Photo: Emma Dodge Harrison

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Maria is in the first class cabin of Aer Lingus Flight 865, New York to Dublin, a stopover at Shannon, hoping she is in time to save her daughter’s life. She is trying to understand why her daughter is where she is, why she has done what she has done. She is terrified. But she must stop herself from being terrified. She has six hours in the air, six hours in which there is no possible action she can take to help her daughter.The plane takes off into a black sky. She is nowhere; the sky turns from black to greenish, a thick weaving over of cloud. Useless to note the number of miles piling up, the figures on the screen in front of her. The pilot, who is Irish, says, “keep your seatbelts fastened, we may be having some light chop.” Light chop, what does that mean, she asks herself. She wishes someone she knew were sitting beside her so she could laugh at the pilot’s language. But she’s afraid the fattish blond man beside her would take it as encouragement if she laughed. He might think she wants to talk. She does not want to talk. To him or anyone. She does not want to explain why she is traveling to Dublin, first class, the day after Christmas. What could she say when she knows there is nothing that she understands?She would like to use this time well, or at least not badly. She would like to begin to understand what her daughter is doing, what she has said. Witness. Against what? For what?And why?There is only one thing that she knows, one thing she would tell her daughter. Nothing is worth your life. You are my child. Nothing is worth your life. Would she say that first or would she say, kindly, or would it be angrily: Why are you doing this? What has happened has meant that she does not know her daughter. Which means that she does not know herself. Which means she is a different person than she was twenty four hours ago.The prospect of her daughter’s dying is a burning place she cannot stand on, must run from, but must return to just in case, just in case. In case being there could stop the fire. In case she could think of something. But it is impossible, simply to form the thought is impossible. Pearl could die. It is unendurable. She is drawn back to the place and then must run from it, no stillness is possible, no stable plane. Fire and avalanche and flood, she cannot catch her breath and yet she must, for it will only make things worse if she can’t catch her breath if she can’t find the piece of ground that will support her weight, that will allow her to take the first step. She has always believed in the first step: that taking it is better than not taking it. But she is on an airplane. Her scope of movement is radically small. There is nowhere for her to go…

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