"Alright people! Gangway! LadyWithABabyCommingThrough!"
The OK from the Captain to freely move about the cabin had barely finished as the blonde and visibly pregnant woman waddled quickly through the aisle on her way to the bathroom. Unbeknownst to her, another passenger had sought to stretch her legs for a minute and had waited for her chance to rise up from her seat…only to come within inches of being slammed in the face with the door.
"Aaa!" Olga replied as she jumped back.
"Sorry!" She shouts as the door closes back and locks.
It felt like hours, but five minutes later, the pregnant blonde lady exhaustedly exits the plane's restroom. Looking back at the row closest to the water closet, she takes a seat next to Olga and catches her breath. While she felt rather miffed at the woman's brief disregard for others on the way to the WC, what stripped Olga of her speech was the uncanny resemblance this woman had to her younger sister; save for the fact that this girl wore her hair in a ponytail held by a scrunchie as well as longer, fuller bangs that concealed much of her unibrow. The woman's hair was even a lighter shade of blonde when contrasted to the other Pataki sibling. Yet what made the whole thing most unnerving to Olga was how well this woman's voice was a dead ringer for Helga's.
"I'm really sorry for not seeing you there ma'am. I'm ready to pop any minute and my kid is practically doing the Sabre Dance on my bladder." She scats a couple of bars to prove her point.
"I can only imagine." Olga replied with a chuckle. "My name is Olga."
"Hilda. Pleased to meet you."
"Oh…um, oh my. For a minute I thought you-"
"-were Helga G. Pataki. YA author extraordinaire from Hillwood, Washington behind such titles as Wheezin' Ed and Other Stories and The Second Orbit. Don't sweat it, if I had a dollar for everyone who made that mistake, I wouldn't be flying in coach."
"Right…" Olga began. "Funny you should mention, considering I was going to Hillwood."
"Really now." Hilda said.
"Yes, it was my childhood home. And I'm well aware of how she is quite the big deal there that you made her out to be."
"Cool to know." Hilda replied. "My husband and I are coming back from that bench-pressing competition which was happening in London last week. We were going to stay longer but…(she gestures to the baby bump)…grandma and grandpa want to be there for my little bundle of joy being unloaded into the world. And with my due date any week now here we are on our way to Spokane International to catch another plane home."
"And where is home?"
"Just this little town in Montana by name of Thicket Valley. You probably never heard of it."
"On the contrary. I have some relations there by marriage-"
"There you are sweetheart."
The two women looked up to see a comically muscular man whose frame almost touched the ceiling of the airplane. Around his neck was an impressive medal with a number 2. Yet despite being roughly the size of a barge, his voice was gentle and concern for his wife all too apparent.
"Brandon, hey." Hilda replied. "This is Olga. I almost knocked her over a couple of minutes ago."
"No harm no foul." Olga piped reassuringly.
"Just wanted to see if you were ok is all." He said helping Hilda back on her feet.
"Pleasure to make your acquaintance." Hilda called back as the two of them made their way back to their seats.
Olga waved back with a smile before turning her attention out the window and back to her thoughts.
(Olga POV/FLASHBACK)
I don't want to make it sound like Helga ruined our family. She didn't.
The Patakis were already the textbook definition of "dysfunctional' long before she was a twinkle in anyone's eye (and always going to be so regardless), A less charitable person might even use the term Dumpster Fire, and they'd hit the nail on the head. And to make Helga shoulder the blame for an already toxic dynamic she had no choice in being born into is all sorts of wrong.
Nonetheless, there is no possible way to deny that Helga's arrival was the final nail in the coffin regarding the Pataki family's collective attempts at forging some feeble veneer of being a well-adjusted family unit for public consumption…but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.
In the ensuing year and a half since Best Buy Baby's dissolution, Big Bob's Beepers practically stormed and roared onto Hillwood's local business scene as a force to be reckoned with. He had a product people wanted, was almost encyclopedically knowledgeable about his goods, and his 'go hard or go home' attitude when it came to seeing his desires come to fruition was something to be admired in this climate…and when all else failed, having a memorable ad also worked wonders.
