Left

by Tamar Ossowski

  Trees passed by in a green blur, moving me farther from my sister, so I closed my eyes to shut out the view and I thought about my grandmother’s yellow house. The one we grew up in with a staircase filled with photographs of my mother getting older the higher you climbed. The house that held no father, for me or for her.

  It was the one thing we had in common.

  I remember when my grandmother pulled me up those stairs and into her bedroom and whispered the story to me, as if overhearing it would somehow hurt my mother, as if she did not already know that she was in the middle of it.

  That she had always been in the middle of it.

  My grandmother dreamed of having a child. Every prayer, every birthday wish was the same and ultimately went unanswered. It was all she could talk about and soon my grandfather tired of her and began spending nights away from home. Eventually she gave up on both prayer and hope until one morning her passion for conceiving was replaced with a passion for consuming Hershey bars. From the moment she woke, all she thought about was Hershey bars, and finally, because she could not control her newfound obsession, she went to see a doctor. He ran some standard tests, but found nothing that a bottle of vitamins could not cure, so he sent her home and told her to get some rest.

  As the months passed, she began to feel something inside of her. At night, she lay awake trying to figure out what could possibly be invading her body with such determination. She decided what was growing inside her was, in fact, a large and fatal tumor. She refused to go back to the doctor, convinced he would just confirm her fears, and secretly planned her funeral while adding Hershey’s with almonds to her grocery list.

  Eventually, my grandmother woke feeling such intense pains that she knew the end had come. She asked a neighbor to drive her to the hospital and fifteen hours later, a perfectly healthy little girl was born. That is the way my mother arrived into the world—disguised as a cancerous growth. There was no secret in the selection of my mother’s name. My grandmother, grateful that she wasn’t dying after all, named her new child Therese, after Teresa of Avila, Patron Saint of bodily ills.

  A nurse called my grandfather to share the exciting news, but he wanted nothing to do with my grandmother, deciding that she must have betrayed him to conceive. That night, he packed his things and disappeared for good. My grandmother bought a bag of Hershey’s kisses, had a good cry, and got down to the business of raising her daughter. I had heard the story of my mother’s birth so often I knew it by heart. It was my story I was more interested in—and the one that my mother kept secret from me.

  My mother kept many secrets from me. Like why she treated my sister and me so differently, and why our father’s name was one that could never be spoken, and why on one sunny afternoon in October she decided to pack up all our things and leave our grandmother’s house. I remember watching as she frantically dug through drawers, gathering our things, while Franny and I stood in the middle of the room—mostly because we didn’t want to get in her way. I knew I needed to do something to make it all stop, but I couldn’t and I didn’t and then it was too late and the next thing I knew we were driving away in her car. I turned to look back and watched the house where I had grown up shrink away. She held the steering wheel tightly and focused with such intensity that it made her look angry. After what seemed like hours of driving, we pulled up beside a little white house that was so dainty, dolls might have lived inside. My mother used a key she wore around her neck to let us in, and when we walked through the doorway a woman appeared and I suddenly felt overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity. But the harder I tried to remember, the deeper the memory hid. She led us to a green room with fairies and I just held on to my sister because I didn’t know what else to do.

  I helped Franny get under the covers and eventually we fell asleep, but when I woke she was gone. I walked to the top of the stairs and listened to their voices blending together. In the kitchen, Leah was standing over a frying pan and my mother was sitting on top of the counter, her legs dangling down and her arms hugging her chest. Franny was at the table folding her napkin into triangles.

  “Hungry?” Leah asked.

  The table was set for four, and Leah was scrambling eggs. It never occurred to me to wonder why she would be making what appeared to be breakfast for dinner, as though we were at the beginning of something instead of the end. Later, I spent hours reliving the details, replaying the moments, over and over again.

  “Matilda, would you like to go shopping tomorrow?” my mother asked.

  “For what?”

  “I thought it might be fun to get some new stuff.”

  Franny stiffened. I saw a tremor pass over her lips. Our sisterly Morse code.

  “What about Franny?” I asked.

  “Maybe Franny and I could spend some time together. Would you like to go to an art museum?” Leah turned to look at her.

  Franny held the fork in her hand and used the tines to trace designs on her plate.

  “She won’t like that.” I slid in next to my sister. Franny never looked up from her plate, but I knew what she was thinking because I always knew what she was thinking. She looked so pale, I could make out the little blue veins beneath her skin, and I reached over to hold her hand. When I looked up, Leah was staring at us, but then quickly turned back to the stove. I squeezed my sister’s hand tighter.

  That night, in what I thought would be our new room, Franny fell asleep before me. I listened to her breaths, deep in and out, like what I imagined a newborn baby might sound like. In the morning, I woke before she did and went downstairs. She came down after and started eating her cereal and I wondered if Leah knew that she only liked it soggy.

  My mother brought up the idea of shopping again and, because I really wanted to go this time, I said nothing when Leah suggested taking Franny to the museum. I waved goodbye to my sister and then went back to eating breakfast. When my mother returned to the kitchen, I looked at her face and only one thought crossed my mind.

