I remember running, the immaculate cold, the air in me, my lungs hard.
I remember thinking, I’m alive, a miracle anyone was. I wondered who had chosen me.
I remember trying to list all the decent things I’d ever done.
I remember walking till it was light, knowing if I slept, I’d freeze. I never wanted so much not to die.
I made promises, I suppose.
In the morning I walked across a bridge, saw the river frozen along the edges, scrambled down. I glided out on it; I walked on water. The snowflakes kept getting bigger and bigger, butterflies that fell apart when they hit the ground, but the sky was mostly clear and there was sun.
Later, the cold again, wind and clouds. Snow shrank to ice. Small, hard. I saw a car idling, a child in the back, the driver standing on a porch, knocking at a door. Clare said, It’s open. She meant the car. She said, Think how fast you can go. She told me I could ditch the baby down the road.
I didn’t do it.
Later I stole lots of things, slashed sofas, pissed on floors.
But that day, I passed one thing by; I let one thing go.
When I think about this, the child safe and warm, the mother not wailing, not beating her head on the wall to make herself stop, when I think about the snow that day, wings in the bright sky, I forgive myself for everything else.
3 HOME
November again. Harvard Square. I called Adele. Not the first time. One ring, two — never more than this. If my mother loved me, she’d pick it up that quick.
Don’t be stupid, Clare said.
No answer, no surprise. Coins clanging down. Jackpot, Clare said.
I saw Emile across the street. He was a Latino boy with cropped hair, reaching for his mother’s hand.
Then it was December third. I remember because afterward I looked at a paper in a box so I’d know exactly when.
One ring. My mother there, whispering in my ear.
Now you’ve done it, Clare said.
Past noon, Adele still fogged. I knew everything from the sound of her voice, too low, knew she must be on night shift again: nursing home or bar, bringing bedpans or beers — it didn’t matter which. I saw the stumps of cigarettes in the ashtray beside her bed. I saw her red hair matted flat, creases in her cheek, the way she’d slept. I smelled her, the smoke in her clothes, the smoke on her breath. I remembered her kissing me one night before I knew any words — that smelclass="underline" lipstick and gin. I heard Clare sobbing in the bunk above mine, her face shoved into her pillow, and then our mother was gone — we were alone in the dark, and if I’d had any words I would have said, Not again.
Who is it? Sharper now, my mother, right in my hand. A weird warm day, so the Haitian man was playing his guitar by the Out Of Town News stand. He’d been dancing for hours, brittle legs, bobbing head. You never saw a grown man that thin. Sometimes he sang in French, and that’s when I understood him best, when his voice passed through me, hands through water, when the words stopped making sense.
I wanted to hold out the phone, let my mother hear what I heard. I wanted to say, Find me if you can.
It’s me, Nadine, I said.
I heard the match scrape, the hiss of flame burning air. I heard my mother suck in her breath.
Your daughter, I almost said.
Where are you?
I thought she was afraid I might be down the road, already on my way, needing money, her soft bed. I saw her there on the edge of the bunk, yellow spread wrapped around her shoulders, cigarette dangling from her lips. I saw the faded outlines of spilled coffee, dark stains on pale cloth, my mother’s jittery hand.
Not that close, I said.
Muffled words. I thought she said, I’m glad. The Haitian man kept jumping, dreadlocks twisting, pants flapping — those legs, no flesh, another scarecrow man. Dollar bills fluttered in his guitar case, wings in wind. Un coeur d’oiseaux brisés, he said, and I almost knew what he meant. A crowd had gathered to listen, two dozen, maybe more, all those people between us, but he was watching me; I was watching him.
I’m glad you called, my mother said again.
And I swear, I knew then.
Je ne pleure pas, the Haitian man said.
For a moment both his feet were off the ground at once. For a moment his mouth stayed open, stunned. He was a dark angel hanging in blue air. I saw his heart break against his ribs. For a moment there were no cars and no breath.
Then every sound that ever was rushed in. Horns blaring, exploding glass; ice cracking on the river; On the ground, motherfucker — all this again.
I said, Clare’s dead.
Tell me where you are, Nadine.
Fuck you, Clare said.
The Haitian man fell to earth. I heard the bones of his legs snap. He wouldn’t look at me now. He was bent over his case, stuffing bills in his pockets.
The voice came over the phone, the one that says you have thirty seconds left. I said, I’m out of quarters. I said, Maybe I’ll call you back.
That night I found a lover.
I mean, I found a man who didn’t pay, who let me sleep in his car instead. He told me his name and I forget. Fat man with a snake coiled in the hair of his chest. I kept thinking, All this flesh. When he was in me, I thought I could be him.
Clare said, I tried to come home once, but the birds had eaten all the crumbs. There was no path.
The next night, another lover, another man with gifts. Two vials of crack we smoked, then heroin to cut the high. Got to chase the dragon, he said. No needles. Clean white smack so pure we only had to breathe it in. Safe this way, he said. He held a wet cloth, told me, Lean back, made me snort the water too, got to get the last bit. When he moved on top of me, I didn’t have a body: I was all head.
Then it was day and I was drifting, knowing that by dark I’d have to look again.
Emile appeared on Newbury Street, shop window, second floor: he was a beautiful mannequin in a red dress.
Listen, you think it’s easy the way we live? Clare told me this: I never had a day off. I had to keep walking. I could never stay in bed.
So she was glad when they put her in a cell, glad to give them all she had: clothes, cash, fingerprints. She said, I knew enough not to drink the water, but nobody told me not to breathe the air.
No lover that night. I found a cardboard box instead. Cold before dawn, and I thought, Just one corner, just the edge. When the flames burst, I meant to smother them. I felt Earl, his cool metal grasp. Get out, he said. Ashes floated in the frozen air, the box gone that fast. Clare said, Look at me: this is what they did. Later my singed hair broke off in my hands.
In the morning, I called Adele again. Tell me, I said.
I thought she might know exactly where and when. I thought there might be a room, a white sheet, a bed, a place I could enter and leave, the before and after of my sister’s death.
But there were only approximate details, a jail, stones, barbed wire somewhere.
No body. She meant she never saw Clare dead.
Clare said she tried to get home in time, but the witch caught her and put her in the candy house instead.