slipped almost invisibly through the masses.
She had no covering for her head.
People moved around her like
packs of lumbering bears wrapped in their brown furs.
I rise from the couch, cross the room to the front windows, and look down. It is hard to see anything through the heavy snow. Just a jostling of figures brown and black and bulky in their winter clothing. Bears. Yes, they look exactly like that. A sea of bears ebbing and flowing beneath my windows. But there is no small girl to be seen.
Of course there isn’t. What did I think? I sigh and go back to my seat, pull the fur blanket up. I have taken a chill from standing at the window, straining to see a girl who exists only in the pages of a book, only in my imagination.
The girl had neither hat, nor coat, nor gloves, nor even
shoes for her small feet.
That morning she had stepped into her grandmother’s boots.
But while racing across a busy avenue
where a carriage steered menacingly toward her,
the girl had fallen and lost her boots.
One had been snatched by a boy who told her he would
use the boot as a sailing boat and go to sea in it.
He ran off laughing at the girl who stared at him, numb
and blinking.
The other boot had been thrown into the air, landing
where the girl could not find it
no matter how she searched.
I have known boys like the one who took the match girl’s boot. Boys whose greatest pleasure arose from tormenting others. But not in this life. I have known no one like that in this life. These parents would not allow such a child near me.
The cold painted its colors on the girl’s bare skin.
Red, blue, white.
These colors dappled her thin arms and legs, but most
vividly, they made a startling pattern on her feet.
Lifting the fur wrap, I stretch out my own foot. On it is a silk stocking and a white silk slipper. Slowly, I uncover my foot until it is bare. Holding it up before the firelight, it looks warm, pink, healthy. The scent of talcum fills my nostrils.
Her soiled apron had a pocket across the front, but the
stitching had let go.
Anything placed inside the pocket instantly fell to the ground.
So the girl held her apron lifted in such a way as to cradle
the matches she had for sale.
Stirring in my mind is this memory: I, too, had been sent out with no coat, no covering, no protection from the elements. I, too, had been careful not to lose my wares, the fragile flowers I had picked the summer before and hung upside down so they might retain some color when they dried. But who wanted such dead brown things? Only those who felt pity gave me money for my bouquets.
But there were days when no one felt charitable toward me and I would come home hungry and empty-handed and then my father, yes, I remember, my father would beat me. And I would have bruises that looked like the mottling of my skin from the cold so that you could not tell where my father’s cruelty left off and the cruelty of nature took over.
This had not been a good day for the girl.
The cold made people blindly plow past in their coats and
shawls,
shoulders hunched, eyes squinted against the stinging flakes.
They did not see the girl with her apron folded up under her
chin, trying to keep her matchsticks from escaping.
Or if they saw, they did not stop and fish out a coin for her.
I restore the stocking and slipper to my foot, pull the fur wrap up to my chin.
How she shivered.
How her mouth watered with longing when she passed a
rosy-cheeked boy eating a bun,
soiling his mitten with bakery grease,
dropping crumbs and bits of raisins in his wake,
ignoring the admonitions of his father,
who held on tightly to keep the boy from running into the
people around him.
The match girl stopped walking and stood where the bun-eater
had stood and drew in a deep breath,
devouring the scent of the sweet roll that still lingered in
the cold air.
I hear a cry from the street. It sounds more like a kitten mewling than a human voice, especially coming in the midst of bells jangling, horses clopping, winds whipping, voices calling out to each other. I hear a cry, a weak cry. “Matches,” it says. “Matches.” I must be imagining it from the book. But how real it sounds.
What a sight she made,
pale and trembling,
exposed to the rude manners of the cold.
Snow gathered in her hair, turning it from blond to white,
covering the long curls with a lacy snow scarf.
If someone had looked carefully at her, they might have thought
under the grime and misery
great beauty resided.
But no one looked carefully at her.
No one noticed her at all.
She was of no matter, not even to herself.
A powerful force lifts me to my feet. Gripping the book, I hurry to the window.
As she passed before the shops, yellow light spilled into
the street.
Every kind of luxury could be found there.
Bright silken fabrics, a cobbler who made slippers of the
softest leather, a cafe, a shop that sold fine silver.
On the second and third and fourth floors, above
the shops, people moved in their lighted apartments.
The sound of music came softly through their windows, and
laughter, and the heavenly aroma of roasted meat.
The girl looked up to see a child looking down at her from
one of the upper stories.
For a moment their eyes met and the match girl felt herself
being lifted.
