Mothers and Daughters

No one was alarmed when Melina Henderson wasn’t home by dinner time.  

Even though it was Wednesday, spaghetti night, her favorite—a jar of Prego, Prince noodles, green cardboard tube of Kraft parmesan with the smiling plastic lid.  Melina’s mother always made garlic bread—margarine spread on Wonder, a sprinkling of garlic salt, that warmed the house as it toasted in the oven.

Even with the bogeyman of the Oakland County Child Killer only a decade cold, ten- and twelve-year-old bodies appearing in ditches, along I-75, shot or cut or smothered and left within view of nearby houses.  Wearing the backpacks and sneakers they were last seen in.  

Because this was only 1989.  Eventually, the potential for predators would imprint itself on the zeitgeist of childhood, summer days and time after school penned in by the safety of backyards, of indoor pursuits.  But when Melina wasn’t home by dinner time, children were still expected to roam, and an absence by dinner time or bed time meant a lapse in judgement on the child’s part.

Melina’s lapses in judgement always had to do with The Treehouse.  More a platform, uneven walls and a partial roof, clinging to the limbs of a tree on the outskirts of Wrenwood, the small public park across the street from Barrow Elementary.  No one knew who first lugged lumber to the spot—The Treehouse had always been, and had been added to over the years.  Splintered planks nailed to the trunk for a ladder.  A clumsy repair where part of a wall was eaten away by animals and damp.  Nail holes weeping rust.  Wood every shade of gray, grown over green with foamy lichen every spring.

Melina had discovered The Treehouse over the winter, while trudging home through the snow, the leafless branches of ashes and oaks giving a glimpse of something that would be hidden once spring came.  She’d claimed the abandoned space for her own. So when 5 o’clock came and Melina wasn’t home, her annoyed mother sent Melina’s older brother Neil to fetch her.

What happened next became a local legend.  A story told and retold with embellishments.  Distortions.  We know Neil rode his bike to The Treehouse.  Some say he was annoyed, at having been sent to fetch his little sister. By late March, the ground in Wrenwood had thawed, his Huffy digging tracks in the mud and last year’s grass.  Some say that when he saw Melina on her back near The Treehouse, he called to her to get up, that their mom would be pissed if Melina came home all muddy.  Some say he just rode up next to her and kicked her gently.  Either way, she didn’t move.  Didn’t blink. Her dark blue jacket open to reveal a mint green sweater with a ribbon at the neck, pink corduroy pants graying at the knees.  All the stories agree that when Neil grabbed Melina’s hand, to drag her to her feet, it was cold, and not the way little hands get cold when outside for too long.

Neil abandoned his bike and ran to the nearest house and knocked.  And when the family inside didn’t open the door right away, he knocked at a second house.  Then a third.  Yelling that something was wrong with his sister.  Or yelling that his sister wouldn’t get up. Or yelling that his sister was dead.  People came running.  The police were called.

Only Neil knows what really happened that day.  But after that day, no one wanted to ask him about it.

* * *

It’s not that being pregnant in your parents’ kitchen is the first time you’ve felt pregnant, but it does feel like the first time you’ve been faced with the cold reality of your changed self.  The distance you have to sit from the oak laminate kitchen table.  The dense feeling of your 8-month pregnant body sitting in the plastic-covered upholstered chairs with the wicker backs.

The way you relate to objects in space is different at home in your Chicago apartment, too, but that change happened more gradually.  Incrementally.  The slow shifting of your center of gravity like clouds moving almost imperceptibly across the sky.

But the last time you were in your parents’ kitchen, you weren’t pregnant, yet.  Thirty-five-year-old you had more in common with every other manifestation of you than she had with current you, and the feeling of that monumental change is both dramatic and disorienting.

“Here it is!” your mother says, emerging from her bedroom.  She’s holding a snapshot of herself, from her baby shower in 1980.  Her hair is pulled into a braid down her back.  She’s wearing a blouse with a peter pan collar and a giant blue jumper like a tent over her pregnant stomach.  She looks unbelievably young and you think about your own childhood, the toll you took on your mother, worry and fear and sadness etched forever into her face.  The baby weight that hung around on her hips and thighs for the rest of her life.

“You look cute,” you say.

Your mother laughs.  “I’m jealous of how much cuter maternity clothes are now,” she says.  “I love that dress you bought.  And it’ll look adorable with that cropped jean jacket.”

That dress you bought was a $220 splurge from the Pea in the Pod store in Wicker Park, flower printed with flutter sleeves. A ridiculous amount of money for something you’ll wear exactly once, but you don’t feel as bad about the extravagance as you perhaps would have, since most of your pregnancy clothes are hand me downs from friends who had their children in their 20s, supplemented by the maternity section of Target.

In the photo, your mother is standing next to the gift table.  You can see the balloon vendor lamp that is still upstairs in your childhood room, the bunch of yellow, green, red, blue, and white plastic balloons are lit from inside by a bulb that smells faintly of burning dust when you turn it on.  Next to the table is a stroller with a fringed canopy that is all yellow flower-printed plastic and chrome.

“This stroller looks like a death trap,” you say.

“You lived!  And that was state of the art back then!” Your mother sounds mock-offended.  “You got yours, by the way.  I checked this morning.”

She’s been keeping tabs on the Buy Buy Baby online registry.  You know that you already got your Playtex Diaper Genie, your BABYBJÖRN, your Boon Grass Countertop Drying Rack with two piece grass stem and poke accessory set, your Spectra S1 Plus Premier Rechargeable Double Electric Breast Pump.  Some shower guests sent the gifts right to the house, your parents’ living room piled with shipping boxes that will be trekked to the hall so you can open them in front of the 50 women your mother invited to your baby shower.

“Are you sure you and Dad can handle all that?” you ask, indicating the pile of gifts with your head.  “This big, I’m not much help to anyone.”

“We’ll manage.  But it is too bad Richard couldn’t be here for his own baby shower.”

“Mmm,” you say, hoping it sounds like an agreement.  You don’t want to tell your mother the truth.  That secretly, you’re relieved that Richard couldn’t take off work for the baby shower.  That the pregnancy had been easier in the beginning, when he tracked the growth with an app on his phone.  You weren’t pregnant with a baby, you were pregnant with a sesame seed, a bean, a plum, a rutabaga.  But by the time you were pregnant with an acorn squash, little hands and feet started fighting.  One night, Richard watched, your sleep shirt pulled up and the bedside lamp glowing while he tracked the movement across your abdomen.  When he asked you what it felt like, eyes wide, you didn’t tell him “gas.”

