I am a writer you know…and after my New Yorker rejection email, I figured I could post.
Miracle Debris Lands on the Coast of Connecticut
By t.tara turk
She still has nightmares of sharks swimming around her, dressed in evening attire and salivating over her as if she’s a lobster in a tank. She hears them cackle during her REM sleep even though she is nice and safe inside her expensive bed with the custom linens flown from Egypt and the pillows made seemingly from angel’s wings and butterfly eyelashes (her boyfriend’s words). There is no amount of money that can make her feel rested. In fact, Lily Whitman hasn’t felt rested since she was five years old. She remembers it all as if it happened five minutes ago.
She was on a plane with her parents Sasha and Jeremiah Whitman, headed from Brazil to Paris after an economy vacation where her father monitored traveler’s cheques and ordered one entree for them all to share. This part she remembers because her mother complained at first and then, towards the end of the trip, rebelled completely by not partaking in the one entrée to share and drank coffee, picking fruit from natural habitats wherever they were. She remembers her parents were silently stewing in their anger towards each other when the first large bump on the plane propelled them up and forward despite their seat belts. Lily was injured slightly by the plastic cup of ice she had in front of her (she was practicing “bobbing for apples” with the ice cubes). Sasha and Jeremiah immediately looked at each other in a panic, forgetting their anger for a second. But when the second bump didn’t happen immediately after, they went back to rolling their eyes at each other, focusing on their reading material but darting their eyes carefully at each other when the other wasn’t looking. Lily sat in the middle caught the volley of all of this. Then the second bump lurched the flight attendant down into Jeremiah’s lap. Lily pushed her. The flight attendant leaped up quickly, embarrassed but also concerned. She darted down the row to the cock pit and when she opened the door, to Lily, it seemed as if she opened the door to some sort of hell. There was chaos flying out of the cockpit. The pilots were screaming at each other or at some one on the radio, the buttons were blinking, the knobs made panicked noises. The flight attendant looked out at the passengers and then quickly slammed the door behind her as she went in. They never saw her again.
The other flight attendants painted on frosty smiles, reassuring the businessmen (they were the first to panic) and parents (they were the best at hiding it) that everything would be alright. Lily watched at how people who were seemingly everyday people with barely distinguishing faces, pulled out religious artifacts as if they were weapons. One woman clenched her rosary so hard that the blood had left her pale fingers. Another woman was doing a call to prayer silently and peacefully. Most were screaming. That was their religion. Fear. It did not help that they started to descend…quickly.
Sasha and Jeremiah looked at each other with desperation. Suddenly, Lily couldn’t seen anything else because her parents had their hands all over her, pulling her this and way and that, not knowing where the best place for her would be. Lily wrinkled her nose, suddenly smelling something sour and looked down at her dangling feet. Someone had thrown up behind her. She reached in front of her and threw the paper bag behind her, to help whoever it was.
“What did she say to do when there’s emergency??” Sasha was digging through the materials in the pocket of the seat in front of her for instruction on emergencies. Jeremiah was pulling his seat, trying to get the floating part in his hands but he was pulling at the wrong part. The masks fell from the overhead and Sasha quickly put hers on and shoved Lily’s on soon after, cutting the girl’s ear with her hard diamond wedding ring. When her wrist was near Lily’s face, Lily inhaled her mother’s perfume (she can’t remember what it was – something faint and feminine – something she’s looked for everyday of her life since) before she started to inhale the stale claustrophobic air of the mask. It was tremendous on the girls face, matched in size only by her eyes. The rest becomes blurry for Lily. She knows that the plane started going down faster at this point but she also knows that her parents were crying and kissing each other and her, forming a tight knot of a their arms around Lily’s face. People around them were just about to reach the apex of panic, the point where you think you can run from a crash. The point where you get up to run to the back of the plane, to the front of the plane, to the side, to the luggage compartment, to the bathroom…all of these places were about to be seized with people but they hit the ocean too fast.
It sounded like a bomb. Her parents had taken her to war movie during one of their times of poor judgment (it gave her nightmares) and she saw what bombs did and how loud they could be from the state of the art movie theater they sat in. Lily had been preoccupied with popcorn until she saw a body part fly across the screen. She looked up at her parents who looked at each other like children who’d been caught sneaking candy. Her mother covered her eyes. But she still heard the big boom.
The next thing she remembers is the wave of light. She knows now, as an adult, that it wasn’t really light so much as the impact of the plane meeting the ocean. An aggressive angry hand shake between two polar opposites. People flew back. Some how there was a fire. And, just like in the movie, she saw body parts fly past her doughy face and her eyes followed like she was watching a tennis match. The screams were horrifying. When she watches movies now, and she comes to the part where people scream when they know they are going to die, she is sad for the moviemakers because they will never know that real, guttural torturous sound that someone makes when they are going to die. The last thing she heard her mother say was “See?” or “Sea?” She can never quite tell which one it was and it is something that gnaws at her like a dog and a bone it can’t quite conquer. Her father looked at her, deep into her eyes, stealing glances at Sasha but focusing on Lily. The look of pain washed over his face and then her face was wet.
