Lily above, lily below
Molly Montgomery
Lily floated through the day with her soul tethered to her body like a balloon on a string. She went through the motions, occasionally peeking down to see that everything was still going as she had commanded it. On the ground level her body paced around a bright classroom, adorned with primary colors and decorated with student art projects. Owls made of papier-mâché and scrawled messy lines of writing on oversized paper. The owls hooted up to her, but the sound of children chattering drowned out their soft calls. She could hear her voice reciting the day’s lesson. How to count by 5’s. 5, 10, 15, 20. Her soft hands held nickels in them that she rubbed together and then pulled apart like magnets. Maybe a quarter of the students were down below, chanting with vigor, eager to throw the nickels at one another. The rest bobbed up above with Lily, like a sea of jellyfish, drifting this way and that.
“Mrs. Camden,” Jordan asked, “What’s the agenda for up here today?”
She watched his spirit patter around like the air under a drumbeat. When she was down there, he was her least favorite student, always pulling at the girls’ ponytails and swearing with words that no five-year-old should know. But up here, how she loved him. She felt her love shimmer around the whole flock who turned all at once to her and sighed. “Up here,” she said. “We’re going to play a game.”
A chorus of tinkling laughs filled the air. She saw vaguely below that her body was about to grab Jordan’s wrist to keep him from flicking the nickels into the other children’s faces. But Lily below didn’t snap, she kept her composure. With a stern, practiced calm she pointed her dreaded sharp index finger with its one long red nail towards the door.
“To the principal’s office, Jordan!”
Lily above tsked with disapproval. She had seen this scene play out so many times before, but it never did any good. If only Lily below could get to know the sweet, but rambunctious child who now whizzed past to follow his lower body’s trajectory.
Jordan peered down at his flailing body. The boy below was throwing a tantrum, pounding his fists into the ground. Jordan above swooped down and patted his doppelganger’s head. The boy on the floor eased his flailing slightly. Lily above tugged the string connecting Jordan above to Jordan below, and the boy got to his feet, hiccupping slightly. It was easier to affect the young ones from up here, the connection to their lower selves was fresher, not like Lily’s. Her string was shriveled up, like an umbilical cord without enough oxygen. She couldn’t feed her body as well anymore; it was starving for her soul.
“I’m sorry I’m always such a mess down there,” Jordan above said, swimming back up to the level of the rest of the class above. “I wish I knew how to be a good boy.”
“You know how to be a good boy, Jordan,” Lily above said as she watched her counterpart below yell at Jordan. “It’s just hard to be one down there. I mean, look at me. I don’t know when I got like that.”
She almost didn’t recognize herself. Anger twisted her face below, marring it with contempt. The times when she could reach Lily below were growing less and less frequent. She was worried one day the tie between them would sever entirely, and Lily below would be all on her own, unable to handle the stresses of the world down there, the constant batteries of suffering which charged at her day after day, from her students, from her co-workers, from the news and the world. It was just a matter of time before she splintered.
Lily above didn’t know what would happen when the connection between her soul and her existence below broke. Probably she would just float away, go wherever the rest of souls went when they lost their body before it was time. She wasn’t afraid for her existence up here, she knew whatever the world held for her, she would face it. It was Lily below who concerned her. While Lily above still had time, she intended to use it as best as she could. Maybe she couldn’t save Lily below, but then there were still all the children, the class, the young souls that gathered up in the air with her like a floating birthday party. If she fed them with her love, if she strengthened them, then maybe some of that would reach their bodies below, keep them going, give them hope.
Lily below was marching Jordan out of the classroom. She slammed the door shut after him and locked it.
“I’ll see you later, Mrs. C,” Jordan above said, waving to them as he swam through the air, off and away, following Jordan below like a kite tugged along on its string.
“Don’t worry, you can still play a game from the principal’s office,” Lily called after him. She took a deep breath to calm herself down and tried to pass the tranquility down the line to Lily below, but the woman swatted the cord away, though invisible to her. She could sense her soul still then. That was a good sign. But it was clear she wanted nothing to do with it. Lily above turned her attention back to the floating children, who lolled around on their backs now, gazing up at the clouds in the sky. The ceiling was transparent for them, not the dull white panels their bodies below saw if they looked up.
