Elizabeth the Brave

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“I’m good at colouring, jumping rope, and fighting to the death.”

“Oh yeah?” I tug on one of her pigtails. “Who have you been fighting, Elizabeth?”

She giggles, leaping off the couch and burying herself in her puffy green bean bag chair. She does her best to sit up straight, her nose held high in the air and her face quite serious. “I have fighted — ”

“Fought,” I correct her.

She nods, then begins counting off on her pudgy little fingers. “I have fought the Boogie Man, Super Darth Vader, Evil Space Jello, Sailor Moon…”

“Sailor Moon?” I ask. “Isn’t she a good guy?” I see the confusion on my sister’s face as she watches the spectacle from the other couch, so I explain, “She’s going to be a writer.”

“Yeah, doesn’t Sailor Moon fight evil?” Jennifer’s eyebrows raise, her lips a tight line as she tries to suppress the smirk. She knows how important it is to my daughter that the adults take her seriously. Elizabeth is almost seven, after all. “Are you evil, Elizabeth?!”

“No, I’m not evil!” She sighs, exasperated with our inability to see the bigger picture. Her hazel eyes light up, the way they do when she knows she’s got you hooked for a particularly good tale. She takes in a big breath, then fires her explanation at us like a machine gun of enthusiasm. “She’s sometimes a bad guy ’cause other more evil bad guys can make tricky plans and make her do mean things ’cause like when they take her magic crown and turn it all evil and when she puts it on it’s really a brain control crown and I need to knock it off with my magic sword and save the world!”

She chokes out the last few words then inhales great gasps of air. The lung capacity on that girl! I make a mental note to get her enrolled in swimming lessons in the summer.

“Also, Mama says I’m super special and brave and that I always need to do the right thing always, even if it’s hard. With great responsibility comes great power, you know!”

“I think you’ve got that backwards, sweetheart.” Jennifer gives her a wink, takes a sip of wine.

“Nuh uh!” Elizabeth’s brows are furrowed, but the gears are turning. I can tell.

“Auntie Jennifer is right,” I explain. “With great power comes great responsibility. Do you know what that means?”

“Uh, yeah!” Elizabeth hauls herself up off of her bean bag chair and stands as though giving us a lecture. She has a single finger raised to her chin; a mini lightning-rod channeling our attention. “It means that if you are… if you are able to help someone you should. You have to be brave like Spiderman, right Mama?”

“That’s right, baby.” I smile. Pride swells in my heart. If I had but an ounce of her strength. “My brave little girl.”

“I’m not a baby!” She rolls her eyes, but I can see the grin. I can feel it, too. “I’m almost eight now, Mama. I’m practically a grown-up.”

“A grown-up! Well, maybe Elizabeth should be doing the dishes after dinner then, huh?” Jennifer suggests. She winks at me.

I nod. “That’s right, and then she can vacuum the stairs and give Mr. Snickers his tummy medicine and what else…” I scratch my chin, concocting my most devious plan. “I know! She can pay the bills!”

“No way!” She sticks her tongue out at me. “That’s your job! My job is to fight evil and put my toys away and not spill the juice. Mama says she’s the boss, so with her great power comes her great responsibility!”

She beams at us, proud of how deftly she’s outsmarted the bad guys once again.

I can’t help it; my composure cracks and I’m laughing so hard that tears sting the corners of my eyes. “You got me good, girl.”

Jennifer is fanning herself, as if her manicured little fingers could blow away the tears of laughter smudging her mascara. “I told you she was too smart for her own good, Maddy.”

“You did. I shoulda — ”

The coughing fit sneaks up on me, the way it always does. A tiny tickle in the back of the throat that soon explodes into a cacophonous uproar and has me doubled over in pain.

I set my glass of wine down on the coffee table before I spill it, but it catches the corner and topples over, dumping the last few sips onto polished wood. Alcohol abuse, Jennifer would say. Luckily, the glass doesn’t break. Jenny rushes over with a wad of tissues to sop it up, her words washed out by the terrible noise thundering out of my chest.

My eyes squeeze shut as the tremors course through my body. At last, the moment passes, or at least the worst of it. I breathe in shaky, shallow breaths, ignoring as best I can the itch in my throat that threatens to undo me once more. A coppery taste lingers beneath my tongue. I’m handed a tissue and I press it to my lips.

Jennifer’s gentle hands find my shoulders, moving in comforting circles. “You all right?”

I nod. I don’t want to open my eyes but I do, and the fear on my little girl’s face breaks my heart.

“Mama?”

“I’m fine, sweetie.” I smile as best I can, hoping my words won’t be lost to another fit. “Tell me another story, okay?”

Elizabeth sits atop a pile of her grandmother’s pillows on the floor, her teddy-bear subjects arranged in a neat line approaching her throne.

“Precocious little thing, ain’t she?” Mom shakes her head, her dazzling smile lighting up her face. Elizabeth inherited that smile, lucky girl.

I nod, enjoying the show. I imagine my little girl in high school, the boys lined up in a neat little queue in the same way she’s arranged ScareBears, HunnyBunny and HippoButt. She’s going to break some hearts, that girl.

“Lizard-breath, why don’t you go wash up and come help me set the table?” Jennifer calls from the kitchen. Elizabeth’s face scrunches up at the sound of her nickname.

“Oh, do you need a hand, Jenny?” I offer, rising from the over-stuffed leather chair. The damn thing is so low that it’s a bit of a struggle to pull myself free from its comfortable embrace.

