The Air We Breathe

by Christa Parrish

  Fat Guy flipped the channel. “Stupid nonsense.” He rubbed his forehead. “It’s hot in here. Stupid windows painted shut. Stupid uncle who doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

  On the TV a man jumped up and down when the announcer called his name. “Come on downnnnn!” He wanted to win a new refrigerator. Hanna wanted to go home.

  Help me, Gee. Help me. Please, please help me, Gee.

  Fat Guy bent toward her, bowl of cereal shaking in his hand. He set it on top of the kennel, fumbled with the keys on a red string around his neck. Found the right one. After three attempts he managed to slip the little gold key into the padlock. The lock sprung open. He panted, stood, dropping the keys back into his shirt. “I feel . . .” He took two steps away from the kennel, dropped onto his knees, and fell backward.

  And Hanna waited. The Price Is Right went off and on came As the World Turns. Fat Guy didn’t move. Then Guiding Light. Hanna’s stomach growled. Fat Guy still didn’t move.

  She stuck her fingers through the metal squares and maneuvered the lock off the hasp, pushed the latch aside, and nudged the door with her shoulder. It swung open. She crawled out, carpet beneath her fingers, sticky, matted with footprints and the milk she’d spilled yesterday. Her hair fell over Fat Guy’s face. The man still didn’t move. Hanna poked him in the neck.

  Nothing.

  She knelt, rubbing her thumbs over her fingers, squeezing her hands opened and closed. And then, in one quick motion, she reached down Fat Guy’s shirt, grabbing the key hanging on the red string between the soft mounds on his chest, tugging it over his frizzy head.

  Hanna touched Fat Guy’s blue-gray lips, knowing deep down he was dead, in that same way she knew it was because of her words to Gee. She thought she should cry but didn’t. Her tears had dried up. If she got home, her mother would be happy; she never liked Hanna crying, always told her to stop. Her daddy hadn’t minded, though. When he was alive.

  She stood too fast and grabbed the arm of the upholstered chair until the clouds stopped swirling in her eyes. Then, with shaky fingers, she slid the key into the door’s inside lock, metal scraping against metal, and stood there staring at the silver key protruding from the gold oval, her toes curling in the carpet. She felt Fat Guy mounded up behind her, the stillness echoing in her ears. Her pulse bubbled behind her knees, in the crooks of her elbows. She turned the metal stub—click—her entire body flinching with the sound, afraid of finding Thin Man on the other side of the door. With only her fingertips she turned the knob and brought it toward her until she thought she could fit through.

  Help me, Gee.

  It had worked before.

  She slipped her thin body between the door and jamb, not touching either of them, stepping into a short hallway. A banister, dark wood slick and curving like a serpent, twisted down a flight of stairs. She touched the cool, lacquered wood, following it down the bare-board stairs, following it around the corner into another hall with one door, a big brass C on it. She scurried down another flight of stairs, around another corner, another door, more steps, until she reached the entranceway, tiled with tiny white octagons and uneven gray grout. The door was glass in front of her. She saw the street, rippled cars parked along it, distorted in the speckled glass. And then she opened the door and ran.

  Her naked toes dragged over the sidewalk, her hair bounced like a Slinky around her shoulders. She could not run far, her ankles hurting and her lungs aching and her toes cold. After two blocks, she had to walk. She looked at every man who passed her, stealing a glance behind her if she heard approaching footsteps, searching for Thin Man or Short One, but didn’t see either of them.

  What would happen when they found her gone?

  As the sky darkened, not yet with night but with long, thin cloud fingers, the people around her darkened, too. First to creamy caramel and throwing words like darts around her. Spanish words; she recognized some from Dora the Explorer.

  “Mira, mira. Mirela. ¿Cuál es su problema?”

