by Zoje Stage
She touched the left side of her head. Oh God.
Hanna.
Hanna who knew how to sneak into her room as she slept.
Hanna and her fucking scissors.
Suzette stumbled into the bathroom, pawing the severed strands as she turned on the light.
No no no…! Chunks were missing from the left side of her head. Too much to hide, and she’d look like a freak if she didn’t try to fix it. But fixing it would mean … How many inches would have to be cut?
Tears blurred her vision. Why why why was Hanna such a little shit? Suzette could already hear Alex tut-tutting about kids and their inevitable urge to try haircutting at least once. But Hanna had never hacked off her own hair. Suzette held the butchered parts flat against her head. Could she go punk? Shave off one side and leave the other long? Would Alex like it? Or would he grimace, disgusted?
“Fuck!”
She pulled it back in a ponytail, relieved that only a few pieces, now too short, dangled alongside her face. She’d deal with it later. Hanna was almost in school, almost out of the house.
“Just get her out of this fucking house,” she muttered under her breath. She clenched her fists. Don’t strangle her. Don’t strangle her. Alex would never forgive her if she tightened her hands around their daughter’s throat.
* * *
Suzette sat at the table, holding the syringe pen in her fist to warm it to her body temperature, staring at nothing and wishing for things that wouldn’t happen. It crossed her mind that she must look like her mother—was she becoming too much like her? Without Alex, it would be so easy to … And suddenly her mother’s lifelong mourning seemed plausible. Maybe her father was her mother’s sustenance, as Alex was hers. Maybe his absence was space that only expanded over time, such as she imagined would happen if she didn’t have Alex. The expanding dissolution of her stability, her health, her sanity. She shuddered away the image, the fear of what she could yet become. Alex was coming around a little. Of course he couldn’t process Hanna’s insane words, but at least he hadn’t refused the possibility that they emerged from her mouth.
The medication in the syringe was viscous, and refrigeration made it thicker; it would sting even more if it went in gluey and cold. As she waited for it to warm up, she pondered the previous day’s drama. She still couldn’t understand what had happened with Hanna or how her arm became so red, so promising of bruises. Don’t touch her. You can’t control yourself. She’d dragged her to the car more than once over the years, kicking and screaming after a shopping trip tantrum. There had never been any evidence to give away her momentary inability to parent as placidly as Alex desired. Fortunately, by nightfall, he resumed speaking to her, seemed to forgive her even. At least his penis had.
Hanna was better at holding grudges. Had the mutilation of her hair been an act of retribution?
Suzette heard stockinged feet on the stairs and the slight squeal of hands pushing erratically against the handrail. She considered yelling at Hanna to wait a minute—she preferred to do her injection without an audience—but couldn’t risk the words that might erupt if she opened her mouth. Not yet. Not while her own vengeance bubbled in her thoughts. Hanna padded closer, wearing patterned monkey knee socks, denim shorts, and a T-shirt given to her by Matt and Sasha—Alex’s partner and his wife—upon their return from Ireland, their last excursion before the twins were born. A green Guinness T-shirt with its harp logo on the front—they’d brought one for each of them, and for everyone in the office. Suzette wouldn’t even ask her to change. So what if she wore a beer T-shirt to her new school? She was exhausted and beyond trying to impress anyone. She’d have her put on a sweater or hoodie, though, to cover the fading marks on her arm.
With the bottom of her shirt tucked into her bra, she tore open the alcohol prep pad. She wiped it in hard stripes against her lower left abdomen—she never used the right side, even before the recent surgery; it didn’t seem right to inflict more pain there. The tops of her thighs were fair game, but they were too sensitive. The nurse had given her a set of rules to follow, but Suzette learned some better tricks. Broken rule number one: she used the same approximate area for every shot, administered every two weeks. Hanna leaned against the table and watched. Suzette had explained the process to her many times over the years. How the syringe pen worked—“I never have to see the needle”—and how the medication changed her cells at a biological level to prevent inflammation—“Sometimes the body attacks itself.” It was hard to explain to a kid; Suzette struggled to understand it herself.
