Chapter Nine
The next day my leg still hurt, but I had to get to school to apologize to Hana in person. And also, you know, not get hopelessly behind in my classes. I searched Mom’s closet to find something that would fit over my swollen leg, and grabbed a pair of baggy cargo pants.
My crutches made my normal getting-to-school routine exponentially longer. No one would suspect the decades it took to brush one’s teeth and make a lunch when one was essentially a human set of tongs.
Late to school, I missed catching Hana backstage and went straight to my first class, which was alternative gym—yoga—this quarter. I started getting out my books, assuming Mrs. Lahiri would let me spend class in the back catching up on homework, since I could barely walk, let alone do yoga.
When Mrs. Lahiri saw me, she smiled wide and said, “Ellie, it is so good to see you.” She instructed the class to continue with their sun salutations and squatted next to my mat. “How are you feeling?” I brightened a little. She was like an angel on earth or something—something beyond us mortals, at least.
“Not so good. It hurts when I try to bend my leg.”
“Ellie, give yourself a break. Let me see.” She had me sit on a chair and roll up my cargo pants so she could see the site of the biopsy, right above my left knee.
“It’s better, but it still doesn’t want to bend much.”
“Do you stretch it to the edge of your pain?” She looked at me quizzically with her big almond eyes. I didn’t know which answer was right.
“I thought it was bad to push it too far—I didn’t want to make it hurt more.”
She gazed out the windows of the gym to the parking lot and didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, she turned to me. “Yes and no. As with all things in life, you must find the balance. Even though bending it to the edge of pain seems to cause more discomfort in the moment, after it is over, your body feels a release. Like in yoga with those twists I make you hold longer than you want—once you start focusing on your breath instead of the intensity of the stretch—”
“It gets easier, and then everything opens up,” I finished.
She nodded. “Pain is sacred. It can be our greatest teacher and our greatest protector. That is why you must respect it and listen to it so closely.”
I chewed my lower lip, not sure about this pain theory.
She took another stare-out-the-window pause. Did everyone who’d found inner peace do everything so slowly? If so, it wasn’t the path for me.
“Most people are so scared of the pain in their life, they do anything they can to avoid it, to not feel what is really there. Ignoring it merely causes a different kind of hurt.”
My skin went goose-bumpy. It seemed like she wasn’t just talking about my leg anymore…but why?
For the rest of class, she led everyone else through the regular sequences and had me on the yoga mat doing “restorative” poses, which were kind of like napping while in an easy stretch. I couldn’t get settled. I lay on my back, eyes wide open, biting down hard on the inside of my cheeks, waiting for the bell to ring, realizing I sucked at “letting go” and “going with the flow.”
There’s a lesson for you: don’t do yoga.
You’ll find crap out about yourself you don’t want to know.
Crutching through the halls between classes, I caught snippets of conversation. It was only mid-September, but everyone was talking about homecoming next month. I’d forgotten about it.
By midday my body was done. Arms aching. Left leg swollen. Right leg wobbly from doing all the walking. And none of Mrs. Lahiri’s advice to breathe deep or make pain my BFF was working.
“Hey, Ellie.” It was Annabelle, a girl that used to live down the street before we moved. She put down her phone for a second. “Crutches are the worst. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks.” I repeated almost the same exchange with four more people, keeping up a smile that might as well have been plastic.
Fine, fine, fine. When, really, I had no idea what I was.
Their best sympathy faces sucked—like they knew they were supposed to express something, but didn’t know how to actually feel it. I was doing the same thing. At least they were looking up from their phones and saying “hey” and trying. That was nice.
Instead of going to Statistics, I stepped into the bathroom, making sure I was alone, and maneuvered into the last stall.
I stared at the toilet seat, exhausted, debating. Gross. But the two darts lodged in my shoulders throbbed again so I sat down.
I could just burn these pants.
I shook out my arms and leg.
I let out a long sigh, needing a second to rally myself.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
A fly was in the stall with me. It was shockingly loud for being such a tiny insect, its two wings like furious little chainsaws.
“Agh!” I pounded my fists against the bathroom wall.
The clamp around my lungs tightened.
Some weird muscle in my chest near my heart clenched.
Buzz, buzz.
That fly had to be destroyed. My fingers splayed and shook. I pounded my fist harder against the stall wall.
Buzz.
I gulped air, forgetting how to breathe.
Breathe, just breathe. It’s okay, it’s nothing, it’s going to be nothing. You’ll be okay.
Buzz.
Finally, I put all my focus on pulling air into my nostrils, long and slow, cooling them.
Buzz.
Breathe.
Buzz.
Breathe.
I found a rhythm with the fly.
The tears poured down my cheeks. Air in, air out. Again and again.
It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.