by Cole McCade
What if she called and they wouldn’t let her talk to Mama?
What if she called, and Mama didn’t remember who she was?
But then Mrs. Grobin was there, the librarian whose boobs were a little lopsided though Willow would never be rude enough to stare, and oh God what if she became a woman and her boobs were lopsided, too? She wouldn’t be THE AMAZING FLYING GIRL but THE HORRIFYING MALFORMED MONSTER, THE LOPSIDED WOMAN, GAZE UPON THE MUTANT AND DESPAIR! She’d have to find a circus like the one Uncle Wally used to have. He used to come with the circus every year, and he and Mama would hug and then Willow would get to meet all the beautiful people. They were all so beautiful, in the circus: covered in colors and joy like they wore their inside hearts on their outsides, and their flesh was made up of all the awe and wonder inside them. But when Willow shot up lopsided, she’d have to join one of the smaller, dirtier circuses, the kind that kept people in cages and brought people in to leer and grin at their suffering in such an awful, cruel way.
“Willow?” Mrs. Grobin waved a hand in front of her face. “Did you hear me? It’s time to go home.”
“Huh? Oh. Right. Okay.”
Willow blushed and quickly closed the browser window. She only wished she’d had time to clear the history. She might be a noob who never got to use the internet, but even she knew that. But Mrs. Grobin was watching, waiting, so she offered a hasty smile, gathered up her books, and stuffed them in her bag before scurrying out.
Outside spring was racing toward summer, boiling away in the heat rising off the roads in liquid shimmers and heralded by the caws of the crows on the line. She wondered why there were always crows on the line, standing there like they were watching and waiting for something, the same way that she wondered that it always seemed on the edge of summer in Crow City, even in the quiet, leaden gray winters when the city hunched into its shoulders and waited for the summer sun to turn everything to gold again. After the chill of the library she could hardly breathe for the heat, and she sucked in wet, panting breaths as she jogged to the payphone on the corner of the school’s block. Uncle Wally wasn’t here yet, but he would be soon and by the time he was, she needed to be back out by the bus pickup where she said she’d wait.
She fumbled in her pocket for the leftover change from her lunch money. She had three quarters, but she only needed one. Under the sun the pages of her history notebook shimmered, the lines of her scratchy-stick pointy handwriting making the numbers fade into the white like they didn’t want to be seen. Like they were trying to melt away into that crawling place inside her that pricked like she’d swallowed a hornet’s nest and they were so very, very angry, flying all over the inside of her chest and stinging away. She couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with the thick summer air and everything to do with the raw cold terror that made her toes curl up into little pinchy knots inside her sneakers.
Call her.
She was fearless. That was what Dad always said, when she fell out of another tree or nearly blew a hole in the wall of the house messing with things she shouldn’t be messing with, like the fuel canisters out in the shed. She broke things. She broke things, she nearly broke herself, and even when her father was sighing and asking her to be more careful, he’d rest his hand on top of her head and say, that’s my fearless girl.
One day, Willow, you’re going to do great things. That’s what fearless people do, because they aren’t afraid of failure. Aren’t afraid to try things that other people never even thought of.
Don’t be like your old man, sweetheart. Fear comes when you get older. When you grow up and see all the hard things in life.
Never stop being fearless.
But if he saw her now, saw her trembling with the tips of her fingers numb, he wouldn’t call her fearless. If he saw how she hid from Erin he’d call her scaredy-cat, and right now…right now, she couldn’t stand to be that.
So with the specter of her father watching over her shoulder—in her head, he was nodding his approval—she propped her notebook in the corner of the phone booth, picked up the receiver with the plastic burning-boiling-sun-hot and hurting her palm, dropped her quarter in, waited for the chink-changle, then punched her finger against the weird metal-plastic click of the numbers with a determination that was half real, half complete bust-out terrified bravado.
The phone rang only once before it picked up with a sharp, brisk efficiency that perfectly matched the tartly polite, perky voice on the other end. If the essence of a receptionist could be distilled down to a voice, that essence was in every word the woman said as she chirped, “West Hotels Corporate, how may I help you?”