She pulled off the gray cap at the bottom of the pen, the part that would go against her skin. Then she pulled off the red cap that revealed the press-button. Broken rule number two: she didn’t pinch her flesh as the nurse had instructed; it hurt more that way, forcing the thick medicine through a compressed space. She didn’t talk it through with Hanna this time, just got herself ready, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. She depressed the button that plunged the medicine into her flesh and counted silently to ten.
Ten seconds. That’s how long the injection hurt, building to a gasping, stinging climax.
And then the pain receded. She pressed a clean cotton ball to the spot and held it lightly, rubbing it in small circles to help distribute the medicine and reduce the lingering sting. Hanna, as she occasionally liked to do, peeled the wrapper off the Band-Aid and handed it to her mother.
“Do you think this makes up for what you did to my hair?” A tiny speck of blood bubbled from the injection site. She plastered the Band-Aid over it and dropped her shirt.
Hanna, smiling, reached for one of the too-short pieces that hung by her face. Suzette jerked away from her touch.
“Get away from me!”
Hanna grinned with her upper teeth overlapping her bottom lip. Suzette worried for her ability to maintain control. She’d never before been so repulsed by the sight of her child.
“Daddy will see this, he’ll know what you did.”
Hanna shrugged. And Suzette couldn’t shake the feeling that they shared the same thought: Alex will throw her away now. Hanna saw it as a victory, while Suzette feared it more than she could ever admit. Not that Alex was so shallow; not that his interest in her was only superficial. But of course her appearance was important to him. And she wasn’t always confident about what she had to offer as a woman, as a wife. She owed him at least her best attempt at presenting an attractive exterior, even if it was a guise to distract them both from the memory of shit oozing through her belly. Or maybe she was only ever trying to convince herself. Not hideous. Not disgusting. Protectively, she held her hand against the damaged side of her head.
“Get your shoes. And a sweater. We’re going to school.” She scooped up the detritus that went into the garbage, then dropped the used syringe into the red sharps box that she kept high up in one of the kitchen cabinets.
Hanna uttered a pouty wail, crossing her arms.
“Go. You and me, looking … worse for the wear. Put on your damn shoes.”
As Hanna’s protest collapsed, her body slumped. She mewled and halfheartedly stamped her foot. Her head fell toward her chest, sending her fine hair spilling forward. Suzette couldn’t stop herself; she reached out and touched it. Her daughter’s hair was still as soft as when she was a baby. Suzette grew wistful, remembering how everyone in the delivery room exclaimed over her daughter’s headful of dark hair. On another day she might have combed it, or put it in two braids, or at least gotten it out of her face with a pair of colorful barrettes.
Not today.
* * *
Hanna slapped at the car window as Suzette drove past the playground.
“If you’re good, we’ll stop by after our appointment.”
In truth, Suzette longed to spend the day in the park, too, though not with Hanna. It had been a gloomy winter and the return of the sun made her want to bask in its light and warmth. She turned down the side street toward the school, which bordered Frick Park. It mad
e her think of Alex, years ago, in the autumn, golden leaves crunching beneath their shoes. He talked about mushrooms. She concentrated on the feel of his bones, his fingers intertwined with hers.
Regent Square was a quaint neighborhood with a bustling few blocks of shops, surrounded by residential streets. From the outside, Tisdale looked like any other repurposed public school (she’d be sure to phrase it that way to Alex) with its classic and solid architecture. A respectable building to house the young sons and daughters of all the elite parents who had hoped for a more prestigious institution for their children, but instead had to accept the best in a private, but not yet college track, education. Troubled children, special children, children exceptional in the wrong ways, perhaps even kids with actual disabilities. Some of them overcame their earlier adjustment problems well enough to matriculate elsewhere, into fine schools even, and Suzette hung on to that hope for Hanna’s brighter future.
