by Kai Kazi
Her roommate writhed on her bed, sheets cast aside as her fists slammed into the mattress, into the wall as she whined. Korra gasped raggedly, drawing in breath before her throat erupted with a scream that brought tears to Alba’s eyes, freezing her in place. Fear clinging to her like a second skin, Alba leapt from her bed, hands going to a candle and striking a flame so a warm glow casted deep shadows in the room.
Alba wheeled around to look at her roommate, throwing her head back into her pillow as she gasped, sobbing out a cry. She’s having her baby, Alba’s mind echoed, hitting her like a slap to the face.
The door flew open and Alba’s eyes darted to find Mr. O’Hannigan, gripping the knob and a candle in his hand tightly enough to crush them. Flickering shadows cast grooves of horror across his features, his wild eyes reflecting the orange flame in his hands.
“What in God’s name?” Mr. O’Hannigan cried; his voice deeper, sharper, more crazed than anything Alba had heard.
She shrank back from him, feeling too many emotions coursing through her veins to have names, bringing tears to her eyes and robbing her of a voice. Korra’s agonized scream shook Alba from her trance and she pulled in a breath, voicelessly falling to her knees beside Korra. The fire of her candle illuminated the sweat on Korra’s face, the darkness of her eyes, the stark white of her nightgown, and lower, the crimson blood staining it like a massacre. The white sheets beneath her were a wash of red that made Alba feel unsteady.
Korra’s hand darted out, gripping Alba’s arms with a feeble, starved strength. Her nails dug into Alba’s skin -- sharp, precise, making her grimace -- but Alba pressed her hand to Korra’s arm, leaning in close. She didn’t have a voice; didn’t have thoughts or reason to follow, but she looked in Korra’s tortured eyes for something, anything.
Alba’s head wheeled around, looking to Mr. O’Hannigan standing frozen in the doorway. Small girls crowded behind him, hesitantly pressing in to see, alarm clear across the faces in the shadows. Alba shook her head desperately, her eyes too wide and her face too pale as she looked to her teacher, but his expression mirrored her own. A gruesome splash of fear and confusion was painted on his face as he stared at the bloody display.
Korra’s voice sobbed, whining without words. Her breathes were rapid and choking, her nails digging deeper into Alba’s arm. A desperate whisper broke from her lips as she pulled her roommate closer, “Please.”
Alba’s mind was blaring. She opened her mouth, not knowing what would come out when she shouted at her teacher; her voice carless of anything but volume. “You have to do something!” The strength of her own tone frightened her, but like a wave washing up on the shore, it couldn’t be stopped once in motion. “She’s bleeding! She’s in pain! Something is wrong with the baby!”
The power of Mr. O’Hannigan’s voice had vanished in his reply, “I know, but we don’t have any doctors here. I don’t know how to help her.” His hand left the knob as uncertain steps brought him closer to the bedside.
A small voice came from behind him, lurking in the doorway. “Is she going to be alright?”
Another girl asked, “What are we going to do?” Their hands held the frame of the door, leaning in but not daring to step over the threshold. Korra’s ragged, bone-chilling shriek cut through the air and the girls shrank back. Mr. O’Hannigan’s jaw was a tight line as he looked down at her.
Alba leaned closer, holding onto Korra’s wrist like a lifeline; she couldn’t look at the blood, at the gruesome swath of gore spread across her. “Korra, tell me what’s wrong. What’s happening?” Alba tried, her voice sounding steady and direct and entirely not her own.
The torture across Korra’s face deepened as she thrashed her head to the side, a sobbing whine scratching up her throat. Alba wanted to hold her, to take hold of her pain and push it away. She wanted to say something – any combination of words in English or her native language – to make Korra whisper out what she should do; where it hurt, what was happening to the baby. Alba felt her mind ringing like the buzz of a million bees, furious, confused, and enclosed in her skull.
She felt herself pinning in place, like the nightmares that imprisoned her when she closed her eyes; locking her in a dark room that made her scream and thrash and beg to be let go. Alba wanted to run, to beat on the walls and demand to be let up and out of this nightmare. Korra’s fingernails dug into her skin, holding her in place, and sobbed weakly, as if choked by the emotion coming up inside her – Alba wasn’t dreaming, and nothing was going to free her.
