by An Na
The rawness in Will’s voice summons such an ache in my heart. I curl forward to insulate the pain. There are no sounds of the train. No whispers, no footsteps upstairs. Only the truth of the cobalt twilight filtering into the kitchen, illuminating the two chairs at the kitchen table, one still tucked into place from the last time social services came by to check and see how I was managing on my own. I see the two mugs of coffee sitting on the counter from yesterday. Every morning I pour him a fresh cup. Every night I throw it out before I go to bed.
I can see the ghost of me moving through the kitchen. Every day. Existing. Leaning against the counter. Standing. Staring out the window. If I close my eyes and listen, really listen, Dad will return to me. He will come back to me. I trace the noises of the house. Where is he? The slow leak in the upstairs bathtub faucet. The monotone hum of the refrigerator.
“Grace?”
“Grace, let’s have some soup.”
“I have to go, Will.” I slowly lower the phone to its cradle and then look up.
Dad leans forward, his hands gripping the edge of the doorway to the kitchen. The rectangular frame like a photo, opens a door into a place when he was always there for me.
Autumn
She stood next to the swinging door, glaring back at the empty kitchen. She resisted pushing into the dining room. Instead, alone with her anger, she quickly ran back to the table and took the muffin from the plate and threw it on the floor. She began to dig her heel into the lying thing full of metallic sting instead of the sweetness and warmth she so craved.
In a minute the door swung open and Mama entered with a hurried air. She reached into the cabinet for a glass and then opened the refrigerator. She moved around the kitchen, pulling out the milk and pouring it into the glass. Where the back of her mother’s shirt had once been neatly tucked in, it was now undone. The strange disorder of the line unnerved her. Mama set the glass of milk on the table.
“What did you do to the muffin? I can’t understand what has gotten into you today,” Mama said, and bent down to gather the larger pieces off the floor.
Gulp after cool gulp of milk finally washed away the salt. Her father entered the kitchen and walked over to the stove. Before she could warn him, he took a muffin from the tin and bit down.
She saw him gag before throwing the entire thing into the trash.
Mama turned around and saw him wiping his mouth.
“It’s good,” he choked out before walking over and taking her glass of milk to wash out the taste.
“It is?” Mama asked.
Dad smiled too happily for such a disturbing event. “I have to grab some paperwork, but then I’ll be right back,” he said, and leaned in, kissing Mama below her ear.
“Come here, bug.” Dad leaned down and placed his forehead on hers, smiling into her eyes. He tapped her nose three times, quickly, their silent signal for the words I love you. All the sadness over the muffins disappeared with Daddy’s touch.
“Why do you have to leave?” she asked. “Why can’t you just stay?”
“I will be right back. So fast you won’t even miss me.”
“That is not the truth.” She scowled. “I know how many minutes it takes for you to drive to the lab and back.”
Daddy grinned at her. “You do? How many?”
“Thirty-three minutes without any traffic and much longer if there are cars on the road.”
“How did you get so smart?”
She remained scowling.
Dad placed the palm of his hand on top of her head. “I promise when I get back, we can take a walk to the playground. Then get pizza for dinner and—”
“Ice cream cones afterward?”
“Yes, my love. I promise you ice cream and rainbows and all the stars in the sky. I promise I’m going to make everything perfect for you.”
“Okay,” she said, holding out her pinkie. “Remember what you promised.”
He linked his pinkie with hers and then he was gone. The sudden absence of him left her confused. She thought about running out to the car and making him stay. She would gladly give up the playground, pizza, and ice cream if he would just stay. But she knew he would probably tell her she was being Unreasonable. Parents used that word a lot when they didn’t want to do what you wanted.
She watched the door for a second more, hoping against hope that he would return magically, but when he did not, she turned back to her mother, who was crouching on the floor and picking up the rest of the crumbs from the smashed muffin.
“You asked me to make these for you all morning, and then this is what you do.”
She thought of Daddy and his promises and stayed silent as Mama chastised her for being ungrateful and threw the remnants of her poor behavior into the trash. Mama walked over to the stove and unconsciously reached over, breaking off a piece of another muffin and placing it in her mouth.
She rushed to the sink and spat. With her head lowered, her hands gripped the edge of the counter. Then slowly Mama straightened up and the heel of her palm rose up, pressed into the side of her head. She stood there, still and silent, the shadow of her raised arm cutting across the floor.
She stared over Mama’s shoulder at the window, where the wind was whipping back the trees, their once-straight frames cowering and hunching over. The sky darkened. And then tiny white dots floated through the air. Right before her eyes, they proliferated, flooding the window until all that remained was white. A snow globe’s swirling fantasy.
Mama screamed.
The violence of the cry, hard as a kick to the gut, made her jump in fear. She raised her knuckles to her mouth and stared at her shrieking mother.
Mama leaned forward, bending at the waist, hands on her knees. She screamed again. A howl so deep it seemed to crawl across the floor like a wild animal clawing its way to bite her.
She stepped back.
