She Did It

As best as I could tell, she was jumping on a bed as if it were a trampoline. At first I only spotted her brown pigtails springing in the black aluminum framed window above me. The apartment tower itself stretched even farther into the nighttime sky. From my angle, glass windows reflected star light that shook with every foot fall. Moments later I glimpsed the back of her head bobbing just above the sill. The room behind her window was lit but nothing adorned the walls. If it was her room -- she was its animated decoration.

I never saw her face, but upon that empty surface I fashioned a decoupage. I mixed and blended all the traits and expressions a young girl might possess while jumping on a mattress in a room high above a courtyard at 10pm. The cheeks, eyes, noses and lips of happy girls -- children who wanted to fly and were trying despite the odds.

Was she laughing?

I was. When I realized what those chunky, shiny pigtails represented, my chuckle poured out like a serving of hot apple cider. It spread unseasonable warmth and jubilance across one of those cold and desolate modern courtyards that are never occupied or filled with life in the manner their architects intended. So for a moment, in this dreary open space, there was festivity.

As I passed through the broad, stone plaza, her jumping sank out of view. The path from the gym to my car was a straight one and I was eager to get home. My six mile run on the treadmill left me hungry -- and there was leftover pizza in my refrigerator. I mentally constructed my plan. I'd drop off my bags, walk straight to my apartment's 1960's electric oven, rotate one black plastic dial to bake and the other towards 450 C. Hot pizza would only be 60 minutes away.

My car loomed ahead -- dirty and silver. Fluorescent lights flickered and hummed above. As if in a trance, I unlatched the door handle. Despite my hunger, my mind continued to twirl around and play with that little girl whose jumping had so powerfully evoked the intoxicating joy of childhood and all of its consequences. Before I bent down to climb inside and drive off, I stood up for moment and rested my hand on the door frame while thinking about Sascha and when I fell off the bed.

When I was 4, some friends of the family had a daughter named Sascha who was my age. She was very nice -- not mean or whiny like many kids. I really liked it when got to play together. I suppose she was a proto-friend, which is to say the closest thing to friendship a 4 year old can form. One chilly Houston evening in 1974 we all paid them visit -- I think it was for dinner.

Their house was decorated in modern furniture and a sliding door near a kitchen looked out onto a covered garden. The adults all seemed like silhouettes visible from elbows down. And I was bored until Sascha's parents suggested that we go play. We didn't really have to be convinced and ran down the hallway screaming.

While the adults chatted out front, Sascha and I dug through her many toys, stuffed animals, and wooden blocks -- playing with this or that in a separate and sort of lonely fashion. Then out of the blue, she dropped her toys and jumped up on her bed and started to spring madly while saying, "Look what I can do!," over and over.

Her glee was infectious and I joined her. Of course, in that tragically male sort of way, I was determined to jump higher and faster than her. Between us both, her narrow twin bed yielded like marshmallows and the ceiling rushed closer with every leap. It made me me squeal and laugh and scream -- and it made me dizzy. The more I jumped, the quicker the walls spun and the colors all around me grew so bright I thought they'd pop. Then I jumped too far and flew off the bed landing with a bang on the floor.

I started to cry loudly and all of the adults rushed in. Sascha was crying, too. As I fell, I'd gashed my head on the corner of the steel bed frames that had been supporting us. There was blood and the chaos of multiple voices. I was hoisted up and slung over someone's shoulder and taken to the local hospital.

Everything was such a blur. I recall worried faces. And the comfort of hands and whispers suggesting that I would be ok. I remember a dark examination room whose bright lights overhead seemed dangerous. I remember a big needle, a sharp stab, and the pain fading away into gray jelly.

The car ride home was long and and my head felt like a giant bandage. I stared at the stars. They were cold and soulless and, as my Grandpa told me, they were very, very far away. Later, while tracing fresh stitches on the back of my head with my fingers, I was warned not to fiddle with them or the stiff threads might come undone and I'd have to go back to that hospital. And I recall very clearly when they asked what had happened. I turned to them and said: "Sascha threw a block at my head."

I never played with Sascha again.