Susan Wolfenbarger’s hand had recently begun behaving badly. Of its own volition, it jumped and danced, especially at critical moments—while making decisions, making soup, and making love.
Her husband Scott pushed her hand away one evening after it squeezed too harshly and wrapped it in his.
“Let’s get this looked at,” he said.
The doctors couldn’t explain it. It was like nothing they’d seen before. They determined a hundred things it was not—not neurodegenerative, not muscular, not psychosomatic—but no one had any ideas about what it was.
“It’ll probably go away on its own,” the primary physician announced after three days of tests and observation. “Don’t worry too much about it. Call if anything changes.” She wrote three prescriptions Susan could try, and sent her on her way.
As Susan left the office, her hand jerked out of her pocket and flapped into the air.
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Over the next few weeks, Susan’s condition worsened. It spread up her arm, across her shoulder, and down her back. The doctors hummed and shrugged and continued ruling out causes while offering no meaningful solutions. She was let go from work. Scott did most of the housework and most of the cooking and grumbled about every bit of it. She loafed about their apartment all day, too embarrassed by her body to even go outside.
She watched, though. She envied the birds that dodged and darted over the small yard of green, dancing together through the air. One afternoon, she tossed stale breadcrumbs out of the window, trying to feed the brown speckled things. Each spasm shot her off the carpet and sent the breadcrumbs across the floor. Scott would throw a fit when he got home from work. Three stories below, a bird twisted its head from the breadcrumbed grass and focused its beady eyes on Susan’s. In two, three wingbeats, it perched on the sill beside her. A spasm contorted her spine.
“Well?” The bird chirped. “Get moving!”
The bird ruffled its wings and gave an experimental hop across the sill, then turned to stare at her. It blinked, twisted its head, then hopped again. When a spasm sent Susan’s arms akimbo, the bird grew more excited. It squawked, fluttered, and jumped on the sill. It tilted its head and chirped inquiringly, but Susan made no response. A moment later, the bird flew off, calling to its flock. The birds whirled into the air in a choreographed dance, wheeling over the apartments and toward the horizon.
“Wait!” Susan shouted out the window as her arms jerked again. She pulled herself onto the narrow sill and sat, her legs hanging into the air. The birds whirled, circling back, racing toward her. She wasn’t sure what Scott would think. She wasn’t sure she cared. She pushed herself off the ledge to join the birds.
Her back spasmed, her arms flailed. And she flew.
On the sidewalk below, a girl jumped and pointed. “Mommy, Mommy! It’s superman!”
“Nonsense,” her mother replied. “Come along.”
Miranda Forman teaches and writes in North Carolina. When she isn’t working with students or figuring out a story, she enjoys eating and exercising.
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