From then on, he’s referred to you as “my girls,” as in “Can’t wait to see my girls when I get home from work” or “Do my girls want takeout for dinner tonight?”

You don’t tell him to stop, even though every time he says it you get a queasy pang in the shrinking space between the baby and your stomach.  Worried about the unnaturalness of that response.  Worried what it means about you.

* * *

When we became friends in the third grade, Melina was just the latest in a string of intense but short-term friendships.  There’d been Brandy Sullivan over the summer, who was heavy and whose mother only let her eat diet fudge bars, which tasted like chocolate and chalk and had a strange, chewy texture.  Before that had been Jennifer Dixon, but we had drifted apart when I noticed stuff going missing—my favorite rainbow scrunchie, a Pink Lemonade Lip Smackers, and finally, my Catra action figure that my mother refused to replace because I had been “careless with my things.”  Jackie Tucker had been before that, but she stopped talking to me when she made friends with Holly Adams.  Amanda Morgan had been before that, but then she moved away.

I wasn’t worried, even though other girls kept best friends year after year.  Or had best friends from Girl Scouts or dance or catechism.  I always found someone, and was invited to enough sleepovers and Skateworld birthday parties to keep my mother from asking questions.

I had been at Barrow with Melina since kindergarten, but we never really talked until we were paired up during the Presidential Fitness Test in gym, holding each other’s feet during sit-ups.  The cuffs of Melina’s maroon corduroys crept up to her shins, and I could see her white socks were dingy and streaked with spring mud.  She wore a pair of boy’s shoes, worn, dark blue with Velcro straps. When she held my feet, she told me that she liked my lavender Keds, but I didn’t like her shoes at all.  So I said instead, “Your pants are soft.”

We could both only do 20 sit-ups, and even though we were supposed to encourage each other to not let our butts leave the floor, we both did it anyway, needing the momentum to make it all the way up to our knees.  And suddenly, we were bonded by a secret.

“Want to come to my house after school?” Melina asked.

I thought about the little box of raisins and the glass of milk that would be waiting for me when I got home and said, “Sure.”

We waited for Melina’s little brother Eric outside the kindergarten playground. Low swings, the wood chips beneath kicked to dirt.  A metal duck, a metal bumblebee, a metal turtle on giant springs, happy paint chipping, smooth-worn handles that always made sweaty hands smell like blood.

Eric was scrawny, white-blonde hair, a smear of dirt on his chin.  The knees of his jeans were caked in mud.

“Who’s she?” he asked his sister.  Critically.

“Cassie,” I said and sniffed.  Letting him know I was equally critical.

“Whatever,” Eric said.  He hitched up his backpack and started walking, not waiting for me or his sister.

“C’mon,” Melina said, and we followed.

We didn’t head to the neighborhoods north and west of school, where my house was—late 70s ranches, mature oak trees filtering the sun, half acre back yards expansive for a neighborhood.  Melina lived on Van Courtland Drive, where the houses were older and closer together.  Less planned.  Wood or aluminum siding in white, pale blue, or yellow.  

Melina’s house was an anomaly—two stories towering over the ranches on either side, gray-white paint peeling from weathered wood.  Toys littered the crabgrass and clover in the yard—a plastic shovel, drugstore army men, a beat-up K-Mart bike with training wheels too bent to be of any use.

I thought about when I left my Sugarberry My Little Pony out overnight.  My dad ran her over with the lawnmower, blades nicking her plastic body, red hair matted with grass gunk.  I wondered if Melina would scold her little brother for leaving his toys lying about, but she just picked her way through the mess and went inside.

Melina’s house smelled old.  Dry wood. Dust.  Short nap carpeting, like in the front office at school but in a color between blue and grey instead of brown, ran the length of the first floor.  I could see uneven patches of darkness under the dining room table, imagined glasses of milk or juice toppling to the floor and changing its landscape.

The table was scattered with crumbs, milky rings from sweating glasses.  Two cereal bowls abandoned, pink milk and disintegrated cereal congealing on the inside.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked.

“Work,” Melina said.  She dropped her schoolbag on the floor next to the front door and I did the same.

I followed her into the kitchen, watched as she climbed onto the counter.  The cupboard she opened was stuffed with cans of Spaghetti-Os, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle, bags of cereal with names that just described what the cereal was—Fruit Rounds, Crispy Oats, Honey Wheat Puffs.  Melina grabbed a handful of fudge striped cookies from a carton marked Oven Baked and handed them to me.  I had been right to gamble—these were a million times better than raisins.

“Wanna see my room?” Melina asked around a mouthful of cookie.  I nodded and followed her back past the kitchen table to a set of stairs between the dining room and living room.  I could see Eric sitting crossed legged on the carpet in front of the TV, and even though I couldn’t see the screen, I knew he was watching General Hospital, which is what my mom was always watching when I got home from school.

The upstairs hallway was narrow and dark.  I could feel, more than hear, a sound coming from behind one of the closed doors.  A steady pounding, the rhythmic insistence of my own heartbeat, but stranger.

“That’s Neil and Eric’s room,” Melina said, as if answering the question I didn’t ask.  I knew Neil was Melina’s older brother who went to Cole Middle School, because Barrow Elementary wasn’t that big, and I knew about everyone’s siblings who used to walk to our school but now rode the bus across town.

“And this is my room.”  The door wasn’t a door, but a piece of woven plastic on a track that clicked open and shut with a magnet.  I’d never seen anything like it, and after Melina went in, I opened and closed it a few times before following her inside.  I wanted to ask her about it, but didn’t—in the same way I didn’t ask about her boy shoes.

Melina’s room was small, mattress and box springs without a headboard pushed up against a sloped roof, a patchwork quilt and faded flower sheets all askew. She had a crooked bookshelf against one wall, baby books on the bottom shelf—Berenstain Bears, Frog and Toad, Amelia Bedelia.  She had some of the Boxcar Children books, but not all of them.  She had a couple Babysitters Club, but not as many as I had.

On top of the bookshelf was the most beautiful Barbie I had ever seen—red sparkly dress, holly in her hair, a necklace that was a pearl bow.  Something about her felt sacred. Special.  So I asked, “Can I hold your Barbie?”

Melina walked over to the bookcase and lifted the Barbie off a little plastic stand.  She held her, as if considering—maybe I was good enough to eat fudge stripe cookies and see Melina’s room but I wasn’t good enough for this.  But then she smoothed Barbie’s hair and handed her to me.

“I just got her for Christmas,” Melina said, as if to explain her hesitancy.  “She came with a Christmas ornament that we put on the tree.”

