See: Hyperventilation, Effects Of
Andrew Ibis
Nanny had her second stroke earlier that morning, and Jonie, manually rolling down her mother’s old-ass car window, was feeling panicky, or, she was doing that thing she does when she needs to make an emotional impact in the moment and, she had to face it, draw the focus back on to her only-child-self. Her mom had planned poorly, decidedly, no, absurdly so, and that called for fake-not-so-fake hyperventilating with Jonie’s head catching air while they were left-laning-it down the highway.
“Jo, get back in here.” Mom yanked on Jonie’s jean shorts belt loop.
“No, Selma.”
They both knew neither of them liked the name each other used, and they both knew the other knew that they, individually, were being antagonizing, but things were in the air, things that were always between them and new things, too, like the stroke, poor poor Nanny, unable to sing Elvis tunes and crack self-made jokes (Ginny the jokester she’d dubbed herself) and Jonie felt like what people meant when they said the world was caving in, that is, apropos (about all she took from middle school French) her father, i.e. Selma’s long-ago ex, might be there. Problems, yah. Was the window-thing and the huffing and snuffling overkill? As much as she believed it wasn’t, she also hated using the ‘k’ word, any death reference, particularly since Nanny was at the threshold and would they even make it in time, which was the planning aspect: had they not stopped for coffee in midtown, Selma, they wouldn’t be tailgating the grim reaper and they wouldn’t be at risk, now, of running into the man that was, biologically, Jonie’s father. And-and-and, because of the mood and doom, the air between mother and daughter was like a silent, captured fart.
Arrangements predated this moment, a forever-agreement, in essence, so that their meetings with the bio-dad would always, in perpetuity, be avoided. Christmas at her aunt’s where she was spoiled rotten occurred on the 26th, and thanksgiving with the other side of the family one day before. Jonie mandated it. She didn’t care what her “father” wanted, though she assumed he was—well, “To hell with what he wants, Ma,” she said to her mother, jumping into the car double-parked outside of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. They’d been cell-phoning and her mom had asked the forbidden question. Jonie’s answer lashed like a whip, while her simultaneous thought was, Change into something nicer, the packed skirt and blouse, because thirty years is thirty years…
Our Lady Mary nursing home was behind a row of mostly-upkept buildings in a green section of town neither had been to except when visiting Nanny a year ago when she was zipping around her wheelchair just fine and had the whole damn staff in stitches on every floor. Jonie’s tummy did a barrel roll—see: hyperventilation, effects of—but also thinking about Nanny’s Elvis impression, with the rockin’ knees and a Reddi-Wip canister as the microphone while they baked Pecan cookie balls a few Christmases ago… Nanny!…
Her mother waited in the lobby to catch the doctor and Jonie was at the elevator telling the nurses it was an emergency and could they skip their stops. Their queer expressions indicated her syncopated breathing had done the trick. At the threshold of Nanny’s darkened room, distilled inner air as hesitant as a bog, Jonie couldn’t imagine a sunken, less boisterous version of her grandma. Bullshit, God, unfair…It shouldn’t be her time and how could Nanny leave so suddenly before Jonie had kids—how could her kids grow up not knowing a Nanny (Selma was no Nanny), the Nanny, a jokester and a singer who named her poodle Snap Dragon because the dog was blind and lost her teeth, or her cat Fat Fat Water Rat, for myriad reasons not the least of which was, well, his girth, but, too, that he would jump in the tub every time Nanny drew a bath. The Nanny that made shadow puppet-fledglings with her fingers and had them quarrel over strands of her exemplary though none-other-like-it, grandma-gray hair-cum-worms at bedtime—a gag tailor-made for Jonie.
A box above Jonie’s head automisted air-freshener droplets. Stomach-punched from the plate of cold pizza that morning, memories of her father spilled out of the squashed shoe box in the back of her “branium.” In that relic, her father’s clothes draped across his wide shoulders like laundry on a line, his arms bruised with purple asterisms—
Then, a man hung with wrinkles looking into his glasses emerged from the tepid space beyond the doorway—must be the maintenance guy Nanny was friends with (staff, nurses and custodians came to see her as if she was a celebrity)….And halfway past Jonie, she noticed the silver ponytail pulled behind unmistakable familial ears that marked him as hers and her as his.
“Oh….” her father he said as the freshener wheezed above them. “I forgot my hat.”
Andrew Ibis’s See: Hyperventilation, Effects Of appears in Flock 22.
