“Take off your shoes if they have hard heels or soles. Remove all sharp objects from your pockets and stow them in the seat pocket. Eyeglasses also.”
This is nuts, she thought, and kicked off her shoes, one of her best pairs. She tried to decide if her house keys were considered sharp objects.
“Ma’am, baby better go in the seat.” Lisa took Carla’s dressy shoes and added them to the armful she was carrying.
“Don’t want to!” Bubble stiffened his back.
“We’re going to be landing soon,” Lisa said.
“At an airport?” the man in front of her asked.
As if he heard, the captain came on: “We’re cleared for landing at…” She couldn’t hear the airport’s name. “Flight attendants, prepare for emergency landing.”
Right away Lisa began to yell at them. Carla could see two other flight attendants forward of Lisa do the same as her, shouting with their arms full of shoes — red, black, brown, white, yellow — like a bathtub full of Bubble’s toy boats. Lisa shouted: “Bend over, put your head in your lap. Stay down until the plane comes to a complete stop and then find the nearest emergency exit.”
The plane took another dive down. Recklessly down. Carla yanked the squirming Bubble against her and winced at the proximity of the earth: “Too close!” she pleaded to the porthole.
They swooped up from the land. But that was sickening also. Her stomach levitated up from her pelvis to her throat, while the rest of her was pinned down, paralyzed.
“Cut it out!” Carla said, addressing her advice to the captain. She couldn’t help feeling that he was behaving like a macho teenager, intentionally doing crazy stunts in his souped-up car to scare the girls in the backseat.
Lisa was almost flipped by the plane’s action. Her knees gave out. She stayed on her feet by grabbing the headrests. The shoes spilled all over, under and around the nearby rows.
“Come on, baby,” Carla said and pulled at Bubble, trying to get him off her and into the empty seat. His hands and sneakers clung to her clothes like pasta drying on the edges of the boiling pot. There was no one available to help. Lisa and the passengers nearby were preoccupied by picking up the scattered shoes. People made their motions in a quick and jerky manner, nervous that the plane was about to take them for another dip on the roller coaster.
“Come on, Bubble!” She pried one of his gluey hands off. But when Carla reached for the other hand, he stuck it to her again. “I don’t have time for games!” she yelled into his chubby determined face.
“No,” he said calmly.
She shoved him into the seat rudely.
“Ow!” he complained and kicked at her with his tiny sneakers.
She grabbed the heavy buckle of the seat belt and pressed it into his puffy belly, pinning him down while she hunted for its mate. What good is this! she yelled silently to herself so as not to scare her son. It’s no infant seat. He’ll get cut in half. She found the other end and locked him in.
Bubble kicked out his legs, scrunched his shoulders, and let himself slide down, wriggling so that his legs and his stomach slithered off the edge of the seat and the belt came up to his chest and neck.
“No!” Carla cried in despair. She pushed at his dangling feet to move him up. It was as hopeless as attempting to put toothpaste back into the tube. His rubbery two-year-old body squashed together for an instant, oozing back down the instant she stopped.
Another swoop…down…
Carla twisted her neck to glance out the window. A highway — looking very hard and firm — rushed at her…
The plane swooped up and the gray pavement was gone. Carla flopped back and lost Bubble altogether. He slid until hooked by the armpits. There was frantic activity in the plane. The flight attendants were shouting, pointing. The shoes they had gathered were gone. Where?
Hurry! she scolded herself. She didn’t have much time. God knows what disaster would happen next. Problems jumped at her out of nowhere, the way they do in nightmares, and there seemed to be a diabolic presence thwarting any progress. She was back at the beginning: the seat belts were endangering Bubble, not protecting him.
Carla decided to try another method. She pulled Bubble up by the arms.
“No!” he shouted. His cheeks were bloated with stubbornness; his tiny lips disappeared into a pout of refusal.
She slammed Bubble against the seat, pinned him with her left hand and pulled at the loose end of the seat belt to tighten it all the way, despite the horrible images of Bubble being sliced in half.
This is no good.
“Shut up!” she said.
“I don’t wanna!” Bubble answered.
Her plan was fine except that the belt didn’t tighten all the way. She had him immobilized, ready to pull everything taut and secure him, and it was stuck.
“Fuck!” she said and didn’t even bother to feel bad that she had cursed in front of Bubble. It was a vice she had promised not to indulge before her baby. Not that she had any hope he wouldn’t eventually learn to use bad words: just that he wouldn’t associate them with her.
“Need help?” Lisa had leaned in. She was a kid, Carla realized, seeing her up close. Her lipstick had been smeared down one cheek and it made her seem even younger, like a little girl who had gotten into her mommy’s makeup. She couldn’t be more than twenty-one.
“I’ll hold him,” Carla said and allowed Lisa to work on the belt, glad to have both hands for restraining Bubble, who was fighting with every muscle to break free. “Stop fussing,” she said mildly, impressed by the total commitment of his effort to escape. Bubble’s fat cheeks puffed out, his brown eyes bulged, his porcelain nostrils flared, his shoulders narrowed. Carla had to use all her strength and both hands to hold him in position. “You’re crazy,” she told him, cheerful at the thought that she didn’t have to worry about how he would manage in the big world against all the other tough guys. “You’re so stubborn,” she lectured him, but in a mother’s wondering singsong of praise.
“Damn,” Lisa said after several tugs. She had succeeded somewhat more than Carla, but there was plenty of slack for Bubble to slide through. Lisa paused and seemed to hear something. Had there been a chime? “That’s the best we can do,” she leaned back.
“That’s no good,” Carla said.
“Let me go!” Bubble kicked out with his sneakers.
To illustrate the problem Carla let go of Bubble. Immediately, without shame, he stiffened his back and shoved with his ass. That propelled him down until the belt caught him at the chest and threatened to choke him.
“It’s going to choke you, Bubble! Sit up!”
He didn’t care: he wanted to be free at all costs.
“Hold him in your lap,” Lisa said. “That’s the drill, anyway.” Lisa seemed to hear something, something Carla couldn’t, or didn’t know she was hearing. Lisa ducked her head to get a view out the windows. “Runway,” she whispered passionately.
Carla followed her glance.
There was an airport straight ahead. A long gray path with broad painted lines and small flashing lights, blinking their welcome. They were safe.
Bubble cried out.
Even as she rescued Bubble, Carla chuckled: he had worked himself so far down that now he was being hung by the neck like the outlaw he was.
“He’ll be okay in your lap,” Lisa said, moving up the aisle, obviously surer of the situation. “Everyone keep your head down,” she called out as she moved up toward the front. The authoritative and casual tone of the routine had returned to her and the other flight attendants’ voices: “And remain seated until the plane comes to a complete stop. We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”