Finding Ways

A short story

I hold my breath and pray, feeling the pressure on my chest from the steep angle of the climb or maybe from my difficult life.

It is not natural to fly, I think, and I feel trapped, strapped, restrained, having no choice. Even if I am able to unbuckle if I want to, there’s still nowhere to go. My life is much the same. I clutch my notebook tightly, my palms fear-sweaty, as we endlessly rise.

It seems hours before we’re level because I have no sense of time. The clock moves so slowly for me, like a snail, when I’m like this.

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“It’s OK,” she says to me, the woman sitting in the aisle seat. The middle seat is blessedly empty. “First time flying?” She looks at me, concerned.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly, trying to breathe silently after holding my breath for too long. “Yes, my first time flying.” I imitate a smile, as I often do, trying to keep the tears from my eyes. She seemed a nice woman, pretty, elegant, and old enough to be my mother, if I still had one. Perhaps she even looks a little like my mother.

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Does she pause, wanting to speak more? A loud, indiscernible announcement breaks the dull drone of the plane, ending a moment barely begun. She smiles and turns back to her book, but was she hoping to say something?

Maybe she is my aunt, I think, and she can tell me about my father. But it is too difficult to sustain the fantasy. She’s not my aunt. Mama had no sister, though it makes me a little happy to imagine.

I breathe, breathe, breathe, slowly. I close the little door over my window, and I open my notebook for the calm. Thinking of my forgotten father brings unbidden tears, expected anxiety. We forgot each other, yes, Father and I.

I release everything in a frenzy of blue ink, scratched neatly, and awkwardly scrawled, words spiraling and words howling. Both are beautiful and ugly, I think, displayed across a pristine new page.

“The trip will be good for you, my foster parents had told me. You’re just having second thoughts.” But I heard their words differently. “Please go. We need a break from you, some rest, some peace, at long last.” It cannot be true, I think. They only want me to be happy. But I also think it is true, even though they love me.

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“Excuse me!” the attendant loudly apologizes when she bumps into the woman in the seat across the aisle. I look over, startled, and the woman sitting near me smiles sweetly at me, maybe amused that I am so startled.

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I open the little window a crack, just for the briefest moment in time to gaze into the terrifying blue, into the very bright white-yellow sun. We’re catapulting rapidly forward into the sunset, into the west, in ways I’d rather not consider. It feels like an ending, a cliché, a fading into the sunset.

I watch the people on the immense plane as best I can from my window seat, remembering the ones I had watched as they had boarded hurriedly, aggressively, and fought for coveted luggage space. I see the lady with the little children, so well-behaved for their ages, and I see the couple with too many bags who complained relentlessly to the attendant. I see the pretty girl, near to my age, 18, who seems bored with everything.

The quiet lady with the two children is escaping a terrible husband, a large and dangerous, violent man. She seeks a new life in California, but she fears his connections with the vicious Mexican cartels. I hope she stays well and safe. The couple with excessive baggage are new biotech millionaires, forced to fly commercial flights, their private jet under repair. They must be upset to be in coach with the lowly likes of me. And the bored girl is adopted, like me, but somehow happy and well-adjusted in life. I wish to know her secrets.

Where is the nice boy I saw? He is actually my older brother, my half-brother, in truth, but he doesn’t realize it yet, because we’ve never met, not since we were very young. He was raised by our father after father sent me away. I was too young then when I had to leave.

Only that last thing I wrote is true, the part about being sent away. Just that part.

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I feel a gentle touch on my shoulder, and I hold a startled cry that wishes to arise. I look over toward the woman, and I see the flight attendant with a forced smile, standing behind her. What does she want from me? I start looking in my purse, for my wallet, for my identification.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks me. I blush and say no. I feel foolish, but I’ve never flown before, so how could I know?

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Is there a perfect world, I write, where I can exist, embraced by memories, happy both in my past and future?

I miss my foster parents now, wishing they let me think of them as my mother and father, not as kindly as Beth and Uncle Al, brother of my long-departed Mama. I love them both so much, and maybe, maybe, I would rather never have remembered Mama, for the more they tell me of her, the less I can ever really know.

She is an incomplete fiction, a story I still am learning to tell myself, but one that never ends well. Where are my own poignant memories? They are so vague, Mama faceless. I’m sure it’s my fault I don’t remember, though I was only 5 when she died.

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“Are you a poet?” It startles me from my internal musings. The woman asks me this, but I’m not sure how to answer.

A poem I wrote today comes to my mind, unbidden, unwanted, as if it should be my reply.

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Between the Lines

Oh, foolish poet, to have so few enchanting words and metaphors in my heart. I place my truths in the embrace of simple words, what beauty therein found only between the lines. Can any see?