If you need new beepers to do your thing!
Come to Big Bob's he's the Beeper King!
Widest selection this side of the metropolis!
Page ya-boyz from down the street or from the Acropolis
Reppin' only Hillwood in full effect.
When you buy from Big Bob it's money well spent!
Those bargain bin Beastie Boys clones were the final step in turning Big Bob's Beepers into a money printing machine. That final push into new money comfort the eponymous enterpriser had longed for in his heart of hearts. The way money flowed through the doors, life was our restaurant and all we had to do was find a page on the proverbial menu and point. And for a man like daddy, there was always something to point to.
"Three B's B+, two A minuses, B-…"
The contrast couldn't be any starker; dad reading my final report card for Second Grade like a judge issuing a death sentence, versus mom who stood a distance off screwing her face in a strained, empty smile in some hope of cutting through the tension.
"And we're so very proud of you…Any parent would be proud of their child coming back with such a good report card... Right B?"
"Sure Miriam. Any family would…" Daddy began before suddenly getting a dangerous gleam in his eye. "But why should we settle for being any family anymore? We are the Pataki's remember? Now as for this…"
The sound of my report card being ripped fills the otherwise silent apartment…for the moment. The feeling of joy I had at seeing my grades for the first time evaporates like dew in the desert as the scraps of card stock fall from his hands like snowflakes. But while I process this in silent sadness, Mommy takes a wildly different approach.
"NOW JUST A MINUTE! Let's not forget YOUR rather stellar academic track record Mr. Football King."
"Hey! HEYHEYHEYHEYHEYHEYHEY! Not in front of the girl!"
"Right, don't want her to think big, strong, smart, daddy once considered 'C's get degrees' his personal mantra once upon a not-too-distant past."
"Yeah, well here's my mantra now Miriam: 'C's for Complacency, and that ain't good enough for me.' Now as for you, you're a Pataki Olga. And never forget, Pataki's. Are. Winners."
"Pataki's. Are. Winners." I parrot back in hopes of appeasing him.
And so began my push to be the straight A student everyone knew and…loved? Our house became a revolving door for all manner of tutors that summer and so many summers thereafter. By the third grade, Bob's work had begun to pay off as my grades slowly but surely became all A's peppered with the occasional A-. Nonetheless, I continued to strive for my first A+, an accolade that came off the heels of Mommy's announcement that the Pataki family would be adding another member.
"Miss Pataki. Well done." Said the teacher with a smile as he handed my spelling test back to me.
Naturally, I bounded home as fast as my feet could carry me. But as I got to the steps, I decided instead to quietly surprise them with the news. Little did I figure that I'd be the one surprised…and not in a good way.
Standing in the doorway, my elation came to a grinding halt as the two of them having a rather ugly row over the chance that the child in her womb may possibly be another daughter…a row that I would later on learn was longstanding and often fought out during school hours. Bob had been hell-bent on having a boy more than anything. And no educated opinion would knock him out of the state of denial he currently occupied.
The two of them fighting was nothing new, but seeing Mommy wipe away tears was what shook me to the core.
Tears.
Once upon a time, she could dish back what Daddy tossed out, but as much as she was putting up a fight with him and his attempts to mold reality into his image, this time her actions seemed hollow. Like an actor phoning it in for a role they clearly have no desire to play.
"…Come off it B! The doctor said it looks like a girl because the ultrasound-"
"Blah, blah, blah. Doctors always think they know everything Miriam. Just last week one of them was on TV saying pork rinds may cause sleepwalking. It's. A. Boy. Miriam. and I don't wanna hear another word about-"
"O—Olga!" Mommy said with a quick wipe of her tears. "Oh H—hi honey, we…we didn't see you there."
With an annoyed 'What?', Daddy turns around and scratches behind his head sheepishly. "Oh, geez, um…hey, Olga."
Mommy walks up and asks what I have in my hand. I tell her we got our tests back.
