Category: Fiction

The week Amy got her first disciple was the same as many others that year. The morning radio talked about the eruption of Kilauea off in Hawaii, and at Glendening Elementary, Ms. Welch read the third graders Twenty-One Balloons and Lizard Music so they could better understand the nature of volcanoes. All Amy knew of them she had learned from a children’s science program on PBS where they had shown how life was returning twenty years after the last eruption of a mountain (whose name she couldn’t remember), but the pretty host of the show was wrapped in a blue duffle coat and green leg warmers, so it must have been someplace cold. Later the volcano had blown again, she couldn’t remember when, and all she could think of was how silly the gophers had been to move back, to settle in as if the danger was over. Silly, silly pocket gophers, it’s never over, she had thought. Their babies must have died too. If she was a pocket gopher she would protect all the babies from eruptions big and small, then build them houses on something quiet and sedimentary, just like sweet Jesus did.

The idea of Peter being Jesus’s rock had comforted her almost as much as hearing that if she put a quarter in the basket and sang on key she would eventually go to a place where there was no screaming, only harps and wings and songs with regular measures. She had looked around for a rock on which to build but had been disappointed in what she found. Her brother Michael would make a poor rock on account of him being obstinate and swearing all the time.

Amy certainly was with her babysitter enough for her to be a good candidate, but Diana was a shaky foundation at best, being always five seconds away from a major meltdown. Plus, the way she kept her fingernails filed to points and painted cherry red wasn’t all that church-like, and Jesus probably didn’t approve of how she treated the baby. Then again, she was making the decisions here, not Jesus, but she agreed with Jesus on this one, so, no, Diana just wouldn’t do. Ms. Welch was calm and orderly, which Amy appreciated, but after 3:00 p.m. she went her own way and Amy went hers. A part-time rock was like no rock at all. After looking most of the week, she finally broke down Thursday morning and asked her mother.

“I’m starting a religion, Mom. Would you be my rock after they crucify me?”

The rusted Mustang struggled up the incline in the 5:00 a.m. dark of the winter morning. Her mother was silent, face focused forward on the skyline of the city in the distance.

“Really, Mom, I need someone to do this, okay? I don’t want to go around setting up people for glory just to find out later I didn’t have the right rock so nobody cared. Okay? Okay, Mom, okay?”

“Amy, please, it’s early, have a little pity.”

Although she’d been told many times that her mother’s nerves were shot from nightly data entry classes at the vocational school; even though she’d been told that no one likes a blabbermouth like her cousin Charlie’s wife, Lynn, who, it was said, could’ve helped the boys win last year’s Labor Day raft race if only they’d used her mouth as a motor; and even though she hadn’t even written her own commandments yet, so wasn’t entirely sure what her religion would require, she continued talking.

“It wouldn’t take much, Mom. You’d just need to walk around telling people how great I’d been and, well, come out and meet me when I come back. That’s a big part. I’d like it if maybe you could bring some chocolate milk with you when you come meet me on the road. I’ll probably be pretty thirsty after being dead three days and all. Okay?”

“I’ll get you a rock all right,” Michael murmured from the back seat, “upside your head.” The summer before he had entered a new level of cool, being eleven and all. During lunch recess, he and his friends would jump the back fence and smoke by the creek. When Amy would try to follow, they’d say, “No, teachers’ll miss your mouth.” He listened to Aerosmith and Stevie Ray Vaughn and took down all his Michael Jackson and Culture Club posters.

“Well, you’re not going to be my rock, so there.”

He pushed on the back of her seat, jostling her forward and causing her neck to struggle against the seatbelt.

“Fuck you.” He hit the seat again.

“Watch that mouth.” Their mother came out of her traffic-induced haze and adjusted the heater vent, sending a blast of warm air toward the back seat.

“Why? What’s it gonna do? Tricks?”

“I mean it. Diana says she won’t take either of you anymore if you mouth off again. Says the other kids are picking it up.”

“What? That slut Tracy’s only 16 and’s got a kid already. There’s a bad influence around there, but it ain’t me.”

“Michael, hush.”

“You know Diana offered me macaroni and cheese for a week if I’d go throw a bag of dog shit on the dude’s porch?”
Amy perked up at the mention of macaroni and cheese. She thought she heard her mother whisper “trash.”

“I wish I had the money to keep you over at Judy’s, but she’s asking more than I’ve got.”

“Why, Mom? What’s wrong with Diana’s?” Amy asked.

“Huh? Oh Amy, don’t worry about it. And don’t you go saying anything to her about what I said either.”

Their mother went back to focusing on the traffic, waiting for it to ease up so she could make the left-hand turn into the babysitter’s driveway. The children opened their doors and said their goodbyes, and their mother pulled away into the morning traffic that would take her the half hour to the Dyserts’ fertilizer factory out on Route 33. Amy liked that her mother was working for the Dyserts now, not only because the pay was more regular than temping as a secretary, but also because all the pennies in her pockets came back green, which Amy took as a sure sign her mother was magical and indeed worthy of being her rock.

Once inside the coal and wood fire-scented coziness and chaos of Diana’s, they went into their regular routine. Michael headed for the new addition, where the black and orange afghan was already waiting for him, still crumpled on the edge of the couch where he’d left it the night before. There were plans to add siding sometime soon, but for now the addition was just the old back porch enclosed with Tyvek and drywall. Although the word seemed a bit much for the space, Diana liked the sound of “the addition,” like things were on their way to adding up to something grand. On most mornings there were six of them, nine if you counted Diana’s two still at home, but since the Stoudts didn’t come until nearly eight, almost time to catch the bus anyway, there was plenty of space. Michael in the addition, Amy on the brown nubby sofa in the living room, and Tracy’s baby in a pen in the kitchen.

“This kid ever go home?”

Amy leaned into the pen to get a better look at the splotch of dried pea on the baby’s cheek.

“You ever shut up?” Diana asked as she chopped something tough and brown on the cutting board. The voice of Dusty Rhodes on 700 WLW (The Voice of Ohio River Valley) was deep and soothing. Amy could see why Diana still listened to him even though the station was coming from down to Cincinnati. He described the smoke that warned of a coming new eruption and the evacuation of people living near, but neither Amy nor Diana paid much attention and let his voice be a comforting drone in the background.

“It stinks. You should clean it.”

“Well, thank you, Miss Blondie. I’ll make sure to get around to that.”

The way Diana called her Miss Blondie confused Amy since all she could think of was that singer her cousin Dustin listened to, who seemed, by all accounts, attractive and successful. She said it with a note of blame, a note of disgust, a note of disdain which led Amy to believe that where Diana was from it must have meant something else. Since she couldn’t figure it out, and Diana just walked away whenever she’d asked, Amy took it as a compliment.

Amy pushed herself up to see onto the counter.

“That looks like last night’s liver.”

“Because it is.”

Diana chopped the pieces smaller and smaller until each was only the size of a single bite, something that could almost be swallowed without chewing, something that would not go down easy, but would go down all the same.

Amy still remembered the gritty taste from the night before, how hard it had been to make herself chew it thirty-two times before forcing it the rest of the way down.

“For Christ sake, just swallow it,” Diana had said in response to her faces of exaggerated chewing and disgust. But Ms. Welch had said “chew 32,” so chew 32 was what she would do. There are ways things should be and ways they shouldn’t. Michael hadn’t eaten his and had nearly flung the plate on the floor, but Diana’s husband Clint had raised his hand, a warning none of the kids ignored more than once.

“This is shit. Cheap shit.”

He’d walked out to the addition to finish House of Danger, the Choose Your Own Adventure book he’d started that morning. Diana had picked up the liver with her long thick nails, real but so good looking you would have thought they were press-ons. She put it in a small orange Tupperware with a clear lid which now sat empty beside the cutting board as she chopped.

“This isn’t for breakfast is it? Because Commandment Number 5 of Amyanity clearly states Thou shalt eat no liver on Thursdays before noon. Now, Fruity Pebble, Fruity Pebbles would be excellent. If you have Fruity Pebbles, I would accept those as an appropriate tithe.”

“This is Michael’s breakfast, you’ll get yours when you wake back up. Now go on, get to your couch.”

“Tuck me in?”

“In a minute.”

Satisfied, Amy went to the living room to lie down. The thought of liver two days in a row would have been too much and she was glad she’d been quick enough to think to add that commandment. As she snuggled under the Dutch girl quilt, she began to hope there’d be grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner that night. Even though she knew Commodities didn’t get passed out until Saturday and the possibility of any of the cheese being left on a Thursday evening was slim, she was sure that if she hoped hard enough, it would be there. She’d get done with her homework and there on her plate would be the warm melting deliciousness, maybe even with macaroni salad made with the shells instead of the little elbow pastas, the shells that trapped the mayo and celery inside so you didn’t know you were getting some until it was in your mouth. It was comforting to know that sometimes good things were hidden, but that eventually you would bite down and have yourself a mouthful. And Coke, maybe there would be Coke still in the can too, with a little drop of water coming down the side like in the commercials. She wouldn’t share any of it with Michael. Not sharing was selfish though, she probably should share. Maybe she’d share with the baby, she liked the baby. Yes, it was settled, she would share the Coke with the baby. And maybe Clint would have to work late and Diana would let her talk during dinner. The daydream grew and grew, as daydreams do.

Since she couldn’t sleep, she focused on what the evening would be like with its grilled cheese and Coke, trying not to hear what was happening in the addition. The “I won’ts”, “you wills,” and “fuck yous,” soft things hitting the walls, hard things hitting the walls, and finally the sound of a mouth being held shut against its will, which is to say, stillness. Soon Diana, flustered but victorious, came to check on her and put an extra log in the fireplace. Amy didn’t ask about the noise, just stayed quiet waiting for any cue from Diana. She knew not to question, but could she talk at all? Tell her about her next commandment, which would run something like thou shalt not scuffle between sundown and sunup on the Sabbath, every day being the Sabbath in Amyanity?

“Good night, Diana,” she said, finally figuring this was safe enough.

“It’s morning, Amy.”

She caught a glimpse of the brown liver lodged beneath Diana’s red thumbnail.

“Oh, well then, good night/good morning.”

Diana shook her head. “Okay kid, good night/good morning,” and she walked back to the kitchen to wipe down the cutting board and listen to the radio announcer report on the distant volcano disrupting the lives of others.

“Diana?” Amy called.

“Don’t sound like you’re sleeping.”

Amy slid into the kitchen. “Diana, I’m worried about the volcano. Will we get evacuated?”

She sighed, answered anyway, “We’ll get some heavy rains our way, that’s about it.”

“Any ash?”

“Ash? How strong you think the winds are?”

“Ms. Welch said that when Krakatoa blew, they had ash in Connecticut and snow in July in Cleveland. Cleveland! I’m just saying I don’t want snow in July like those people got back then. I’m sick of winter already. I want to be warm when it’s supposed to be warm.”

“No, Amy, it’s just on the radio. It ain’t happening to you.”

“Then why do they keep talking about it?”

Diana paused and, having no answer, returned to her original stance.

“You don’t look like you’re sleeping.” She turned Amy toward the living room with a gentle scootch.

That night for dinner they had Johnny Marzetti with pintos instead of beef, even though it was better with kidneys. Dreaming of grilled cheese during arithmetic had been nice and thinking of the Coke, a pleasant distraction during recess when Michael was showing his friends the scratches on his arms and face. Michael’s badass status, for the day at least, turned the fight into a win-win. Amy’s list of commandants grew: thou shalt not build a fire when the coal furnace is running lest the smells conflict and thou shalt have no scratches. The redness of the lines on Michael’s arms worried her, like maybe they could get infected or leave a scar. He ate his dinner that night without a fuss. Then again, it wasn’t liver. The evening would have been reasonably pleasant except for the baby’s crying that drowned out everything, from the sound of T.C.’s helicopter on Magnum to the filing of Diana’s nails in the living room.

“Shut it up or call its mama to come get it.” Clint had little patience now that his own three were in their teens and learned their lessons long ago. Diana held the baby tightly, hoping the weight of her body would comfort it, but this did no good. The baby didn’t know that Furnace Two had gone down at the plant that day. The steel had begun to set in the vat and not in the wheel molds. The baby didn’t know that Clint was looking at a long, hot weekend, as everyone on B Crew would pull double shifts to get the vat cleared out and ready for another week of steel and fire. The baby didn’t know that Clint’s oldest girl, Shelly, had announced at dinner that she wasn’t going into the Army after graduation as planned, but instead was keeping her job at Central Hardware to be closer to her boyfriend. The baby didn’t know that it wasn’t the only one who just needed a good nap and some clean underwear.

“When’s Tracy getting off tonight?”

“Ten.”

“What?”

“Ten.” The louder she spoke, the louder the baby cried.

“When?”

“Oh, Jesus, ten o’clock, Clint. Tracy will be back around ten and Rod’s not got the sense God gave a cricket.”

Diana went into the kitchen to heft the baby into the pen and Amy followed.

“In my religion, babies can cry whenever they want and no one will yell. You can be my first disciple.” The baby was not comforted by this promise.

“You can be my disciple, too.” Amy placed her hand on Diana’s shoulders as she hunched over the Formica countertop, hands raised, eyes closed for a moment. Amy tried to reach up to pat her head, but could not quite make it.

“Special Commandment 73: All babysitters will have assistant babysitters. I could be your helper, Diana. Take the baby for walks, play peek-a-boo, clean her up after supper.”

“She don’t want to play peek-a-boo and can’t tell the difference between dirty and clean.”

“Oh.”

The solution had seemed so reasonable, Amy was unsure where to go next, so she went to her couch to sleep until nine when her mother would get out of class. To sleep meant she couldn’t hear whatever was happening in the kitchen. But she still knew. It was the same thing that happened every night and it never ended well for the baby. Diana never seemed more relaxed, but things were quieter, which was something. When she arrived, her mother said nothing about the scratches and neither Amy nor Michael brought them up.

The next day was Friday, which meant her mother would pick them up at six and they would have dinner at their own house sitting around the little maple table Granny Mingus had passed down after she’d gotten that government grant to update the house. It had looked so small in the new space that her kids had pitched in to buy a new one that fit better. They had gotten the old one with its years of gum stuck to the underside and its mismatched center leaf. The thought of that dinner could get Amy through the day. Commandment 87: Thou shalt eat pizza at home each Friday with milk and salad (cucumbers and radishes optional). She liked the way that sounded. Her commandments were coming together nicely. It felt good to have a list, to know that X and Y could and would add up to Z, even if she had to write the equation herself. She hadn’t decided yet what the afterlife in Amyanity would bring, but it would be more interesting than angels and harps and less time consuming than reincarnation.

Friday morning Amy was ready to move to this next step. “Mom, what should Heaven be like? I think I’ve got my rules, now I just need the reward. No one will do anything without a reward.”

Her mother cranked the engine and pulled the car out toward Diana’s.

“What should it be, Mom? There’ll definitely be no homework and maybe no rain or snow. What else, Mom? What else?”

“Quiet. Heaven will be a very quiet place.”

“Oh, but what about birds? Won’t there be birds in Heaven? My Heaven should definitely have birds.”

“Take a fucking hint you moron,” Michael pushed the base of his hand into the seatback, then once again for good measure, and the car was quiet the rest of the drive.

Truly, Amy hadn’t planned to steal the baby that day. After she’d said “goodnight/ goodmorning” to Diana, she lay on the couch picking at its large decorative buttons, unable to sleep. Usually the house was quiet in the morning except for the radio and small kitchen noises as Diana packed her children’s lunches and fixed their breakfasts. The evenings were the loud times, when Clint was home and the TV was on. But today the baby was crying. Diana had yelled first, then turned the radio up, then yelled again. When Amy heard the slap over the Dusty Rhodes Show, she felt a commandment she’d forgotten to write had been broken. One about mornings, and quiet, and babies getting to be babies.

She was tired of people not respecting Amyanity. At this rate none of them would get to Heaven. After Diana passed through the living room toward the back hallway, Amy snuck to the kitchen and lifted the baby from her pen. She hadn’t been expecting it to weigh so much, or maybe she had been expecting herself to be stronger. The baby was surprised to silence, assessing the new situation. It was too cold to walk outside without taking time to get their winter gear on, by then Diana would be back from the bathroom. So she took the baby downstairs where no one ever went except to put more coal in the furnace or to do laundry. She hunkered down under Tracy’s old clothes hanging from the water pipe, the red corduroy overalls making a cozy fort. The concrete cold seeped through her jeans making her chilled even though the furnace was not far away.

“It’ll be okay. Don’t you worry now.” She sat the baby, all squiggly arms and flailing legs, in her lap. It made soft guttural noises of escape and reached its arms toward the ground. She heard her name being called from above and then the sound of the backdoor opening. Attempting peek-a-boo with the baby did not distract it from reaching for the hot, bright metal of the furnace not two feet away. It was not a very good disciple; it didn’t care if she ever reappeared from behind her hands. The door reopened and she heard the quick movement of feet above her and the older children being roused from their sleep. Her name some more, doors being opened, doors being closed, the word “Hell” a few times, her name some more.

“Let’s go somewhere where there’s no yelling, okay? What do you think of that, baby? Not a quiet place, just no yelling. Except you, you can yell all you want. Yell your head off. And me too, I can yell. We can yell our fool heads off. What do you think of that, baby, what do you think of that?” She took the coo as an assent and smiled. Although she was still unsure where such a place was, knowing it might be out there was comforting.

“No, baby, that’s hot,” and she struggled to pull the baby’s arm back toward her and away from the furnace. It began to cry and push her away. The word “basement” and the scuffle of four pairs of feet came from above. No shushing or bouncing would stop it, so she held the baby loose to her chest to muffle the sound, but it squirmed even more.

“I don’t hear her anymore,” Michael said when he was halfway down the steps. Amy pressed the baby tighter as she’d seen Diana do, it was still. She tucked her feet under and let Tracy’s old clothes engulf them both as Michael moved around the room shifting boxes of old Barbie gear and Star Wars toys for just a minute to sound like he was giving a good search.

“Maybe it was coming from outside?”

“Keep looking.”

He sighed and put his hands on an old T-ball uniform and a ballerina skirt then slid the clothes back and forth, his eyes never leaving the ceiling.

“Nope, not down here.”

He huffed his way back up the steps and Amy heard four pairs of feet heading out in the winter dark. The sun was just beginning to rise over the east edge of town, catching the light off the well-meaning but not quite right skyscraper of the LeVeque Tower. They would all go to school soon and Diana would take a nap before Price Is Right. Breakfast, kids off, nap, Showcase Showdown, lunch, and Days of Our Lives with tidying during the commercials. That was the way it had gone when Amy had been home sick from school, and she was counting on that being Diana’s ritual. She could probably get the baby down the hill and to her house while Diana was sleeping. There would be the spare key to get in, and she could hide out until her mom got off work. Her mom would know what to do; otherwise she wouldn’t be the rock. She’d bring the baby chocolate milk and show Amy how to get the peas from its face and how to soothe it when it cried. After a few minutes, Amy relaxed her hold and took a deep breath. The baby reached up and patted her face. She crossed her eyes and rolled her tongue to make it giggle.

