Disasters in the First World

by Olivia Clare

  “Who is that?” he said. “Everyone’s calling you. The baby will wake up.”

  “Check on him,” she said.

  “It’s very late.” He was putting on his sweatshirt backward. “I will get the door.”

  “You think this late?” She buttoned her shirt, moving her long hair in front of one shoulder. “Check the baby? You, please.”

  It was asleep, with the balding stuffed animal, a large parrot, pinned beneath it. She’d put on Mahler—someone had told her that would be healthy, good for the child’s brain.

  He closed the door and listened from the hallway—she was laughing, talking unlike herself, a high-pitched and courteous tone. He went to the front door to see a man in a fleece vest and coat with a clipboard held toward her, which she leaned over, keeping her hair out of the way. On the table was a white vase of red tulips.

  “Who sent tulips?” he said.

  “No card.” She went to the table to smell the tulips, one of them batting against her nose as she inhaled.

  “Nothing?”

  “No. I think they are for Christmas. But who has tulips in winter?”

  He looked at the deliveryman and pointed to the tulips. “Fra hvem? Can I see?” He took the clipboard from the deliveryman. Almost nothing on the paper—just her signature: something, he realized, he’d not seen before. It was strangely precise and legible.

  “Wait,” he said. “These aren’t ours. Two-B is across the courtyard.”

  “Hvad?”

  “It’s the wrong apartment.”

  “No, let me see.” She went to her purse on the table by the door and pulled out a pair of glasses.

  “Right here, see?”

  She held the glasses in front of her face and read the clipboard. She spoke to the deliveryman in Danish and returned the flowers with a shrug and then laughed after she closed the door after him, a performative laugh, maybe out of embarrassment. But then he watched her transition, as if coming back to her life—only for a second—composing her face, lowering her voice.

  “The baby’s asleep?” she said to him. “He needs me now?”

  “No, he’s asleep.”

  “Wait,” she said, swatting the air with her hand and putting her ear toward the hall. “Did you hear that?”

  “There’s nothing. I said he’s asleep.”

  “Thank the god.”

  “You thought those flowers were for you?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  She walked to the other end of the room, to the grandfather clock they could never get to work.

  “Kære,” he said. “Who did you think they were from?”

  “What?”

  “I’m asking you a question,” he said.

  “I can never tell you what you want to say,” she said.

  From her face he knew he’d given something away. She stood there, maybe holding whatever he’d given her, maybe anticipating something else—a thing he might say, the child, the phone—wanting a thing to distract them again, to intercede. She didn’t know what that was, though she waited for what might relieve her, what would not refuse her.

  Rusalka’s Long Legs

  We buried my great-great-grandmother in 1990 with a diamond royal flush in her hand. She played poker twice a week at the casino in Lafayette. She had friends and cancer and debt. Her face was thin, mottled. She had arthritic knees, atrophied legs like a doll’s. At home, she was almost always in a chair or bed.

  Her house—heirlooms and cats and photographs of ancestors, our ancestors padlocked in a concrete tomb in the graveyard five miles away. The oldest family member alive, she said, is the one who lives with the dead.

  What Ula said I believed. She could not walk from six to nine.

  Her legs. In 1908, outside New Orleans, she was six and following her mother, Del, up a hill. Del was ahead, her blonde-white hair in rough straight strands so dense that if Ula had drawn her hands through that hair, if she’d covered her face with it, she told me she’d never have found her way out.

  You like it here, walking with me? said Del.

  Yes, ma’am, said Ula.

  How long would you walk? How far those little legs go?

  Far as I want.

  Ula wore a little dress and, in her hair, a barrette she would later lose. They were walking through sparse woods on a hill behind a hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes. Del had a room in the ladies’ ward, fifth floor. Ula’s father had dropped Ula off for a full-day visit, and Del had introduced her to all the nurses, some of the patients, but none of them, thought Ula, looked sick. She had sat on the sunporch while it rained, sucking a garlic clove the hospital cook had given her. When the rain had stopped, she and Del went to the hospital rose garden and chased a glossy black bee, and the nurse wasn’t looking, and Del picked Ula up under her arms and lifted her over the fence. Then Del herself climbed over.

