Gingerbread

by Helen Oyeyemi

  Harriet takes out her pocket mirror and looks at the face she no longer asks anything of. No use wondering why it doesn’t register as distinct; it just doesn’t. That’s just as it should be: striking types never get left in peace. She widens her mouth around her vowels and reapplies her lipstick at the same time as she wishes Samreen all the best. Samreen wishes Harriet all the best too, and though it should stop there, the conversation somehow continues. Harriet sucks her middle finger so there won’t be any lipstick on her teeth, and when the call finally ends, she feels somewhat mangled but also relieved that she at least made herself useful to Samreen, had provided an outlet for the minutiae Samreen needed to blurt out before discarding. This is, however, the sort of thing that makes Harriet afraid to think about her other relationships and how one-sided they may or may not have been. Aristide Kercheval may be Harriet’s benefactor, but he’s also the only person who has ever been up front with her about using her. Which makes him the only person she feels comfortable using. Her work on the Salinas family annals is a favor to Ari, and a well-paid one. It’s been a few months since they last spoke, and Harriet is about to send Ari an update when her phone lights up with a call from Perdita’s school. It’s Mrs. Scott, the school secretary, inquiring about Perdita’s absence. Harriet knows this drill. She tells Mrs. Scott that Perdita’s unwell. Nothing too serious, I hope . . . Mrs. Scott hasn’t forgotten that the first time Harriet covered for Perdita, she managed to imply that Perdita had contracted meningitis. Harriet calls the GP to book an appointment so that Perdita can be provided with a sick certificate, and then she calls Perdita to ask what happened to giving notice before bunking off school. Perdita doesn’t answer, and some questions begin to occur to Harriet. Mrs. Scott hadn’t mentioned the history class trip to Canterbury. If the entire class had gone on an overnight trip, why expect Perdita alone to turn up at school as normal the next morning? Come to think of it, why does a school trip from London to Canterbury need to be an overnight trip at all? The school letter had been vague about that, but Harriet had signed the permission slip and handed over cash anyway. She’d prefer not to call Mrs. Scott back unless she really has to, so she calls Alesha Matsumoto, whose son, Fitz, is in Perdita’s history class. Alesha’s phone rings unanswered. So does Abigail Klein’s phone, and Emil Szep’s. Then she remembers she has to ask the group to get an answer, and she sends a group text saying she’s lost the school letter and asking what time the A level history class are due back from Canterbury.

  Abigail replies first: canterbury when? did they go this morning

  Then Emil: Why would they go to Canterbury? A bit off-syllabus, no?

  Alesha just sends a question mark.

  Harriet texts Perdita: What’s going on? and signs off with three tangerines, their emoji code for love. It would be three oranges, like in Prokofiev’s symphonic suite, but iMessage doesn’t offer an orange emoji. She returns to her window-seat project: preparing a comprehensive family chronicle for a descendant who doesn’t like reading. “Just the turning points, please,” this descendant told Aristide Kercheval, and Harriet has been following that brief for half a year, hacking decades down to paragraphs. The result will be one volume, and ultimately she wants it to read like Spring and Autumn Annals. Simple sentences in which maelstroms crystallize: Peter Salinas was born to every advantage and lost them all one by one, and then ninety-nine years later, John and Christina Salinas paid down generations of debt and became creditors. The Salinases in between lay low—perhaps it takes that long to forget certain blows and to gather strength. And all the while the seasons passed, as they do, without telling us anything at all, not even whether they will come again. They only turn their blank faces to us as they go by.

  The library closes, and Perdita still hasn’t texted back. She’s a girl who’ll bunk off school because she feels like going for a spa day with her grandma, but Margot is working and says Perdita isn’t with her today. It’s dawning on Harriet that she should’ve checked Perdita’s whereabouts before lying for her, but it’s OK, a lesson learned. She goes on to night school in a classroom at the local college near her house, paces in front of the whiteboard as the slate-colored seats slowly fill up. Harriet’s class always starts late and often ends a little before the time stated in the course catalog.

  Most of her students arrive from jobs as cleaners and builders and nail technicians, and many will go on to other jobs or go back to work after the class. But for three hours a week Harriet’s ten students set aside their fear of falling into verbal traps and give Macbeth a chance, and Jekyll and Hyde, and a selection of Romantic poets. They hadn’t passed GCSE English at sixteen, for various reasons: they hadn’t been in the country, or they had had other things on their minds at the time, or it had been predicted that they’d fail and they’d done as they were told. Every member of this class is under the impression that they are thick, and every single one of them is the opposite. Passing the GCSE now probably won’t improve their job prospects or raise their estimation in the eyes of their family and friends. Betty’s shy cunning as she whispered, “Alf thinks I’m at the bingo . . .” When Betty said this, some gaudy joy flew through Harriet, chirping and fluttering like a canary. The mad canary sings not only for Betty but for the whole obstinate bunch. No need to rationalize this endeavor to anybody outside the class. Their curiosity and readiness to sail through storms of meaning makes Thursday Harriet’s favorite day of the week, though she does occasionally worry about Shura, who has failed this exam three times, even though she’d studied hard and studied from her son’s revision notes.

