by Annie Johnson

I saw a man jump off a bridge today. I was just walking home from the office, and there he was, arms spread wide as if he would sprout wings. And when he fell, for a moment, I really thought he would. Holding my breath, I waited for his body to stop its rapid descent and propel up, far, far away.

But he didn’t, and soon enough, I could hear the splash, a boulder in a lake. I waited until the sirens came to leave. I didn’t want to see his bloated, purple body when they pulled him out of the water.

I’ve seen dead bodies before. They made us cut open fetuses in Anatomy lab once, taking out the tiny pink heart with our tweezers. There was a pregnant girl in the class who cried the whole time as her little scalpel broke through the wrinkled skin, clutching her own belly with her other hand.

But this was different. I never saw the fetuses die, never saw their little hearts slow down or lungs freeze mid-pump. I didn’t watch them plummet off a granite bridge.

My husband, Nick, and I eat microwave burritos for dinner. We make small talk about the consistency of the beef and our downstairs neighbors who won’t stop fighting and definitely not about the man I watched die today.

I’ll save that conversation for the bedroom when he lies panting and blissed out next to me, or for never.

Maybe I’ll tell my sister when I see her over Thanksgiving. We’ll stand in the kitchen, washing dishes while our husbands watch football, and I’ll say, “I saw a man kill himself.” She’ll want details. It’s the true crime fanatic in her, the part that craves other people’s tragedies to make her feel better about her own.

“I thought he was going to fly, Lisa. I really did,” is what I say in my imagination, and she stares at me with wide eyes and a kind of sadistic enjoyment.

Later that night, I scour the local news for headlines. Man Jumps from Bridge. Tragic Suicide of Community College Professor. There’s nothing of the sort. Instead, I spend the next hour reading about the elementary school having a gas leak and a gang leader dying of cancer. It’s riveting and momentarily makes me forget about the man who never sprouted wings.

Nick comes up behind me and kisses my neck.

“Come to bed, Joanna,” he says. “You’re tired.”

But when he’s on top of me, his face flushed, I can’t stop seeing the man. I bury my fingernails into Nick’s back, the place where his wings should be, and I tell him to stop.

“I have a headache.”

I watched a man die today.

“Oh, okay.”

His rhythmic snoring keeps me awake. I breathe in time with it, like it’s a metronome because I fear that if I don’t, my heart will stop.

Just like his.

The next day, I end up on the bridge. I don’t know why or even how I get there. But suddenly, there I am, looking down at the water. It’s more green than blue, polluted with smoke from the General Motors down the street. It makes me wonder if it stung his eyes when he fell. What it tasted like.

I wonder if it tasted like regret, a mistake. Maybe it tasted like freedom.

My feet dangle off the edge. It really is so easy to fall, I realize. It could happen in an instant, in the blink of an eye.

“Miss?”

I whirl so quickly that I nearly lose my balance, my fingernails scrambling for purchase in the granite. A girl, her hair in two blonde braids, stares at me, wide-eyed.

“Are you okay?”

She’s little. Too young to watch someone jump.

I slide off the bridge.

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

She doesn’t need to learn that people can’t fly today.

That’s a lesson for another life.

by Annie Johnson

My father has always resented me. Just a little bit. Not the kind of resentment that sets a fire in your stomach, just the kind of casual disdain fathers have for their daughters.

I remember asking my mother, back when I was very young, why my father hated me.

“Oh baby,” she said, kissing my head. “Daddy doesn’t hate you. He just likes football.” Then she went back to the kitchen and left me to play with my dolls alone.

I tried to like football; I really did. I checked out books from the public library all about Walter Payton and the ‘34 Bears and read them in bed late at night with a flashlight. But I could never get more than halfway through. Flags and sacks and touchdowns were white noise to me—I wanted stories about princesses, where no one ever got tackled.

So, my father took my brother, Jack, to football games. He bought him a baseball glove and drove him to all his soccer tournaments. He gave me fake pleasantries at the breakfast table and forgot if I was turning eight or nine.

Once, when I was ten, we went on a family road trip. I sat next to Jack in the backseat of the minivan as we sped down the highway. He wouldn’t stop blowing in my ear. When I yelled at him to stop, my father whirled around, red-faced.

“Be quiet, Sarah!” he snapped. “Do you want me to crash the car?”

I could feel my face flush. “No,” I said in a very small voice. Jack wore a self-satisfied grin. I kicked him.

“Sarah kicked me!” Jack tattled, pretending to be hurt.

“He won’t stop blowing in my ear!”

“Jesus Christ,” my father groaned. Swerving sharply, he pulled off on the closest exit and into a gas station parking lot.

“You deal with this,” he told my mother, before stalking inside.

I started to cry, shame bubbling in my stomach.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I whimpered.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. And then she followed my father into the gas station. She came back ten minutes with my slightly mollified father and a bag of Jolly Ranchers.

“For you.” She handed the bag to me and wiped away tears.

I rustled through the bag very quietly. “Does anyone want one,” I asked.

“I’ll have one,” my father said, reaching a cupped hand behind his seat. “Do you have any grape?”

“Grape is my favorite,” I told him, and he gave a noncommittal grunt of thanks when I pressed it into his hand.

When I was eleven, I asked my father if he could come to my dance recital. He said that he would try to make it. When I stepped on stage in my leotard, I scoured the crowd for his face. I found my mother, smiling widely, next to my brother, who’d fallen asleep.

“Daddy had a meeting, honey,” she told me afterward, rubbing my back as tear tracks streaked through my blush.

I never told him about another recital. I quit ballet the next year.

I’m thirteen now. It’s Christmas morning. I’m sitting, cross-legged, on the ground next to Jack. Shreds of wrapping paper are scattered around the room. But there’s still one more present under the tree. Jack buzzes with barely suppressed exhilaration. We both think it’s his—probably a new baseball glove from our father. When my father picks it up, I see Jack’s eyes light up. He’s sizing it up, trying to rule out what could be inside.

“This is for you, Sarah.” He doesn’t really meet my eyes, just kind of tosses the package in my direction from a few inches away.

I gape at him. He’s never gotten me a present before, not for real. My mother writes “from mom and dad” on all our gifts but I know that he’s just as surprised as I am when I open them up.

Jack watches me with poorly concealed jealousy as I tear the paper.

It’s a large plastic bag, and for a moment, I think it’s a bad joke. But then I look inside.

It’s full of Jolly Ranchers, only the grape flavor.

I stare at my father. “Grape is my favorite,” I tell him.

“I know,” he says.