by Miriam Cohen
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
ADULTS AND OTHER CHILDREN
“In the weird and gorgeous tradition of Angela Carter and Kelly Link, Miriam Cohen has written a manifesto of postmodern womanhood. Her characters are hilariously neurotic, exquisitely self-diminishing, and yet grotesquely eloquent—perverse poets all, wandering the streets of New York or suffocating in the decorated living rooms of suburbia, trying their dire best to navigate life’s labyrinths.”
—JOSHUA GAYLORD, author of When We Were Animals
“Adults and Other Children reimagines the Bildungsroman, as childhood clashes with adulthood to create a beautiful and terrifying emotional story. By stretching the misconceptions of children so thin and so wide, Miriam Cohen creates a glittering, transparent fabric through which we can finally read more clearly the myths that invent us.”
—SABRINA ORAH MARK, author of Wild Milk
“The girls and women who inhabit Miriam’s Cohen’s dazzling short story debut are like voyagers into the foreign land of their lives and families. These characters invent, observe, dismantle, fabricate, dissect, turn inside-out and, as a result, we, her delighted readers, are led into a funhouse where daily life is shrunk, stretched and reimagined so that we are left breathless and gratefully altered. As if that were not enough, Cohen is wicked funny, crafting sentences so surprising and alive you’ll gasp.”
—VICTORIA REDEL, author of Before Everything
“Lies, misconceptions and self-deception are at the heart of Miriam Cohen’s funny, scathing, and touching collection, Adults and Other Children.”—FOREWORD (starred review)
ADULTS AND OTHER CHILDREN
ADULTS AND OTHER CHILDREN
Stories
MIRIAM COHEN
Copyright © 2020 by Miriam Cohen.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquires to:
Ig Publishing
Box 2547
New York, NY 10163
www.igpub.com
ISBN: 978-1-63246-100-1 (ebook)
To my sisters, biological and otherwise
CONTENTS
1. Naughty
2. Bad Words
3. Recess Brides
4. Expecting
5. Old for Your Age, Tall for Your Height
6. Care
7. Surrogate
8. Little Hippo
9. A Girl of a Certain Age
10. Odd Goods
11. Attachments
12. Wife
13. Guns Are Safer for Children Than Laundry Detergent
14. Fun Day
NAUGHTY
All the shades from all the other houses are pulled shut, the eyelids of sleeping giants. Amelia’s house is the only house still awake. Its shades are flung open. In every room, ceiling lights flicker and buzz like sheer-winged insects. Amelia’s mother is outside. She sits on the wooden bench meant for guests, her arms crossed neatly in her lap, her chin upturned. Amelia sees she has her keys. She has not forgotten them.
Amelia can see her mother, but her mother cannot see Amelia.
Amelia opens the freezer door. Crystals of white ice chip off from the edges, to the floor. Foil pans of other people’s food make a wavering tower. There is lasagna and meatloaf and, from the next-door boys who are her enemies, a chocolate moose. The chocolate moose is from their mother. There is a note attached that says, Congratulations!!!
Amelia is not to eat except at mealtime. This way her father will not say to her mother, What have you been feeding her? each time he returns from another country and cannot lift Amelia high into the air.
But she isn’t going to eat the moose. She only wants to see him: the delicate chocolate antlers, brittle as leaf stems, the shaved curls that will serve as fur for his hoofs. When Amelia removes the bowl where the moose is kept, the tinfoil tower trembles a stumbling curtsey. She peels back the tinfoil covering, careful, at first, not to rip it, but then she rips it anyway. The tinfoil comes apart so easily.
She can smell the chocolate. It makes her collapse, just inside her own skin. It makes her want to say, Hello. She takes care not to look at the moose until all the foil is gone, until she can see him entirely. Soon all the foil is off, crumbled into stars at her feet. Amelia’s spine is stiff with joy.
In the bowl there is only mud.
Someone has put a spell on the moose. Probably it was Oliver, the meanest and youngest of the next-door boys. She should have known.
