checks herself out in a full-length mirror, spreads eagle and finds some teeny spider veins, she sees how they creep up slow-and-fast like dental appointments. She plays I Spy with beauty moles. There are a few teaspoons of cellulite on her butt and one gray hair on the crown of her head. She christens it “silverweed” and plucks it out.

And there’s Claire’s lone assault: a single stretch mark. Forsooth, the once-taut abs, the thought of reclaiming her thong days, Coppertone legs a la glow-bronze, nail color being the only worry in the world. But, redemption’s in all those motherhood things like giggles, like “oopsie doodle,” like pink tights and purple dresses, like the flit of a grasshopper and chocolate chip cookies. Lord-help her; motherhood is what Manda celebrates, yet mourns.

She fetches a few beers and gives her body a B. A grade she would never allow on her report card. So what do you do, she thinks. You pour your Michelob into a plastic cup and raise a toast to the silverfish scuttling across the laminate.

Manda’s still fumbling and mumbling by mid-afternoon, can’t answer the phone when it rings, misses her mouth with the beer bottles, can’t think worth snicker doodle, wonders why in kudzu Claire’s painting poop murals instead of napping. Oh well, Manda takes another happy pill and settles on a little butter mint therapy, decides to play “guess that shape” with shadows on the wall while I whisper into her soul:

Let it go, doll. Let go of the thing that was Claire’s pseudo-birth.

Claire treasure-hunts in her soiled diaper while Manda parks herself in the bedroom, still jaybird-naked, with photo albums she stole from her parents. She opens the albums and flips through randomly. There she is, Miss Forsyth County, the over-achiever who never missed a curfew, the lover of Daylight Savings Time, endless summers, a Straight-A student donning her cap and gown, a golden Honors sash, keys to a new car. Here’s her scholarship letter! Alas, the days when AG meant “academically gifted” instead of “abundantly goofed.” Manda flips further back, remembers the cozy front porch Christmas lights. She took dance lessons and left the nightlight on so monsters wouldn’t scare her.

And then she wades into Forbidden Territory--her very own “Mick and Manda” albums. These contain photos of Claire in the incubator and machine after machine, tubes on top of tubes. She’s smaller than a squirrel, with blood-red skin like something’s about to burst. From womb to tomb. That cradle-of-life incubator, at any moment, could have become a casket. Manda still sees Claire’s jerky movements, like she’s trying her nerves out. What could the baby have been thinking: Do my eyes work, my ears, what about my lungs?