Yellow Balloon

The string in Marley’s tiny hand felt alive, like a really skinny worm trying to get away. As she stood on the small plot of grass outside her apartment building in the sunny warmth, she only had eyes for the yellow balloon that hovered a few feet above her.

“Marley, come home, five minutes until lunch!”

Her mother’s voice floated out the third story window, but the balloon was her whole world, and she was completely adrift in it as only a five-year-old could be.

She liked the way it floated there against the pretty blue sky, like another sun. If she didn’t move, the balloon was as still as a picture, but it was hard for her to stay still for long. When she gave a quick tug, the balloon twitched and quickly returned to its place. When she looped her arm slowly to one side, the balloon did a ballerina dip before gracefully floating back.

“Mother, may I take three skipping steps?” Marley asked it, playing the game her Grandma had taught her.

“Yes, you may,” she answered in a squeaky voice, and the balloon skipped alongside.

She jumped up and down in place, and the balloon rose and fell, rose and fell in time with her. A pigeon flew by, swerving too close, and with a cry of outrage, she jerked the balloon string hard to save its life.

Unseen by the little girl, an old woman watched Marley from her window two floors up. She now spent most of her time here in her armchair observing the rest of life go by, and she was as absorbed in the little girl as the girl was in her balloon. It took her back back back in time to watch the small child move this way and that, like a little bird. Once upon a time she, too, had been a happy, carefree child.

She had grown up in Brooklyn at a time when mother’s apron strings were a literal part of her life instead of the figure of speech they were now. All her clothes were handmade by her mother, her grandmother, and her aunt May, which is why all her dresses matched her brother’s short pants. You could tell who was related to whom in those days, by the patterns on their bottoms and jumpers.

The fun was clean and innocent, she thought, play was just play and everyone helped out without wanting something in return. We were hardier than these kids today, she mused. A bloody knee was more likely to result in a spanking for the torn skirt than for a Minnie Mouse Band-Aid and a mother’s kiss to make it all better.

“That’s what you get for being careless, young lady! Now you can walk around in that ripped skirt and everyone will know how clumsy you are.” She could hear her mother’s scolding voice shaming her.

As the little girl moved her arms to and fro, the old woman’s arms moved in eerie imitation. Years fell away as she remembered the rare day her father took her to see the circus.

“Papa, can I have that yellow balloon?” she had asked as they passed the balloon man standing by the entrance. He held dozens of helium-filled orbs in a rainbow of colors, but the yellow one would match the daisies on her dress.

“I’m sorry, it was all I could afford to bring you to the circus. Let’s go look at the elephants before the show gets started!” and he pulled her away by the hand. She remembered looking back until they turned a corner.

A single tear slid down the wrinkled cheek as the memory played out, unnoticed by the elderly woman.

That solitary tear was noticed by the old woman’s daughter who was sitting in her car on the street in front of the apartment building, watching her mother watching the little girl.

She had come for her weekly visit to the apartment where she had grown up. It always made her feel like a girl again coming here, and not in a good way. She would walk up to the door a mature, self-assured professional, and take her set of keys out her bag. The jangling sound alone would take years off her and then the smell would hit her right in the teenage-hormone memory. It would begin with her first step inside the small Brooklyn apartment.

“Ma, open a window, it stinks in here.”

“What are you talking about, Susan, it smells the same as it always does. I made chicken soup.” Her mother’s voice would stab her in the brain, as the next painful hour loomed ahead of her.

“Are you hungry? There are bagels in the freezer from when you came last week, we could have those. Unless you brought something, did you bring something?”

“Not hungry and sorry, I didn’t have time to stop on my way here.” Guilt always fought with annoyance in this apartment, and always won.

“So busy, you are. Such a busy woman, my Susan, no time for her mother. You know when I was your age...”

And there it was. She would close her eyes and try to block out the rest until what she thought was an appropriate amount of time had passed.

Her mother’s old-fashioned ways had been a huge embarrassment to her. The fighting had really started when she went off to junior high school and refused to wear the calf-length skirts her mother continued to sew for her. It was bad enough that her little sister always had a matching one, but the worst part was that everyone else had brand new mini skirts and marshmallow shoes to match.

“Ma, I look like a freak, like one of those bible-thumper girls. Are you going to get me a horse and a black buggy to go to school in? Nobody wants to sit with me at lunch.”

“What do you girls know these days? You are lucky to have clothes to wear. In Africa, the kids have no clothes and no food. My mother’s sewing was good enough for me and mine is good enough for you.”

On another day: “Ma, could I please have a bigger allowance. I clean the bathroom and vacuum the rug and hang the wet clothes on the line. Fifty cents won’t even buy french fries and a soda at the new McDonald’s.”

“What do you need french fries for? You should watch your weight, you won’t get a husband if you’re chubby, men don’t like chubby. Have you seen that Twiggy on the television? And that Cher? Skinny as a rail and very popular.”

As Susan sat during her visits, these tapes would run through her head like reruns of a bad movie. Hopeful that one day things would change for the better between them, she sat half-listening and making noises that she hoped sounded like answers to her mother’s questions. When she could not take another minute, she would stand and grab her sweater.

“Okay, Ma, I have to go. I’ll see you next week.” She would bend over and give her mother a peck on the dry cheek and leave her mother still talking.

As she sat in her car dreading the next hour, Susan’s gloomy ruminations were broken by the second round of calling for the little girl, a shriller, more insistent tone that implied, “losing my patience, little miss. If you don’t get up here right now you might be sorry.”

The sharp note of warning pierced the little girl’s spell and brought the old woman out of her woolgathering all at the same time.

Susan got out of her car and locked the door behind her. As she walked into the apartment building, the little girl and her bumping yellow globe-friend were right behind her.

“Hey, Marley, is it? You know Mrs. Greenbaum on the second floor? That’s my mom, and when I was your age, she used to tell me a story about a yellow balloon. Do you think you could come by with yours and show it to her? I’ll bet she would like that.”

“I’ll ask my mom!” the little one said with a sunny smile.

With a new bounce in her step, Susan moved up the dingy white tiled staircase to her mother’s faded-green apartment door.