Unsure what else to do, she sat and waited for the baby to grow restless again, for the sound of the game show to start, for someone to realize that half-assed was the only way Michael ever did anything and come double-check the basement. While she waited she made a new commandment, one that was the best one yet. Commandment 125: Everything turns out okay in the end. It has to, it just has to.

He sat across from me at that tiny table, in that tiny apartment, gesticulating and performing for others, and how I wished it would all fade away, every pixel in the scene blank except for him and me. I was buzzed from one beer, a worrying feat, and my suspicion was that the smell of him changed my brain chemistry.

The first time I saw him—truly saw him—came weeks before that night in the apartment. I was at work, on my way to the bathroom, when I saw him hunched over a computer a few cubicles down. There was something in the shape of his bearded jaw, its almost leporine nature, that stopped me. In the ensuing weeks, I subsisted on crumbs: listening to him talk about his favorite books, ones I hated but assumed I just wasn’t cultured enough to understand; examining the meditative photos he took of the city’s rare natural landscapes and posted on Instagram; gushing about him to anyone who would listen and watching the disinterest build up in their eyes like cataracts.

That night in our mutual friend’s apartment was the first time I’d seen him outside of the office, and for that reason I had expectations. But after an hour of sharing him with others, I felt like a failure for not already getting him home with me. I excused myself to the bathroom.

Gazing into the mirror, I took stock of my face. There was a seriousness in it that I was unaccustomed to, a tired look that had nothing to do with my lack of sleep.

I’d always known that the difference between lust and love is what remains after orgasm. Many times, I tried to come and forget, to toss my intoxicating obsession with him away as easily as a wadded-up paper towel. After all, that method had proven itself depressingly effective in neutralizing my feelings for the many boys I’d bedded in New York: the gay nightclub residents and queer, “non-scene” academics I’d met in cafes or libraries alike. But it never worked with him.

I left the bathroom, skirting around a circle of conversation that included my close friend, the one who had expressed mere minutes ago that she was bad at meeting new people, whom I had invited under the guise of getting her to meet my coworkers when she was actually there as emotional support. Our eyes met, and I smiled. It stood to reason that if I didn’t look guilty for abandoning her, then she wouldn’t feel abandoned. She smiled back, and I found my place at the table.

He was quiet now, listening in that intense way of his that I had come to adore. He wasn’t simply waiting for his turn to talk, itching to give his hot take. He was reacting, supporting, absorbing. It was I who was impatient to speak. I was onstage at Madison Square Garden, and he was the only person in the audience. Every laugh was a step closer to my bed.

And that’s when I had to ask myself if a night with him would be water or gasoline for the flames that eagerly licked my chest. I had imagined it, of course, but only for a few seconds at a time. Images of us intertwined strobed in my brain at night when I couldn’t fall asleep. But if we went through with it, if I tasted him as hungrily as I wanted to, what would remain?

I tried to picture it as realistically as possible—yes, at that table, surrounded by others—and I knew my answer. After the climax, after he’d come, his monopoly on my desire would remain. His face didn’t change in my mind’s eye, it never became hollow and disfigured like the faces of so many one-night stands. The touch of his phantom limb, my tactile approximation, never failed to give me chills. My compulsive need to expel my traumas as fast as my lips could spew them to his ivory ears never lessened, it never ceased.

Gasoline.

We left the apartment, all of us, and went to a bar. I sat next to my friend, knowing I had some damage control to do. We discussed her job. How stressful it was, how rewarding and taxing and stimulating and frustrating and fitting. And I realized that loving him was exactly the same.

He sat at the other end of the table, once again gesturing and speaking animatedly, and I considered begging God to release me from this captivity of want. I had learned as a child in church that through Him all things are possible, that you only needed to pray with enough conviction. And He had done it before. There were boys I believed I’d never forget whom I barely thought about now: the real estate agent who lived with his boyfriend in Philly, the poet in Austin I stopped texting once I was sure he hadn’t killed himself.

But without my current toxic affection, what would I be left with? My feelings for him were the only valence in my life. The only time I rose above numb was when he hurt me or flattered me, always without him noticing.

My friend had said something to me, something to which I was supposed to respond, and I heard the slight pleading in her voice, pressing me, Be here.

I made a pithy comment, some offhand ironic statement that bordered on self-parody, and the response was a smatter of laughs. Had he noticed? I wondered. Did it make him wish he’d heard what I’d said?

I got up to get another drink.

A strange phenomenon had occurred the moment I stepped inside the bar. The bright flashing of sports games on TVs and the loud chatter of patrons caused an almost instantaneous rush of sobriety. I had become clearheaded, hyperaware, conscious in the most disconcerting of ways. The three whisky-somethings I had downed since our arrival did little to improve my condition.

There were a number of strangers whom I would have pined for on any other night, a diverse array of God’s finest creations, His divine flexing, but lowercase “he” had long supplanted my usual need for “someone.”

The bartender came closest to making me forget him. She was beautiful in a striking way, like time didn’t mean the same thing to her as it did to me. And I could tell that she understood me based on the slight smile on her face when she heard me order cinnamon whisky, the drink that eclipsed all others in terms of abetting bad decisions and bone-aching hangovers. She knew immediately. I was running. I wanted out, I wanted to leave. And this was my ticket.

Her knowing that made her all the more attractive, all the more otherworldly, and a part of me yearned to bare myself to her, to tell her how the loneliness and fear and isolation made me ravenous for love, or even a facsimile of it. I wanted her in a way I had only wanted a few women before, but there wasn’t any more room in me for not-him.

Glass in hand, I walked back. A few of our party announced their departures, and after the goodbyes, our group numbered few enough that we were able to begin a shared conversation. And suddenly I didn’t want to escape. This was my World Series. Here I was, stepping to the plate, pointing to him, in the stands at the other end of the field, and saying, This one’s for you.

I was charming. I was funny. After a group chuckle I’d lean into my friend and whisper an inside joke that would make her choke on her drink. I complimented his hair, like it had only suddenly occurred to me how beautiful his auburn ringlets were, like those strands of dead cells hadn’t made me want to pull out my own at times. He complimented the character of my nose and for the rest of the night it was my favorite part of my body.

But nights like these always ended too soon for me, and one person’s “Early day tomorrow…” was an impetus for everyone but myself to express similar sentiments.

As we walked to the train, I kept waiting for a moment when things would take flight, when a touch or a look would change my mind about the reciprocity of my obsession. But there were people between us and in front of us, and we kept pinballing past each other in the herd. I cursed the narrow, cockblocking sidewalks and stewed in the brisk, October air.

I said goodbye to him last and couldn’t quite catch the seconds as they ticked by, as if I were forgetting in real time. I knew this much: it was brief, too brief, tragically, horribly brief. Did we shake hands? Did we hug? Did we nod?

I’m standing on the corner of 110th and Broadway. I am alone and far from home, the ache in my chest my only company.

At the time, everyone’s partner had the same name—David.

There was no good reason for it. Initially, we joked that the name had been in vogue the year they were born, but that couldn’t be true: the Davids were set apart in years, the youngest being Alena’s boyfriend at nineteen, and the oldest being Audre’s secret, at fifty-eight. Perhaps the first of the sisters to procure a David—Audrey, at thirty-two, who had been courted for eight months by an age-appropriate David at the swimming club where she tuned her finely muscled thighs every weekday evening—had set some kind of subconscious example for the rest. Whatever it was, within a year of Audrey’s formal introduction of the First David to the family, Adalyn and Alena had both found Davids of their own, followed by Ayla, and then, when they all turned to Audre, the eldest, thinking wouldn’t it be funny if she found someone after so long and that person turned out to be a David, too, it came out that she’d been carrying on with a married man this entire time, their father’s wife’s orthopedist. Who, of course, was named David.

There were five of them, Audre, Ayla, Audrey, Alena, and Adalyn. It’d just been Audre and Ayla at first, but their father’s second wife had come packaged with the indomitable Audrey. When Wife #2 passed quite suddenly from belatedly discovered leptomeningeal disease, he brought the three girls, aged twelve, seventeen, and twenty-one, to get their meningitis vaccinations, which, no two ways about it, was where he met the woman who was to be his third wife. Me.

By the time the twins arrived, it’d been decided that they’d continue the tradition of names beginning with A. Myself, I thought it’d be nice to break away. Didn’t mind a Darby, or a Christine. But the older girls sensed my discomfort and pressed down hard, insisting on keeping with convention. In private, I consulted with their father. You already have an Audre and an Audrey. Are you sure? Truthfully, I was afraid he’d mix them up. He wasn’t getting any younger, and his memory had never been crystal. The thought of five similarly named girls wandering around in that big house just seemed like a trap. You want to know the worst part? Ask me my name.

Call me Anita, I said, before the battle lines had been drawn. I was only twenty-three, I had no peers to consult with. All my girlfriends had found men still on their first go. Later, they’d say: you should have established authority first thing. Don’t try to be their friend. Where was this advice when I was first inducted into the family? Not yet hatched, I suppose. Anyway, being authoritarian wouldn’t have worked. And the girls knew it. Anita, they’d say, we’re out of eggs. Or, You’re so cute—Anita. Wielded at a distance, as if to remind me that my presence in the house was but a passing amusement to them. Even the twins didn’t anchor me: the other wives had come and gone, too.

Audre, the eldest, is saying it now. Don’t mind Anita, she takes a while to process things. The way she always says it, Ah-ni-ta, the ta a harsh spit. I look to David, but he is of no help. He’s in that spot men eventually all find themselves in, between enamored and guilty. It’s the first we’re hearing of the affair, and looking at Audre, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a smugness in her eyes, a certain challenge in the set of her chin. She crosses her legs, her hand snakes into his. I can’t believe how reckless they’re being. Life can’t be lived on a whim. And yet. David is one of my oldest friends, and I had no clue. Even though it’s been a while since I’ve had to see him for my herniated disc, I meet him and Celine at least once a month for lunch. Celine. Oh god, Celine. I look at him again. His eyes are pleading. I can tell he’s asking permission to smile, to take Audre’s side. So, it’s that fresh. A fifty-eight-year-old man, still hanging on the tail end of his mistress’s every sentence. Audre says it again: Earth, earth to Anita. And laughs. It’s the laugh that does it for me. I put a hand on my husband’s lap, turn to my old friend and orthopedist, David, and say, You know, darling, we should all have lunch.

—

The lunch is set for the first Friday of the following month. We can’t do weekends, because then Celine will want to know where her husband is. The other four girls and their Davids have flexible schedules and somehow make it work. In the lead up to that lunch, I often wonder if Audre regrets announcing the relationship to her father and me in that way. I turn that analytical eye on myself, too. What is it in me that drove me to propose that disaster, lay that trap?

Was I conscious of what I was doing? The girls think so, I’m sure.

Just shy of a decade later, at their father’s funeral, Audre will say, flatly, while picking at a cucumber and egg sandwich, Now you’re free, Anita. She doesn’t clarify, but we both know she’s referring to that lunch. I don’t want to look at her, so I stare at her sandwich instead. Cucumber and egg, her father’s favorite. Deceptively simple, but hard to get right. The cucumbers have to be pickled in rice vinegar, sunomono style. And the eggs boiled for ten-and-a-half minutes, then whipped with kewpie mayonnaise.

When Friday comes, I spend all morning perfecting the sandwiches, then arranging them on the lunch tray. When my husband tries to steal one, I send him out for fruits. It’s a last-minute decision, and I give him a list of what I want, in order of priority: mango, and if that’s not available, then jackfruit, or rambutan. I can only breathe easy when I hear the car pull out of the driveway.

He returns with the first set of Davids. He found the twins wandering around the market with them, trying to settle on an appropriate gift. They tumble out of the car, all limbs and laughter, and together the Davids present me a massive bouquet of wildflowers. Double the size for double the girls, they say. As for my husband, he’s found the mango, my first choice. I peel and dice it, populating the table with small dishes of yellow flesh, when Audrey walks in with her David. They’ve brought wine, and I feel defensive as I send her to decant the bottle into a carafe.

Then, Audre and my old friend David arrive. They come empty-handed, as if to assume the position of host and hostess, as if to claim this lunch as thrown for their benefit. The younger Davids giggle nervously; the twins must have given them the background. I don’t let it get to me. I offer them a drink, which the traitor David accepts. We all take our seats, and wait.

Ayla flies in half an hour late, corresponding David in tow, and looks disappointed that we’re all still civil. Anita, David, David, Anita. Dad. Ayla has a laugh like a horse. It puts you on edge. To ask her why she’s late would be to offer her an opportunity to humiliate—No. We return to the conversation at hand, which vaguely, but also clearly, includes dear, absent, hapless, betrayed, Celine.

I don’t even like Celine. If you asked me directly, I wouldn’t be able to name one compelling thing about her. We met in church, after my wedding, when the twins were still germinating secretly under the frou-frou of my corset. She was a friend of the family, inducted by Wife #2. So I inherited her. She’d pressed her husband’s card into my hand, told me to call if I ever needed company or orthopaedic work. What kind of woman outsources friendship to her husband? Though it’s true that Celine’s David and I got along swimmingly. From our first appointment, I knew. He had the reassuring air of an anchor, weighty and rooted, from which Celine ballooned. Even though she was absent in that treatment room, David’s steadiness conjured her; it made you, a female, feel safe. In friendship with him, you were sexless, and could release yourself from the trappings of charm. Very quickly, over the course of treatment for a pinched nerve, David and I became close friends, bedrocked on his commitment to Celine.

Where is she during this lunch, Celine? She is back at the church, cross-stitching bible verses on the dresses of dolls, to be distributed at the Christmas service in two weeks. Every perfect and good gift is from God above. James 1:17. Poor, boring, good Celine. She’s been doing this for years. There isn’t a family within a hundred-meter radius without one of those dolls. When children bring them home, the idea is that they’ll carry these verses with them too, and, worrying the dolls over and over, that the verses will catch, and grow. That she’ll plant these beacons of morality in homes all throughout town. That’s Celine for you. She’s been volunteering at the church for as long as I’ve known her, and even after the divorce, she will stay. But we will go. We will drive twenty minutes more to attend Sunday service at another church, which is helmed by a fire-and-brimstone sort. I look at her David, who is no longer hers, though she does not know it yet. He’s looking at Audre, my oldest. The others are all looking at me, at him, at Audre, their gazes flickering between us, as if afraid to miss the slightest blink.

Audrey’s David gets up to pour the wine.

I’m sure the twins drink, but in front of me, their faces are stone as the carafe passes them over. Everyone remarks on how similar we are, how perfectly they take after me, but already the twins must be keeping secrets from me, maybe even from each other. Their Davids will only last one and three months more, and then they will refer to this period as the Davidic era, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

“It’s a common enough name.” This is Audrey’s David, the wine-pouring David. He says it apologetically; he’s a therapist with a reasonable attitude toward everything. “I was in school with two other Davids, myself.”

“But all five!” I say. He just shrugs: everything about this situation is unusual. The twins interject. Alena, older by twelve-and-a-half minutes, punches her David in the shin.

“I picked you because of your name.”

Adalyn: “And me, because it’d be funny.”

The twins glance at each other, and say, perfectly synced: “We’re collecting Davids.” They dissolve into laughter.

I’m embarrassed. I say, “What one does, the other has to do. You should see their rooms. It’s a compulsion.” I mean to say that with them, everything is a game, but that their playfulness is simply a byproduct of a sheltered youth and shouldn’t be taken to heart. Their Davids don’t seem to mind.

Therapist David sets the carafe down and settles back into his seat. I can see Audrey resting a hand on his thigh, gratefully. He speaks directly to Ayla’s David, the latecomer, making general, safe inquiries about his family. I find myself leaning forward. I know nothing of Ayla’s David. I hadn’t paid him any attention.

“One brother. Older. Nathaniel. And then I think my mother just went down the Book, picked the most normal sounding name out of the lot. Nathaniel’s other brothers in the Bible were all things like, Shimmy, or somet’n.”

“Shimea.” It’s my friend David. Just like that, Celine is with us, again.

Ayla’s David looks at him with interest. “You a deacon, or the like?”

“No, an orthopaedist. But I attend.”

I can’t help it, I snort. It’s very funny. And I know David has said it for my benefit, establishing a private bubble between us, of warmth and banter. For a moment, I feel like nothing has changed. But when I look up, it’s Audre smirking, Audre amused. Audre, just two years my junior, with her limp, dirty hair, which she shaved off once, after I ran my hands through it, absentmindedly petting her head as I introduced her at a gathering as my oldest step-daughter.

David relents. He tells Ayla’s David: “It’s a good name, it means beloved.”

Ayla’s David looks vaguely comforted. “My mother said he was a king.”

“And a womanizer.” Audre is smiling now, audacious, as she leans into David’s chest. She hasn’t even touched her wine. How could they do this to Celine? To me? I reach for another sandwich, pick at it. Technically, Audre has known David for as long as I have, though they’d never spoken outside of absolute necessity. But two years back, I’d rung David and asked if he could please have a quick look at Audre’s wrist, which had been giving her trouble. Carpal tunnel was easy enough to diagnose, and she really just needed a prescription. I remember ringing him again to complain, afterward. Audre hadn’t even thanked me. She treats me like a secretary, I told him. She always has. My old friend David had hummed on the phone, then said it’d been tendonitis. Not carpal tunnel. Though the two were so similar that they were easily mistaken, one for the other.

We are done with lunch. The sandwiches I’ve so painstakingly labored over, demolished. The mango, gone. Audre turns to my David and squeezes his bicep, bringing it sharply into existence. I blink, stunned.

“The strudel,” she says.

He smiles at us, then goes to retrieve it from his car. So they did bring something after all. They’ve kept it in the boot, a surprise.

“It’s your favorite,” Audre continues, in David’s absence. She’s speaking to her father. As if I’m not there. “Dave and I drove way out of town to get it. It was his idea; he knew you’d been craving it.” Dave? I hear a waver in her voice, I look at Audre more closely.

But a buzz of distractible excitement has settled over the table.

I’m momentarily confused, until I hear Ayla explaining to her David: “It’s this place we used to go to, as kids. It’s by our first house, when we were still living with Mom. We haven’t had it in years.” She turns to her older sister. “How’d you know it’d still be good? I wouldn’t dare. I’d be so afraid it’d disappoint.”

Before Audre can reply, David returns with two long boxes of pale yellow. He heats it up in the oven for ten minutes, then the strudels are unveiled with ceremony, one apple, one mango. He looks at me apologetically. “We didn’t know you’d be serving mango.” Puts a slice of the apple strudel on my plate.

