by M Sawyer
She slowed down and walked, taking care not to step on the cracks of the sidewalk, but walking through every puddle she could, savoring the cool rainwater on her feet.
Dread roiled in her stomach when she turned onto her street. Her father might scold her if he had the energy, but that was nothing compared to her mother if she found out. Nolin hated disappointing her. The look on her face when Nolin got in trouble at school...she couldn’t even stomach the thought of it. Nothing made her feel worse.
It was her fault her mother was sick, after all.
Nolin took her time walking down her street.
The woods appeared in the gaps between the houses as Nolin passed by. They seemed to be watching her, those deep, dark spaces between the trees like sunken eyes that saw every move she made, read every thought. The woods almost felt like a kind of imaginary friend. She’d never had a real imaginary friend—she was far too old for one now—but she never felt alone with the woods watching her. They scared her. The forest was a companion that might shift its mood at any moment, like a wild animal, and devour her.
Chapter 3
HER FATHER’S FACE reminded Nolin of a zombie movie she once watched. He shuffled around the kitchen while he cooked dinner, sometimes pausing to stare at nothing, eyes glazing over and mouth hanging open slightly until he shook his head and returned to cooking.
“Dad, are you okay?” Nolin asked. He put a brick of cheese in the cupboard and a loaf of bread in the refrigerator, then shook his head and switched them, putting them both where they belonged. The circles under his eyes were more pronounced than ever.
“I just had a really long day,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much. Your mother was twitching around all night. Kept jabbing me.”
“Was she talking?” Nolin often heard muffled words when her mother had nightmares, like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Sometimes, Nolin got out of bed to creep into the hall and listen. Melissa mumbled nonsense in her sleep—whimpering, groaning, often crying. The next morning, Nolin would find her father sleeping in the armchair, pale with bruise-like shadows under his eyes.
“Not really. She nearly kicked me off the bed, though. I swear, that woman takes karate lessons in her...” He yawned before he could finish. His face stretched so far Nolin wondered if it would flip inside out.
His gaze didn’t seem to focus on the cheese sandwich in the pan. He stared straight ahead, his gray eyes glazed over like those of the dead fish in the seafood case at the supermarket. Dark smoke started to rise from the pan.
“Dad, you’re burning that.”
He jolted back to life and cursed at the charred, black sandwich. Muttering, he slid it onto a plate and turned on the overhead fan. He ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, which made it stand on end. He looked like a mad scientist.
Nolin slid off her barstool and took the spatula from his hand.
“Go sit down; I’ll finish,” she said. He didn’t protest, but silently staggered into the living room and collapsed into his favorite armchair.
Nolin scooted her little kitchen stool to the stove, then peeled the burned slice of bread off the sandwich and replaced it with another buttered slice and piece of cheese. She hadn’t found any tomato soup in the pantry, but she did recover some carrots from the bottom of the crisper that weren’t too wiggly. The milk should have been thrown out days earlier. She poured three glasses of water instead.
“Is she coming down for dinner?” Nolin asked, though she already knew the answer. She sliced carrots for her mother’s plate and added the sandwich, neatly cutting it into triangles. When her father didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder. His head had already tipped back, and he was snoring.
Within a few minutes, her father’s snores practically rattled the windows. Nolin pulled off his shoes and laid a checkered fleece blanket over him. He wouldn’t move until morning. Before placing his shoes by the chair, where he was sure to find them in the morning, Nolin slipped the right shoe onto her own small foot. It was still warm inside and slightly damp from workday sweat. When she was little, she used to waddle around the house in her father’s shoes, quacking like a duck.
“Daddy, I’m a duck!” She’d exclaim.
“Yes, you are. I need those to go to work, Nolin. Give them back.”
Her cheeks burned. She removed the shoe and laid it next to its mate.
When she returned to the kitchen, she flipped the sandwich onto the center of the plate inside the carrot design. She ran her fingers through her knotted hair and scrubbed her wet hands on her face before cautiously carrying her mother’s dinner up the stairs.
