Unfurled

by Michelle Bailat-Jones

  He stands and shakes his head, holds out his hand like he’s going to give her something, but she just gets angrier. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing!”

  My dad says something, but my mother cuts him off, “Speak normally!”

  “I am!” my dad yells. It’s such a shock to hear his voice raised and I pull it deep inside me where it starts a small fire. I’m angry, too.

  “That was yelling!”

  “Jesus, Maggie, you’re the one yelling! You are the one who’s always yelling!”

  Yes, I think. Tell her, I think.

  “Don’t manipulate me. I know what you’re doing.”

  “What I’m doing?” my dad says, tipping his head back and throwing his arms up to the gray sky. In my perch over the garden, I do the same and my arms are electric and strong. “What I’m doing?” He gestures at the garden, at the mess of it, and the hand at the end of his arm shakes. “Just tell me what you’re doing! Please! For God’s sake!”

  My mother takes a step away from him. “Stop bullying me!”

  He freezes. I freeze, too. His hands are still extended toward her but he pulls them back and quickly covers his face while I watch his tall body quake and I hear him take in the deepest breath I’ve ever heard. I take one in, too, shaking, because she’s the bully. My mother stands there watching him, and then she says, “Anyway, I have so much to do. You’re not helping me at all.”

  He loses it then, and a mournful wail rises up out of his body as he dips down and hoists a great armful of the garden debris at his feet. “I’ll help you,” he bellows, hurling the debris at the garage wall while I sit above them, furious, excited.

  “Stop it!” she yells. “Stop!”

  “No! Because someone has to clean up your fucking crazy messes!” Then he takes another armful and another, throwing each pile, grunting each time he launches one away from him.

  I scurry out of their room and back to my own. Stand in the center of my carpet and I’m so jittery I can hardly contain myself. My dad never gets upset. His face never gets red. His voice never trembles. We’re not just waiting and watching. We’re not just afraid. I get dressed in clean summer clothes, limbs tight, body contained, staring into the greenish light of Lizzy’s fish tank because it gives me somewhere to focus. School is starting in a few weeks and my project isn’t working. I strain my ears into the house and beyond. Nothing inside. Nothing outside. My fish floats listlessly near the bottom of the tank. She’s gotten so much worse. What are we going to do?

  The back door slams and I freeze. But then my dad calls me from the botom of the stairs. “Ella?”

  “I’m up!” I yell, running down to meet him in the kitchen.

  He’s clutching his white hat and twirling it—two times, three times, tension in his hands. His face is white, his mouth a tight line. “I’ve switched with Don, so I can be back at 2:00 PM, but now I’m really late and we need to race so I can drop you at Sonja’s on my way.”

  I shake my head. If he’s taking Don’s run, he needs to be at the Pier in fifteen minutes. “That will make you even more late. I can go on my own.”

  We stare at each other. He looks at his watch and I know he won’t make it. We both know. Captain’s cannot be late. The whole day’s schedule will be off. Still he says, “I’m taking you to Sonja’s.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, and I mean it, because we’re not afraid anymore. I stand tall. “You can’t, Dad. I will walk by myself. I promise.” We’re quiet for just a fraction of a second and then I ask, “She’s outside?”

  My dad looks down and I pull my hands behind me to hide my still-bandaged pinky. He says, “She’s walked to the nursery for something. I don’t know what.”

  “Ok, I’ll hurry. I’ll leave in ten minutes. I promise.”

  “Eight minutes,” he says, pulling the keys from his pocket. “Then call me when you get to Sonja’s. I’ll be back here at two.” He pauses. “You know you can always radio for me on the boat, if ever you need me.”

  I salute him. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He glances at George’s telephone number magneted to the fridge before walking out the door.

