Fiction | King

On Saturday morning, Elena drank coffee in the kitchen, looking out at the untrammeled snow, and thought of her daughter Nori, who at one o’clock she’d see in person for the first time since her birth, the first time in a month. She’d watched Nori sleeping through the cell-phone camera of her ex, who had custody, but that paled in comparison to touching and smelling her. As she rinsed out her mug, the two little boys who lived next door came out dressed in red snowsuits, black stocking caps, and rainbow-colored mittens. She turned up the music on her phone and cracked a window so they’d look up at her, and when they did, she waved at them. They waved back, but grimly, as though they had more important things, such as snowman-making, on their minds.

Elena played Mysonne while she showered. Her counselor had told her to stay away from angrier rappers like DMX. Elena saw her point, but also felt something cathartic in someone articulating feelings she’d had but never had the vocabulary or talent to say like that. She dressed in a maroon turtleneck—she always wore long sleeves now—and skinny jeans. She checked on the boys, who’d finished a snowman and were trying to push in a carrot nose that kept falling off. Finally, the younger one, Arjun, grabbed the carrot from the older, Mahir, and stuck it on top of the snowman’s head. The creature looked like an alien with a conduit. She thought she could offer them snowman eyes—maybe buttons?—but she didn’t have any. As she searched, she decided she’d make cookies and invite the boys up. She’d taken a liking to them the day she’d moved into the unit above their parents’ detached garage, when they’d been playing Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes, a comic she’d loved as child. She could also take cookies to her ex’s sister, she thought, who’d be bringing Nori to the visitation at the Louisville Public Library.

The first dozen cookies were burnt, but the second batch was light brown, the chocolate bars she’d used instead of chips melted in strange but beautiful whorls. She made two more batches, then went to find the boys. They were on the snow-covered sidewalk, Mahir pulling Arjun on a wooden sled. They’d taken off their mittens; their hands were red. Elena waved to them, and they waved back.

“Do you want some cookies?” she asked. “I just made some upstairs.”

The boys stopped their sled. Arjun hopped off and stepped toward her. Mahir placed a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder, pulling him back. “No thank you,” he said.

Elena buried her eagerness. “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.

Arjun looked like he was salivating, but Mahir shook his head.

“I’m going to the store,” Elena said. “You can go up and get some while I’m gone, if you want.”

Elena went back upstairs for her purse, then headed to her Accord. The boys were on the front patch of snow, trying to pull the feet out from under each other. She waved at them faintly as she pulled away.

Finally, the younger one, Arjun, grabbed the carrot from the older, Mahir, and stuck it on top of the snowman’s head. The creature looked like an alien with a conduit. She thought she could offer them snowman eyes—maybe buttons?—but she didn’t have any.

Elena drove the plowed roads on autopilot. Walmart had always been a comforting place for her. She’d crushed on a girl, a coworker, for the first time while working at a Walmart at fifteen. She didn’t tell her mom she was queer, not because she didn’t think she’d accept her, but because she was sure they’d stop receiving rent assistance from their church if their church found out. The coworker and Elena used to drive toward the mountains, pull off onto tree-shaded gravel roads, and make out, but Elena didn’t have her first official girlfriend until she’d graduated early from high school and moved west to Steamboat Springs. There, she also went on occasional drinking binges. These nights released something in her that nothing else would, something to do with having to lead a double life, to appear straight to her mom and church community. Eventually, she stopped visiting her hometown except at Christmas.

She was attracted to guys, too, though Nori’s father, Liam, was the first she’d had a serious relationship with. They’d moved in together after two months and after six wanted a kid, which she now found strange, but at the time she’d liked Liam’s steady aura and had gone with it. The problem had come while pregnant, when she couldn’t go on binges. Throughout the pregnancy a rage grew in her, which she’d let out two months before Nori’s due date when she’d cut her wrists. 

Today, she walked around the infants’ section at Walmart, wondering what her mom would have bought her daughter. Soft things, she thought. Her mom liked soft things. She would have bought Nori the soft blankets, the soft onesies, the soft stuffed animals. Elena touched these objects as she walked by them. Her counselor said it might help her to tell her mom about Nori, but Elena didn’t know whether she wanted to admit to her mom why she wasn’t taking care of her daughter.

Elena stopped at the infant stocking caps. It was the beginning of winter; Nori might need them. She chose a packet of pink and blue caps with little yellow duckies on them, and in the next aisle found a plastic ducky to match. It would be a few months before Nori could play in a tub, but when that time came, Elena wanted it to be a fun experience.

Elena didn’t know whether she wanted to admit to her mom why she wasn’t taking care of her daughter.

At home, Elena took the stairs two at a time. In the apartment, only the burned batch of cookies remained on the counter. The boys had taken the others, she thought. She’d said they could come up for cookies, but she didn’t think they’d take most of them. Now she didn’t have any to give Liam’s sister. Anger rushed from her gut to her head. She hurried downstairs. In the backyard, the boys had pushed cookies into the snowman’s face and zigzagged crumbs around the lawn. The streaks of chocolate in the snowman’s eyes and its huge cookie mouth that curved above the eyes made the creature look manic. Elena rushed around the house and knocked on the front door.

Arjun opened it. He was eating a cookie. Without thinking, Elena swiped it out of his hand. It fell to the checkered area rug beneath him. Without crying out, as Mahir might have, he leaned over, grabbed the cookie, and gazed at her while munching on it again. By then, his mom Preeti had come up behind him.

“Hi Elena,” she said.

She was wearing a neon-green apron. The scent of curry rose from her. Sometimes, on weekends, she’d make large batches for the entire workweek ahead.