She hoped with all her heart that her mother didn’t know about her suspension. Nolin planned on going to the library during school hours to cover her tracks. She sometimes saw her mother at the window, watching her get on the school bus in the mornings; she’d know if Nolin didn’t go. Maybe Nolin would tell her she was going to ride to school with a friend who lived around the corner.
No, that would never work. Melissa knew she had no friends.
Maybe she’d pretend to miss the bus and look like she was running to catch it at the next stop. Or she’d just fake sick.
That wouldn’t work either. She’d never been sick.
A slice of dim light peeked through the crack under Melissa’s bedroom door, casting a yellow square on the floor of the dark hallway. Nolin tiptoed to the door and knocked. Nothing. Carefully, she let herself in.
The room smelled of stale sweat and dirty laundry. Something ominous hung in the air, an odd tension like dust settling after an explosion. The hot, stagnant air made her head swim. She wanted to open a window, but Melissa never opened windows. She said she wanted to keep the outside out and the inside in, whatever that meant.
A little lamp on the nightstand cast sticky yellow light over the master bedroom, showcasing the unmade bed with sheets falling all over the mattress and floor. Thick curtains were drawn over the windows, the floor dotted with stacks of books and empty water glasses. Beside the door sat a bowl of untouched, dried-up oatmeal from that morning.
The flickering lamp threw dancing shadows over the walls. Nolin tried not to look at her own twitching shadow, distorted and hunched like a monster.
Breath hissed. She turned to see her mother lying on her back with her legs propped up on a wall, her arms stretched out to the sides with her curled palms facing upward, glasses folded and resting in her right hand. Her eyes were closed, her limp, pale hair spread around her head like a fan. The bony ribcage rose and fell as she drew in deep breaths and exhaled through her nose.
Without her glasses, Melissa looked much younger. Though her eyes were shadowed and sunken, her delicate features echoed a time when she smiled more, when her mind was clear and vivacious instead of haunted.
“Melissa?” Nolin stepped forward, closing the door softly behind her. “I brought your dinner.” Melissa rolled her head to the side, away from Nolin. Her jawbone standing out like gills on a fish.
“This is soothing,” Melissa said softly. “Inverted poses prompt the circulation of stagnant blood in the legs and increase blood flow to the brain, calming the mind.” She breathed in deeply and exhaled through her nostrils, her breath rattling in the back of her throat. The legs of her pajama pants had slipped down her calves, revealing her skinny legs and bony ankles. Under the old tee shirt, Nolin could see protruding collarbones, the sharp points of her mother’s shoulders, and the peaks of her ribcage poking out below her flat chest. Melissa inhaled again.
“Did you have a panic attack?” Nolin asked. She didn’t dare speak above a whisper in this strange room, where everything seemed surreal and even the colors were muted.
Melissa exhaled again. “That would have been a relief.”
“Oh.” Nolin cast her eyes around for clues about what Melissa had done that day. Crumpled papers. Books facedown to hold their places. After a moment she set the plate and glass on the floor, then sat cross-legged, slowly
working her way into the invisible bubble that surrounded her mother and kept everything, everyone out.
Nolin noticed a plate of hard toast on the end of the bed from two days earlier. She leaned down and saw two other plates under the bed, one bearing what looked like an uneaten sandwich, the other with what Nolin assumed to be the enchilada she’d brought up the night before. She wrinkled her nose; the food was starting to smell in the warm room. How did her father sleep in here at night? No wonder he often slept in the armchair.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asked. Melissa didn’t respond. Nolin eyed her mother’s sharp elbows. “You really need to eat something.”
Melissa let her legs slide to the floor. Slow as a sloth, she rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed herself up to her feet, swaying where she stood. She put on her glasses and parted her long, lank bangs.
“I saw the school bus come.” She didn’t look at Nolin. Nolin was glad. “You and Paul try to hide it from me. I’m not an idiot. You got suspended again, didn’t you? You got in another fight.” Her voice climbed higher. She looked over at Nolin. The glare on her glasses shielded her eyes, but Nolin knew they were wide with anxiety. She’d received that look many times. It stung like a whip.