Willow opened her mouth to speak.
Nothing came out.
It wasn’t just that she couldn’t get the words out. There were no words to get out, like her head had opened up and tipped on its side and emptied out completely, spilling her words on the ground where they could scurry out of her reach. She didn’t know how to speak anymore. She didn’t know a single solitary thing. She could hear, could understand, but not say anything back. Inside she was hollow. A nothing. A nothing that wore a girl like a coat but didn’t know how to walk and talk and be a girl, so it could only stand there and stare while emotions zinged and sparked around its empty shell.
“Hello?” the receptionist said. “May I help you?”
“I-I…”
One word. One word, but it was something. One more thing crawling back inside her to weight her down and give her definition.
“Are you there?” the receptionist asked, sounding impatient, and Willow found another word.
“Yes.”
Small, dry, barely whispered, but it was there. Progress. Triumph.
The receptionist sighed. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Y-yes.” Every word she found led to another, and another, like following breadcrumbs home. “Hi. Um. Hi. I…I’m calling for Miriam West?”
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said thinly. “Mrs. West isn’t accepting unsolicited calls right now.”
“No, I…um…she’s my mother.” She said the words like a confession. She’d only been to church once, and for some reason it had made Dad angry, and he and the pastor had whispered over her head in fierce and furious hisses before Dad had taken her hand and walked out. She remembered the booth, though, and people going inside only to come out with their faces shining and their steps lighter. She wondered if they’d felt unburdened as she did, when she managed to confess, “I…I just want to talk to Mama.”
Nothing, but in the silence she could hear the hesitation. The confusion. The wondering. And she wondered if the people Mama lived with now, the family Mama loved now, even knew about Willow, or if she was a dirty secret no one talked about, the dirty secret of why Mama went away and didn’t come back.
“Is this Devon?” the receptionist ventured. “Where’s your nanny, sweetie?”
Willow tried to remember where she’d heard the name Devon before, then remembered: that tug of war on the sidewalk, the little brown hand in Mama’s, the wide green eyes so much like Willow’s but so much starker against that soft, tan skin. The way he’d looked down at the ground as if he didn’t want to be on this battlefield any more than Willow did, and Mama had said Don’t you want to meet your brother? when he wasn’t any brother Willow knew, nothing she recognized as her own, yet she saw herself in him nonetheless.
She guessed a little boy could sound like a girl, especially over the phone. Especially when she was whispering, talking as small as she felt, her voice cracking. If it got the receptionist to connect her to her mother, she’d take it.
“I-I don’t know where my nanny is.” She bit her lip. “Can I talk to Mama?”
“Sure, sweetie. Give me a second to transfer you.”
The hold music switched on, peppy and pleasant and a little bit desperate, some man singing about how only fools fall in love. Willow closed her eyes and scrubbed her sweaty palm against her jeans and tried to figure out w
hat she’d say to her mother. She wanted to sound calm. Cool. Collected. She wanted to sound all grown up instead of like the panicked little rabbit she was inside, her heart thump-thump-thumping like a jackrabbit leg against a log, like Thumper in Bambi.
But when the line picked up she opened her mouth to speak, and nothing came out but a strangled, gurgling squeak. She clapped her hand over her mouth, biting back a groan, and thought a word she wasn’t ever supposed to speak but that girls like Erin said all the time:
Damn it.
Her mother didn’t even seem to notice. She made an exasperated sound and said “Devi? I told you not to call me at work.”
And there it was. The voice she hadn’t heard in two years, still with that same sticky-sweetness like honey that had started to go bad, thick but with a sharper edge than her memory recalled. And the desperation she’d heard in that hold music was in that voice, too, and she remembered hearing it time and time again right before Mama disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to come back glowing.
Until the one day when she didn’t come back at all.
“It’s not Devon, Mama,” she croaked out. “It…it’s Willow.”
