Bernadette

I’m lying on the grass in Beverly Park. It’s mostly dirt, beaten in by little league games and cookouts. The smells of charcoal, cigars, and sparklers, the way they sizzle like a cheering crowd. The heat, the humidity hugging my body. The cool stickiness of watermelon on my face and hands. The boom. The crackle. The whispers. Everyone whispering like the fireworks are sacred. Neil Diamond in the distance. “On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America.” Mom and dad, close by. Chasing my brother. Chasing with sparklers. 

“Don’t touch that side,” dad told us. I touched it. It seared my skin. Seared. That’s what that means. The hiss. I didn’t make a sound. Everybody laughed at the face I made. Dad lifted me up to the water fountain. The cool water was so soft. I felt it on my hand but not where I had burned it. I felt safe, held up at the water fountain that runs endlessly from spring until fall. Later, after all the pinks and greens and blues clapped and spidered and chandeliered across the great big Southside sky, I cried. Only smoke and the smell of sulphur remained. Sulphur always smelled yellow-green to me. 

“See the stars?” Dad asked me.

“No.” 

I really couldn’t. Then the wind blew and the smoke cleared and I could see a few, far away and blinking in the galaxy. I rubbed my eyes and they were brighter. 

“I see them.” 

They were so bright now. All of them. Fearless. 

Burn

Waiting outside for Teddy, Bernadette slipped her left hand under her shirt and mindlessly touched the landscape of her belly button. She thought about the Chicago winter they left behind, the brutality it had hit them with. The baby that didn’t happen. Teddy’s fidelity. The darkness and the cold and the nights that just turned over onto each other with no day. She wondered if she still loved him the way she thought she did before. She was hungry.

She closed her eyes and felt the warmth on her face — the California kind. It was good in the morning. Teddy came up behind her and put his arms around her waist, rested his head on the crook of her neck. Bernadette kept her eyes closed. Sun filtered through the leaves and lit their faces. 

 Bernadette exhaled. “How was the breakfast spread?” she asked, digging the bug spray out from her pack. She gestured for Teddy to turn around and sprayed his broad back, his arms splayed out like a taxidermy eagle. She pushed the trigger at a bad angle and cringed. It always felt like nothing when she hit her finger like that. Not that the sensation was negligible — it was uncomfortable — but it was like a revolt of the absent nerves on the tip of her left pointer finger where she nearly burned it off as a kid. She thought her dad would have told her to think this through more before getting into something that she might not be able to get out of. Teddy smiled at her over his shoulder, that troublemaking smile that always made him seem so young.

“I ate five eggs,” he said, seeking her approval. “The orange juice was good too. Fresh like they got the oranges from down street. Would you call this a street? You’re going to be hungry. Why didn’t you come down for breakfast? This is a really long hike.”

“Please. Tell me again how hard this is going to be. I love hearing that before we start,” said Bernadette, spraying herself now. Her face was small and round and she had dark, angular eyes that could switch from amused to accusatory if he said something the wrong way. Teddy thought about the two soft stretches of muscle along her spine. He wanted to lick her whole back. He thought about the bug spray and sunscreen she had on, and wanted to do it anyways. She would have laughed at him but she wouldn’t have stopped him. He loved to embarrass her and make her laugh in that way that showed she was just as strange as he was. It made him feel closer to her, like they were the only people out here. He grinned at her bullheadedness.

“Come on, it’s a long ride,” he said. They climbed into the Nissan Rogue they had rented with Bernadette’s points and took off for the valley where the trailheads started. They rode through the three-thousand-year-old giant sequoias with their prehistoric bark and gaping stances above the wildlife, like strong old men balancing on a crowded CTA bus, through the California black oaks with their yellow-green leaves spackling the sunlight onto their dark ink trunks and the thick groves of Incense-Cedars with their feathery, reddish bark.  Johnny Cash played. The trumpets. “Burns, burns, burns,” they sang absentmindedly and watched the billows of smoke bloom into the low clouds in the trees as they passed a sign they couldn’t read explaining the controlled fires sent down the mountain to keep the old trees healthy.

