by Zoje Stage
When Hanna awoke many hours later, the house was dark and quiet. For the night’s final act of revenge, she fished the jewelry out of Mungo’s plush back. But on second thought, she put the ring back; she liked it, maybe she’d want to wear it someday, when she got bigger.
Plop! Plop! Two diamond earrings, into the toilet. For good measure, she had a quick pee before flushing everything away. She remembered watching the shiny baubles circle and spin before the tidal wave carried them away forever.
Mommy never set her treasures beside her bed again. Or called in another babysitter. The memory of it made Hanna grin, but it was hot in the car and she was hungry. A part of her wanted to get back in the tube, where she could spin around like a ship in orbit. Sometimes she couldn’t tell where she wanted to be. Far away in outer space? Or closer than close. Sometimes she wished she could remember being in Mommy’s tummy. Were they both really happy then? When their blood was all jumbled up and they shared a mystery?
SUZETTE
SHE TUCKED THE little travel pillow against her abdomen before fastening the seat belt. It wasn’t such a necessary precaution anymore, but sometimes when she hit a pothole it made her wince. She described for Alex how it felt, feeling the places inside her knit back together. Once, on a slow day at Phipps Conservatory in their early months of dating, they meandered from room to room, lingering in front of whatever odd plant caught their attention. The sweat dripped from their temples as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the sun-filled glass enclosure, entranced as they watched a grassy plant burst upward in spurts of growth. The sound attracted them first—they could hear the plant growing!
“That’s how it feels inside sometimes. Like little bursts of mending. It’s like I can feel filaments reaching out, webbing together. Like that plant we watched grow at Phipps.”
“Must be weird,” Alex had said as he gently caressed her tender flesh.
“It doesn’t hurt exactly, but it startles me.” And it was reassuring that her body knew how to put itself back together. Though she still willed it to mend correctly, without the aberration of another fistula.
Suzette concentrated on the traffic; midday Oakland was always a mess. She regretted not going in the other direction. She could have stopped by Alex’s office if they’d gone that way—his firm owned a building on McKee Place that had once been a church. He and his partner, Matt, had fully remodeled it, keeping the main room—open and airy—as a conference room with an immense table made of recycled paper. She knew Hanna loved the atrium, which had once been the altar. They’d installed skylights so the trees would reach for the light. Visiting Daddy would have been a treat; he’d give Hanna his effortless kisses and affection. Sometimes it bothered Suzette, how Hanna lit up in his presence, becoming as loving toward her daddy as he was toward her. It wasn’t that Suzette had never tried to be more loving, but her efforts waned as Hanna continually pushed her away. Still, she’d behaved very well through her appointments; she deserved a little reward.
“So Hanna, I want to thank you for being so good today.” She looked in the rearview mirror, but Hanna wouldn’t meet her eye. “Why don’t we stop at Trader Joe’s and you can pick out a little—”
Hanna burst into happy clapping. Suzette smiled, pleased with herself.
“You’re becoming such a big girl. And the doctor had good news: you’re totally fine. Perfect health. It might be a good time to start looking for a school. It’s been a while and you’ll probably like it better—”
Hanna slammed her hands against the window, shrieking as if she’d awakened in a coffin.
“Stop it!” Suzette didn’t think Hanna was strong enough to break the glass, but the girl seemed determined to try. Suzette regretted spoiling their good moment.
“Okay! You wouldn’t be going to school now, not right now. We’d be looking for the fall—”
Hanna kept pounding on the window, squawking in anger.
Suzette wanted to whip around and slap her knee, but the cars inched together nose-to-tail; she couldn’t risk turning away. Why had she said anything? Another of her stupid parental fails. The light mercifully turned red and she put on the brakes. She snapped off her seat belt so she could turn all the way around.
“Stop it right now! We’re not going to Trader Joe’s if you keep acting like a brat!”
Hanna switched off her tantrum. They competed in a stare-off, which Suzette lost when she glanced at the stoplight. But she quickly reengaged with her daughter.
“You think this is funny? These games you play? Someday it’s gonna get you in real trouble. You’re not going to get your way forever.”