“Willow?” She said her name like she’d never heard it before, and that stabbed deep. Hard. “How did you get this number?”
“I…I looked it up online. For…for the West office, and the receptionist said—”
“I should fire that girl.”
Willow’s stomach twisted. “…Mama?”
“Nothing,” Mama snapped. She fell silent for a moment, her deep breath audible through the phone; when she spoke her voice was more measured, more kind, more sweet, but the kindness and sweetness were fake, so fake, and Willow could taste the difference like she could taste the difference between sugar and the cheap artificial sweeteners Dad brought home from work in packets by the handful, and used to sweeten her cereal while she pretended not to notice. That kind of sweetener-packet bitter-powder sugariness was in Mama’s voice when she said, “What do you want, honey? I’m very busy with work.”
She almost hung up. But if she hung up she wouldn’t know if she was dying until she was dead, so she took a breath, reminded herself she was fearless, and spoke.
“I need help, and…I can’t ask Dad. It’s a girl thing.”
“Doesn’t your father have a girlfriend you can ask?”
Willow bit her lip. “No. Daddy doesn’t go out with girls.” He hasn’t since you, she wanted to say, but kept her mouth shut.
“I’m not surprised. What is it?”
“I…” Just say it. Say it. This was her mother, and a long time ago her mother used to kiss her hair and sing to her at night, like mothers in storybooks did. Mothers in storybooks knew these things, and imparted the ancient wisdom of girlhood and womanhood and motherhood to their daughters because they were things the world said were bad to talk about, so they became whispered secrets passed from mother to daughter and generation to generation like legends of oral folklore. “…I’m bleeding.” It came out in a whisper, and then that whisper turned into a spate. “Erin kicked me between the legs in the bad place and I’ve been bleeding since then. Like, bleeding all over my underwear and it smells bad and I’m scared I’m going to die and…and…if I’m not dying maybe I’m…am I having my p-p-period?”
“God, Willow, that’s disgusting,” Mama spat. “Why would you tell me that?”
Willow closed her eyes. Emptiness, scouring desolate emptiness, took her over—as if her emotions had burrowed down into the dry dead earth so she wouldn’t have to feel them. Ugly, Mama’s voice said. Ugly ugly ugly inside, and now outside too. Everyone’s ugly to someone, and you’re ugly to me.
“Because I need help,” she said. Small, so small, her voice a turtle retreating back down her throat. “I’m…I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.”
“It happens. You get over it. It’s normal. Tell your father to buy you some pads. There’s a whole aisle in the grocery store and even he can’t fuck that up.”
Willow’s breaths sucked in. You weren’t supposed to say fuck in front of kids. You weren’t supposed to say fuck in front of your kids.
“That’s what you were worried about?” Mama demanded. No, not Mama. Mom. Mother. This wasn’t the Mama who’d kissed her hair and sung sweet stardust lullabies, and clung to the merry-go-round and spun and spun with her, laughing until they were a mix and mingle of autumn-leaf hair. This was Mom, Mom who kissed strange men, Mom who talked to her daughter in a voice like black tar. “It’s about time, isn’t it? You’re—what, fifteen now? Sixteen?”
“I’m ten,” Willow said flatly, and that wasn’t Willow, either, but the voice of a cold, tired thing who saw her mother for what she was for the very first time.
“Well it’s a little early. It’s nothing to freak out over. God, Willow, grow up.”
Grow up. No how are you, it’s good to hear from you, I miss you baby, how’s your father?
Just grow up, cold and scornful, talking to her the same way she’d said she needed to fire the receptionist.
“Okay,” she said, and wet her lips. “I’ll tell Dad.” Then she remembered her manners and, even though she wasn’t grateful at all, said “Thank you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“School’s been out for an hour.”
“Oh.”
“Mama—”
But the phone went dead. A slamming click, and then the dial tone, loud and whistling and keen. Willow froze, staring at the graffiti scribbled all over the inside of the phone booth, MARTY WUZ HERE and LYVE NOYSE KREW and CLARISSA SUCKS DICKS. All these certain proclamations, so self-assured in black Sharpie, written with the absolute faith that they would be true for all time—as permanent as the markers they were written in.