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Nanny had her second stroke earlier that morning, and Jonie, manually rolling down her mother’s old-ass car window, was feeling panicky, or, she was doing that thing she does when she needs to make an emotional impact in the moment and, she had to face it, draw the focus back on to her only-child-self. Her mom had planned poorly, decidedly, no, absurdly so, and that called for fake-not-so-fake hyperventilating with Jonie’s head catching air while they were left-laning-it down the highway.
“Jo, get back in here.” Mom yanked on Jonie’s jean shorts belt loop.
“No, Selma.”
They both knew neither of them liked the name each other used, and they both knew the other knew that they, individually, were being antagonizing, but things were in the air, things that were always between them and new things, too, like the stroke, poor poor Nanny, unable to sing Elvis tunes and crack self-made jokes (Ginny the jokester she’d dubbed herself) and Jonie felt like what people meant when they said the world was caving in, that is, apropos (about all she took from middle school French) her father, i.e. Selma’s long-ago ex, might be there. Problems, yah. Was the window-thing and the huffing and snuffling overkill? As much as she believed it wasn’t, she also hated using the ‘k’ word, any death reference, particularly since Nanny was at the threshold and would they even make it in time, which was the planning aspect: had they not stopped for coffee in midtown, Selma, they wouldn’t be tailgating the grim reaper and they wouldn’t be at risk, now, of running into the man that was, biologically, Jonie’s father. And-and-and, because of the mood and doom, the air between mother and daughter was like a silent, captured fart.
Arrangements predated this moment, a forever-agreement, in essence, so that their meetings with the bio-dad would always, in perpetuity, be avoided. Christmas at her aunt’s where she was spoiled rotten occurred on the 26th, and thanksgiving with the other side of the family one day before. Jonie mandated it. She didn’t care what her “father” wanted, though she assumed he was—well, “To hell with what he wants, Ma,” she said to her mother, jumping into the car double-parked outside of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. They’d been cell-phoning and her mom had asked the forbidden question. Jonie’s answer lashed like a whip, while her simultaneous thought was, Change into something nicer, the packed skirt and blouse, because thirty years is thirty years…
Our Lady Mary nursing home was behind a row of mostly-upkept buildings in a green section of town neither had been to except when visiting Nanny a year ago when she was zipping around her wheelchair just fine and had the whole damn staff in stitches on every floor. Jonie’s tummy did a barrel roll—see: hyperventilation, effects of—but also thinking about Nanny’s Elvis impression, with the rockin’ knees and a Reddi-Wip canister as the microphone while they baked Pecan cookie balls a few Christmases ago… Nanny!…
Her mother waited in the lobby to catch the doctor and Jonie was at the elevator telling the nurses it was an emergency and could they skip their stops. Their queer expressions indicated her syncopated breathing had done the trick. At the threshold of Nanny’s darkened room, distilled inner air as hesitant as a bog, Jonie couldn’t imagine a sunken, less boisterous version of her grandma. Bullshit, God, unfair…It shouldn’t be her time and how could Nanny leave so suddenly before Jonie had kids—how could her kids grow up not knowing a Nanny (Selma was no Nanny), the Nanny, a jokester and a singer who named her poodle Snap Dragon because the dog was blind and lost her teeth, or her cat Fat Fat Water Rat, for myriad reasons not the least of which was, well, his girth, but, too, that he would jump in the tub every time Nanny drew a bath. The Nanny that made shadow puppet-fledglings with her fingers and had them quarrel over strands of her exemplary though none-other-like-it, grandma-gray hair-cum-worms at bedtime—a gag tailor-made for Jonie.
A box above Jonie’s head automisted air-freshener droplets. Stomach-punched from the plate of cold pizza that morning, memories of her father spilled out of the squashed shoe box in the back of her “branium.” In that relic, her father’s clothes draped across his wide shoulders like laundry on a line, his arms bruised with purple asterisms—
Then, a man hung with wrinkles looking into his glasses emerged from the tepid space beyond the doorway—must be the maintenance guy Nanny was friends with (staff, nurses and custodians came to see her as if she was a celebrity)….And halfway past Jonie, she noticed the silver ponytail pulled behind unmistakable familial ears that marked him as hers and her as his.
“Oh….” her father he said as the freshener wheezed above them. “I forgot my hat.”
Andrew Ibis’s See: Hyperventilation, Effects Of appears in Flock 22.
Andrew Ibis is Publisher of C&R Press, Mastodon Publishing, and Steel Toe Books. His work has appeared in Quiet Lunch, Pank, The Hollins Critic, At Large, Terminus, and Bridge Eight. He consults with authors, presses and universities on writing and publishing. He has an MFA from Hollins University.