They know that Lily was in water because when they found her floating on debris, she had sea plant life tangled in her hair and what was later to be found as coral wounds on her pudgy legs. Not deep enough to bite but enough to draw a little blood that had been left in the sea. Somehow, though, in her mind, she made these wounds to be from sharks and never changed the memory. She was either tired or unconscious when the rescue helicopters circled the crash site. Groggily, she remembers holding on to someone in all black who held her tight as she was lifted high, again, into the sky, the ocean rocking beneath them, ready for them to fall. She started to cry only when she was up high enough to see how far the water spread around her. There was no land in sight. The rescuers tried to calm her in a language she didn’t know. It was a beautiful language, soothing under most circumstances except this one. She was tired but still cried. She felt weak and thirsty. The only other time she’d felt like this was when she and her parents spent the whole day at the beach. Her father, a bit too overzealous, made sure they spent every waking minute in the salty water – jumping, diving, running, splashing, treading to the point of exhaustion as her mother looked on over her magazine, pretending interest.
Lily, at five, was mature but really did expect to reach the top of the helicopter to find her mother there, magazine cast aside, reaching for her baby’s soft face and wiping away her tears. Except she wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a woman on board. Lily twisted her head around quickly to see if her father was there, crying for her, his thick eyebrows knit together with concern, his large hands extended to take her by the arms and hold her close into him so she could inhale his peppermint scent. No father. In fact no one she could recognize. Not from the line at the airport, not anyone who ordered from the large metal cart that kept hitting feet, not from the panicked run to the back of the plane. There was no one. She would’ve even been okay with the flight attendant who landed on her father’s lap but she wasn’t there either.
The helicopter whisked her away from the salty water before she could see the bodies floating and sinking around her. The debris she floated on was, ironically, a seat cushion that had been singed by one of the fires but remained in tact enough to carry the five year old, face down and rear up. The sway of the helicopter, the tight arms of the man who held on to her as some one checked her body for signs of trauma, impending death, escaped bones, etc., the salt on her body was all soothing enough to have her fall asleep though she tried to fight it.
Weeks later her face was still on the news of every major market. One country called her “Miracle Debris” though it sounded better in their language. Her grandparents rushed to her side and attempted to shield her from the microphones, the endless flowers, the handwritten prayers in shaky old people writing, the stuffed animals, the crazies who insisted that she was the child of Neptune that was birthed from the sea, the nurse who tried to abduct her, the doctor who sold his story to the tabloids and the families who pleaded with her to remember something, anything, that would give them peace over their deceased loved ones. After all, she was the sole survivor of the plane crash.
She could give them nothing.
It had taken years for her to piece together the chain of events she remembers. Some of the memories came in the middle of the ridiculous nightmares, like the sharks dressed up for the opera. Or the time she dreamed her father had flown away just in time before the plane hit. Or that it was all just a big photo spread in one her mother’s magazines. How disturbed her grandparents had been when she came down and told them she’d better stop reading before bed because she had the strangest nightmare. And then she paused before she lifted up her milky cup of coffee and realized it was not a dream. She went to school in a fog afterwards.
The settlement from the airline ensured that all her basic needs would be met for the rest of her life. Though there was some uncertainty about how accurate the trial would be, there was tons of evidence that there had been faulty wiring here and there, some parts that were supposed to be switched out, a fatigued crew, etc. The money meant nothing though, in the grand scheme of things. It certainly didn’t make her more social, more warm, and more outgoing. She was considered a bitch until someone remembered what had happened to her and informed whatever circle she happened to be around. Then she got sympathy looks over beers, faux concerned touches on the arm from possible suitors for the night and everything else she found unbearable. She respected very few people outside of her grandparents and those were mostly people who considered her bad luck and steered clear. She found those people honest and amusing.
First her grandfather died of a heart attack. Quick and sudden, he’d grabbed his chest and toppled down in a clump on the kitchen floor before Lily could call the emergency. As she waited for the ambulance to arrive, she wondered what he saw when he died. Did he see the light explosion from impact like she did? Her grandmother’s face was worried, concerned and sad but she carried on, putting together an overnight bag, holding his hand and watching the tea kettle all at the same time. His face reminded Lily of pictures she’d seen of herself, emerging from the sea wreckage.
Her grandmother followed her husband soon after and Lily was alone but comforted that she believed her grandmother had died of a broken heart. When standing at the cemetery over the only people she ever trusted (that included her parents since she was not clear on if she trusted them especially given the crash – she felt guilty for acknowledging this but it was true in her heart, despite the imploding feeling of love in her heart for them), she happy because she saw true love, side by side. She felt there was honor in dying of a broken heart, a commitment of joy to life springing eternal so much so that you will die if even one molecule is removed. She does wonder why she didn’t die of heart break at the ripe old age of five.