I liked how the netting of Barbie’s dress was stiff and stood out from her body.  I liked her necklace and her red shoes. Her hair was still yellow and shiny, hadn’t taken on the dull quality of a well-loved Barbie.  I wanted her, could feel the envy like an itch on the palms of my hands, tickling the back of my throat.

“I should probably go home,” I said, handing Barbie back.

“Okay.”  Melina placed Barbie carefully back on her stand.  “I’ll walk you part of the way.”

We headed back towards school, but before we got there, Melina turned left into Wrenwood Park.

“My house is that way,” I said, pointing through school.  I didn’t know what was on the other side of Wrenwood but I assumed another neighborhood.  Either way, I didn’t live there.

Melina turned. “I just wanted to show you one more thing,” she said.

I thought about telling her that I had to go.  That I was already late and I hadn’t called home.  But something about her convinced me to follow—the way she bounced lightly on her tiptoes when she was standing still, the way her eyes, under her fringe of bangs, were too big for her face.  She looked like she was sad, even when she wasn’t saying anything, and when I hitched my backpack more firmly into place and started to follow her, she smiled.  I felt like I’d done something right.

This was the first time I saw The Treehouse.  Melina ran the last few feet and scrambled up the slat ladder so she could watch me approach.

“It’s yours?” I asked.

“Now.”

I left my backpack at the foot of the tree and scrambled up after her, hitting my knees against the tree trunk as I climbed.  I didn’t look down—being high up made me feel sick inside.

There wasn’t much inside the house—an overturned milk crate, a tea cup with pink and yellow flowers that had a chipped rim and missing its handle.  In the corner, there was a block of wood like a little table that held an almost-empty glass bottle of perfume and a green plastic compact.

“Was all this stuff already here?” I asked.

Melina shook her head.  “Some stuff I found.  The rest I brought from home.”

“Can I smell your perfume?” 

Melina handed the bottle to me.  The glass was cool and knobbly in my hands and I liked the cap, perfectly round plastic painted gold.  There was a small amount of dark yellow liquid at the bottom of the bottle, and when I uncapped it, the smell was pungent—growing things, like flowers and moss, a dark smell under it like old leaves and church.

“You can put some on, if you want,” Melina said, even though there wasn’t much left.

I was careful, tipping a little onto my finger to dab behind my ears, like I’d seen my mother do with her bottle of Zen.  After I recapped it and put it back on its shelf, I picked up the compact and opened it, too—there was a puff inside, its velvety surface flattened from use, only a crust of beige pressed powder left. The mirror inside was perfect.

I knew it was trash—the tea cup, the compact, even the dregs of the perfume I could now smell on myself.  But I also knew it was important to Melina, that she was sharing something with me.

“I have something, too,” I said.  “Wait here.”

I carefully made my way back down the ladder, eyes closed, Keds searching for one blind step at a time.  I stayed away from the jungle gym and the high slide at recess.

I dug my Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers from the bottom of my backpack.  It was my favorite flavor, and looked a little like lipstick when you put it on.  I climbed back up and handed it to Melina.

“We could keep this here, too,” I said.

I watched as Melina opened the compact and, using the mirror, carefully applied the Lip Smackers to her lips.  When she recapped it, she stood it next to the perfume bottle on what I now understood to be her dresser table in The Treehouse.

“It’s perfect,” she said.  And when she smiled, I felt again like I’d done something right.

“I gotta go for real now,” I said, and once again made my careful way down the ladder.

“You won’t tell anybody?” Melina asked as I picked up my backpack.

“Cross my heart,” I said, and trudged towards home.

*

When I walked into my house through the side door, my mother stood from the La-Z-Boy and asked me where I’d been.

“Melina invited me over after school,” I said, which was usually enough.  I had been with a friend. And after my mother ascertained where I’d been, the conversation always turned to what kind of snack I was offered, or what my new friend’s room was like, or sometimes, what the kitchen looked like or if the bathroom was clean.  I was prepared to report on the toys in the yard, the breakfast dishes left out all day, Melina’s plastic-and-magnet bedroom door.

But instead of asking for details, my mother just said, “Melina Henderson?”

I nodded.

Then she said, “You stink!”

“Melina let me put on some perfume she had,” I said.   I kept my promise and didn’t say anything about The Treehouse.

“What’s a nine-year-old girl doing with perfume?”

But I could tell my mother was annoyed and I knew better than to answer.  I knew better than to tell her that Melina wasn’t my only friend with perfume.  Wasn’t my only friend that had crossed the invisible barrier between nine-years-old and the rest of life.  Amanda Morgan had had makeup that her older cousin had given her, lipsticks and blush, a half-used eyeshadow palette with frosted lavender, pink, and blue.  Jackie Tucker wore a training bra and had told me that she used her father’s razor to shave her legs.

My mother grabbed the dishrag draped over the faucet, wet it, and scrubbed at my wrists, where I hadn’t put the perfume, and behind my ears, where I had.

“You know, with some people, you have to be careful,” my mother said, rubbing at my neck like she was trying to slough off skin.  “I’m sure Melina is nice, but, she’s not like you.  And her family is not like us.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I nodded, because I knew my mother wanted me to agree.

“If you’re not careful around people like that, you could end up just like them.”  And even though I didn’t understand her words, I knew a threat when I heard it.

* * *

The kitchen table is laden with a dozen glass cylinder vases, each filled with a mix of natural and silver-painted mini pinecones, twisted willow branches, and one red metallic berry pick.  The baby shower centerpieces will be finished with a 12 inch round mirror and three LED votive candles that flicker with an approximation of fire, because the hall won’t allow real candles.  

Your mother found the idea online when searching for “nontraditional centerpieces.” Nontraditional has been your mother’s mantra since she first started planning the baby shower, after traditional options were found lacking.

“I thought about forest critters, but it was too insipid. All those cutesy foxes and porcupines.” Or, “Some of these ‘Mother to BEE’ showers were cute, but it’s just too much yellow.”  Or, “I like the moon and stars themes, but I’ve already been to three baby showers like that.”

When you suggested something simple, just pink and gold, she shot you down. “You can’t let people know what you’re having, because then people will buy a lot of clothes and toys when what you really need is the stuff off your registry.”

So you stopped suggesting after that, but not because you’d been excited about pink and gold. More, the picking of shower themes felt like some strange game, where your mother knew the rules and you didn’t.  What was appropriate and what was passé.  What you were allowed to do and not, and the consequences of missteps.

