by Jean Roberta
I’m halfway to the black SUV when I finally remember to be angry.
•
The trip to the concert is awkward quiet. I can’t think of anything to talk about, so I stay silent and she concentrates on the road. The floor is at least four inches deep in old soda cans, candy wrappers and shopping bags—a garbage can bird’s nest at my feet. Every time I move, the rustling seems deafening, so I don’t. But my legs are going numb and the silence is ballooning between us.
“That’s weird.” She squints sharply ahead and I shift my weight, stirring up the litter. “The street lights keep going out.” Sitting back again, she makes a face and smiles, the light glimmering and whispering conspiratorially off her teeth and that powder she always wears.
“Oh, really?” The lights for half a block around our house have turned off and on as long as I can remember. Street lights burn cold and long in a humming monotone. No periods, commas, or breaths taken, except for the sun. When the sun rises they grumble their way into mean silence. Street lights don’t speak the way other lights do and they play games, probably to pass the time. When I was little, I thought that they did this for everyone, humming in that distracting way and lighting up only behind, never ahead, making the future a dark place you have to feel your way into. Until I found the flashlight in the back of the junk drawer in the garage and could light my own way. The old kind, chrome and glass with a hard button for Morse code signals.
I tried in the beginning to learn Morse code, but it was dull and the flashlight made fun of me, sneering through the clumsy stutter of dashes and dots. I finally made up my own rhythms, like songs, that seemed to please the ancient yellowing bulb that always took a few seconds to warm up.
One of the taillights on the car ahead of us winks at me and I start to sweat, sinking further into the giant leather seat. I click the cold metal button in the familiar pattern until hear the incongruous high-pitched giggle of the flashlight.
“Yep. Creepy cool,” she raises her eyebrows at me and smiles louder, like I didn’t hear the first one.
•
3. The blinking light is a complex mating signal. A language. Each species of firefly has its own pattern to attract others of its own kind.
•
The concert is already in motion by the time we arrive, everyone in their hipster best clogging the front door, so I hang back wishing I hadn’t come. She grabs my hand and drags me through the crowd to an enormous bald guy with multiple piercings and we are suddenly inside.
An unfamiliar band plays up front and I look away quickly from the sexy reds and blues of the stage lights to find her watching me with a quizzical look.
“Want a drink?” she mouths and I notice the noise, nodding as she takes my hand again. I swallow down the overwhelming desire to pull away. No one touches me. Ever. Not even with their eyes.
On the way to the underage bar she pauses and I pull away before she can. The room goes silent just as she is mobbed by a group of squealing, unfamiliar girls who must be her Cincinnati friends.
My arms are crossed now and I am conscious of the weight of my shoes, my feet sliding around in the too-big space of them. There is the pull of an arm around my shoulder and I am introduced in shy waves and exuberant smiles. I’m not quite sure what to do, so I don’t do anything, just stand there waiting for that look of disgust, but it doesn’t come. We are moving as a group toward the back of the club and there are a lot of questions about our high school and Lexington. Someone hands me a flask and I take a drink that is sour heat all the way down.
“What the fuck is this?” Miranda asks, horrified, after taking a drink.
“I don’t know.” A girl with stringy pink hair and suspenders named Chelsea shrugs. “I just poured a little out of all the bottles in the liquor cabinet so they wouldn’t notice.”
“Ew.” They all make gagging noises and laugh as they tip the flask up one by one before handing it again to me. Another drink and it doesn’t taste quite as bad. Miranda makes a face and smiles, handing me her soda to cover the burn in cold and sweet.
Another shot of toxic heat from the flask and the concert fades into a blur of lights and the bump and pressure of strangers and new friends dancing around and against me. It smells like perfume and cigarettes and I smile, thinking of Gran’s room, but there is something more complicated behind it: beer, sweat and something else that should be familiar but isn’t.
I don’t remember making my way to the front, but I am there, pinned between the bodies before and behind, Miranda screaming beside me. A silence in the lights and music and the flask hits my lips again. There is a faint warning wail from the dim bulb over the exit, but I ignore it.
The lights smear themselves all over me and faces bob above and around, eyeliner smudged in furry lines except hers. They stay perfect, like her eyes were drawn on years ago in permanent marker, mirroring the designs on her sleeves. The sweat smell is stronger and the crowd nudges and pushes me, but her hand is cold and direct, leading me into the soothing quiet cool of the back exit.
The alley is all dark quiet leading to the shouting explosion of the well-lit parking lot. I cover my ears and fall against the car and out of Miranda’s grasp. She laughs and there are other cars teasing around us.
Then lights ahead, red and white, winking and Miranda slips something cold into my hand, the chrome of that small flashlight I am almost sure, but it’s just a bottle.
“Here. Drink.”
Water. The light bends through the lens of it, distorting her smile as I use it to stop the burning in my throat and stomach. I’m drunk, I realize with terrified amusement. I’m drunk with a girl I barely know a hundred miles from home. Maybe she isn’t smiling, maybe it’s just the bending of the light. Lowering the bottle I see that she is holding the steering wheel, staring ahead with great concentration, but the pink and black-clothed bodies of her friends are draped over the hood of the giant black SUV.
