When it’s accurate, give or take, she inks, outlines, crosshatches details on the manila.
– Blue: to the train station (Ned and May!)
– Black: roadblocks snares regular ambushes
– Red: hotels theatres restaurants (good furniture)
– Green: decent rummage (also: “glass”)
– Orange: nightmarkets
– White: shelters / trenches
– Pink: paths Peyt takes coming home
Mireille carefully measures the distances with a wooden school ruler. Plots her weeks, her days, her hours. When she squints, the splotches and squiggles blur into masses, just like the pale continents on Peyt’s hands, wrists, face. She studies the patterns, near and far, familiar and foreign. She peers through her lashes. Tries to get her bearings.
####
Mireille is sweating when she reaches the red road, more from anger than heat. Keeping her head down, she skirts around the overpriced bazaar, avoiding hawks and ballymen gibbering at her in their lisping, slurring tongue. They follow her, a few steps away from their stalls, eventually slowing to a stop as she hurries past without buying anything. These merchants don’t smile; they bare their teeth, lips disappearing, and watch her with wide golden eyes. Now that the skies have calmed, the streets are busy once more. Mireille lifts her collar, tries to blend in with the crowd, but feels their stares penetrating the flimsy beige shield. She’s sure, if she looked closely, their pupils would be pointed. Vertically slit. Like a snake’s.
Just like the cobras who live upstairs, she thinks. The pythons that slither around Mireille’s unit—some scaling the rubble outside her window to slide up the fire escape, others hissing past her front door—all those nasty blonde snakes with their thick eyeliner and strong perfume, their ’windless heads and sagging figures, their forked tongues forever talking about, but never to, her. Like the adder she bumped into half an hour ago, on her way out.
“Morning,” Mireille had said—sweetly—lifting the corners of her mouth until her cheek muscles confirmed she was smiling. “Nice day today.”
It wasn’t, they both knew; it was cold and sooty and fuckin’ miserable. But that’s what you say to people you haven’t quite met, Mireille had thought. Something neutral, friendly, insipid. You can’t just launch into deep conversations—you have to give them an opening.
But the soldier’s wife hadn’t taken it. Her mouth had gaped soundlessly as she sketched a few symbols in the air, as if trying to ward off evil. And when Mireille clearly hadn’t disappeared—she was still there with her little tin wagon, standing in the apartment’s entranceway, halfway down the tunnel leading through the trash to the building’s main door—the wife had gaped, exasperated, frustrated, and turned her gaze to the ragged walls, to the piss-stained threshold, to the scuffed toes of her stupid high-heeled shoes.
She’s jealous, Mireille thinks. They’re all jealous. Peyt’s been home twice now—twice in two months! Their soldiers haven’t shown up once. Not once. And we’ve got the lowest apartment, probably the biggest. Three rooms for four people, three rooms for two… . Yeah, they must be jealous.
But too jealous to say hello?
Just one word to make her feel welcome?
She stumbles and falls, palms and pride stinging. The wagon wheel is wedged between two crooked paving stones, stuck fast. Without slowing, the crowd parts; swirling like a muddy stream around a big, dumb rock. On hands and knees, Mireille’s head starts to ache. Her inner ears thrum.
It’s Peyt, she thinks, heart pounding as she gets up off the ground. Peyt’s calling!
A moment passes: she clears her mind, closes her eyes, opens herself to the mentalegrapher’s wave. Projects images of her and Peyt into the ether, an anchor for the medium to latch on to. Visions of his homecomings: how he’d tremble, seeing her, and she’d laugh to see him, laugh with joy and relief to have him, here and unharmed and whole; how he’d hug her then, fiercely; how he’d kiss her shoulders and neck, stinking of sweat and miles and vanilla. She thinks of lying in bed, his fingers tracing patterns on her naked skin; hers drumming silly rhythms on his bare arse, then making him guess the song. She imagines him getting misty when Ned learned to read, when she started to hum, to sing. In the narrow passageway, suffering bumps and glares, Mireille’s mind is so open the fedora bounces on her head. Her ’wind is frenzied, drunk on memories.
