I did what you wanted. I understood your life.
My mother smiled. Yeah. You understand everything. Let’s talk again tomorrow night, in another twenty-four hours, after you’ve worked and had almost no sleep. You haven’t been broken yet. I’m going to break you, and then we’ll find out who you are.
I pulled the rest of the sheet free and bunched it up and carried it to the washer. I didn’t turn it on because of the neighbors. Then I found the bottle of bleach and poured a little bit in a bucket with some warm water and grabbed a sponge.
The mattress had other stains, old. And it seemed it might soak up a lot of water, so I was sparing. I wondered whether my grandfather was awake, too. Where was his house, and what was it like? I was almost like Cinderella dreaming of the prince, except he was an old man, not a prince, and his house would be small, no castle, and this was my real mother, not my stepmother, and she had already destroyed the carriage. But the idea was the same, to leave the old life and have a new and better one.
I’m Cinderella, I said. You were Cinderella.
No I wasn’t.
You had to work. You didn’t get to have your life. You had to take care of someone else.
That’s true. But there was no prince waiting, no one to take me away. You don’t see me in a castle now, do you?
What about a house, and not having to work? What if I could get him to agree that you don’t have to work anymore? He could be a mechanic again. He would do that. I know he would. And you can spend time with Steve as your prince.
It’s a fairy tale, Caitlin. That means it’s not real. There’s a real life and there’s a fantasy life.
And Cinderella gets to have the fantasy. That becomes her real life.
Yeah. You’re right. But that doesn’t happen for us. We don’t get to cross over. Whatever road you’re on, that goes all the way to the grave.
I put the bucket down on the floor, and I didn’t know how to convince her. I sniffed the spot on the mattress, and it was mostly bleach now. I couldn’t tell whether the urine was still there or not.
I used the hair dryer on low to not disturb the neighbors. This gentle hot wind drying the urine spot, such a strange thing in the middle of the night. I was so exhausted my eyes kept closing.
What if you could go back to school? I asked. If you can’t just be given a new life, how about the chance to make a new life? He would work, and we’d live at his house, and you would go to school.
It’s not the same. I’d be about fifteen years late, too old. And where’s his punishment? It’s not enough that he has to work again. He needs to die alone. You’re forgetting that part.
You’re just mean.
Yes. Yes I am. But I want to be a thousand times meaner. I can’t possibly say anything bad enough. I’d have to pull my guts out through my mouth to be saying enough. And maybe not even then. You have a goodness, a generosity, and I don’t want you to lose that. But I lost it almost twenty years ago.
I felt the spot with my hand. The mattress hot now, and only barely damp. It seemed fine. So I went to the closet for a new fitted sheet and did my side of the bed first, pulled the sheet all the way over and then rolled her gently and attached her side. All better, I said, but she didn’t answer.
I noticed then that both our dinner plates were empty on the floor beside her. She had eaten both dinners while I was sleeping, and I was starving now. So I went to the kitchen and fixed a bowl of cereal. Almost four a.m. on the kitchen clock. At least we weren’t going to work and school and I could sleep in. Sound only of the refrigerator, and light only from the hallway. I sat in shadow in a quiet world waiting.
When I returned to bed, she spoke. I need medicine. You have to go out now.
~ ~ ~
Streetlamps hunched over, softened cones of light and dark spaces between. I hurried along the sidewalk, my chin and hands buried. The cold a dull ache already in my legs. I could almost feel my bones.
I thought there would be no other movement, no one else awake, but a white van passed, and then another, and a car coming the other way. For Boeing Field, maybe, everything starting so early.
I didn’t know where I would find a store open. I was looking for a 7-Eleven or a gas station. She wanted a painkiller and something to keep her from throwing up. She said she had made these night trips all the time.
Corson Avenue South had become part of a field of white indistinguishable from sidewalks and front yards and the parking lots except that it was bordered by these lights and had slim dark tracks from the few cars. I crossed over on South Harney Street to get to Airport Way South, thinking there had to be some stores or gas stations, but there were only windowless warehouses, small office complexes, a few cafes closed. A bakery, and even that wasn’t open yet. Interstate 5 a corridor of light, trucks arriving early in the city, come from anywhere.
For some reason, I didn’t feel afraid. Perhaps because of the snow. When I hit Corson again, at the top of Airport Way, an overpass rose above like a landing strip. Old trucks, rusted and dented, and wrecked cars on the other side of the street, kept for parts. The street no longer lit under the overpass, forming a kind of cave, but I walked along the mouth of this cave and met no one. A park, then, behind chain-link fence, and I just kept going on Corson back toward our apartment, and then I saw someone walking toward me, another figure hunched over and bundled up and pushing through the snow, rushing now, and I stopped, confused, not knowing whether to run, but my mother called out, Caitlin!
I stood in place. I didn’t run to her. In fact, I looked back behind me, at that cave of an overpass, some instinct for escape. The weight of her, momentum, snow flung by each plow of her boots. Some shadow figure from fairy tale, come to rescue or destroy. As if we lived in the woods, no concrete beneath the white, that overpass the curve of a mountain, faced in cliffs. Each warehouse a dark grove with fields between, small clearings. And I was not fast enough. I couldn’t move. In fairy tale, you can never get away.
She caught me, pulled me tight against her. Caitlin, she said. My baby. I’m sorry. Kissing my forehead and cradling me. You can’t be out here.
Wolves, she might have said. But there were no wolves.
I used to walk along the highway, she said. Day or night, alone. I can’t even think of it. It makes me crazy. Don’t ever come out here again. You understand?
Yes, I said.
There are men out here. Always men. They will rape you. They will rape both of us, if they find us now. We have to get back.
So she grabbed my hand and we ran through the snow together, as if a pack of men ran just behind at our heels. We exploded up the stairs and my mother fumbled with the keys at the lock and then we were inside, safe.
Everything bad in this world comes from men, my mother said. You have to know that. All violence, all fear, all slavery. Everything that crushes us.
We sat on the kitchen floor, with our backs against the door to barricade. The lights out, so we wouldn’t be seen.
I’m sorry, she said. I went too far. Don’t ever tell anyone I sent you out in the snow. At night, in this place. And don’t tell anyone I dunked your head underwater. You can’t tell anyone that.
I won’t, I said. And I thought, who would I tell? Only my grandpa or Shalini, and I wouldn’t tell my grandpa, because I wanted him to like her. I wanted them to get along. So only Shalini, and when would I see her again? I missed her suddenly with this deep and hollow ache in my chest. I wanted her to lie on top of me. I wanted to kiss her and feel her skin against mine. And I wanted to be able to tell my mother.