She didn’t know what else to do. Alba pinned her eyes firmly on Korra’s face, so she wouldn’t glimpse the gore and the macabre painting of white and crimson played out on the sheets. She rose up climbed into the bed with Korra, sliding her arm under her roommate’s head and pulling her close into her chest, even as Korra cried out, her face wet with tears and sweat. Korra’s other hand wrapped in Alba’s nightgown, twisting and pulling as she kicked. Alba’s ears burned as a scream too sharp, too close sounded out, and she grit her teeth.
Alba’s eyes darted up to Mr. O’Hannigan and found him gone; Mrs. Greenspan stood in his place with a hand pressed to her pale mouth. A manic sob to mirror Korra’s worked up her throat where words could not be found when Mr. O’Hannigan appeared in the doorway again, moving through it with a steadiness to his stride that was lost a moment before.
“Ms. Wright knows a doctor that will see her; he’s not far from here.” He was at the bedside in an instant, and his hand pressed against Alba’s shoulder, pushing her away from Korra as he leaned down.
“You can’t take her!” Alba barked with a sudden ferocity; her voice spoke of its own volition, her body moving with a mind of its own. “You don’t know what’s wrong with her! You did this to her! Leave her with me -- at least she’ll feel safe.”
The expression that flashed across his face looked pained; a deep crease between his brows and the tightness of his mouth looking deeply torn. The expression only lasted a heartbeat until he pulled his eyes down away from hers, a hand sliding under Korra as he pushed Alba away. His strength was gentle but unwavering, and even Korra’s nails in her arm couldn’t hold her in place. Alba’s back pressed against the wall as he lifted Korra from the bed, gingerly and precise pulling her into his arms.
The white of his shirt, as stark and pristine as Korra’s nightdress, as Alba’s, as Mrs. Greenspan, dyed a striking red as he shifted her in his arms, backing away. A high-pitched whine clawed up Korra’s throat as he adjusted her and his expression twisted, jaw tightening.
The strength that had possessed Alba fled her as quickly as it came, and where her voice had been, only a cry rose up, tears flooding her eyes. The girls crowding the doorway scattered as Mr. O’Hannigan pushed through, disappearing into the dark hallway. Alba watched after him, vision blurred with tears.
Mrs. Greenspan lingered, casting a glance to Alba with a hesitant, wordless look. There was blood on Alba’s hands, staining her own dress and smeared across her skin, proclaiming the baby and the secret more than the swell of her own belly. Yet still Mrs. Greenspan stood, her hand pressed to the rosary on her neck as she looked down on Alba.
Alba held her gaze for a long moment, letting the secret hang between them, as if the blood around her hadn’t revealed it. As if the secret could still remain if Alba didn’t speak. She shut her eyes, dropped her head to hang low as her shoulders shook, tears coming like a flood that would choke her.
Alba didn’t know when Greenspan left, but she was gone when Alba lifted her head, crawling off the bed to sit in a bloody pile on the floor. She pressed her hand to her belly, feeling the rise that was only slightly smaller than Korra’s. She looked at the crimson on her hands, feeling sickness wash over her in that traitorous routine as she looked down at the blood marring her dress. The thought came forth immediately and without permission – one day it will be my blood – and it rocked her like a blow to her face; like when the headmaster slammed her onto his table, knocking her dizzy.
The
re was too much gore on the bed, on the floor, on her hands and on her dress. She felt loneliness hit her with the same force; Korra was not going to be alright. Tears flooded to her face with a manic, open-mouth gasp – Korra’s not going to be alright.
She sat Albane in the empty room; the teachers gone, the girls fleeing back to their rooms. As if being gone meant it hadn’t happened; as if Greenspan not saying a word and Alba not uttering a syllable would keep the secret intact. The girls fled for fear of the blood and the baby; as if glancing at it would make their own bellies swell. As if seeing meant the already present babies would burst forth with blood and horror and screams.