Hanna smiled. And nodded her head.
A car beeped at them. “All right!” Suzette put her foot on the gas and the car lurched forward. With one hand, she refastened her seat belt. “And I expect you to behave well in the store—you behave well, and you can pick out what you want.”
Suzette saw the smug grin on her daughter’s face; Hanna might have thought she’d won, but the issue of school wouldn’t be dropped that easily. She’d get Alex on her side before they brought it up again. Meanwhile, if she was lucky, she could appease Hanna with a bag of dark chocolate–covered blueberries, and hope they could maintain the peace for the rest of the day.
* * *
In the store, Hanna dropped her favorite items into the cart while Suzette pushed it along, lost in thought. Alex. Naked. Alex’s mouth. Alex’s comforting arms. Alex’s torso and the way they fit together. She didn’t love his trendy beard, but he looked good in it. More reddish than his corn-silk hair, and he kept it fairly short. He liked his beauty products. He liked beauty—Suzette’s, their daughter’s. He dressed well and kept himself fit, but he wasn’t traditionally handsome. His features were too crowded in the center of his face; when they first met, she had an impulse to pinch his cheeks and stretch them out, giving his eyes, nose, mouth a little more room. But the minute he started talking to her by the coffee machine at her first and only post-school job, he exuded such warmth and interest. His kindness transformed him, making him so easy to talk to. And so gorgeous.
They were all the way to the refrigerated section when Suzette realized she’d forgotten the bananas. She scanned the cart, pleasantly surprised that Hanna hadn’t picked up any strange items, just her Puffins, a jar of peaches, a bag of organic tortilla chips, and a frozen spinach pizza. Suzette experienced a rare bloom of pride, hopeful that she’d managed to teach Hanna about healthy food choices.
“Did you want to get your blueberries?” she asked as they backtracked past the fruit, nuts, and chocolate.
Hanna grabbed up multiple bags of various chocolate-covered fruit.
“Hey, how about just one of each.” That was still more than she usually allowed, but she wanted Alex to have proof of the reward she’d given to her. She knew how he envisioned their family: his good daughter and his perfect wife. The loving, caring mother who successfully eased her daughter’s fears of the scary machine and found a new path to try on the quest for their sweet child’s health and happiness. (The perfect, devoted wife who worried her family was slipping away. She’d spent years in the pre-Alex abyss and couldn’t survive another descent.)
When Hanna didn’t listen, Suzette plucked the extra pouches out of the cart. Hanna only whined a little, halfheartedly stamping her foot.
“It’s still four times what you usually get.”
Flashing a triumphant grin, Hanna bounded off to the produce section.
From elsewhere in the store, a young child was crying. Recognizing the long, determined wails of a tantrum, Suzette felt immediate sympathy for the parent. The cries increased in volume when she reached the produce area, where a mother struggled to hang on to an erupting toddler in one hand as she pushed a full cart with the other. The toddler’s screaming grew louder and more determined, and Suzette made out individual words—Want! No!—as he raged.
Just as she was about to tell Hanna to stop licking the lemons, Hanna abandone
d them to go watch the tantrum. Suzette kept a watchful eye on her and quickly placed bananas and apples, Brussels sprouts and salad fixings into the cart.
“Hanna, come on.”
The toddler, red-faced, tried to wrestle out of his mother’s grasp. When he realized he couldn’t, his body went rigid and he howled at the ceiling. The other shoppers made a wide arc around the commotion, their faces pinched and judgmental. Hanna stepped right in front of the bellowing little boy, bending at the waist as she put a finger to her mouth. Sssshhh.
It startled him for a moment and he quieted.
“Hanna, come on—we’re ready to go.”
“She’s a sweet little girl,” said the other mother.
“Thanks.” Suzette, not trusting in Hanna’s sweetness, extended her hand, knowing Hanna wouldn’t take it, but hoping she would move along.
The toddler exploded again, this time with Hanna as the object of his rage. He lashed out at her with a sloppy punch and resumed screeching.
“Brandon, you know better…” said the other mother.
