The balance beam in purgatory is only 4 inches wide too
and I know this because I’m teetering on the suspended wood beam in an almost-empty gym, cold and abandoned somewhere in the Cold War, next to a hospital-aqua walled pool with angry plants escaping out of its tile cracks. I’m wearing a too-small double knit leotard made for a child that isn’t me, grave dirt still fresh between my toes. There’s a hint of radiation in the air that burns my nose more than the ghostly pool chlorine fumes. My routine was designed to be performed to Highway to Hell played on a crackly loud speaker. Across the same radio waves, I can still hear my mother praying, but she’s got the wrong idea for what I need. She needs to pray for balance and a decision, but all she’s doing is begging for me to find a man, have a baby, come back, earn a gold medal she can sell to buy a Cadillac, be a daughter she’s proud of, come back, come back, come back. My feet are suddenly bigger, swollen like Oldsmobile Cutlasses at the end of pipe cleaner Olive Oyl legs. I’m not looking for balance anymore; I’m trying to not crack the entire beam in half or fall three feet to the faded floor mats, incurring the wrath of my East German coach. He’s glowering at me to get done, but he keeps leaving and going to the soda machine and getting angry when he finds only soda, but not vodka. I’m thirsty, dammit. He screams at me and the bottle and my huge clumsy feet. My mother is praying again. I can hear her over the tinkly music, imagine her performative on her knees next to my pastel floral canopy bed. She winces when she hears the coach’s curse, waves a threatening bar of Irish Spring soap at us both. Reaching under my bed, she finds a vintage wine bottle, separated from its pink and white poodle crochet clothing. She secretly drank herself into the middle place. I knew it. My father shakes his head and reminds her it was a gift from my crafting grandmother. I do one final dismount skill, landing on my big feet like they’re a soft pink mat to catch my fall. My coach slow-claps with his bearpaw hands. Move to the floor exercise. He tells me, but I’m tired and my mother is singing the 23rd Psalms through sobs, again.
Amy Barnes is the award-winning author of three collections: Mother Figures, Ambrotypes, and Child Craft. Her words appear at The Rumpus, In Short, Literary Namjooning, SmokeLong Quarterly, X-R-A-Y Lit, -ette review, and many other sites. She’s an editor at Fractured Lit, Ruby Lit, and Gone Lawn; reads for The MacGuffin; and also reads and teaches for Narratively. A recent empty nester, she lives in Tennessee with her husband and their very stubborn black lab rescue dog.
This is soooo good!
Wow! Brilliant, breathless flash. Always love Amy's work.