"Ohhh, an A+…! Amaazing." She gasps.
"That's great, Olga!" Daddy booms triumphantly as he snatches the paper from Mommy. "Heh, barely out of diapers and already scoring the big one."
"A natural talent."
"Perrrfecto! She got it from *my* side of the family of course…(in response, she shoots back a look that can melt lead as Daddy laughs in victory)…Our bloodline goes back to a whole mess of great spellers!"
"Ah, well, you must be forgetting about *my* side of the bloodline B. Haha…" Mommy continues with a slight ripple of anger in her voice.
"Huh. They're easy to forget…" Daddy mutters.
"Ahem! I BEG YOUR PARDON B…?"
"Maybe I got it…" I begin with a slight shout. "…from both your families?"
Both paused, and turned to look at me. In hindsight, this wasn't the smartest decision I made to diffuse the situation, but my gambit worked. Daddy glances around sheepishly before relenting that perhaps, just perhaps, the Weeks end of the family tree may have been a branch the apple of their eye had fallen off of.
"Hmm, well, I guess so…..maybe."
"Of *course" she's right! After all, Olga is a *genius*" Mommy replied happily pulling me in for a hug.
"Hmph, yeah, I guess your right." He said smiling smugly with half-lidded eyes.
Upon Mommy's proposal to hang my assignment up on the wall with pride, Bob hustles off to find some tape. Later that evening, Mommy and Daddy beam with pride as we continue to gaze in the glow of my first A+ like the first cave people to discover fire. My assignment framed and mounted with all the pomp of a Rembrandt or Monet painting, adorned with stationaries and decorations proclaiming sentiments like 'Our Perfect Daughter.'
'Our. Perfect. Daughter.
'Our.'
'Perfect.'
'Daughter.
'Perfect.'
'Perfect.'
"Perfect." I lip to myself as my face curls into a determined and solemn expression and my small, cherub-like hands unconsciously tighten.
A successful small business, a decent home, a loving wife and a well-rounded, academically gifted daughter. A sensible man would find himself believing Daddy hit life's jackpot. But like every father in history, there rested a latent longing for a son to carry the Pataki name and lineage. And the faint hope of hopes that a boy would come out of this was all that carried him as he watched as Mommy's pregnancy with Helga increasingly became a deep contrast to her first in every possible way: instead of glowing vibrantly, she appeared sickly, large, and ungraceful—suffering from high blood pressure and gestational diabetes which left her bedridden by the third trimester. She begged Bob to look into terminating the pregnancy, but he'd hear no such thing about it.
"What does that egghead know about anything." He'd mutter as sweat profusely poured down his face. "That's my boy in there…my son…"
I never knew Daddy to beg or bargain. That was not the Pataki way. Patakis didn't supplicate, nor did they accept the world as is; they broke it and shaped it into one they wanted. But from the shadows, I'd see him hold Mommy's hand every night, bowing before her belly like a shrine as he choked back the urge to weep.
"I know you're in there little guy… warming up for when you take the world by storm."
The waning day's before March 26th, 1985 proved to be a chaotic post-script in a pregnancy which already served as stark study in contrasts. Two due dates came and went before Mommy finally went into labor, and the delivery itself lasted a grueling 36 hours before those six fateful words exited the doctor's mouth.
"Congratulations Mrs. Pataki. It's a girl."
I later had the chance to talk to one of the midwives assisting the doctor that delivered Helga. By her account, 'numb' didn't even scratch the surface. She wasn't elated at a second prospect of motherhood, or even relieved that the labor had ended. Even disappointment over knowing that the baby was a girl would have been something. But no. Instead, Mommy had all the emotional range of granite before she went limp and fell backwards out of post-labor fatigue.
"Mrs. Pataki."
"Tiemyfickingtinbesimmesiatelydoc."
The unfortunate (and male) doctor leaned in an attempt to get his patient to articulate her request. Instead, with what little strength remained, Mommy yanked the doctor as close to her mouth as possible and repeated her request n a hoarse but adamant whisper.
