Circle Nine

by Anne Heltzel

  But something is wrong. I look at Amanda’s back and see that it is shaking with sobs. My delightful feeling is muted by her pain.

  What happened? I say to Sam.

  Don’t worry, mija, he whispers, but I can tell he’s shaken up. It’s just Amanda being Amanda. It’ll be fine. Then what is that note of fear in his voice?

  Sammy, I say, please tell me if something is wrong.

  Nothing’s wrong, mija.

  Now he looks as if he is thinking hard. He pauses, then whispers hesitantly into my ear, low so Amanda can’t hear: I want you to come out with me tomorrow, Abby. I want you to meet Sid.

  You want me to meet your friend? I ask.

  Yes, baby.

  When, Sam? When do we go? I am so delighted, I am practically jumping out of my skin. This must mean that Sam has made a decision. He has chosen me. He is bringing me closer to him, letting me be a part of his life.

  Shhh, baby. He motions his head toward Amanda. He must not want to hurt her feelings. Suddenly, I have no regard for Amanda at all. It’s clear why she’s crying; it’s because I have won. She is no longer close to Sam’s heart. My own heart is so warm and full of Sam; it is the happiest I’ve been in so long. I am so happy that his creased brow doesn’t bother me at all. His worry for Amanda, because that is what it must be, can’t affect me anymore. Seven at night, he says. We’ll go at seven. I fall asleep after several hours of tossing and turning, like a child. And for once, my sleep is dreamless.

  We’re going to Sid’s so I can meet him for the first time, and also for Sam’s medicine. Sam asked me to dress up, to look pretty, and I am so excited for this and all it means for us that I am eager to please him. I want to look extra beautiful tonight. Being here with Sam is a cause to celebrate. Sam put on his nicer jeans, too — the ones without the holes, and the button-down shirt the man at the deli gave him as a present last month. He looks handsome, although a little nervous. I wonder if he’s worried about whether Sid will approve of me. I am wearing a pink-and-white striped sundress that Sam brought me this morning. I don’t know how he bought it; it still has the tags on it. It fits me perfectly, except in the chest. I think for my age I should have a bigger chest than I do, and it is my only big regret physically. It cinches my little waist nicely. It looks like a southern-belle dress because the skirt is so wide; if I tied a Hula-Hoop in it, I’d be a true Scarlett O’Hara. Amanda has been staring at Sam angrily all evening.

  Beautiful, Sam says to me as we are leaving, deliberately ignoring her. It has been a long time since he has given me a compliment, and I can’t help but be smug at the way he’s treating the she-witch. I can tell he is a little anxious. He’s clutching my hand tight, and it’s sweaty. I’ve never seen him like this. I know he is hoping for his medicine.

  When we arrive at Sid’s, we sit on the sofa, sipping on the drinks Sid gives us in red plastic cups. We do this for a while, and the boys make uneasy small talk. Sid’s just a normal guy, not much older than Sam or me. He’s wearing jeans and sneakers and a white T-shirt. He doesn’t look like anyone special. His house is plain inside. There’s nothing here but a sofa and a coffee table and a few empty Chinese takeout containers and a guitar propped in one corner and a cat slinking around on the windowsill.

  It’s strange that they are so awkward together, Sam and Sid, even though they’re friends. The drinks are strange, too. I thought they were glasses of mango juice at first, but now I notice some bitter taste behind the sweet. I sip until the world is hazy. I am not sure what world we are in right now. It seems like one or the other won’t stick. I lean into Sam’s shoulder and close my eyes, waiting for the world to settle. I allow my mind to drift, leaning farther into the soft leather couch cushions, as I wait for Sam and Sid to finish talking business. To finish talking about Sam’s health, so Sid and I can get to know each other. Sid does not seem like the doctors I remember from Before. I have vague memories that might have happened to me or might have been something I saw on TV, but I remember doctors in sterile offices with white jackets and stethoscopes, a kind woman who whisked me to such places the second I got a sore throat. But everything is different with Sam, and I have gotten accustomed to it. So even though it is different tonight, I am not worried. We have been out together before. But the world has not spun like this any other time.

