She licked her thumb and rubbed the crinkly paper between it and her pointer finger, trying to separate each liner from the next. Mama sang softly as she finished washing the rest of the dishes. The running water muffled the words, but she could still hear the melody. She hummed along to Mama’s song as she counted. Without the door open to the breeze, the bright sun streaming through the windows warmed the tiny kitchen, thickening the scent of the buttery muffins baking in the oven. She glanced at the timer sitting on the counter. One more minute and the muffins would be ready. She scowled at the remaining muffin papers in her hand. She had better hurry. Her heart raced as she counted, her ears straining to hear every click of the timer. Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six. The train whistle echoed faintly one last time in the background.
Spring
The distant howl of the train splits the night. Long, piercing shrieks slicing through my mind. I look up from the homework that I am trying to finish before bed and leap from my desk. Run to the window. But as I part the curtain, my fingers trembling, my eyes close shut.
Strange, how the body knows instinctually to protect itself. Eyes blinking before the blast of sand. Arm rising before the blow. The will to survive is not a conscious choice, but encoded into every cell. The body acts to defend and protect itself even against one’s own mind.
I force my eyes open to confront the darkness. The cold reassures me as I lean my forehead against the pane of glass and stare out into the frozen landscape barely illuminated by the crescent moon. We live so far from anything. Just meadows and trees as far as the eye can see. Out here, even the sound of a passing car is an event. Legions of bare fields surround me. I am an island.
The scream of the train recedes until the high-pitched whistle only echoes like an abandoned TV talking to itself in the other room. Perspiration pools under my arms, a drop rolling down the side of my rib cage until it soaks into the cotton of my T-shirt. I let the curtain fall back into place.
There are no train tracks. I know this for a fact. A conscious fact that I repeat to myself over and over again as I sit on my bed and open the nightstand drawer. Inside, there is a black journal and pen. I need to keep track of what is happening. I check my clock and note the time: 1:07 a.m.
As I leaf through the pages, searching for the last entry, my heart fists when I see all the notes. The pages are filled with my handwriting, each entry dated and notated. Some days there are multiple entries about moving shadows in my peripheral vision, clanking noises from radiators that are not in this house, but from two houses ago. On other pages, there’s just one entry, mostly about missing Dad as he traveled, but those were at the beginning of the journal. The recent entries are short, sometimes just one word, “train,” with a date next to it. By the end, all my handwriting crowds together, one entry flowing into the other like codes of data. Though I know I am the only one logging this information, I cannot remember how the pages have gotten filled. How can I have no memory of entering these notes? And now there is no more room in the journal. I stare at my handwriting and a realization forces my lips together against the nausea. There are only a few possibilities for this disorientation, this lapse of memory. And I know them as well as I know this house. I have researched extensively. The first time when I was old enough to understand why and how my mother could have abandoned me. The next time when I started this journal. But to lose track of all the entries, the compromised state of my memory . . . This is another piece of evidence that I cannot ignore.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, my feet placed firmly on the ground, I force myself to feel the frigid wooden floors. Force my thoughts, my ears to the other noises in the house. The creaks and movements, each physical sound a reminder of where I am. This room, this house, this place. My reality comes into focus.
I don’t scare easily, having lived in so many cities and countrysides of one kind or another. But a house so completely removed from any noise of civilization seemed, at first, uncanny. Only over the last few months have I grown used to this place. I know the blueprint of each room, having charted every sound meticulously, like a doctor hunting for a disease. The popping in the attic comes from a crossbeam that only moves when the wind is strong enough to dip the birch saplings in the field. A ticking from downstairs like a cartoon time bomb signals that the woodstove is cooling down and the baseboard heaters are warming up. The spastic seasonal rattle in the window above the kitchen sink has only been quiet on the most humid summer days, when the wood swollen with moisture shuts down on itself. Every little noise registers as though the house is talking to me.
I slip my cold feet under the sheets and pull the comforter over my shoulders before lying back. Though spring has officially started, winter grips on by its fingernails. My frozen hands slide neatly under my pillow, the cool envelope making me sigh. I force my eyes shut, but my mind continues to roam.
If I concentrate, really focus my mind, I can even hear, down the hall, the rhythmic, guttural exhale of my father sleeping. Not exactly a snore, but not just loud breathing. It’s the sound of a reluctant sneaker scraping
