The Island of the Day Before

by Zuni Chopra

  Once again, they barely turned to look at her. Her whole body swelled up with indignant fury, and, never having felt this way before, she really didn’t know how to deal with it. An angry shriek began to tear itself out of her throat, but before it had the chance, her eyes fell upon the mother again. The mother waving a spoon, full to the brim with mushy food, through a wave of unseen space. As though the baby she’d been feeding had suddenly dissolved into the air.

  With a start, a flood of memory washed over her, nearly drowning her in the past. Her mother, strapped to a hospital bed, being drained of life by the hundred sparkling needles in her arm. The cries of the neighbours as their little Drooly choked and went silent. The countryside’s shared funeral, a hundred roses and tears and whispers, praying that this disease would spare them all if ever it returned. Father hadn’t been there. He had been at home. Making brekky. Two eggs on a plate. It was always two eggs on a plate.

  No. Not always. It had been toast. Okkie remembered now. It had been toast.

  Okkie gasped, a single tear shivering down her cheek. Immediately, the son laughed, the same chilling, mechanical laugh, as though the whole prairie was a little music box, wound up and performing brilliantly. As though wires ran through their perfect little limbs, and with a single short circuit, the lovely doll’s house would come crashing down. But no. That wouldn’t be allowed. That would spoil the fun. That would remind them of what they had left behind. And so that could never happen.

  Okkie was shaking like a leaf in a gale, inching towards the doorway, something in her heart screaming for her to run, just run, for any minute they’d turn to her with those same plastic grins and suffocate her in those chilled plastic fingers. Frozen, they were. Frozen in a moment they could never have again. Trapped by the loss that had torn into their icy hearts.

  Her mind raced frantically, raced to the horses out on the prairie, to the ones she could surely catch, to the roads leading into the horizon that could take her somewhere new.

  But did she really want to go?

  She stared at this family: empty, soulless, but safe from harm. She remembered her mother now, remembered how suddenly she’d slipped away, remembered her hot, stinking tears on the rooftop, remembered her wish on a shooting star, that somehow, she would never have to feel this way again; never have to feel loss. It was empty, and alone, and frightening. And so, so painful.

  But this wasn’t.

  Suddenly, the woman faced her. There was sweat along the edges of her ghostly brown hair. ‘Join us, Okkie,’ she whispered. ‘It’s meant to be like this.’ Something in her eyes, a burning flame, died down within her as she stared at the little girl. She smiled, shivering from the effort of holding it in place. ‘We can be a happy family again! Everything … everything just the way it was. Before … before. Okay?’

  Okkie nodded, understanding. The mindless suffering echoed in her memory. The voices of the doctors. ‘What a terrible tragedy. I hope you can move on.’ But they hadn’t, had they? They never moved on. Never moved forward. Not even a single second forward. And they never would.

  There was a seat left. Okkie took it. One last deep breath, and her face split into a beaming grin. ‘Pass the jam,’ she whispered, feeling her limbs grow short and firm and brittle.

  ‘Pass the jam,’ she repeated, extending her arm across the table.

  ‘Pass the jam.’

  And her voice began to fade away.

  Echoes rang about her ears.

  The world began to blur and dim.

  Sounds were out of reach.

  Their voices bounced off the walls.

  ‘Pass the jam.’

  Every day was the same on the prairie, such that a day had no meaning. A herd had a meaning, and a harvest had a meaning, and a song had a meaning, but a day meant nothing at all. Okkie was part of the prairie, perhaps even more so than the clouds, for the clouds would flutter and gasp and vanish, and she never really seemed to change. Her tiny dress was always white, and her tiny gumboots always yellow upon her tiny feet.

  Sunday

  I know that Sunday is a day of peace. It is the day when the Lord Himself did rest. It was the one day that he did nothing. But I don’t believe that. It seems so much more plausible to believe that he simply was not here. He was out. Building something new, finding something fresh, exploring a universe he helped to create.

