Flash Fiction: Center Seat, Coach Class

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is to write 1,000 words or so about “bad parents”. After pondering for a while, I decided that parents who use their kids as pawns and weapons in a contentious divorce are really, really bad parents.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

CENTER SEAT, COACH CLASS

I had already gotten comfortable, my tablet in the seat back pocket along with two candy bars and my point-and-shoot camera. I had a blanket ready to go when they turned the air conditioning down to “subarctic”. I had cleaned the window so when I took picture the camera wouldn’t be trying to focus through multiple layers of forehead sweat residue. My headphones were in, my favorite songs playlist queued up on my phone. Hawaii, here I come!

The aisle seat had been filled with a Hispanic woman who seemed terribly out of place. Some combination of kids and in-laws and grandkids were filling two full rows back near the galley, but Grand Maw-maw had been deposited and strapped in up here ahead of the wing exits. She showed no sign she was going to do anything other than glower and whimper for the next ten hours.

I was just daring to hope the center seat would stay empty when a flight attendant escorted a small girl down the aisle. I would have guessed the girl was nine or ten. As she was buckled in, I noticed the absence of the usual ID lanyard which unaccompanied children usually wore. Odd.

As the final passengers were trying to find room in the overhead bins for their excess baggage I looked at the little girl and said, “Excuse me, would you want to switch seats with me so you can look out the window?”

She looked up at me with a quizzical look. For an instant I thought she might not speak English but she said, “No, thank you, sir. I fly a lot and I don’t care about looking out the window anymore.”

I swallowed my comments about how one should never get tired of looking out of the window when flying. Instead I nodded and said, “All right. Let me know if you change your mind later. It’s a long flight.”

“Ten hours and ten minutes, just like always.”

How did a ten-year-old get so world-weary and blasé?

Once in the air we settled in with our distractions and waited for the beverage service. As the carts started to roam the aisles I noticed the girl had put away her game and was holding her stomach, looking pale. I was going to mention something to one of the flight crew, but when they got to our aisle, the girl spoke up herself.

“Mommy, I’m not feeling very good.”

Mommy? The flight attendant in question was the same one who had brought her onto the plane and buckled her in. Leaning over the old woman in the aisle seat, she gave a brief, cursory exam and started asking questions.

“What’s wrong, what do you mean you don’t feel good?”

“My stomach hurts.”

“Is it a sharp pain, like when your appendix was sore, or are you nauseous?”

“Like I’m going to throw up.”

“When did this start? Did you play with any kids who were sick last week?”

“No. It just started feeling bad a little while ago, after we took off.”

“What did you –“

Before she could finish, the girl convulsed and vomited all over herself, the seats, me, and the Hispanic woman.

Chaos was the order of the day for the next ten minutes. I tried to not use too many inappropriate words in front of the girl and her mother. The Hispanic woman wasn’t so restrained but it was all in Spanish and neither the flight attendant nor her daughter seemed to understand a word.

Towels and napkins were distributed and air freshener was sprayed. The Hispanic woman was the least affected of us, so after a brief cleanup she was led to near seat even further away from the rest of her family, but away from the toxic waste zone. The young girl and I took a bit more work to clean. It took an effort to hold down my own gag reflex, but finally both the girl and I were wiped down. I took over one of the bathrooms to get minimally presentable.

I rinsed my shirt and pants thoroughly before trying to dry them as much as possible before going back out. I figuring that wet was better than chunder covered. When I went back out into the galley, the young girl was in the final stages of cleaning, her mother having found a change of clothes for her.

“You ate breakfast? Why did you eat if you were feeling bad?” her mother asked harshly.

“I didn’t feel bad then. I felt good. Daddy said I needed to eat hearty for the long trip, so we went to that deli I like.”

“What did you have for breakfast that might have made you sick?”

“Nothing, it all was good. I had pancakes and eggs and sausages and bagels with cream cheese and a pastrami sandwich. Then, because I ate all gone, Daddy said I should have one of the giant banana splits. Daddy bet me five dollars I couldn’t finish it. I won! Do you want to see the five dollars?”

The flight attendant was turning red. The other crewmembers helping her were suddenly finding something else to do or somewhere else to be.

“So, Daddy fed you all of that food and all of that ice cream just before you got on the plane?”

“Yes, but I feel much better now. Can I get my video game back?”

Her mother wasn’t listening. As she finished dressing her daughter, small chunks of her internal dialogue kept slipping quietly out. “That lousy son of a bitch! I’m going to take his ass… To use our daughter to embarrass me like this…”

She finally noticed I had come out of the bathroom. Flustered, she did her best to transition to professional flight attendant instead of furious mother. “I’m so sorry about this, sir; I’ve found you a different seat for the rest of the flight. I’ll help move your belongings.”

The voice was level and polite and the smile was firmly attached, but the eyes betrayed her. Mr. Sonofabitch Daddy might have made a tactical error in this child custody case.

I and my collateral damage clothes were on her side. I hoped she ripped him a new one.