  Some mornings I put my shirt on backwards.

  I picked ones with big stiff collars that sliced into my chin and openings that dipped down my back. I wanted it to be obvious to anyone who saw me that I had done it on purpose. I practiced my look in the mirror, emptying my eyes of emotion and arching my eyebrows. Slowly, I would walk out of the room as though I had a book balanced on my head, trying desperately not to shake the expression. Inevitably, I would spin the shirt around, slipping it back into its proper position because I never had the courage to go out into the world backwards. That morning, when I glanced back at my mother, I recognized her look—the one I had practiced and failed to achieve.

  We went upstairs and she told me to collect my things. I looked around the pretty green room with the pixie fairies innocently watching me and then I disentangled my belongings from Franny’s. I gathered some clothes and books and hair barrettes—things my mother had hastily thrown together when we left my grandmother’s house. When I was done packing, I sat down on Franny’s bed to talk to the pixie fairies. I knew it was silly and childish, but I made them promise that they would look after her, especially at night. It made me feel better to imagine them hovering around the room while she slept.

  My mother was waiting for me when I came downstairs. “Where are we going?” I tried again. She simply shook her head. “Mom. Please.” And even though I didn’t mean to, I could feel tears slipping down my face, making me feel worse.

  But it didn’t matter because she didn’t look at me. She fluffed up the cushions on the couch like we were waiting for company to arrive and then took my bag and walked out of the house. I wanted to disappear, and I even looked around for a second, wondering if I could hide in a closet, but then I heard her calling and something in her voice made me know there was no place I could go where she would not find me. I got into the passenger seat of the car, purposely not putting on my seat belt because I didn’t really care if something bad happened. Maybe I even wanted it to because I could not envision anyth
ing worse than leaving my sister behind.

  I started to imagine what she would think when she realized we were gone. I glanced at the clock on the dash; I didn’t know what time we left Leah’s. I wondered how long we had been driving and how much farther we had to go and then, just as I was about to start crying again, the crunching sound of gravel startled me out of my head. She slowed down as we passed a sign that read EMERALD WELCOMES YOU.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  “Where’s here?”

  “Emerald. It’s just what we needed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A place to settle down. We’ll be happy here. You’ll see.”

  “Why here?”

  She was quiet for a few minutes. “Someone told me about it once, and I thought it sounded perfect.”

  She drove on and then pulled up alongside a row of attached town homes. She turned off the ignition, held the keys in her hand, and tilted her head back on the headrest. A white pickup truck drove up beside us. An older man got out, thrust his hands into his pockets, and began jiggling their contents. My mother puckered her lips in the mirror, folded a tuft of black hair behind one ear, and climbed out of the car. He was still busy digging in his pockets when she tapped him on the shoulder.

  Even from a distance, I could see his features soften. His hands moved in a clumsy way, like they weren’t attached to his body. Her back was to me, but I knew exactly what she was doing. One eyebrow was slightly arched and her mouth was poised in a halfsmile, making her cheek look round and full. She put both hands on her hips and curved her shoulders inward.

  He was no match for my mother.

  Within minutes, she talked him down several hundred dollars and an hour later we were unloading our things into our newly-leased town home. It was sandwiched between two others units, which eliminated the possibility of any natural light and made it feel colorless. The only saving grace was a small porch off the back of the living room. My mother was so involved in unpacking that I managed to sneak out onto the porch without her noticing.

  I found an old plastic chair a previous tenant had left behind, but it was caked in thick black grime, so I sat on the wooden planks instead. Everywhere I looked, I saw green. It was still warm, but the air now had a snap to it. I closed my eyes and reinvented the porch in my mind, filling it with people I wished were there. I saw my grandmother and Franny sitting at a picnic table eating hamburgers. I pretended that it was windy and the napkins were flying away and that ketchup dripped onto my plate and a bee buzzed by my ear. It took a few minutes before I realized that the sounds I was hearing were not in my head.

  I opened my eyes and heard it again, a soft chirp coming from the other side of the wall that divided our porch from our neighbor’s. I peeked around, not sure what I would find, and there was a girl, very small but probably my age.

  The first thing I noticed was her hair, which she had tried unsuccessfully to tie back with a ribbon. It was honey-colored, but what was more striking was that her eyes matched the hue of her hair. They were the most yellow-brown I had ever seen. She smiled, pointed at one of the trees beyond where we were sitting, and made that sound again. An orange kitten appeared from behind a bush. He walked toward her in that loping, unsteady way kittens walk, and she scooped him up and nuzzled him with her cheek. He lifted his paws over her shoulder and started kneading her hair. “You just move in? I’m Laverne. But everyone calls me Lavi.”

  The way she said it sounded like “Lovey” and reminded me of what Mr. Howell called his wife on Gilligan’s Island. “Yeah we just got here today. You live here, too?”

  She nodded, stroking the kitten, who had found a home in her hair. “I’ve lived here for almost two years with my mom and brother. It’s not too bad. You gonna be starting school here?”