Amelia skates her fingers over the mud’s frozen crust. Because it smells so wonderful! Because there is more than one way to say, Hello. The ice is furry, and burns her fingertips. She does the best she can, using her nails, tiny and patient ice picks. She lifts her fingers to her lips. To her tongue.
After, she is thirsty. She unlatches the small door in the freezer. There are no live-in elves inside. This is where the ice cubes are kept. This ice is safe from spells. No one knocked on the door with the ice, their two arms outstretched. Amelia plucks an ice cube and slurps. Some of the slurp is her saliva, some is water, melted already from ice. Her mouth is so hot.
Mrs. Prym comes into the kitchen. Mrs. Prym is the imaginary nanny. She stands next to Amelia, clucking with her tongue. The lacy petticoat beneath her apron brushes against Amelia’s leg, scratchy as fancy tights. The petticoat is nice and stiff, because it is held in place with another child’s bones.
“What has your mother done this time?” Mrs. Prym says, gesturing toward outside.
Amelia shrugs. The ice is a tiny sliver against her cheek, a bitten-off nail.
Amelia’s mother is still on the bench. She is uncrossing her arms and crossing them back, as if the baby is inside her still, her fists curled uncomfortably around the cradle bars of her ribs.
Mrs. Prym sighs loudly and fully, as if she is blowing out a cake full of birthday candles. “This is my day off, you know. I’m not supposed to be here at all. Mr. Prym is waiting for me at home.”
Mrs. Prym does not have any children of her own. She does not like children. She and Mr. Prym are wildly, wildly in love. Amelia has never met Mr. Prym. And thank goodness! Mrs. Prym is difficult enough. She is a real handful.
The ice inside Amelia’s mouth disappears. Amelia did not need to swallow to make it go away. It is just gone.
“Mr. Prym and I had a whole evening planned,” Mrs. Prym is saying.
Amelia opens the freezer door again. The shredded cheese on the lasagna looks like it could be confetti. She sticks her finger through the cellophane. There is a small pop that is only a sound for her fingertip.
“Naughty pig,” Mrs. Prym says, interrupting herself. She is gripping Amelia’s arm all at once.
Amelia struggles but she can’t free herself. Mrs. Prym slams the freezer door shut. There is a whoosh of cold air. Then nothing.
“Let me go,” Amelia says. Mrs. Prym twists Amelia’s arm tighter. Mrs. Prym is giving her an Indian burn. Skin flakes into the air. Amelia’s arm may fall off. This is not totally impossible. She has seen it happen before with long balloons. The trick is to keep turning.
And then Mrs. Prym stops, abruptly, mid-twist.
“That was a warning,” Mrs. Prym says. She wipes her hands in the folds of her apron. For a moment her hands disappear entirely into the creases, but then they are back.
Amelia rubs her arm. She feels as if she has swallowed a piece of ice whole, but she has not—that ice was melted into nothing.
Amelia leans over the crib to pet her baby sister. Well. She is not really her baby sister. Mrs. Prym says the baby is a changeling. Witches have the real baby. The witches live near the train tracks, in a house that lo
oks like a pile of leaves. Amelia has seen this house, but she has never knocked on the door, because the house has always looked to her like leaves. This was before Mrs. Prym came to stay, of course. She has taught Amelia what to look for. Danger is all around.
There are also werewolves. The father of the next-door boys is a werewolf. Amelia watches him now as he leaves his house. He leaves without turning on any lights. His house is not like hers. It stays asleep at night. There are all those boys—they need their rest. They need to do their homework. This is what their mother yells to Amelia when the sky is dark and Amelia must resort to hopping inside the squares of invisible hopscotch boards.
Amelia stands on the radiator and watches the next-door werewolf cross his yard. He sits next to Amelia’s mother on the bench. He sits very close to her.
Mrs. Prym glances up from her knitting. Her needles look like enormous cockroach antennae. “There isn’t even a yarn string of space between them,” she observes.