They had kept their eyes down like Korra kept her head low, not looking up as Alba was called to the headmaster’s office for the second time, the third. They turned the other way and fled like Alba fled as she watched the headmaster smile at another girl who ducked her head, pressing their lips into fine lines.
The teachers disappeared into the darkness, as if their presence made them guilty, as if the blood that touched their hands would stain them, staying forever. They took care of themselves; and Alba supposed, that’s what she’d done too. That’s what the school demanded of her; quiet, without fight, without anger, and without a voice.
Alba curled up on the floor, careless of anger and hate and anything but the loneliness twisting in her chest and the sobs wracking her body. She wanted her tribe, she wanted her mother and her voice and her little brother and Korra, and she wanted the baby in her belly gone. She didn’t want the blood on her skin and on her dress and staining the sheets, and she didn’t want the kick she felt as she pressed her hand into her belly. It was coming for her; it wouldn’t take long before she was writhing on the bed, and the thought made her gasp out a strained, choked cry against the floor.
She cried until dawn broke. She cried as she pulled her hair up from her face, and washed the crimson stains off her arms, and cast her nightgown into the pile of bloody bedding she knew would be gone when she came back. She cried as she sat in class – silently with streaks of tears down her cheeks. The teachers looked past her, not meeting her eyes, and her eyes never lifted to meet theirs.
Ms. Wright was gone, replaced by Mrs. Greenspan that morning, and when class came to an end, Alba wandered to the front of her desk. The same question that beat through her mind every moment -- taking over the only free place her tears and her pain and her fear had left -- came to her mouth as she stood there, solitary and defeated.
Alba’s voice was level, free of rhythm as she asked what had happened to Korra. One sentence was all she could manage, running her fingers through the empty well inside of her for something that could be made into words -- was there any news?
Greenspan looked back at her with a frown, her normally strict features creased with pity. “I’m not sure.” She answered, and her voice had taken on a softness, a hesitance that never entered her tone before.
Alba looked at her, eyes red and puffy with the glimmer of wetness still on her cheeks, and wanted to scream at her; wanted to drain all the boiling, burning, acidic feelings inside her into one voice and thrust at Greenspan, as if that would make her speak. But the well inside her was empty – with just sickening, useless, enveloping mud left at the bottom -- so she turned away without a word, and moved to her next class. Her body moved with a mind of its own, following the hallways from class to class like a train on its rails – mechanical, thoughtless. This invisible railway guided her and Korra every day as their bellies grew wider, and now Alba wandered Albane.
This invisible railway brought her to class, to lunch, to all of her obligations with a blind awareness until she sat in her bedroom, curled up against the wall. The candlelight flickered from her bedside table, casting ghostly shadows across the room as Alba stared at the empty bed across from her. The bed that had held her roommate was stripped of blankets and sheets stained with gore, and replaced with new, stark and untouched bedding that lied as if no one had ever slept there to begin with. There was no news, no one would look Alba in the eyes; it was as if Korra had simply vanished, as if she had never been.
The silence of the room was deafening; Alba opened her mouth to breathe, letting the waspy sound grow louder and louder in her ears so she could hear something – anything. Korra’s breathing was gone; Korra’s low voice in the darkness was gone. For the first time since Alba had arrived, she was wrapped in solitude in the inky blackness. Dark shadows watched from the walls and Alba drew her blanket up tighter to her chest, retreating to the corner of her bed. Time stretched out infinitely as her eyes flicked from Korra’s bed, as if she could find her there, and the corners of the room, looking for the dark, specter-like creature to attack her.
She pressed her mouth to her blanket, wishing she could close her eyes and never see them open again. She would be fourteen tomorrow, and she was Albane in the dark with a monster’s baby in her belly and her only friend gone from existence.
Maybe that’s what they wanted all Albang.
Sleep nudged her without strength, until pulling her down finally, but nightmares never needed rest. They flashed images not of the headmaster, not of home, but of Korra sinking into her bed, drowning in a sea of blood and screams.
The next morning brought her to the desk of Mrs. Greenspan with the same emotionless question on her tongue. The same response came, and the railway carried her across the floor like the sun trailing across the sky. The next morning was the same, and the one after that.