  Mira. Look. They were looking at her, walking the streets with her cornflower hair and Corona T-shirt. No pants. She crossed her arms to keep the cooling air from dipping down her shirt, kneaded her shoulders and elbows as she stepped through some invisible barrier back into an English-speaking part of the city, where people were darker still, where she heard them talking about her—“What’s wrong with her? Where did she come from? Man, she’s whack.”

  A woman, solid midnight, came off her stoop and stopped Hanna. “Dear, sweet Lord, girl. What happen to you?” She had an accent, like the people in the movie about the bobsledders from the tropical island.

  Hanna opened her mouth, waiting for the words in her head to drop into the cavern at the back of her throat and fill it, but nothing came.

  “We get you help,” the night-woman said, her teeth and eyes bright. “Come into my home. We get you clothes, and help.”

  Hanna stared up toward the door, where other children and people sat and stared back. Someone touched her from behind, and she spun, waited for her hair to fall before she saw a huge man with a bowed-out belly. His hands were on her, and the fight inside her she had choked back into some deep place right after Henry had been shot came roaring up, and she clawed at the stranger, even as he said, “Calm down, little girl. We want to help you.”

  Little girl. He called me little girl.

  She went deaf to him after that, and when his arm clamped across her breastbone, she lowered her chin and bit him as hard as she could, until she tasted blood on her tongue and he let go. Then she ran again, wiping her mouth as she ducked between people, turning one corner, then another, crossing the street and dodging a car, before she tired again. She pressed herself into a narrow alley to catch her breath.

  She looked down at her feet, black with the day, and shivered. Tired, her stomach gurgling as it shrunk in hunger, she tiptoed through the alley, avoiding broken glass and beer cans and stray papers and potato chip bags, and emerged from the other side, onto a quiet street with building lights glowing in the fading day.

  She needed to find a place to rest, a warm place. A small place. She felt dizzy in the hugeness of the outside. The tall brownstones she passed grew up from underground, having basement doors in stairwells below street level and iron fences around them so people wouldn’t fall in. At least, that was what she thought they were for. It didn’t matter; the twisted black iron looked like her cage, and that soothed her somewhat.

  She snuck down into one of the stairwells, careful to crouch down, even though she was shorter than the windowless door’s peephole, and squeezed in between two gray trash cans. But the cold ground hurt to sit on and her teeth chattered and she could see her breath, feel her frozen nose against her not-so-frozen knee. She stood, planning to find somewhere warmer to sleep. The one garbage can was full, a white bag pushing open the hinged lid. Hanna opened the other can; one bag of trash filled the bottom. There was plenty of room for her.

  Holding on to the metal railing, she climbed the wall and swung her legs into the can. She dropped down, something sharp in the bag poking into the sole of her foot, and then she folded into the darkness, pulling the lid closed. It was warm, but with the smell of rot and fish and soiled diapers, she couldn’t breathe. She pressed her nose to a tiny hole in the side, the size of a nostril but perfectly round, and took in thin breaths of outside air.

  She dozed, woke, shifted, slept hard, woke, and dozed again. Light flooded in, and Hanna slapped her hand over her eyes, heard someone say, “Oh,” heard the lid clatter to the cement. She squinted, tilted her head up but saw only shadows between her eyelids. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” And then hands were on her, and she slapped them away; her flailing and kicking knocked the can over.

  She crawled out, crashing into the jean-clad legs in front of her. A woman fell down next to Hanna as she tried to scramble by, grabbed her. “Shh. It’s okay. Honey, it’s going to be okay. Calm down.” But Hanna didn’t stop wriggling, jerked her head back into somet
hing hard, and the woman cried out but didn’t let go. And then Hanna was half lifted, half dragged through the basement door.

  “Trey, hurry,” the woman called as the door closed, and Hanna fought harder, trapped again inside an apartment. Something dripped on her neck. “Help. Trey, come quick.”

  “Joanna, what—? You’re bleeding,” the man said, towel around his waist, water slipping down his bald, brown head.

  “My nose. It’s nothing. Just call 9-1-1.”