“What game shall we play today, children?” she asked.
Down below they would argue bitterly whenever she gave them a choice or blame each other for misbehaving when that choice was taken away. They fought with safety scissors, pushed each other off the swings, chased after the weaker ones. But up here, everyone got along just fine.
“Tether tag!” the children cried.
“All righty,” Lily said. “Close your eyes and wait for the count of three.” Lily twirled in the air and the children swirled with her, like lottery numbers bouncing around. She grabbed their strings, twisting them in one hand like a bouquet of flowers. “One— two— three!”
She released the strings and the children tumbled giddily around the room, moving as fast they could to swoop down and land a light touch on the heads of those whose strings they were tangled with. If the children below felt anything, it was a light touch of energy, shivering like a jolt through them, imbuing them with kindness, with patience. Lily oversaw this sharing, counting how many students had touched how many heads, her heart overflowing with the beauty of it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Lily thought, if life below could be so easy? But lessons down there had to be earned, not just felt.
There was one girl who zipped around the room faster than any of the others. She quickly racked up the most points of anyone, and just when Lily above called “time’s up!” she lightly brushed Lily below on the head. Lily below, who was in the middle of stalking the room like a prison guard, not a teacher, suddenly broke out into a giggle.
She clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Very good, Matthew,” she said, looking down at his worksheet. She straightened her dress and regained her composure. Lily above gazed at the girl in wonder. Somehow Elvira had managed to reach the teacher, to infuse her with just a little bit of joy.
Elvira below was the calmest of the all the children; she was fast asleep, dozing in a corner. Though it was May, she wore a long shirt and pants to cover the bruises her mother had left on her after a night of drinking. Lily below had seen this happen many times before, to Elvira and other children. When Lily below had started her job, she had dutifully reported every out of place mark she saw on her students’ bodies. After seeing how the students suffered even more when they were brought in and interrogated by adults who were supposed to help them and then separated from the only family they knew, she started to turn a blind eye to such things. Elvira’s mother had come into parent teacher conferences, drunk, and berated Lily below for not being a proper teacher, for making her child stupid and insolent. Lily below had not snapped at her, had not smacked the woman, though she had been sorely tempted. Lily above had held her back, like an owner restraining her dog with a leash. She didn’t like to intervene that roughly but sometimes it was necessary. Now Lily below was pretending not to see that Elvira was sleeping. Perhaps the woman could be redeemed yet, Lily above thought.
Lily above saw the lesson was almost up. Next, she would have to take Lily below out for her break, which the woman clearly needed. Two factions of children were fighting with another, flicking nickels this way and that, and the poor woman had no idea how to stop them. Her arms trembled and she looked like she was about to burst into tears. Some of the children below had the same quivering; they cowered, anticipating Mrs. C’s angry outburst.
“Mrs. C,” said Elvira above, poking her gently like a fish brushing against kelp. “I think she needs you down there. They need you. We’re doing fine up here, thanks. We can play another round on our own.”
“If I must,” she groaned, taking one last deep breath of the summer breeze mixed with the ocean’s salty tang, the clear smell of a pine forest wafting in from the distance, and then she tumbled back inside Lily below just as the bell rang. Lily above resisted the intrusion, just for a moment. She let loose a coughing fit, but then they melded together once again, one Lily, one Mrs. Camden, corralling the children into a line. Lily below, if left to her own devices, would scream at the children just now, but Lily above wouldn’t let her.
“Who can make the quiet coyote?” she asked, pulling her fingers into the form of a snout. “Very good Elvira, very good Frances, very good Hannah.”
She smiled and winked at the children above, who she knew would be laughing, jostling another as they lined up to go back into their bodies, just in time for recess.
Molly Montgomery is a writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches high school English. She received an M.A. in Creative Writing from UC Davis. Her work has been featured in Entropy, X-R-A-Y, and Burning Jade Lit.