By Dipti Ranganathan
Marisol twirled around the coffee table in her red, frilled dress, skimming the glass with her bandaged knees, clapping overhead in time to the Bee Gees’ greatest hits. She reached her crescendo with a classic Travolta move and bowed. We jumped to our feet and clapped. She looked around the room, as if it were filled with adoring fans, tears in her eyes, and sighed.
“And now I die happy,” she said, bowing deeply as her chest rose and fell. I rolled my eyes and Oliver slapped my knee.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, as Marisol skipped off to pick a new song.
“Jesus, she’s only six. Leave her alone.”
“Exactly! All this death talk from a six-year-old? Where does that even come from?”
“Maybe she senses your worry?”
I rubbed my eight-month belly. “She has no reason to think that I’m worrying.”
“Maybe she does,” Oliver said, but hesitated as Marisol bounced back into the room, her fingers wrapped around Lambeth, the Jelly Cat lemming. A strange choice of stuffed animal for a child, but that was Marisol. She shoved her way between us and rested Lambeth on her lap.
“When I am dying,” she said, “I’d like Lambeth to sit next to me. She’ll be in a fancy chair, all day and all night. We’ll listen to Bruce Springsteen, and I’ll dance like this.” Marisol swung her arms in unison from side to side in a fluid arc, snapping her fingers at each apex.
Where did this morbid obsession come from? It was not good for her, or for us. “Enough of this talk,” I said, and grabbed Lambeth, marching Marisol into her room as she tugged on my hand, crying and screaming. She sat on her bed, arms folded, staring at me, until she wiped her nose with her sleeve and slowly exhaled. Softened by her emotional control, I kissed the top of her head.
“I am calm now, Mommy. May I have Lambeth back? Please?”
I pulled her close and handed her the lemming. “Marisol, why are you talking about dying?” I asked.
“I’m talking about dying, cause I’m making a death plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Like your birth plan.”
“My birth plan?”
“Uh-huh. You and Daddy talk about it. A birth plan for the new baby, with music and everything. You’re going to have Daddy and maybe Grandma in the room when you go hee, hee, hee.” She let out her breath in staccato to demonstrate, as she jumped off the bed and hopped on one foot. “I’m already born, so now I need a death plan cause I’m not dead yet.”
“I see.” But I had no way of seeing. Of grasping the experiences that carved their way through Marisol’s brain. The infinite number of sounds, words, and stories that had sparked the neurons that developed the pathways that resulted in behavior that made me sad.
“Birth plans are different,” I said. “They make us happy. People don’t make death plans because they make us sad.”
“The baby didn’t have one when? Daddy said you packed up and went to the hospital, and you were sad.”
There it was. The story that had sparked the neuron that developed that pathway that created Marisol’s death plan.
“Mommy, you should’ve had a death plan for the baby.”
“The baby was just not ready to be part of our life. And you are right. We were sad.”
“But if you had a plan, your mommy and daddy and best friend would’ve been there, and it wouldn’t have been sad.”
I held her tight, rubbing my nose against her baby shampoo-scented hair. “You know the new baby is going to be just fine, right? A birth plan is all we need.”
Marisol nodded and clapped before running off to play with Lambeth.
With any luck, Marisol, the six-year-old, would have forgotten all about her death plan by the next morning. But she had a point. How perfect it would be to die according to plan, with music and our best friend in a comfy chair by our side. How smart it would be to be prepared. A plan for every possible outcome. A kick in the belly demanded my attention. “Yes,” I replied. “A birth plan in which you get to meet your brilliant sister is all we need.”
* * *
Dipti Ranganathan is a first-generation Indian American whose parents immigrated to the United States in the early sixties. She has lived across the United States and currently resides in Chicago. While her formal education is in computer science, Dipti has a passion for writing stories. Her stories are rooted in experiences of assimilation, identity, and family. She was a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and has stories published in Old Lady Comedy Magazine and CafeLit.