Milk Teeth

by Helene Bukowski

  7.

  Months after that first time I had left the plot, Edith found the sentences I’d written. She stared at the paper for a long time without noticing that I was standing right behind her. I didn’t dare breathe.

  Finally, she put the slip of paper back as if she’d never found it, and before she could discover me, I snuck back into the hallway.

  I knew that it would be necessary to hide these sentences better in the future.

  From then on, I slipped them underneath a loose floorboard in the upstairs hallway. More were added each day. When there wasn’t any room, I found new places, always careful that Edith didn’t see.

  After a while, I had the feeling that the house was constructed only of my sentences. It seemed as if they were visible under the surface of things, ready to burst out at any moment.

  8.

  For the first time in my life, I perceived the house in all its clarity.

  The paint was flaking off the green front door, and the dirt on the overlying arched window with its fanning wooden struts was so thick that no light fell through it.

  The gray flagstones in the hallway were sticky. It was always dark in the kitchen, not least because of the oak cabinets and the kitchen sideboard, which was black, almost as if its entire surface were charred. It was only darker in the pantry. I sometimes found Edith in there, touching her hair with her eyes closed or her hands balled into fists and screaming at me as soon as she noticed that I had opened the door.

  The disarray began to take on new dimensions. It was worst in the living room, the largest room in the house. Edith had pushed the couch into the middle of the room. It sat obliquely across the well-worn carpet. In many places its beige slipcover was scuffed, as though a large animal had rubbed up against it.

  Edith had become accustomed to only sleeping in there. She used a sheet that she never washed as a bedspread. It smelled sour from her night sweats.

  The floor was covered in a layer of books. Among them were half-empty water glasses and used plates.

  Edith always left the small cherrywood dresser next to the door open. Its contents varied: dirty laundry, mason jars, crumpled paper, firewood.

  Once Edith cleared it out completely and only put a brooch up on its shelf. When I entered the room around midday, sunlight fell through the small gap between the curtains and was thrown back onto the walls by the brooch. Scattered light reflections I momentarily mistook for bullet holes.

  Sometimes I went into the cellar out of choice. The entrance was in the hallway. A hatch door, beneath which was a steep, musty wooden staircase leading down into the darkness. The shelves were filled with our provisions. Preserved fruit and vegetables. Dried fruits. Evaporated milk. Rusks. A few of the canned goods Edith had brought back. I found it comforting to count the available supplies. And even when the light from the bulb hanging from the low ceiling went out sometimes, it didn’t bother me. I even liked standing in the dark, where it made no difference whether I had my eyes open or shut.

  A wide wooden staircase led from the hallway to the upper floor, its wooden handrail smooth and slinky. Halfway up the stairs was a small window from where we could see the street the house was connected to via a sandy path.

  I once startled Edith while she was standing on the stairs and staring out the window. When she noticed me, she spun around and said, “When they come, I’ll stand there and blow them away,” then she formed her left hand into a gun. “Bang, bang,” she said, aiming at me. In her room, Edith had covered all her windows in newspaper. She had painted over the thin pages with black shoe polish. From then on, it looked as if she had sealed up the windows with tar.

  The bare mattress and comforter were blotted with sweat and blood stains. I surveyed them with the flashlight.

  “No one will ever get them out,” Edith said, standing in the doorway. I drew back. She came in and ran her finger over the outlines. “This is my body’s inscription. The mattress will always be a monument to me.”

  She laughed soundlessly and left me once more alone with the trembling beam of the flashlight.

  Edith had wheeled her dented silver roller suitcase next to the bed, arranged like a relic. She never moved it. I didn’t want to disturb it under any circumstances.

  Opposite the bed was Edith’s vanity. The more time that passed, the dustier it became. The mirror was covered in a thick layer. My face looked like a mask in it.

  On its marble top were Edith’s lipsticks, a mother-of- pearl compact, and a brush made of driftwood, which she used to use to comb her sun-bleached hair for hours.

  Sometimes I would hide one of these objects, push the brush under the rug or place a lipstick on top of the wardrobe. It was only when Edith had given up looking that I would let it reappear.

  I also started removing the wallpaper, but Edith didn’t mind.

  “Some days I wish I could be more naked too” was all she said.

  Edith’s wardrobe took up a whole wall of her room. The mirrored doors made the room look twice its size. Not a single piece of clothing hung from the silver hangers anymore. When I opened the wardrobe doors, they moved and jingled in the draft of air.

  Edith had covered the inside walls with pictures of the sea:

  SANDY BEACH

  BRIGHT DUNES

  WASHED UP SEAWEED

  MOSSY BREAKWATERS

  A PIER IN THE FOG

  A BOMBED-OUT BOARDWALK

  She only went in the room in order to sit inside the wardrobe and look at the pictures with the flashlight. If she heard me walking past, she would call out: “I only recognize the pine forest. It looks like the pine forest near the coast.”

  Next to Edith’s room was the bathroom. Dark blue tiles, many of them cracked. A crack ran across the ceiling too. In the middle of the room was the freestanding tub in which Edith was always bathing. Sometimes she forgot to turn off the tap. I was constantly occupied with rushing in, turning it off, and mopping up the water that had already flowed over the edge of the bath with towels.

