by Kyra Wilder
I cut the last cucumber into shapes that were supposed to look like monkeys or tropical flowers. E could barely pick them up, they were that thin and slippery. We ended up licking them off the table like wild animals. Sometimes my heart would begin to beat hard and I would gasp to catch my breath but mostly it was lovely. A whole day spent picnicking in the shade.
It could have been late or it could have been early whenever we went to bed. I took E and B with me. We all piled in together. E and B drifted off smiling and I lay there with them, loving them that much. It was like that sometimes, being a mother, like feeling all the screws tighten down inside you.
Eventually I untwined myself from E and took B to his crib. I wanted to take the garbage out but that sticky shutter wouldn’t let me so I just scooped all the leftover food into another black plastic bag and even a plate or two that I couldn’t see my way through to cleaning and set it down in the guest room next to the other bags of garbage. The flies smiled then and rubbed their little hands together like good children. I came back into the kitchen and arranged the alphabet letters on the fridge to say I love you for E to see even though she couldn’t read yet.
The point was now mainly to move quickly. The point was to be quicker than whatever was coming, slipping into the apartment like bad thoughts, to be busy enough that whatever it was that was there couldn’t get me. The darkness, the child, the dusty eyes. To be quicker and necessary and needed and full of love. To move and move and move through all the hours until the children woke and were ready to play and keep me high and dry and safe from winking out inside my clothes and disappearing into nothing. What is a mother anyway when her children are asleep? What could she possibly be? If a tree falls in the forest. It’s like that isn’t it?
I found more candles burning, this time in the bathroom, lighting up my face in the mirror, the little flames merry and just so almost touching the bottom of the towel. It would have been almost cheerful, like dinner parties in the bathtub, except it wasn’t and though I blew them out quick, the candles, I knew that it was too late and that the thing was inside with me anyway already. The shadow, the toad, whatever it was, hopped and crouched and sniffed at this at that. It was moving through the rooms looking for me. I could feel it, could see it slipping in and out of the corners of my eyes. I had used too much bleach in the cleaning water and my hands were speckled with raw patches on them and stung like anything but I couldn’t stop dipping my hands into the cleaning bucket and wiping down the kitchen counter because otherwise it would surely find me. I told myself, licking the sweat off the top of my lip, to lie down, still in the tall grass. The thing, the terrible thing, it hadn’t happened yet. I was still, thank god and goodness, in the time before.
Something banged against the shutters in the bedroom. It came again. Bang. It could have been a bottle or a ball or a fist pounding the metal slats. Bang. Bang. Bang. The noise woke E and she sat up and cried out for me and I couldn’t move until I was sure the thing in the apartment was gone and I was alone again and safe. I dumped the bucket of bleach and water down the sink and rinsed out the little towel and wrapped my hands, because they were bleeding now from the bleach and all the washing, in more towels so they wouldn’t stain the rental-company sheets and then I ran to E and kissed her and tucked myself in with her and slept and slept.
16
When I woke, the bed was washed in weak shuttered-up sunlight. My hands had escaped from the towels and found their way into E’s hair. There wasn’t much of a mess because the raw spots from the bleach had scabbed over which was a relief considering the sheets.
It was morning or afternoon, daytime anyway. M could have been anywhere and we were here. I threw myself at the window and managed to get the shutters up and the window open but it was hard going and I almost couldn’t do it. Opening it left me sweating and dizzy and I leaned back against the window frame and really knew, in that moment, that it was time to run. The window was open beside me. It was right there. But how could I have done a thing like that?
There were yellow shoes under the window, lying in the grass. They were perfectly arranged and waiting, calm yellow shoes, as if the person wearing them had, woosh, been lifted up out of them and carted off. The grass around the shoes was trampled down in all directions.
