And then the craziest thing happens. The flight attendant breaks into song. Right there in front of me as we rumble down the runway, she starts to sing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” at full volume into the intercom. I stare at her with my mouth open, and Maria smiles. She’s got a good voice. A little showtuney, but strong. And I know this song. It’s John Denver. I used to perform it before Mom decided it was too slow. It’s not slow how this lady’s doing it, though.
I close my eyes and smile. For a second I forget where I am and see us, Mom and me, at a farmer’s market in Oklahoma. I’m singing this song and it’s July and muggy hot, but the tips are piling up and the audience is easy and when it’s done, Mom scores us free fresh-squeezed lemonade, and it’s the coldest, sweetest thing I’ve ever had.
Then the plane jerks so hard I’m thrown back in my seat, and there’s a sound like a roaring animal. It shakes the whole plane, and I look down at my armrest swaying like my seat is attached to nothing at all. We’re crashing. I’m drowning in the noise and blinded in a wave of white panic. I try to cover my ears, but the sound creeps in around the edges. I taste the burrito coming up hot and chunky at the back of my throat. The roaring isn’t stopping. It’s never going to stop! I dig my nails into my scalp and pull hard at the roots. I stomp my feet over and over until they tingle. Somewhere, someone is screaming. It’s me.
I cry for one hour and sixteen minutes—the entire length of the flight to Los Angeles. The passengers across the aisle request to move. A little kid in a Lakers cap asks his mom, “What’s wrong with her?” on the way to the bathroom. Maria keeps passing me tissues and making me sip water. But she’s no help. The flight attendant looks like she’s ten years older by the time we land.
* * *
“Okay, listen.” Maria kneels in front of me with her beige knees on the dirty floor of the terminal. My hair is dripping around the edges from the water I splashed on my face in the bathroom. “We need a game plan.”
“I can’t do it.” I don’t cry. There’s nothing left but a wet hiccup. People are rushing past us, dragging kids and rolling bags. They all look so certain of where they’re going.
“Yes. You can. You are stronger than you think.” She says it with such sureness. The kind of sure you can only be when you barely know someone. “Tell me what triggered it. You looked all right just before takeoff.”
“I was okay when she was singing. But then the engines were so loud, I…” I can’t finish it. I can’t even think about it again.
Maria snaps her fingers and I jump. Everything’s making me jump today. “That’s it. The music. We need something loud enough to drown out the noise.” She stands and looks around and then leads me to a gift shop selling metal water bottles that cost fifty dollars and chocolate truffles with the Hollywood Hills on them. Is this what LA is like? Could Mom and I have even afforded water in this city? Did Mom know what she was getting us into? It’s still Friday. Today, a man named Howie and his wife will wait for a girl named Lou who will never show up. And then they will forget she ever existed.
“Okay,” Maria says, coming out of the shop and crooking her finger. “You follow me.” We wind our way through the terminal until we end up at a little vending machine. I expect to see Fritos and Snickers. But instead it’s filled with black boxes. She swipes her credit card and hits F-10.
We stand side by side and watch a black box make its way across and down and out into Maria’s waiting hand.
“Here.”
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
I peel off the clear sticker and open the box. Inside is a tiny iPod and headphones. I look up at her and then back at the most expensive vending machine I have ever seen.
“I can’t afford this.”
“Consider it a loan.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts.’ We don’t have a lot of time before our next flight. Let’s get you set up.”
We spend the next thirty minutes creating an Apple Music account on Maria’s laptop and downloading Pink and Katy Perry and, yes, Dolly Parton, to get me through the four-hour flight to Nashville. I hope it’s enough.
This time, before the flight attendant can even begin the safety talk, I put in my earbuds, hit play, turn the volume all the way up, and let the good noise outshout the bad. I keep my eyes closed the whole time. By the time we land in Nashville, it is three o’clock in the morning and my head is throbbing and I still have to meet my mysterious aunt Ginger and I am now farther away from Mom than I have ever been. But I did it. I flew across the country, and I did not fall apart. Not all the way, anyway.
5 Music City, USA
I slip the iPod in my jacket pocket and then pat it and keep patting it all the way down the long empty terminal. With no people to dodge, it feels bigger and calmer, like walking the mall after closing time. All of a sudden I kind of like airports.
Maria had requested that Aunt Ginger and her husband, Dan, wait for us in baggage claim. She stops me just before the escalator. We are standing under a big cutout of a guitar that makes me wish I had Mom’s in my hands. She kneels again in her suit, now wrinkled and grimy at the cuffs from a morning at a hospital and the rest of a day on planes. Sixty percent of her hair has escaped its bun, and she kind of looks like a mad scientist, but when she smiles, her eyes crinkle like Mrs. Claus.
“Got your iPod?”
I pat my pocket again. I’m worried now about the big meetup and also so tired I could curl up under this fake guitar and sleep for a week. Maria’s already told me this is where we part ways. She’ll be staying until tomorrow to confer with my new caseworker, whatever that means, and whoever that is, and then she’ll fly back to Tahoe. I hope she fights for Mom, too, even though she keeps saying, “You’re my first concern, Lou.” It’s a little scary that as of right now, Maria is the person who knows me the most in the whole wide world, outside of Mom. The people downstairs are strangers. I don’t want her to leave.
“Now I want you to listen to me very carefully before we say good-bye.” She doesn’t try to take my hand, but she does lean in, and I’m looking at the top of her graying head and then finally meeting her eyes. “I know these people are new. This town is new. And maybe it will only be for a little while. If what you tell me about your mother is true, then I hope so. But this is an opportunity, Lou. No. Don’t roll your eyes at me. It is. I meant it when I said you are tough. I know the world can be too loud sometimes and too close—”
I let my eyes slide off hers and back down to my feet.
“But you are not the only one who feels like that. Look at me.”
I do.
“You are not the only one scared of noise or crowds or planes or strangers and the unknown. I’ve seen your file from the school in Biloxi. I know you’ve had a hard run. But I also know you’re smart. And this is a chance to find out more about yourself and to learn who you are when everything else falls away. This is an opportunity.”
I’m so tired of hearing how I have to fight for everything. For someone who won’t let me see Mom, Maria sounds a lot like her. It makes me want to hold on to her sleeve.