Yet she hears nothing. Receives nothing but echoes from the past, snarls in her present.
It’s all right, she thinks, yanking the wagon free. It’s fine.
It’s still early.
She trudges to the end of the red lane, turns into a green zone. A paved courtyard surrounded by ten-storey office buildings, a glass rehab centre, a soup bar, and a skinhouse. High above the rooftops, cranes swing loads of steel struts and huge spinning tubs of concrete. Patching mortar-holes, erecting watchtowers, building and rebuilding the gap-toothed skyline. Arranged in straight rows across the square below, dozens of hundred-gallon dumpsters sit with lids lifted, an aproned ladderman guarding each one. It’s hard to tell which bin holds what—a long line-up doesn’t necessarily point to the best goods. More often than not, the people queuing are stoolies hired by the trash collectors. For a few bucks, they’ll spend their days beefing up the lines. Climbing in and out of dumpsters to pick up decoy bags made to seem full of plunder. Or, sometimes, shaking their heads, descending empty-handed—while catching or avoiding just enough glances to convince those waiting that pickings in that particular container aren’t as dire as they appear.
One way or the other, the front row of bins usually gets picked-over first; then again, it’s also first to get refilled. The far rows often get heaped with actual junk: lamps that aren’t worth refitting, dishes beyond gluing, dolls with no heads or heads with melted bodies. The middle section is a hodgepodge of clutter, some trash, some treasure. Mireille once found a great photo album in the biggest junk bin—the sepia Da now hangs on their living room wall, proud in his suspenders, straddling a cross-desert motorbike—so she heads over there again, gives her twenty cents to the ladderman, and lines up. Waits for her go at the rummage.
When she’s finally whistled forward, Mireille wheels her wagon up to the X marked beside the ladder. The guard, a zeppelin-bellied man dressed in chequered flannel and yellow rain pants, reaches out and blocks the rungs with the bloated stump of his arm. As always, Mireille tries not to cringe while meaningless words spit at her. She even attempts a smile. Nodding as if she understands him.
Her hat tilts and just let me go slips from under the brim. The ladderman recoils, swatting violently. “Sorry,” she says, crimson. Before climbing up, she presses another nickel into the fat pig’s hand, which he shoves into his apron with a grunt, as if it was his due.
Now up to her shoulders in the bin, she takes one look at the hoard and feels her stomach drop. Though these are supposed to be dry dumpsters, this one smells rancid, offal and curdled milk. Flies buzz out of shopping bags. Maggots congregate on soggy cardboard boxes. With the toe of her boot, she kicks back this flap and that, more and more dejected by the second. She finds:
– plastic containers without any lids (15 ½)
– smashed percolators (3)
– a cedar tray, worm-eaten, split in two
– mugs with no handles, dirty brown chips in the glaze (7)
– chains, four different gauges and lengths
– empty briefcase, monogrammed “VL” (hinges shot)
– a metal trolley, no wheels, foxed with rust
Nothing worth salvaging, she thinks, chucking the trolley aside. The flies dance around her, mixing with her ’wind, mocking. She squats and they follow her down. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing tears into her eyes. What a fuckin’ waste of time, she thinks. But then—there. She digs under a dripping green bag, stirs up another swarm. Blowing them away from her face, she uncovers a squashed carton. She smiles then, despite the wings and feelers batting her lips.
&nb
sp; A shoebox. Universal home of valuables.
Lifting the lid, her smile widens. And fades.
####
Once, Mireille had a photograph of her Mamie, filched from the vanity dresser while she was sleeping. Black and white, matte finish, hand-tinted. Aurelia’s cheeks and lips had been washed in coral, her irises a watery green. Her black-brown hair was bouffant, rising beyond the ebony frame. It’d been a close shot: Mamie seen from above. Crouched over a gramophone, she was looking up over her shoulder. Not smiling: coy. Flirting with the photographer, who, Mireille guessed, had been her father.
She’s never had any pictures of him.
He was too temporary for that, Aurelia explained when Mireille pestered her enough. Nothing could capture him for long, she’d said. Especially not some little piece of glass.