“I...I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Do not call me ‘Mom.’”
“Sorry...Melissa.”
Melissa sighed and clutched her face with her trembling hands. Her pale, papery skin pulled over her fine bones. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Behind her hands she drew in rattled breaths, shoulders quivering.
“I’m sorry,” Nolin said again. She wished she’d just let stupid Max carry on until the whistle blew. Why did she have to hit him? Why couldn’t she control herself? It was so hard in the moment, when that boiling rage swam in her veins. Her eyes filled with tears. She watched her mother shake.
“You can’t do this anymore,” Melissa squeaked from behind her hands. “You don’t know what you can do. You can really hurt someone, Nolin! You cannot do this!”
Nolin fiddled with the frayed hem of her tee shirt. “I won’t do it again,” she whispered.
“You will not do this again,” Melissa repeated, her hands dropping from her face. For a moment, she swayed, staring over Nolin’s shoulder. She looked ill. Nolin worried she might be sick, though she probably couldn’t vomit because she hadn’t eaten in days. Melissa swallowed hard and straightened, still unsteady on her feet.
“Mom, I mean...Melissa?”
Melissa’s eyes snapped back into focus and bored into Nolin’s, then floated upward to rest on Nolin’s hair. She took a few wavering steps forward, then reached out and touched a matted lock.
“Your hair. Go get the brush.”
Nolin dreaded that phrase. Obediently, she stood and crossed the room to the adjoining bathroom. The floor was littered with towels and dirty clothes. The mirror was so covered in water stains that Nolin could barely see her reflection. She opened the top drawer to fish out the dreaded hairbrush, an awful object she regarded as an instrument of torture. For a few moments, she desperately pulled at her hair to untangle some of the knots before the brush ripped through. They remained hopelessly snarled.
Melissa was punishing her. Nolin knelt before her mother, facing away from her. Nolin saw Melissa’s shadow raise the brush behind her. She gritted her teeth.
The brush dragged through Nolin’s wild mass of knots, making a sound like Velcro unsticking. Nolin wondered how much hair she’d have left when they were finished. Her watering eyes squeezed shut. Tears dripped down her cheeks. Melissa held the top of Nolin’s head still and raked the brush through, her grip strong for an emaciated woman. Nolin whimpered and pretended to be somewhere, anywhere, else.
“If you’d look after your hair yourself, we wouldn’t have to do this.”
Nolin bit her lips until she tasted blood.
“You listen to me: if you hurt anyone again, any child, any person, I don’t care what they’ve done...you will not leave this house for a very long time. And I don’t mean grounding. You will not set foot outside until I’m sure you will never harm anyone ever again. Do you hear me?”
Nolin nodded. She twisted the bottom of her shirt in her hands until the fabric tore.
When they finished, Nolin carried the plates of leftover food downstairs. Her face was stained with dried tears. Her hair puffed out from her raw scalp like a dandelion. Nolin tiptoed as she put the plates in the sink and retrieved her book from the counter before going upstairs to her room. She didn’t want to wake her father, who still snored in his chair.
Her mother’s words etched inside her skull, screeching like nails on a chalkboard. You could have really hurt that child. You could hurt someone!
She settled into bed with her knees propped up to support her book, Where the Wild Things Are. She couldn’t remember where they’d gotten that book, just that the book had always been around. The idea of a child stumbling into a world of strange creatures felt so familiar. Her parents must have read it to her when she was a baby, because that idea had fascinated her when she was very young, determined to learn to read so she could pore through the pages herself, perhaps find the answer to a question she couldn’t quite articulate.
Too often, she felt like the boy in his wolf suit, an animal among humans. If only she could crawl inside those pages and find her place with monsters. Turning the pages, she daydreamed of running away to a land of creatures who loved her so much they’d roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth at the thought of her leaving.