  “Dima gets A’s . . . just don’t understand how this can be,” Shura says with a sigh.

  A GCSE exam paper is no place for unorthodox theory. Harriet tells Shura that her gloriously abandoned response to a book she likes, basically that of a living being full of contradictory impulses running off into the night with another living being full of contradictory impulses, is largely incompatible with exam language. Shura zips up her puffa jacket, tucks her chin into the collar, and mutters that glorious abandon is nice, but sometimes in life it’s good to be able to answer questions in the language in which they are asked. Shura needs to know she can do that if she chooses to, so she would like to get an A this time. Harriet promises her at least a C as long as she demonstrates passing familiarity with a handful of established terms and concepts. Shura says a C will do. She says that very quickly, as if the prospect will be taken off the table if she isn’t prompt with an affirmation of interest. At this point Shura just wants a grade.

  Harriet comes home to the smell of gingerbread and has mixed feelings, mostly good ones, about Perdita’s sudden taking up of the mantle. The fruit bowl in the kitchen was empty when Harriet left, but now there are three oranges in there, and a note propped up against them. The note may be in Perdita’s handwriting, but Harriet isn’t certain. It’s been a few years since she last had a note from Perdita, and she remembers the note very well, though she’s a bit hazy on the specific event the note was a reaction to. That note, in an envelope addressed to Mother, had read: You! You’ve embarrassed me for the last time. Grandma’s going to raise me, so don’t ever talk to me or come near me anymore. P.S. Thank you for the food and lodging to date.

  Harriet can smile at the memory now, but when she received the note, she cried so much a bystander could’ve given their hands a good rinse beneath her eyes. She cried so much that Perdita got scared she’d make herself ill and relented, dragging Harriet into her bedroom so she could watch as every item in her suitcase was laboriously unpacked. What about the note before that . . . oh dear. Not as upsetting, but still cause for concern: On this, the day that Jesus was born, I curse you . . .

  Notes from Perdita make Harriet nervous, three oranges or no three oranges.

  She picks up the note with tongs and sets it aside, calls out, “Perdita?” and frowns when there is no answer. She looks around the kitchen, smelling gingerbread but see
ing none. The oven’s empty, but she sees a hedgehog-shaped silicone mold on the pastry board beside her rolling pin, and there is a bowl by the sink with a little dough still left in it. Ever precise, the girl had made just enough dough for one gingerbread hedgehog with three little dots left over, an ellipsis of dough. Harriet squashes one dot with her finger and tastes it, is proud for a moment. Saline, saccharine, piquant, all proportions correct. But then there is an aftertaste that shouldn’t be there. This throb in the tongue, as though the flesh is swelling and shrinking around the site of a sting . . . she tries Perdita’s phone again.

  There’s a pause while the call connects, and then she hears the phone nearby. The flat is very quiet just then, so the vibrations are like hail rattling against the windows. Harriet follows the rattling to Perdita’s bedroom door, which she’s only able to open part of the way—what, what on earth is this, what is she looking at? Oh. A limb—an arm—inflexible—a doll’s. It blocks Harriet’s view of the bed, and its fingers are closed around Perdita’s phone. The arm belongs to the doll named Prim, and Prim’s shoulder joint almost shakes itself out of its socket until the ringing stops. Harriet only has to jam her shoulder up against the door one more time before Prim’s grip buckles and she falls so that Harriet can step over her. Lollipop and Bonnie are kneeling on the bed on either side of Perdita, Bonnie shielding Perdita’s head with her tiny trees, Lollipop’s palms open: We couldn’t stop her. Perdita’s skin is cold. Her head lolls to the side, and that side of the mattress is awash with the vomit that’s spilled from her mouth. When Harriet lifts her up, her plaits whirl into a knotted gray halo. The girl lies meekly in Harriet’s arms as she phones for an ambulance. The paramedics will come too late. There are seven staircases—

  Perdita convulses, and convulses again. There is no more vomit, but there is bloodstained excrement. She has a pulse, and then she doesn’t have one, and then she does. The convulsions stretch the skin of her throat. It looks as if she’s holding a bubble of air in there, or a giant marble. A voice speaks from the throat bubble. Not Perdita’s . . . it’s the croaking of a toad. Harriet holds her—Oh, please, please, please. She opens the front door; her voice carries down the stairwells, and her neighbors station themselves along the banister, their arms held out for her daughter. Perdita croaks and cackles as she’s passed from person to person; her journey to the first floor is only a little slower than a fall would’ve been.

  * * *

  —

  AT THE HOSPITAL MARGOT tells Harriet that, on the whole, it’s probably better to have sons. Daughters are enigmatic minefields of classified information, she says.

  Harriet would like to act as if she hasn’t heard any of this but can’t help blurting out: “Are daughters the only ones who fit that description?”

  Margot pats her on the head. “I knew you’d say that.”