Before Suzette could stop her, Hanna drew back a closed, determined fist and struck the boy on the side of the head.
The boy tottered, stunned, then dropped to his bottom.
“Oh no!” Suzette rushed over, tugging Hanna away. “I’m sorry—we’re so sorry!”
The mother scooped Brandon into her arms, her face alight with shock. He burst into tears, breathy cries of pain.
“Is he okay? I’m so sorry!” Suzette glared down at Hanna. “We do not hit people!”
Hanna pointed at the boy, her silent way of condemning him as the instigator.
The mother held him away from them, checking his eye, his ear, the soft spot along his temple. She bounced him, trying to soothe his tears.
Reading the hateful, how-dare-you-make-my-day-worse glower on the mother’s face, Suzette clutched Hanna’s hand and escaped to the checkout lanes. She would have just left, abandoned the cart, and fled in shame. But things would get worse if Hanna had to leave the store without her treat.
Suzette’s hands shook and she babbled as the cashier scanned her items.
“Hanna, you absolutely know hitting is wrong. And he’s just a little—it doesn’t matter, you can’t hit people, ever. That is not okay, and you know that is not okay…”
Hanna sighed, bored. Suzette kept her head down as they left the store, certain everyone would recognize her as the mother who couldn’t control her violent child. Slugging a toddler.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
After buckling herself into her car seat, Hanna gazed at Suzette, expectant and unblinking. She tilted her head and quirked her mouth, and Suzette knew exactly what she was threatening. A tantrum of her own, unless Suzette handed over the goods.
Suzette put the shopping bags in the front seat, far from Hanna’s reach, and dug out a pouch of dark chocolate–covered blueberries.
“This is not a reward for what you did in the store,” she said before handing them over. “You earned this by being good at the doctor’s, but Daddy and I will have to talk about what you did, because hitting is unacceptable. Okay?”
Hanna grinned, tearing open the bag, and God help her but Suzette saw nothing but devilish pride in her daughter’s face. She wanted to rip the pouch from her hands. But she was too tired. Too tired and she just wanted to get home.
It was always too much to hope for that an entire day would go well.
As they drove, Hanna nibbled her blueberries and hummed a nasally tune that almost made her sound cheerful, normal. Suzette prayed the chocolate would be enough to mollify her until Alex got home, when Hanna could be counted on to put on her angelic mask and become Daddy’s good little girl.
HANNA
THEIR HOUSE WAS different from the other houses on their tight Shadyside street, like it was from the future. She loved it because it was safe, and familiar, and Daddy designed the whole thing. He always said Mommy helped him with the inside, but Hanna knew she just picked out the furniture—stuff not so different from things she’d seen in the IKEA catalog. Everything was white or natural-looking wood. But the magical part was all Daddy’s doing: the glass wall that overlooked the big garden, even from the second floor. The space-age stairs. The cool cleanness of the whole interior, better than a flying saucer.
The L-shaped living room couch was custom-made. Hanna liked to leap off the built-in slats that stuck out at the ends. Mommy always yelled “Stop standing on the tables!” but to Hanna they looked like diving platforms. She liked to stick her fingers in the potted plants to see if they needed to be watered, but Mommy always yelled at her for sprinkling dirt on the floor. Mommy liked things to be clean. And she liked to yell, when Daddy wasn’t around. Hanna liked to play in the walled-in garden, the high fence and hedges a barrier that obscured the other houses, and hid them all from the neighbors’ curious eyes. No one bothered her as she ran around saving all the passengers from the sinking ship. She filched the money from their pockets and the gems from their necks before pushing them into the lifeboat. Sometimes she galloped around and around, astride her magnificent gray horse.
She stood in front of the giant television, flipping through the channels.
“Hanna—it’s not time for TV, you haven’t done any schoolwork today.”
Behind her, Mommy put away the Trader Joe’s stuff in the cabinets that reminded her of fog. When she was little, she climbed onto the counter and carefully took out all the plates and bowls. She was about to hoist herself in, wanting to see the foggy cabinet from the inside where she imagined it would be like being in a cloud. Then Daddy scooped her into his arms. “Whatcha doing, little monkey?” He wasn’t mad and she giggled.
