- Olivia Brooks
- Jun 16
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 20
The Girl by the Window (1893), Edvard Munch
The Night I Remembered How To Fly
I have to do it.
I have to do it right. I have to do it right with every piece fitting exactly how it needs to fit. Mom and Dad need to know that it isn’t bad. I am not bad. They need to know that this is something I worked hard for. I can show them like I showed Muriel, and they can soar to the highest heights and never be afraid. Ashton was afraid. He saw the footsteps and went running, making his own. No, Mom and Dad wouldn’t do that. They won’t.
All they need to do is not float away. Not float away and don’t run the other way. I can show them how just like he showed me. They can bring into them all the breath there is. Every atom of air. And don’t you know it? A little bit more. Hold it in. Mom’s belly will stretch like she said it did after they made me. It will hurt. She will feel like there is too much inside. So much. She would rather be split open and made into two people with all of her life in that new person and nothing left for her than hold all of it in. I know, but she has to keep it all with her. Every bit of it. Every piece must be in the right place. All of the outside must come inside and they have to make it stay, hold their breath past when they see all the stars in the galaxy and those stars tell her to go to sleep. They must hold it past when they might explode, sending body and soul into the stratosphere. Travel through the tunnel. Hold your breath. You’ll see the red lights in front of you, white lights behind. The sirens will echo off the walls. There is something after this. There is always something after this.
It was midnight last night. I was in my bedroom upstairs. I couldn’t sleep. Not a wink. My pillow was wet and cold. So, I let the record spin. The B-side ended. The coda faded. The arm did not retract. Endless bump and static, bump and static. It wasn’t too bad a noise. Kinda calming. Besides, I thought I might be dragged beneath my bed, beneath where the two-by-fours held up my mattress if I walked across my room to my record player. I’m a kid. Kids know things like this. You used to know things like this too. Dragged by whom, you ask? If you don’t remember, I ain’t gonna tell ya. That’s not what this is about. This is about air. It’s about who told me how to fly when I take all of it inside, and it’s about how I told Muriel and Ashton, my sister and brother, that they could fly too.
So, yeah, it was midnight. The record was all skips and static and I wasn’t even thinking about doing anything about it, no way. Last time I couldn’t sleep, Papa–that’s what I call my grandfather–saw me wiping sleepy stuff from my eye and he said, “Next time, try counting sheep.” So, I tried that last night. The first sheep looked plenty enough like a sheep. The second one did too. The third one was more like a sheepdog, but still way more sheepy than sheep number one thousand. That little guy didn’t look a lick like a sheep. His face was all screwed up and he had too many legs. Scary stuff. I was done with counting sheep. For real done. But the static from the record was nice, and I didn’t have to do any counting. One of the songs on the record is called “Sheep,” and I thought that was good enough.
At about the millionth repeat of the bump and static, I hear a thump, and I panic. I panicked because when you get used to the same sound over and over and something new wants to say hello, it’s a big deal. Then there was another thump. This time I could tell it was coming from outside my window on the other side of my room. I had to know what the noise was. Like I told you before, I was not going to put one foot on the floor. I know what’s under my bed. So, I stood up. Don’t ask me what I was wearing. I’m shy. I stood up—I had my blanket around me, kind of over my shoulders—and I said, but not too loud, “Who is this?” Nothing but that record player. Don’t get me wrong, I love my record player, but I really wanted it to be quiet right then. I reached out. I tried to make my arm long enough to stretch to the opposite wall, but, and you know it, that’s not how arms work.
Okay, so I looked around to make sure the sheep with the screwed-up face and too many legs wasn’t around. There were a few more thumps at my window. “Okay, okay,” I said, and I plopped belly-down on my bed and looked under to make sure there was nothing there. There wasn’t, thank you for asking. I put the tippiest of tiptoes on the floor. Just the pinky, real slow. There was another thump. I thought whoever that was, was in the biggest hurry I’d ever seen. So, I put my whole foot into the coal-black shadows of the floor and then I put the other one beside it. Then, one went in front of the other in big, long steps so I could get over to the window in a flash.
My curtains have cartoons on them and I am too old for that. I said it. You had colorful curtains you were too old for, too. Remember? And besides, who says I’m too old? I’m not too old.
Wait. Every piece needs to fit. I’m telling you about curtains when I really should be telling you about the man. He said all the pieces fit and I don’t need to try so hard. Do you know what that means?