But then an oafish man trod on her and the match girl felt
with renewed pain the unbearable coldness of her feet.
And I see her. She exists. She is there below me, outside my window.
I want to bring her up out of the storm, to bring her into my bedroom where I can warm her.
A crowd of revelers passes the match girl, blocking her from my sight. When they move on, she has vanished. I am desperate to find her but she is gone.
Between the bookseller’s shop and the shop that sold confec-
tions, a recessed doorway offered shelter to the little match girl.
She pressed the thin bones of her back against the wood of the
door and imagined the heat from inside the building.
Protected here, she could not be so fiercely bitten by the wind.
No one could see her and so she could make no sales,
but here at least the snow could not tear at her.
I scan the doorways, seeking her. Even though I have not seen her go, I suspect she, too, like the child in the story, has sought a doorway for shelter. And yes, there is movement in the shadows. As if a small animal circled and settled there, seeking comfort.
I must stop my trembling. If there is any chance of prolonging this life, I must tear myself from the bitter draft at the window. I carry the storybook to the hearth, and stand before the fire.
She would be content to stay here and never go home.
At home only her father waited, like a monster,
with his hot temper and his stinging blows.
She had not a single coin to give him and that would stir
his anger to boiling.
He would beat her.
She knew that with certainty.
He would beat her savagely.
No, she would not go home.
She would sit in this sheltered doorway forever.
The fire warms me. I feel its soothing touch. The warmth enters my hands, toasts my face, raises the temperature
of the book.
She peered out from her arch of protection.
Everywhere she saw the golden glow of the town.
She held her small hands up toward the lighted windows
but she was beyond the reach of their comfort.
I can’t leave her out there. I can’t let her go on that way. No matter what it costs me, I must bring her here, to me, bring her into this room, talk to her, warm her, comfort her.
The match girl sank down, drew herself into a ragged bundle.
Perhaps, tucked in like this, she was small enough to be
warmed by the fire of one of her own matches.
If she lit it, she would be a penny poorer.
But if she lit it, she would have a penny’s worth of warmth.
I shut my eyes and concentrate. I know precisely what she needs, what she wants. I imagine her here in this room with me. I imagine a shaft of light guiding her, her path beginning at the arched doorway and ending just inside my bedroom. I will her to come here, to join me.
She scraped the match against the cold brick wall beside the
door and a lick of fire sprang up at the stick’s end.
Now she had a tiny globe of golden light at her command.
She drank in the dancing blue-orange-white skirt of flame.
A ballet of fire.
She could feel its liquid warmth on her face.
She felt herself being lifted by it into a room where a fireplace
burned brightly, giving off waves of soothing heat.
She could hear a voice speaking to her from somewhere in
the room,
but she could not make out the words.
The voice did not sound cruel,
not like the boy who had stolen her boot.
It sounded surprised, breathless, welcoming.
“It’s all right,” I tell her. “Don’t be frightened. Let me help you.”
She turned toward the voice and just then the match burned
itself out and
the girl felt the darkness and cold close back around her.
The tiny stub of a match dropped to the ground from her
numb fingers.
I had her for a moment. I could see her hair dusted with snow, the blue of her ears, the threadbare fabric of her dress. I held her here for a moment, only a moment. And then she slipped back, back into the book, back outside my window. I must try harder, strain harder to bring her here again.
The cold felt like a stone weight on the match girl’s chest.
Struggling against the heaviness, she lit another match.
With a sudden spark, then a whisss, the match blossomed
into life.
Holding up the lighted match, the girl could see through
the walls surrounding her,
as if the match turned the brick and wood to glass.
She chose the apartment she wanted to enter, the one with
the child who had looked down at her from above.
And there was the child. She stood in a beautiful bedroom in
which a small table held court on its sturdy four legs,
bearing on its white cloth back a perfectly polished silver
tray of sweet buns and a sparkling pot of chocolate.
A delicate china bowl held an array of ripe fruit.
The smells thrilled the match girl’s nose and made her mouth
fill eagerly with hope.
The child pulled out a chair and beckoned for the match girl
to sit.
But then the flame from the match reached the girl’s fingertips,
too cold to feel the singe before the flame died.
And once again she huddled deep into the recess of the
doorway, in the hungry dark.
“Come back. Please come back. I can give this to you. I can give this all to you. You must help me, though. You must want it too. Concentrate. Come back.”
She struck a third match.
Instantly she was back inside the apartment with the child.