"Tie. My. Fucking. Tubes. Immediately. Doc."
In time, this decision was the last natural act of self-confidence Mommy showed anyone. Little by little, the roaring flame of assertiveness became a lantern, then a candle, then a smoldering wick.
Upon coming home, Helga Geraldine Pataki quickly proved to be a sickly child for the first half a year; prone to colic and ear infections as well as colds and fevers. Though nothing compared to what we've come to call 'the strawberry incident' which landed her in the ER for three weeks. Financially speaking we weathered the storm courtesy of Daddy's business…but money only pays for so much in life. With all chances of a third shot at a son voided, Bob threw himself into his business while Miriam silenced the voices of self-loathing with homemade daquiris and little by little lost the will to fight.
If you need new beepers to do your thing!
Come to Big Bob's he's the Beeper King!
Widest selection this side of the metropolis!
Page ya-boyz from down the street or from the Acro-
As quickly as it had appeared, the ad vanished as the screen iris-ed out before going black. With a frustrated groan, he looked up from the pile of bills on the dinner table to see Mommy standing in the threshold behind him remorselessly holding the TV remote.
"Not. A. Peep. Robert." She whispers venomously. "Helga has finally nodded off for the night. And I'll be damned if that moronic advert of yours-."
"Hey! Heyheyheyheyhey!" He retorted while wagging his beefy finger within inches of her face. "The way my beepers have been flying off the shelves, that 'moronic advert' is practically a mint unto itself. And at the rate I'm paying these hospital bills, we'd be living in the damn store were it not for all the money coming in. Imagine that, us squatting in the emporium like a couple of failures!"
To prove his point, he snatches some of the papers one by one and waves them at his wife's general direction even as her face further curls into an agitated sneer.
"Her ear infection, her fever, your high blood pressure, another fever, her colic drops, your gestational diabetes, her constipation, that one visit after we learned she was allergic to strawberries. Not to mention that nice house you liked on 36th Street … So, if I were you, I'd choose my words carefully next time, ok Miriam?"
"Mhm." Mommy said dryly. "And I'm sure we'd suddenly have money to burn if Helga was that son you always wanted. Or does her health take a back seat to more pressing matters like, I don't know…(Miriam snatches two bills of her own at random off the table)…Olga's piano tutor or whatever spelling coach you dig up this week?"
"At least with Olga I know my money is well spent!" Daddy said a little loudly as he gestured to a small pile of awards accumulating the corner. "Or are they starting to give out prizes for 'most likely to replace an air raid siren' or 'world's record for infant ear-infections' these days?"
"Dammit B." She shot back suddenly matching his volume. "She's your daughter not a prize horse! And Olga too. I know we didn't plan for Helga in the slightest but we as parents still have a duty to-"
"Oh! Oh, that's rich!" Bob suddenly bellowed. "Little Miss 'Tie My Tubes Doctor' is going to give ME a sermon on how to be a loving parent!"
By now, I am standing in the threshold of my room, a stone's throw from the space that passes for our apartment's den. I couldn't sleep, and hoped that me showing up would quell their latest row (as it often has in the past). Mommy opens her mouth but from the deafening silence that chokes the atmosphere she knows he was right. With a nasty look at her husband she slunk out of the room just in time for Helga to start crying again. I bolt back inside so as to relieve mom from baby duty. From the corner of my ear, I hear daddy mumble: "That's right, go grab a smoothie."
Most nights I hated when she cried, but compared to mommy and daddy fighting like that I'd take Helga's wailing any day. Since we shared a room, I could determine by now which cry meant what issue. But even without my newfound gift, I could smell the problem the instant I turned back into the bedroom.
I have watched mommy change Helga so many times, I could do the job blindfolded if the occasion ever arose. Once she is out of her foul fabric, washed and talcumed, it occurs to me that she had soiled the last diaper from the pile mommy had stashed in our room. Furthermore, even though the crying has stopped, she is still so fussy. I set her down on my bed knowing we had just bought a new box but neglected to take it in from the den.