Finally, she landed on Old Fairy Tales as a theme—an illustration of a baby surrounded by glowing fairies for the invites, twisted willow branches and pinecones in the centerpieces reminiscent of an enchanted forest, and each table marked with a picture printed on cardstock from a different fairy tale. The muted colors of turn of the century artists Rackham, Dulac, Goble showing the Witch climbing the tower using Rapunzel’s hair, Cinderella leaving behind her glass slipper, Snow White surrounded by her seven dwarves, Hansel and Gretel eating parts of the Witch’s house.

Your mother holds up the image for Red Riding Hood. In it, Red Riding Hood has made it to her grandmother’s house, but when she pulls back the bed curtain, the Wolf is there, wearing Grandmother’s glasses and with Grandmother’s quilt pulled up to his chin.  The image has the same feathery quality as the rest of the antique illustrations, but there is a sharpness to the Wolf’s teeth.  As if Arthur Rackham wanted to ensure that the viewer could see right away what Red Riding Hood saw too late.

“Truthfully, this one’s a little macabre,” your mother says and laughs.

You don’t tell her that they all are.  That, until that very moment, you hadn’t realized how many fairy tales were stories of girls in danger.  Of girls suffering cruelty at the hands of the women around them—witches and stepmothers and wolves pretending to be grandmas. You pick up the picture of Sleeping Beauty, hand outstretched to touch the spindle on the spinning wheel, and you feel like you want to warn her.  To tell her that some actions can’t be undone.  Some paths, once chosen, are forever.  But you know you can’t, that her story will play out as it always has, so you tuck her card in under the rest and try to not feel like you failed her.

You return to your task, tying five Jordan almonds up in silver tulle, and affixing the bundles to the die cut metal bookmarks your mother has picked for a shower favor.  Ornate metal hearts, metal unicorns, metal crowns, and metal butterflies, hung with pastel colored tassels.  The little tag you include with each bundle is printed with “Thank you fairy much for showering our little one with love.”

You pop another Jordan almond in your mouth. The sugar coating, smooth against your tongue, shatters when you bite down.

“Quit eating them,” your mother says.  “We won’t have enough and we need five for each favor.”

You finish crunching and ask, “Why these candies?”

“The almond is supposed to represent the bitterness of life, the sugar coating the sweetness,” your mother says.

“And why five?”

“Luck. According to the internet, each candy represents health, wealth, happiness, fertility, and long life.”

Like the good fairies’ gifts to an infant Sleeping Beauty, you think but don’t say. But you do say, “That sounds like an old wives’ tale.”

Your mother shrugs, accepting.

And you remember how she told you to eat nuts and dairy if you wanted the baby to be a girl, citrus fruits if you wanted the baby to be a boy.  You remember how she performed the gender test right after you told her about being pregnant—she made you lie on the floor, she plucked a hair from your head, and she suspended your wedding ring over your belly by the strand.  If the ring swung back and forth, you were having a boy, and if it moved in a circle, you were having a girl.  Your mother insisted circle, but from your vantage point, it didn’t look like the ring was moving at all, and you wondered what that signified.

And you tried to remember how many Jordan almonds you’d eaten since starting work on the favors.  Was it four or five?  And if it was only four, what were you dooming your baby to?  And if you ate a sixth one, what would that mean?  You think about asking your mother, but pop another almond in your mouth, instead.  This time, you let the sugar melt away slowly, layer by layer, until the almond’s rough skin surfaces against your tongue.  You chew the almond quietly and swallow, feeling certain that this was number five.  And even if it was number six, too much would have to be better than not enough.

* * *

I first met Melina’s mom on my third trip to the house.  

Melina and I had already spent an hour at The Treehouse after school, despite the late February chill, fingers stiffening in the dank. I was still learning the rules of being with her in The Treehouse—I’d played pretend, Barbie’s apartment with her boyfriend, Ken; spelunking in chair and blanket caves; tea parties with stale Royal Dansk cookies but empty cups; the floor is lava.  But that didn’t seem to be this.  

For the hour we were there, Melina sipped on a room temperature Carpi Sun that I had smuggled from home, paged through the small stack of Bop magazines I’d brought on my last trip here.

“I think I like Kirk Cameron best,” Melina said. She held up a photo of him on the set of Growing Pains.

“He’s nice,” I said, but secretly, I didn’t agree.  Something about him seemed false—his smile to the camera hiding something, all the while pretending there was nothing to hide.  I preferred Johnny Depp or River Phoenix, who as often as not weren’t smiling.  Their sullen faces somehow more honest.

I spent most of that afternoon not knowing what I was supposed to do, but Melina seemed content, head bent over the magazines, the cuffs of her green corduroys creeping up to reveal thin shins over her bunch of socks, and I decided that was enough for me—she thought I belonged, and I’d figure it out eventually.

But I was still relieved when we trudged back to Melina’s house. The handful of cookies eaten on her cramped bedroom floor, or on the couch while soap operas devolved into the evening news, was a world I understood better.

But when we walked into the house, Eric sat at the kitchen table surrounded by his school books, no breakfast dishes in sight.  The sounds of plates and glasses in the sink came from the kitchen, and a woman emerged a moment later.  She had long blond hair that hung straightly down her back.  She wore a Rolling Stones t-shirt, little moth holes and frayed along the hem, and a pair of jeans.  Her toes sported chipped red nail polish.  I didn’t know who she was and so I stared.

“Mom, this is Cassie,” Melina said.  She didn’t drop her school bag at the door like she’d always done before, but placed it in the corner out of the way.

“You staying for dinner?” Melina’s mom asked.  “It’s French bread pizza night.”

“Mom” still hadn’t registered.  This isn’t what mothers looked like.  Mothers had permed hair in banana clips.  Mothers’ bodies were fleshy in their stirrup pants, their polyester blouses with shoulder pads, sleeves rolled to their elbows while doing dishes or making meatloaf.  Mothers wore makeup that pooled in the creases around their eyes and mouths, gold hoop earrings, socks that matched their blouses in shades of hot pink, teal, and lime green.  I tried to remember what my mother’s bare feet looked like and couldn’t.

“French bread pizza would be great,” I finally answered.  “Thank you, Mrs. Henderson.”

Melina’s mom laughed. “I’m not married. You can call me Lisa.  Or Mom.”

And I didn’t know which option was more thrilling—calling an adult by her first name, or calling her “Mom,” like I was making a trade.

“Is it okay if I call home?” I asked.

“Phone’s in the kitchen.”