  We’re rabbits, you and me, Del said, taking Ula’s hand. Rabbits who only go uphill. And they don’t stop until a hundred trees later.

  Is Clark at the top? said Ula.

  I’m not scared of him, said Del, a mother sees her child when she wants. And don’t call your father by his name.

  You do, said Ula.

  Beyond the hill was open land, pasture, an old roofless shed split by a tree, a bunched bank of cherrybark oaks, trunks corroded with beetle nests and heart rot. Moss unspooled from the branches. The two of them sat against the split shed. They were hot. It was early June. Del put her hair atop her head and held it there, then let it down. Del was what Clark called “a hard woman,” a face like a carving, an eagle-beak nose. She pulled her skirt so high about her waist the hem would not cover her calves. She smelled of ladies’ ward—warm milk, disinfectant.

  With her own child a mother does what she wants, said Del. She stood and clicked her teeth. She squinted in the sun. I’ll show you something I found here, she said, you better not tell at all.

  Around the shed were the remains of a mostly picked turnip and cabbage garden. There were tangled rows of weeds and stems. A tomcat lay near dead in the jessamine, panting, mangy orange as an old carpet. Yellow bits of petals flecked its mouth.

  Don’t you touch it, said Del. Scared me. Damn cat.

  He ain’t dead, Mama, Ula said. She stepped away.

  See there, on his fur those spots like flowers?

  Del broke a nail-thin wand off a branch and made a show of poking the tom’s tail. She received a small reward—the tom blinked.

  Strangest cat I never saw, she said. See that there? You touch his spots, they bloom like t’fire.

  No, ma’am, said Ula.

  Combustion, you call it, said Del. She pointed to the pearling bulbs of fungus, like a rout of tiny snail shells, on the wand. This, she said, you don’t touch this, either.

  I wasn’t, Ula said.

  You touch it—Del rapped the fungus on the wand three times—your hair starts going wild. It’s all right for me, see, your mama can touch it.

  Del poked the tom again.

  But there’s another thing around here turns your eyes a color mine is like, she said. That’d be good for you, sure.

  Del looked in the grass. Ula knelt amid azaleas and kinked a stem and chewed it.

  Her mother felt large, entire, but only half-there, both in this world and out. It’s possible, Ula told me, to be motherless while your mother lives. Possible to think of her, even when she’s beside you, as a stranger.

  See in there? Del pointed to a snake hole. Birds go in there.

  No, ma’am.

  Oh yes they do. My eyes’ve seen so. They go in and root. For twigs and seeds.

  Del put her head at Ula’s level.

  You hungry? she said.

  We going back? said Ula.

  Up here a ways is a place.

  From the garden
, they found a dirt lane with dwarf magnolia and tiny songs from warblers in the branches. They came to a chipped building, a general store, dull white, the size of a caboose. Strands of Spanish moss hung from the chimney, spiraling down the wide-hipped roof to the eaves. On the porch, a man smoked.

  Got anything for me? he said. I ache in this heat.

  Sorry, Pop, said Del.

  Whose girl is that? he said. That’s a pretty dress.

  My child. This is mine. Del tapped Ula’s head twice.

  Is that right? He picked at his shoe. Not likely, he said, she prettier than you.

  I’m hungry, Ula said. She chewed the stem and spit the bits into the dirt.

  Your father’s coming here, said Del.

  No, ma’am.

  He’s meeting us this way. He said so.

  In the store was a glass counter with jacks, dice, yo-yos, magazines, and cinnamon chewing gum arranged in neat piles with prices hand-printed on brown paper squares. There was a shelf of pots and pans, flour and sugar on a shelf next to that. Games and puzzles, hardware, cosmetics, and used shoes. There was water damage, the color of camellias, in cracks of the walls. Del eyed a four-cent hair comb. A man in a sweaty work shirt came out from the back. He had large thumbs he held in his pockets.