It’s warm. I can see the glazing winking at me, the brushed sugar melted slightly from the heat. Beside me, my husband digs his fork in, bringing a big wedge up to his mouth. He’s delighted and seems to have no compunction about the scene unfolding before him. We’re all adults here, he said, when I’d raised my objections in private. What they choose to get up to is their business. He chews loudly. The twins exchange glances of wonder: the strudel is very good. Still? Ayla is smiling, so it must live up to memory. A David, not my David, is exclaiming, asking for the baker’s address. I look back down at my slice.

—

Nobody really understood, when I married my husband. Of course, you could argue that those were different times. These days, a girl can go with a man twice her age without the world blinking, and separate just as easily. Not I. Sometimes, when you look back on your life, you think to yourself: what else could I have done with the options that I’d had? Back then, I knew how people talked, but I’d been determined to weather it through. I married for affection, but, yes, also for agency. And haven’t I played my part? I remade myself in the image of a perfect wife, I committed to becoming a step mother when I was barely past twenty myself, I’ve always been faithful, even when I’ve had occasion to stray. I stayed. People can say what they want, but I gave myself and the twins a life not otherwise possible, and there’s no shame in that.

A year after his funeral, Audrey will call me. My overachieving, perfectly sculpted middle child. She wants my recipe for the cucumber and egg sandwiches. She’s tried pickling the cucumbers several ways, but can never quite get it how he liked it. Of course, she admits, it could just be her memory. After all, so much time has passed. It could be that they were perfectly ordinary sandwiches, and she’s inflated them in her mind over the years, enhanced by her step-father’s enthusiastic appreciation. I give her the recipe; there is no longer reason for me to withhold. A few days after that, she calls again. They are exactly as she remembers. Perfect.

I invite her back to the house, where I live alone. The twins, who everyone said resembled me so, have flown the coop. Ayla married her David, and they’ve moved to Germany. Audre and I keep out of each other’s way. When Audrey shows up, I am surprised to see that she is very pregnant. It hadn’t worked out with therapist David precisely because he wanted kids and she didn’t, but I suppose the right person can correct a wrong situation. Her new husband is apparently very nurturing. As we sit together, eating sliced cucumber, Audrey asks to see the dolls again.

How does she know I wouldn’t have tossed them? She reads the question in my eyes and says, You’ve always been one to punish yourself, Anita. Her smile is mirthless and tired.

—

After the strudels are done with, there’ll be a moment of awkward limbo, a pause. Then, someone, one of the twins’ Davids, asks to see their room, picking up on an earlier thread. We all troop upstairs, my husband and I, the five girls, their Davids. Push open their door. Enter the room. The twins are vibrating with mischief, excitement. Nothing is serious to them yet, they have no skin in the game. The world bears no stakes.

It had once been two rooms, but we knocked the middle wall down, so the effect is that of perfect symmetry. A long room, folded in half, one side leaving a precise imprint on the other. Their beds, desks, even the random entrails of their mess, mirrored exactly on each side. I turn and see Audre’s hand on my David’s lower back, rubbing it slowly, an act of intimacy that makes me feel awfully vulnerable.

But by then it is already too late.

The twins run up to David, their eyes shining. They see him as a funny old family friend, and throughout the lunch, they’ve been watching him with growing amusement as he affects a veneer of cool, trying to keep up with the younger boyfriends. I’ve seen them exchange glances at his occasional stumble and looked away, burning from secondhand embarrassment. But David has taken it in stride, played along. He doesn’t blink until that moment. In their hands, the twins hold a pair of Celine’s dolls, worn soft from years of attachment. Do you remember, they say. Do you?

—

A decade later, in that same room, Audrey will turn the dolls over in her hand, flip one of their dresses up. Along the hem: James 1:17. Every perfect and good gift is from God above. She reads it out softly. They really take after you, she tells me, finally. She puts a hand on her belly, and asks: Can I have this one?

—

The strudel, it turns out, has gone bad. Perhaps it is the fact that it has been sitting in the car throughout lunch, cooking slowly. Perhaps it is the burden of what it was called to do. After Audre’s David, Celine’s David, my David, mine, throws up all over the doorway of the twin’s room, something shatters. My friend David sees the flash of dismay in Audre’s eyes and in it, his own pitifulness reflected. The twins snatch the dolls away.

By the time the mop is retrieved and the cleaning cloths wrung and sponged, it is already over. The hopefulness of the afternoon has been punctured. An air of frailty overcomes David. He puts one hand on each twin’s head heavily, first Adalyn, then Alena, without seeing them: they are the same to him. Says goodbye to the rest of us, politely. Audre climbs into the car with him and they drive off a little way, before parking behind the church and separating quietly.

He is a good person, my David. He returns and confesses everything to Celine, who cannot forgive him. They file for divorce shortly after, and David transfers to a different clinic, out of town, for the remainder of his practice. Neither of them speak to me again; they ignore my calls. I respect them for that, at least. And if there are any significant developments in Audre’s personal life after that, I am never privy to them. Whatever relationship we might have had is lost with that lunch party.

—

But all of that is later. Before the end, the apple strudel sits, untouched, on my plate. Everyone has already gone for seconds, and it’s becoming uncomfortably clear that I don’t mean to eat mine. My husband, who’s already had a slice of the apple, then the mango, then the apple again, tries to make a joke of it. “If you’re not eating that.…”

The only David that really exists in that room is quiet. He’s looking at me, and I know in his face I will see that same pleading expression, betraying his naive desire for everything to be okay. Despite the disaster of the affair. Despite the fact that this is a small town, that it cannot last. Despite the fact that we have an unspoken understanding, he and I, of solidity, of accountability. Our friendship built on the assurance of things being exactly as they should.

In that moment, if I take a bite, he thinks, it will somehow all work out. It will resolve itself. He cannot possibly believe this, but he does.

I am not looking at him. If I see that plea in his eyes, my resolve will tremble. I know this much about myself. I am not looking anywhere, except resolutely at my plate, where the shiny slice of pastry sits.

Already the twins are scheming. Already the die is cast. My hands twitch by my sides, and I grip the edges of my skirt to steady them. Audrey, my perfectly poised child, gets up and begins clearing the plates. She gestures to her David, who collects the glasses and carafe. There’s a scraping of chairs. Everyone is up, now, except me, starting the dishwasher, cracking jokes, whipping the dishcloths between them.

My friend David gets up too, to use the bathroom. He hesitates, then leaves a kiss on Audre’s forehead, a chaste compromise. It’s just Audre and I now. I raise my eyes, we look at each other. I am shocked to see that her gaze is fierce, fervent.

“Mum,” she says, her voice controlled and low, and suddenly I can see that I’ve gotten it all wrong, but that it’s too late, and has been too late for some time now, “please.”

We could start the story here: Phillipa Pirrip at thirteen, walking into her eighth-grade dorm room for the first time. In the middle of this room stands Phillipa’s roommate—Minji—who introduces herself with a slight bow. Over the next five years, Minji will nickname Phillipa Pip, and she’ll pass Pip Korean lessons written on graph paper between bell rings in the main school building. At night in their room, Pip will teach Minji how to cornrow hair like Pip does for all of the other Black girls in their dorm, and Minji will cook Shin Ramyun on Pip’s desk as she grades those Korean lessons, gesturing with her chopsticks and splashing spicy, orange soup across Pip’s awkwardly scrawled Hangul letters. Here, on this campus, Pip and Minji will run through horse pastures in the black of November nights, warm their hands in each other’s pockets, and pantomime smoking with their ashy breaths. Perched on splintered, wooden fences, Minji will teach Pip the word for family, the word for death, the word for love, the word for ghost.

Then senior year hits like a flashbang. In the abandoned barn at the edge of campus, they will lie on sawdust floors. Watching the clouds of their breaths mushroom together, Pip will say in accented Korean, “I want to live in Seoul one day.”

Minji will hook arms with Pip and say, “Let’s do it! Let’s live there together.” And then six months after that December day, somewhere in the desolation of Delaware, Minji will die in a Dodge Durango. Three days after the memorial, Pip will sit on a stage in a cap and gown, feeling Minji’s absence in the empty seat next to her as hot as an open oven.

—

Or maybe we’ll begin here: Pip at twenty-two, running from security guards in France. Inside the Palais—the convention center at the heart of the Cannes Film Festival—Pip carries her screenplay in her hands. Surrounded by hi-tech booths for film distribution companies like Sony, Film4, and Lionsgate, Pip darts through the crowd in the Distributor’s Market. Her low-level festival pass swings from her neck, announcing to anyone who knows better that she is somewhere she does not belong. She catches her breath behind a white pillar that conceals her from the large men in khaki suits coming for her. If these men take away her badge, she will be barred from the remaining festival screenings. Already this deep in the Palais, escaping is not an option; she has to hide. Pip looks at the elaborate booths with their promo-playing television screens and the logos that she has only seen in theaters before movie trailers. Her gaze stops on the tri-colored logo for CJ Entertainment—a South Korean distribution company. At this booth, a young woman in an expensive suit organizes the flyers on the table, and a man in his fifties flips through an art book behind her.

It’s wild, but Pip has to give it a shot.

She peeks around the pillar to make sure the guards aren’t looking. Her heart beating in her throat, she walks up to the woman at the CJ Entertainment booth, bows, and says in the language she has been studying for the last ten years, “Annyeonghaseyo? I’m sorry to bother you. But there are bad people looking for me. May I hide here for just a minute?”

The woman’s mouth drops open, and the stack of flyers fall from her hands. Maybe that lie was a little too serious. Or maybe her shock came from the fact that she has never seen a Black person speak Korean as well as Pip does.

The woman doesn’t respond right away, but the man behind her walks over with his disheveled, curly hair and square, frameless glasses. “What’s going on?”

“She says she needs to hide from nappeun saramdeul,” the woman says.

“Nappeun saramdeul?” The man looks out at the crowd to find these “bad people,” and Pip follows his gaze to the security guards talking into their radios. He then glances down at Pip’s badge, and she covers it too late with her script. Laughing, he says in English, “So, by bad people you mean the men doing their jobs?”

Pip gives him a deflated smile and nods. “Ne, I’m sorry. I’ll leave.”

The man shakes his head. “Jamkkanman.” He waves her into the booth and gestures for her to hide under the table. “It’s okay. Come in.”

Pip bows again in thanks. “Gamsahabnida.” She crawls under the table and sits with her knees to her chest.

“How did you get in here without the proper badge?”

“I just walked in.”

“You just walked in?”

“Ne, if you pretend like you belong, people will think that you do.”

He laughs and says to himself, “Ah, this girl. Really?” He looks up and puts a finger to his lips.

In the shadows under the table, Pip hears one of the French guards say in uncertain English, “Pardon, have you seen a suspicious Black girl come by?”

The man pauses as if to really consider the question. “Yes, I saw her. She went downstairs towards the exit.”

“Ah, merci.”

The man watches the guards walk away for a long minute before giving Pip the okay-sign. “Coast is clear,” he says in English and then in Korean: “You speak Korean well. How did you learn?”

This question—as it always does—lances through the scar tissue in Pip’s heart where all the memories of Minji live. “My roommate in boarding school taught me. And then I studied in college.”

He makes a sound like he finds this information interesting. “What’s this?” he asks, nodding to the script in her hands.

“My screenplay. I’m here to network.”

“Juseyo.”

Pip hands him the script, and he flips through it. “You wrote this?” She nods. “It’s too bad I don’t read English well. What do you want to become?”

Pip translates this poorly in her head, and it takes her a second to understand that he is asking what she wants to be when she grows up. “I want to become a writer and director.”

“Geuraeyo? Do you have a demo reel?”

She pulls a silver flash drive out of her festival tote and hands it to him. He leads her to a table at the back of the booth where he sits and plugs the flash drive into a laptop. Pip guides him through the folders until a QuickTime Window pops up, and he presses play. There are a couple of shots that Pip could have color corrected better, but she is proud of her work and stands by it as a representation of what she can do, will do, as a filmmaker.

When the player stops and the screen goes black, the man sits in silence with his chin in his hand for the longest minute of Pip’s life. Pip, of course, expects nothing from this man; he has already shown her a great deal of kindness by letting her hide under his table, by lying to get the guards off her back. But still, to watch even a compilation of her films is to see inside her mind, deeper than she would ever consciously allow. There is a nakedness to sharing your art that is both frightening and addicting. No, Pip doesn’t need validation from a stranger, but she also doesn’t need cruelty from one either. Just when she is about to snatch back her flash drive and go about her day, the man looks up and says, “I’m impressed.”

“Jinjjayo?”

“Ne, very impressed. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two American years.”

“Have you graduated from college?”

“Yes, two weeks ago.”

“Job isseoyo?”

She shakes her head. “Anio. I haven’t found a job yet.”

“Good.” He takes a ticket and business card out of a messenger bag on the table and gives them to Pip. “My film premieres tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. You should come. I’ll bring a better badge for you.”

Pip runs her thumb over his name and title engraved on the business card: 배영철 감독. Bae Young-chul. Director.

Two days later, at a cafe overlooking the Bay of Cannes, Director Bae offers Pip a job. A week after the festival ends, Pip boards a plane to Seoul, thinking about Minji’s arm hooked in hers, and how—in this small way—she can keep the promise they made to each other.

—

Or start here: seven years later, on the precipice of a marriage proposal in an aquarium in Seoul. There, in Coex Aquarium, Pip follows Hong-gi into the tunnel where stingrays wide as cars glide over them in serene, simulated underwater silence. Then, standing in a black gallery before a theater of sharks and fish, Hong-gi laces his fingers in hers and says, “Let’s go to Busan tomorrow. I want you to meet our Umma.” Pip has lived in Korea long enough to know that meeting Hong-gi’s mother would be no ordinary meeting. The two of them had talked about marriage, and Pip—for the most part—was open to the idea. Although whenever Hong-gi wanted to talk specifics, talk timeline, talk concrete plans for the future, Pip always pushed off those conversations with sex as a distraction. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Hong-gi; she just loved her own dreams a little more.

When she first came to Korea all those years ago to crew on Director Bae’s film, she was twenty-two and couldn’t see that starting a film career in Korea, that working on eight films in five years, that forging a name for herself in this industry as the heukin—Black—camera director would delay the start of her film career in the US. After five years of hopping film to film and supplementing her income by tutoring outrageously wealthy children in Seoul, Pip grew tired of the hustle and job instability. In retrospect, this was when she should have gone back to the US. But what was waiting for her back in America? Two dead parents and a drunk sister meaner than a junkyard dog. As hard as it was to be a waygookin filmmaker in Korea, moving to LA with no connections, no prospects, no Director Bae to help her find her footing seemed all the more difficult. Just when Pip was about to give up and try her luck again in America, she met Hong-gi on the subway platform in Dogok, a place he would normally never be but his car happened to have broken down next to the station. On the train, they talked so long and enthusiastically about which Taika Waititi and Bong Joon Ho films were the best that she missed her chance to transfer at Yaksu and his at Jongno, and they have been inseparable ever since. And so Pip asked Director Bae for help finding more stable work, and he got her a job as a camera director on a Kpop group’s reality television show. Assigned to the maknae—the youngest member of the group—Pip has spent the last two years in Korea chasing a teenage boy around with a camera and occasionally joining the group on tour to document their backstage shenanigans for their cleverly named fanbase.

Yes, Pip put off marriage because she didn’t want to just be a camera operator; she wanted to direct her own films, write scripts, tear her hair out over plot holes and characters that wouldn’t behave the way she wanted them to. But now, seven years into a career in a foreign country, Pip can see that a dream could be a person, and in this person holding her hand in front of a menagerie of blue lit sand sharks and tiny, zippy fish, she believes she can find a reflection of happiness. She believes this because Hong-gi, with his whole-hearted love for life, for adventure, for Pip, represents the possibility for something Pip never had: family. With a mother dead after childbirth and a father blipped from this earth by a heart attack shortly thereafter, Pip has no family to speak of. Of course there is her much older sister, Josie. But the only thing Josie loves more than liquor is coke, and when Pip was young, Josie always made sure to beat Pip’s ass when she was lacking in either. Yes, Hong-gi is her family. Pip spent so much time curating found families in boarding school dorm rooms, in college common rooms, in the casts and crews of film projects.

Now, she has found one in Hong-gi, and for the first time, she isn’t worried he will drop dead like Mama, like Daddy, like Minji. Yes, Pip no longer needs fame and fortune; she doesn’t need anything as long as she has a family. The only obstacle now is his mother’s approval. And then, there, in the undulating light of the aquarium, as if waking from a nice dream, Pip realizes how large of an obstacle that would be.

The next day, Pip and Hong-gi take an early morning KTX train to Busan, make it to their beachside Airbnb by the afternoon, and walk along the warm, late spring water, swinging their held hands as if they had given each of their hearts to truly understand the others’. But there was hesitation in Pip’s giving because there is a question she needs to ask him, a question that once asked can never be unasked.

Pip waits until they’re back in the Airbnb, getting dressed for this first dinner with his mother. “Oppa, hok-si,” she says, fastening one of his cufflinks. “Does your mother know that I am heukin?”

Hong-gi fastens the cufflink resting on his prosthetic wrist and checks his slicked-back hair in the mirror. “She knows that you’re American.”

Good god, this man hasn’t told his mother he wants to marry a Black woman. Pip thinks back to the three people she dated seriously in college. Two were white and one was Cuban, and Pip’s Blackness was an issue for each of their families. It didn’t matter that Pip went to Johns Hopkins, maintained a 4.0 GPA, and spoke Korean. Nothing could impress a parent at a dinner table when all they saw was a Black person—someone they saw as less than human—sitting next to their child. Though the biggest shock was when Pip met Cecilia’s mother, who didn’t seem to mind that her daughter was queer but very much minded that she was dating a Black woman.

“Wae? Why haven’t you told her?” Pip asks even though she very well knows why. He knew it would be a problem. He didn’t tell her because he thought he could somehow ambush her, bully her into acceptance.

“Why does she need to know beforehand?” He is playing dumb now, avoiding the question the same way Pip avoided asking him in the first place. “I mean what’s the worst she can do? Disinherit me? She won’t do that. I already have Appa’s company.”

Hong-gi’s father was the founding CEO of a video gaming company until 2001, when he died in the car crash that took Hong-gi’s right arm. The accident killed both Hong-gi’s father and his twin brother when they were ten years old. His mother was also in the car, but she walked away with just a broken arm and a face full of glass. After the crash, Hong-gi’s uncle ran the company and groomed Hong-gi to take over once he finished university.

Hong-gi walks over to Pip now and kisses her on the forehead. “I love you. Don’t worry. Okay? Oppa will take care of it.” And then something like the sudden realization of a thing he had always known to be true settles on his face. “She won’t disown me anyway. I’m all she has left.” He says this sadly, matter-of-factly because it is a sad, matter of fact. In this moment, Pip squeezes his hand and bears both his loss and her own, for her parents, for Minji.

“Have you told your uncle?”

“Ne, he said that I’ve had a hard life and I should be able to marry who I want.”

“What about your mother’s side of the family?”

