my right hand, or the bag of clear liquid hanging at the side of my bed. Light and steel and liquid have all melted together into a series of textures, all these objects trying to keep me alive.
“Happy birthday, sweetie.” This is my mother. She can only be my mother, that much I know. Mothers seem to be there, always. The first and the last people you call for, from the beginning until the end. She lowers her voice, thinking I won’t be able to tell. “How much time do we have?”
Another voice. “All you want.”
And then a door shuts.
Happy birthday. I’ve had forty-four of them, but these are the ones I remember.
Oma, spry and sixty, holding me on her lap, helping me blow out the four candles on a chocolate cake.
My father lifting me high, putting me on a horse twice as tall as I was at eight years old.
Joe, sending me a box of carnations in my first year at college. The note said, Sorry I can’t afford roses.
And, more recently, Anne and Freddie and Malcolm storming into my room the morning of my fortieth birthday with a tray of coffee, fruit chopped in chunks that looked like the pieces in a game of Tetris, and a single rose from the garden in a bud vase. Three voices, two high and one low, sang me awake. A good start to the day. Good starts set you up for a fall, though.
Later that day, in class, I watched a few of the girls giggling over pictures on their phones. It hadn’t been that many years ago I was one of them, stealing Mom’s lipstick when I thought she wouldn’t notice, passing notes about the new boy in school—Do you like him? Do you think he likes me? The technology changed, but girls are girls, new women, life stretching out before them, futures unplanned and uncertain. What killed my birthday buzz was that old sonofabitch called time.
I know I’m running out of it.
The Mother Voice whispers one word.
Wait.
SEVENTY-FOUR
From the Washington Post, Monday, November 11
SILVER SCHOOL TEACHER BLOWS WHISTLE ON COVERT DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PROGRAM
by Bonita Hamilton
In what may soon unravel as the scandal of the decade, Dr. Elena Fischer Fairchild, a life sciences teacher from the Davenport Silver School, has supplied heretofore unobtainable evidence concerning the DoE’s current practices. Photographs, voice recordings, and other documents point to a . . .
Dr. Fairchild, the wife of Deputy Secretary Malcolm Fairchild, was taken to Sibley Hospital early yesterday afternoon and remains in critical condition. No comments have been made by her family or by the attending doctors, but . . .
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From CNN, Monday, November 11, 1:04 PM EST
BREAKING: SECRETARY OF EDUCATION MADELEINE SINCLAIR RESPONDS TO OUTRAGE
“I had no idea,” Secretary Sinclair said as she emerged from her offices earlier today. “This is a faction that has regretfully gone unnoticed, and on behalf of this department, I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Fairchild for bringing it to light.” Sinclair, in her signature blue suit, has denied any knowledge of . . .
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From Twitter, Monday, November 11, 2:53 PM EST
@Sec_Ed_Sinclair You stole my children and I hope you go to hell. #BringThemBack #NoMoreYellow
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From the New York Times, Tuesday, November 12
LAST OF 46 YELLOW SCHOOLS RAIDED
As the hashtag #BringThemBack, started by an actress-turned-activist, continues to trend in the social media sphere, an emergency team of federal authorities has announced the removal of over one hundred minors from a state boarding school in Winfield, Kansas. The late-nineteenth-century building and its grounds were once used as the site of the Kansas State Asylum for the Education of Idiotic and Imbecile Youth prior to changing its name to the State Training School in 1930. From 1998, the facility was used as a correctional facility before being condemned. Roy Tolliver, who led the operation in Winfield, has released a statement attesting to the substandard conditions at the institution. Judith (Judy) Green and high school classmate Sabrina Fox both gave interviews. “It wasn’t a school,” Green says. “Maybe we got an hour or