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“No. Yes,” I pause. “No. I don’t know. I’m not anything, I suppose,” smiling at her apologetically.

“I understand,” she laughs, blue eyes merry. “Spoken like a true poet. It’s just that I couldn’t help but notice what you were writing.” She searches my face. “I wasn’t reading, of course, just seeing the lovely forms you created on the page … the many short lines.”

I smile, uncharacteristically happy with a stranger. “Oh. Much of it is just ramblings of a crazy person.”

“That’s the best kind of rambling,” she says., “I …,” she pauses, “ … am a poet. My name’s Ellie.”

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My heart slows for just a moment, to a melancholy monotone beat, and the world waits patiently for me. Ellie was my mother’s name, Elise. I sit in a moment without boundaries, in the stillness of forced composure. I remember, eventually, to breathe.

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“Oh,” I say again. “That was my mother’s name. Ellie, they called her. For Elise.” She smiles at me kindly, seeing my eyes moisten, I’m sure. She raises one eyebrow as if in question.

“Oh. Oh yes. I’m Annelie. Annelie Marais.”

I reach to her awkwardly with my right hand, and she clasps it warmly in her two hands. I see her nail polish, my favorite color, I think, and I look into her eyes, blue like Mama’s (a memory of a picture), blue like mine, too. I think I looked into her eyes for a very long time. Maybe it wasn’t such a long time. I don’t know. I blush and look away.

“Nice to meet you, Annelie Marais. You should keep writing. I can tell you have a beautiful soul.”

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The woman is clearly my aunt, the one that very few people knew, a half-sister to my mother and for years only known secretly by Mama and Al and Beth. They asked her to fly with me, to take care of me on my long trip to meet my biological father in San Diego. They knew I was frightened.

She’s considering taking me in, even though I’m already 18 because she just found out about me.

I sleep for a while, succumbing to stress and my worries, and to escape from myself. My dreams are restless and confusing, and the seat is so uncomfortable.

When I awake, I find myself relaxed with my head on Ellie’s shoulder.

Startled, I sit up and look at her.

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I try to suppress them, but tears flow. “I’m so sorry,” I say, weeping. “I didn’t mean to.” I am embarrassed to have slept on her shoulder.

“Annelie, you did nothing wrong. I saw you were having difficulty sleeping, so I offered my shoulder. I should be the one to apologize.” I see that she is crying too.

Suddenly, we both start giggling. “A couple of fools we are,” she says, and I agree.

Still tearful, I ask her for a hug.

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We spend the remaining two hours of our long flight to San Diego, talking about life, the world, poetry, and I tell her those deep things even I didn’t know I thought. And she shares her wisdom with me. She tells me I will meet my father, and I will enjoy knowing him, but I will be even happier to return to my foster parents, Al and Beth, whom I will call “Mom” and “Dad.”

She is certain I will be happy, though life, of course, she says, is never supposed to be easy. She knows I will be a poet. She tells me I am very much loved. It is a time, a mere sliver of time, that passes much too fast.

As we are arriving, I open my window and look out into the still-setting sun as though no time passed for this trip. I write Ellie a small poem, secretly, just to capture a moment, a feeling, and I tear it from my notebook cleanly, sharply, folding it neatly into a small square.

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I need a hug

I think I’m not unlovable. I have been loved before. And it seems like such a foolish thing, to so desperately dream of a nice warm hug . . .

It’s been weeks. Just a small hug. But a warm hug. I promise not to cry. Not too much. I’ll try not to wet your collar.

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When the plane lands, I hug her again, giving her my little poem, gently into her hand, admonishing her to read it only later. I tell her my phone number is on the back. We are both very tearful, I can see, but I begin to feel foolish for burdening her, and I’m grateful for the distraction of packing up things to disembark.

“This is for you, Annelie,” Ellie tells me, handing me a wrapped item that can only be a book. “It is a book of poetry, from a very special author. ”

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I am nearly speechless, nearly in tears, again, but I thank her gratefully for the time we had, turning to place the book on top of my bag. When I turn back, she is gone.

Impossible.

She cannot be gone in this crowd; all lined up waiting to depart the plane. I desperately look all around me. I begin to feel betrayed and disconsolate, but I also have faith in her. I know she cares about me.

I pick up the package she gave me, removing the beautiful wrapping, I see the book is titled “Finding Ways” and is written by … Annelie Marais, by me, dedicated in the beginning to “an Ellie I met on a plane.” It is full of all the poems I wrote, from my notebook. I don’t understand how it is possible.

When I arrived at baggage claim, my father was waiting for me, with a smile, and many sincere promises in his eyes. I find myself in San Diego, for sure, and in the embrace of my biological father, but inside, I am also in another world, so happy with who I am becoming.

This is how I begin.

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Originally published as an early draft in Vocal Media.

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