Then Mama was all motion, arms flailing as she threw muffin after muffin into the trash. Some she smashed, fisting them in her hand before heaving them away. Mama swung her body back and forth, grabbing at anything, the muffin tin, the wooden spoon, the towels, the teakettle, anything within reach. Mama began to heave it all against the wall, the floor.
She began inching toward the door when Mama’s eyes found her. Mama’s eyes lasered into her and she could not move.
Spring
I’m frozen in my place at the sink, my reflection in the window directly before me. Behind me, Dad moves through the kitchen, talking about tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, which is just as good as pizza and how they are exactly the same except in a slightly different formulation. He rattles on, discussing the lab and how the new recruit is moving out here to work for Dr. Mendelson. The surfer wunderkind that Dad went to see in Australia. Sometimes our past conversations played over and over again in a Möbius strip.
I look into the darkness of the night transforming the window into a mirror and imagine what someone from the outside would see. A lone girl standing and staring into an empty field.
But inside, in the reflection, I see us the way we always were and will be. Locked in a place and time by the residue of life and the love that bound us. We were never orphans when we were together. Reflections are the illusions of what cannot be known from the outside.
Dad moves upstairs now, coughing hard as he gets ready for bed. The cough that lasted all winter is back again. I walk up the stairs to my bedroom and along the way pass the myriad of my school portraits. Missing upper teeth in that one, too-long bangs in another. Acne, brown corduroy jumper, spiked hair, pigtails, eyeliner. Thirteen portraits of a life frayed at the ends, bounded and boundless.
I climb a few more steps and stop at the picture of me when I was eight. My tight tiny smile as my brows gather in concentration. The heavy bangs cutting diagonally across my forehead. I remember this time so clearly. It was the first time that Dad and I had moved away from our house by the train tracks. Without their consistent presence reminding me of the time of day, e
vening, or night, I became anchorless.
I climb to the very top step and look behind me at the wall of memories. Who are we in the end? A collection of photos? How do we know what is truly lived if we cannot remember it? Dad holds on to the pictures like precious jewels. They are the first things that he unpacks. The first things he hangs on the walls before anything else is done to settle in. The pictures of the life we had so long ago. The only new pictures are the ones of me collecting an award, the odd holiday pose in front of the tree. Me in front of the sterile blue background of school portraits.
There are no pictures of Dad after Mama disappeared. The only pictures that remain are the ones in my mind: Dad reading medical studies, his sheepish look as he picks me up late again, the glow of the screen on his face as he researches online, the crook in his neck as he talks on the phone to scientists, detectives, hospital administrators, his joy at my first science-fair project winning regionals. The moments collect together and beat in my heart. Dad is still here. And if I cannot keep him alive, then I would rather we both be forgotten.
I begin to prepare for bed as I do every night. I will brush my teeth. I will wash my face. I will use the toilet one last time. After I enter the bathroom and stand before the mirror, I glance at my reflection and find a shadow looming behind me. When I whirl around, there is nothing there. After pacing the small space, opening drawers, searching for the shadow, which eludes me, I run back into my room and slam the door. I crawl into bed with my clothes on and pull the covers over my body, leaving the lights on in case the shadow returns. There was a shadow, I repeat over and over. I saw the shadow. It was real. I saw it. It was real. I saw it. It was real. My eyes begin to drift closed. I saw it. It was real. I saw it.
The tomb of sleep finally descends.
Summer
You will die every night only to be reborn the next day. The marrow of your bones birthing cell after cell. Muscle covering skeleton. Flesh folding over muscle. Hair coating flesh. Lungs expanding.
Your eyes will open and you will look down at the body of someone living. A life that is filled with the death of you. Second by second. Minute by minute. Hour by hour. Time passing through you like a sieve. And then the siren songs will begin.
You will listen to the whispers. Light and sweet at first. You will welcome them with familiar thrills. Here is home. Here is your family. They welcome you. Join you. They have been waiting all this time. You will look at them and wonder where they went and how they came back. You will try to hold each of them in your arms. And when you can’t, they will anger. Their voices changing to ash and coals. You were never happy with them. You left them. You were too weak to stop it. How could you let them disappear?
You will stand up to leave, but they will follow you. Pester and torment you. Words, simply words, you will say, but when the voices cannot be ignored, you will begin to sing. Softly to yourself at first. Then louder. Then screaming into the cave of your mind. Fighting and yelling at them to leave. You will slam your head against the wall over and over again to fight against their voices invading like skittering insects crawling through your skull.
You will see the nurse approaching, his hand clutching a small cup of pills. He grips your forearm. You will try to thrash out of his hands, but he will force the pills into your mouth. He will be stronger and hold his hand over your lips to keep you from spitting them out until all you can do is swallow. Swallow your life and voice and everything you should hate, but want and know this is how it is supposed to be.