E woke up and was hungry and there was no avoiding going to the store today. We needed yogurt, milk, berries. I grabbed my coat and E and jumped out of the window. B was still asleep and I thought if I just do this one thing quickly, if I just leave him here and run, I’ll be able to get him a warm roll and won’t even have to wake him. He can’t, I thought, he almost certainly can’t, get out of his crib on his own. Hurrying, I slipped my feet into the little yellow shoes, they were at least two sizes too small for me but I squeezed into them anyway and, carrying E, ran off to the store. See? I said shouting as we ran a bit through the wet grass and hopped over the planter out onto the sidewalk, See? Isn’t this fun? We’ll be back before B wakes up. He’ll think we flew.
At the store I filled my bag with this and that, grabbing anything. As the minutes passed I felt less sure about leaving B, less sure that he wouldn’t wake, less sure that he couldn’t get out of his crib. The seconds twisted into me and I felt the whole world tightening around my shoulders. I fought for berries with all the other greasy-haired mothers, we all needed the best. We all, each one of us specifically, needed the best berries with which to feed our very special children. We all took turns fingering the avocados. We looked at each other out of the corners of our eyes. We peered down into each other’s shopping baskets. They were too ripe, the avocados. Slightly too. We recoiled. We all knew about vitamins and nutrients, we all knew about the dangers of over-ripe and under-ripe fruit. We all knew all about it.
The girl ringing up the purchases beeped through everyone’s baskets very slowly. Everyone in line in front of me had baskets filled with things. When it was finally my turn I slammed the croissants down so hard that half of them were flattened, and the checkout girl, young, solicitous, with no baby at home, either inside his crib and smothering or outside and imperilled by literally every single thing, sent the shop assistant all the way to the back of the store to get new uncrushed and freshly baked ones.
Outside, E wanted to walk. She was tired of being carried. I put her down and tried to make a game out of running together. See? I couldn’t see the apartment. It was just around the corner but I couldn’t see it. I began to find breathing difficult and a pain started up in my chest.
E, I said, E, let’s run. But she wouldn’t. She walked slower and slower until she wasn’t moving at all just standing there looking at me. The handles of the shopping bags cut into my bleach-cracked hands and suddenly, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, all the strength ran out of my legs. It was like falling down a waterfall. I was drowning right there on the street with my groceries.
I slid down onto the sidewalk and then, because I really couldn’t see the apartment, because leaving B had been a mistake, because leaving at all had been, I began to crawl along on the pavement on my stomach, dragging the bags, dragging my useless legs. It’s a game, see? I shouted now to E. It’s a game! Even as I shouted I felt the dried noodles, the tubs of yogurt pressing into my shoulders, pegging me, as brutally as a dog’s teeth, to the ground. From the apartment, I heard B begin to cry.
Skipping, crawling, dragging, jumping, we made it back to the window with almost all of our things. I tossed the groceries through the open window, then I tossed E after them. I kicked the shoes back into the grass and threw myself over the window sill as well. Threshold. Maison magique. Husk. Hull. Cocoon. Hide as in skin. Hide as in to.
I lowered the shrieking shutters back down and it was half dark again and safe, except of course the eyes that suggested themselves in the swirling dust. B had fallen out of his crib and was lying on his back beside it kicking his legs and putting his hands one after the other into his mouth. His cheeks were covered in little red marks, a swarm of tiny bit
es or kisses.
I cooed over him and kissed him and checked his pupils to make sure they were the same size. He’d fallen on a pile of blankets. I promised him, whispering and singing and cuddling and swinging him around and around until he laughed, that I wouldn’t leave again. That we would all stay and stay and stay inside where we were safe and cosy and together.
E had a bloody knee. I hadn’t seen her fall on the way back but she must have and I whisked her off to the bathroom and drew a bath for her and sat her in the warm soapy water and even dangled my legs in the bath beside her and smiled and didn’t take my eyes off her so she would know that I was with her and loved her always. We let the water get higher and higher and higher. We let it slop over the edges. We laughed when it did because we loved each other so much.