When I went to make the call, I watched Melina’s mom cross to where Melina was standing.  She kissed Melina on the top of the head, asked her how her day had been.  Then she looked at Melina’s hands and said, “Were you digging for worms? Your nails are filthy. Go wash up once Cassie is off the phone.”

I could tell that my mother wasn’t happy when I called and asked if I could stay at Melina’s for dinner.  The clipped way she said, “I see,” when I told her I’d been invited for pizza.  Usually, she’d say, “That’s so nice,” or “Be sure to thank so-and-so’s mother for having you over.”

“I’m making stew,” my mother said instead.  I made a face—hunks of beef with hard potatoes and soft carrots, the ghosts of onions, a red sauce that felt like it needed salt or something else.  “But I guess it would be rude for you to refuse.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Come straight home after dinner.  It will already be getting dark.”

“I will,” I said.  When she hung up the phone, I realized I’d been holding my breath, and let it out.

“All set?” Melina’s mom asked.  She leaned against the mustard yellow refrigerator with the wood handles, covered in alphabet magnets and kids’ drawings, the edges rumpled from kitchen humidity.

I nodded.  “Thank you for having me.”

“So formal.  Like you’re nine going on ninety,” Melina’s mom said.  I didn’t understand what she meant, but I smiled and shrugged, hoping it was sufficiently penitent.  Melina’s mom walked over to me and tugged gently on one of my pigtails.  “Go wash up.”

I had never had French bread pizza.  Melina’s mom served the rectangles, decorated with little triangle pepperoni, on Melmac dishes that had a spray of blue and purple periwinkle decorating one side.  My dish had a burn mark in the middle and I wondered how it got there. When I bit into the pizza, the cheese burned my mouth, but the middle of the bread was still cool.

We were crowded around the kitchen table, Melina’s mom in a folding chair.  Melina was on my left, her brother Neil on my right.  It was the first time he had been anything more than pulsing music coming from behind a closed door.  He ate with his left hand, our arms occasionally bumping at the small table.  He had an earring, little silver hoop that hugged his earlobe. He smelled strange, green moss and snow, Christmas trees.  I took him in through furtive glances but he ignored me like he did Melina.  I was an extension of his sister.

Dinner at my house was always a quiet affair—my parents discussed their days, my father’s work at Plante Moran, my mother’s shopping, cooking, cleaning.  Having the neighbors over for coffee in the afternoon.  Then they asked me about school and my father wanted to hear about math and science, how I was getting on with long division, the order of the planets in the solar system.  When I tried to tell him about reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, about the reproductive talk we had, where the boys left the class and our teachers told us about pads, tampons, and menstruation, my father’s interest would turn to patience.  I could see the change—the set of his eyes, the way his head nodded.

“How’s your Galaxy Commander coming?” Melina’s mom asked Eric.

“It’s missing two of the astronauts and one of the gunners is broken off,” Eric said.  He took a drink of his Kool-Aid.  “But I might be able to fix it with some paperclips.”

I waited for someone to ask for clarity, and when no one did, I said, “What’s a Galaxy Commander?”

“They’re Legos, duh,” Eric said.

“Be polite, duh,” Melina’s mom said.

“And how’s the house coming?” Melina’s mom asked her.

“Mom!  It’s a secret!”

“I know.  But isn’t there anything you can tell me?”

“Well, I decided today that I’m gonna marry Kirk Cameron,” Melina said.  Next to me, Neil snorted.

“Bold choice,” Melina’s mom said.  “And you, Cassie?  Who are you gonna marry?”

I froze.  I’d been preparing to tell Melina’s mom about how Jupiter was a gas giant when she asked me what I learned in school that day.  I didn’t know she was going to ask me about this and I wasn’t prepared with an answer.

“I guess I don’t know,” I finally said.

“Good girl,” Melina’s mom said and winked.

“You can’t marry Kirk Cameron,” Neil said.  “He’s famous and like ten years older than you.”

“I have a better chance at marrying Kirk Cameron than you have at marrying Cindy Crawford!” Melina shot back.

“I don’t want to marry her,” Neil said, in a way I didn’t understand.  Sly.  Melina’s mom’s face got serious and she pointed at Neil, which was a language I recognized, the silent warning.  But for what, I didn’t know.

“Then why do you have that picture of her up on your bedroom wall?” Melina asked.

“Neil likes Revlon cosmetics,” Melina’s mom said and smiled.  “And also, Neil is gonna clear the table for us.”

With dinner over, I knew I had to head home, but I didn’t feel ready to leave.  I wanted Melina’s mother to ask me more questions.  I wanted Neil to keep bumping into my arm.

“Street lights are coming on.  Will you be okay walking?” Melina’s mom asked. I nodded. “You’ll walk her part of the way, yeah?” 

“Sure,” Melina said.

“It’s colder when the sun goes down,” Melina’s mom said. “Be sure to wear your hat.”

We headed back towards school, our breath heavy on the air, the buzzing street lights turning the night blue and white.  Some houses had the curtains in their front windows open, and in the warm yellow, I could see families sitting around the dinner table, or seated before the television, faces lit by the screen.  There was a nagging in my stomach at the sight of those families.  I thought of the thrill, of claiming Melina’s mother for my own, and felt guilty.  Even though my mother would never know.

“Your mom’s nice,” I said.

“Yeah.  We have a lot of fun.”

“Do you think she liked me?” 

“Why wouldn’t she?” 

I could tell by her tone of voice that she thought my question was weird.  I considered explaining about how she and I are different, that her mom might disapprove of me and give Melina a talking-to about being friends with me.  But the topic felt too big and vague to get into in the three minutes we had left together.  So I just shrugged.

*

Every time we went to The Treehouse after school, I hoped to see Melina’s mom after.  She wasn’t always home—Melina said she worked at The Wagon Wheel, a bar and restaurant close to the expressway.  Their famous dish was French onion soup, and Melina’s mom made it for us one night—cheese melted over the side of the brown soup crocks that I picked off and ate with my fingers, just like the rest of the family.

One night, I was invited over for McDonald’s, and Melina’s mom got Melina, Eric, and me Happy Meals.  I wasn’t allowed them at home, they were a “waste of money for a piece of plastic junk you’re just going to throw away.” The few times we’d had McDonalds at home, my mom had a Big Mac, my dad ate a Filet-o-fish, I had a small order of chicken nuggets, and we shared a large fry.  I dipped my chicken nuggets in the same little plastic cup of honey I always had, but they tasted different in the Happy Meal.  Better.  My fries were small but I didn’t have to share them with anyone, and all three of us got wind up bear toys from a movie I had never seen.  We raced them around the kitchen table after the boxes and wrappers were cleared, and no matter how hard I tried, my bear never won—it spun out of the way, moved back towards me, fell off the edge of the table, like it was confused.