  It was a Sunday, and I was God. Finally settling on a café down the road, I began the playful march down cobblestones well curved to my jaunty feet. When I arrived, the lady at the counter was haggard and slouching, brushing away the painted silver streaks of her brown, stiff ebony hair. Roughly, she slapped a damp rag against the ageing counter, whipping it fiercely – punishment for appearing an embodiment of her battles. The café was empty save one man. I knew him, I was sure. He’d been round the house since I was a toddler, being some vaguely attached relative of my mother’s good friend. His face was drawn low over his tea, which looked untouched. No, not entirely. I could see the smallest ghost of once-hot liquid staining the edge of the white. He’d taken a sip.

  My eyes skittered across the rusting tea and coffee machines surrounding the woman, until I finally settled on a bag of salted biscuits. I enjoyed their flavour. It reminded me of the sea, and if I thought of the sea, I would think of its depth, and if I thought of its depth, I would think of its currents, of its pure ocean currents that could take me wherever I wanted to go. Then I would feel the crisp ocean breeze on my face, and I would see the sun dip quietly into the horizon, fire at last meeting its match and backing out with grace.

  I was interested in this man and his tea. So I asked him why he was here alone, looking as though his last hope, his tea, had betrayed him.

  He didn’t answer me at first, and told me there were things I wouldn’t understand. He said it kindly enough, as he knew me, but the disbelief in his eyes displayed a man who’d been crossing the same road back and forth for all of his life, and would refuse to consider that there was anywhere else to go. Even on a Sunday.

  I pressed the issue.

  ‘Did you lose someone important to you?’

  ‘No, but … look here, girl, there are some things that can’t quite be explained.’

  ‘Don’t you have someone important to you?’

  ‘Well, I … yes, of course I…’

  ‘Did a dream of yours not come true?’

  ‘No … I just…’

  ‘Has something happened to someone you care about? Your family?’

  ‘No, no … nothing like that.’

  ‘Well, what else can it be to make you sit here with your head in your hands, as though all the world has shown you not a single kindness?’

  There was silence.

  I realized that the waitress was watching us now, her eyes wide and her filthy rag limp and exhausted upon the fraying countertop. Suddenly she seemed not so old. Her smile had made her face glow with a radiance that pulsed through her thick hair.

  He was stunned, and then he rose with the air of a lion defending what little pride he has left. Yet he was shaking behind his mane, his claws ever so blunted by this unexpected rivalry.

  ‘You are a child. You will never understand the course of life and how cruel it can be, not until you’re put through it yourself. Which you will be all too soon, I’m sure.’

  He swept out of the café, leaving scattered sugar from an overturned spoon and the bell hanging off the doorway, yellowed with age, ringing sharply in his wake, agreeing with his assertion on all counts.

  I watched him go through the freshly wiped window, and I saw his back, knotted with tension, disappear over the end of the sidewalk.

  And I thought as I watched him, of how I had first met him and remembered him, and all too soon would forget him. And he would leave, and I’d never see him again. And soon he would die, and I wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t care. I’d be far too busy with my own life. Then I would follow someday, and there’d be others left of me, continuing this
self-made war, giving the bell a final look as it rings shrilly to persist that I had been here, I had been here, and I was not irrelevant. But I was, wasn’t I? And so was he. And so were the sugar flakes brushing lovingly like snow across the rough, jagged wood. And so would they all be, those who came after me, whoever they were and wherever they were now.

  I hoped then that they would enjoy every Sunday they managed to reach.

  I knew I had.

  The Path

  Four little girls went into the woods. Three little girls came out. Two went back in to look for her, and the third ran back to the house. The third grew up all alone there, not knowing where her sisters went, and years from then, she was wrinkled and old, and went into the woods again.

  The path through the wood is grainy, like walking on a rock of sand. It stabs at your feet, urging you to turn back. But you don’t, you see, because turning back is boring, and the wood seems so enchanting. What might you find in its depths? Soon, you hear a noise: a soft coo emanating from somewhere between the trees. You run after it, thighs snapping against branches, path shrinking rapidly behind you. You stop, breathing hard, to listen for it again, before turning around and around, and realizing every direction looks the same. It’s as though you’ve been plunged into the darkest depths of the sea, where the surface is the same as the ocean floor. Now you’ve really done it. You had one instruction: stay with your sisters on the path. And you didn’t. You put the breadbasket down in a rush, tired of holding it for it scratched at your arms. Besides, it was only bread. And wine. You didn’t like the taste of wine – too bitter. Like beetle juice.