“Our grandparents died before we were born. She has no siblings.” Even though he hasn’t been a twin in almost two decades, he still speaks as if he were one. Hong-gi slips his hand out of hers and walks to the foyer when he says, “It was her fault, you know. She picked a fight with Appa over something stupid and they were arguing. She wasn’t paying attention to the road when the truck swerved into our lane and she turned the car to protect our side while Appa and Hong-joo took the hit.” This is new information to Pip; he had never told her the specifics of the accident. Only the details of his amputation, which bones his mother had broken, and the fact that his father and brother lost more than that. No, he had never told her that—all these years later—he still blames his mother.

Hong-gi puts on his shoes, looks up at Pip, and says, “Are you ready?”

—

Hong-gi’s family home is a modern, multi-million dollar monstrosity shaped into a rectangular concrete prism with smooth, sterile curves. This place looks more like a prison than a home. The house’s gray exterior has an aura so cold, it reminds Pip of walking barefoot on winter sidewalks, of stepping in silvery seafoam on off-season shores, of watching muted rain through a clean window. Pip stands in front of a black, slatted gate, her hand in Hong-gi’s. The sea laps at the docks behind them, and private CCTV cameras glare down from above. Pip looks up past the cameras at the third-floor balcony set deep into the concrete structure of the house. The windows of a house always remind Pip of eyes; this house’s eyes are empty and dead.

Hong-gi lets go of her hand to ring the doorbell.

“Ah, Mr. President. Please come in,” a woman, presumably the housekeeper says, almost teasing.

Pip pokes him in the side and teases him too. “Mr. President,” she says. She is used to hearing people—his colleagues, his employees, and sometimes his friends as a joke—call him Daepyonim, Mr. President, but since she rarely sees him in a professional capacity, there is something hilarious about this goofy person she loves being addressed so formally.

A buzz sounds, and the black gates yawn open.

Inside, the house maintains its drab color scheme of slate and gray with occasional pops of dark wood. Everything about the minimalist interior design is just as disinviting as the exterior. This house has the same energy as a museum, an energy that tells you to whisper, to walk quietly, to keep your hands to yourself or it’ll cost you something dear. Though Pip has never experienced a great deal of wealth herself, between attending a rich-ass boarding school on scholarship and filming the lives of worldwide famous Kpop stars, the wealth of others no longer intimidates her, but there are small moments like this one when she wonders: What is it like to have a housekeeper? To grow up more than comfortable?

The housekeeper greets Pip and Hong-gi at the door. She looks at Pip and does her best to control the surprise on her face. Hong-gi gestures to Pip. “Ms. Han, this is Pip.”

“Pip?” she says, her voice high with surprise.

“Ne, bangabseubnida,” Pip says with a bow.

“It’s nice to meet you too.”

Hong-gi leans over to Pip and says as if it’s a big secret, “Ms. Han has been with our family since I was in high school.”

Pip smiles at Ms. Han. “Geuraeyo? Then I bet you can tell me all of the embarrassing stories about Hong-gi ssi.”

Ms. Han laughs. “So many embarrassing stories! Let’s see, where should I start—”

A door upstairs closes, and Ms. Han stops talking mid-sentence, almost as if the sound—or more specifically whoever made it—has startled her. They all turn towards the staircase, a strange, jailed thing with thin, floor-to-ceiling balustrades lining the steps like cell bars. Hong-gi’s mother appears in the cage at the top of the steps, and Hong-gi noticeably stiffens beside Pip. Pip tries to read the profile of his face for any clues of what to expect, and it occurs to her that he’s told her very little about his mother. An orphan herself, Pip didn’t think anything of it before because the absence of her own parents is both something that she constantly thinks of and seldom discusses. But that is because their deaths haunt her. Could someone be haunted in the same way by the living? Watching him watch his mother descend the steps, she can’t tell what he is thinking the way she usually can.

Ms. Shim enters the foyer wearing a gray dress with a severe, boxy silhouette that matches the house in both color and warmth. Even though Ms. Shim’s face is meticulously made up, Pip can see deep divots in the skin, what Pip assumes are scars from the car accident. Ms. Shim smiles widely at her son, but the corners of her mouth dip when she sees Pip. She collects her composure with a dead-eyed smile, and Pip greets her with a deep bow.

“Annyeonghaseyo. My name is Pip. It is such a pleasure to meet you.”

“Pip the American?” she says, looking at Hong-gi like he has lied to her. She looks at Pip again, her mouth tight, the wrinkles around it straining as she holds back whatever she really wants to say. Pip swallows hard to steel herself for the night to come and offers Ms. Shim a tense smile.

Aggressively civil, Ms. Shim turns to the housekeeper and says, “Is dinner ready?”

—

One wall in the dining room is a giant window that overlooks the water and the flamed sun sinking behind hills and skyscrapers. The three of them sit at one end of a long, fourteen-person table. Leaving the head of the table open, Ms. Shim sits across from Pip and Hong-gi. Plates filled with tteok kalbi and banchan fill the table between them. There is an awkward silence that Hong-gi doesn’t jump to fill, and Pip decides it’s best to keep her mouth shut until she’s spoken to.

“Pip ssi,” Ms. Shim says, and Pip does her best not to flinch at the sound of her own name. “Our Hong-gi hasn’t told me much about you. He said that you work in the film industry?”

“Ne, I am a camera director on a Kpop group’s show.”

“Which group?”

Pip tells her, and Hong-gi sings a line from their most popular song to jog her memory.

“Wow, that’s a famous group. Very impressive.” Pip and Hong-gi smile at each other in this small victory, and she wonders if she is worried for nothing. Ms. Shim continues, “They must travel a lot. Do you travel with them?”

“Yes. Not always. But often.” Pip fills Ms. Shim’s water glass and then Hong-gi’s.

Ms. Shim frowns and says, “All that traveling must be very hard on you. It’s difficult to be a good wife if you travel a lot.” She side eyes Hong-gi as if she has made a great point, and something folds deep within Pip, just like it did when she was the only Black kid in her class and picked last for everything, just like it did when her class studied the Civil Rights movement and everyone turned to her for answers, just like it did when she first arrived in Seoul and people on the street would stop to take photos of her without asking. For Pip, to be Black is to fight the constant urge to shrink into yourself until you disappear.

Hong-gi speaks up now. “Umma, I’m not a child. I’m not looking for a babysitter. We’re partners. Equal partners.”

Ms. Shim breaks off a piece of her tteok kalbi with her chopsticks and changes the subject. “You speak Korean incredibly well. How long have you been living here?”

“Seven years.”

“Seven years! Wow, when do you plan to move back to America?”

“I don’t plan to. I like it here. I’m very happy here.” Pip and Hong-gi share another smile.

“Don’t your parents miss you?”

Hong-gi holds his breath, but Pip smiles that I’m-totally-okay smile she has rehearsed since childhood. “They passed away when I was a kid.”

This shakes Ms. Shim because she hesitates with her chopsticks at her mouth, sets the food down, and looks at Pip like she’s really seeing her for the first time, like they have something common to share, even if that common thing is pain. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Gwaenchanhayo. It was a long time ago.”

“Do you have any brothers? Sisters?”

“Anio,” she lies. Josie isn’t worth mentioning. They haven’t spoken to each other in seven years.

Ms. Shim sighs, staring down at her plate. “You poor thing. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have our Hong-gi. You see, family is very important to me, to us.” She looks at Hong-gi for him to back her up, but he just narrows his eyes at her. Where is she going with this? “Family is water. Family is air. It nurtures us. How is family important to you?”

“Umma,” Hong-gi warns, hearing the same question under the question that Pip does: how can you join a family if you’ve never been in one?

“What? It’s a fair question. Family is a priority to us. I want to hear how it’s a priority to Pip ssi.”

The porcelain on the table clatters as Hong-gi slams down his metal chopsticks and stands. “Umma, we need to talk.”

Ms. Shim shakes her head. “Don’t be rude. We’re still eating.” She nods to his chair. “Anja.”

“No. Now.” Hong-gi says, his voice colored with a scary seriousness that Pip hasn’t heard before.

Hong-gi leaves the room, and his mother puts her napkin on the table and follows.

Alone at this enormous mahogany table, Pip dabs at her eyes. She feels her soul suck into itself, crumpling like paper in a fist. God, she loves this man more than anything she could want or dream for herself, and if it comes to it, she doesn’t want to be the thing that breaks him apart from his mother. Yes, if it comes to it Pip will lose everything to stop herself from taking the one thing from Hong-gi that she never had—a parent to fight with, a parent to love, a parent to hate, a parent to unfold you from within yourself and iron you out until you’re new again, until you’re you again.

At the thought of losing Hong-gi, Pip doubles over, about to retch. She’s crying now, hard, and scrambles to her feet, feeling her shrinky dink soul rattle within her like change in a tin can. Pip starts down a hallway in this titanic house, the concrete walls towering over her, threatening to fall. The hallway is dark. She cannot find a light switch, and so she runs a hand along the wall to support herself, to guide her to a bathroom where she can sit in a corner with her shrinky dink soul and wish for the nth time that no one would ever see her again.

Then in that dark hallway, she hears Hong-gi’s voice rise above the chaos of her own mind: “I love her. I’m going to marry her. Please accept this.”

Pip stops in her tracks and covers her mouth to mute the sound of her own breath raking up and down her throat. She should go back to the dining room or try another hallway for a bathroom in this stupidly large house. She knows this. But for the same reasons you pick at a scab or chew your cuticles bloody raw, she stays in the shadow of the hall to wound herself.

“Aren’t you worried that your children won’t look Korean?” Ms. Shim says.

“I don’t care about that. They will look like us, and that’s what matters.”

“Don’t you know how hard it is for biracial children to grow up in this country? Don’t you worry that they’ll be bullied? That they won’t have friends? That they won’t be happy?”

“Pip and I have discussed this. Our children will go to school in America.”

Ms. Shim gasps. “You’re moving to America?”

“Ani, they will go to boarding school. They will stay here long enough to learn Korean and then they will go to boarding school like Pip did.”

“Hong-gi, this is a bad idea. I won’t let you do this. I forbid you from doing this.”

Christ, Pip can barely stand.

“You forbid me? Umma, this is ridiculous. Pip is—”

“What would your father think?”

Hong-gi spits his response back to her with palpable venom. “Well, he’s not here, is he?”

A long beat of hostile silence sits in the air stagnant like standing water until Ms. Shim says, “I won’t speak to you ever again if you do this.”

“Jinjjayo? You won’t speak to me.”

“No. I won’t.”

Pip hears her own breathing loud like gunshots.

“Fine,” Hong-gi says. “I don’t need you.” And then he pauses to consider his next few words before he says them like he means it: “At least she won’t make our son lose his arm.”

Truly believing she is going to vomit, Pip staggers away from the sound of their voices into another dark hallway. There, in the shadows, she feels the weight of the blackness the way she feels the weight of her own Blackness. There were few times in her life where it felt this heavy, where she thought it might crush her. Before now, that weight was at its heaviest when she was a junior at Hopkins, watching the coverage of the 2015 Baltimore Protests in her best friend’s apartment. As Pip and Jamie watched the news, Pip’s pulse choked her with its throat-high beating, and for the first time in her life, she felt true, unadulterated fear. Jamie—who was white—must have seen it on Pip’s face because she put her arms around Pip, and they just sat there on the couch as two people who knew exactly where one of their experiences began and the other’s ended.

Now, in the love of her life’s family home, she feels just as small and alone. Finally finding a bathroom, she locks herself in it and crawls into a marbled corner to quietly feel this horrible monster of humiliation, of hurt, of spurn, of anger—she cannot find the right name for this pain, this slight, this smart—god knows what its name is. She leans her head against the wall, craving a cry, but there is a heat to all that she feels, one that makes her stamp her feet, hit the wall, and take a hard twist of her hair, so bitter are her feelings and so sharp is this unnamed smart that makes her feel so small in her Blackness.

Growing up Black made Pip both hard and sensitive—hard to the small injustices you face and sensitive in the moments you face them. Yes, you are small, and the world is small, but you cannot let this small world make you smaller, make you shrinky dink, make you blip away like they want you to. Packing away her injured feelings for the time, Pip stands and wipes her eyes. At the sink, she splashes water on her face. She looks at herself in the mirror, forces a smile, and holds it until the second wind of that smart without a name blows past. Then she opens the door.

In the unlit hall, a warm, yellow light spills out from a doorway. Pip approaches the door. Inside the room—a beautiful study mismatched to the rest of the house with its classic, dark wood shelves and inviting leather armchairs—Ms. Shim paces with a glass of whiskey in her hand. “He doesn’t need me?” she mutters to herself. “That ungrateful little shit.” In her pacing, she steps hard and angry, her upright, dignified posture replaced with a mean slouch. “He doesn’t need me?” She scoffs and pauses in her pacing. Pip takes a step back, but from the hallway, she can still see the profile of Ms. Shim’s face, the ghostly remnants of her scars, the way the ire on her face relaxes into something else—something new that Pip can’t quite make out. Ms. Shim scoffs again, not with spite but with epiphany. She steps backward, blindly, into an armchair and collapses—the whiskey in her hands sloshing but never spilling. Ms. Shim stares into the middle distance between her and Pip, and her face softens—Pip can see it now—with pain, with devastation, with clarity. “He doesn’t need me,” she says again, the words a soft breath quietly punched out of her. A single tear streaks her cheek, and her grip on the glass goes slack. The tumbler falls from her hand. Pip closes her eyes, expecting it to shatter, but the glass clacks against the hardwood floor without breaking. Ms. Shim sniffs and wipes her face with the heels of her palm. When she stands and walks toward the door, Pip sprints back to the bathroom.

Pip leans against the closed bathroom door, her heart thudding in her ears. She counts to fifty to calm herself, to prepare herself to find Hong-gi, to come to terms with letting him go. Taking a deep breath to still her heart, she opens the door again.

Ms. Shim is standing on the other side and startles Pip. “I’m sorry. I was about to knock,” she says, the wounded look on her face speaking volume to the rest of the conversation Pip didn’t overhear. She then adds with a sad smile: “Will you walk with me?”

Ms. Shim leads Pip through the barren house to the balcony. Outside, the night air cools whatever frustration still simmers in Pip, and she follows Ms. Shim up to the glass barrier. They both rest their hands on the railing and look out at the water. Night has fallen on the cove, and moonlight shimmers on the restless water below.

“It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” Ms. Shim says this like an offering, like an olive branch, like a kind of treaty to be signed between them.

Pip accepts this kindness for what it is: Ms. Shim trying. “It is. Busan is one of my favorite places in the world.”

“Really?”

“Ne, I always wanted to live here, but it never worked out with my work.”

“You said you’ve been here seven years?” Pip nods. “Such a long time. Don’t you miss America?”

“No, I don’t.” Pip reads her face, trying to judge the moment, trying to judge how honest she can be, how honest Ms. Shim wants her to be. “There’s nothing there for me.”

Ms. Shim stares out at the water and Pip does the same, the silence rooting between them so long that it becomes almost comfortable. “It never goes away, does it? The missing.”

An image of Minji sitting in a desk chair as Pip cornrows her hair comes to mind, and that missing Ms. Shim speaks of blooms in Pip’s chest. “No, I don’t think it does.”

“I just thought our lives would play out differently.”

Pip does her best to sidestep the hurt of her implication, that if the dead weren’t dead, Hong-gi and Pip would have never met, but Pip understands. Her life is a dark road lit by headlights that only show her so much of where she is heading. The two of them look at one another sadly enough, but there is hope—for in this blue moonlight, Ms. Shim’s face and her voice give Pip the assurance that the cause of each of their suffering will not be each other.

The wind, always on the hunt for a new location, combed the straw-yellow grass. The prairie withstood the wind as the gale blasted the grains, turning the invisible visible. Colorado Springs lay patiently close to the earth, as if prepared to love it.

Visitors gathered at the base of the mountains, taking pictures of the Beware of Rattlesnake signs caught between the bayonet shrubs gathered around the buttes. The tourists came from Denver, in search of awe. Deserted windmills from the gold rush jutted out from the small valley outside the mountain. Vincent stood at the edge of the cliff, looking outward, his phone turned off. His jacket, strained from his newly trained biceps, rippled between his body and the wind.

A stranger approached him, wearing a cloth face mask and holding a disposable camera. Vincent stood up almost preemptively, watching her walk toward the edge of the cliff, watching how her feet moved clumsily along the grooves of the hill.

“Could you take our picture?” Her sunglasses had sunflowers printed along the sides.

Vincent nodded and pointed, asking where the best angle for the snapshot would be.

He took pictures of the small ragtag team she had come with. Her boyfriend posed with his hands in his pockets, leaning only slightly toward his fellow travelers. The other guy, white like his companions, laughed as they joked about the wind.

“Where are you from?” the boyfriend said, yelling against the air.

“Out east,” Vincent shouted back.

They were friendly. They showed him the pictures he had taken alongside videos of them driving on the road south and even of the bus ride from the Denver airport terminal. Vincent’s large frame stood over them, with only the third traveler tall enough to look him in the eye. They asked about his job and how long he’d been in Colorado.

“Three years, I’d say.” They asked about his age. “I’m thirty-four, and you?”

He didn’t remember their names, nor their answers to his questions. Tourists to Colorado were always cheerful, ready to spark up a conversation. They were happy to be there, around the long Rockies, where the shadows of the range could be seen from a distance.

The woman laughed and turned to him, asking if he wanted something, a small pill that she had pulled from a backpack. “We’re here for a while, would you like to climb the hill with us?” she asked, a warm smile underneath her shades. She had partially removed the cloth face mask, the rose-pink fabric now dangling off her ear.

Vincent stared at her for a moment and then laughed, his voice coming out deeply. “Thank you, but no thank you. You should know, I am that lone tower.” He said this softly, looking over her shoulder. His hands lay relaxed by his sides.

She blinked, startled. Vincent did not know if she could hear the drift of his Chinese accent. She excused herself and walked off, looking over her shoulder as she made her path back to her flock, where they stood around in the small lot below with the boyfriend smoking a cigarette. Vincent watched the blue van move away and went back to sitting so quietly, with his back toward the grain of the stones behind him. The valley’s wind blew, catching the sides of his head, refreshing and cold.

—

On the drive back, Vincent could see the mountains, looming high over the small grassland of Colorado Springs. Their gray shadows stretched out like columns, like an open jaw. To his left were even wider plains, the corridors of the earth that carried travelers as far east as Kansas.

To the north, a blue glacier was assembling, the color of Mt. Everest. But having lived there for years, Vincent knew in an instant it was the great fires in the Rocky Mountains. The avalanche of smoke looked like a castle in the sky, the plumes of smog rising forward and into a long tail that carried itself east toward oblivion. Vincent drove on, almost closing his eyes to avoid looking at the mass growing in the distance.

—

At night, Vincent had been having dreams, ones from which he’d awake calmly, before turning his face deeper into the pillow, laying himself back into those worlds.

In one dream, he was older. His head had been shaved completely bald, and he had gained weight, more weight beyond even that of a bodybuilder, and he would look down at the body of what felt like a fully grown bear of a man. He sported a large brown beard, like the white and black wrestlers he had seen on WWE as a teen.