“Don’t you dare!” Mom chastises me, shaking her finger. “You sit your butt back in that chair until it’s dinner time, do you hear me young lady?”

“Oooh, Mama’s in trouble with Nana Billie!” Elizabeth giggles from atop her pillow throne.

“And you will be, too, if you don’t get cleaned up right this second!” Mom tosses a pillow in her granddaughter’s direction as I collapse back into the chair.

I want to argue the point, tell Mom that I’m perfectly capable of being more than a throw cushion on this chair, but I know it would be futile to try. I know that she’s right, too. It kills me that my elderly mother and my nearly eight-year old daughter are forced to pick up my slack. It’s not fair.

“Request… denied!” Elizabeth hops from her throne, punts ScareBears square in the face, and cackles as he goes sailing over the couch. “You’re too fat, no more honey for you!”

Jennifer wanders into the living room just as Elizabeth streaks past her, racing for the bathroom and squealing. “Your little girl is body-shaming her teddies. What have you taught her?”

I know it’s a joke, I know it’s something said to lighten the mood, but a small piece of me can’t help but resent her for it. I have so much I want to teach Elizabeth, so much she needs to know. She needs her Mama. “Don’t worry, she’ll be changing her stance on that when it’s time for dessert, just you wait.”

Jennifer’s gaze lingers on me for an extra beat, penetrating the walls I’ve put up. She smiles. Everyone’s always smiling.

“You know, Beth is a smart girl…” my sister starts.

“Don’t call her that,” I say. “It’s Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth sounds so old.” My mother waves her hand in the air, wandering back to the kitchen, pleased she’s at least distracted me with conversation. “Why didn’t you give her a pretty princess name, like Tiana or Ariel or something?”

“Because I ain’t raising no princess.” I’ve had this same conversation with Elizabeth’s father years ago. My position hasn’t changed. “She’ll be a queen. Her own woman, master of her domain.”

“If she’s anything like her Mama, the world better watch out.” Jenny squeezes my hand and follows Mom to the kitchen. “Nothing will stop that brave little girl.”

It might have been the pride swelling in my chest once more, pressing against my weakened lungs, or maybe the universe had more nefarious reasons to undo that quiet moment. The dreaded tickle returns.

This time, it’s worse. I struggle to catch my breath through the wracking coughs, and the metallic taste is stronger, thicker. It chokes me and I don’t know if it’s my throat or my lungs or… I need to breathe. I collapse to the ground, hitting my arm hard off the coffee table. But I don’t feel the pain. I lay, clutching my throat, clutching my chest… clutching and clutching. I need air!

My mother and sister rush over, tea towels tossed aside as they reach for me.

“Call an ambulance!”

Far away, the pain is washed out by the gray; a flat sleepy feeling that folds over me like a heavy blanket. I feel my body shuddering violently, but the colours blur. Desperation begins to melt away. The pain softens to something numb, unmoving.

There’s no light around me, no darkness. Just nothing. Then the sound of sirens cuts through the miasmic fog, along with something small, but so much stronger.

Her voice. I can hear my baby girl calling for me…

The hospital is a dreary place.

I don’t know how people are supposed to get better here, with the harsh lights and not even a spot of colour. White everywhere, like a toothpaste commercial.

But I smile all the same, flash those pearly whites. If not for me, for them.

“Mama, are you gonna eat your pudding?” Elizabeth is perched on the chair next to my bed, leaning over the bed-rail and staring expectantly at the tiny cup of chocolate pudding.

“No, you go ahead, sweetie.” I push the container towards her, savouring the gorgeous smile that lights up her face as she peels it open and digs in. Sweeter than any over-processed dessert, that’s for sure.

Mom and Jenny aren’t offering much in the way of smiles today. Mom’s wringing her hands, knuckles white. Jenny’s been reading the same page of her book for the last half hour. They wait quietly in chairs on the other side of the bed. Waiting for what, I’m not sure. But they’re here for me, and I’m thankful.

I must have stared too long, because Elizabeth stops eating, spoon dangling precariously from her mouth. Her eyes are watering and her lip quivers.

Please don’t cry.

The spoon clatters to the floor, and her face twists up, an internal struggle to keep herself from falling apart. Even now, this little girl has more strength than I could imagine.

“Elizabeth, honey, I know you’re sad. And that’s okay.” I hold my palm up, and she places her impossibly small hand in mine. “And I really appreciate how brave you’re being for Mama. I’m so proud of you, do you understand me?”

She nods, biting her lip in furious determination.

The waves of guilt come crashing against me. There’s so much I want to tell her, so much I need to say. My walls begin to crumble against the constant erosive forces of remorse and shame. Tiny cracks appear. The siren’s call seeps through the fissures, ringing in my ears, “It’s not fair.”

It’s not.

But my girl is strong. I know that. I made her that way, and she’ll survive. No, she’ll thrive.

A queen, the world her domain.

“I don’t want you to go, Mama.” Her words almost break me.

“I won’t, honey.” I boop her on the forehead. “I’ll always be in here.”

“How?”

I smile, and it’s genuine and true. This is her gift. “Write me into your story.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can, Elizabeth. You are unstoppable. Don’t ever let anyone tell you any different, okay?” I pause, demanding the tickle subside for one fucking moment. “You can do anything.”

Elizabeth sniffles, wipes the tears away. Another nod. I squeeze her hand.

She takes a deep breath, her eyes glistening the way they do when she’s got a great story.

“Once upon a time there was a Mama… and she was very brave.”

Dedicated to Elizabeth Fitzgerald — an inspiring writer, an incomparable friend, and one of the bravest people I know.