Of course not! He is a werewolf—he needs to press his face to Amelia’s mother’s neck, as he is doing now, to get to the blood. Amelia cannot see well enough, even standing on the radiator in the changeling’s nursery, because they are outside and she is inside, and so she asks Mrs. Prym to describe what they are doing. Mrs. Prym has perfect vision, also X-ray. She can see through skin, all the way down to the bone. This is how she knows the sister is a changeling. She can see into her lopsided, jelly bean-sized, black magic heart.
Mrs. Prym squints. “They’re holding hands,” she reports. “And now she is running her fingers through his hair, and alongside his ear, and his chin, and—Oh my!”
“What?” Amelia says, leaning forward, trying to see.
But Mrs. Prym is involved in her knitting now. “Stop asking so many questions,” she says. “You’re on my last nerve.” The needles click together. They do not frighten Amelia. The ends are not that sharp.
Amelia steps down from the radiator and sits for a while, watching Mrs. Prym knit. Mrs. Prym is making something special for Mr. Prym. It is almost their anniversary. They have been married for almost one hundred years.
The carpet scratches tiny waffles onto Amelia’s thighs and the waffles make water rush into her mouth from the sides, and also from beneath. She is not to eat when it isn’t mealtime.
Amelia stands and pokes her fingers between the bars of the crib. The changeling’s skin is as soft as rose petals. Her hair is scraggly, like the silk that comes from a split-open husk of corn. Amelia is to be extra careful at the back of her head, where the hair wisps to nothing. The bones in her skull are much too soft.
“Did you and Mr. Prym ever want a baby when you were first married?”
Mrs. Prym puts down her knitting. “Absolutely not,” she says. Her lizard-beard throat wobbles as she laughs and laughs. The laughter does not sound like a foghorn moving in from far away to so close it is a touch for Amelia’s spine. It is not small silver bells that are heavy to hold.
“Once I was offered a child,” Mrs. Prym says, after she is done with her laughing. “By a witch it was, in fact. The child was nice and slender. Not like you.” She pinches a doughy ripple of skin at Amelia’s waist and does not let go until pink marks begin to bloom.
“I could have entered her into contests. My wallet could’ve been stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey. In the end, Mr. Prym and I talked and talked—we had some red wine, very expensive—and Mr. Prym convinced me. There isn’t room in a healthy marriage for even one child. Not if the husband and wife are as in love with each other as Mr. Prym and I are.”
“My parents have two children,” Amelia says.
“Exactly,” says Mrs. Prym.
“What are you doing, just standing there?” Amelia’s father says. He’s in the room now.
Mrs. Prym gathers her petticoat and leaves the room. Her footsteps sound like: hush, hush. She has no patience for parents.
“You’re just going to watch her cry?” It doesn’t sound like Amelia’s father is screaming, but Amelia is not fooled. He is screaming under speaking, the way people breathe underwater.
Her father runs his fingers over the middle of his head where there isn’t any hair. The next-door werewolf has hair all over his head, but that is only because he is a werewolf.
Amelia moves away from the changeling so her father can take her away.
“Next time, you come and get me when she’s crying. Do you understand?” Her father looks out the window above her head. When she is older and taller, the place where he is looking will be her face. But she is still her age.
The changeling’s face is dewy with tears that don’t seem entirely clean, like the beads on cellophane after it has been covering steamed broccoli. It is like someone invisible is hurting the changeling. Good. She’s not a real baby anyway. The witches have the real baby.
Amelia’s father lifts the changeling out of the crib. There is the red mark at the back of the changeling’s neck. The mark is a bite from a type of bird called a stork. This is what the nurse at the hospital said. Amelia is not fooled. The mark is from a type of man called a werewolf.
Amelia’s father makes a hammock with his arms and swings the changeling back and forth. Quickly, quickly. The changeling weighs almost nothing. Her father swings her so far in each direction. If he were to let go, the changeling would not need wings to fly. Her father does love the changeling. It does not matter to him who the real father is. Amelia doesn’t need to worry about all that.
The window can be like a mirror at night. In the window Amelia’s father and the changeling become large ghosts, hovering above Amelia’s mother and the next-door werewolf. They look like they are all together, but Amelia is not fooled.