He was living in the future, in a two-floor log cabin out even further into the country, in Ozark-land possibly. The pines would surround the house, and a small stone road would take this house back toward smaller roads, situated far from any highway or gas station. Here, young families would come, often just a woman and a man, sometimes just one woman. They would give him a baby wrapped in a small blanket. He would carry the infant down to the fireplace room, as they drove away. He would hold the newly given infant, gently speaking to it, walking to a room farther back. A nursery was there, where small cradles were neatly organized into rows. He would bring this child to their new place. In this world, he would hold them each gently, attending to small medical charts written on cheap paper and a small wooden pencil. He listened attentively to each of the tiny voices, and when he held one with the bottle, his chest would be so close to their mouths and it was as if the milk was his. The dream was suspended in just one hour of a day. Vincent never truly achieved the sight of this home after or during sundown. Always in the deep afternoon, the moment would stop promptly when his eye fell on where the one lone window for the fireplace room would shelter sunlight, the dust moving slowly along the rocking chair.

—

Xiao Hu lai le. Xiao Hu was taking the airplane for the first time in seven years, due to his nerves, and despite his nerves. The chemistry courses in New Jersey were proving to be remarkably challenging, and while he worked hard enough to squeeze top marks for the semester, Xiao Hu needed time away from college life. Over fall break it was decided that he would fly over, by himself, as Vincent waited to catch him.

Vincent’s mother had called last week, around 7:00 p.m., as they had a system set to adjust to the two-hour time difference. She often called from the kitchen, and he could hear the buzzing of the washing machine in the back.

“Ke neng Xiao Hu jiu xu yao yi dian ren bang lai kan ta.” Her voice was steady, indifferent, as if  her arms were casually crossed. Just a small errand, really, to chaperone the student around. “Ni zhi dao ta de baba xiang se me yang.”

Xiao Hu’s father, the prominent pharmaceutical director. He was generous, outgoing. He was known to bring German beer kegs to the Thanksgiving potlucks, where five or six Chinese families would gather each year. His mirth, matched only by his wife’s generous helpings of her own saran-wrapped meals, would bring a splash of color to the existing variety at the table. The families would never elect to meet at the Hu household, though, as the Chen’s were allergic to cats, which the Hu’s had three of.

While Vincent’s family didn’t need any help, they admired Mr Hu’s personality. It’d be good luck to exchange kindness, in this way.

He’d be arriving in Denver in about a week. Characteristic of Xiao Hu, it had been a plan made only in the blink of a month. Apparently Mrs. Hu almost booked a ticket for herself to come along.

Like observing a comet cast from the sky, Vincent counted the days as he waited for an imminent arrival.

—

Vincent had heard about the first breakdown over the phone, years back when he was in college and Xiao Hu had been in secondary school. One night, after a long week of basketball tryouts, Xiao Hu had cracked under the pressure and needed to be admitted into the hospital in Piscataway. Vincent’s mother described the apparent agony the parents had to go through, wrestling with the questions that the doctors were posing for them: How much was he eating? How often did he stay awake at night, rocking back and forth?

Xiao Hu stayed at home often after that, but the house was sizable enough for a teenager to live comfortably by himself. Once, when the Hu’s invited Vincent’s family over, the high schooler showed off his National Geographic magazines, which took up an entire bookshelf, spanning over a decade.

As they flipped through the images of red-tailed hawks and the wide, double-page spreads of the Michigan landscape, Xiao Hu spoke energetically about how he had discovered a mistake on the Lake Erie Wikipedia. He had proudly retraced the actual timeline of the watershed and found that there was enough evidence in two geological surveys to prove that Lake Erie was much older than the webpage claimed.

Xiao Hu sat very comfortably, it seemed, near the older Vincent. Vincent would move slowly away, as his junior spoke sometimes so quickly that their bodies would get close, much closer than Vincent felt comfortable.

That Thanksgiving, Xiao Hu also described the panic he felt during the basketball tryouts. “I had set up shop in the garage, making marks using charcoal to see how high I can jump,” he explained. “I was so prepared.”

“Was it the coach?” Vincent asked. They did not grow up in the same school districts, but he was aware that Xiao Hu’s high school was particularly competitive, known for cut-throat academics. The Hu family had invested heavily in college essay preparations, soon after Xiao Hu turned thirteen.

“No, no, it was the people.” There hadn’t been many East Asians trying out alongside him. “Some of them were really muscular, but also really nice.” Xiao Hu smiled as he remembered. “Those guys were funny, and told these jokes to each other. I remember I kept laughing at this one joke, and for some reason when it was my turn in the final round, I thought about it and started getting nervous. I was worried I’d laugh, or yell, or something.”

Xiao Hu ended up leaving early, and when the roster was announced the next day, Xiao Hu was not at school. His parents found him in his room, unable to speak, lying down in his bed with his eyes wide open.

When he didn’t respond, an ambulance had to be called. Only on the ER gurney did Xiao Hu start to talk, quietly, about his failure at the basketball tryout.

—

Vincent was engaged to a woman named Esther four years before. The way the engagement ended between Vincent and Esther was a gradual process, which surprised him. They had met and shared their first date in the course of weeks, but the finale of their relationship spanned much longer than its beginning. There was something structural about the breakup, as if the decline had been built, deliberately by hand.

Esther had met him through a mutual friend. She knew Trina, who knew Rishi, who knew James, who in turn knew Vincent. The string of connections allowed a sense of trust, and by the time they had gone on their first date they had already known so much about the other. Esther knew of Vincent’s background studying computers, and he knew of her love for origami and the graphic design degree  she never talked about.

She enjoyed discussing movies, particularly classics, like Breakfast At Tiffany’s. She looked like Audrey Hepburn and complained about how she wished she could wear the twin tails as well as the actress did in the film. She was shy about how she looked when she wore her hair anything other than straight down.

But ultimately they were both attractive in the way one would expect. Both of them were very tall, he was bulky and she was slim. The couple looked good together, and when they waited in line at the Korean bakery sometimes teenagers would point at them and giggle.

“They’re jealous,” Esther would say, “but they’re more jealous of you. I’m the pretty one.” She would giggle, which had a mischievous shishishi sound. He liked this about her, how she was more playful than him from the start, but he was used to this kind of dating, where the girl took the lead.

They were both East Asian. Esther was Taiwanese and would joke about the food in Taipei, teasing him for having never seen it. His parents were raised in mainland China, and with only one or two international outings that he could not remember, he had stayed largely content in his birthplace in Northern New Jersey. They met often in New York, where he worked for a while and she would commute from Union City.

It worked well, especially given that she was Vincent’s type. One of the best things, during their short time living together in Union City, was the routine. He would sometimes touch her thighs as she was getting dressed, as he lay on his stomach at the corner of the queen-sized bed, and she would smile without looking at him. In the mornings she would play music as she brushed her hair.

Vincent had an odd habit of getting annoyed in the shower. He would, since high school, lash out if the shampoo bottle would fall too quickly off the shower shelf, hitting the floor loudly. Something about the sound startled him, and he would yell, sometimes scream at the bottle, the shower. Even the hot water that touched his back, which had previously been comfortable, suddenly became unbearable. Sometimes he would pick the bottle up just to throw it as hard as he could into the ground. He would occasionally buy one, maybe two bottles in a week.

But while he was living with Esther, he had to share this life. He was terrified of being seen like this, naked, with his body so big that his head reached over the shower separation. He admired how his feelings for her changed his behavior; he suddenly knew more about the nature of even the most private spaces in life. He learned in this way how odd he had always been, so quiet. She would sometimes see it, as they got ready in the morning.

“You’re so emotionally constipated,” she said as they walked to the elevator apartment. Esther eyed him from the side. “But you know I get annoyed too.”

Sometimes she would interrogate him. One time they had a fight, walking back from a sushi restaurant. She pushed him on the topic as he sat, his sweatshirt pulled up to cover his mouth.

“Where’s all this coming from? You get so quiet? Like, what do I even make of it?” They were both drunk.

“Does it matter?” he replied. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

—

Xiao Hu arrived at Terminal B, and Vincent waited outside for him. It was raining, the sun barely visible through the clouds setting quickly. In Denver, the Mile-High City, the weather was unpredictable. During the summer, Vincent had observed entire blazing afternoons followed by nights where it felt freezing, blistering cold.

“I just can’t handle it.” Xiao Hu laughed, putting on his seatbelt. “I just can’t handle it anymore.” He collapsed into the seat, chatting away about the airplane as Vincent drove onto Interstate 70, the windshield groaning against the strain of the wind.

Xiao Hu’s slim build had grown even skinnier, and during the pandemic he had grown his hair out into a spiky length. Vincent had been accustomed to his bowl-cut, but the younger man had now a more wild, feral appearance.

“Was the airplane bumpy?” Vincent asked.

“It was alright.” Xiao Hu’s hand covered his forehead, and he looked out into the Colorado landscape. They were passing by the massive plains over by Arsenal, as the car headed west. The straw-yellow land stretched out for miles. “It’s so wide, I didn’t expect that. Everything feels like it’s on a bigger screen here. I’ve never been to Colorado, you know.”

Vincent focused on the road, the sounds of trucks passing along, of the rainwater that surrounded them.

—

Vincent lived in the basement of a two-floor house owned by a Chinese couple in their late fifties whose children had moved away. The house was complete with an upper middle-class set of hedges, which grew athletically. The area, close to Aurora, had seen a boom in the East Asian population. Especially in the shopping plazas, where nearby restaurants were now becoming more Korean in what they sold and who shopped there.

Xiao Hu would be sleeping on a small two-person couch across the room. Despite the support pillars in the basement, it was spacious. Vincent even had a bathroom to himself, newly remodeled. He thought suddenly how he’d have to behave himself in the shower once again, as he didn’t want to upset a nineteen-year-old.

“Do you mind if I study here at night?” Xiao Hu had set up his toiletries and taken a shower before Vincent. His wet hair was pressed straight down, and he had on a Ramapo College sweatshirt.

“You’re only staying here for four days, and then you’re flying back, right? Why do you need to work at all?” Vincent lay on his mattress, his arms crossed behind his head.

“I became a research assistant over the summer, after freshman year. I’m studying ecology.” He paused. “But I might switch to something more cool, like botany. There’s even a toxicology major at my college, but that might prove to be too difficult.”

Xiao Hu started muttering to himself, typing entries into his silver laptop. The screen lit a red and yellow glare onto his glasses, and from the distance of the room, Vincent could see water from the shower still dripping from the ends of his hair.

—

There was a stray pipe from the roof’s gutter that always held a surplus of water when it rained. The tip tap of drops hitting the backyard’s bricks below would sometimes wake Vincent early. He would always check if it was an insect or a cat. Instead, he would always find the tip tap of the droplets falling eight feet onto the ground. It was in these instances he thought about Esther.

Xiao Hu asked him the next morning what that sound had been. But then Xiao Hu himself forgot, busying himself with his laptop.

—

Vincent took Xiao Hu out west of Denver, closer to the long line of the Rocky Mountains.

“God, look at that,” Xiao Hu said. “The shrubbery here is purple, isn’t that something? In Jersey, it’s mainly marshes, swamps. But here, everything is so dry.” Xiao Hu said this while slowly breathing in and out. He had read about altitude sickness, tourists flying in from out-of-state and being unable to adjust to the oxygen levels in the mountains.

They stopped for lunch near the Red Rocks Amphitheater. At the turn of the twentieth century the rocks were known for their massive, cascading formation. The pillars of stone came jutting out like an upside-down cliff, far into the sky. The series of bedrock was known as the Garden of Angels, the Garden of the Gods. Xiao Hu walked with Vincent to the sitting areas, large steps made adjacent to the butte. Their bodies were dwarfed by the sheer height of the butte, a golden-red wall so huge it felt to the student the size of a skyscraper.

“It’s even larger than I had thought,” Xiao Hu said, making his way down to the amphitheater’s bottom row. “I know, mentally, that this probably isn’t bigger than the Empire State Building, but it feels just as huge. I think it’s the fact that the whole rock is one uniform color.”

He looked up again and realized even if he rolled his whole head back he would only be able to visually capture just a section of it with his eyes.

Vincent and Xiao Hu had gone to the local H-mart in Aurora for lunch, bringing with them an assortment of sandwiches and bread. They ate fluffy red-bean buns with ham and cheese inside the toasted loaves. They chewed quietly and chatted about Xiao Hu’s classes at Ramapo. A small black beetle crawled toward the crumbs of the bread left on the grass.

“I have this professor who always yells at me,” Xiao Hu said, picking sesame bits off his pants, his hand clutching a half-eaten bun. “She studies these bugs, tapeworms, actually. I hope you don’t mind me talking about something so gross.”

Vincent smiled. “Push my limits.”

“I say too much sometimes. You know, I was so worried about climate change for the longest time. I was going to ask you about the fires here. I’d been reading about them on the news.”

Vincent looked out into the open plains and said nothing. The sky was peacefully blue, with a matrix of clouds streaming out into the world above them.

“My professor told me that I worry too much,” Xiao Hu continued. “She said, ‘You know, if there really was a natural disaster, if you worried like that, you’d be the first to go.’ In her office there were all these jars filled with taxidermied parasites and preserving liquid.”

Vincent squinted from the sunlight at Xiao Hu, listening. The wind was picking up, and Xiao Hu’s bangs started to float as he spoke.

“She said, ‘Look at these parasites. Some of these could kill you in seconds. Life thrives anyway.’” Xiao Hu stared down at the concrete platform they were sitting on. “I think she was saying we have this symbiotic relationship with nature, but also we don’t.” Xiao Hu started to stand up and stretch, and took a few steps out into the open plains before them. “I had this one professor who took us out over the summer to sit by a basketball court. One of those crappy ones. He said, ‘Look at the grass, growing from the separations and cracks of the court.’” There was even this flower that grew from a crack. It was so dramatic.” Xiao Hu started to walk along the stone platform, poking at the small plants growing against the height of the steps, out of patches of sand. “He was one of those white, cool professors, who talks while sitting on the desk instead of a chair. The professor with the parasites was Asian. Thai, maybe?”

Vincent pulled his sweatshirt closer to his body. He watched as Xiao Hu’s sneakers made imprints on the grass.

Xiao Hu looked up at the massive butte above them. “We need nature to survive. But nature itself? It doesn’t care what it becomes.” The clouds above them moved quickly, their form changing to a shape more perpendicular to the angle of the rocks.

—

It wasn’t Vincent’s anger, ultimately, that ended the relationship with Esther. She had started to grow restless at her job in New York. She would go out for long walks during the mornings, wearing jogging clothes. More and more, she left her professional blazers at home. She quit her job suddenly, after she stopped wearing blouses to the office, just polo shirts.

She was moving to Rhode Island, she announced one day. She had quietly been applying to MFA programs in sculpture, and even interviewed that fall during a weekend at her parents’ house in Basking Ridge. It felt, to Vincent, like this would be a transition to a long-distance relationship. He helped her pack, which was slow process, not noticing how many of her belongings she was taking. That day, she still kissed him, holding him closely, and then she took her family minivan to RISD.

Once she was gone, the text messages quickly dried up. He would ask to call, but she didn’t want to, said she was tired or busy. Weeks dragged on until the fall semester. By the time they broke up, she had stopped using his name. He panicked, for a while.

Vincent looked back on moments of the relationship and realized there were points he could’ve seen this coming. Once, over wine, her friend Jiyoung described to the couple her new job as an art gallery co-owner. When Jiyoung asked if Vincent liked art, Esther suddenly became quiet, looking down at her hands. Vincent stared blankly at his guest, surprised for a long moment, and then laughed nervously, saying, No, no, I don’t know too much about that stuff.

After she left he decided, abruptly, to move to Colorado. He looked around his empty apartment and realized he needed so little, he could have been alone this whole time. Vincent saw that he could be anywhere, be by himself in any way he wanted.

—

The next day, Vincent cooked a home-made meal for Xiao Hu and himself. He was proud of his dishes, which were mainly built on greens. Chinese celery, eggplant with oyster sauce, and tofu.

He was surprised by his own thoughts as he placed the dinner plate down. He wanted to say, My wife cooks much better than me. But of course he didn’t have a wife.

They retired early at night, turning off the lights except for the bathroom, which was kept open by a slight crack. Xiao Hu lay on the couch, checking his phone while Vincent rested on the mattress.

Into the darkness, Vincent said, “You know, I thought about what you said, about nature.”

“Oh yeah?” Xiao Hu put his phone away, letting it lay underneath him, his head now supported by his elbow. He was facing the wall, his back to Vincent.

“Last year they introduced gray wolves back into the Rockies. There’s this whole conservation attempt going on, over near Boulder. They’re even taking them off the endangered species list soon.”

Xiao Hu was silent.

“I don’t know. People are worried here, about Denver and Aurora getting too crowded. This year, those fires out west? They’re apparently the worst that this state has ever seen.”

A few seconds passed. Despite the fact that it was a basement, moonlight crept into the space through small windows seated at the top of the walls.

“You know,” Xiao Hu said, “it’s a headache anyways, what the professors say.” Vincent was surprised at the serious tone in which he said this, as if he wasn’t smiling as usual.”I just don’t care sometimes. I really don’t.”

Vincent turned to look over, straining in the dark to see that Xiao Hu’s arm was tracing long circles on the wall next to him.

—

The day before Xiao Hu had to fly back to New Jersey, Vincent planned a small tour up north, near Boulder. But the fires had started to grow worse overnight, the wind must’ve brought the flames even farther through the Rockies. Throughout the state, emergency vehicles and C-130 forces cast their wave of personnel. Reporters from local news stations went on duty, too, relaying information to national media outlets.

The sky was faintly yellow, and it appeared as if it was sundown, although it was only 3:00 p.m. Xiao Hu watched from the convenience store, where they were both wearing face masks and drinking carefully from cans of iced tea.

“I want to see the fires,” Xiao Hu said.

Vincent looked over, surprised. “Why? It’s pretty dangerous, I hear. The dust, the particulates.”

“I don’t know. I’m only out here for a few days, and I don’t know the next time I’ll come back.” He looked over quickly at Vincent. “The next time I’ll be able to come back, I mean. I like it here, it’s been fun.”

Vincent flicked the rim of the iced tea can with his right hand. On the other hand, his fingers traced the car keys in his jacket.

—

The plan was to take State Highway 93 up north, far past Eldorado Springs and even Buckingham Park, before continuing onward. As Vincent drove, they played music as the clouds got darker. They passed by Boulder, where the city shined and flickered.

They were passing by the small stores, still displaying shoes and coffee signs outside the brick-and-stone apartments. Pearl Street Mall popped by, as Vincent’s SUV slowed down then sped up to catch the ramp onto Route 119.