Inside it had been fully remodeled and everything was bright and modern. They took a left past the front doors and followed the sign toward the office. A young teacher emerged from another room holding the hand of a boy, maybe a couple of years older than Hanna, who wore a bright red helmet. The young teacher said hello and led the boy up the stairs. Hanna watched them go, a storm brewing on her face. She turned to look at her mother, an accusation forming in her expression.
“No, you’re not like him. You won’t have to wear a helmet. There is a spectrum to behavioral disorders, and they can help all different kinds of children here.” She made it sound as if Hanna was so lucky; Hanna clearly wasn’t buying it.
Footsteps came running up behind them. “Mrs. Jensen? Am I saying that correctly?”
They stopped and let the running man catch up with them. “It’s Yensen—”
“That’s right, I know you told me on the phone, and I couldn’t quite remember, knew it wasn’t Hensen. I was just hurrying to our appointment—I’m Dr. Gutierrez.” They shook hands.
“So nice to meet you.”
“David to coworkers and parents, and Mr. G to most of the kids. Hello, Hanna. Look at you, all ready for spring.”
Hanna barked—ru ru ru—followed by a throaty growl. Mr. G didn’t miss a beat.
“I love dogs; we’re going to get along so well.”
As they followed him into his plant-filled office, Suzette couldn’t shake the impression that he was a Latino, and possibly gay, Mr. Rogers. He wasn’t overly effeminate, but there was something in the lilt of his voice, the grace of his movements, the ease with which he moved about the School of Imperfect Children. He even wore a V-neck sweater and sneakers that squeaked on the polished floors.
So close to her meeting with Mrs. Wade—another calm and confident principal—it seemed obvious to Suzette that managing children, especially difficult ones, was a job best suited to someone with a middle-aged or older level of experience. Twenty-eight wasn’t a young age to give birth to a child, but it alleviated a bit of her self-loathing, her sense of failure, to see how much better a mother she might become by her fiftieth or sixtieth birthday. It suddenly made sense why people were so eager to be grandparents: by that point they’d achieved some level of competence with their offspring, or at least were more accepting of their own deficiencies. Even her mother had been excited to become a grandmother. She, more than any of them, spoiled Hanna with excess gifts of toys and clothing, though she’d died before the girl’s problems started to set in.
Her mother’s death remained a source of guilt for Suzette: she shouldn’t have been living alone. Her situation had deteriorated after Suzette moved in with Alex. No one was there to pick up her piles of dirty Kleenex or keep the sinks from growing a thin layer of mold. When Suzette hired a housekeeper to do the cleaning and laundry, her mother complained that the woman was a thief and fired her. She fired the two replacements as well—one for laziness, one for giving her the creeps. After that, her mother insisted that she didn’t want strangers in her house. Sometimes Suzette and Alex took her out to Alibaba’s, and they always had her over for their not-very-Jewish seders—Suzette could still taste the nasty gefilte fish of her youth—but it wasn’t enough. Her mother even once said, “I miss your cooking,” which was a complicated, overwhelming compliment.
She was still a couple of years too young to qualify for senior housing, but Suzette had started researching it anyway. Not even generous Alex ever suggested their home as a possibility for her. Shortly before she died, her mother complained of a sore throat, but Suzette didn’t take it more seriously than any other of her frequent sinus complaints. Suzette hadn’t even thought to suggest she see a doctor; eventually the infection spread to her bloodstream. Officially, her mother died of sepsis. Suzette sometimes wondered if she actually died of irony, but there was little comfort in such black humor. It scared Alex; he kept saying “That could’ve been you,” because what if her childhood illness had been fatal, not chronic? Her mother didn’t have a single, practical life skill—not even the instinct to preserve her own life. It broke Suzette’s heart.
As Mr. G led them into the Botany Lab, Hanna made a beeline to the long table covered with starter pots of tiny plants.
“Careful,” Suzette said. She considered it a good sign that Hanna seemed so engaged in the tour, but it was easy to imagine her ripping out all the plants.