“We’re in the park, near your dad’s house,” she says with a smile so bright, I can’t help but reflect it.
“I don’t have a dad.”
Her eyebrows tip precariously over her eyes, her head tilting slightly.
“Oh. Okay,” she says. “But you said he lives on Spruce.”
My head starts nodding before I really understand, until the websites and maps flash in my mind. Spruce Street. “Always, Glenn” written in ballpoint. Paper-colored Glenn, my most possible father.
“Oh, yeah,” I mumble trying to remember talking about him to her or anyone.
“We could go say hi,” she says, motioning toward the green Spruce Street sign nearby. But the driver’s side door opens with squeals and before I can answer, she is pulled laughing into the dark. The stereo jumps to life and I feel the car give way as I fall into the giggling arms of her friends who are shouting the words to whatever is playing.
They all tell stories about people I don’t know and I try to smile and laugh in the right places, but it hurts my face like when we have to go to my Uncle Gary’s house. There are so many people and terms I don’t know. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but they keep referring to people as “moths” and “grubs” in condescending tones. Probably, they are saying “goths” and “chubs,” but I am too drunk and tired to sort it out.
Miranda keeps looking at me through the moving silhouettes, black hair illuminated by the angry glow of cigarettes and the occasional lighter. Her smile when our eyes meet changes and I wish I was like them and could understand. Or at least if I was closer, the dim light of her smile might give something away.
The shoes are starting to hurt my feet, too much time standing in them, so I step back and lean against the still-warm hood of her car, looking up at the stars that blink bored, too old and important to be impressed by a bunch of drunk punk girls in the middle of the night. They are burning super hot somewhere billions of years ago, I remind myself, even if they are shivering and chattering ice cold over us.
Turning my cheek to the slowly cool
ing metal of the hood, I see the reflective letters of Spruce Street and slide down to the ground. My father. He would know about the science of stars and reproduction. He would do normal things like ground me for being out late and coming home drunk. Unlike my mother, he would tell the truth. There would be rules about how to behave and what was appropriate. That’s what being normal means.
The sidewalk sways and tilts under me and the night seems unnaturally bright, turning the street into a straight line as the house numbers get bigger and bigger climbing toward 1234. The street lights are a different kind of quiet tonight, a sort of black hole of silence like someone expecting an answer. For the first time I can remember, they don’t go out as I walk, they burn brighter. So bright I have to cover my eyes with one hand and I wonder what the game is now and why it has changed so suddenly.
His house isn’t any different than the other houses, really. Nice car in the driveway, sculpted hedges and the walk is edged. I think of the weeds growing up around the front walk at home and get a little queasy. The flashlight would fix things, but the cold cylinder in my hoodie pocket is just a water bottle.
My head hurts and my shadow is thick black and small in all the light, until with a last surge the street lights go suspiciously silent and dark. I stand there staring at the yellow squares of light from his house and the street light in front slowly brightens to a faint glow. It whispers something I can’t make out or maybe I don’t want to. I wobble to one of the windows and look inside, where a man sits at a long table bent over papers and I can just make out the blue flicker of a television in another room.
Stumbling back a few steps, I look into the backyard, which is littered with the soft shapes of children’s playground structures, the kind that don’t break or leave splinters. They look kind of gray in the faint light of the backyard. Their sloping plastic lines pull at my stomach again and I take a swig from the cool bottle before stepping back to the window. I can just make out his face now, his graying head, glasses perched on a thin nose as he studies the pages in front of him. Maybe he’s a lawyer or an accountant. I should have checked.
The street is completely black now except for the dim street light in front of his house. I look back at his pale features and watch his pen scratch around on the paper without a sound. He is so close I could just tap on the window or knock on the front door and ask about her. About me. The thought of talking to him makes my stomach twist and burn. I bend over taking deep breaths to keep from throwing up.
I hear it before I even see it: the laughing phrases of my flashlight blinking in the dark past of the street.
“Hey.” Her hair shines black. I walk to meet her on the sidewalk and the final street light goes black. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“How’d you…?” She clicks the flashlight off before I can finish the question and I can just make out a smile.
“You gave it to me in the parking lot for safe-keeping. Remember?” No. I don’t. “Did you see your dad?”
I think of the man at the table and his perfectly normal house, of my mother, our scruff lopsided house, the crazy street lights, and Gran’s fairy tales. What would he think of his angry, unlikable daughter in the ugly shoes? How would I ever fit into a life so compact and carefully arranged where street lights behave and flashlights don’t speak? I’ve always imagined my world as small, limited to just Mom, me, and Gran and nothing else, but looking at the pale glow of the house that doesn’t even try to speak to the street lights, I feel enormous and full of light. Too bright for this nice house, this dead end street and its darkness, to contain.