  Once, one of Edith’s books fell off the sink into the water; maybe I had grazed it with my elbow by accident. It was immediately soaked, swollen. Edith pulled it out, clutched it to her chest, and in a flash had grabbed a stone from the edge of the bath that I’d brought out of the forest and placed there. I was able to duck just in time. The stone crashed into the mirror right above me, and a large piece broke off and shattered on the floor.

  “That will bring the worst bad luck,” I told her, but Edith didn’t hear me. She had submerged herself and held her breath until I left the bathroom.

  Edith had blocked up the other rooms with furniture. Much of it was covered with white sheets. Hulking forms. As if this house actually belonged to other people, on whose return we were waiting.

  During Edith’s sleepless nights she shoved the wardrobes and dressers over the floorboards for hours on end. Traces of this could be seen on all the walls and on the floor. She was always in search of a different arrangement. I couldn’t get used to anything.

  From my room, located on the upper floor like Edith’s, I moved into the attic. It was the only place I felt safe. She never figured out where I hid the wooden pole needed to fold down the ladder.

  Up there, it was always a lot warmer than the floors below, so I left the furniture where it was. The mattress beneath the only window. A small writing desk against the other wall. A wide wicker chair opposite it. My clothes carefully piled in cardboard boxes against the wall. Nothing lay strewn around.

  When I opened the window in the evenings, I could smell the pine forest.

  Ever since Edith felt betrayed by me, she barely went into the garden.

  I created a tunnel system through the brambles. That way I could hide there all day long without having left the plot. Edith barely made any effort to look for me. Often, she would only step out of the front door and call my name. It sounded like she was trying to call in an animal.

  Sometimes she would half-heartedly prod a
stick into the long grass. I watched her and stayed where I was.

  There was only one time when Edith was stubborn. She endured a whole afternoon outside, standing motionlessly in the last of the fog and listening out for a sound from me, while the wetness gathered on the see-through raincoat she wore over her black rabbit fur coat. I crawled so deep into the brambles that the thorns scratched my arms and legs. The scars are still visible. They form a light pattern of fine lines on my skin.

  The brambles hardly ever bore blackberries anymore. When they did, I had to give up my hiding place, as Edith would notice them immediately and spend the day picking the fruit. She would eat nothing else. The juice dyed her lips, teeth, and her tongue dark, almost black.

  9.

  Ever since it began getting hotter, the rabbits’ fur started changing. Every new litter was lighter than the one before, until they were all white, like snow. They had red eyes and were not as strong.

  Edith called them ALBINO.

  I will never forget the way the pelt rotted on the compost, the flies and the stench, because Edith refused to use the white pelt.

  “The color can’t mean anything good,” she said.

  Other kinds of animals lost their color too. Suddenly there were only white hens, white horses. A couple of dogs, as if whitewashed. A white fox appeared in the forest. Around the same time the native birds disappeared. I built and hung up nesting boxes for many years in a row, yet every year they remained empty.

  Edith no longer took care of the potato patch. I began to make the mulch myself. So that the plants would be able to handle the unending heat, I fertilized them daily. The return was poor. Three times a year I gathered the potatoes from the dry ground and put them in the cellar in a wooden crate, turned the soil, and planted new seed potatoes.

  I rarely stayed in the house. Instead, I familiarized myself with the landscape.

  “You look like them,” Edith screeched when I came back from my wanderings and laid my red raincoat, which I had found somewhere in the undergrowth, over the back of a chair.

  “I am one of them,” I replied, and Edith tried to tip the boiling water from the stove over me. I took cover behind the table. Edith dropped the pan, and the water poured over the floor. I climbed onto a chair.

  “Traitor,” Edith said, and left.

  She only left our plot to walk into the forest to fetch a pine branch. Back in the house she would put it in the living room in one of the water glasses and would sniff it every time she walked past.

  She didn’t drive the pickup anymore, and new canned goods didn’t come.

  She barricaded herself deep in the house. Sometimes she lay for days in the bathtub. When she came out, her skin was white and puffy.

  At some point I began to hope that Edith would disappear. I dreamed about it over and over.

  AN ABANDONED RABBIT FUR COAT SLIPPING HALFWAY OFF THE STAIRS. NO DUST IN THE PLACE WHERE THE SUITCASE USED TO BE. CLEAR OUT THE HOUSE LITTLE BY LITTLE. I STACK FURNITURE IN THE GARDEN AND LIGHT IT, I HEAR THE CRACKLING OF THE WOOD IN THE EMPTY ROOMS.

  When I woke up, everything was still there. Her clothes, her jewelry, the pieces of driftwood, the silver roller suitcase, and Edith herself, sleeping on the sofa.

  The years went by, and I no longer believed that anything more would change. Then I found the child.

  10.

  I walked through the forest. The pines stood in the last of the light. Time and time again I paused, tilted my head back, and looked up at the branches that cut up the sky with their rusty shapes. I oriented myself with the markings I had made an age ago. Crosses made in the bark with a knife. The resin made my fingers stick together. The scent stayed on my skin for days afterward.

