She’s crafted together a suit of armor so thick that she’s almost warped reality. It’s not that she’s putting on a show, it’s more performance art, with her life as the subject. With no time for emotional weakness, she’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s brave almost to the point of recklessness; staring into strobe lights and avoiding medication as if the hurricane of electrical activity in her brain won’t send her entire body into a state of emergency. You would never know that this girl has seized so violently that she’d covered her kitchen floor with blood after biting her tongue. At this point she can take things out of an oven in the middle of a grand mal episode. Her mastery over her illness is beautiful and terrible, a tornado masquerading as a waterspout. She chooses to be the joke-teller before she becomes the punchline. It works so well for her mother.
***
Ann and her mother Geri enter the house and I confuse them for a second. They look so much alike. Same brown skin, black hair, and dark eyes. It’s not the first time I’ve mistaken them for each other. I faintly overhear Geri talking to Mrs. Kudrow, our teacher, mentioning that Ann had a seizure that morning and that we should be on the alert for anything out of the ordinary. Overcast and anxious, she hands Mrs. Kudrow a syringe with a small bottle of medicine in a Ziploc bag.
Ann and I have only been talking for a few minutes, but the conversation still seems labored. She responds to my comments, but it feels like she’s stalled in time. There’s a gap between what she hears and what she says, as if she’s using an internal remote to press pause on herself, and then play fifteen seconds later. Her brow furrows as she tries to formulate words. I peek into the other room and her mother is making an identical face, both of them stormy and perturbed. We head to the car and Ann is putting her things in the trunk when she asks where her new sunglasses are as her fingers wrap around them. The sky is clear but her mind is not.
We drive to school like normal. It’s a beautiful day, but something about Ann makes me think it shouldn’t be. Mrs. Kudrow’s been blasting the radio from the driver’s seat for five or ten minutes. As the song ends, I notice something. It sounds like a muffin being sucked up by a weak handheld vacuum. When I turn around, she’s slumped over, but rigid, saliva pouring from the mouth of Mount Ann. Her eyes are rolled so far back in her head that I’m pretty sure she can see her brain. My mind goes blank so quickly that I think I’m the one shaking. In this moment she looks nothing like her mother. A phone is shoved into my shaking hands, and I’m commanded to call 911. “Hello, my friend is having a seizure.”
The operator asks me if Ann has epilepsy or any similar disorders. “I’m not sure,” I respond. She never mentioned anything like this before. There are birds flying overhead, small specks on a blue background. The scenery doesn’t match the disaster inside of this car.
“Is she pregnant?” The voice on the phone is asking questions that I don’t know the answers to. I stammer out a hesitant no.
Mrs. Kudrow opens Ann’s car door so forcefully that the metal bends. She stares at the Ziploc bag as if it’s a Rubik’s Cube, unsure of where to begin. She pulls the syringe out of the container, holding the instrument like dynamite. She picks up the vial of medicine, staring at the tiny tsunami swirling inside it as she reaches for Ann. With one last look at the small jar, she tosses it aside, afraid she’ll create a bigger wildfire than the one that’s before her. First the fire truck appears, then the ambulance, both arriving to find a disoriented child crying for her mom. Her thundering voice cuts through the buzz of traffic as she’s transported into the ambulance. My teacher gets behind the wheel as I call Geri. You would think I’d just told her that her daughter was being hospitalized for a sugar overdose, her voice light as a summer breeze. She asks where they’re taking Ann. I give her the address.
Doctors keep rushing in and out of the hospital room; clusters of nurses swirling about like small cyclones. Ann is sitting in her bed with tears streaking down her face. Her eyes, cloudy. Mrs. Kudrow and I are exiting the building as Geri enters. We’re sitting in the car when she comes outside, thanking us for helping her daughter. Then she starts sobbing. I can see the weight of the years as clearly as I can see the tears lining her skin. Her entire body wracks with sobs, as if she’s trying contain her own personal earthquake. Her expression mirrors that of her daughter in her hospital room. Mrs. Kudrow expresses sympathy and within a matter of moments Geri’s pulled herself together as if nothing was wrong in the first place. Her smile has brightened the situation so quickly that it’s almost as if she’s just slipped on a mask. She’s putting on a performance and I’m at the edge of my seat.
We drive out of the parking lot and proceed to school, my teacher handing over the auxiliary cord putting me in charge of the music. I look behind me as we fly along the highway when my eyes land on the drying stain on the backseat; remnants of scorched earth from Ann’s eruption.
I email her a few days later to see if she’s feeling better. She is no longer the tear-stained girl in the hospital bed. The storm has dissipated.
***
“So Naomi told me you totally blanked when I had the seizure she said you couldn’t remember 911 hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I bet you were freaking out. Wait so did it happen in the middle of the highway I wanna know what happen the wholleeee story. I still haven’t got my walking completely back yesterday when we were walking around the resort I almost fell of the curb it was so funny. You guys walked in the hospital miss Kudrow looked so serious then she started like rubbing my arm I was like ok is today like touch Ann day?”
***
Flash forward seven years and nothing is wrong in this world of hers. Foolish, insane, call her what you like, she’s in total control. She wakes up each morning with fate in her hands, and when she chooses to flourish the universe is on bended knee, waiting to serve her. Poseidon couldn’t have made the world more his oyster. However, if she chooses to suffer, it’s likely that it’s by her own hand. Not because she enjoys the pain or likes the attention, but because she has something to prove. Even though life loaded the gun, she still wields the power to pull the trigger.