“My mother swallowed a lightning bug and I was born nine months later,” I say and smile. The heat in my gut that was so painful before turns into something else, something fluttering.
She doesn’t laugh or tell me how drunk I am. She just stands there staring at me under all that dark. Something cool slips into my hand and I think at first it’s my flashlight, but it’s her hand leading me down the driveway to the back yard away from the conspiring street lights and the silent, suspicious house. Overhead, the stars are talking again, but I can’t make out what they’re saying over the powdery, glittery sheen of her skin that shines back at me like a smile. Like an unfinished sentence.
“What?” She strips her shirt off, the collar catching for a moment around her elbows and the powder is everywhere, spattered like starlight. Her skin is divided into grays outlined in black like the playground pieces standing in silhouette between us and the house. I remember the tattoos, the patterned sleeves, but these aren’t arranged like someone meant to design and mark her, they are giant blotches of what I know even in the dim are bright iridescent colors.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Her voice is a soft bright and I can see that she is smiling now, a different sort of smile that flutters around her mouth like a candle flame.
“I um,” I say, but her fingers are working the pink buttons of my sweater and I back up clumsily into the plastic sliding board, stepping out of the mean dead weight of my shoes. “This…” I begin. My shirt peels away and cool air falls all over me. The grass is cold and wet soaking through my thin socks and she is so close now. I shut my eyes so I can’t see the glint and glimmer of her skin that must be laughing at me. The cool of her fingers slides down my back opening up that lit, burning place and everything pulls tight and then away. Her arms are around me, her lips on my neck and I am weightless, rising.
When I finally open my eyes the stars surround us, shifting and burning like fireflies, cold and quiet. But I can see them now for what they are and maybe always have been: the lights of the city seen from above where we hover, lit up ecstatic and almost too bright.
•
Sarah’s Child
Susan Jane Bigelow
Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.
In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.
I asked for Sheldon.
“Ms. Harp is here,” someone said, and then there he was. He was blond, maybe five or six, with a round face like my sister’s. He smiled toothily up at me.
I took his hand. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go.”
And then I woke up. Janet snored softly next to me.
I touched the space on my body where my womb would have been, if I’d been born with one, and ached.
•
It was a mistake to tell Janet.
“So you had a dream,” she said, crunching her toast. She ate it plain, no butter. “So what?”
She was wearing that muscle shirt that made me melt, and her short hair was a mess from sleep. Janet was athletic, butch and pint-sized, and she wore her queerness like a pair of brass knuckles. I was lucky to have her.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seemed so real.”
“I dreamed I was a hockey player,” Janet said, popping the last piece of toast into her mouth. “But I ain’t one.”
“I know.” I stabbed at my breakfast, not feeling all that hungry. “Never mind.”
She came over and kissed the top of my head. “Sorry, babe. I know it bugs you sometimes.” She put her dishes in the sink. “You aren’t gonna start asking about sperm donors or anything, right? Did you freeze yours?”
“No,” I said. “And no. I didn’t.” There’d really been no point. When I had my surgery I’d been in the middle of the divorce with Liz. Kids were out of the question.
“Cool. You gonna be okay?”
I nodded.
“All right. I gotta hit the shower. See you at the game tonight!” She headed off to the shower, humming happily to herself. She usually took half an hour in there, so I’d be long gone by the time she came out. I poked at my scrambled eggs again,
then tossed them out.
•
I went through my day in a fog. People at work asked me if I was all right, and I just shook my head mutely. Sure. Fine, just a little haunted.
I didn’t go directly home that night. Instead, I drove the half hour north to Elm Hill, and parked outside the elementary school. Class was long over, and the playground was mostly empty.
I shut the car off and got out. There was a hint of fall in the air, though the leaves hadn’t turned yet. I walked through the playground, passing by my own ghosts on the steps, by the wall, and on the baseball field. A wide, flat rock, smaller than I remembered, was out by the fence. I sat down and thought about Sheldon.
This was silly. It was just a dream. I’d had dreams about motherhood before. Pregnancy, babies, those dreams came with the hormones. Everybody had them, or said they did.
So why wouldn’t this one let me go?
I sighed. Somewhere across the playground, a father with two daughters was watching me. I waved at him, and he turned away. Dads don’t like me.
Impulsively, I rummaged in my purse and found the little reporter’s notebook I kept handy. I’m not a reporter, I work in layout and design for the magazine, but somewhere along the line I’d picked up a few of their habits.
I pulled a pen out of my purse and started to write.
Hi Sheldon
My hand shook. What was I doing? This was stupid. There was no Sheldon.
But my traitor hand kept writing.
I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you had a nice day. I used to play on this rock when I was little, like you. I hope you have a lot of friends, and that you’re happy.
Your friend,
Sarah
I couldn’t bring myself to sign it “Mom.”
My phone chimed, and I pulled it out. There were two texts there. One was from Janet, wondering where I was. Guilty—I’d forgotten her game—I texted her back that I’d be there in about half an hour.