Chapter 4
SOFT SPRING LIGHT trickled through her bedroom window, the morning sky gloomy and bruised. Nolin cracked the window open for rain-scented air to waft in. Her head felt heavy. For hours she’d drifted in and out of sleep, her bedroom window swimming through confused visions of trees, mist, and wild-haired women with empty eyes.
She slid off the bed and changed into a fresh tee shirt and shorts. Her hair had matted again during the night. She tried to untangle it with her fingers as she descended the stairs, but her curls wound even tighter.
The green numbers on the microwave clock glowed seven thirty. Why wasn’t her father getting ready for work? She looked to the chair where he’d fallen asleep the night before; he had slumped down so far in the armchair that his legs splayed out before him, his big toe peeking through a hole in his left sock.
“Dad?” Nolin touched his arm. He jolted forward so hard that his glasses fell off his face into his lap. He checked his watch.
“Damn!” He leapt from the chair and bolted upstairs without acknowledging Nolin at all.
Nolin listened to the bedroom door opening and slamming closed, his heavy footsteps pounding overhead as he stomped around. Melissa was probably already awake. At least Nolin hoped so. This would have made for a very rude awakening.
Water swished in the pipes. She listened for voices upstairs while she assembled a stack of peanut butter sandwiches and slid them into plastic baggies. Once or twice she thought she heard murmuring, but no shouts or sharpness. No clear ring of her mother’s panicked voice. No low rumble of her father’s toneless reassurances.
When the clock glowed 7:37, she heard her father’s frantic footsteps like bowling balls bouncing down the stairs. She scooped up the sandwiches and rushed them to him as he pulled on his jacket and picked up his briefcase. With a tiny nod of appreciation, he took them and disappeared out the front door, one arm still out of his jacket. Nolin’s heart deflated. She’d hoped for a good-bye hug or even a smile, but he was late.
The sudden quiet filled her ears. Blocks of gray light streamed through the windows. Everything stood eerily still. For a moment she stood between the kitchen and living room, listening to the roaring silence, hypnotized by the gently falling dust, sparkling as it hung in the air, some of it swirling in her own breath.
The whoosh of a passing car outside broke the spell. Nolin blinked. Breakfast. Her mother. Lots to do. Humming tunelessly, she cracked
eggs into a pan, slipped bread into the toaster, poured water into glasses because the milk smelled like corn. She climbed on the counter to reach the serving tray.
Very slowly, she carried the heavy tray up the stairs, eyes trained on the water glasses, careful not to let them tilt too far. When she reached the bedroom door, she tapped a few times with her toe. No answer, of course. Nolin carefully laid the tray on the floor to let herself in.
Her mother lay on her back on the disheveled bed, studying something in her raised hand. Nolin stepped over the untouched remains of yesterday’s dinner to approach the bed.
“Melissa?” she whispered. She felt like an invader, stepping in on something she shouldn’t be seeing, like she always did when she visited her mother’s room. “Breakfast.”
Her mother didn’t acknowledge her. She continued rolling the glinting object through her fingers. A wedding ring, Nolin realized. She hadn’t seen her wear it in years. Melissa slipped the ring onto her finger and let her hand droop, allowing the ring to slide off. It landed on her belly with a soft thud.
“It doesn’t fit,” she whispered.
“Well, you’ve lost a lot of weight,” Nolin said nervously. “Here, eat breakfast...”
“It was always too big, but it never fell off. Now...” Melissa put it back on and let it drop again.
Nolin wanted to suggest that the ring could be resized, but she knew better. This was about much more than a ring.
She settled on the bed and placed the tray next to her mother. “You need to eat breakfast,” she said, her voice quavering.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. You haven’t eaten in days.” She eyed the harsh line of her mother’s jawbone. Melissa pushed herself up and plunked the ring onto the nightstand. Nolin scooted the tray closer. The water glasses sloshed. She stabbed a clump of scrambled eggs with her fork, as if demonstrating for her mother, who might have forgotten how to use a fork. Melissa gingerly picked up her toast and nibbled a corner.