The match girl stands before me. Her eyes widen as she looks at the chandelier, the table laden with food, the enormous gilded mirror. Her eyes fix on the Christmas tree. It sparkles with glass baubles. Light from the fire dances the tree’s shadow up and down the wall. The boughs scent my room with the spicy aroma of pine.
The girl had never been inside a room like this.
A crystal chandelier twinkled like a constellation of stars.
The match girl smelled a dizzying perfume.
She moves awkwardly on her frozen feet, half teeter, half stumble. I go to her and hold her hand. She wants to touch the tree, to examine the decorations.
Paintings adorned the walls.
The child who had called her took her hand and they stood together.
And the third match reached its end.
When the girl looked up, the place where the chandelier had hung was filled with stars.
The snow had stopped falling and the sky had cleared. The cold was the fiercest it had been all day.
But with her eyes turned upward, the girl saw a star shoot across the heavens.
It traced a path of light.
It was beautiful the way it made a bright bridge across the sky.
“A shooting star. Someone’s fortune will change.” That’s what I had been told about shooting stars. That when a star left a track of shimmering dust across the sky, someone’s fortune would change.
“Someone’s fortune will change,” the match girl thought,
her arms wrapped tightly around her shivering body.
Her grandmother,
the only person who had ever loved her,
had told her so. She had told her a shooting star was an
omen of change.
Often of death.
It is my fortune that will change. I know it with certainty. I can go on in this life. Or I can give this body, this life, to the match girl, by willingly taking her place. The match girl will die this night. I must will myself to enter her dead body and let her take this living one. I will take her death. I will give her this life, for I am certain now this body will go on.
All at once the girl scratched the remainder of her matches into life.
The glow filled the sheltered doorway and spilled out onto the street.
Coming toward her was that beloved child from the room above, that angel of comfort.
“What’s happening?” the match girl asks.
“Your name will be Nell,” I tell her.
A little crowd in hats and coats and boots
stood gaping at the small frozen body in the doorway
between the bookseller and the confectioner.
The snow around her held the match stubs that she’d lit
the night before.
The last she had lit at midnight, as the Old Year finally re-
leased its grip and allowed the New Year to be born.
“It’s a wonder she didn’t set fire to the building,” a woman
in a purple shawl said.
The match girl looks out from Nell’s eyes. She holds the hand of Nell’s mother and the hand of Nell’s father and they come close to the stiff, cold body, because the child says they must.
“We must see to her burial,” the match girl says. “We must see that her body has every comfort it lacked while she lived.”
And the parents, who do not know they lost their daughter, their Nell, once, a year before, and once more, last night, look adoringly at this child who is alive, who is theirs, and say, “Of course. Of course. Of course.”
GARTY SOTO
WHAT I WISH FOR
I make a wish and blow on a tottering candle,
Smoke like a lasso when the flame goes out.
Outside, in the yard,
I busy myself with clippers.
I make another wish: a dandelion explodes.
The wind, I see, flies east,
A cargo of cumulus clouds not
far behind.
Before my nap, I make a wish.
Behind my closed eyelids
I see my bedroom tidy itself up—
My food-stained pants on the floor walk themselves
Down the hallway, through the kitchen,
And jump into the washer.
Monday, Tuesday, let’s skip Wednesday and go to Thursday,
When the farmers’ market pitches its tents.
It’s October, good season for apples.
What I really want is a melon big as a wheelbarrow,
But I buy three Fuji apples,
One to eat and the others to juggle
On the way home.
When I toss a nickel into a pond,
A koi surfaces, her mouth throwing out kisses—
I return the kiss with my fingertips.
The koi wiggles its glossy tail and disappears,
A ripple on the surface,
A ripple in my memory.
If only I were a rocker.
I would write a song called “Wishful Thinking,”
A tremendous hit with my three friends
And my jailbird parrot, I should add—
See how he salsas on his trapeze?
But I’m not a rocker.
I have harmless ambitions, secret wishes . . .
If only I could drive a car backwards.
I could chug up a hill in second gear,
My companion in the passenger seat
A hungry goat. When we reach the fire trail,
The goat snacks on a serving of dandelions.
I could visit the sea, too.
Waves slide up the beach, then back,
The crab a fortress in itself,
Its claws like pliers, its eyes like dark periods
Ending sentence fragments.
Yes, this is where I wish
To be, the sea with kelp and seagulls,
Kites going berserk,
And shells the color of baby teeth,
Tokens I could pocket for free.
Under a low sky,
I’ll applaud the clouds arriving from China—
The world loves me, the world loves me,
What You Wish For Page 9