Lighter Than Air
Not-Mother scolds Christy for leaving her burnt toast and rubbery eggs uneaten, and Father stares at his hands and mumbles “Listen to your mother.” Every morning starts the same way. But this time, Christy has had enough.
“She’s not my mother!” With that, Christy bangs out of the house, cutting off Not-Mother’s shouts. That’s going to cause quite an argument when Christy comes home. Maybe she’ll just stay gone.
A salty-tear smell lingers in her nose as she swipes the back of her hand against her damp, hot face. She doesn’t know where she’s going. Being away from Them is all she cares about.
But when she reaches the open field where she sometimes pretends to be a galloping horse carrying herself away from everything, there’s a huge, cigar-shaped thing tethered to the ground, and her legs freeze.
It’s a blimp. It drifts back and forth, tethered to several wooden stumps on the ground. Christy’s heard of blimps but she’s never seen one, and it makes no sense here. People use cars or bicycles to get around.
A tall woman in a pilot’s hat stands by the blimp. She spots Christy approaching, sweeps her hat off, and bows, revealing red hair that reminds Christy of her own. There’s something familiar about the woman, but Christy can’t place her.
“A pleasant morning to you.” The woman’s voice is high and musical.
“Is that yours?” Christy points at the blimp.
“It is indeed. Would you like a ride?”
Never get in cars with strangers; Christy’s heard that over and over. Nobody’s ever said anything about a blimp, though. A mental image of Not-Mother left fuming on the ground settles it.
“Sure!”
“Wonderful!” The woman replaces her hat. “Climb aboard, my dear. Quickly now.”
As Christy climbs into the gondola, the woman blows a whistle and several people Christy’s never seen before hurry through the field towards the blimp.
The woman squints at Christy and then picks a sandbag up from the gondola and tosses it on the grass. She climbs into the gondola with Christy and chucks two more sandbags to the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Must keep the weight even.”
Christy settles in next to the pilot’s chair as the people outside untie the ropes from the wooden stumps. The engine roars, hurting Christy’s ears for a moment, and the blimp rises. The early summer breeze through the open windows ruffles her hair.
She’s never been in a plane. Not-Mother doesn’t like them, Father would never go anywhere without her, and Christy can’t remember what her own mother’s opinion on flight might have been. But as they drift into the sky and everything beneath them shrinks to the size of Monopoly houses and postage stamp lawns, Christy bets her mother would have liked it. A lot.
Blimp is a funny word, and Christy enjoys the feeling of it in her mouth. “Blimp, blimp, blimp.” She kicks her feet in time with the words.
Not-Mother would tell her to stop that, but the pilot doesn’t seem to mind. “It is a silly word, isn’t it?”
“Blimp,” Christy agrees.
“You seemed like you were in a bit of a state when you first showed up. If you don’t mind me saying so.” The pilot’s tone is gentle, but inquisitive.
The lightness inside her grows soggy at once. “It’s my stupid Not-Mother.”
“Not-Mother?”
“She married my dad a while ago. I hate her.”
“And why’s that?”
Christy thinks of all the burnt toast breakfasts, all the times when she’s shooed into another room, or silenced, or struck when she isn’t quiet enough. She doesn’t want to dwell on it now.
“It’s just that…I think they’d be happier if I wasn’t there.” Tears prickle her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” The pilot sounds grave. “You seem quite agreeable to me, Christy.”
“Wait. How did you know my name? I didn’t tell you.”
“Perhaps I was rude not to introduce myself. I’m Tina.”
Tina. “I could be a Tina too. That’s funny,” Christy says.
“No, dear. I’m afraid it isn’t funny at all.”
Christy, who’s been gazing at the marvelous blue sky all around them, looks at Tina. “What do you mean?”
Tina steers and adjusts toggles before she says anything else.
“They don’t want you there, Christy. You’re more right than you know. You should come with me.”
Maybe Christy should have listened to herself earlier: Never get in blimps with strangers. Sweat beads her forehead as her heart speeds up.
“Take me back home.”
“What for?”
Christy’s mouth opens, but she has no ready answer. There’s Not-Mother, who she’d gladly leave forever, and Father, who might be sad for a little while if she doesn’t come home but maybe not. There’s their drab house with the mildewed basement where Christy sleeps now after Not-Mother claimed her bedroom as a sewing room, saying the light was better in there. There’s school, which she doesn’t enjoy. There are kids she plays with, but she can’t call them friends, not really.
“If I don’t, I’ll be in trouble. Big trouble.” That’s all she can think of.
“Go home and you’ll be in even worse trouble.”
“I don’t understand.”
The nose of the blimp dips downward and Christy yelps, her stomach rising into her throat.
“Relax. It’s just a wind gust. It’ll straighten out in a moment.”
The blimp levels out, and Tina sweeps an arm around the gondola.
“I’ll show you how to fly this. That’s the only thing you need to learn right now. The stuff they teach you at school will be there for later. But you must promise me something.”
Christy decides she’s hit her head somewhere, knocked herself unconscious. This Oz-like magical world with floating people is just her imagination, and soon she’ll wake up in her drab, gray real life. She might as well go along with the dream. She never did understand why Dorothy seemed so happy to be back in Kansas.
“What should I promise?”
Tina takes a deep breath and fixes her eyes on Christy’s, and Christy notices their eyes are the same shade of hazel.
“When you’re grown like me, go back to that town and wait. There’s going to be a very sad little girl there, and she’s going to need your help if things are going to be all right.”
That afternoon as the sun’s setting, Father walks through the neighborhood, shouting Christy’s name. Not-Mother adds her own harsh voice, telling Christy what’s going to happen to her if she doesn’t get her butt home right now.
High above and far away, Christy steers the blimp, floating over grass and houses and water, pretending she’s a bird. A cloud. A sunbeam. Any of these things are better than what she was in her down-below life.
Father and Not-Mother hurry to the field where Christy plays sometimes. A small shape lies on the ground in the distance and Father breaks into a run, leaving Not-Mother behind.
It can’t be, it can’t be, he says. And it isn’t. It’s just some sandbags someone left on the grass.