  The question jolted me back into reality. I had no idea why or what I was doing here. I didn’t like looking as though I’d been thrown off guard, so I shrugged my shoulders and nodded my head. Luckily, Laverne didn’t seem to need much more from me. I figured she would assume what she wanted to and whatever that was would be fine by me.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  I paused. Were we on some secret mission, my mother and I? Should I have just said the first name that came to my mind? I hated my name and was always thinking up potential replacements, something glamorous and mysterious. Quinn or maybe Scout. A name that would leave someone speechless. A name that would make me feel like I could wear my clothes backward. I took a deep breath. “Matilda.”

  “Oh. That’s a nice name. Like ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”

  “What?”

  “The song—‘Waltzing Matilda.’ We learned about Australia last year. It’s their national song. Something about stealing sheep. It’s kind of sad. Not your name, the song.”

  It was nice to hear that Lavi didn’t think my name was sad, and I was glad that I had been honest when I told it to her. There was something about this girl that made it hard to lie. We sat on her side of the porch for a few more minutes, listening to the rumble of the kitten as it purred and burrowed into her hair. Then I heard a car drive up and a door slam, and Lavi unhooked the kitten from her shirt and placed it on the ground.

  “I’ll see you around,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her focus was on the kitten, watching as it scurried behind the tree from which it had come. She seemed distracted, but finally turned to me and smiled. “See you at school, Matilda.”

  I nodded and made my way back to my side of the porch. My mother had turned on the radio and was humming to the music. I wished she would sing louder. I wished she hadn’t brought us to live in a place that was so empty. I wished she could make it so that I didn’t have to hear the screams coming from the unit on the other side of the wall.

  Therese

  Therese turned the radio up louder, hoping to drown out the noise of the neighbors. She hated living so close to other people. She enjoyed her privacy and the fact she could hear the sound of muffled voices coming from next door made her angry. She wondered where Matilda was. Maybe she had gone off to explore. Maybe she needed some time to figure things out. Part of her wished she could have explained, but Matilda would not have understood.

  In fact, no one would really understand, but Therese always followed her instincts, and no matter how angry Matilda appeared at the prospect of leaving Franny behind, she was not about to divulge to her twelve-year-old daughter why they were on the run. It was too difficult to explain how she knew about things, about people. In fact, she barely understood it herself since she was only six years old the first time it happened.

  Sitting in the dentist’s chair, she watched his eyes dart back and forth across her face, and they reminded her of pebbles. Just as she was about to turn, a bolt of electricity pulsed up her wrists and around her elbows. She blinked as the energy buzzed warmly around her ears and wondered if this had ever happened to anyone else. He stared blankly back at her, seemingly unaware of what was going on.

  It kept whizzing through her, oddly exhilarating, overwhelmingly revealing and luxuriously out of her control. After it was over, she replayed it in her mind and when it came time to leave, she kept her face down so that he would not see the reflection of his secrets in her eyes. He was too busy peeling off his plastic gloves to notice. Everyone was stunned two weeks later when he was arrested for beating his wife.

  Everyone, except Therese.

  She called it “sparking” because the flickers reminded her of the shocks she got when she danced around the living room rug in tights. She taught herself to focus and then braced herself for the electrical spark that followed, allowing her to see the world through another person’s eyes and gain a glimpse into their soul. When the conditions were right, and her focus was strong, few were unsparkable.

  It was with surprise, then, that one day that she found herself distracted. She was at the supermarket picking things up for her mother, and he was organizing apples in a
bin with the precision and thoughtfulness of an artist. The white apron tied around his waist fit snuggly, reminding her of an enormous loincloth. Later, she decided what distracted her most was the way he held each apple so delicately in his big thick hands, as though each one might crumble at his touch.

  When he saw Therese, he smiled with a grin she could tell he had practiced in the mirror. His eyes were the color of silver and gave the illusion that they were transparent—that if she looked closely enough, she could see into his head. But she had forgotten to look that close and, before she could turn back and try, the moment for sparking was gone.

  “Want a bite?” He lifted one so close to her face that she could feel the warmth of his fingers against her cheek. She tore a plastic bag from the roll at the side of the display and threw two apples inside. Then she smiled, turned, and walked away.

  To her mother’s surprise, she offered to do the grocery shopping every week. In the produce department, she taunted him by hiding and then willing him to turn and spot her. As the weeks passed, he became more and more adept at a sport he never knew he was playing. It seemed he could sense her presence within seconds, and she quickly grew tired of the game.

  Therese was confused about her attraction to the grocer. She was always successful with boys, but this time things were different. This time the stakes seemed higher. There was something special about him, and she never questioned her instincts.

  His name was Tim, and he loved chocolate shakes. They met after work and went to the Friendly’s across the street from the supermarket where he always instructed the waitress to make his shakes extra thick. It fascinated Therese to watch him struggle to get the drink up through the straw. His cheeks would sink in and his lips would purse and it seemed as if all he cared about at that moment was getting the sweet taste into his mouth. He spent a long time studying the menu, and then when the food came, he ate it slowly, many times just taking the first few bites even as she neared the end of her meal.