I pulled the curtains aside and lifted the window. There he was. There he was with his hands folded under his chin. “Whatcha thumpin’ on my window for?” I asked him. And you know what he did? He laughed like I told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. And when he laughed, his eyes looked like cotton candy. The kind of cotton candy that’s in the sky when the sun sets. I asked him what was so funny when just then I heard stomping. It got louder and louder. Closer and closer. In between the stomps, I heard people yelling. Yelling, not like they were having a good time, but the worst time you can think of. They sounded like their throats were swollen and scratchy with strep and they did not like each other at all.
For some reason, I thought about my wet pillow.
Then, it came to me. There was no place for the man to stand. He was floating, no, flying like it was natural. Of course, it wasn’t natural. People don’t fly. You know that. It was magic. I asked him, and I tried so hard to make my voice small, “Why are you flying?”
Do you know what the man did then? He talked to me. Only, he didn’t open his mouth. He talked to my brain with his brain! He told me what I am going to tell Mom and Dad. He said, “You are full even when you feel empty. Everything will be where it needs to be. Breathe.” And that’s what I did.
I took it all in and when I believed everything was where it belonged, I lifted right up to my ceiling. It was hard at first. I got turned upside down. I got woozy. I went left when I wanted to go right. Backward when I meant forward. What a mess. But when the man with the cotton candy eyes reached through the window and took my hand all I had to do was keep taking the air in and, bam! I shot right out of the window, and I soared up to the top of the magnolia tree. I grazed our roof with the tips of my fingers. I flew to the stars. So close to the stars. I almost forgot the man with the cotton candy eyes until he pulled my ankle, not hard or anything, and told my brain with his brain that I shouldn’t go so far. Who was I to say no?
Then when our faces were lit by the light of the stars, I saw that he had the same mark on his cheek that I have. It’s a birthmark. Lots of people have them, but none are just like mine. I thought it was a shadow before, but I could see it just like you see it right now on my face. What do you think that was all about? Then he waved goodbye and flew away. I watched him until I couldn’t see him anymore. I knew I needed to stay and show my brother and sister how to fly.
By the time I got to Murial’s room, the people who didn’t like each other had stopped making all that noise. Muriel was sound asleep on her bed, a bed that was way too big for a kid. She looked like the lioness they kept in that pit at the zoo. I nudged her on her shoulder. Just a little with my little finger. She said, “I’m sleeping.” Her yellow hair covered her eyes. I said, “Duh, I’ve got something to show you.” And that’s what I did. She caught on right away. Faster than I did. She goes, “Oh yeah, I remember this,” like she had done it a million times but long, long ago. She was zipping all around, pushing with her feet off the high corners of her room.
Muriel said Ashton would remember, too. So, down the hall we flew.
Ashton was sitting up in his bed probably because his pillow was wet like mine. It was way past midnight, but I don’t remember the time. He said, “I’m afraid of the stomping, I’m afraid of the sound.” I said, “What if you could leap out of the window and not come down?” He then said something to himself. I think he counted sheep. Because Muriel and I heard whispers like bleats.
We filled up our lungs, then our bones, and our hearts. We readied to show Ashton how to float toward the stars. But he panicked and shook, saying we had disappeared. He only saw our footsteps, adding to what he feared. One day he will see, just like Mom and Dad will do now, that fear isn’t real, and we will fly toward the stars somehow.
Before I show them—and I have told you, I have to do it—why don’t you give it a try? Fill your lungs with all the air you can. Hold it past the moment your body begs to let go. This is how we are made. This is how we are unmade. Mom once held everything inside her, stretching beyond what she thought she could bear, until life demanded release. It hurt. It split her open. It made her two, and then she was one again but changed forever. That is how this works. That is how it has always worked.
You must take everything in before you can give it away. You must surrender before you can fly. And when you do—when you finally let go—you will see that fear was never real, that you were never empty, and that the stars have been waiting for you all along. You will remember. You will fly.
This is like living. You can fly and soar. This is like giving. More and more. And when everything is in its right place, and we know it already is, the stars will light our faces, and we will flow with the wind.
ERIC ST. PIERRE, a multifaceted New Orleans-based artist, weaves story, color, and sound to create work that examines the play between the tangible and the transcendent.
Eric’s writing and visual art have appeared in Grim and Gilded, The Raffish, The Emerald Coast Review, Running Wild Press, and The Independent News Weekly's columns.