When the water started to get cold I plucked her out of it and wrapped her in three different towels and set her on the bed like a baby. She loved this game and I told her over and over how little she was and kissed her and wrapped her tighter and tighter until she couldn’t move. Then I dried her hair and brushed it and braided it and she dressed herself and I actually started humming as I tidied up.
There was a smell in the bathroom. That grey rotting-meat smell that comes from drains. I sprayed the tub with disinfectant. The cuts on my hands were singing with all the wet but still, the smell didn’t go away so I jumped into the tub and stuck my hand all the way down inside the drain as far as it would go. I twisted my fingers down around inside it.
There were rotten gobs of hair mixed up with all sorts of other filth. I pulled these out bit by bit and set them in a line beside the drain like a tiny horde of stinking mice. When I’d pulled out all I could I dumped some bleach down the drain to take care of the rest. The micey filth balls I grabbed up in my hands and held them slimy-dripping for one long second before I dumped them all into the trash. I washed and washed my hands and even though it was filthy to do one thing and then another, I ran into the kitchen to make something for E to eat because she would need it and I was the only one there to get it for her.
When I was little, I saw my mother once, crouching naked and wet in the shower in our musty blue apartment bathroom. She had her back to me and her long wet hair streamed down across the secret map of her skin. She was picking long wet clumps of our hair out of the drain. She didn’t turn when I opened the door, she just got on with it. She might have been crying or it could have been the water from the shower on her face.
When she finished, she grabbed them all up, the grey flecked nests of dead hair, and flushed them down the toilet. Then she walked over to me, reached up above me and shut the door and didn’t come out for the rest of the morning. I had to pee in the bushes behind the parking lot.
Afterwards, I never wanted to be left alone in any place. It was something about the hair, how much of it there was. If we were always losing so much of ourselves, how could we be sure of what we’d have left, what would stick?
Also, naturally, I always had a horror of drains, it seemed to me the loneliest, the most unloved thing a woman could do, crouching naked over a pipe, fishing out wretched bits of her own hair.
I made E spaghetti with butter for lunch and cucumbers and carrots all cut up into the tiniest pieces. The cups in the kitchen were filled with ash, they kept filling up with the stuff and I kept dumping it all down the drain. Hot ash and cold ash. Ashes on fingers, ashes on our toes, ashes lining the tops of our lips like milk moustaches. Ring around the rosey, pocket full of posey . . . It was from the candles though, that I found sometimes burning in the kitchen or the cabinets.
We pretended the carrots were butterflies and we were frogs with long tongues. She slurped the pasta up, hunting the butterflies with her wide frog’s mouth.
That afternoon we played more games. I’ll be the mother bear and you can be the baby, I said. We’ll spend all winter in our cave eating berries. Outside it’s snowing, it’s all ice and cold and terrible things. Come here little bear, I said, and I’ll lick your fur and scratch your fuzzy ears. Come here little bear, I said, we’ll be so warm together in our cave.
We scratched up the paint on the walls with our bear claws. The walls had been painted over so many times in cheap rubbery paint that the layers came off in great big sheets, exactly like tree bark. This is the real thing! I said in my growly honeycomb voice. I told E, This is what bears do to sharpen their claws. If we were bears, our claws would be so sharp now, we could slice right through the door.
We made toast and E and I buttered it with big melting swipes and set hunks of cheese on top. We crunched it up sitting on the rental-company sofa and we didn’t care at all about the crumbs. We rolled around on top of them and let them fall through all the cracks between the cushions. I unstuffed the couch pillows looking for something, I can’t remember what, keys maybe, but we made that a game too, so it would be fun. Foam and plastic rental-company feathers flying up everywhere in the air and then down around us as we cuddled on the sofa. Has someone been pinching your arm? I asked E, looking at it. Red marks crept all over her smooth skin. She didn’t answer.
I sat on the sofa and nursed B until he fell asleep. Perhaps we all slept. Who knows? It could have been the middle of the night.