I come back, open the door, and there's Helga scooting towards my nightstand where a little pink hair bow sits next to my lamp and hairbrush.
"Here, let me…" I say as her little fingers swipe at the accoutrement.
As I clip the bow to the wispy little strands that pass for Helga's hair, she is truly at peace for the first time since we bought her back from the hospital. No squirming, or crying, not even a babble. Just silence. She lays on her stomach and her face breaks into this pitiable and supplicating smile. A wordless plea to be unconditionally loved by the three of us, as opposed to the foundation of mommy and daddy's neglect and scorn. There is even a single tooth starting to protrude at the upper right corner of her mouth.*
"Aww. Baby Sister's first smile."
By the time I aim my camera at Helga, the smile has been replaced with her default look: unfathomable fury. Nonetheless, it's the only picture anyone seems to have wanted to take of her since leaving the hospital and so it went into the heart shaped frame bearing the words 'My Widdle Sister' that a friend of mine gave me when I learned mommy was expecting a girl.
As she continued to grow, that scowl by and large became Helga's default emotion…that is except for the moments I would stumble into her soliloquys over a neighborhood boy who would go on to be her husband. Over the years, I learned the origins of these feelings and with each piece of information, my heart would sink; on her first day of preschool, the very first brick in her academic foundation, Mommy and Daddy were too busy with my piano to attend to taking her; an act which inspired her to make that short but perilous trip into the rainy streets. But in her lowest moment, a boy with an umbrella and a blue hat offered her the first unconditional shred of love and compassion she had ever known…a sharp contrast and letdown when compared to what she endured under our roof.
As much as I'd like to wag my finger in judgement at Mommy and Daddy, I can't. To keep the peace, I continued to drive my head deeper and deeper into the sand until before long I felt myself living the old adage about wearing the mask at first, only to have the mask wear you before you know it. I tried to reach out and relate to her, but the damage had been done. We gave her no reason to play along with the façade we erected of a functional family and in turn she shattered any idea among PS 118's administrative staff in regards to following in my footsteps: qualmlessly sinking her shot at spelling bee glory, having a reserved seat in detention, the meetings with Dr. Bliss, and so on.
Though wounded, the image of the Patakis as a functional family unit hobbled along tenaciously thanks primarily to one simple maxim: money talks. Big Bob's Beepers may have never become that international super conglomerate, but its place as a heavy hitter within Hillwood's tapestry of municipal commerce was unquestionable; and Daddy regarded the money as enough of a cushion/shield from the opinions of the great unwashed…then came his cravenly deal with Future Tech Industries to build a super beeper emporium on the ashes of everyone's old lives once the bulldozers wiped Hillwood off the face of the earth. Fortunately, that business venture ended with FTi's CEO in shackles thanks to Helga and her friends Arnold and Gerald, but at a steep (and well deserved) personal cost for Big Bob's Beepers.
Daddy's misfortunes may have started with the FTi fallout, but the pinch wasn't fully felt until my junior year of college. I was begged not to come home, under the pretense of the home being renovated, but the full scope of our family problems was information I found out on my own. Me having a beeper was the butt of many a joke on campus. Whenever I was introduced as Bob Pataki's daughter while performing concertos at the orphanage, there was always an awkward hem and haw from the host upon mentioning Daddy's company. The bandage didn't officially get ripped off until my tuition check bounced.
Despite it all, I managed to finish college in a reasonable time-frame; Work Study programs went a long way in helping me with tuition costs, I had good standing with almost all of my professors which went a long way when it came to getting extended deadlines on classwork (as needed of course), and for room and board I couch surfed; calling home a revolving door of off campus apartments rented out by friends, friends of friends, co-workers of friends of friends, etc. But it was all worth it that winter when I finally graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bennington College with a double major in Elementary Education and Musical Arts. I knew Daddy's business was struggling, but the full extent of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks when we drove past the house we once called home and instead to the floundering beeper store. Though I was now expected to pull and suffer along with mom and my sister, I tried to keep myself from letting the negativity I'd see day in and day out shatter my optimism and drive: after all, I was twenty-two, fresh out of college and already possessed an accomplished resume and with it some connections.