When another morning brought her up from sleep, more torture than consciousness, Alba scrapped her hair back into a bun as she had done every day, and wandered into the classroom. Mrs. Greenspan was gone, and Ms. Wright stood in her place; Alba felt her senses coming alive, hope and a twisting fear catching in her throat as she paced to the desk before Ms. Wright had a moment to speak.
Alba was already a stride away as Ms. Wright smiled, her expression tense as she waved her hand in a gesture, “Alba, dear, come here and talk with me.”
Alba’s tongue felt stunted in her mouth; the well inside her had been dry too long to draw up anything. Her nails dug into her palms, her eyes wide in anticipation as Ms. Wright settled into the chair behind her desk, Alba coming to stand in front of her. Korra, Korra, Korra thrummed through her mind, a thought too big and too overwhelming to fit into words, into a sentence, into anything that wasn’t a scream or a cry.
Alba felt eyes on her from the classroom; girls pausing in their chatting to cast them a conspicuous glace, leaning forward in their chairs in expectation. Ms. Wright sat with her posture graceful and poised, her shoulders level as they always were, and her thin hand took Alba’s. Her heart was thrumming in her chest, contrasting emotions rising up inside her – hope and excitement, fear and dread -- clashed together into one sickening pit in her stomach.
Ms. Wright’s voice was low, measured as she spoke, and only Alba’s ears could hear it. “It’s about Korra. She lost the baby.” Her eyes flitted over Alba’s, searching for her reaction, but Alba’s face was frozen in place, like stone that could not be etched away. She felt the truth hanging in the hair like an axe about to drop – what about Korra? What about her? “There was a lot of blood, and the child didn’t make it.”
Ms. Wright’s eyes were firmly set on Alba’s face, not glancing down to the roundness of her middle or the thinness of her hands, and Alba felt irritation rising up in her like red heat, threatening to become a snarl. Her fingers scrapped through the well inside her, taking the only mud that could be found, and brought it up.
She didn’t know what would come to her lips, what coherency she could manage, but she spat out, “Is Korra dead?”
The words made a chill she didn’t expect wash through her, and she clenched her teeth to keep from shivering. Shock flashed through Ms. Wright’s eyes, her head jerking back visibly; Alba expected a reprimand, but instead her teacher shook her head.
“No; no, of course not. Korra is very sick, but the doctor said she wil
l recover in time.” Ms. Wright said, and then her second hand came up to take Alba’s other. “Though, when she recovers, she will not be returning to Carlisle.”
The words hit Alba like a slap; numb at first, but then flushing into horror.
“What?” Alba gasped, feeling tears come to her eyes like a surge. “Why?”
Ms. Wright pursed her lips, tipping her head; her words came measured, as if practiced. “The school believes it will be easier for her to start again at a different school, considering what has happened. No one will know her there. She can… have a fresh start.” Ms. Wright provided, finally bringing her eyes back to Alba’s.
Alba felt as if ice had run through her veins, and dizziness came in a wave. She pressed her eyes shut, feeling drops of tears press from her eyes and stream down her face without permission.
“I’m so sorry, Alba. I know you two are very close.” Her voice was thick with sympathy, tender. “I wish it wasn’t this way, but the school believes it’s best.”
Alba felt bile come to the back of her throat, but her empty stomach offered nothing to purge. She wanted to run, but she didn’t trust her feet to give her such strength; she wanted to scream, but her voice was dry and weak.
So instead she nodded, her level voice, devoid of rhythm, raised a notch higher as she opened her eyes. Ms. Wright’s eyes glimmered wetly, maybe with pity, maybe with regret, but Alba’s well was too empty to care for what her teacher was feeling. The well was too empty to care for her own feelings. “Thank you for letting me know,” Alba said flatly, and pulled her hands from Ms. Wright’s without struggle, backing away and wandering to her desk.
They hate us, they hate us, they hate us; Alba could hear Korra’s voice echoing in her ears, as sharp and as real as if she sat beside her. Alba closed her eyes as she took her place at her desk, and willed the hate that filled Korra’s seething voice to envelop her – to push out the tears and bring a glare to her eyes; to make her grit her teeth from rage, from seething, and not to hold back the sorrow.