"Flight"

By Judy Budnitz

There was a time when the women jumped off buildings regularly. They wore hoopskirts then and carried parasols. They fell gently, their skirts filling with air, their legs dangling in long lace knickers. Men were gentlemen then; they did not look up and snigger when a lady fell.

Now the women wear blue jeans and spandex. They have sleek haircuts. They slip too fast through the air; you can't get a grip on them. No place to fall to -- there are too many busy streets, too many antennas and telephone wires read to slice off a finer or snag on an earring. Now when a woman jumps, everybody looks. THey have no manners.
It makes Kanisa sad sometimes.

Kanisa took the leap the first time when she was five. SHe jumped from the front step. Her sandals made a wop sound when they landed, and she rocked forward on her hands. That was all.

Now she is so much older and so much heavier, she nees to jump off higher things. Thirty stories at least, she thinks, to get any feeling of flight.

She thinks about it often.

In the time before, women had reason to jump. An incriminating letter, a misplaced glove and your life could change forever. They jumped with necks outstretched, swanlike, tears in their eyes and the sun sliding a burning path down the sky. Gauzy scarves trailed after them, and impassioned speeches, and perhaps a lazy handkerchief fluttering down late, like the last leaf off the tree in autumn.

Now women like to get where they are going as fast as they can. No time for a journey. It must be done as soon as they think of it. That's the way Kanisa's mother did it. SHe took the leap headfirst on a cloudy day in the middle of rush hour, didn't bother to wait for the dramatic sunset. Her mother splattered neatly next to the curb. It was street cleaning day: lucky coincidence.

And then her aunt, who was in such a hurry that she leapt before even she was ready, and had to finish her coffee and pull up her panty hose midflight. Not that it mattered; no one had time to look up.

Back then the woman leapt off cliffs. It was a beautiful thing. Songs and poems were written about them. People wept for them. Lovers leapt after them. They fell neatly into rivers that carried them along and away to the sea, to the dark, dark deep, where the permaids braided their hair and sung them to sleep.

Now it is the police report, the juicy mess, the spot on the evening news. The bums check the street for loose change and the landlord looks for another tenant.

Kanisa stands at the window in their apartment on the seventeenth floor. Not high enough. It must be the thirtieth floor at least. There is a gull from off the bay perching on the building opposite. He shrieks for company. Behind her the baby screams for a fallen toy.

What if someone tipped the high chair, she thinks, and the baby spills out and thunks his tender head on the floor and doesn't move? What then? Why, then she will burst through the window, like a tropical fish bursting through the glass of the aquarium with a crash and splash, gasping and flapping its fins like it might fly.

But the baby's still in the chair, sucking his finfers. The gull flies away. A tropical fish, if it's lucky will be scooped into a saucepan of tap water while someone sweeps up the peices of broken glass and sops up the mess.

Kanisa trips over the baby's fallen toy. It's a woman, hard and smooth and egg-shaped, and wieghed on the bottom so she always rolls upright. Her body clings to earth like a magnet.

Dennis said once that most people who jump have heart attakcs and die before they even reach the ground. "it's not fear of falling." he said; "it's landing they're afraid of." He said that and laughed, his teeth caulked with mashed potatoes. Soon after, he left for good.

What did he know about it anyway? He was a trucker, accustomed to moving in horizontals, not verticals, she thinks as she takes the elevator.

Now Kanisa stands on the roof of her building. The iron railing comes only to her waist. She leans way out. SOmeone could tip her over. SHe looks out across the stunted forest of chinmeny and TV antennas. She looks down into the hot wind barreling up from the street. The wind carries with it the smells of subway and pretzel stands and a small, thin wailing -- her baby wants his toy. The yellow cabs slide past one another on the street like peices on a fame board.

Long ago, Kanisa thinks, the villians were easy to pick out. They wore black clothes, cape, and gloves, and had pencil thinn mustaches. They carried swords and made women swoon. These days they are much harder to spot.

She thinks, The terror of falling is not the eath rushing up, smiling and effusive, to embrace you like an old friend you had hoped never to see again. Nor is it the fear of impact, the teeth-rattling jolt, like the violent thrust you close your eyes and brace yourself for in the night.

It is the sense of betrayal, as you arch earthward like a shooting star and look down to see no one there waiting to catch you.