  I run back upstairs to get a sweater and to quickly change the water in Lizzy’s tank. I can do this one thing. I can fix something small. I ready my room-temperature water jug and the filtering cup, and as I trace along the aquarium glass with a finger, delight sparks because my fish has finally moved. She must be better. Maybe it just took her some time to adjust. My relief builds as I search the tank for her, growing wider and hopeful, but it collapses when I find her—head down, belly up, those marvelous wispy fins stretched out on either side. I drop to my knees, both hands plastered to the tank’s sides, thinking only how odd it is that Lizzy’s belly is all white. I assumed it was spotted like the rest of her. I narrow my eyes on the dead fish, waiting for tears, but none come. Crazy fucking messes is what I think.

  “I’m not sad,” I say. I examine Lizzy’s bloated body, whispering through clenched teeth, “My fish is dead. She’s dead.” I could kick myself. I’ve wasted my summer on a stupid fish. But no more. I race downstairs and with furious hands, I grab my tennis shoes from beside the door and stuff my feet into them, hearing again the sound that rose up from my dad’s body as he threw the plants against the garage. It fills me, too. The house is so quiet now but still vibrating; I hold myself very still and hear the sound of water dripping in the sink, the rasp of car wheels on the pavement outside. I focus. I rustle for my house key in the drawer by the back door. But then comes the sound of the toilet flushing and the sink running in the downstairs bathroom. The door opens and there she is.

  She walks out of the bathroom and I say, “My fish died,” like it’s all her fault, like she owes me an apology.

  But she doesn’t ask me what happened. She doesn’t argue with my tone of voice. She doesn’t even seem to see me.

  “I know they’ve done it, I know they’re out there. They tricked me into buying the wrong seeds.”

  She is covered in mud, both her arms, her knees, even her hair has mud in it. Her fingernails are thick dark crescents. There are petals and plant leaves stuck to her t-shirt. Three tomato seeds on her cheek. Her face is tense, focused inward.

  “What are you talking about?” I say. My voice is hard.

  She cocks her head at me. Sees me. Then her eyes narrow, “Follow me, I don’t want you going out there right now.”

  “I’m going to Sonja’s …”

  “Not right now you’re not.”

  My rebellion is to wait a moment. I don’t follow her right away. But she repeats herself, “I said I don’t want you out there. I want you to stay with me.”

  We walk in a line up the stairs and I hold tight to my little ball of fury. Leaves drop from her shoulder onto the carpet and I step on them. She goes into the bathroom, leans over the sink and turns on the water. “I’ve got most of them out. I’ll finish it after a break.” She immerses both her arms up to the elbows in the porcelain bowl. I stand behind her at the doorway. I watch her cleaning her arms so gently, so carefully.

  “I said that my fish died.”

  She just keeps passing her forearms under the stream of water.

  “Don’t you even hear me?” I’ve raised my voice. “My fish. The one I found with George. My project. Don’t you even care?”

  She nods over the sink. “I hear you, but I’m telling you I’ve got a few more of those seeds to get out of the ground and then I’ll have fixed it.” She wipes the mud off her knuckles.

  “What seeds? What are you talking about?”

  She keeps washing her arms, running a hand up one arm and down the other. The dirt sluices off her skin and creates a dirty lake inside the wash basin. “It’s a very good thing I figured this out,” she says.

  “Why?” There is poison in my voice and I both want her to hear it and am terrified that she’ll hear it. “You’re talking about seeds and I�
��m telling you my fish died.”

  “They’ve got a scheme going at Sky Nursery. A dangerous and deadly scheme. They’ve fooled everyone.” Here she laughs. “And I told your father but he’s just as trusting as everyone else at this point.”

  When she looks at me this time, her eyes are hooded and dark. She’s looking at me, but I’m not anywhere in that look. I can’t find myself in the face she’s using to stare at me. This is not my mother.

  “No. He’s. Not.” I say, alive now. Electric now.

  “He’s not what?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with trusting.”

  She moves back from the sink and is drying her arms. “What are you saying to me, Ella Tomlinson?”

  I don’t know what I’m saying—my body is red hot, my hands and feet filled with energy and courage—but I say it anyway, “You’re wrong.”