Vincent recognized the route, at first. He knew the direction toward Platt Rogers Memorial Park, after he had gone camping with coworkers for a winter afternoon two years ago. But suddenly, the climb up with the car became tedious. Throughout the drive, he had seen smoke, rising out of the sky, and there were more firetrucks stationed around Boulder than usual.

The car made sounds as he shifted the gears, the vehicle twisting around small bends of the road. He had started to sweat. He rolled up the windows to prevent the smell of fire from entering the car, and turned off the music that had been playing aimlessly as noise.

Xiao Hu was quiet for most of this trip, although he sat relaxed now, feeling the bumps and turns of the highway move his body along the track. He simply looked out from his passenger window, watching the smoke and the trees that blossomed from the side of the road blink and then pass by him.

Thirty minutes up this road, the highway’s exits toward the surrounding forest area were blocked off with black-and-red fences. Road maintenance vehicles guarded the new gate, and men in helmets motioned to the car to turn over. Vincent saw a man, white and over forty years old, shaking his head. They made a K-turn, back onto the road.

When the car was almost immediately upon the pass, Xiao Hu tapped Vincent on the shoulder. “Pull over. I was wondering if I could walk around a little.”

“You’re crazy.” Vincent was too surprised to even be angry. “I’m not letting you out of this car.”

“I need to go to the bathroom. We drank too much water on the way over here.” Xiao Hu laughed as he said this, but there was an impatience to his voice. “I’m being serious, I’ve really got to go.”

“Just make it quick.” Vincent turned on his hazard sign as he parked along the side of the road, near the small stretches of land marked by the white stones of the cliffs and forests on the other side.

“Thanks, but also, I really just want a close look around,” and by the time Xiao Hu had finished this sentence, he had already left his seat. For a moment, Vincent was terrified he’d fling himself over the side of the cliff, but instead Xiao Hu made a turn and ran, laughing, into the woods. All around them, the smog was starting to get thick, and the sky was turning quickly from yellow to soft blue. Evening was approaching.

Vincent unbuckled his seatbelt in a hurry, noticing how much his hands were shaking as he did this. He got out, standing by his vehicle, before pocketing his keys and running toward the other side of the road, where over the steel bars, small forest plateaus were formed and unformed by ditches.

Xiao Hu was still laughing. Vincent could see his small figure disappear over the mounds. All around him, he realized how difficult it was to make out the sight of the forest. The shadows of conifer trees dominated his vision, and Xiao Hu had now made it past two large slopes in the hill, and he could no longer see him.

“Xiao Hu! I swear to God!” Fear started to truly hit him, and he felt an itch rush his back. He thought about Mr. Hu, and screamed, hoping an echo could be made this high up in the mountain. “Xiao Hu ni hui lai! Ni zhe me ban ne? Ni hui lai xian zai—“

Vincent started to lose his balance as his feet caught between the ditch made from the main road to the natural forest ground below him. He felt himself almost fall, and he had to catch the metal rail. He looked out, panting. He considered calling 911 or rushing back to his car.

Two minutes later, he saw Xiao Hu coming out from the woods, on a higher angle of the small forest hill. Xiao Hu was panting, and his sweatshirt was wrapped around his waist.

“I’m coming, don’t worry, I’m coming.” Xiao Hu descended the mound and hurried toward the car.

They both sat in the car, breathing heavily. Vincent didn’t say anything, just started the car and drove away with his hands trembling.

“Dude, what the hell. Dude, what was that?” Vincent finally said as the car made a steady climb back down the mountain.

“I’m sorry, I really thought it would be okay.” Xiao Hu wiped his nose with his sleeve. His eyes were dry, but his breathing was scared. “I was there for just a moment, and then I realized I didn’t know where I was. I just thought…if I could see the fires a bit, or smell them better. I don’t know.”

The two started down a series of bends in the path.

“Did you really shout Chinese at me?” Xiao Hu asked.

Vincent didn’t reply.

Xiao Hu locked the door to his right. He later would say he worried he’d fall right out of the car, or even get pushed out.

“You’re not laughing at me, are you?” Xiao Hu finally asked.

“No,” Vincent said. “No, that’s very far from how I’m feeling right now.”

This time, he’d plan on taking the highway directly back to Aurora, without making a stop to see Main Street at night. He was breathing deeply, not heavily now, and focused on getting the car back before the smog got any stronger.

Vincent turned the windshield wipers on, despite the fact that it wasn’t raining. Around them, dust started to descend upon the car. The windshield wipers hit the dry glass, rocking the front slightly. What what what, the sound seemed to say. What what what, the machine said. The car made another turn toward the main roads, toward the apartment, or someone’s home, or somewhere, anywhere away from the forest above.

The first rock wall Esme Andersen built was in 1975 when she’d just turned twenty and was halfway through an engineering degree. Her father had been diagnosed with MS, and she was home from college for the summer. People said she was pregnant—“Look how bloated that belly is”—but she’d never been with a man. She just passed clots and passed out a lot. “That’s why they scraped her out,” Dad said. “Ended up taking everything. It’s a pity, you know.”

I didn’t quite know.

She and her dad took trips to the creek bed every day for two weeks, gathered up flat rocks from the slippery bottom of the Sidle. The rumor was Esme kept adding stones on days she felt well, sometimes only a few—toiling over making the fit right, a half turn here and there. When she was poor and in pain, she claimed she felt the hum of protection within the kissing stones of her very own rampart.

After her father died, Esme ended up living alone behind that dry-stacked wall, being called strange, a fool. But I adored the wall, how it held.

—

Back when we first moved next to Sidle Creek—not a large creek but cool enough for trout—a man who’d been blinded by welder’s flash got his sight back when he fell into its water. When Dad gave directions to our house he’d say, “Follow Sidle from the bridge near Colwell’s Cemetery about three quarters of a mile out Stone Church Road. If you get to the old pump station, you got out too far.” He’d add, “You won’t see our house from the road so just turn right where the creek takes a sharp bend to the left—where Prichard got his sight back—and you’ll see our drive.” How strangers could have been helped by his directions was lost on me, but no one questioned them, and every time someone said, “What do you mean got his sight back?” Dad would tell the story about how the Sidle’s water cured Mr. Prichard.

—

Granddad had a bleed at the muddy bank of the Sidle the same year my mom left. His best fishing buddy, Lee, gave him sips of whiskey thinking it was a clot that could thin, but it was a different kind of stroke. “Hemorrhagic” read the death notice. Dad repeated the word three times, slow. Dad said Lee couldn’t have known when he held the bottle’s lip to Granddad’s he was making his death come swifter. For a long time he wondered what might’ve happened had Lee let Granddad drink some of the Sidle’s water instead, but decided it was all good. “He didn’t have to suffer years of half a life, unable to talk or walk or dance or fish. No one should have to suffer.”

But when Granddad showed up in everyone’s dreams, even the neighbors’, he had dirt all over him. “Just that dried-out topsoil from trying to get back to us from his grave. Not the muddy silt from the Sidle,” Dad said. “Don’t you worry. He didn’t fault the creek. He loved it pret’ near as much as he loved us.”

—

Before my Uncle Bobby went away to the pen, back before his layoff at the mine and his broken marriage and the drug bust and the helicopters hovering over the hunting camp while state boys dragged him from the attic with bits of pink insulation stuck to his shirt, we all fished together at Granddad’s spot, like some happy family. But the truth is my dad might have sooner just gone alone. We kids were too loud. Spooked everything. And Uncle Bobby used weird things for bait that day. Hot dogs, Pop-Tarts, bubblegum, carrots.

—

Late-season snow runoff, and a bout with the wrong side of manic, sent Miss Turner into the deepest channel of the Sidle with stones from the Allegheny River weighting her coat. “She’d given it some thought,” Dad said. Those river stones were smooth and small—unlike the bulky, irregular creek stone covered up in the high-water rush—and she could fit them nicely into the woolen coat she’d sewn with extra-deep pockets, some said, exactly for this deed. Two anglers scouting for spots to stock rainbows tried to pull her from the high cold. One of the Colwell boys, a newly minted volunteer fireman who’d completed fifty-two of seventy-two passes in the final game of his senior year, overhanded a throw bag to each of them, landing them right at their chins. Still all three abided feverish shivering fits of hypothermia for a handful of days in ICU. Miss Turner lived three more years before something like cancer nettled into her woman parts and offed her slow and terrible. Dad blamed Miss Turner for using the creek wrong. He blamed her for the fact that the browns weren’t taking nightcrawlers that season. He swore her actions cursed the line, cursed the hooks.

—

Dad always said attractor dries were best for catching wild browns. I tried every fly in the box, every single one clatched to my hat. Caught my best brown once when the stream was high and thick after a hailstorm. Filled my waders, nearly drowned. I cried out for help but no one heard. “You got yourself out. Found good footing on that creek bed. That’s what counts,” Dad said, patting me on the shoulder, then hugged me tighter than he ever had in my whole thirteen years.

That night I dreamed I kept finding something stuck on the undersides of rocks, stuck to the slippery green of them, and how it stuck I couldn’t figure; I worried it would tack over the whole run. It was stuck to everything. When I woke up, my panties were full of blood. I told Dad and he said, “That’s natural. It’s time. Go to Mom’s closet and get her napkins in a pink box,” and I did. They were right beside the pretty purses and shoes in boxes she’d left behind when she left me behind too, two years before. He said, “Let’s go see how they’re runnin’ today.”

I knew the blood would come. I’d learned about it a few years before. I just thought it was much, much more than it should be.

—

Shiners, in the minnow bucket, darted left and right. Nightcrawlers we filched by the light of night’s moon tunneled dirt in the coffee can. Bait. “Live things to catch live things,” Dad always said each time he slipped the thin hook through a slippery body, but I heard it different that day.

He cast. Set the pole in the wooden wye he carved from a cherry tree branch.

“Always use thin wire hooks and rig close to the tail so it can still move a lot. Or through the top of its back. You want it lively in the water. Just as it would be if it wasn’t on the hook.”

I nodded and straightened my back, rubbed at my spine. He glanced at me then grabbed a minnow from the bucket and placed it in my palm.

“Hold onto that for a sec,” he said. He pulled his lighter from his shirt pocket and relit the charred end of his cigarette. Took in a long drag. I watched the smoke come out his nose and thought of gills, of the insides of our lungs and wondered if they were red, too. The minnow’s tickle made my throat burn, made me want to clamp tighter, but I didn’t want it dead. I blinked. I swallowed all that extra saliva. I thought about where he’d slip the hook through the one I held.

That’s when he said, “Uncle Fatso takes them close to the eyeball and through the snout. They’ll wiggle then.” He laughed. “Here,” he said. I opened my hand and watched its shine flip to the ground. “Son of a bitch,” he said, stopping it with his boot from flip-flopping its way toward the water’s edge. He grabbed it after two tries and handed it to me again. “Don’t worry, you can use them like this, too. Hook straight through both lips. See?” I rolled my lips in while he slid the dead minnow on my line’s hook. “Living or dead they still look good to the trout.” He took in another drag and winked.

We moved to nightcrawlers then. We waited for a hit while the other worms burrowed deep to the bottom of the can, away from the light splashing through the trees that lined the bank. I couldn’t help staring into the minnow bucket, watching their frantic flickers, their wild eyes.

—

Five bleeds later, I got hints when it would come on. Angry at my cowlick. Lonely. Fish looked sad. It scared me, this thing happening to me. Hurt all over. Made me slow. Run down.

“Maybe flow’s off a little,” Dad said. “Maybe it’ll straighten out.” Though he told me before Mom left us for Jesus and moved to a place in upstate New York to be nearer His Grace and Love, that she’d had the exact same kind of pains. He wanted to take me to Crazy Miss Jean for a tincture, but I was so scared of her that I refused to go.

So, again, he took me fishing. We caught our limit quick. Let the gutted fish soak in saltwater in the sink all day. After supper, Dad said, “Let’s have a sundae.” I couldn’t bring myself to grab the maraschino cherry jar that always sat next to the salmon eggs after I spotted the canned plums. They looked too much like the clots that dropped from inside me.

“Hot fudge is plenty,” I said.

In those five months, I’d learned to hate all things red.

That frightening leaking out came again just as I was halfway done with the sundae, sending the bowl clanging into the sink and me running to the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet I imagined my own eggs sliding to the bottom of the porcelain while I peed.

“You okay?” Dad said from behind the bathroom door.

“I’m fine,” I said, shoring up my voice box to keep at bay any sound of stupid crying.

—

After eight bleeds, Dad told me to head out to the Sidle, wade in the water some. Might cure me from bleeding so much. But I worried the Sidle couldn’t help me, and I didn’t want to use the creek wrong like Miss Turner, didn’t want to spook the fish away. He said, “Regular season’s over. They’ve slowed by now.”

—

Cramps woke me. Cramps kept me home from school. Headaches weighted my eye sockets.

Snow came early. I tried to think about the cool creek water, how oxygen would be swelling, how trout hens would be building nests in the gravels, deep in the redds, to home their eggs.

—

A year more passed when Dad said, “I can’t have you suffer,” and went to Crazy Miss Jean without me. She said it was a malady no one aspired to study for a long time. She said she had it, too, ‘til she went through the change. She said people still think it’s fake, a lie. She told him what kinds of stones to find at the Sidle, gave him a bottle of paregoric and told him to mix it with sugar.

“It tastes like black licorice gone bad,” he said and held the tiny whiskey glass to my lips. I forced myself to drink it.

Warm, warmer. Cramps eased, eyelids drooped. Rest came. Until pain rippled again.

Miss Jean told Dad to “search for a keen doctor who’ll listen.” She said it may take years. She gave the awful thing a name. “Endometriosis, endometriosis, endometriosis,” Dad said.

I repeated it. It didn’t sound half as mean as it was.

Dad said, “It’s a dirty rotten shame.”

In my floating self, I said, real quiet, “Will you help me build a wall, Dad, from both creek rock and river rock? It’ll be knee-high and I’ll plant flowers to line it.”

“Sure will,” he said.

From the steeped water in the pot, Dad took the smooth flat stones he found near the redds where the trout laid eggs. He placed the warm stones right on top of my belly where Miss Jean said my ovaries and uterus ached underneath. I could feel the Sidle’s love walking deep inside. It made me want to live.

I stared at the rainbow Dad had mounted on my wall. I’d caught it on opening day near the bend where Lee cut the line on his palomino when he saw Granddad slump, where he held whiskey to Granddad’s lip. The shininess, those pretty dots, that magenta line the length of it. Its colors buoyed me. It stared back at me with its hopeful eye.

It had been the girl’s mother’s idea, after consulting mystics and holy sages, to procure a wedding gown before finding her a groom.

It is a meritorious act, Sara, her mother assured.

We are told that Bella had done all that was required to have her daughter successfully married, though the order of attempts is disputed—Bella had sent the girl to the most proper of religious schools in Jerusalem, worn the correct style of wig, attended ladies’ breakfasts, never repeated a Sabbath dress, and encouraged her daughters to visit the sick on Sunday afternoons. And with time, according to various sources, her attempts grew more desperate—forty days of prayer at the Wall, sages paid to invoke the merit of the family’s maternal line when reciting Psalms, kabbalists consulted about constellations and energies, eighteen sheqels paid to Hasidic women in Mea Shearim squalor to pour boiling tar into a pot and thus save Sara from others’ evil eyes and from the girl’s painful solitude.

This was how things had been done There, back in the place they had come from, in the Carpathian Mountains, in the Time Before Forgetfulness and Red Flags and the Tanks in Red Square: A girl without a husband must prove her faith that she would find one.

And thus a campaign began to ensure Sara’s marital happiness. Under no circumstance would the girl be permitted to sit by the corner of the table, lest she be cursed with a seven-year wait for her wedding day; every wine glass spilled on a Sabbath tablecloth was quickly marked as a sign of blessing; at every circumcision and betrothal party, she was handed toffees, kushai kushai, eat, eat, some sweetness in your mouth will bring you the sweetness of marriage. As every girl from her high school class married, one by one, wearing long-sleeved satin gowns with tall collars, each wedding held in the same hall and with that same ancient orchestra, Sara increasingly received sad nods. Soon by you, they crooned.

It is said that her entire life, the girl had been lavished with exaggerated praise: nannies and grandmothers would cry out as she walked by, Lucky is the man who makes her his bride! Yet here she was, twenty-one, and there was something unfinished about her, the way her head remained uncovered, no headscarf, no wig. What was so puzzling to us was that the girl was seemingly fine material for a wife.  If Isaac the bakery owner’s daughter had found a husband that didn’t mind her bleary eyes and irritating lisp, and even her loudmouthed classmate Shifra, despite her ceaseless gossiping, was married, and to a diamonds salesman no less, surely Sara could somewhere find a husband who would be enamored by her peacock-colored eyes. The girl had been matched with plenty of bachelors, and one after another she’d shyly shake her head, no, it’s not it, and then return to the pages of her book. Even mothers of prospective grooms were not completely averse to the notion of Sara as a daughter-in-law: a reaction which was rare, as most mothers disapproved of most girls categorically. But this girl seemed kind enough, despite her love of reading; a daughter of Israel raised by simple parents to be a woman of valor, a wife who would resemble merchant ships, dressed in fine linens and purple honor, a mother who would arise while it is still night and open her mouth in wisdom, her words tumbling out like pearls.

“If you wanted to, you could be long married with two children,” Bella would tell her offhand, jotting down the number of a mother who knew a rabbi who knew of someone. It had become a constant occupation, a flurry of files, phone numbers, emails with enumerated references and small passport photos of a nineteen-year-old Sara, powdered and hair curled.

The word that the community used for girls of this sort was, of course, whispered, and even her mother wouldn’t hear it outright from the gossips, yet she knew it was being said. Particular. Spoiled. Some commentaries have even interpreted particular to mean arrogant. “She thinks she’s above our sons,” Naomi the podiatrist’s wife said aloud one Friday afternoon at the butcher’s, to which the cashier girl and even the rabbi’s wife nodded. “Who does she think she is, some mythical beauty? And the daughter of a teacher, at that! As if her father were a millionaire!”

It must also be mentioned that we couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Bella’s other girls, the four of them; they were undoubtedly afraid that soon their turn would come and Sara would still be single. What then? To ask for her permission to start dating, while she is yet unmarried? Of course she’ll give us her blessing to date; but what if we get engaged before she does? She can’t keep us single, too, just because she’s being, ah, particular.

And so Sara found herself one dreary morning in a dressmaker’s basement office in the neighborhood of Geulah, for the sake of a meritorious act.

“Heaven would see our faith in God that the girl would marry one day, and then send the right man,” Bella said. The girl had nodded in response, wearily, letting them take her by the hand to the seamstress for fittings and debates over designs (beading? ruffles? princess gown or simpler a-line?). She invited her younger sisters to join, hoping they would bring some comic relief as she stood in front of a mirror in a white gown and tried to giggle with them. Bella sat on a stool, radiating with light, as commentaries would later describe her. “I think the high-collar would be very elegant,” she said to the dressmaker. “What do you think, Sara?”

