A Good Day for Seppuku

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I love O’Hare Airport, with its unpredictable weather and constant gate and terminal changes. This is where I board my plane to Los Angeles. O’Hare is a zone with variables that can’t be controlled. Cell phone service ceases and nobody can tell me no.

I wander corridors that end in cul-de-sacs where I sit alone in alcoves. Loudspeakers announce implausible destinations like Madrid, Prague and Tokyo. I pretend I’m someone else. I have a red or black passport, a different genetic code and a suitcase full with lace mantillas and hand-embroidered shawls. I’m subject to random acts of nature — lightning storms, tornadoes and lethal black ice. But that’s at a distance so vast it’s incomprehensible and irrelevant.

It’s the summer of my 13th year and I’m supposed to make my decision. I must choose which parents I’ll live with for high school and what foreign language I’ll learn. I’m officially a teenager. I have a biological passport and carry tampons, lip-gloss and credit cards in my purse. My age has 2 syllables. And I count everything.

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