strength

She sits on her bed facing her wall, her Spongebob blanket a cape protecting her shoulders. She hasn't talked to me much these past few days; she didn't want a sticker, and she doesn't smile or wave back; I've stopped using my speaking-to-kids voice with her. Her door is plastered with pictures she's drawn of a lady with long black hair in boots, and when I ask who it is, she says she doesn't know but I'm pretty sure it's someone. I can't tell whether she can't or won't express; I have little to offer and she much to risk. At 7:30 in the morning she's usually still lying in bed, sometimes with her sister or mom engulfing her in the bed. But this morning she's alone and awake and she speaks first, for the first time.

"SURRRRGERY!" she hollers. In that way she has of making booming noise with no apparent effort. Her voice is its usual deep, but her eyes shine. She ignores the television behind her, and tells me she's having surgery today. Her hair, thick, flees from her face and sticks midair. She lets me put my arm around her, and she tells me what she knows about her problem, and I learn. Her eyes stay wet, her face dry. She's done it many, many times before, is always fine, and I would be scared too but she's strong and not anyone can do it, only her. She has had more taken from her, more pieces rearranged, more removed from her and filtered and re-administered, than I can glean from reading and re-reading. Only you. She nods, knowing, but open enough to humor me a little longer. I feel horrible that this is the only way I've had to her, and if it has to happen I wish it were something closer than another white coat. At some point I listen to her lungs and feel her belly.

She says she wants to get outta here. She takes us aflight, and I hang onto the side of the bed as we sift through clouds. She speaks loudly with a kind of distinct firmness that I, with fewer doubts, will never have. I've never met a kid with her clear throaty voice and intonation. Later that afternoon she'll play and yell, tossing around handheld toy dogs named Nanny, Jessica and Peachblossom, watching them topple happily in a plastic pink tub under which she traps them. Later that afternoon she will fold her tiny limber limbs into the cabinet, with a flashlight and the toys and she will leave the door open while I crouch to peer inside, and close it when I stand and leave and when she can use the flashlight. This morning, while we are flying with her bed as sail, she says we've made a faulty landing, and now we're in Tokyo, though she'd been aiming for Orlando Florida. What's in Tokyo, I wonder. "Chinese people!!!" Then we're in Kansas, and she says the landing will be hard. If I could land on my feet I wouldn't be this sick.