“Yes,” the girl said coolly. “That would be nice, but please, the sleeves should be halfway past the elbows, not any longer.” She’d get hot while dancing. There’s no reason to have unnecessary fabric, she explained as she looked out the small basement window.

—

And when word came that the son of a wealthy man of a far away city—of Antwerp, no less—had looked into Sara’s resume, through an American matchmaker, Bella went as pale as the fabric they had consulted over.

It was a well-known secret, of course, that the expensive son of the diamond seller had inquired himself, that very bachelor who was famed for having gone out with over two hundred young women and still not found a bride. But many of us had suspected it to happen, because having a wedding dress made in the name of Faith is no simple business.

“He is the top of the Neman yeshiva, a brilliant student,” Bella whispered, sitting at the table across from her daughter one evening over tea. “And his parents, respected in the best of homes…who are we, to be considered by a family like that?” She glanced around the dining room, which she’d no doubt have to get freshly painted before hosting the future in-laws. “Sara, do you understand what this means?”

It was a fluke, of course, that the family was even considering a girl like Sara.

And of course the girl understood what it meant. If she went out with this yeshiva student, she’d be obliged to him, would have to wait for the moment in which he’d decide to cast her off. She, of course, could never dare to reject the boy, as she had done with every other young man until now, and if she did, the entire world’s eyes would question her angrily.  And if he did indeed desire her, she would have to marry him— there was no alternative.

But the thought of imminent marriage scared Sara, and she pushed it away. After all, she didn’t like her wedding gown very much, and it would need more tailoring until she’d like it, a project which might take longer than one month of courtship and another three of engagement—and anyways, didn’t that kabbalist which her mother dragged her to last year, didn’t she say that she wouldn’t be married for at least another year? Better not to fight destiny.

“He probably wants a rabbi’s daughter, or someone wealthy at least,” the girl reportedly said, setting her tea cup down.

But Bella did not hear her daughter any more; she was already making phone inquiries.

A month later a date was set.

She wore a deep blue blouse carefully selected to highlight her eyes, kitten heels; when she looked in the mirror for the last time before stepping out, she was almost startled by her eyes’ color. Something moved her to tears—she tried taking a deep breath and saw that her eyes only grew more blue. She didn’t want to go, she insisted in the very last moments, as her parents and sisters watched her put on her jacket. That preceding Sabbath she had trembled so much that she was unable to eat the food.

Just look beautiful tonight, that’s all you have to do, Mrs. Hart the matchmaker had told her, according to most versions.

And he? Sara asked without thinking. Mustn’t he also look handsome?

No, no. That is your job, the matchmaker said, laughing throatily into the phone, a secret smile of relief, for now, finally, she had clearly found a match for the unmatchable, and one of them the son of this wealthy house-holder of a far-away city! Two of the most notoriously particular people to match, and she had managed to come up with this innovation so cleverly, a wedding was surely destined. Listen, Sara, I don’t know you, but your name was mentioned so here I am letting you have a go at this, and let me tell you, this guy is a prince, every family wants him for a son-in-law, you’re lucky you’re getting even one date, and he’s even excited about you, so you should feel blessed. Listen, I’ll tell you the truth, he just wants a girl who is smart and put-together. “Put-together,” ahem, that means beautiful, you understand?

The yeshiva student came fifteen minutes late. Well, he wasn’t exactly the lanky and stuttering yeshiva student we had all imagined: Leah, the next-door neighbor and wife of the pharmaceuticals businessman, later informed us that the boy was clean-shaven, black-haired, very tall (by our standards, at least), in a tailored suit of course, a black Italian-made hat.

“How are you?” he had asked as Sara approached him and as he opened the car door for her. His Hebrew had a slight accent.

“Good, thank God.” What a silly question, she thought. We’re complete strangers—why would it matter how I’m doing now, as opposed to yesterday? Though perhaps it was a test to see if she invoked the Divine in her response. Thank God. And you?

He must have sensed the girl’s nervousness, because immediately he began asking her questions, gently, about details which he had had his investigators procure for him. She was surprised, pleasantly—how did he know that she loved Edith Wharton, that she insisted on playing only Chopin on the piano, and absolutely no Bach? And that she knew the Song of Songs by heart? What would a yeshiva student know of these things?

He surprised her again, as they later walked along the promenade overlooking Jerusalem’s twinkling hills, when he told her of the very Places she was told about as a child, that dark Europe of demons, as if he was singing back to her the secret lullabies of her childhood: toy-like streets, gothic palaces overlooking rivers, little magical bridges. He told her he found her purity and passions—what a combination!—exciting. And now, now they were talking over each other, there were too many verses and politics and opinions to discuss.

It is said that at two in the morning, they stood outside her house and he turned to her with a smile that was later described as “teasing” though other versions say “nervous”.

“I had such a wonderful time tonight,” he said. “I want to see you again. Tell me, Sara, what are we going to do about this?”

She laughed, in shock. Had he just invited her out again, without consulting the matchmaker? She was speechless.

“Okay,” she said softly, just like her grandmother had taught her. Slushai menya, make a man think that you agree with everything he’s saying. You’ll spend the rest of your life disagreeing with him—at least in the beginning be peaceable.

Their evenings took them to hotel lobbies, then to strolls through parks. Despite his reputation, she found him surprisingly humble in front of her, at times too cautious, well-read though not a reader of literature—he was much more comfortable in the jungles of Aramaic.

Later, she would tell her girlfriends about her evenings, slightly breathless, and her friends would exchange glances. I don’t want to part from him in the evenings, and I can’t hold his gaze always and sometimes have to turn away. Though I shouldn’t get swayed by a man’s showing interest, of course. Just because he’s looking at me in that way doesn’t mean anything—any man can give any woman that look and lavish her with praise and attention. It’s not like he’s the first or the last, right?

We knew exactly where and how long each date went, naturally. We knew that the young student was in no way frugal in his courtship, each evening taking her to the center of the city; we looked on enviously as Sara would come home late, entering the small house with lit-up eyes and swaying from exhaustion. Over a Sabbath table once, Zissel, the wife of the computer programmer, expressed wonder that it had gone this far; what would a diamond-seller’s son like him want from a difficult child like her? It won’t last long, just watch.

Whoever thought of the match is brilliant, remarked Miriam, the wife of the local steakhouse owner, to Bella as they gathered their younger children from school one afternoon. Bella brushed it off with a nervous smile, spitting under her breath like they did Back There to ward off the evil eye.

—

And it was that the gown was almost finished, earlier than Sara had expected. Adina the seamstress had not let any of us see her hard work, under strict orders from Bella, but her assistant Zahava told her mother who then informed us that surely even Queen Esther did not own a more resplendent gown than the one that Adina the seamstress was making for Bella’s daughter. Even Sara seemed satisfied, after all of her tireless adjustments. Perhaps she didn’t care any more; it was plain to all of us that all she could think about was the warmth she felt when she caught him looking at her.

But you must watch out for the evil eye from others, her mother would warn her. Everyone else wishes they had a boy like this for their daughter—you must hold on tight until you get engaged. Tread carefully, daughter.

At the office in the city, the other girls whispered and peeked over cubicle walls, hoping to catch Sara daydreaming, and then grew disappointed to see her concentrating on her work. When she went to the grocery, she suddenly felt eyes; people were watching her. Had her skirt ridden up to expose her knees, her face powder worn off? What if she was seen exchanging pleasantries with the neighbor’s son—what then? And what if someone told him that she was seen with a slightly uncovered collarbone? She found herself running always, back into the house or into the car, afraid of whoever might be watching and would slander her modesty. Somehow, everything had become a possibility for disaster. A get-together with friends, a street crossing, a bus ride—anything could happen under the evil eye.

We are told that on the following date she came in a gray silk blouse, her eyes the color of vapor; the young man was surprised by her quietness that night. “Are you all right?” he asked, as they entered the hotel lobby where they were meeting.

Yes, yes, I’m sorry, it’s just been a long day.

But she was immersed in thought, ambushes of feeling, wonderments, what if, and that gown, and those evil eyes—she had to watch out, there was such a thing, an evil eye, of course there was. Negative energies, subconscious but exceedingly powerful. Hide your face, your pictures, your good news, your successes. Lower your head lest someone hate you for your goodness and bring evil upon yourself and even upon your family. Your house, your health, your blue eyes. Everything was in danger.

He was studying the menu now, and she could only think, eyes, watch your eyes: be wary, eyes eyes eyes everywhere, black eyes that the gypsies used to extol, that the peasants used to sing ballads about. Eyes which could know your innermost thoughts, glares which could burn through even the most beautiful of silks and chiffons. Even the woods of Rabbi Nahman’s stories were not thick enough to protect her, she thought, remembering the mystical fairytales her father would tell her as a child, or so we are told. Maybe she’d trek across the thousand Mountains that were outside another thousand mountains to the caves of the east and there beg the king of demons to release her from the many many eyes that now pursued her. Why do those Hasidic tales never include God? Where does He hide, among this madness of eyes and woods?

They ordered sushi and iced coffees, the waiter later confirmed to us. The young suitor assured Sara that he was comfortable with the silence, that it was a sign of a good match if the two could sit together quietly.

But while he leaned back against the park bench later that night, watching her from a small distance, she found herself paralyzed by that very silence, terrified by the heated distance joining them, or perhaps by some turmoil inside which he would never know, this electricity that was her own doing, she knew, something in her eyes that had spurred his eyes to look at her like this, a silence in which she heard, turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me.

—

After these things, four weeks after that first turquoise night, Bella picked up the finished gown. “The dressmaker told me to bring it back in case it needs anything else, but I think it’s simply perfect.” She stood in the living room, fingering the fall of the fabric from the waistline.

Sara nodded, setting down her hair iron (she was going out that night), yes yes, here, let me hang it in the closet. The two went upstairs together, carrying the gown in its layered garment bag, her mother leading and Sara carrying the end carefully, dutifully, like some funeral procession. They placed the dress in the front of Sara’s closet.

Her mother breathed deeply as they looked at it.

“We prayed and yearned for your wedding day, for so long,” she whispered, shaking her head.

And it came to be that Sara was not wrapped in mysterious silence that night, to the yeshiva student’s relief; she had sworn to herself to stop thinking about evil eyes, and about that wedding gown in her closet, which had now become a dybbuk, a demon, in her mind, and instead she was laughing, smiling, crossing her legs, looking out dreamily from the rooftop bar where they sat. He watched her and asked her shyly if she’d mind if he’d meet her parents: she looked up at him suddenly, and he noticed that tonight her eyes flickered from blue-green to the silver color of her skirt. She laughed.

When he drove her home that night, he said they ought to speak seriously, and in stilted syllables explained that he enamored (his exact wording has also been disputed, see commentaries below), behold thou art fair, yet something was holding him back. And when she turned to him, she saw that his dark eyes were now moist. Something in her (did this now make her a woman?) wanted to reach across and stroke his cheek, to console this boy-man with the same tenderness of Ruth the Moabite; he continued to weep silently, and with her hands folded in her lap, she waited in vain for him to continue speaking.

Leah, the next-door neighbor and the wife of the pharmaceuticals businessman, later informed us that Sara did not stay long in the car, and that from the limited view from Leah’s living room window, the girl exited the car after what looked like a brief conversation.

What puzzled us most was that the match seemed faultless; no one could understand the young man’s sudden change of spirit, and no one dared entertain the thought that it may have been the girl who had broken it off. Who are we to know of God’s mysterious ways? Shulamith the Bible teacher’s wife threw up her hands. Children these days, they’re so spoiled that they’re afraid of marriage.

Well, her family lineage was nothing special, noted Raizy, the high-end wedding planner.

Yes, said Zissel with a smirk. It made no sense.

He must have heard reports about her skirt length, said Yehudis, the school principal. She was not particularly careful.

Sharon, the divorcee who lived across the street, vowed that she had seen Bella’s daughter talking to the neighbors’ son. There’s something coquettish about that girl, the way she laughs, it’s too airy.

It was said that Bella took the news the hardest. According to reports which were later reluctantly confirmed by Sara’s sisters in school, Sara had gracefully sauntered into the house that night, smiled to her anxious parents and exclaimed how utterly exhausted she was and what a lovely night she had had and that she was off to bed—and it was only the next morning when the girl had casually informed her mother that she and the young man would no longer be seeing each other, and that Bella quickly canceled the Sabbath guests and took to her bed.

That evening, we are told, Sara rearranged her closet.

The young man, in the meantime, disappeared. In the days that followed, reports trickled in, sightings of him in an airport terminal a few weeks later, just before the beginning of the fall semester; his family confirmed that he had left for another yeshiva, hoping the streets and hills of another place, one that was truly far, far away, would help him find order.

That Friday, the local bakery was abuzz with discussion. No other girl, of a hundred prospective brides, had ever made this boy go crazy. To book a ticket, flee the country? Like a film! We weren’t so worried about the failure of the match; instead, as we returned to our children and our houses strewn with toys and our husbands whom we’d have to greet that evening like Sabbath queens, we each secretly wondered at Bella’s daughter and at her forgotten dress. We thought about her as we sat at our Sabbath tables, listening to our husbands drone on, singing about our valor and our righteous kindness as they fell asleep at the table.

Additional testimonies were given as to the young man’s distraught behavior. We are told that he called his friends and teachers depressed, muttering something about how he couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t, a girl like that is indecipherable, harder than any tractate he’d ever learned, a tractate without commentaries and without a conclusion, just one long passage of gaps and disputes and contradictions. Something about her silver eyes, like silent doves—What, I don’t understand you, his parents would ask over the dining room table. Please explain, what’s a silver dove? His father told the frustrated matchmaker to give his son some time, perhaps recommend another girl, someone simpler, someone wealthy this time, please.

The matchmaker called Sara and, breaking away from her own norms, did not seek to take the boy’s side. Listen, who needs this prince? I have another one for you in the meantime. This one’s a lawyer.

The girl wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m busy,” she said simply, suppressing a yawn as she waited for the elevator in her office building.

You have to prove to God that you’re trying. Give me a reason why you won’t give this one a try, the matchmaker exclaimed.

Reason? Sara thought. Reasons are, obviously, irrelevant here.

We were given various accounts, and there was even a dispute as to which was more accurate: There were sightings of the young yeshiva student in America, going from sage’s study to synagogue to library, each time coming out shaken and pale, swaying as if in the midst of the silent meditation. Then, upon his return, he was seen again in restaurants, each time with a different girl, dull-eyed perhaps but certainly with brighter smiles. He’ll forget her one day, said Chana, wife of the cantor, after Sabbath services one morning.

Now it came to pass that Sara decided that waiting was useless, a waste of time and sleep and thinking-energy.

We are told that she waited for her mother to leave for the grocery store, and then picked up and took the wedding gown to the community’s free-loan fund, which was housed in the synagogue basement, and donated that ivory masterpiece for impoverished (yet clearly more fortunate) brides. That week, of course, we busied ourselves driving to the synagogue basement to admire the handiwork on the sleeves, the delicate bodice and the long train of the skirt—each of us, even Zissel, wife of the computer programmer, found an excuse to stop by—and we were too excited by the prospect of finally seeing that legendary dress to even notice the awkward vapor-eyed child who stood praying in the back of the women’s balcony. 

We found the snake lying stretched across the road, a black gash extending from the sewage grate on one side of the street to the rain gutter on the other, and I wondered what it would be like to fill space, to lounge, to occupy more than the boundaries allotted to me.

It was a muggy afternoon in the middle of July, and heat radiated off the asphalt in waves. The air smelled of tar and leaves, and of something else, something sweet and vegetal. Sweat dripped between my shoulder blades and pooled in the small of my back, soaking the waistband of my shorts. From where I stood near the foot of the driveway, I could see the snake’s tongue, flicking in and out of its mouth, as if to sample the air.

Abhi, who stood beside me, took a tentative step forward. I could tell from the look on his face that he was planning something stupid. He would be thirteen in September and thought much of this fact, all puffed up with the pride of impending manhood that was his inheritance. Just that morning, he had insisted on having coffee with his breakfast, insisted too on having it without sugar or milk. He’d taken a big gulp but ended up spitting it right back into the cup. He was all bluster.

Predictably, Roshni wanted us to shoo the snake away. “It’s going to get in the house if we don’t do something,” she said. She kept a good several yards back from the snake, turned half toward it and half toward us, one eye trained on it, warily, the other on us, no less wary.

At seventeen, Roshni was the de facto leader of our little group. I say group, but that makes it sound more organized and volitional than it was. In reality, it was just the three of us, Roshni, Abhi, and me, together only because of the circumstance of birth—me and Roshni to the same parents; Abhi to our dad’s sister—together only because it was summer and Roshni was in charge while our parents were at work.

“It’s not doing anything. This is so retarded,” Abhi said, with a slight whine that irritated me to no end.

“Abhi! You can’t say that,” I said, shoving his arm. “That’s really offensive. You’re such a jerk.”

“You’re really annoying, you know that, Poonam?”

“You’re really ugly, you know that, Abhi?” I said. Back then, my verbal sparring prowess was no better than Abhi’s, and I exhibited all of the sophistication one might expect of a fourteen-year-old.

“You can’t call me ugly. That’s offensive to ugly people,” he said.

I took another step towards Abhi, thinking a good shove toward the snake was just the thing to put him in his place. Everything about him infuriated me—his insufferable voice, the way he wore his T-shirt tucked into his cargo shorts and his socks pulled up almost to his knees, the way he always insisted on explaining things to me like I was an incompetent, vacuous idiot, as if I wasn’t fifteen months older than him. He’d been staying with us for a week, and by that point, I was sick of him. It didn’t used to be that way—back when we were younger, we’d been inseparable. I don’t know when I’d started to hate his guts.

“Cut it out,” Roshni said. She jerked me back, pulling my arm hard. She wouldn’t have been so rough with anyone else, of course—wouldn’t risk Abhi telling our parents on her. Me, she knew she had under her thumb.

I rubbed my arm where she had grabbed me and took a grudging step away from Abhi.

“I’m going to poke it,” Abhi said. He bent to pick up a fallen branch from the side of the road and thrust it out in front of him, wielding it like a sword as he approached the snake.

“Stop it, Abhi. You’re going to get hurt,” Roshni said. She tried to reach for him, but he was too far away, and she was too afraid of the snake to move from where she was rooted.

It seemed like the whole neighborhood and the entire surrounding mountainside had fallen still, the birdsong and chatter of squirrels and cicadas silent as every creature waited with bated breath.

The snake lay motionless too, its thick form still roped across the asphalt. At some point, it had raised the front of its body off the road and turned to look in our direction, hovering in an s-curl, poised and ready to strike.

Abhi alone was still moving, and he inched slowly toward the snake. The branch trembled in his hands as he lowered it. Roshni and I watched, entranced by his audacity and his stupidity. A clump of dead leaves and grass dangled from one end of the branch and quivered in the air, threatening to fall, hanging on by a blade.

Abhi took another step forward, and then I don’t know what came first: Roshni’s scream, Abhi’s scream, the snake’s disappearance, Abhi lying on the ground clutching his left leg, the bite.