  Their words are underwater. I don’t hear anything anymore.

  Sam is sitting next to me. His arm was around my shoulders, but now his hand is creeping up my thigh. It reaches higher, touching me tentatively, as if it is afraid. Then he is touching me where he touches only when we are both in our world, happy together and alone. It feels good then, but it is strange and foreign now. I feel another hand on me, this time on my chest. I struggle to open my eyes. I pry them open just slightly, and I see Sid next to me. I am being rude by falling asleep the first time we meet. But is it Sid’s hand on my chest, under my dress? His other on my stomach, rubbing low? I try to move, but it is as if my mind is not connected to my body anymore, as if I am not a part of any world at all and my motor functions have ceased to operate. It isn’t a bad feeling. I stop worrying and let go, float along the haze where I can feel nothing.

  * * *

  When I wake up later, I am curled up on the sofa as if nothing has happened. Sid is nowhere in sight. Sam is nudging me. He looks happy. There is a shine to his eyes that was missing before.

  Did you get it, Sam? I ask sleepily.

  Yes, baby, he says. Even though his eyes shine, something in them doesn’t look right. He carries me home in his arms. I am small, but he hasn’t been strong enough to carry me in a long time. I’m happy that he’s gotten stronger. He puts me to bed carefully, because I am still too sleepy and sluggish to do it myself. He is being especially tender tonight. He touches my hair and whispers, “I’m sorry,” over and over. I know somewhere deep down what he is sorry for, but just now I can’t place it. I only need to sleep. He touches my hair for a very long time, until I drift away again.

  Amanda’s going out. She’s slipping on a pair of shoes. They’re lovely; their fabric is a rich and creamy leather. They’re woven with a pretty space for her polished toes to poke through.

  Peep-toe, she says.

  Then something changes. Something wriggles in the back of my mind, and I rush after it and fight with it, wrestling. I halfway want it and halfway want to get rid of it. It’s a memory. I am anxious and sweaty and teeming. It breaks its way in.

  I am in a large store.

  The shoes are all around me, but not the ones I want to find. I look down for them, because it is too far to look up for faces. That’s how small I am. There are greeting cards on the shelves next to me. They’re at eye level. Women’s thighs are also at eye level, but not the thigh I am looking for. I can tell by the shoes.

  I have gotten lost. Usually I wrap my arms around her cool, smooth knee, press my cheek right there against her, and don’t let go. But somehow I have let go, and I am lost, wandering around this store, looking for my mother. I can’t think what her shoes look like, but I will recognize them when I see them.

  I walk up and down the aisles, my head pointed toward the floor. Black high heels with little gold buckles, flashy against this worn, patterned carpet. Brown loafers. Sneakers. None of them my mother. Then I see it: two feet in flat, tan, woven shoes, with a hole in the front for the toe to poke through. I lunge at this pair of shoes and grab the leg attached to them. I am safe. I am home.

  Oh, hello, a voice says. It is kind but unfamiliar. Only then do I look up. To my horror, I see a stranger’s face peering down at me. It is not her at all; the shoes deceived me! I burst into tears, and the world is black. I back away from this unfamiliar woman.

  And then there is a pair of arms around me, and I am scooped up onto her chest where I am able to bury my face in her shoulders and neck. She found me. I looked for her, and I couldn’t find her, but she came to me.

  It’s OK, says the little girl who’s standing next to her, a li
ttle older than me. She looks up at us sweetly. Don’t cry. Mommy’s got you now, see? I nod down at her, and then there is the lovely feeling that no matter what, she will always come to me. I will always be found, never alone.

  The memory fades.

  But later, even long after the pain in my head is gone, an overwhelming and unexplained guilt remains.

  It’s disgusting what you did, Sam. Amanda’s voice reverberates into the room from outside where she sits. I can tell from her tone that she’s upset. That’s nothing new, though, so I don’t pay much attention. Amanda’s always upset, even when she’s not upset. She exudes tense energy that makes her look constantly ill at ease. And she’s especially frustrated all the time with me, because I am what she calls a lethargic lump.

