There are three things Susanne Bradshaw knows for sure: 1) Her mother is dead. 2) She has no living relatives. 3) Her last summer before freshman year of college will be spent alone.
But with her mother's death, Susanne learns her family's deepest...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I had never been on an airplane. Before my mother became too sick to travel, she preferred driving. We took road-trips across the United States. Together, we zigzagged through national parks, cheap motel rooms and road markets on long weekends.
Now, I was curled around a porcelain toilet seat inside the private bathroom of the Bradshaw's family jet. I cradled the white, glass bowl like a mother clutching her newborn. Each time I tried to stand on shaking legs, something swayed in my empty belly, like a thread tightening, and I was pulled back down to heave colorless bile into the shallow water.
"Little plum." A quick knock accompanied my pet name. "We are just about to land. I would prefer you take a seat and get buckled in."
"The only way I'm getting out of this" – I coughed, a loud, wet sputtering noise that caused my fingers to clench on the emerald tile – "bathroom is if we aren't moving."
"The turbulence will just knock your mouth away from the bowl, and then it'll go everywhere but where it should," Leonora's calm voice said. "Trust me, I know."
I opened the bathroom door slowly, and kept my head down, ashamed to look Leonora in the eyes. She wrapped a warm arm around my shoulder and directed me to a cream-colored leather chair. A heavy bowl cut from marble waited for me, it was wrapped in a shiny plastic, a makeshift barf-bag good enough for millionaires—sorry, billionaires—to huff dryly into.
The moment I buckled myself into the plush seat, turbulence wrapped around the plane like thin, dying leaves holding onto slender branches during a May thunderstorm. I imagined myself as one of those leaves, twig-fingers digging into the upholstered leather. I pressed my lips into one tight line and refused to even breathe.
"Look out the window, it will help," Leonora said.
Although I shook my head, I turned my eyes to the dark, zooming world outside. Only the lights of a small airport below us shined—there was no sign of a city nearby, just dark green trees and acres of smooth farmland snuffed out by the night.
I didn't know what I preferred more, this steady darkness or the dancing, golden pearls of light that came with thick populations and cheap gas stations on every street corner.
"Welcome to Daisy Land," Lenora whispered.
She nudged me softly with a folded pointer finger. I smiled, and then, I vomited.
***
Although the empty airport was small, the interior was decorated in granite floors, bronze statues of people I failed to recognize, and pleasant-looking staff members who smiled in my direction every other second. Save for a family of four—all golden-haired and pristine in the way they dressed despite it being only ten minutes past sunrise—Leonora and I were the only guests.
Our steps echoed loudly in the terminal. The building reminded me of the waiting room at my mother's hospital. At the Yarborough Care Center, everything appeared pleasant and perfect, even the patients and overworked staff. I always thought about how I never saw a dead body or a frenzied group of nurses rushing to a room. It just didn't make sense to let in all that bad stuff from the big, mean outside world.
