The Balloon Artist
The back yard of the Aetna Street house had a jungle gym with plastic rings on it. Maybe it had a slide and a little ladder made out of rope or something too, but the still rings were the best part. I was five when some girl, eight or so, visited my grandma’s house the same day as my family. Everyone else spent the day inside, celebrating something we didn’t know or care much about; we just wanted to hang around on the jungle gym and catch some sun.
The visiting girl decided we could play a fun game where I hang from the rings and swing, and then she’d suddenly push me in the back without any goddam warning. People like to do things like this; just do some knee-jerk thing as if there won’t be any consequences for it. Sure, sometimes there aren’t but how can anyone know that in advance? You have to be careful, especially when you’re only eight, because you don’t yet have the wisdom to not do stupid things like this. Nobody understands that.
I swung back, and then she he pushed me. The momentum picked up and I bent my knees to clear the dirt below, slipped my hands off and flew over the clouds that hung like marshmallow creme pasted to the sky-blue sky. Only on the way down did I know for certain that I was about to lose my life, and that the visiting girl would rightly spend the rest of hers in prison. She made her choice.
If the bent-up ligaments would have allowed it, I would have bet that week’s allowance I could touch my right elbow with my own right hand to make a full circle out of it. I could morph my arm into wild shapes: the letter C, a weird-looking Z, or even an S, depending on your angle. It was a slithering snake. A small staircase. If I could somehow manage to survive this, I knew I was doomed to join the circus, so people near and far could come pay to see my work; like a balloon artist twisting up my own damn arm for money. The ringmaster would bring me out into the spotlight so everyone could stare and have a good time. What a destiny.
My dad took our 1985 Renault and me on a noticeably assertive, profanity-laden drive to the hospital, where the doctor told us the Ulna and Radius bones were each broken right in half. On our way there, he had blown through a few stoplights and honked at people just driving down the street like normal people do when there’s no emergency. He still cared then.
When you break a bone, people really like to talk about your cast and ask you what happened. They probably just do it because they have to. It would make them look bad if they didn’t ask a kid with a sweaty igloo for an arm what the hell happened to him. They try to act like they’re the only one you ever got to tell about it. Like you were just waiting around to tell the story one more goddam time. Visiting Girl pushed me off the rings at my grandma’s house; isn’t that pitiful? I suppose it’s nice to have the attention.
In high school, I had a friend, and he lived a few blocks away from the school. He was a year older than me. After he graduated, I didn’t spend my lunches with him at his house anymore eating Dunkin’ Donuts and ironically watching Jerry Springer. Instead, I’d drive to the grocery store down the street from school, walk around by myself for a bit and watch a bunch of my classmates laugh and have fun with each other in line at the deli counter. Something about their lives let them enjoy things like standing at a deli counter hankering for jo-jo’s and macaroni salad. No one ever figured out or cared that I was actually pretty affable; funny too. I’d have bet half my paycheck they were laughing at me, the guy who spends lunchtime eating jalapeño poppers alone in his parent’s Renault in the grocery store parking lot for his whole senior year of high school. People always laugh at stuff like this. That’s why you have to stay away from people; they’ll always turn on you just for a good laugh. Especially the ones with perfect teeth. People with perfect teeth never got pushed off a jungle gym or anything else in their life.
The Renault only had AM radio even though it wouldn’t have cost that much to get a CD player installed. They never played anything I wanted to hear, just oldies music and old white guys talking politics. They sounded like my dad. Mad at all the wrong people and so sure they’re right about it. You could feel their fingers pointing at you right through the speaker and into your temple. I’d turn the volume down anytime some clique walked near my car so they wouldn’t get the wrong idea about me. People always get the wrong idea about other people and then stick with it like they know something for certain. It’s exhausting.
Since they never put you in a cast for internal injuries, nobody will ever ask you what the hell happened to you. You just have to build as many walls around yourself as possible so nobody can stare at the wild shapes you’ve twisted up on the inside. People always want to see this stuff, but it’s only so they can have something to laugh at while they’re waiting for a donut. Jerry Springer made a whole career out of it. I guess even grown-up people do knee-jerk stuff just to get a rise out of you without thinking about the consequences of the thing. Nobody has any wisdom anymore.
That whole year, I sat in the parking lot inside the beige walls of my parent’s Renault, legs sticking to the hot vinyl seats and fingers covered in greasy panko crumbs, wishing they made casts for the ache inside my chest. If they did, people would be obligated to talk to me about it through their bright white smiles, just to make themselves feel like they’re not assholes. I knew the truth about them anyway, but I suppose it still would have been nice to have the attention. It sure was nice after the visiting girl pushed me off the jungle gym in the back yard of the Aetna Street house.
