"Fly Away Girl"

Erin Nederbo

"Don't slip," Trent says as he grabs my arm and leads me past Kara's front room floorboards, that hold our six-year-old slumber party confessions, and into her bathroom. He closes the door behind us, shutting out the guitar strums of summer and the slurred stories of strangers. I stumble over the orange rug, knocking stacked shelves of O'Malley-named, sharpied toothbrushes and packaged soap onto the dirty white tile. Kara would be holding my body up, but she's to busy losing hers in cotton bed sheets with another blue-eyed, baby- faced boy. "Iya's got it, calms downaaaa," I announce to whoever will listen. No one's there but Trent, so I fall back and let his dry chocolate hands catch me.

He holds me up, hesitates, "Um, lift your arms, ok?" I lock eyes with him for the first time since I took the bottle from his hands, washed it down my throat like first-grade-lunch-table juicy juice. His brown eyes tell me what they told me five summers ago when he had to run three city blocks to escape a stray pit ball from chopping his leg like a bone, he's scared. I've never seen his eyes boil water like the neighbor's sprinklers we'd cap with rubber gloves until this moment; it frightens me so I obey him, try to convince him I'm alright. Hands up, arms jiggling like Lutheran's jello molds towards heaven, a smile spread like peanut butter over my face. "Taaa-Daaa," I exclaim.

Trent rubs his eyes with his fingers and pretends I don't know he is on the verge of tears as he walks towards the sound that's coming from the door. Bam. Bam. The doorknob shakes its hips from side to side. Speaking Saturday night shits under his breath, Trent makes his way to the wooden door and tells someone's exploding drunken bladder that we're busy. By the time he gets back to me my arms aren't trying to touch heaven but instead, are spread open like wings. I flap them up and down, create a gust of wind with my armpits, and slur a promise at him, "I'm getting the fuck outtta herre somedayyyy."

"I know," he assures me as he balances my arms back up to St. Peter's gates and lifts my shirt over my head, the cotton's thread managing to get stuck on my headband. His strong arm grazes over me for the tub and draws a bath. Through snorts and giggles I ask him if he's trying to have sex with me, and he calls me an ass. "That's like incense." He's right. Even if the color of my skin, same as his sisters, isn't painted on his body, we've been family since kindergarten. Since we shared naptime coats in room 207, where we found common ground over Dr. Seuss rhymes and banana popsicles. I feel nighttime creeping toward my eyelids, and I know I'm going to pass out any minute and that the bath he's drawing is supposed to postpone my need for slumber.

Ears block out noise, chin touches chest, mouth opens, and noon burrito blankets my body. Trent doesn't speak he sighs, as he takes the rest of my fabrics off piece by piece, unwrapping me like a present, careful not to stare at body parts too long. Just as he manages to untangle my feet from dark denim, my eyes shut. He shakes me like a magic eight ball, wishing I'd sober up, and my eyes flutter open like plastic dolls. "Lift your legs up for me okay," step by step he instructs me on how to get into the water. "You're good, you're good." The bath is like a grave, cold and lifeless, and his hands feel like God's as he lets the water cover my body without a splash. It feels like he'll never let go, and when he finally does, I bang my head on the cigarette-stained tiles that cover the walls.

The bump of my head against the tiles closes my eyes, and in my dream, I hear him, rustling towels, turning on facets, and dropping dixie cups in a frenzy. "Iggy! Iggy!" He opens my lips with his fumbling fingers and pours three shots of water down my throat. I cough the liquid up and open my eyes. He pulls my knotting hair back, and I can tell while I've been asleep, he's let his boiling water spill over and burn his cheeks. I break the mood best I can. "Yoouuuu should grow a fro, like youuss used to have, "member that looked sooo hott. HA!"

"No. I should get you cleaned up," he reaches for a rag, dips it in the bath water and wipes the crusty throw up from the creases of my lips. He guides the rag down my neck like the African mothers he's never met. Trent's face lets me know that in the morning he'll pretend he never rescued me because he's learned that men don't save drunk girls, they fuck them, and only boys cry. "Thank you," I mumble, as I let him erase the parts of me I can't.