After an additional three months of submitting countless applications and letters of intercession to former professors, a note came from the Dean of Students of Wellington College in England all but snatching me up as his secretary. But since it was Daddy who got the mail, he intercepted my letter. From what Helga told me years later, his face contorted in pure rage; twitching eye, steam-out-the-ears, the whole nine yards. I think the words she used were "you could cook an egg on him, he was so steamed". Then his face turned into this steely grin as he decided to himself that it would be burnt for fuel later that night. Had it not been for her…well, I don't want to think about it. What really got me was his remorselessness over the whole thing when confronted. No sheepish attempt to apologize, he just started in on Helga, then me. I knew what had to be done.
"No daddy; if my mind wasn't made up before, it most certainly is now! I'm going to England and you're not going to stop me!"
"SO NOW YOU'RE TOO GOOD TO WORK IN A BEEPER EMPORIUM, IS THAT IT?! I PAID YOUR TUITION, SCRIMPED AND SAVED, EVEN HAD THE GIRL SELL MIRIAM'S BELNDER. ALL FOR THIS?!"
"Yeah well maybe if you put as much effort into researching tech trends as you did treating me like some prized piece of livestock-"
"DAMMIT LITTLE LADY YOU'RE A PATAKI. AND-"
"And what Bob?" Olga responds coldly. "'And Pataki's are winners?' Does this look like winning to you? If it does, please enlighten me…"
I stomp over to a small gathering of boxes over by a supply closet serving as the kitchen and starts pulling out assorted commendations of yore.
"…because this trophy can't change the fact we're homeless and in debt! This plaque can't help Mommy with the drinking problem ANYONE WITH THE BRAINS OF AN ICE CUBE can CLEARLY see she has! These medals can't replace all the friends I could have had if I wasn't glued to that piano, or shoved through every municipal spelling bee! And then there's Helga. No record amount of time of playing Chopin can restore the years of neglect and hell all three of us put her through. I failed her as a sister while the two of you failed her as parents."
I made my way to the door. The motion sensor beeps as I stand looking out in the tranquil city evening. Mommy finally stumbles in from the stockroom covered in a vomit-stained dress and carrying a half empty bottle of cheap whiskey. Her mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water before expelling a fresh round of puke and falling over headfirst into a display case.
"MOTHER HUBBARD YOU USELESS…HEY! HEY! YOU CROSS THAT THRESHOLD AND YOU'RE DEAD TO ME"
"Were any of us alive to you in the first place?"
Within 72 hours, I was airborne heading to England. To calm myself as the plane sped upward and onward across the pond, I flipped though the channels on the little TV embedded in the back of the seat in front of me. I stop as a breaking news bulletin catches my attention.
"…new developments in a Hillwood Washington car crash that killed a family of three. Local business man Robert Pataki was arrested for second degree murder last night after traffic cam footage showed him throwing trophies off the overpass. The award in question was a trophy from a local orphanage given to his daughter in gratitude for performing a Brandenburg Concerto…"
A sudden ding from the intercom bought Olga back to earth.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We will be making a brief stop in New York to refuel and ask that everyone return to their seats as the landing process will begin shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for flying with us today."
Despite a brief wave of grumbling, everyone did what was asked of them. After all, such a process was not an uncommon one…
*THUMP*
…but getting a goose sucked into a turbine at 13,000 feet was!
The passengers bounce in their seat, startled by not only the sickening crunch of bird on blade, but now the faint odor of jet fuel filling the cabin coupled with the small but nonetheless ominous cloud of smoke and occasional spark.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking." Came a voice over the PA. "We have just hit a goose and lost thrust in one engine…"
AN: Ideas for this scene came from Genaminna's "But I got an A+" drawing on DeviantArt, as well as the fic "I have a Heart but it's Buried" by Starry Nights.