When right now, nothing felt true at all. Nothing felt permanent, and nothing felt real.
“Mama, did you really want me?” she whispered into the dead phone.
But that empty ringing dial tone had no answers.
She hung up the phone. It fell from the cradle and she had to catch it and put it back, and then she stared at that. That was where Uncle Wally found her: standing, staring, looking at the blue and silver and black that used to be a payphone booth but were now blurs in eyes that tried so hard to cry. But she stood locked in a battle of wills, unable to move a single inch of her body except her slowly clenching fists while she fought against every tear that built up in the corners and caught there, unable to fall as long as she wouldn’t let them.
“Willow?” His voice came up the sidewalk, breathless and a little urgent and scared. She blinked fiercely, so fiercely, forcing back a few more tears and freeing up a little willpower, a little strength to turn around.
Uncle Wally came flying up the walk, his shirt collar half up, half down, his glossy hair come half loose from its tight slick and falling into his face like a draping crow’s wing, his shirt sleeves cuffed to the elbows and his neat black slacks dusty at the cuffs with dun-yellow sidewalk dust. He never quite fit into the backdrop of Crow City, even as he seemed made up of all the things that made Crow City Crow City. He’d just moved to town a little while ago, at least to stay. He used to come in and out all the time, sailing in on the Greyhound bus and always bringing gifts from far-off places all over the country—sometimes staying for weeks, sometimes for a day or two, but when he was here his shop was open and Willow had her ice caves of lace to play in.
But last year he’d come not on the Greyhound bus, but in a small rental van with a few quiet cardboard boxes and suitcases that looked sad and droopy. And Uncle Wally, her vibrant, beautiful, wonderful Uncle Wally who could make flowers sprout from his sleeves and was like a living light full of awe and made of all the lovely things about being little wrapped up in someone big…looked just as sad and droopy with his light gone out and his colors faded and everything about him just tired.
And he hadn’t gone away again.
He tumbled to
a halt before her, then doubled over, clasping his knees and panting. “Well there. Gave me a bit of a fright, you did. I’m getting too old to be running like that.” Then he smiled his sunny smile. “Hello, my lovely little Willow-girl. What are you doing all the way down here?”
She flung herself against him, wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her face in his stomach, and cried.
The tears wouldn’t stay back any longer. She shouldn’t have turned around, shouldn’t have relaxed her control that tiny bit, because that was the tiny bit that opened a crack in the gates and let one creep through, then another and another, forcing it wider until she couldn’t stop the rush and she sobbed, clinging to Wally and hiding against the safe shelter he made.
Wally made a surprised sound, then wrapped his long arms around her. He was like a tall, leafless tree, gnarled and long-limbed, and sometimes in her head she pictured him as a cartoon tree with reaching branches for arms. Those warm woodsy arms wrapped around her now, and he was a forest full of secret safe places, a forest where she could get lost in the brush and hide.
“Now, now,” he soothed. “Why is my darling Willow a weeping Willow? Was detention so very bad?”
She shook her head, smearing her tears, and oh God she was snotting on his nice shirt but she couldn’t stop. “I…I-I c-can’t talk about it, I c-can’t…”
“You don’t have to, darling dearest. Not if you don’t want to. Here.”
She didn’t know what he was doing until he was doing it: long hands around her waist, then a hoist and her feet were leaving the ground and she was rising up, backpack and all. High, so high, and she grabbed at his arms with a squeak as her stomach dropped out. He flipped her about deftly—then settled her onto his wide, thin shoulder, all bony angles under her butt and thigh, nestled up with his cheek and hair and neck on one side and a long, long drop on the other. She gasped and clutched at his head dizzily, tilting her head back and looking up at a sky that looked so much closer from up here, wide and blue and the few bright, gilt-edged white clouds low enough to touch.