The first time I was invited to spend the night, Melina’s mom ordered pizza and we got to have Coke instead of milk or Kool-Aid with dinner.  Melina’s mom spread knitted afghans on the floor, everyone got the pillows from their bed, and we lounged while we watched, passing around a giant bowl of air-popped popcorn. The movie was one I had never heard of, Big, blue and white Blockbuster case shoved under the credenza while the movie played.

“Let’s get an arcade machine and a trampoline,” Eric said.

“As soon as you’re an influential toy executive, you can,” Melina’s mom said.

“Is that really a job?” Melina asked.  “Could I really be that when I grow up?”

“That’s the best part about growing up. You can be anything you want.”

Melina smiled and turned back to the movie, but I kept looking at Melina’s mom, face lit blue by the TV.  There was a layer to her voice I didn’t understand, a sadness or a yearning.  A disappointment, which made me feel scared.  When Melina passed the dwindling bowl of popcorn to me, I passed it on to Neil without taking another handful.

On one of the warmer days, the whole family and I rode our bikes to Kaleidoscoops for blue moon ice cream in cake cones.  One day after school, Melina’s mom surprised us with cans of silly string, and we ran around the house trying to string each other—so much fun, that I didn’t mind having to carefully clean the string out of the carpeting after.

I didn’t tell my mom about the ice cream or the silly string or the Happy Meals or the blankets on the floor.  My times with Melina’s mom and the rest of the family became secrets, like The Treehouse, claimed bits of fun that I knew she’d disapprove of.

“You don’t always have to go over to Melina’s house,” my mother said over dinner one night.  Dinner was meatloaf, and when my mom brought up Melina, I could feel it heavily in my stomach.  “You could clean up your room and have Melina over to dinner here.”

And I had considered it, on and off, since we first became friends.  So far, I could only show myself to Melina piecemeal—the magazines I donated to The Treehouse.  The Babysitters Club books she didn’t have that I’d loaned to her one by one.  If she were in my room, I could show her the Pocket Rocker I got for Christmas with the tiny cassettes of Madonna, Michael Jackson, and The Beach Boys, which wasn’t allowed to leave the house, because I’d lose it.  I could show her my foil fantasy art—two fairies marrying on a lily pad under the moon, a unicorn with a rose in its mouth—the images almost holographic.  I could show her my daybed, bed skirt and comforter printed with big pink roses, which looked like a couch when I took the time to make it up.

But the more time I spent with Melina, at The Treehouse, at her mother’s house, the more I realized that I couldn’t have her over for dinner.  She didn’t know the rules—of taking off your shoes, of how to talk about school when asked.  Of being quiet—while eating, while watching TV, while playing in your room.  I was afraid that, if my mother could see what being Melina meant, she wouldn’t let me go back.  

Which worked for a while.  But one of the afternoons when I was at Melina’s, when we had our schoolbooks spread out on the kitchen table and we were completing a worksheet for homework on the branches of the government before dinner, Melina’s mom saw me scratching my head.

“You got an itchy scalp, Cass?”  Melina’s mom was the only person who called me “Cass.”

“Not sure why,” I said, scratching again.

Melina’s mom disappeared into the back bathroom and returned with a tail comb.  She used the plastic pic on my head, parting the hair.  The feeling of it running over my scalp gave me goosebumps.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Melina’s mom said, smoothing my hair back in place.  “You have lice, Sweetie.  Eric just got it from school, too.  You’ll need to go home.”

I didn’t understand—what lice was, why I couldn’t stay for dinner, why she would send me home.  But if I was being sent away, I knew it was bad, and I could feel anxiety knot up in my stomach. Anxiety that threatened to climb higher, to erupt as tears, and I didn’t want them to see my cry.

Silently, I packed up my book bag, put on my coat.

“You’ll be fine in a couple of days,” Melina’s mom said.  I knew she was trying to be comforting.  She looked apologetic.  It just made me more afraid.

I nodded and smiled, because I knew that’s what Melina’s mom needed, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t, the panic balanced there between my throat and my eyes.  The tears started before I reached the end of Melina’s street, a runny nose that I had to wipe on my sweater sleeve.  Coming faster and faster, past The Treehouse, past school, until I got home, hiccupping with sobs.

“What happened?” my mother said when I walked in.

The kitchen was warm and I could smell chicken and rice in the oven, empty Cream of Mushroom soup cans waiting to be rinsed by the sink.

I was still sobbing, breath catching, throat too full to speak.  But finally I got out, “Melina’s mom says I have lice.”

I wanted to ask what it meant, but my mother’s face darkened so completely, I didn’t dare.  An anger that radiated heat like the oven, that sucked the light out of the kitchen.  She marched over to where I stood next to the door, switched on the hall light, and started combing her fingers through my hair.  I didn’t get goosebumps that time.

“Jesus Christ!  You’re crawling with them!”

The night was a blur after that—sheets and blankets ripped from beds and washed with hot water. Pillows closed tightly in garbage bags. My father vacuuming the rugs, the couches, my mother’s recliner.  

My mother ran to Perry Drugs and returned with a bitter smelling shampoo and special comb.  After washing my hair twice, I sat between my mother’s knees while she parted my hair, bit by bit, and ran the green fine-toothed comb through it, looking for lice eggs.

The chicken and rice casserole sat on the stove covered in foil.  I could hear my father vacuuming in the other room, the rhythmic whirr of the Hoover going back and forth, back and forth, ridding our house of bugs.

I had stopped sobbing, but everything still felt tender and miserable, the skin around my eyes and under my nose raw.

“What did I tell you?” my mother said, her voice grim.  Parting my hair, running the comb through it.  Parting my hair, running the comb through it.  The comb getting stuck on a damp tangle and my mother pulling it free.  “I told you this would happen if you stayed friends with that dirty girl.”

I nodded.

“Well, no more, okay?  You can see her after school outside.  But I don’t want you going back to that filthy house.”

I nodded again.  And when tears leaked from my abused eyes, I just let them fall, knowing my back was towards my mother and she wouldn’t see them.

* * *

The coffee table has been pushed against the couch and your mother has the living room carpet tiled with reply cards. Each has a picture of a baby in a cradle surrounded by fairies, and perhaps some aspiring invitation designer imagined Goble’s fairies were rocking the baby to sleep.  But when you pick one of the reply cards up and examine it, you can see mischief on their tiny faces. Malice. And you remember stories about fairies stealing human children from their beds and replacing them with weird things, changelings, with long teeth or intelligence beyond their years. Left to be cared for and raised by the unsuspecting human mother.