  Dolores? he said. Your nurse ain’t come with you?

  Meet my family, Quint, said Del.

  Hospital know you’re here?

  This is my daughter. Del tapped Ula’s head.

  Your child?

  Look at her. She’s got my face. Look at those shoulders, coming from my own. Del took Ula up under the arms and stood her on the glass counter. She’s my blood more than anyone.

  Quint put his hand to his hip. I see.

  Where’s Clark? said Ula.

  Del picked Ula up from the counter and placed her on one of the hard wooden stools. Quint brought out a long metal tray. Ula was given soda, ice cream, a cold spoon. She remembered that she rarely received gifts, this ice cream and soda being perhaps her first. It was near dark, and Quint was lighting the outdoor lights.

  Look at your little legs, said Del. Got any beaus?

  No, ma’am, said Ula.

  Your face is a little meaner than mine. But you still will have.

  Clark says I’ll have long legs, Ula said, he told me.

  He’s right for once. Look at mine. Del lifted her skirt and held her leg far up straight so that the foot was higher than her face. I danced, she said. She strained to hold her leg. She had a bony white ankle and mosquito bites on her calf. She eased her leg to the floor and fixed her skirt. You want yours long? she said.

  With her right hand, she seized Ula’s knees, one after the other, her fingers hooking into the sides of Ula’s kneecaps.

  Now your legs will be, said Del, they’ll be long. I made it so.

  How long? said Ula.

  Longer than mine. Longer than anything at all.

  Del had a dime. She bought a three-cent doll that Quint had to stand on his toes to bring down from a shelf. Painted like a harlequin, black triangles above the bald doll’s eyes, lashless, arms and legs made of fat peppermint stick wrapped in polka-dot crepe paper.

  Her name’s Rusalka, said Del.

  Ellen, Ula said.

  If it’s Rusalka already, how can it be Ellen?

  It ain’t a girl, said Quint.

  They came back out onto the dirt lane at dusk. They could see all the way to the side of the levee like a canted roof, down to the main road. When the river rose to two feet from the top, Del told Ula, men guarded at night with guns and lanterns to prevent someone from cutting the levee.

  Any rabbits there? Ula said.

  We rabbits haven’t passed a hundred trees yet, said Del. Not fifty.

  Who said that about the guards at night? Clark said?

  You listen here, said Del, stopping Ula, looking at her. You won’t see him for a while. Not a long while. Now don’t you cry about it.

  They walked until Ula’s legs would not. She’d fallen twice, and there were twigs sticking up from her shoes. She’d never walked so far before—miles—and she felt a deep pain in her ankles like something biting.

  I can’t walk, she said.

  Don’t quit now.

  The pain spread from ankles to calves and knees. She stopped, put her doll down, and sat in the lane to rub her legs.

  You quit that, said Del. You pick Rusalka up and leave your legs alone.

  They hurt.

  Could be they do, but rabbits don’t quit walking. Rabbits never stop.

  Something’s up inside them moving, Ula said.

  Ula stood with her doll and felt the pain in her thighs. Her mother’s eyes in the near dark: cold. Pain in her legs burned like cords that would rip. She was crying as they came to a house with a mounted flag, parlor chairs and sofas heaped on the porch. Graffiti was on the door. Empty milk bottles, wires, and broken fencing in small piles in the yard, deep with weeds.

  Inside was a grandfather clock and couches tented with sheets. There were rooms with more parlor furniture and mosquitoes and quilts. Del found an old rug and made Ula lie down, and covered them both with the rug.

  I can sing to you, said Del. Did you know your mother could sing?

  I’m hungry, said Ula.

  Del took the doll from under Ula’s arm and tore the painted crepe paper off her legs. She broke off each fat peppermint stick leg, gave the right to Ula, and sucked the left herself. It was soft from the heat. Ula asked if anyone was in the house.