“You were in the freezer before,” Amelia’s father says. He is whispering. He is not telling a secret; the changeling has fallen asleep.
Amelia is not to eat except at mealtimes.
She digs her fingers into her sides, which are soft pockets. She twists. “I only ate ice,” she says.
Amelia’s father shakes his head. His eyes look smaller than they are supposed to look. The skin around them has them buried. “You’re not telling the truth,” he says.
She backs up against the crib. The bars hurt in a way that feels nice. They feel like bones. She doesn’t have any bones. It’s true. Touch me, she has told Oliver, long ago, when they were friends, before they were enemies. All over she is soft. See?
“Ice is water,” Amelia says. If she is hungry she may drink water.
“When did you start lying like this?”
She does not mean to be a liar. She does not mean to be so hungry.
Amelia’s father is still looking at the space on the window where Amelia will be when she is taller and older. The werewolf leans over Amelia’s mother, dipping his face inside the saucers of her clavicle. Bone marrow is delicious. When it is mealtime, the bones go in the garbage. Amelia is not to eat the skin, or the parts of the meat that are dark. What is she, some kind of animal?
Amelia’s father swallows. “You’ve got to do better,” he says.
She watches the egg in his throat move up and down. The egg never goes away. It is there just in case.
Amelia’s mother is throwing a dinner party!
“I’m still a person,” she says.
The plates are porcelain. The forks and knives are made of silver. The reason they are black in creases is because Amelia’s mother is not a maid. The napkins are cloth. The glasses are not made of glass, but crystal. Held to the ceiling light, they make rainbows.
These are the guests: the werewolf from next door, the next-door boys’ mother, all the next-door boys, including Oliver. Amelia is to set eight places. Four for the children, four for the adults. The changeling doesn’t need a place. Amelia’s mother feeds her beneath her shirt. It is not magic. Mothers are a certain kind of animal called mammal.
Mrs. Prym supervises Amelia while she sets the table. Mrs. Prym does not lift a finger to help. Twice, she trips A
melia. Both times, a crystal glass shatters. Luckily, no one notices. Amelia’s father is at the take-out place buying food—Amelia’s mother is not a maid—and Amelia’s mother is upstairs putting on her face. When her face is put on she will be as colorful as a male bird.
“Mr. Prym and I had quite a night last night,” Mrs. Prym says. “He ripped my clothes right off me. We made that bed rock like a boat. He said he would kill me if he could. And I said, ‘Oh Mr. Prym!’ And he said, ‘You cunt.’ And I said, ‘Call me that again!’ and—well, the rest is private. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if you didn’t know.”
Amelia steps carefully over the shattered crystal. On the highest shelf above the fridge there is a bag of crystal made from sugar, spun around small wooden sticks. That crystal is broken also, and so lovely.
“What will you do with the clothes he ripped off?”
“Well, what about that! I’ll probably sew them right into a dress for you. It’s so hard to find clothing that will fit you. It’s taxing, Amelia. It’s like tax season all the time with you.”
Forks go on the left. They are not lonely, because they have the napkin. Amelia tucks them in. Most of the napkins do not flutter open. They are sleeping birds.
“Some clothing fits me,” Amelia says, tugging at where the sleeves of her dress stop before her wrists do, etching bracelets into the skin.
“Oh, but you’re lying,” Mrs. Prym says. She raises her longest finger into the air and wags it like a tail. “Naughty.”
Amelia nudges a tiny piece of crystal with her bare toe. It comes close to breaking the skin, but she does not push far enough. There is too much fat in the way. “You’re a liar,” she says.
Mrs. Prym raises her eyebrows. “Call me that again,” she says.
Amelia doesn’t want Mrs. Prym to be angry with her. When Mrs. Prym gets into one of her moods, she is absolutely impossible.
“Cunt,” Amelia says. It is a nice word to say.
But Amelia is not Mr. Prym. She cannot make Mrs. Prym rock like a boat.