“Pretty, huh?” your mother says.  “You can find anything on Etsy.  But don’t mess up the order.”

You put the card back in the pile and don’t tell your mother about the changeling.  Some of the names you recognize—aunts, cousins, your mother’s Great Aunt Martha, who lives in a retirement community in Plymouth and is the only one of your grandmother’s siblings still alive.

But for most of the names, you have to dredge the memory banks—mothers of kids who went to Barrow Elementary School? Mothers of kids from that one failed year of gymnastics? People from your mother’s on-again-off-again Zumba class?  But for a lot of the names, there isn’t even a spark of memory.

“Who even are all these people?” And even though that’s exactly what you mean, that wasn’t how you meant to ask it.  You see your mother’s mouth settle into a thin line.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

But you can’t tell her what you mean.  The difference between being pregnant in your mid-thirties, when everyone else you know was pregnant a decade before.  That all of this pomp and circumstance makes you feel like a circus attraction—distended stomach, skin stretched and itching like a sunburn.  Pregnancy feet swollen to twice their normal size, but also pregnancy arms that are tight in jacket sleeves. Pregnancy face appling your cheeks and rounding out the space under your chin so thoroughly that you don’t even recognize yourself in the mirror.

“It’s just, you’re still friends with all these people?” you say lamely.

“Of course I am,” your mother says. She goes back to arranging her piles.  Deciding which distant names would sit with which during the plated luncheon—stuffed chicken breast or herbed salmon, pasta primavera for the reply cards marked “vegetarian.”

And in this moment, you know that you can let it go.  By turning back to her task, your mother has given you an out.  You can feel the event horizon of the fight shrinking away and all you have to do is stop. 

But then you feel the baby inside you twitch to life, stretching, head butting your bladder, claiming more of your space for its own.

“Really?” you say.  You pick up two of the nearest reply cards.  “Trish Doyle? Anne Lumpkin?  These are still friends?”  You know that your mom and Trish had a falling out years ago, when they both brought seven-layer-bars to the PTA bake sale when “everyone knew that was your mother’s specialty.”  And Anne Lumpkin moved away so long ago that three different families have lived in her old house since, including the one “trash family that painted the trim magenta.”

“I’m not not friends with them,” your mother says.  “What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s just—I don’t know any of these people practically.”

“So? I know them.  Or I was invited to their kids’ baby showers and a return invite is only polite.”

“That was years and years ago!” you say.  You feel like you might have to pee, but you just peed, and it only makes you angrier.

“There’s no statute of limitations on baby showers, Cassie,” your mother says.  She’s good and truly angry now, hives crawling up her neck to the bottom of her face, reddening her ears.

“Some if those kids are already in high school, Mom!”

“It’s not my fault you waited until middle age to finally get over yourself and have a baby.” And you can tell that your mother has been holding that one in for a long, long time.  The look on her face triumphant, knowing that she’s right, but tinged with guilt for having said it.

But you’re not a kid anymore.  And for perhaps the first time in the past 8 months, you don’t feel like crying.

“I don’t need all of this shit,” you say.  You spread your arms wide, so she’s clear that you mean the presents, the centerpieces, the carefully planned seating charts.  “This thing is coming out of me, whether we throw it a parade or not.”

You march into the kitchen, grab your jacket and your purse off the back of the chair.

“‘This thing.’ Nice talk!” your mother calls after you from the living room.  “You know, your hormones are making you say this.  And you’re going to feel really sorry that you were so mean to me when I throw you a beautiful shower tomorrow.”

Your mother might have said more, but the front door closes and you don’t hear it.  Already, the anger is slipping away, and you know that she’s right, that you’ll regret this tomorrow.  Not because of the shower she’s throwing.  And not even because of what you said, which is exactly what you meant. But because you started it.

You settle your body behind the wheel of your Corolla and you can feel the small of your back protest—it still hasn’t forgiven you for the five hour drive from Chicago.  But you ignore it, and despite the March chill, you roll down your window and drive.

It’s the kind of March day that is unforgiving—thin sky, light diffuse and grey, the world feeling closer to winter than it is to spring.  You grew up here, but after fifteen years of living away, driving these streets feels strange.  The strip malls are the same but the signs outside are different.  A CVS where there used to be a vacant lot.  The movie theatre that used to be a K-Mart.  The 7-11 that hasn’t changed at all.  If you still lived here, these would be places you’d go. Now you’re a tourist.

You know where you’re headed, even though you took a roundabout way to get there.  Turning off the main road onto Twining Street, which curves into Maple, on the south side of your parents’ neighborhood.  Barrow Elementary has changed in the years since you called this place home—a whole wing added to the back, where they dug out the metal playground equipment that had been there since the school was built in the 60s—vaguely rocket-looking slide, rubber swings that blackened the seat of your pants.  Even the two giant concrete cylinders, that were likely just construction leftovers, but someone had painted them orange and then they were toys.  As a child, you climbed on them but never went inside, because of the rumor that some kid or other had peed in there.

You park against the back fence and start across the parking lot, determined scrub growing up out of the broken concrete.  It’s a Saturday and cold, so everything is deserted.  Even so, you look three times before crossing the street, more muscle memory than habit.

You’re surprised that you can plainly see The Treehouse from the outskirts of Wrenwood.  Even though spring is still struggling to get a hold, the trees just starting to swell with new growth, you remember it being more hidden than this.  More secret.  A place away.

You pick your way through dead leaves and last year’s grass.  Your fingers have gone numb but it doesn’t matter, the baby inside you like an oven, radiating, warming the air around you.

The sun around which I orbit.

The Treehouse is just a platform, grey wood nailed in the crook of the bough, in a giant maple that was here long before the elementary school was built.  I can see where weather and time have eaten away at the slats nailed to the trunk for a ladder.  Around the platform are empty Bud Light cans and cigarette butts. A used condom stuck with gravel.  No magazines.  No treasures. Not a house.

I’m eight months pregnant and I know it’s stupid, but I climb up anyway. I remember the uneasy feeling in my stomach when I looked down, how high it seemed, but I don’t feel it anymore—six feet off the ground just isn’t that great of a distance.  From the platform, I can see my car in the parking lot across the street.  I can see the main door of the elementary school.  I turn and I can see where Maple curves, turns into Forest Road, off of which Melina’s street branched.

