I waved at Yvonne in the driver s seat before I turned to make my way down our driveway. She pulled the stop signs back into the side of the bus as she honked the horn at me and made for the turn around further up the hill. One of my knee-stockings were starting to fall down as I walked, so I grabbed it in a fist and yanked it up, far above my knee, ignoring my jumper skirt as it bunched on top of my rear end. I bounced my backpack straight as I adjusted a falling strap, and I held it in place while I leapt like a cat onto the wooden beams running along the grass edge of the asphalt, my navy blue mary-janes walking an invisible tightrope down to our doorsteps.
At the door, I squatted to open my backpack for my house key. I knew my mom was home that day, but I figured I would unlock the door and meet her inside; I wanted her to see that I was becoming more responsible every day in second grade. But fishing around at the bottom of my Jansport, I couldn't find my googley-eyed keychain. I pouted for a minute, jerked my zipper shut and resigned to ringing our doorbell just as Yvonne zoomed back past by my house, heading down the hill.
I dug the toe of my shoe into a clump of dirt by the door as I waited. I watched it settle into the flower imprints on the leather. When I felt impatient, I rang again. And again. And again. Pretty soon, our black Sheppard came to the door and began to bark, but my mom still wasn't coming to open the door for me. I pushed the bell again, and sat hard on it this time for at least five whole seconds. I peeked in the window slit next to the door, but still didn't see her.
“Go tell mom I'm home, Ziggy!” I shouted to our dog. He seemed to understand me, because I saw him take off, running back into the hall to my parents bedroom.
I frowned and, a little worried and confused, looked behind me at the driveway as if I expected someone could be coming from that direction to let me in. I walked back up the driveway and then back down to our doorsteps, searching for my key that I somehow might have dropped getting off the bus, had it not been securely zipped in my bag. No luck.
Returning to the door, I peered inside again. This time, I saw my mom coming around the far hall corner. I was relieved in an instant, but then terribly confused and scared in the next. My mom was crawling to the door? She looked like she was still in her pajamas. Ziggy was walking beside her, nudging her with his nose and barking at her and then at me outside.
I thought I heard her talking, but I couldn't understand what she was saying, and it seemed like an eternity before she finally made it to the door; she stopped moving altogether a few times to lay down on the floor. Finally she was kneeling in the tile entryway directly on the inside of the door. She started to fidget with the lock, but stared at it, with brows furrowed, as if it was a rubix cube.
I didn't understand what was going on, but pretty quickly I figured out that something was wrong with her. I finally understood her when she started slurring my name repeatedly. She started to cry while she fumbled with the lock a few times, tugging on the door with each attempt when she thought she had opened it.
“Turn it to the side, mom!” I yelled, shrieking a bit, unexpectedly. I just then realized that my heart had been steadily quickening in my chest. I was still baffled, but I knew I needed to be in there to help her. I almost started to cry with her when I realized that if I had my key, I could have already been inside, calling someone for help.
My mom gave up on the lock for an extent of time and lay down on the tile floor beside the door. I gave up trying to give her instructions. That was when I started crying: scared, panicked, choking sobs and squeals. I flew to my left and kicked in the lower windows on the deck. They broke, but were double-layered and did not completely clear the frame with a few kicks. I was too scared to break all of that glass into the house, let alone to try then to crawl through them. I ran around the porch to the back door and kicked the lower windows in there, hoping that somehow they were made of different glass. I was still too scared to crawl in. Ziggy had followed to watch me to the back, running and barking. I stood for a second, panting as tears streamed down my face. Then I sprinted back to the front door where my mom was still laying on the other side.
I yelled in to her, persistent and loud, over and over;
“Turn it to the side, mom! The bar that goes this way, up and down! Turn it to the side! The side!” I wiped my eyes and nose on my coat sleeve in one harsh motion.
Then the door was unlocked and she was trying to pull it open. I pushed it open carefully and squeezed into the house. She was kneeling directly in front of me, her arms stretched out to me. I immediately dropped my bag against the wall and prepared to snatch the phone as she tried to say my name again and then turned around to lay back on the floor. After a few slow and slurred tries, I understood that she was asking me for a pillow and orange juice. I bolted to the kitchen and living room and back with both, and then I leapt for the phone.
“Hi, this is Alicia. Um, is Stephen Soos at his desk? This is... Kind of an emergency.” For some reason I remember feeling badly for interrupting my dad at work, and that I was embarrassed of demanding for him by saying “emergency.”
After I told my dad that something was wrong with Mom and I knew he was rushing home, I called my best friend Vera from down the hill for help. I brought my mom a blanket and helped her hold the juice container while she drank. Some juice got on her clothes and neck because the container was too heavy for me to hold, nothing like a doll's bottle, and I felt clumsy. My mom rested her head on my shoulder between gulps.
When Mrs. Herbert got there, the rest rushed by me in a hurricane as I sat on the floor. She called the ambulance and then I was suddenly leaning against the front door's wall while she tended to my mom instead. And then my dad was home.
He came in and told me to pack a bag, and I went home with them while my dad waited with my mom. I had stopped crying, even though I was still terrified. At some point I had adopted a zoning, blank stare instead. Ziggy licked leftover tears from my face, and I absently hugged his neck. Was the baby making her sick? Would she die? I started crying again when I got into Vera's car, but I managed to thank them for coming to help me so quickly.
I do not remember playing at Vera's house; I do not remember what we did once we got there. I do remember Dad calling when it was okay for me to come home; he said Mom was okay.
Later on the couch my dad explained diabetes to me. I held my green blanket tight and played with the worn edges, folding it and rubbing it over my palms and fingers. He said Mom had a reaction; that the sugar in her blood was low, and when that happens she can t always think right. She must not have woken up from her nap at the right time to test her sugar, and so she didn't eat lunch. That was why she was acting so strange and could not meet me off of the bus. I asked if she could have died. He said that it is possible for someone to die of a bad sugar level, high or low, if they go into a coma. He also said I was brave, and that we were all lucky I had been there because he wouldn't have been home for a few more hours and Mom would have been a lot worse then. I was happy for this and feeling relieved, but I cried when I said I was so sorry I didn't have my house key. I would never forget it again. He just told me again that I was so brave, and he wiped my cheeks with his fingers.
Then he asked me what happened to the windows? I swallowed, scared again, and a new pair of heavy tears welled up in my eyes, threatening to wet my face again. I thought I was in trouble, and so, looking down at my footy pajama feet on the cushion, I lied and told him that some older boys ran by with a baseball and broke them all.
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