  Very well, you decided. Lost you may be. Stupid you weren’t. It’s easy enough to get out of the woods. All you have to do is pick a direction and stay on it. You’re bound to wind up somewhere. So you begin, picking through lumps of grass with slightly pinkish toes, your breath coming soft and gentle, your eyes attempting to hew out a path before you. The flowers and undergrowth tickle at your calves, brushing your skin as you walk by, as though trying to hold you back. They can’t, of course. Occasionally, you see the glint of a rusty red can or the crumbles of an ashed- out cigarette. They remind you, somehow, of Mars. You remember the man who stepped on it for the first time, with a flag. That was silly, you think. You’d have taken a camera. But he never reached Mars, did he? No. Only the moon. The trees grow taller and thicker around you, the forest growing and coming alive till you’re sure they have their gazes fixed on your small scarlet figure as you move on.

  The wind begins to whisper around you, slow and in gusts at first, then steadier and forcefully, wrapping your coat up around you, burying you in its crimson cloth. A figure appears before you as you bat the fabric away. It’s a woman, you think. Something so old and rotting, the trees shy away from her cracking face. She’s all wrapped up in waves of deep purple cloth. Her face is a valley of missing chunks and scratches, as though rats have torn at it while she was asleep.

  You don’t say anything. She does.

  ‘Where are you headed, little girl?’

  ‘Down the path.’

  ‘But there is no path here.’

  ‘There never is. I’m making my own.’

  ‘And what do you hope to do on that path, little girl?’

  You jut your chin out, feeling proud and strong. ‘I’m going to grow up. Just wait. I’ll be a big girl of eleven, and then twelve, and then, by golly, I’ll be a teenager! And I’ll have my own phone and lots of friends and a boyfriend, and maybe even a girlfriend and—’

  ‘Ah,’ she hisses cruelly, lips crumpling back to form a slimy grin, ‘but what happens … when all the years get used up?’

  This thought had never struck you. You don’t want her to see that she’s shaken you – she really is a very unpleasant woman, you decide – so you swallow that odd lump of fear and bewilderment in your throat.

  ‘That won’t happen, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think that can happen to me.’

  She smiles again, worse than ever now, all yellowing teeth and blackened gums and heartlessness, before turning on her heel and stalking away into the trees. They lean over you suddenly, looming, threatening to swallow you whole. You hurry on, not wanting to linger, frightened tears beginning to trickle down your cheeks.

  The path rolls on. Moons later, still walking, you see a large figure blocking your path. It’s curled up like a kitten, but its fur is sharp and thick, the deepest black. You go nearer and smell the stink of old meat and curdled blood, as though it has laced itself within the creature’s claws. As though the stench of death rolls off its tongue.

  Regardless, you had promised yourself you wouldn’t change directions.

  You clear your throat. ‘Excuse me, I need to get by.’

  The figure rises slowly, a mountain coming to life, then turns, saliva dripping out of its snarling maw as it trains its silver eyes on your now quivering form.

  ‘Excuse me,’ you squeak, ‘but you’re in my way.’

  ‘What, me?’ he gasps, his voice rumbling and powerful, thundering through your heart like too-loud earthquakes.

  ‘Y-yes,’ you murmur, knowing all too well he didn’t need an answer.

  ‘Why are you on this path?’ he purrs dangerously, claws glinting thick maroon.

  ‘Well … I want to get where it takes me,’ you say, feeling a vague answer is better than something he can use to tear you apart.

  But his voice grows husky with triumph when he speaks again.

  ‘Ah.’ He chuckles. ‘But what that your precious path leads nowhere?’

  ‘Nowhere?’ you whisper, eyes fixed on his.

