Aquarium

~ ~ ~

Streetlamps hunched over, softened cones of light and dark spaces between. I hurried along the sidewalk, my chin and hands buried. The cold a dull ache already in my legs. I could almost feel my bones.

I thought there would be no other movement, no one else awake, but a white van passed, and then another, and a car coming the other way. For Boeing Field, maybe, everything starting so early.

I didn’t know where I would find a store open. I was looking for a 7-Eleven or a gas station. She wanted a painkiller and something to keep her from throwing up. She said she had made these night trips all the time.

Corson Avenue South had become part of a field of white indistinguishable from sidewalks and front yards and the parking lots except that it was bordered by these lights and had slim dark tracks from the few cars. I crossed over on South Harney Street to get to Airport Way South, thinking there had to be some stores or gas stations, but there were only windowless warehouses, small office complexes, a few cafes closed. A bakery, and even that wasn’t open yet. Interstate 5 a corridor of light, trucks arriving early in the city, come from anywhere.

For some reason, I didn’t feel afraid. Perhaps because of the snow. When I hit Corson again, at the top of Airport Way, an overpass rose above like a landing strip. Old trucks, rusted and dented, and wrecked cars on the other side of the street, kept for parts. The street no longer lit under the overpass, forming a kind of cave, but I walked along the mouth of this cave and met no one. A park, then, behind chain-link fence, and I just kept going on Corson back toward our apartment, and then I saw someone walking toward me, another figure hunched over and bundled up and pushing through the snow, rushing now, and I stopped, confused, not knowing whether to run, but my mother called out, Caitlin!

I stood in place. I didn’t run to her. In fact, I looked back behind me, at that cave of an overpass, some instinct for escape. The weight of her, momentum, snow flung by each plow of her boots. Some shadow figure from fairy tale, come to rescue or destroy. As if we lived in the woods, no concrete beneath the white, that overpass the curve of a mountain, faced in cliffs. Each warehouse a dark grove with fields between, small clearings. And I was not fast enough. I couldn’t move. In fairy tale, you can never get away.

She caught me, pulled me tight against her. Caitlin, she said. My baby. I’m sorry. Kissing my forehead and cradling me. You can’t be out here.

Wolves, she might have said. But there were no wolves.

I used to walk along the highway, she said. Day or night, alone. I can’t even think of it. It makes me crazy. Don’t ever come out here again. You understand?

Yes, I said.

There are men out here. Always men. They will rape you. They will rape both of us, if they find us now. We have to get back.

So she grabbed my hand and we ran through the snow together, as if a pack of men ran just behind at our heels. We exploded up the stairs and my mother fumbled with the keys at the lock and then we were inside, safe.

Everything bad in this world comes from men, my mother said. You have to know that. All violence, all fear, all slavery. Everything that crushes us.

We sat on the kitchen floor, with our backs against the door to barricade. The lights out, so we wouldn’t be seen.

I’m sorry, she said. I went too far. Don’t ever tell anyone I sent you out in the snow. At night, in this place. And don’t tell anyone I dunked your head underwater. You can’t tell anyone that.

I won’t, I said. And I thought, who would I tell? Only my grandpa or Shalini, and I wouldn’t tell my grandpa, because I wanted him to like her. I wanted them to get along. So only Shalini, and when would I see her again? I missed her suddenly with this deep and hollow ache in my chest. I wanted her to lie on top of me. I wanted to kiss her and feel her skin against mine. And I wanted to be able to tell my mother.

I miss Shalini.

Well you’re not going to school today.

But today’s Friday. That means I won’t see her until Monday.

Don’t whine. You need to get me in bed and catch some sleep if you can. You still have a lot of work ahead of you.

Shalini is the best friend I’ve ever had. Not like other friends.

I don’t care about Shalini. By this time next year, you’ll have forgotten all about her. Or it could be next week. Focus. You’re Sheri now. You’re going to learn what exhaustion is, and despair.

I’ll never forget Shalini.

Yeah, whatever. You’re twelve. Everything is so important in your life right now. Real life-and-death stuff, the world holding its breath. Now drag me to bed.

I was so angry, but she had the power to make me never see Shalini again and never see my grandfather again. She had the power to do anything. She could have decided we were moving to some other part of the country. Or she could have just vanished forever. So I hunched over and pulled her to the bedroom.

I’m not due at work until Monday morning, she said. All of today and then three more nights. That’s how long it could be. You might want to become a faster learner.

No Shalini, no school, no aquarium, no Grandpa. All taken away. My back had tightened up, stiff as I dragged. And then we were at the bedside and I hauled her off the ground and we fell onto the mattress.

Sleep, she said. Sleep while you can. Forget where you are and forget the mountain of days. Each one enormous, lost in some forest that never ends, but then the edge will fold back and you’ll walk on what was the sky and is now only another forest floor, another layer, and you can feel the weight of hundreds of these layers above you. Like an ant climbing tunnel after tunnel in darkness and the mountain never ends. Think of that. More than a thousand days, each one never ending.

My mother facedown in her pillow, yawning now, falling into sleep. She had never left that mountain of days. Her mother had died, but that hadn’t been the end of the forest. I wanted more than anything to free her.