She’d made a silent vow to return the photo before Mamie got home from the dry-docks the next morning. But when she was late for breakfast, Mireille had hung onto it. Just a bit longer, she promised. Just a while. Morning turned noon turned dusk. Still no Mamie. Still Mireille kept the frame propped against the ballerina jewellery box on her bedside table.
She’d stayed awake all night, listening. Hearing Mamie’s velo in every crunch of gravel outside. Her footsteps in every creak. Her sighs in the breeze.
At dawn, Mireille realised her mistake. Bleary-eyed, she rushed into Aurelia’s room and put the picture back where it belonged.
Now she’ll come home, she’d thought, just as a key scratched in the front lock.
She ran to the door, ready to apologise for keeping Aurelia away so long—if only I’d done that yesterday!—but the silhouette darkening the frosted glass was too big to be her little Mamie, and much too tall. Its shoulders were way too broad, and the thing had two heads …
Hiding in the hall closet, she’d watched the landlords inspect the apartment, running their fingers along Mamie’s prized oak table, sneering at her collection of porcelain dancing cats.
“The stiff’s lease doesn’t expire for three months …” said the man. He lifted the living room trunk, grimaced, and let the lid clunk the way Mamie always told Mireille not to. “How fast can we get the Bartletts and Singhs in here?”
“Sell what you can,” said the woman, carrying a clipboard, her wordwind filled with checkmarks and dollar signs. “Junk the rest. Paul can hose the place down tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”
“Good,” said the man, opening and closing cupboards. When he approached the closet, Mireille read his ’wind, his intentions, his reasons for being here.
Mamie’s not coming back.
Her muscles coiled, ready to spring. The man jumped after he’d slid the doors wide and saw Mireille there. He yelped like a clown when she leaped, but she didn’t laugh.
Mamie’s gone.
Mamie’s gone.
She flew out of the closet, out the front door, out into the terrible bright.
Mamie’s gone, she thought, running, running, leaving everything behind. She’s gone and it’s all my fault.
Now Mireille sighs, long and hard, and slumps onto an upside-down bucket. She rifles through the shoebox, knuckle-deep in its empty promise, rejecting picture after picture after picture. True, a house won’t ever feel like a home without photos. Without proof that other people have smiled or held still or looked coy for someone else at least once in their lives. That—for a split-second, for now, forever—exposed and chemically-fixed, they exist. These people, though. Ugly as the flies invading her nostrils and ears, their static droning and insistent—and loud. Cocking her aching head, she squints to hear better.
“Is that you, Peyt?”
He’s going to call soon, she thinks, pulse racing. If I find one more cousin in here, he’ll call.
She flicks through the pile, faster and faster, but doesn’t feel a connection with any of them. They’ve got to be right; either with Peyt’s slender build or her crooked nose or dangerous grey eyes like Neddie’s. Aurelia’s shiny coif. A man’s callused hands awkwardly cradling his baby. Something, anything, to make these people familiar… . But all she finds are freckled mutants. High-heeled snakes. Blank-eyed psychos nobody wants on her family tree.
Come on, she thinks, tearing a potential candidate in her haste. In profile, the boy’s brow and chin were only sort of elongated, only a bit concave… . Who am I kidding, she thinks. The kid’s practically a crescent moon.
There are only two snapshots left when the ladderman knocks his cane against the bin’s metal side. Time’s up.
“Just a minute,” Mireille says, and the banging gets louder. The guard may not understand what she’s said, but he is obviously well-versed in the tone of stallers. The dumpster gongs, rattling her skull, making it impossible to hear the mentalegrapher’s signals.
“Fine,” she snaps, picking the technicolour print of an almost-pretty girl. If only her fingers weren’t quite so long. Her skin a bit less like weathered bark. “You’ll have to do, cousin.”
But as she climbs down the ladder and puts the picture in her wagon, Mireille recognises it for the cheat it is. This—creature—won’t ever go up on their living room wall. She’s an act of desperation, a mistake in judgement. In taking this thing and pretending she’s a fitting addition to their gallery, Mireille has undone all the good luck she stockpiled this morning. And now Peyt probably won’t be calling.
No, she thinks, scrunching the not-cousin. He definitely won’t call today.