When I woke up it was dark outside. B was still on top of me sleeping in his soft full-bellied baby way. I slid him carefully down into his crib and went to go find E. E, I said. E, in my soft voice. She didn’t answer. E, I said, where are you? Where are you where are you? I was creeping along the hallway towards the bedrooms bent over almost double like an old witch limping through the forest with her basket of apples. Or maybe I was loping like a wolf. It was the middle of the night, so anything was possible.
E, I said, E, it’s me. Where are you? It was so dark in the hall. I couldn’t see a thing and the dry dry cracked backs of my hands rustled against the walls like dead leaves. There was a light on in her bedroom, and a soft humming coming like singing from her room. Good evening, the hush-soft humming could have said. Good night, with roses covered.
E, I said, but my voice was too quiet for anyone to have heard me, it was as if the apartment itself was gulping down my words, was drinking up any sound that I could make. Perhaps I could have screamed right then and no one would have heard me. There was a noise at the front door, the hushed slip of a long coat gliding. Had I locked the door? Had I remembered to? It wasn’t M outside in the hall, coming back from wherever he had been, it wasn’t him. It didn’t feel like him. There was a scraping against the door that could have been a knock, could have been knuckles on wood.
I was in the entryway now. M? I said. M? Is that you? The doorknob rattled and I felt how cold it was suddenly in the apartment, too cold for the summer when the nights should have been long and cheerful and we should never be alone. The whispering started now from the other side of the door and I thought, Yes, now, I should open it. M? I said, but I couldn’t reach out, couldn’t lift my fingers to the lock. The light switched off in E’s room. Click. I heard it and now the dark itself was cold and I ran back down the hall to E’s room and I felt the thing skipping behind me. I felt the lightness of it, how quickly it could move. I threw open the door and threw myself onto her little bed and under the covers and found her there, warm and fast asleep. B was all alone out there, the beds were lifeboats maybe, in a cold ocean, and I couldn’t be in two places at once. I shook her a little, but she was asleep and kept sleeping, asleep in a way that made her gone, that had taken her somewhere else. E, I whispered, but she wouldn’t wake.
There was a soft clicking in the apartment, like the light in the kitchen being flicked on and off and on again. I had my head under the blanket and couldn’t see. Perhaps it was playing with me. Perhaps this was all a sort of game. Click. Click. The light in the hall flicked on, flicked off. I wasn’t cold anymore but sweating under the blanket. I couldn’t drop my hands down from my eyes. The light in the bedroom flicked on. Click. I found I couldn’t scream, could only open my mouth wit
h the scream stuck inside it. Bang. Something hit the shutters on the little window in E’s room. Bang bang bang. The light clicked off.
I threw off the blanket and started banging on the window myself, from the inside. E’s body bounced lightly on the mattress but she didn’t wake. Still, she was elsewhere. Then the thing was behind me in the room, bang bang bang, I shoved my fingers into the metal slats and tried to lift them up but the window was shut tight. We were stuck. Help, I screamed, Help help help, but no one could hear my voice, the apartment rushed in to eat it up and I could hear how quiet we were despite my desperate noise.
Soft behind me, like a dancing partner, something came and slid a cold hand up my arm and touched my bruises, and another hand went gently like a couple dancing slowly in the moonlight and like hush-now-it’s-all-fine around my neck.
B screamed, loud and wailing, in his normal hungry-baby voice and I was alone again in the apartment with nothing there.
I ran fast to him like any good mother in the middle of the night and picked him up and cuddled him and lifted up my shirt and slipped my nipple into his mouth and he sucked a little and fell back asleep and didn’t seem bothered that I was shaking and soaked in sweat. He had more red marks on his cheeks, a rash of little kisses. I set him down in his crib and whispered I love you and sweet dreams and all the things that good mothers say over the soft heads of their sleeping children. Then I crawled into the guest room and over to the garbage side of the floor. I didn’t want to stain the beautiful white sheets, the eiderdown, all still in their bags and waiting for a bed. The bed that would make the whole room fantastic. Beautiful and perfect, whites and blues, a whole island stocked with little jewelled soaps and smelling of sea salt and cotton.