She kept pressing the buttons on the remote control, aware of her sticky fingers. She saw it in her mind, and then it happened: Mommy marched over and grabbed the remote. She made her disgusted face. “You’ve got chocolate…”
Mommy clicked her tongue and switched off the TV. She carried the remote back with her to the kitchen and got a paper towel and the fancy spray bottle and rubbed away Hanna’s cooties. Hanna grinned behind her hand, licking it clean.
“Come on, we’ll start with a little spelling bee, it’ll be fun. You can impress me with all the hard words you know.” Mommy got some supplies out of the cupboard where they kept the school things.
Hanna trudged over. She sat on her knees in a chair at the big tree-slab table that hovered between the kitchen and the living room.
Mommy stuck a pencil into the electric sharpener, whirring it until it was sharp enough to poke out an eye. Hanna liked that part, and watched as Mommy did a second pencil. Mommy handed them both to her, and slid over a piece of paper.
“We’ll just do a few. It’ll be a short school day. First word: love. I love sleeping. You love the color yellow. Love.”
As Hanna wrote down an answer, Mommy tucked the reading book under her arm so Hanna couldn’t see the answers and went back to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and two white pills. She swallowed the pills as she came back.
“Got it? Ready?” Mommy sat across from her, looking weird and wobbly as she rubbed at two spots on either side of her head.
Hanna held up her paper so Mommy could see what she’d written.
Hate
“Nice try. But this isn’t word association. Do you want to spell out love?”
Hanna shook her head. She knew Mommy tried to be her most extra patient when they did schoolwork, because it was Important. Daddy said that all the time, so Hanna usually tried her best so Daddy would gush about how smart she was. But she needed Mommy to understand how it would be if she forced her to go to school. Mommy should never have brought it up.
“Okay, we’ll do a different word. How about … summer. In a couple of months it will be summer. Hanna’s Farmor and Farfar come to visit every summer.”
So easy peasy. Hanna wrote something on her paper, then turned it around to show Mommy.
>
Bitch
Mommy’s sigh half-melted her and she could barely keep her floppy-self sitting upright. “That’s not a nice word. I’m not even surprised you know how to spell it. Could you please spell the words I’m asking you to spell? The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can move on to other things.”
Hanna sat poised, ready for the next word.
“Strawberry. Straw-berry. She couldn’t eat just one strawberry.”
Hanna covered the paper with her hand so Mommy couldn’t see what she was writing.
“That seems a bit long for one word—what are you spelling over there?”
Hanna giggled and kept writing. When she was ready, she held up her masterpiece.
Fuck Mommy. She is week and stupid.
A vein squiggled next to Mommy’s eye and she clenched her jaw.
“Okay, that’s it, you can work on your own for a while.” As she got up, Mommy reached for the spelling test.
But Hanna was ready: she tore up the page into little pieces and sprinkled them on the table.
“Of course, no evidence for Daddy. Hanna, I don’t want to do this with you right now. I know you couldn’t have loved the CT and new doctor—don’t you just want the rest of the day to be easy?” She scooped the paper scraps into her hand.
It wasn’t just easy, it was fun. And here was Mommy, losing her patience. Bad, bad Mommy. Maybe she’d make a report card on Mommy and show it to Daddy, with a big fat failing F. But Mommy wasn’t quite ready to give up. She opened another workbook and spun it around so Hanna could see it.
“You can read this short section … It’s about ancient Egypt: the Pyramids, and the Pharaohs—they’re like kings and queens, you’ll like that. And then on the next page. Look, you’ll get to write something out using hieroglyphs—that’s like a secret language. You can write Daddy a secret message. Okay? Write him whatever you want. Tell him you hit a baby at the store. Tell him you’ve mastered spelling profane words.” She headed for the kitchen. After sprinkling the spelling test into the recycling bin, she gathered up her cleaning supplies and trusty rubber gloves. “And by the way, you used the wrong spelling—it’s w-e-a-k. Because Mommy is not a day of the week.”