  I reached the clearing, an almost circular zone. Up from the ground grew grasses bleached by the sun. I slowly went into the center, where I had built branches into a den. It had been my first hiding place in the forest. Far enough away from Edith that I could talk myself into believing that she didn’t exist.

  Stooping over, I entered through the opening. I saw that the wooden crate that I’d hidden here had been moved. Beside it was a bed made of moss. It smelled differently too. Someone had been here.

  I opened the crate; nothing was missing. I took out one of the cigarettes and lit it. When I turned around, standing in front of the entrance was a child. We looked at each other. It was wearing a T-shirt that went down to its knees. Its feet were in overlarge sneakers, crusted with dirt. But the most remarkable thing was its hair. Red, as if ablaze. No one had hair that color in the territory. I stepped out of the den; the child backed away.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, lowering the hand holding the burning cigarette.

  Without saying anything, the child walked past me, sat on the moss bed, and wrapped its arms around its knees.

  I crouched down in front of the den. “You can’t stay here,” I said.

  The child turned its head and furtively wiped its eyes. I stepped away from the entrance; it got up and came back outside. It looked around indecisively and fumbled with the hem of its T-shirt. I took a drag on my cigarette. The smoke was barely visible.

  With its shoulders hunched, the child went to the edge of the clearing. Once there, it turned around and nodded. Only after it had disappeared among the trees did I understand that the nod wasn’t meant for me. The child had bid farewell to the clearing, just like I did every time I left.

  “Come back,” I said, raising my voice.

  Nothing stirred. I called out again. The pines crackled in the wind. I stepped anxiously from one foot to the other. I was going to shout out a third time, when the child appeared again between the trees. It looked at me, waiting. I stubbed out the cigarette and stuck the butt in the pocket of my raincoat.

  “Do you want to come with me?” I asked.

  The child threw a look back into the forest. The darkness already stood behind the trees. Above us, the sky was losing its color.

  “I live in a house not far from here. It’s safer there.”

  The child leaned against the pine it was standing next to. I held out my hand. To my surprise it stepped out from the trees.

  “Promise?” it asked.

  I nodded.

  The child took my hand.

  “This way. It’s not far from here.”

  While we walked to the house, the child didn’t let go of my hand once. If someone had stood in our way, I would have knocked them down without thinking twice.

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Edith said.

  She stood in the doorframe wearing her black rabbit fur coat. Her greasy hair hung in front of her face. The circles under her eyes were dark violet, like bruises. She hadn’t got up from the sofa in weeks.

  “Where did it come from?” she asked, eyeballing the child, which I had sat on the kitchen table.

  “I found it in the forest.”

  “How can that be?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Edith stood next to me.

  “None of the others have hair like that,” she said, “it can’t be from here.”

  “How did you make it to this territory?” she asked the child. As she didn’t receive an answer, she turned back to me. “Can it speak?”

  I nodded.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “It has to eat something.”

  “And then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When are you taking it back?”

  “Back where?”

  “Back to the forest.”

  There was a silence.

  “I promised it that it can stay with us,” I said.

  “You did what?”

  “I promised it—”

  “You really have lost your mind.”

  “Anyone else would have done the same thing.”

  Edith twisted her mouth into a sneer. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  She turned to the child and asked it its name. Once again, she didn’t rece
ive an answer.

  “And you’re sure it can speak?”

  “Before, in the forest—”

  “Meisis,” said the child, pointing at itself.

  Edith shook her head. “Sounds made up.”

  “I’m called Skalde,” I said. I looked at Edith, to prompt her. She cleared her throat and said her own name.

  “Skalde, Edith,” Meisis repeated. We nodded. The light over our heads flickered. I looked at the window. The darkness had swallowed the garden. The kitchen was reflected in the windowpane. Edith and I, shoulder to shoulder, the child shielded by our bodies. We were standing very straight, like we weren’t afraid.

  I now ask myself whether everything had already been decided in this moment. Had I not already surmised how this would turn out?

  I shook my head, took a tin of evaporated milk from the pantry, opened it, and poured half into a glass for Meisis.

  “You can drink it,” I said, passing it to her. Meisis brought it up to her mouth and took a sip. She wanted to give some to Edith, but she ignored her.

  “I will most definitely not be bringing up another child, despite objections,” she said.

  “Are you talking about me?”

  Edith nodded.

  I laughed. “Are you really saying that you brought me up?”

  Edith took a step back. She had restored the usual distance between us. I waited for her to respond; instead she turned around, left the kitchen, and closed the door behind her. I could physically feel the silence that followed. It lay across my shoulders and my neck and tightened my muscles. From there, the pain grew right up to my ears. I started at the sound of a fly coming in through the window and buzzing. It bounced off the glass multiple times from the inside, tumbled and fell. Its black body twitched, then it was silent.

  “You’ll get used to it, Meisis,” I said, not knowing what I meant. The child nodded and drank another sip of the milk.