Years after her grandparents died, Lily went on to become a pilot. There were very few people around to find the irony in this. Every few years, a reporter would pop up with a piece on “Whatever Happened to…” and she, the “Miracle Debris” would be included with minimal detail. It would read something like “Lily Whitman went on to go to Harvard and study science. From all accounts, she was a great student with a creative mind though very much to herself.” They tried hard to make it all sound interesting but it wasn’t. By the time those social cake pieces faded into history, she’d decided to become a pilot. Her Harvard professors were puzzled but then they also rationalized that true genius students generally went on to do the extraordinary even if it wasn’t rational.
Her boyfriend was another Harvard grad but he didn’t appear to be one in person. Scruffy, genius, not from money and generally unimpressed with most social interaction, he went on to start a eco shoe company built from natural remains of the Amazon and sold on the internet. No classmate of theirs thought it would work. He was a millionaire five years after graduation. He adored her flying obsession, even knowing her background. He thought it an unexpected prank on the idea of “fate” and that would amuse him more than any of the reality shows on VH1 (which they loved to watch for various reasons).
Though they lived together in a large loft in Tribeca and their only extravagance were the sheets and bed she insisted on, she appeared to be like every other broke young pilot at the fledgling airline she worked for which specialized in luxury economy trips from the Eastern Seaboard to standard vacation points not too far away. She willingly took the longer trips and was renown for her keen detail of geography and her ability to stay awake for long periods of time. But because she was a she and young, she was only wanted as a co-pilot and therefore rarely got be “captain” which suited her fine. Until February 18th, 2009.
She was at the airport in Puerto Rico, sipping milky coffee and watching the passengers mull around for the flight she was going to co-pilot. She was always early because she generally liked to watch the passengers. Any shrink would say that she was looking to recreate her own experience but then that person would be paid to go deeper in the brain than Lily cared for. She would just generally say that she wanted to feel connected to who flew with her before take off. She wanted to see their eyes, faces, hear their interaction with loved ones, look at the state of their luggage, find out what they did to relax before flying…these things relaxed her.
Her captain was a jolly man who smelled like mouthwash though the rumor was that he was a drunk. Lily knew it was really mouthwash because she’d seen him swig and swish before a few flights. She liked him because he didn’t talk very much about things not related to the flight but also felt bad because he was old, like her grandfather, and was unable to retire because he needed the money. That was the only personal thing she knew about him. Well, that and he had a picture of a King Charles named Tommy on his side of the cockpit.
Take off was smooth except for Lily’s bra itched a bit but that was nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until they were about thirty minutes away from JFK did she notice that something was going to go wrong. Since her accident, she had developed a split second alert that told her when things were not right. Her boyfriend called it her Jungle Bell since it was very animalistic. When she looked over at the captain, his head was resting on his chest as if he were sleeping but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. His arm went dead but he was breathing. Calmly, she got on the radio and let the tower know that there was an issue with the captain and that she’d be taking over. She alerted the lead flight attendant so she wouldn’t worry but she did so with reserve as she never warmed to flight attendants going back to her crash and the woman who landed on her father’s lap. She knew it was irrational but then most things were. The flight attendant responded to her coolly and confirmed the change in captain status.
That was the least of her problems. At the top of her list? Birds.
The plane shook more than usual and the head flight attendant came rushing in to see the problem as the passengers were concerned. Lily didn’t need the flight attendant to tell her that; she felt it. When the flight attendant came in the cockpit, her reflex was to shout for her to leave. She remembered seeing the one disappearing into the cockpit when she was small and she didn’t want to be stuck, in her last moments, with a flight attendant. Irrational but true. Plus this one had perfume that could change a skunk. The flight attendant rushed out of the cockpit as Lily went to work. She told the tower she needed to do an emergency landing. They told her they would clear the JFK runway for her. She told them she couldn’t make it in time. With the quickness and a mindlessness that didn’t belong to her (she doesn’t remember thinking really about anything), she went to work. Her best guess she would be able to land the plane in Delaware but then she realized that was too far. Her pits were sweating. She was chewing her upper lip and trying to digest all of the information the plane was giving her. She was trying to blink away the images of her five year old self, trying to move past the sharks with the evening attire, the fires, the people running. She was blinking fast as if trying to make her eyes swallow those memories whole and ensure it wouldn’t happen again. She smelled that feminine faint smell on her mother’s rest for a moment and she panicked once she realized that it was not the perfume of the flight attendant. Instead, she tried to picture her grandparents’ faces and when that didn’t work, she pictured the darkness she saw when her parents embraced each other, with her in the center before the plane hit the ocean. She felt serene. She felt her hands go into motion. She even closed her eyes.
With the ease of someone far beyond her years, Miracle Debris landed on the coast of Connecticut. Everyone was alive and well.
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