  “What?”

  “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything.”

  Her face grows very still. “I won’t have that, Ella. You’re going to behave. That is the first rule. No matter what your father says.”

  “You don’t make the rules,” I yell. “You just make stuff up!” Then I turn, ready to race down the stairs and out the door to Sonja’s.

  But she is behind me in a second, grabbing my elbow in the doorway.

  “Get off me!” I scream.

  Her hand tightens. “You’re out of control, you’re being unsafe!”

  “You’re hurting me, let me go!”

  We tussle. Me pulling away and her hand like a vise on my arm. “Stop moving,” she says.

  I don’t stop. I am fighting her with everything I’ve got. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Stay still. I would never hurt you!”

  My tiny body explodes with rage at this lie. She is someone who cannot, absolutely and never again, be trusted to tell me the truth. I am louder, sharper, more dangerous than I have ever felt and I shout in her face, “Get away from me, you fucking crazy mess!”

  She jerks back, shocked at what I’ve said and I am suddenly fast as a swordfish, slick and swift with power. I slip my arm away from her before she even knows it and I strike out with the same speed. I slap her in the face and the sound is thick, sickening, as it echoes in the tiled room. Then I push against her hips and when she stumbles backward, I slam the bathroom door, putting it between us, scared of myself and of her. I kick the door hard, screaming that I hate her and I want her to leave us alone, to go far far away. But I mean me, now, too.

  In five quick steps I am safe inside my bedroom and plunging a small hand into Lizzy’s tank, wrapping my fingers around the slippery creature and feeling the flimsy bones break as I clench her body and race downstairs. I am outside in a flash and into the wreck of our garden. With my free hand I carve out a small hole near an upturned paper flag that reads acorn squash in my mother’s once-tidy writing. I hurl Lizzy in and hurriedly cover the corpse with more wet mud.

  The rain is falling hard as I stand up. Rain soaks the front and back of my sweater and slides onto my nose and I know that I cannot go to Sonja’s. I head in the direction of George’s house. But I get within a block and turn down another street. And I keep going. I zigzag, left on 60th and right on 24th, left on 59th and right on 22nd, and so on, until I hit Market street and turn around. Just walking. Keeping myself in motion. Kids are outside on their bikes even in the rain. Cars pass with their windshield wipers screeching. I walk for over an hour. Maybe even two. Before I realize it, my zigzagging brings me back to my own street. And this is when I see that the front door is wide open.

  I walk up the steps. I am only ten years old. I’ve exhausted my anger in all my walking and all I’ve got left is my child’s fear. The house is very quiet but I wait for a moment just inside the door. Everything is silent. I stand at the bottom of the stairs and then tiptoe up them. Listening. All of the doors upstairs are open. Not a sound comes from any of them. My room hums with the buzz from the light in Lizzy’s empty tank. I step past my door toward my parent’s room. Listening, both hoping and not hoping.

  I don’t call her name. Signs of a departure are everywhere. “She’s always leaving,” I sass into the still air, but it’s only a whisper. “A normal parent would leave a note.”

  An empty duffel bag lies several feet from the closet. Two dresser drawers are slightly open, some drawers empty and some drawers draped in clothes spilling over the edges like cloth vines. Shoes litter the floor and one of my mother’s winter coats is arms-wide spread across the bed. There is a gaping hole in the closet where her hanging clothes usually hang. She’s left before but she’s never taken anything with her.

  I understand in the way you experience the pain from a burn. There’s the initial contact, and at first nothing, but then it blazes and throbs. I understand her leaving is my fault. I told her to go.

  I hurry back to my own room, get my savings wallet and a coat and run outside. I don’t call my dad. This is my fault, and if I can just get to her in time, I can fix it. I sprint to the bus stop a few blocks away and watch the mud on my shoes dry as I ride all the way downtown. Then I get off at the pier as I’ve done many times before, just never alone.