  And what exactly is that, Amanda? What is it that I did? Sam’s tone warns her, but I know she isn’t done. They’re on the verge of another fight. I feel even more anger in the air than I did the last time they fought. I sketch harder in my journal, and the small girl peers up at me from one unfinished eye. The scene from my memory has been haunting me for days. It can only mean one thing: I had a family once. I let the knowledge roll around inside me where it makes me feel full and sickly empty all at once. I wonder and wonder how I got from who I was to who I am, from full to empty, connected to lonely; until the wonder is too much and I give up altogether, focusing on my drawing instead. It is an incomprehensible world in which we live.

  Are you kidding? And it’s not even just that. It’s what you do every day. I can’t believe I never noticed it before, how sick it is. You use her, you bait her, you encourage her fantasies. It’s . . . She trails off. Then, more calmly, It’s sick, Sammy. Everything’s so fucked up here.

  Abby’s a thinking being. She can do whatever the hell she wants.

  But she doesn’t. She does whatever you want. She may as well be your pet, Sam. She’s terrified of —

  The rest of Amanda’s sentence is muffled by a sob.

  You used me, too, Sam.

  I never asked you to do anything you hadn’t done already.

  My hand sketches the heart-shaped face and long, curled lashes of the woman. My back hurts where it is pressed up against the stone wall. There’s a long pause.

  Then, She loves me, he whispers to her. I don’t force her to be here.

  She doesn’t know what love is. And you don’t treat her like you love her.

  I press the pencil hard on the paper, and it cracks. But not before it draws one tiny jewel in each ear. A mouth bow-shaped and meant for talking to me. Arms strong and meant for hugging me. Amanda’s voice is getting shrill outside.

  I can’t take it, Sammy! I’m leaving. And if you want me to keep my mouth shut, you’ll let me take her with me.

  Shut up, Amanda.

  You’re not going to stop me, Sam.

  He laughs scornfully. What are you going to do, huh? You going to be a hero? Save your precious little Abby from big bad Sam? You’re a junkie; Amanda, and how about the truckers in the big city? Were you too skinny? Too drugged up? Business not booming like you thought? What was it, anyway? Why’d the big plan fail, A.? Why’d you bother crawling back here? I’d love to see what you plan to do for Abby, run a tag-team operation? Make her just like you, so you can feel better about yourself? You going to be the hero here? You go right ahead.

  I’m going to tell her, Sam. I can’t keep it in any longer. I’m going to tell her what you did. I’m going to take her away from you. I’ll take her out West with me to California. It’s warm there. We’ll have a life. We’ll get away from you.

  I never asked you to come back! he shouts. We were finished! I was done with you; I found her, everything was fine. She needs me. You’re meddling — that’s all. You’re just fucking it all up. You came back and thought you’d mess with my head and things would be like always, and it’s driving you crazy that I don’t need you anymore.

  I hear an angry howl and a tussle. I really don’t like that they are fighting. My hand goes right on drawing. Then there are loud noises and the sound of cries, and now Sam and Amanda are in the room. She grabs my wrist.

  Wait, Amanda. I’m drawing. See? I show her my picture.

  Isn’t it nice, honey, she says. Now, come on with me. Then she’s pulling me up off my feet, and I can only think that she’s incredibly strong for someone so skinny.

  Amanda, stop, I say. Isn’t this one better than the others?

  Yes. She grits her teeth hard. Now, put it down. You’re coming with me right now. She rips my tablet from my hands and the paper tears, dividing the face in half. It lands on the floor at our feet. I scream long and loud. She’s ripped my mother’s face in half. I scream and scream and then Sam is between us.

  Leave her alone, he says over my shrieking. He tries to pull Amanda away but she’s too strong even for him. I’m afraid of her now, afraid she’ll take me away from him.

  Sammy, help, I say.

  Don’t look at him, Abby! Look at me! she shouts. Something inside me is waking up. Something about this isn’t right. I stand still and let them fight over my parts. Maybe they’ll divide me in two like the picture, and they won’t have anything to argue about anymore.