  “But really, I . . . suppose Perdita was a boy . . . wouldn’t you be sitting here tutting and telling me about the trouble with sons?”

  Margot nods and folds Harriet’s hands between her own. Eye to twinkling eye, a look passes between them.

  “You knew I’d say that too?”

  They keep their fingers linked as they’re told that the hospital’s still working on identifying exactly what Perdita’s imbibed. They’ve ruled out pills; her symptoms are closer to those exhibited by two mushroom foragers who’d recently been brought in with amatoxin poisoning. Both had survived and made partial recoveries, though one had permanently lost his eyesight and the other . . . Doctor Li avoids Harriet’s gaze and repeats that both patients survived and made partial recoveries. Harriet has read her name badge: Doctor Li is not a Harriet but a Meizhen.

  There’s a terraced square just outside one of the hospital’s exits, and Harriet and Margot take turns leaving Perdita’s side in order to walk around and around this square, passing haggard-looking escapees from bedsides bleaker than the one the Lees have left. These bench-sitters are all cried out and are holding a variety of objects—a cigarette, a bottle of Lucozade, a cup of coffee—not really doing anything with them, just looking them over. Each object is held ceremoniously, its function purely symbolic for now. Harriet throws away a wedge of her data allowance on an urgent group Skype chat, turning to the PPA to try to find out if anything has happened at school. She can’t assume that their kids don’t talk to them. But she’s reluctant to say “Perdita” aloud; at a time like this, scant reception of the name could push its bearer off the edge of the world. Harriet’s hands shake a lot when she tells the PPA that Perdita’s had an accident and Gioia says: “Perdita . . . ?”

  “My daughter.” Harriet provides a little more context. Nothing too disruptive of Perdita’s privacy, but nothing factually incorrect either. Emil very much hopes Harriet’s not implying that his twins have been bullying Perdita—he says it just like that: “I very much hope . . .” Mariama suggests contacting Perdita’s friends. Gemma asks, in the most roundabout way possible, whether this couldn’t be a case of heartbreak. Alesha says she is sorry and waves her hands, fending off the question of what she’s sorry for. Abigail asks about Perdita’s current condition. Felix says he hopes his twins haven’t been bullying anybody either (subtly different from Emil’s hope that Harriet isn’t saying his twins have been bullies) and expresses a resolve to get to the bottom of this if he can. Noah and Hyorin say they’ll visit. Harriet welcomes this but will believe it when she sees it.

  Perdita lies under white sheets, her eyelids so smooth the sockets could be empty. Sunken cheeks and inflated veins. The ICU is keeping her afloat, but its beeping and whirring is impartial; Perdita is alone here in a way that she was not before, when her dolls and bedposts stood watch. Harriet sits beside her daughter, and Margot sits in a chair by the door. They turn to their phones for information and are tortured by the search results: kids hounded to death by messages that pop up in every inbox they have passwords for so they know they are hated—by one person who hates them very much or by a multitude who only hates them a little at a time. Yeah, tell your parents all about this. Go crying to Mummy or Daddy. Let’s all sit down and have meetings with our guardians and sign contracts promising to be nice to one another—you’ll have to sign too even though you’re the victim—let’s do all of that and see if anything changes. Margot and Harriet swap phones, read each other’s findings, and then close all the tabs so as to keep from having to cry out. The scope of their project was petty: they wanted Perdita to get good marks at school; they wanted her not to cause trouble, not to punish them for being unable to afford the very best of everything for her. Oh, and they also wanted her to smile every now and again. Those boxes were all ticked, so they’d concluded that all was well, or well enough. They dare not be noisy now. Sick and injured people are sleeping in the neighboring rooms, and they shouldn’t have to forfeit the rest they need just because these two have only just become aware of the fine print. After a time, Harriet hears herself counting aloud. She’s not sure what she’s counting. The numbers don’t seem to correspond to any external event.

  Around midnight Harriet gets a text message from somebody who says Hyorin Nam from the Parental Power Association has sent him, and she goes down to the drab terrace, where a young man with bloodshot eyes and hair longer in the front than it is at the back hands her a cardboard box. The young man is Hyorin’s nephew, Toby. He’s a university exchange student. “We just got done folding these for you,” he says, pointing at the box. “Me and my aunt and two cousins. There are exactly one thousand.”

  Harriet opens the box. Row upon row of radiant symmetry: a thousand paper cranes.

  Toby says: “My aunt said to tell you it’s so you can have a big wish.”

  Her tears don’t appear to make anything awkward for him. He seems to be reasoning that she’s doing what she needs to. This is a one-thousand-crane situation. Eventually he says he’s got to go and backs away, saying: “No,” offended by the sight of her money. She’s
not trying to pay him for the paper cranes. She just wants to make sure he gets back to Ealing safely. The distinction she draws has no effect on his resistance. “Uber . . . I’ll take an Uber.”

  Harriet likes Toby’s accent and its ample slice of Decencyville, Canada. Would it be weird to get his email address for Perdita? Yes. Yes, it would.