  It’s not a problem to find the terminal, to know which doors to go in. Will she already be inside, waiting for the next ferry? Am I too late? I try to rush but I’m blocked by a large family, the kids juggling with backpacks, the parents rolling a suitcase each. Finally inside, the main terminal waiting hall is crowded with people sitting in straight rows of linked plastic seats or milling about the vending machines and coffee counter. I sweep the room, searching for her. Nothing. I check the bathrooms, the telephone cabins, the groups of people staring at the time boards. But she isn’t there. It’s nearly two o’clock. My dad will be off his boat and heading home already.

  I am determined. I am fierce. I stand in that main hall and I weigh my options. I can give up and go home or I can get on the next boat and follow her where she must be going. My dad went to find her in Bellingham the last time, where the Skagway boat brought her back. I will do the same. I have my pass. I can still catch her. But none of the schedule boards list Bellingham. I stand below them and read them all again. None of it makes sense.

  I have to think. I have to figure this out. I stand rigid, checking the schedule. She takes boats. The times she left us this summer she took a boat, didn’t she? I just have to get on one. I can be brave. I think how relieved my dad will be when my mother and I will come back home together tonight. So I dare the counter, waiting what seems like ages for the line to grow shorter. I ask the woman in the Washington State Ferries uniform about the Skagway Ferry. I say this like I know what it is.

  She frowns and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady.”

  “The Alaska boats,” I say, growing quieter.

  She shakes her head.

  “Or Bellingham?” I asked.

  “We got boats to Bainbridge Island and Bremerton. That’s all. If you go next door there’s the boat for Canada. But that’s an expensive one.” She gives me a sideways glance. “You’re not on your own are you?”

  I shake my head, point across the room and say, “Just asking for my parents. We’re visiting the city.”

  A man comes from behind her and says, “Yes, yes, the Alaska Service. You got to get to Bellingham to use that one. But that’s a three day boat ride, how long you folks visiting?”

  I shrug and smile and slink away. Then I circle the inside of the terminal, once, twice, three times. Hoping. Thinking. I know the ferries but I don’t know this. She isn’t here. How will I get to Bellingham? Where is Bellingham? Three days!

  Groups of people are staggered about the room, everyone shuffling luggage back and forth. At the main doors, I peer outside. I walk back and forth in front of the building. There are taxis lined up and a few people waiting for them. There are several other cars whisking into the pickup/drop off space then speeding away once they’ve collected the person they’ve
come for.

  I pause. I walk to the end of the street. I walk back, cross the front of the terminal building and keep going on to the next corner. I will try these first streets. Walk them carefully. I have to find her. I will find her.

  “Looking for someone?”

  The voice comes from behind me. I turn around.

  And I jump. The man only has one leg. He’s holding an empty white box in one hand and a pair of crutches in the other. “It’s okay,” I say, backing away. “I’m meeting my mom.”

  “So you’re going somewhere with your mom?” He has a full beard and a baseball cap. His face is tan. His lips are dry.

  I shake my head, walk toward the terminal building.

  He’s hopping beside me, staring at me. “It was just a question, I’m just curious. I like talking to people.”

  I keep walking but he stays with me; he’s really fast on his one leg. “Where’s your mom then?”

  “She’s just there,” I say, pointing, trying to walk even faster.

  “I don’t see her. Is she that blonde lady?”

  I keep going. I don’t answer him.

  “Wait,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I said, is she that blonde lady?”

  I try to shake his hand off, but his fingers hold tight. “Let’s go talk to her. She looks nice.”

  I pull again but cannot get out of his grip. I’m looking all around and there’s no one paying any attention. There’s no policeman. No other adults even noticing what’s happening. A group of people down the street are laughing, families going about their family stuff. I start to cry and the man lets go. “Whoa! That’s ok. You’re okay.” He puts his hand back. “Just help me along.”

  But I hurtle myself away from him and his hand drops. I break into a run.