When the voices leave, they part silently, disappearing one by one like melting snowflakes whispering, Traitor. Your family. You will weep, searching for them in the halls. Turning corner after corner only to sit down and realize you have never moved from your chair. Lost in the mirror halls of your mind. You will stand up crying. In grief. In love. With ghosts. In confusion. In pain. In heat. In cold. Inside. Outside. This skin burns. This skin is not yours. You will try and peel off what is not yours. Peel it off layer by layer with the nails that they cut to the quick. So you will use your teeth. Grab sections and peel it away to reveal what is underneath. The red of you. The meat of you. This is you. This will be the true you hiding under all the lies and voices. The trails of red that run down your body and spread across the white floor. The smear you will make with your fingers in the red pools collecting like rain on potholed streets. That will be you.
Spring
The ruts in the road are beginning to fill with the slush of ice and water as the rain beats down relentlessly. I stand at the threshold of the open front door, smelling the air. It is of earth, damp hay, and dark attics, rising up through the foggy mists.
“Dad, your coffee’s on the counter,” I yell before I heave my backpack onto my shoulder and step out into the drizzling wetness.
“Thanks, bug,” Dad calls. “I’m going to remember the pizza tonight. I promise.”
The exhaustion I feel as I maneuver the Lincoln over the slippery road toward school almost makes me turn the car around and head home. I gingerly touch the bump on my nose. I don’t think it’s broken, but all the blood I had to scrub out of the rug makes me question my own diagnosis. At least I can breathe.
Suddenly the sun peeks out from behind a cloud and the bright light blinds me for a second. I blink quickly to keep the road ahead in sight. In the distance, a dark shape forms on the horizon. I wheeze and eagerly press on the gas. Hannah’s figure looms ahead of me. She is walking.
“Hey,” I say, and frantically wave as I pull up next to her.
She glances through the window and pauses. I stop the car completely and jump out.
“I don’t want any more lectures,” she says.
“I don’t have any. Come on, Hannah. Please . . . I miss you.”
Hannah smiles and my heart stills for a beat. Her brown eyes in that moment are so familiar to me. As though transported through time. The relief I feel at her forgiveness is immense. She is still my friend. And that knowledge means more than I could have imagined.
As soon as she is in the car, I am running my mouth about how there is a new guy at the lab and there is this hush-hush secret that I wish I could tell her about, but then I would have to cut off my tongue and possibly hers as well. She listens to all this without a single word but continues to smile at me through it all. I have truly missed her.
“Where have you been these last two weeks? You haven’t been at school. Did you go to Costa Rica with Dave?”
She absentmindedly nods as we pull into the school parking lot. A group of guys standing on the lawn, including Dave, watch us drive by. I maneuver the beast over to the far side of the lot to keep as much distance between Dave and Hannah as possible. I just want a few more minutes alone with her.
“Why do we have to park so far away?” she asks.
“Can we just catch up for a minute? I know you’re gonna just go and be with Dave when we get into school.”
Hannah shifts in her seat, and her long greasy hair falls into her face. I can smell that she hasn’t showered in days. The veins in the back of her hands stand out like tunneling worms.
“Are you getting enough to eat?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Enough,” she says quietly.
“Hannah, you can’t keep going like this. Have you thought about what you want to do?”
Hannah remains silent, her hands folded neatly in her lap like she is at church. “I know how you feel about this, Grace.”
“Remember I vowed lecture radio silence.” I smile.
“I told him, and he wants me to have the baby.”
I want to throw up my hands and ask if she is insane, but instead I nod and keep the fake smile Sharpied on my lips.
“I want a family, but is this just a cliché?” Hannah’s eyes fill with tears. “Some teen mom bullshit?”
“Do you love him, Hannah?” I ask gently.
She looks away from me. “I don’t know. I don’t know about anything. What am I supposed to do after high school?
Find a job? Go to college? I don’t have the grades like you, Grace.”
“You could go to a community college. Transfer later. Get a job for now and—”
“Stop! I don’t have plans like that, Grace.”
“It just sucks, Hannah. I wish you could see that you have so many options. Choices that you can’t even know about in the future. Don’t you want the freedom to see what happens?”
Hannah cups her slightly protruding belly. “This is all I have.”
I lean forward, my neck stretching tight with all the things I want to say, but instead I tell her a truth. “I wish my mom and dad never had me. If I could have had a say in all of it, I would have said no.”
Hannah turns away from me. Immediately, the horrible meaning of my words sinks between us. I reach out, but she flinches away.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t meant that. I know I said I wouldn’t do this. Please, Hannah,” I beg, “please, don’t be mad at me. I can’t sleep. I’m just tired and cranky.”
Hannah nods but won’t look up at me. She dashes away the tears with the back of her hand and then opens the door to step out. As we walk away from the car, my throat raw from the scraping words, I wonder about what choices we really do have in life. What did my mother and father know of love? Of bringing me into a world and a life that was never going to be truly mine?
If I had known that one day my father would crucify himself all for a childhood dream . . . if I had known that I would have a runaway mother lost inside her own locked mind, forever in a world within a world . . . what choices do we really have in this life?
In the distance, walking toward us, I see a lone guy. Hannah instantly turns to me. “Don’t start anything, Grace.”
“Can I just talk to him, Hannah? Please? I just want to ask him if he is really going to take care of you.”