  The man dialed the phone and disappeared with it down a hallway. He returned dressed. “They’re coming. Let me take her.”

  “No. I don’t want to let her go. Get her that blanket,” the woman said.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” the man said, covering her with a fringed throw from the back of the rocking chair.

  The woman smoothed it over Hanna, rocking her. “I think so.”

  7

  MOLLY

  FEBRUARY 2009

  When Tobias finally came back, it was with a girl. A petite, pretty girl with shaggy amber hair she wore tied back in a wide olive ribbon, the sides falling out and around her face. She wore a scarf of wild colors around her neck, looped twice, the tasseled ends hanging mid-thigh.

  She matches him, Molly thought. They looked like they belonged together.

  “Toby, this place is fantastic,” the girl said, her Down-Easter accent much stronger than his, more like the old-time Mainers. Like Mick’s. “Just like you told me.”

  “Molly,” Tobias said, “this is Kristina.”

  “Hey,” Kristina said. “Wow, this place is like something out of a movie. I love it.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Molly said, her tongue dry as Velcro.

  “Oh, you too. Hey, you have a brochure or something?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure. Of course. I’m sorry.” Molly handed her a pamphlet from the counter. Tobias gave her a twenty and a ten.

  “And a map,” he said.

  “Right, of course. Sorry.”

  “Don’t keep apologizing,” he said.

  Kristina grabbed a couple of postcards from the tall revolving rack near the door. “I have to have these, too. Toby says you’re homeschooled?”

  “Yeah.” Molly slid the cards into a thin paper bag.

  “That’s fascinating. You seem normal, but, boy, no prom? No other kids? No boys to look at all day? And you’re okay with all that?”

  “I guess. I never really thought about it.”

  “Who teaches you?”

  “It’s an online school. Sometimes there are videos to watch. Mostly it’s just reading and writing papers. And taking tests.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Kristina’s a psych major. Everything’s fascinating to her,” Tobias said.

  The girl giggled, on cue, wrapping both her arms around Tobias’s one, which he had planted in his pocket, his elbow bent and winged out like a chicken. “Ayuh. Got that right. Come on, let’s get through. I have E.C.D. at two.”

  They stepped through the black curtain together, and Molly stared hard at the words she’d written in her history notebook, numbered and bulleted with lopsided asterisks and thick dark arrows pointing to key ideas. She would only remember it long enough to take the test, and then it would be gone, disintegrating into the mound of other things she needed to know only for a grade, and it would be on to the next handful of useless information. She didn’t see any use for history.

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The George Santayana quote was printed in the front of her textbook, the one Louise had bought used online. But Molly thought both parts of the quote didn’t matter. People held on to their pasts all the time, and it didn’t make the future any different. And people forgot all the time, or tried to, and what did it change? Nothing. The repeat part would always exist. There was nothing new under the sun.

  Her rib cage felt as if someone had wound a rubber band around it, over and over and over, so tight that when she tried to take a deep breath, it hurt. Tobias was back in the museum with that perky girl. He was in college and going places, cool and charismatic, the kind of guy who drew people to him. Molly wasn’t perky. She wasn’t much more than the mop she cleaned the lobby floor with, a pole of wood and dull cotton tresses.

  She wanted him to notice her.

  Silly, silly.

  They came through the other side, laughing about something, and Molly dove into her work, scribbling sentences about Nixon and Watergate. About betrayal.

  “That was fascinating. Thanks. To think I’ve lived fifty miles from this place and have never been here,” Kristina said.

  “No problem,” Tobias told her. “Will it work for you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Let me walk you to your car. I know you have to get going.”

  “Such a sweetie. Molly, nice meeting you.”

  Molly swallowed. “Yeah, you too.”

  Tobias opened the door, the recorded cackle mocking Molly. Hahahahahahaha. You don’t get him. You don’t get anyone. You’re stuck here forever. She was. She knew it. She’d be thirty years old, selling admissions and living with Louise, and she didn’t think her mother would mind at all.