  They gone, said Del. They been gone.

  She lay with her strange hair beside her and told Ula to put her head on it like on a pillow. Everything went dark to the sound of Del sucking the peppermint stick steady as a clock. The orange tomcat who’d eaten jessamine was in Ula’s dream. It spit and cackled, a feral orange language Ula didn’t know. It wanted something from her, also to tell her something it couldn’t—she hated it. When she woke, there was her father and, behind him, the nurse from the ladies’ ward. Del had gone.

  Clark had Ula’s shoulders in his hands.

  She was being shaken. Though she’d woken, she was half-not-there. Sometimes you don’t come awake for a long time.

  For Strangers

  I’m Richard, he said, but I wouldn’t remember that later. I’d seen his face before, I told him.

  “Is that right? Where was that, sweetheart?”

  I’d seen his face on a man in Las Vegas dealing cards, I said, but I’ve been known to imagine faces from elsewhere in the wrong places, just as I’ve been known to remember myself in cities I hadn’t been. But Vegas had existed—I’d been there. And then Reno, where I lived now. I said something about how in Reno I’d been as directionless as an eastward-walking beetle you pick up off the ground and then turn around to the west and set going again.

  “We’re drunk,” he said, putting down his wineglass. He smiled casually, with no sign or glint of keenness inside him.

  It was a hotel bar. Amber and white spirits were poured behind me, the bar lit up in a neon blue, with standing clusters of mostly men. A life-sized, plaster Dionysus was in the corner, the hotel was called something-Olympus or Thebes. I was in Sonoma County for a high school friend’s wedding, which made Richard and me meeting like this a cliché, and that was erotic, he told me. He was in his early fifties, I supposed, and I was thirty-four. His hair was black, shaggy. He had a pliant nose.

  “Are you in the industry?” he said.

  “Industry?”

  “Wine.” He saluted me with his wineglass, a ring with a shallow aquamarine stone on his pinky. He wore two leather bracelets and another of white string. “I am, and this smells like cat piss. Want to smell it? No, you don’t. Trust me. You like cats? I’ve got two. Tabbies. Great, I’ve known you two minutes and I’m talking about my cats.
What a creep.” He looked around. “Creep in a bar.”

  “It’s like the inside of a whale,” I said. “I’m Jonah.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jonah.” He shook my hand, an exaggerated shake. Veins at his temples showed through the skin.

  “Do you know what I want?” I said.

  “What?”

  “To scare you,” I said. “Because I want to.”

  “What’d you say?” he said.

  “Forget it. My name’s Paulina, not Jonah.”

  “You like your name?”

  “It’s not something to like.”

  He looked at me with a child’s expression of little or no experience. But I liked to think he was smarter than that. I wanted to leave but not yet.

  “Paulina,” he said. “Pauleeeeena. Can I call you Lena?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to.”

  Of course not, I said. What about tomorrow? he said. Not ever, I said.

  I told him about the rehearsal dinner earlier at the winery. I drank cat piss and ate shrimp and pepperjack cheese cubes on a little plate. The grounds, the tents, the wine were gilded in California’s mid-north sun-and-green. My friend the bride was in a white cocktail dress and pink heels; she’d told me on the phone that she had been taking prenatal vitamins to grow her hair long for the wedding. She looked almost the same as seven years before, the last time I’d seen her. All my friendship feelings for her returned, until I remembered we were there for her wedding. She was under strict contract to join the universe of pairs.

  “Fucking weddings,” Richard interrupted. “Fuck them and their cat piss champagne.”

  I had been at a table of people I didn’t know, though there were a few I recognized from school. I was an isolated friend of the bride’s without realizing. People were making speeches while we ate our salads. They were performing their joy, crying. I told Richard I felt the inevitable loping enthusiasm that rises in you from such speeches. I sat next to a guy with long, hare-like teeth in the front. Within five minutes, he told me he was a poet. Oh no, I thought. Oh Lord.