“We grow all sorts of things here—beans and tomatoes and flowers—and when they’re a bit bigger you can take them home and plant them in your own garden. Would you like that?” Mr. G asked Hanna.
To Suzette’s shock, Hanna nodded.
They visited the Bouncy Room next—an open space with padded floors and big, rideable rubber balls. Hanna jumped right on and started bounding around the room.
“She seems to like it here,” Suzette said, tingling with optimism.
“All the kids love this room. It lets them work out any aggressive behavior in a safe way—or just have fun.”
Fifty minutes after walking through Tisdale’s front doors, Suzette left feeling a bit silly that it had never been on their list of prospective schools. She carried the student handbook under her arm, which included all the school policies, dress code (in fact, beer T-shirts—even fancy ones from Ireland—were not okay, though Mr. G admitted to loving a good stout), and contact info for the other students and parents. Even Hanna seemed resigned to the reality that she would join the first-grade class come Monday. They accepted everything Suzette told them about Hanna’s academic progress without insisting on any preliminary tests, and Suzette was more than glad to hand over the credit card when Mr. G’s assistant said they’d prorate the fees for the rest of the semester. Mr. G promised the school would send her and Alex daily emails for at least two weeks on how Hanna was adjusting, with suggestions of things they could say or do at home to ease her transition.
She drove to the playground a couple of blocks away and parked the car. Hanna shot out and headed for one of the complex climbing rigs. Suzette didn’t even care that she tossed off her hoodie and left it on the ground. She picked it up and dusted it off. She sat on a swing, kicking her feet along the rut as she swung languidly back and forth, and called Alex.
“I have good news about Hanna.” What a triumph to finally be able to say that. She didn’t even need to exaggerate about how well Hanna responded to the school’s carefully considered environment.
“I’m glad, Suze. This will be good for her. And you.”
The words were right, but Suzette didn’t think he sounded enthusiastic. She knew it wasn’t the school he’d dreamt of for his child.
“It’s a starting place,” she said. “She has to start somewhere.”
“No, you’re right. It’s a beginning, a good beginning. Tack, älskling. You’re a good mother, don’t forget it.”
“Tack.” And she felt it, too, in that moment. Maybe she was a good parent. Persistent. And blessed with a clarity that he didn’t have. Maybe she’d made some mistakes, but who didn’t?
He st
arted to say goodbye and she almost blurted out about waking up and finding hair on her pillow. The image that came to her—tiptoeing Hanna, with outthrust scissors—made her shiver. At the last minute she changed her mind. Alex didn’t like it when she focused only on Hanna’s mischief. She’d call Meri and see if she could see her right away—as soon as they left the park. Maybe Meri could give her a new hairstyle, restore her confidence. Maybe Suzette could still get Alex to call her beautiful.
She watched her daughter clamber on the underside of the rig, swinging from arm to arm. A strong girl. A girl who moved with purpose and wouldn’t let herself be pushed around.
Maybe she’d still grow up just fine.
HANNA
SOMETIMES SHE WASN’T sure if she remembered it exactly right. When people asked her how old she was, she was still only holding up two fingers, but the leaves were starting to change so she was probably almost three. So the memory was more or less right, and she knew what Mommy meant even then, when she was two, not-yet-three, because she saw Mommy crumbling. And heard in the silences all of Mommy’s regret.
Lunch. Must have been a weekend, because Daddy was around somewhere. But only she and Mommy were at the table. Mommy used her favorite plate, the one with three little sections with a fox, a squirrel, and a rabbit. Little bits of colorful food were in each section. Strawberry slices and grapes cut in half; yellow and orange cubes of cheese; teeny tiny carrots and crunchy sugar snap peas. Stuff she still liked to nibble on.
The only thing she couldn’t remember is why she didn’t feel like eating.
Mommy sat with her, nibbling a sandwich. She remembered Mommy kept gazing at her, but her eyes looked off, blank like the ones in the dead fish she’d seen at the deli. Hanna wasn’t sure if Mommy was really in there, so she threw a carrot at her.
