Chasing the Milky Way Read Free Page B

tried to keep my crying small so it wouldn’t wake anyone up, but Gram sure had good ears for an old lady. She came into my room and sat down on the side of the bed.
    â€œYou have nothing to do with why your mama left,” she said. Then she leaned up against the wall. “Lucy, you’re old enough to know this now, so I’m going to tell you. I won’t be around forever. I want you to be prepared for what’s to come.”
    I sat up on my pillow and peered over to make sure that Izzy was genuine sleeping, not just faking it. Her thumb was hanging half out of her mouth and her breathing was long, so I nodded at Gram.
    â€œYour mother has manic-depressive disorder.”
    â€œManic what?” I said. Wondering if manic was the same as maniac. There was a kid in my class at Poughkeepsie that Mrs. Sophia called a maniac. He mostly jumped around a lot. It didn’t seem the same as what Mama was doing.
    Gram adjusted my blanket around my belly. “It’s when—” She stopped and smoothed the corner of the sheet that was sticking out. “It’s when you go three steps past imagination.” I looked at her, wondering what the heck that was supposed to mean.
    She leaned toward the window a little and looked up at the sky. One thing about the Peevey family is that everyone likes the look of the stars. She got a little glint in her eye. “It’s like when one second you’re so high you can taste the sweetness of the Milky Way.”
    I looked out the window, too, and pictured my head way up, blasting off past the clouds into deep space. Clear as crystal. Sweet as candy.
    â€œThat’s good then,” I said, thinking how happy you would be like that.
    â€œIt’s better than good. It’s sharp, it’s quick. It’s filled with purpose. But only for the moment. When you have manic-depressive disorder, the next second it’s like you have your head in the sand, and any sort of critter can go wandering in one ear and out the other.”
    I slammed my mouth shut, thinking about plummeting in my spacecraft, crash-landing, and the suffocation of sand all around my head.
    â€œWhen you’re that far down, everything in your head gets all muddled up and confused. And sad.”
    I just looked at her, thinking of what that would be like. To have any manner of stuff running around inside your head, making you fuzzy and sad.
    â€œYour mother has a mental illness,” she said.
    And just like that all of the sand and insects that I imagined running around in my head thundered down into my stomach and started churning. She kept talking about it, but it seemed like she switched into a different language all of a sudden. She said schizoaffectivesomething psychoticsomething episodes. Bipolar type. Mixed diagnoses. She must have seen the look on my face as I tried to understand what the heck she was talking about, because she took a deep breath and put her hands on either side of my head.
    â€œI have a mental illness, too,” she said. “It runs in the fam
ily. It takes a long time to understand.”
    Gram’s eyes were filling up with tears. I put my hands on either side of her gray head, just like she was putting her hands on mine, and looked at her close. Her brain didn’t seem very sick to me. Not as far as I could tell. Gram was the best and I started wondering if maybe mental illness was a good thing? I wondered other things, too. Could I catch it? Like a cold?
    â€œDo I have a mental illness?” I whispered, wondering what an ill brain would feel like, wondering if I’d be able to detect mine coming down with something.
    She pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket and wiped her nose. “You’re not showing a predisposition to bipolarity, Lucy, not yet. And anyway, doctors, scientists, they’re all on the case. They have medication that helps.” Her teeth hit together as she said medication. I pictured little pills