Probably the bite.

—

“Mummy, you need to come home right now,” Roshni was saying into the kitchen phone. “Abhi needs to go to the hospital.”

She sounded surprisingly calm for someone who, only a few minutes earlier, had been screaming like she’d just witnessed a murder or was about to become the victim of one.

After the bite, we had rushed Abhi up the driveway and into the house. Roshni made Abhi lie down in the living room and wrapped a tea towel around his calf. Two red specks bloomed on the white and gray checkered fabric. Abhi was still clutching his leg and moaning almost continuously. Snot bubbled out from his nose. Some of it had already dried in a beige, boogery patch on the tip of it and smeared across his cheek.

“Do you want ice?” I asked. “Does it hurt?” I stood well away from where he was lying, keeping the coffee table between us. I wanted to be useful, but I also hated sick people, and the latter feeling was winning out. Something soft brushed my foot. I looked down and realized I’d unwittingly carried Abhi’s branch inside; the clump of leaves and grass hanging from it had fallen onto my foot. I set the branch down on the coffee table.

“No, don’t give him ice. Are you stupid or what?” Roshni yelled from the kitchen. “What if it stops the blood flow and the poison just stays there and he gets gangrene or something? The tissue could die. He could lose his leg.”

As soon as our parents had agreed that Roshni could go to UNC in the fall, she’d announced her plan to be pre-med. She’d let it go to her head. I suspected that she had no idea what she was talking about.

“Nothing, Mummy, it’s fine. Poonam was just being annoying,” Roshni said into the phone.

“Venom,” Abhi said, his voice strained and croaking.

“What?” I asked him.

“It’s venom. Poison is absorbed. Venom is injected,” he said, lifting his head up off of the faded flowered armrest. He sounded more cogent, the feebleness gone from his voice.

“What?” I repeated. I was still feeling dazed and overexcited from all that had happened, and thinking felt strangely like wading through molasses. “Why are you giving me a science lesson?”

“God, you are stupid.”

“Mummy and Pappa are on their way,” Roshni said as she came back into the room. She sat down on the coffee table, on the couch side.

“Ooooh, my leg,” Abhi said, letting his head fall back against the armrest. “Oooh, the pain.” He flung an arm over his forehead and closed his eyes, grimacing.

“Don’t just stand there—make yourself useful. Get him some water and the ibuprofen,” Roshni said to me. Then, turning back to Abhi, she said, her voice softer, “Does it hurt a lot? Can you still feel your leg? Can you wriggle your toes?”

I left Roshni to minister to Abhi and went into my parents’ bathroom down the hall to look for the ibuprofen. As I rummaged through the medicine cabinet, I could still hear them both, their voices only a little muffled through the thin wall separating the bathroom from the living room.

“Did you see where the snake went? Should we try to find it? In case they need to make an antidote?” Roshni was saying.

I rolled my eyes. I suspected the snake wasn’t venomous—it just looked like a rat snake—but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I knew all too well that Abhi and Roshni wouldn’t believe me. They were both enjoying themselves far too much to be persuaded to see reason.

When I returned to the living room, Roshni was telling Abhi not to elevate his leg. “It’ll make the poison flow backwards into your bloodstream. It could eventually reach your heart. Or even your brain.”

“Here,” I said, holding the bottle out to Abhi. He just looked at me blankly, unmoving.

“Here, let me,” Roshni said, snatching the bottle from me. “Is he supposed to take this without water?” she asked, with her back to me.

I rolled my eyes again and stormed away, muttering to myself. I hated when Roshni ordered me around, but I knew if I didn’t do as she said, I’d have hell to pay later.

From the kitchen, I could still hear Abhi’s moans. “Oooh, it hurts.” I opened a cabinet door more forcefully than was necessary, and it slammed against the cabinet beside it. “Oooh, my leg.” He was milking this. He would be so much more unbearable now than he already was.

“Maybe I should make a tourniquet. Maybe it’ll stop the poison from spreading,” Roshni was saying when I returned with a glass of water.

Luckily for Abhi, that was when we heard my parents pull into the driveway.

“Can you hold the glass to my mouth, Poonam?” Abhi said, fluttering his eyes weakly open, his arm still flung over his forehead. “I’d do it myself but—ooooh—I’m too weak to do—oooh, my leg—to do anything.”

—

The hospital was halfway between our town and the neighboring one. It would take us a good forty minutes to drive there on our own, but my parents hadn’t wanted to call an ambulance.

“We’ll be left with a bill for close to $1,000,” I’d heard my father tell my mother when they’d gotten home. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Varun could afford it. It’s his own son.”

But my father had made up his mind, so we’d all packed into the car. Roshni wouldn’t hear of being left behind, and my parents wouldn’t hear of my staying home alone, no matter how much I begged them. “How can you even think of staying home when your cousin is hurt?” they’d said. “How could you be so heartless?”

Easily.

On the drive to the hospital, Abhi sat between me and Roshni, with his leg extended and resting on the center console. I held my torso as rigidly as possible and had squeezed close to the window so that no part of me was touching Abhi. He disgusted me. And what if obnoxiousness was contagious?

“Who’s at the store?” I asked my parents when we passed Main Street and turned onto the only road out of town. They ran a convenience store a few blocks away, back in the other direction, an off brand 7/11 of sorts, only smaller and less corporate.

“We had to close up. It was Pratik’s day off,” my father said, with a little snort. I heard the usual note of bitterness that inflected his words whenever he mentioned Pratik.

Pratik was a recent hire—one of those friend of a friend of a friend deals, a fresh transplant from a village outside of Ahmedabad, where we’d moved from. Pratik had worked nearly every day at first, taking only five days off a month, which he said he spent at a temple down in Atlanta. But then five days became six, then seven, then eight, and so on, until he took more days off than he worked.

It had seemed obvious to me from the start that Pratik wasn’t praying on his days off. I’d seen him wipe up spilled coffee with the yellowing print of Ganesh that my mother kept taped to the side of the cash register for good luck. Once, when Roshni and I were waiting for my parents at the store, he’d asked Roshni to accompany him to Atlanta. Roshni had reddened and didn’t have a chance to answer before my parents came back out from the backroom, where they had their office. I don’t think Roshni ever told them about the invitation. They would probably have found a way to blame her for Pratik’s creepiness. They were always making excuses for him.

I tried to catch my sister’s eye, but Roshni was intently looking out the window on the other side and pretending not to listen. Her right ear, which peeked through her hair, had grown pink.

“Why don’t you just fire him?” I asked my parents. Even if Pratik weren’t so creepy, I still would have disliked him. At that age, it didn’t take much for me to develop strong aversions to people, and to me, Pratik was especially gross—he had a paunch; at thirty, already had hair tufting from his ears; and he smelled perpetually of cabbage and tobacco. He always wore short-sleeve button-down shirts with the top three buttons undone, revealing a thick gold chain and his chest hair. I didn’t understand how my parents could bear to keep him around. “Does he even do any work?”

“He’s threatened to turn us in to the police,” my father said, still with the same bitterness. He gripped the steering wheel more tightly, his knuckles pale from the effort. “He’s here illegally. He said he’d tell them that we’ve been paying him under the table. We could lose everything.”

“But he wouldn’t do that—he’d get deported,” I said.

“Leave it,” my mother said, turning to me from the passenger seat. “Your father doesn’t want to think about that good for nothing man.”

“Ooooh,” Abhi said, sounding like an especially irritating ghost, but for once I was glad he was there.

“We’re almost there,” my mother said. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Is there any weakness?” my father asked. “Can you move your toes?”

“I—I think so,” Abhi said, his words thin and shaky. “Oooh, my leg.”

I couldn’t stand listening to them anymore. They were all so annoying—they never focused on what was important. I put my headphones in and spent the rest of the car ride looking out the window.

The mountains were an effulgence of green. The road twisted and wound its way through thick forest, and at times the deciduous trees were so dense around us that it seemed like we were making our way through a tunnel of leaves. I was beginning to feel nauseous—my father was driving more aggressively than usual and kept rounding the bends sharply—so I was relieved when the sign marking the turn to the hospital came into sight.

My father pulled into the hospital complex, and he told us to wait outside until he found a place to park.

“I could park—I need to practice for my driver’s test,” Roshni said, hopefully, but my father drove away, dousing her optimism.

“Oooh, my leg,” Abhi said, as if in send off, almost cheerful.

My mother, Roshni, Abhi, and I stood to one side of the entrance, near an overflowing trashcan that smelled like overripe bananas and rotten eggs. Birdsong sounded from the trees, joyful and incessant. The air was humid and damp, and my shirt clung to me. I scowled up at the big red letters that spelled Emergency over the door. The day was just becoming more and more annoying.

—

Inside the hospital, we all went up to the check-in window. The woman who worked there was in the middle of a conversation and didn’t look our way. Roshni pushed past me to stand in front, next to our father. She was standing taller than usual, her chin tilted up ever so slightly. She kept looking around, taking it all in—the gray carpeting, the fluorescent lighting, the fake lemon tree sprouting from a dinky plastic pot, the clipboard with a chewed-up pen tied to the metal clip, the tiny American flag planted on the counter.

The rest of us crowded behind them. Abhi was no longer moaning, and my mother seemed to shrink into herself. She, like Roshni, kept looking around her, but furtively. I couldn’t help but think of a dog, shamefaced and frightened, cowering. I tried to wipe the image from my mind but couldn’t.

My father, who’d been drumming his fingers against his legs, cleared his throat. The receptionist finally turned our way. She was an older woman, probably at least in her fifties, and heavily made up, with her gray roots showing through her purplish-red hair. Her long fake nails were painted a garish fuchsia.

“Oh, my,” she said when she saw us, startled.

“My nephew was bitten by a snake,” my father said.

“It happened at around oh-two-hundred hours,” my sister said. “The specimen was black. I’d say eight to nine feet long. Scaly.” She either ignored or didn’t see the angry look my father shot at her. “I had the patient keep his leg lower than his heart, but there’s no telling what kind of damage there’s been.”

“It was more like six feet,” I said. “She’s just exaggerating.”

To my right, my mother said to my father, “We weren’t there when it happened. Can you tell her that? Tell her Roshni is old enough to watch them both. We had to work. It was an accident. Can you tell her that?”

“Oooh, my leg,” Abhi said.

It was the receptionist’s turn to clear her throat, but no one heard her over the chatter. I could see a vein in my father’s forehead had started to pulse, and with one hand, he rubbed his neck and shoulders, as if to smooth away his tension.

The waiting room was empty except for an older couple. Both of them watched us intently, like we were aliens, like they’d never seen a spectacle quite like us before. I felt myself getting warm, and I stepped back and to one side, separating myself from the rest of the group.

The receptionist cleared her throat again, and my father shhhed the others.

“Look, you can’t all be at the window. One of you sign the injured person in and we’ll be right with you.” She picked up the clipboard on the desk to show us and then put it down again, slamming it with a loud thwap.

“What happened? What did she say?” my mother asked. “Do they think it’s our fault?”

My father shook his head at her and waved us all away. We walked hesitantly to the waiting area. The only remaining seats were arranged in two groups of three on opposite ends of the space, so my mother went with Abhi to one set, and Roshni and I went to the other end, closer to where the older couple was sitting. They were still staring openly at us. I was used to the attention—back then, we were still one of the only non-white families in town—but most people were more discreet. I stuck my tongue out at them, and the woman, flushing, looked away; the man glowered at me but looked away too.

—

It was a good hour before anyone came to get Abhi. I was bored out of my mind. The TV that hung in one corner of the waiting room was turned to the weather, and I must have watched at least five cycles of their afternoon loop—local weather, commercial, county weather, commercial, repeat. I had looked through probably every magazine they had there and was flipping idly through an old National Geographic with a picture of a lion on its cover, my eyes glazed over, the words a blur.

Over on the other side of the waiting room, Abhi had fallen asleep in his chair with his mouth open. He still had snot dried on his face, and now he had dried spit too, a white splotch near the corner of his mouth. My parents sat on either side of Abhi, silent and stony-faced, staring at the TV.

Roshni, amazingly, seemed to be enjoying herself. She had wandered over to the coffee and tea station. She didn’t drink either beverage, but the station was set up right by the check-in desk, and from the surreptitious glances she kept casting in that direction, I could tell she was only heating up water so she could listen to the gossip of the women working behind the window. I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying, but it sounded like some nurse or orderly was having an affair with a doctor. I couldn’t tell if they were talking about real life or about a soap opera.

A door near the check-in desk opened, and a woman emerged, looking at her clipboard, frowning. She wore scrubs the same shade of fuchsia as the receptionist’s nails, and a pair of earrings shaped like hot air balloons dangled from her ears.

“Pay-tell. Pat—Petal?” she said. She looked up from the clipboard and looked around the room. “Petal?” she repeated, more confidently this time.

We all looked at each other and then around the waiting room. We were the only ones there—the older couple was long gone and no one else had come in after us.

“Patel?” my dad said, half standing from his seat. “Abhi?”

“Must be,” the woman said. She pushed the door open further and stood to one side. Her earrings twirled like two tiny spinning beach balls.

“Come on, Abhi,” my father said.

My mother gently shook Abhi awake. He yawned and got to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Can I come too?” Roshni asked.

When my father shrugged his response, she set her Styrofoam cup down next to the coffee pot a little too enthusiastically, sloshing hot water onto the table, too delighted to mind the drops that splashed her hand. All four of them disappeared through the swinging door.

A plume of steam floated over Roshni’s abandoned cup. From somewhere behind the check-in window, something beeped—a microwave, I guessed, from the garlic-y, tomato-y smell that soon permeated the room. On the other side of the waiting area, across from me, my mother stared mutely at the television, its blue fluorescence reflected on her glasses. I turned to the National Geographic on my lap and tried to read again.

“—wet afternoon. A few lingering thunderstorms until evening—”

—

Abhi was the first to emerge from the swinging door an hour later, limping slightly, his left leg bandaged. My father followed closely behind, and my sister behind him, but holding back a little. She looked grim, and when she approached, I could see her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying.

“Let’s go,” my father said, pausing only long enough to jerk his head in the direction of the exit. He brushed past Abhi and out the door, leaving the rest of us to hurry to catch up.

Outside, it was even stickier than before. An afternoon thunderstorm had swept through, leaving the parking lot shiny and slick and the air smelling of petrichor. Water had pooled in spots where the ground dipped. Abhi, who walked beside me, tromped through a puddle, splashing brown rainwater on me. I started to say something but thought better of it—my father was watching us from where he stood near the car, stern and tight-lipped.

We piled into the car again, and this time, I was forced into the middle. I noticed my mother glance at my father, but she looked quickly away when he turned to check behind him before pulling out of the parking spot.

No one spoke, not even Abhi, for the rest of the drive home. I heard my sister sniffle a couple of times, and once, Abhi had a sneezing fit. Otherwise, the only sounds were the spray of water, the clatter of traffic, the low, distant rumble of thunder.

When we pulled into the driveway at home, Roshni was the first one out of the car, before my father had even shifted into park. She slammed the car door closed behind her. I noticed a muscle in my father’s neck tense, the clench of his jaw, but he didn’t say anything.

“What’s her problem?” I asked, unable to hold my tongue any longer. Everyone was being so weird—even Abhi had been more subdued than I’d ever known him to be. He hadn’t moaned about his leg even once on the whole drive home.

“Roshni’s mad she can’t volunteer at the hosp—”

“Abhi,” my father said, a note of warning clearly discernible, and Abhi cut himself off.

That may have been enough to shut Abhi up, but it wasn’t enough for me. I kept pressing.

“Why can’t she? She’s going to be a doctor. She’s going to be pre-med.”

“Don’t you start too now,” my father said. He sighed, seeming suddenly weary and old, and got out of the car.

—

I found Roshni in our room, lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were no longer red, but the skin around them was still puffy and swollen, looking a little bruised.

“They’re so annoying,” I said, collapsing onto my own bed. “I can’t wait to get out of here. You’re so lucky you get to leave soon.”

Roshni made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh.

“What?”

“Keep dreaming.”

“What do you mean?” I sat up and swung my legs off my mattress, dangling them into the space between our twin beds. The room was so cramped and our beds so close together that I could touch Roshni’s bed frame without having to extend my legs. I gripped the metal frame with my toes, flexing and unflexing my feet. “What does dreaming have anything to do with it?”

“You know what Pappa said when we were in there and waiting for the doctor?”

“Abhi said something about not being able to volunteer at the hospital. So what? That’s not the end of the world.”

“That’s not all he said.”

“Oh. So what did he say?” I asked, though a slight nagging, tugging sensation told me I knew the answer already.

“You’re so slow sometimes. Figure it out yourself.”

With that, Roshni climbed down from her bed and left the room.

Light streamed in through the worn bedroom curtains, filtered and fluttering, casting long shadows across Roshni’s crumpled comforter and the carpet. Elsewhere in the house, life had moved on. The faint aroma of onions and ghee and cumin suffused the air, and familiar house noises drifted through the open door—the clatter of dishes, the steamy hiss of the pressure cooker, a Jagjit Singh ghazal, a sitcom laugh track. There was no comfort in these smells or noises, no comfort in what they stood for or what they offered, and I lay back down on my bed, feeling strangely empty.

—

The next day was Friday, and I woke to find myself alone in the house. My parents were usually long gone by the time I woke up in the mornings, but I was surprised that Roshni and Abhi were nowhere to be found. The air conditioner hummed as I creaked through the house, ducked my head into my parents’ bedroom, the hall bathroom, the living room.

In the kitchen, I found two cereal bowls next to the sink, the milk still left behind in one of them, tinged the color of wheat fields ready for harvest, a few bloated Cheerios huddled together, bobbing on the surface.

I was ready to give up and make myself some toast when I heard voices coming from out in the backyard. It had to be them.

Outside, the air, muggy and wet, suggested rain. A thick mist had descended on the mountain, obscuring the surrounding trees and rhododendron thickets. I ran around to the back of the house, following the sound of their voices, the damp earth soft beneath my bare feet.

“Maybe it slithered into that rotten log,” Abhi was saying when I found them, pointing a few yards away. His voice seemed peculiar, almost giddy. “Should we look there?”

“I’ll check,” Roshni said, yelling the words, sounding as keyed up as Abhi. She wielded a branch like the one Abhi’d had the day before and was using it to push her way through the underbrush, the look of a huntress about her. “We’ll teach that stupid snake not to mess with us.”

There was something in the way she spoke, or perhaps the set of her figure, that made me think that looking for the snake had been her idea, that this was her battle.

They had their backs to me and hadn’t seen me yet. I kept away, cleaving close to the house. For some reason, I knew that I shouldn’t interfere. It wasn’t my place to get involved. I wouldn’t tell them that they were wasting their time, and that there was little they could do, that the snake was long gone. I suspected that Roshni knew that already, deep down, in some inner recess. But it felt good, even if for a morning, even if for a moment, to pretend to forget.