by Noy Holland
To be Margaret. The hoard of her life ahead.
The mother felt her pulse in the cut in her knee where she had opened it on a stone. No pain. Not pain but the steady push of her blood and the lights synchronized in the tree. Now red blinked on, blue. Blue was raspberry. Blue was arctic. The grape was still in her mouth—the last shred.
If an apple falls.
If a Margaret.
No hope now of burying anything bigger than a shrew.
She pictured Margaret on a ledge and cars below, a window small as a washcloth.
A sling hung in the tree beneath the branches—a net—so the apples wouldn’t bruise when they fell. Wouldn’t drop and rot in the snow underfoot for the deer when there was nothing but apples. These were cider apples, not eating, late—chalky and tart. Still she would eat one.
Then she would live another month, another year.
The sling sagged as though an infant were in it, asleep and gently leaking. The hay lay gray and wispy in the field and the barn door beat on its hinge. Too much. And still the mare. The blackened door of her eye. A secret language but no one spoke it.
She would crawl. Shake the tree.
So it was cheating, so what. Three apples, but the mother counted two. Snow clung to the fruit as to the curve of the eye, like paint that is light and melts there. Pie, the mother thought. She would make a nice pie for Margaret, nutmeg, zest of lemon.
Wind. And in the wind the ruffled leaves turned and dumped their little buckets of snow. Snow in the barbs of the fences. There the ashen strands of the mare’s tail caught and Margaret’s hair, not her mother’s hair, but dark and sleek and fine.
She had meant to die without a fuss but here she was.
She was listing. She let her tongue drag. Hair—not hair. Fuzz like a duck’s.
You had to work at snow. You had to win it. Snow could be friendly—tender, fluffed—not fickle like air, not careless. She said her name to herself. Nothing. Something in the wind. Her father. With a shovel. With a broom.
And from the barbs of the fence. What was it?
Yes. She was listening. She was cold. Someone would have to tell Margaret. Yes.
The ashen strands of the mare’s tail twisted in the wind and Margaret’s. Yes. Tinsel. It was Christmas. She heard the phoebes. She heard wrens—the next batch, the litter, the brood. And the babies streamed out, baubles of skin, ravenous under the snow. Not likely. Not likely. But—there—yes, something. Was under the mother in the snow. It molted. A seal? It was not going to fall to the mother, she thought. It would not fall to her to tell Margaret—no.
A spotted dog?
No. Not likely. Cold.
And white the mare. Also violet. And pland was a word and white the mare and blue was, blue was arctic. And snow was beaten cream. Her eye was a door the wind sailed through and after that? Something. A door. Eye a door; I adore you. To lie beside of, the mother thought. Was it beside of? Was it only if? An apple falls? That game she had played? Two apples. One. Won. Now was won—backward, she knew. Were there two? Little gray birds? And her hooves frozen in? White, the mare. Happy. But she had gone to her knees like—jelly was a word?
Was it lie, the mother thought, or lay? And last before sleep, the prayer they once said? She knew nothing, next to nothing. Now I lay me. Now I lay me. And the babies in the ice? The face turned to see?
To sea, the mother thought. So—pretty. Fish in the lifting wave and snow, and in the barbs of the fences—pretty—and pland was pretty and violet and in the veined cups of the leaves. And Margaret. Margaret was pretty, a name like a bird the mother would not again see. Not again. All so. Not the sea, not again. Not Margaret. Her face in the snow still falling. Her face in the cup of her hand.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank every single reader who has ever thought or said anything nice about my work. Every one. Also my agent, Georges Borchardt, and the open-armed visionaries at Counterpoint, particularly Jack Shoemaker, Kelly Winton, Megan Fishmann, Ryan Quinn, Megan Jones, and Joseph Goodale. Thanks to the MacDowell Colony, for time in the trees and a sturdy bicycle. I thank Brad Morrow, who published many of the stories gathered here, and whose editorial hand continues to be illuminating and sure.
I want to thank my feral students, former and current, who are my kin and teachers—I hope to read you for as long as I live. Thanks to Lisa Olstein, Jason Schwartz, Leni Zumas, Hilary Plum, and Lauren Goodman—beautiful mavericks, careful readers, beloved friends. Thank you, Parker. And Chris Dombrowski. Thanks to Jane Ogden and Richard Blanchard, who keep their doors open. Thank you, dear Lance and Melanie. Thank you, Gordon—for your immeasurable gift, your terrible jokes, and the lesson of obsessiveness. And from the steamy mountaintop, for as long as I can shout it and as loudly, thank you, Sam.