The wind kicks up and I sway, center of balance off, and in that moment of unsettlement, the memory rushes in, swift and brutal.

Only a week after the lice, Melina and I were at The Treehouse.  I hadn’t told her about the trouble I’d gotten into.  I hadn’t told her that my mother wouldn’t allow me to go to her house anymore.  And I didn’t tell her that she wasn’t allowed at mine.

 “We’re having spaghetti tonight.  You coming?” Melina asked, and excitement bloomed warmly in my stomach.

I smiled. “Yep.”  Because I knew my mother was away.  Visiting Aunt Martha and taking her to the doctor.  She’d given me strict instructions to come home right after school, but I didn’t listen.  Because she wasn’t there to make me.  To stop me.  Even though I knew I’d be in trouble, when she got home and I wasn’t there.  She wasn’t going to stop this.

Melina and I were cutting pictures of Kirk Cameron from the magazines.  She said her mom had gotten her a big piece of paper, and we were going to make a collage for Melina’s bedroom wall.  She’d taken two pairs of scissors from the art room, metal safety scissors with dull blades and rusty tension screws that made them difficult to work.  My pair was for a left-handed person, which made my right hand slow and stupid when I tried to cut around all the Kirks.

“Do you see that?” Melina asked.

I looked to where she was pointing.  The sun had broken through the clouds some, and I saw something red caught up in the branches.  It glittered when it moved, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.  Like a tiny dragon with burnished scales. Like a phoenix made of red fire. 

But I said, “A balloon, maybe?”

“I wanna get it,” Melina said.

“You mean climb the tree without steps?”

Melina shrugged. “Of course.”

“I don’t want to.” What I meant was, “We’re high enough already.”  What I meant was, “Nothing is worth that risk.”  What I meant was, “I’m afraid to go.”

But Melina didn’t make me say any of that.  “I’ll only be a second.  You keep working on our collage.”

I watched her at first—fingers on her hands strong despite their size.  Her boy shoes that seemed to know the way to go.  But her climbing made me dizzy, and I looked away.  Back at the magazine in my lap.  A picture of Kirk lounging, smiling at the camera, a phone to his ear.  A ridiculous pose.  Who would talk on the phone like that?

I felt, more than heard, Melina fall.  The displacement of air.  The sucked-in breath of a body in flight.  She landed with a thud that was quieter than it should have been.  Old leaves and grass deadening the sound.

An enormous fear took hold—that Melina was hurt.  A broken leg or arm.  I was afraid of her pain.  And I was afraid of the trouble we’d get into.  But when I looked over the side of the platform, she was fine.  Laying on her back and looking up at where she’d fallen from.

“You scared the bejesus out of me,” I said, scrambling down the makeshift ladder.

But she didn’t answer.

I walked over to where she lay.  Eyes wide and gray.  She didn’t look over at me.

“C’mon,” I said, grabbing her hand.  “The ground’s wet.”

But the arm attached to her hand was heavy, and when I pulled, she didn’t move.  And when I said, “Melina?” she didn’t move.  And when I dropped her hand, and it landed with a quiet thud, she didn’t move.

I backed away from her.  I was terrified.  Of her.  Of the thing that happened that shouldn’t have happened.  Of the height that wasn’t really that high.  Of the fall that was too quiet to be anything serious. Of what it meant that she wouldn’t move.

I grabbed my backpack at the foot of The Treehouse, where I left it every time I visited, and I ran.  Through the park.  Across the street.  Through the break in the back fence. All the way home.  

When I got there, I crawled under my bed.  There was a huge space there, where a trundle bed that we didn’t have was supposed to fit. Once hidden, behind the cream-and-rose-colored bed skirt that had just been washed with everything else because of the lice, I cried.  The hard knot of fear in my stomach, that I thought might come up as school-pizza vomit, came out in hot tears.  And once that was gone, I had sorrow to cry—over what I’d had and what was gone.  And once those tears were spent, I was exhausted, so I slept.  Curled in a ball on the floor of my room.

Which is where my mother found me, when she returned home.

“What are you doing under the bed?” she asked.  She got down on her knees and raised the bed skirt higher, letting more light into my cave.  “Are you alright?”

My face felt hot and strange, my mouth sticky with crying.  I told her truthfully that I didn’t feel good.  But I didn’t tell her anything else. 

* * *

The first night I stayed at Melina’s house, when we had the popcorn and we watched Big, I felt homesick in the middle of the night.  Melina was already asleep in her bed next to me, and I watched the strange shadows chase each other around Melina’s ceiling. Across the room, I could see the Holiday Barbie on her stand, her red dress glittering faintly in the streetlight leaking in around Melina’s shade.

Through Melina’s thin door, I heard noises coming from downstairs, muffled, and I wondered if Melina’s mom, like my own, sometimes got up in the middle of the night to watch TV.  Maybe, instead of chasing me back to bed like my own mother, Melina’s mom would invite me in.  Maybe, if I told her I felt homesick, we’d sit next to each other on the couch and watch nighttime TV together.

I got silently out of bed, willing my body to not have mass.  I didn’t want to wake Melina, to alert her of my plan.  I picked my way silently across the small floor, pulled apart the magnetic latch on her door, and crept down the stairs.  This was the first time I had passed Neil and Eric’s room and there was no music beating its way through the door.  And I thought about how, in the middle of the night, all children are made equal.  How sleep erases the distance and the years between us.

I crept quietly down the stairs, and before I reached the bottom, I realized that it wasn’t the television I had heard, but the radio.  Melina’s mom sat at the table, the glass pendant lamp painted with flowers above casting her in a halo of yellow light.  A bottle of Budweiser was sweating on the table next to her and she was carefully painting the toenails on her left foot.

I know that I don’t remember what song was playing on the radio.  I was nine.  There’s no way I could remember.  But when I think back to that night, Melina’s mom’s thin shoulders in her threadbare t-shirt, the way her arms hugged her leg as she painted her toenails, “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones plays over the image.

I watched as she recapped the bottle of nail polish.  I watched as she picked up the brown bottle of beer and took a meditative drink.  Lit from above, her hair took on a golden hue, like a princess in a fairytale.  But her eyes in their sockets, and the space under her cheekbones, were cast in deep shadow.  Like a very old woman.  Like a skull.  And I realized I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to see.

I shrank back into the shadows, turned, and crept back up the stairs, down the hallway, into Melina’s room, and climbed back under her quilt.  Eventually I slept, but not before I replayed what I had seen over and over.  I’d learned something that night.  But what it was, I didn’t know.