  ‘Just a grassy plain. Ordinary, like all the others. Where you’ll have to fish and drain water and cook and earn and work and age. Nothing special. Nothing talented. Nothing worth it. Nowhere.’

  ‘But it’s the only path I have!’ you cry out, growing hysterical.

  ‘Better get off it, then,’ he sneers, crouching low before you. ‘I can help with that,’ he offers, his voice silky and clear.

  You look at him closely. You think you see a scrap of torn, wet, pale chicken, dotted with freckles of blood, caught between his fangs.

  You pull your coat closer around yourself. You want your sisters. You miss them so terribly. But, you realize, you left them on the path a long while ago.

  ‘No, thank you,’ you respond, firmly. You push past his astonishment and keep right on walking.

  The path, growing ever steadily under your feet, has led you over the sharpest and most uneven of boulders. You walk over them anyway, very nearly slipping and cutting yourself on jagged rock. You squat down then, more cautious as you cross, using both hands and feet like a lost monkey scratching a wooden barrel for water. The rock cracks beneath you and you roll off in surprise. And yet – you’ve made it! You feel grass and pebbles beneath your bruised knees once more. Smiling to yourself, you open your eyes – and cry out. Your path – so hard to forge, so deserving of recognition, so triumphant in its goal – is now running alongside several others. They’re splayed out like sunrays across the woods. And they join in the centre. Join. Join to form a large, wide path going forward into the light. You grit your teeth, frustration taking over at the idea that several others were just as worthy as you. You’re about to turn, dejected, when you spy grass pushing through stray cracks at the far, far end of this larger path. No, not cracks – splits. So, you realize, soon your path will be your own again. You inhale deeply, preparing to move forward. You’ll soon be alone again anyway. For now … you’ll keep going. On the path where it’s safe and flower-filled and peaceful. Just enjoying the sunshine.

  You’ve been walking for so long … your feet begin to throb. You look down at them, surprised – you didn’t know they were capable of such a thing. Yet here they are, red and slightly swollen at the edges. At once, you fear they might slowly tear right off, like waterlogged paper. You bend down to rub them and notice something that nearly bowls you over. The grass beneath them is st
ill sharp and straight. Still a darkened, wild green. Still unchanged. You look behind you. A few paces away, you spy a final, faded footprint, your last mark on the deep, flattened soil, before the presence of you seems to have lost its impact, and with its impact, its meaning. You begin to breathe quickly, short strokes, each like a knife wound to the neck. Stubbornly, you stomp on, fiercer, fiercer, gnashing your teeth, crying out your frustration over and over, stopping only when the back of your foot begins to bleed. You flop onto a rock, exhausted, and feel your eyelids grow heavy as stone. It’s okay, you think, heart calming to a steady rhythm. I’m not stopping. Just taking a break. Your world begins to distort into a dream. Nothing wrong with just … taking a break…

  The world is kind. For when you wake, the grass is littered with dewdrops, fresh light breaks through the trees, and your footsteps are sure against the ground, cutting through the shrubbery like butter. You begin to grow strong of heart and mind, moving forward till it seems you and this path are old friends. You seem, now, to be more focused on where it will take you than you once were. No, the existence of the path is no longer enough. You forge onward, unstoppable.

  And the woods break apart. At long last. After years and years of an age-old trek, the trees move aside like curtains of an opera stage to let you through. And there it is – grandma’s house. Just like they promised. The fresh scent of cookies and prune juice wafts from each window, calling you closer. And you rush towards it, joyful, gleeful, eyes caught like writhing fish on the front door, and it’s a brilliant red, and you’re about to burst through it and—

  Your fists bang against it and nearly break through. You run your fingers against the surface. It’s cardboard. Almost as thin as you are. Bile rises in your throat, burning your tired heart. Your emotions strangle each other for dominance, fighting like gladiators in an abandoned arena. You let the tears flow freely now, hot like acid against your cheeks. All this way. All this way for nothing. You raise your fists and bring them down as hard as you can. Anger, it seems, has won.