Things to tell Peyt:
– found two new polishes for Ned (indigo, emerald)
– forgot your jacket
– one sidewalk is clear
– cockroaches in the cupboards
– grocer’s awning blew away
– my freckles have disappeared
– forgot your jacket
– apartment echoes (a lot)
– job (?)
Five more days, and no word.
She’s run up the stairs to the second floor and back without making a single step squeak. She’s worn the same three shirts in exactly the same way, avoiding the necklace that attracts bad news. She’s kept the hat in its box, the papers arranged by size and colour on the kitchen table. She’s managed to write five new lists before the kettle boiled. She’s held her breath twice as long as she needs to guarantee he’d call… . And still, nothing.
Mireille knows Peyt won’t talk about the war. She can respect this silence even without appreciating it. She gets it. She understands.
So she’s never asked him about it.
And still.
To kill time, she’ll go down to the toilet block. Brush her teeth—no blood and he’ll call—wash her hair—ten strands rinse down the drain at once and he’ll call—pluck her eyebrows—don’t flinch and he’ll call. Sometimes she just sits there, pants round her ankles, skirt hiked round her waist, staring at the graffiti. All the left-right, triangular, illegible words. The cocks and slits drawn in thick black marker. The question marks asking—something. Reaching out, anonymously, to a girl who gets it. Who understands.
Today, towel over one arm and hair dripping rat-tails, Mireille shivers on her way back up the slope. The apartment building looms before her, a giant marble headstone jammed into a grave of filth. Skeletons jangle in clusters at the water pump and by the taxi stand and near the tunnel to her home. Nests of snakes, she thinks. Packs of wives.
She shivers so fiercely she can’t fake-smile. Instead she matches her expression to theirs, scowling. Hisses and whispers follow her up the sidewalk. They’re talking, talking, talking about her. She doesn’t understand the words, but still she knows what they’re saying. They’re staring at her wordwind, staring at her. They think she’s stolen their crude little thoughts; they think she’s flaunting the theft about her, wearing it like a mantle. They think she’s keeping herself warm on their mean ideas.
One snake sashays across Mireille’s path, intentionally bumping her towel into the dirt. Another, whose blued knees jut out b
eneath a red silk slip, snorts a laugh. “Look,” Mireille growls, grabbing the smirker’s skinny forearm, a bare stick of meat. She tightens her grip, forcing the woman to feel the chill in her fingers.
“See,” she says, tugging desperately as the skingirl struggles. “See?”
Red stripes brand the other woman’s arm when she wriggles free.
“Cold,” Mireille calls after her. “Just like you. But you’ll soon have someone to keep you warm, won’t you? At least for a spell. Won’t you!”
Refusing to run, to be chased from her own threshold, Mireille plods underhill to the door. Rubbing her freezing hands together until they’re as pink as her cheeks.
Go on, she tells herself later, hesitating on the mentalegraphers’ doorstep. It’ll be fine.
Mireille looks up at the cream-coloured townhouse on the red road. The mediums couldn’t have chosen a more calming location for their business. Foot traffic bustles up and down the street, but the people are well-dressed and busy—too busy to deepen their scowls, wondering what a girl like her is doing in such a nice neighbourhood. The building’s smooth rendering is hardly shelled, and there isn’t a sharp edge in sight. Architraves curve gently around oval windows. The house’s corners look like they’ve been baked in a rounded cake mould. A decorative lintel projects vertically over the front door, adorned with long tubes of soft white light. Beneath her dull boots, a pale pink mat—scalloped and stitched to look like a brain—bids her Welcome.
Go inside. One way or another, it’s someone to talk to. Sort of.
Before going in, Mireille steps aside to let a young couple past. Their faces burnished with the joy of speaking long-distance. Receiving messages from Pigeons can’t compare to this kind of contact, this actual getting in touch; even if they’ve got a great ear for languages, Pigeons can only report. They’ll parrot each word the senders have shaped—they’ll get the order of phrases exactly right—but there’s no tone. No certainty that what’s been said will be heard the way it was intended. No feeling or emotion that Mireille doesn’t read into it herself.
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