  Get OFF her! He screams this in her face and then slaps her, and she flies back and sobs on the ground, and I sob standing up. Then she’s running, running away from this hell, and he’s chasing her outside through the trees and instead of thinking of anything, I pick up my tablet and carefully line up the paper where it’s ripped and finish my drawing, and when I’m done, I hang it up on the wall next to the others. There is a striking similarity. My mother in this picture looks like Dream Girl. Amanda is not that girl.

  The room around me looks brighter in the last evening light and from outside, the sunset has washed away all traces of the ugliness that just happened here. It makes the stone walls glitter like a thousand tiny prisms, and I am blinded by the beauty of it all. The breeze carries in the scent of freesia, and as I soak up these very nice things, I am happy again and unworried.

  I am five or six. I am opening a gift; it is my birthday. I tear off the wrapping and toss it aside.

  Say cheese, says a woman. Another woman who looks like her, but older and wrinkled, stands behind her. She wears a fudge-smeared apron. She waggles her tongue at me and flops her fingers behind her ears, making a silly face.

  I smile at them both.

  The flash of a camera.

  I pull out the ice skates. They’re white with pink laces, for a figure skater. I can’t wait until after I open the rest of my gifts. (There is a large stack of them on the wooden table where I sit.) I slip on the skates right away. I teeter to the door, and the older woman shakes her head at the scratches my blades leave on the floor.

  I slide down the narrow pond-bank on my rear. The snow is cold through my jeans. I didn’t stop to put a snowsuit on. Then I am on the ice; I am skating, faster and faster, and the wind is hitting my cheeks in sharp painful gusts. I laugh; I am freer than ever before. I slip and I fall; I get up and do it again. I try turns and jumps. I am becoming bolder. I can’t get enough of this feeling.

  I slip and fall again. This time, the blade of my skate catches in a rut when I go down, and my ankle is twisted. I feel strong arms lift me up. They carry me back up the bank to the house, where I am deposited on a sofa in front of a fireplace. The younger woman wraps my ankle with thick gauze, brings me hot tea with milk and sugar. I am allowed to open the rest of my presents: a carousel music box, a silver charm bracelet. I love coming here; this place is peaceful, happy.

  I want it, this memory and all the rest, despite the way it hurts.

  It was an accident, he tells me when I ask where Amanda has gone. She was upset. He couldn’t control her. He tried. He says I was there. That I held her hands behind her back, and he pushed her to the ground. He says I was jealous. That I watched him press his body weight against hers. He says he was trying to make her be quiet so he could comfort her, but holding her
down didn’t work. Amanda has always been was always strong and feisty. It is was a joke among us that I am the porcelain baby, she the snorting bull, Sam the circus master. I don’t remember who came up with that joke. I don’t remember any of this happening.

  They got into a fight. Amanda has been had been edgy lately. Things were tense between Sam and me, Sam and Amanda, me and Amanda. Three’s a crowd. She told me she wanted to leave. She wanted me to come. But it’s not my fault I couldn’t. She knows knew I can never leave Sam. I can’t ever leave Sam. He knows my mind like it is his. And then she was gone into the fog. I don’t know what happened after that.

  He says he shouted her name. That he ran outside after her, and I stood just outside and watched them running, and for once, he stresses this part, we didn’t care who saw or heard us. Things will be bad, very bad, without Amanda. He tells me that, and I know it to be true because I feel it myself. She is was our double-sided tape. He says he couldn’t stop her, that she shot ahead and he found her a half mile away. There was a cluster of people around her body. He had to fight through them to see her. She was hit by a teenage boy driving a Jeep Cherokee. She must not have been looking while she ran.

  It happened, he tells me. That is what happens when you choose Circle Nine instead of staying here, where it’s safe.

  I’m not going anywhere, Sammy, I say.

  Since Amanda died, it’s as if I have been granted permission to see into another reality.

  My thoughts are confused, disordered.

  The world is sometimes perfect as it used to be, sometimes gray and bitter.

  I can’t sort it all out, so I sleep.

  And sleep, and sleep.

  That’s what we have done for most of the past few days, Sam and me.

  Today, though, Sam says we have to go. He says we have to pay our respects.