  She watched them through the window, hugging, Tobias opening the car door for Kristina. Kristina picking something out of his hair. She kissed him on the cheek, and he closed her into the yellow VW Beetle. A new model, not the original. Kristina looked like a VW girl, all bright and tiny and full of character. The kind of girl Tobias would want.

  Stop it, Molly. Stop it.

  She wasn’t one to pout. She didn’t often sit and think about things she didn’t have, never saw the point of it. God gave what He wanted, and He wanted her in a run-down wax museum, alone. There was a reason. She didn’t understand it, but she trusted it. Had to.

  Tobias jogged back across the street, opened the door.

  Hahahahahahahaha.

  “Hey, Moll?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Got a minute?’

  “I guess.” She closed her notebook inside the history text, keeping her place.

  “About the other day . . .”

  “Sorry I flipped out on you.”

  “No, don’t. It’s nothing about that. I mean . . . Molly . . . don’t you even get it?”

  “What?”

  “I like you.”

  Everything inside her stilled. “I like you, too.”

  “No, Molly. I. Like. You. Like, like you. Like . . .” He took a breath. “Like, really like you.”

  She’d been wanting to hear those words, imagining him saying something like that for the past six months—since the mozzarella sticks and the one-year Bible schedule. But with the real words in front of her, it sounded ridiculous. She shook her head, snorted. “No you don’t.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed again. “No.”

  “Molly, stop telling me what I feel. You’re great. Pretty, of course. Smart, funny, kind. Always have something interesting to tell me about bugs. The real kind, not the lobster kind. Always think what I say is important. You see me. You . . . Molly, why do you think I come here every day with my meager offerings of seltzer water and leftover garlic knots? I’ve wanted you to notice me.” He rubbed at the hair beneath his lip with his middle finger. “Will you notice me now?”

  Molly shifted on the stool. She tugged at the collar of her shirt, a flushed feeling coming over her. The compliments. She couldn’t handle them. They made her feel as if some huge, hot spotlight had settled right over her head, close enough to burn her scalp, lighting up every pore and imperfection Tobias hadn’t seen before, but would see—if he spent any amount of time with her. She couldn’t let him close. If she did, he’d know she was none of the things he said about her—not smart nor funny nor kind nor interesting, nor worth three cents on the dollar. She was empty.

  “Tobias, stop.”

  “No. I had to put it
out there. It’s been driving me crazy not knowing if you were ignoring me or if you really didn’t see. But you don’t see, do you? You don’t see how wonderful you really are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Let me be the judge.”

  “No.”

  “Why, Molly? What’s inside there that you don’t want anyone to know?”

  “Nothing.” She shifted on the stool. “What about Kristina?”

  “She’s a family friend. We go to OSCC together. I mean, we ran around in our diapers together. She wanted to check out the museum for a paper she’s writing.” He stopped. “You were jealous.”

  “Tobias—”

  “I admit it. I was hoping for that.”

  Molly ran her pencil along the metal notebook spiral. Zip, zip. “I can’t be what you want.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “Whatever it is, I can’t be it.”

  “I don’t want you to be anything. I want to spend time with you. I want to get to know you better. I want to take you to the movies, to dinner, to church. I want to walk on the beach with you. I want to talk. That’s all. I want a chance.”

  “I can’t.”

  He sighed. “Louise?”

  She nodded. How much easier that was than the truth, letting people believe their own truth. It required no floundering for a convincing story.

  “Then I’ll take what I can get.” He bowed low, holding out his open hand. “M’lady, may I escort you through the museum?”

  “You just went through.”

  “Not with you.”

  “Someone might—”

  “No one’s coming in today.” He twisted the dead bolt and flipped the Open sign to Closed. “I’ll pay again.”

  “Tobias.”

  “I’m not leaving until you say yes. Or Louise kicks my butt out of here. Whichever comes first.”