“My cookies,” Elena said. “They took my cookies.” She imagined the boys jumping up the stairs, Arjun leading. He was probably the one who wasted them, crumbling them across the lawn, while Mahir made the smiley face and eyes on the snowman. She felt her hands fisting and tried to relax them.

Preeti’s brow crinkled. “They said you said they could take some.” She looked down at Arjun. “Did you not say that?”

“I invited them inside,” Elena said. “I invited them in and they wouldn’t come.”

“Arjun, go up to your room,” Preeti said. “Elena, please come in.”

The boy stared at Elena’s red face before he turned. Elena stepped inside and followed Preeti down the hallway to the kitchen.

A huge pot sat on the stove. On the counter sat a wine glass full of red wine. Preeti turned down the stove, then turned back to Elena, holding the glass.

“I’m so sorry if they took more than they should have.”

The scent of onions was making Elena’s eyes water.

“They’re strong aren’t they?” Preeti said. “Would you like to come over later for dinner? We have plenty.”

“I don’t know,” Elena said. “Maybe.”

Preeti nodded. “The fact is, I told the boys not to go up to your apartment with you.”

“They’re welcome to. I don’t mind.”

Preeti shook her head. “I know you’re working through some things. I think it would be best if they didn’t.”

Anger welled up again. Elena couldn’t believe this woman feared she’d harm them.

“You’re welcome to hang out with them in the yard.” Preeti swished the wine.

What did this lady know about her? Elena thought. Only what she’d discovered through a background check—that Elena was sick enough to have her newborn taken from her.

“Got it.” Elena turned and walked out of the room and down the hall.

Preeti followed. “We eat around seven,” she said. “We’d love for you to come.”

Elena thought of spilling a bowl of hot curry down Preeti’s dress, pretending it was an accident. She was as unstable as she thought she was, wasn’t she? “Not today,” she said.

What did this lady know about her? Elena thought. Only what she’d discovered through a background check—that Elena was sick enough to have her newborn taken from her.

Back in her kitchen, Elena eyed a bottle of red wine that had been left by the last tenant. She thought of drinking it before she left, how it would help her face Liam’s sister, a drunk kind of distance. But she didn’t want her first visit with her daughter to be like that. If she ever told Nori this story when she was older, she wanted to tell it with emotion and clarity; she wanted to remember she’d been sober. She imagined herself and an elementary-age Nori living in their own house, of them renting out a unit over their garage to help pay the mortgage. If they had a tenant with problems like herself, Elena wouldn’t want Nori alone with that person either.

Elena uncorked the wine bottle and headed to the backyard. The red liquid sloshed onto her hand as she galloped down the stairs. She remembered when Liam had found her cutting herself in their tub. She’d left the bathroom door unlocked, probably intentionally, and although she didn’t cry out until her third cut, when she did, immediately he was there. The look in his eyes, not of surprise or concern, but of fear, made her dislike him. She disliked him for being scared of this aspect in her.

Outside, she examined the snowman, its strange carrot top and creepy face and no arms, the cookie-fragments of artwork behind him. She wondered whether the boys had modeled it after the grotesque snowmen in Calvin and Hobbes. As a child, she’d replicated them: the decapitated heads, the aliens. Her mom laughed at these attempts at horror and sometimes even helped create them. Now, Elena decided to assist the boys in their snow-art. She poured wine on top of the snowman’s head, so it looked as though something had stabbed the carrot into it, then dribbled the liquid out of its cookie mouth, as though it were spitting out blood. She followed the patterns of cookies on the ground with wine, until the bottle was empty.

As Elena dropped the bottle into the recycling bin, she heard a tapping on glass. She stepped back and looked up. Arjun and Mahir stood at their bedroom window. She smiled and opened an arm to her additions. Mahir nodded and smiled shyly and waved, and Arjun jumped up and down, delighted, flailing both hands.

She poured wine on top of the snowman’s head, so it looked as though something had stabbed the carrot into it, then dribbled the liquid out of its cookie mouth, as though it were spitting out blood.

When Elena reached the long steps of the Louisville Library, ten minutes remained before one. She turned toward the outdoor skating rink across the street, and watched kids and parents skate while listening to Kendrick Lamar through her earbuds. The really young kids pushed a rolling, mini-walker-type contraption that helped them stabilize on the ice. Elena thought this device practical and creative; she’d never seen anything like it. Louisville is a perfect little town, Liam, who’d grown up there, had said when they’d met. Like that town in Hot Fuzz? she’d asked. Perfect on the surface with bodies underneath? And he said no, not like that. They probably locked up the crazies instead of killing them, Elena thought now. She’d learned that in Colorado you could get a court order to force a next of kin diagnosed as a threat to themselves or to others into long-term, clinical treatment. Elena doubted her mom would do that to her, but she’d feel as though her mom were afraid of her if she even suggested it. She knew that was why she hesitated to tell her mom her situation: she didn’t want another person close to her to fear her.

Elena turned toward the glass wall of the library, then walked closer to it. Liam’s sister sat on a bench on the far wall, a detachable car seat on the ground facing toward her, away from Elena. Elena imagined Nori dressed in a warm flannel onesie with a hood, and the rubber duckie and stocking caps, compared to a thick onesie and everything else Liam’s family had probably given her daughter, seemed rather sad. Elena remembered in the hospital bed holding Nori, her newborn skin against her own newly cut wrists. Her whole body yearned to hold her again, but she didn’t want to face Liam’s sister. Elena was more likely to encounter pity than scorn from her, but she didn’t want to deal with any of it. Elena’s breath had fogged up a small spot on the glass. When Liam’s sister glanced toward her, she would go in, Elena thought. She would go in, she told herself again. She would go inside in a couple of minutes.