The Air Mattress

The air mattress—which my mother set up in the back room for my visit, the room that used to be mine—has been leaking. Slowly, throughout the night, air has escaped from some microscopic hole or improperly tightened seal; and now, with the morning sun filtering through the blinds of my east-facing window, I sink low into the mattress’ center and the sides billow up around me, puffed up like wind-filled parachutes.

Every movement of my body, a roll to the side, a stretch of my leg, sends a rippling wave of motion through the deflating bed, and I rock back and forth, as if floating on the ocean. I dream, first of being stranded on a boat. The sun beats down on my tattered clothes and bruised skin. The wind around me is salty and burns my eyes. I have long since eaten through the better part of my rations, and all that remains is a fat, juicy, perfectly cooked steak. It was a Christmas gift, from someone who didn’t know that I don’t eat red meat, or that I’d be lost at sea without a fork and knife. I smiled when I opened it, thanked him kindly, returned it to its box. It stares at me now from across the boat, and as my stomach gurgles and churns, I can see the steak pumping in and out like a beating heart. I hear it grumble softly, vibrate, purr.

My parents’ cat makes his way across the bobbing mattress and settles in beside me. His body, curling into a U, jars the bed and wakes me up. I roll to my side and dip back to the floor. The air, pushing up behind my turning body, lifts the cat onto the crest of a wave and he slides down and rests against the small of my back. His purring vibrates my spine.

A new dream, I am in an airport, awaiting a last minute flight. The mayor of Baltimore—whose name and gender I don’t even know—has called me personally. “There are chickens loose in the city, Claire,” the mayor tells me. “We need you back now!” So I book myself on the first available flight, and take my sister with me, because she knows how to speak to chickens.

They’re running amok when we arrive. From BWI to Hampstead and all the way over to Highlandtown, chickens fill the neighborhoods of Baltimore like a poultry-themed Where’s Waldo. We find one dining at Acropolis in Greektown, eating Spanakopita and drinking a beer with a drawing of the Parthenon on the label. We stuff him into an over-priced garbage bag that I purchased at an airport newsstand and I carry him over my shoulder.

There is another one in the Inner Harbor, shopping for sports gear. He pauses in front of store window and adjusts the bill of his new Orioles cap. “Why don’t any sports teams have chickens as their mascots?” I ask my sister, and she has no idea. “What are we?” I cheer. “Chickens!”

“Sounds good to me,” my sister says, and we can’t fathom why the chicken, of all birds, has been so long ignored.

It takes us three hours to round them all up. Two have spent the afternoon barhopping through Fells Point and stumble up my apartment steps wobbly and hammered. I make them rest on the couch, place trash cans on the floor beneath them, just in case. Clucking fills my small apartment, feathers float around my head. “We should make them some nachos,” my sister says. “Chickens like that.”

I lay tortilla chips on a cookie sheet, cover them with black beans, shredded cheese. “There,” my sister says. “Now just put them in the oven to bake. Nachos, oven, make,” she adds. “Stair, cool, lake. Hey Claire are you awake?”

I blink my eyes open, and my sister’s face hovers before me like a mirage. “Claire,” she says. “Claire, it’s time to wake up.”

“Did you feed the chickens?” I ask her.

“What?”

“Did you feed the chickens?”

“Uh…yeah. I did,” she plays along. “Come on and get up.”

“Okay.” I roll onto my stomach and push up with my arms. The mattress collapses beneath my weight and sends a wave of air up and under the sleeping cat. He hisses and races from the room.

“I think this thing might be leaking,” I say. It is almost noon.