“Deep breaths here are the best,” said Bernadette as they approached a curve nearly six times the elevation of the tallest skyscraper at home. “Stop. Oh my God stop stop stop stop stop.” 

Teddy pulled over carefully on the shoulder of the mountain road. Bernadette bounced like a child in the passenger seat. They hopped out onto the gravel. Teddy followed Bernadette to the edge of the cliff. Their silence was exactly accurate for what they saw. Miles and miles of America. Unfenced. Free. The air was soft and strong across their faces. They were so far away. The burnt trees covering the mountainside looked like manmade weapons. A graveyard of morning sides and black mauls and those clubs with spikes once wielded in medieval battlefields stretched before them. 

Bernadette felt strange that they were there together, after everything that had happened, sharing the sight of the mountains that waved gently across the valley and the brilliant, open sky and the miles and miles of green where the burn ended. She was ashamed of her weakness. Of how she had almost let things fall apart when Teddy never did anything but love her in his way. It had all been in her head. She knew she loved him now, she thought. A low, slow sound interrupted her thoughts.

“Do you hear that?” Bernadette said, reaching for Teddy’s arm. His skin was softer than at home. Must be the mountain air. She knew nothing about mountains that she hadn’t learned in an Ansel Adams book. That sounds real, though, she thought. He stood up tall and scanned the area from beneath his White Sox cap.

“No,” he lied. “Let’s go.” They descended the road, surfing the tight curves with caution. The car already smelled like sweat and earth and yesterday’s rotting banana peels but with the windows open, the trees won out and steeped everything in freshness and oxygen.

****

“Bernie, hey, come up here,” Teddy called from up in the trees. Bernadette couldn’t see him but she worked her way up, using roots and steep, slippery stones to ascend the small hill. It’s a lot harder to breathe up here, she thought, taking the air in her nose, her chest rising and heart racing. She wondered how hard it would be to catch her breath when the hike got harder, as Teddy continued to promise it would. Her foot slipped on a rock, loosened by the small spring that had formed as the ice melted in the elevations of the granite rock formation they climbed. They both would have called it a mountain. She knocked her knee in the mud, caught herself on a mossy boulder and kept up the incline, swatting bugs away from her sweaty skin. Her neon Nikes weren’t made for much more than running on cement. She wiped the dirt and pebbles from her palms as she settled next to Teddy.

“Shit, that was hard. Why’d you —”

Teddy hushed her and nodded towards the woods. A doe snacked on wild grass just a few feet from the young couple. Her hide was exactly like the nearest trees, soft and fair, and her eyes — deep dark knots. After staring for several minutes, Bernadette noticed the second deer. There in the trees, Bernadette understood why deer were made exactly the way they were. Her foot cracked a twig and the deer looked up at the humans. The two pairs faced each other. 

They weren’t alone. Dogwood floated between them. Teddy felt the sweat cooling his neck and the tips of his fingers tingled. I wonder if she’s scared, he thought. I wonder if she thinks I’ll keep her safe. He looked at Bernadette. She was intrepid. She seemed so light. So far away. He put his hands on her face and neck and turned her towards him. He kissed her the way she said she liked, on the forehead with his chin fitting in her eye like a puzzle piece. He loved the feeling of her lashes in his beard. The sound of the deer tromping away was calming. Teddy pulled his face back a few inches and stared at Bernadette’s new freckles, close to his own. He breathed her in. She turned to look at the deer again. They were gone.

****

Early in the day, Bernadette and Teddy attended a session with a park ranger so they could check a box that qualified them as “bear aware.” One of the key points to preventing an encounter: keep talking. So Teddy talked.  

“When I was five or six,” he said as they climbed, “my parents took us to Lincoln Park Zoo. These two baboons were playing, running at each other, running away, hiding, just playing around. We all stood watching them. Natalie was on my dad’s shoulders. She was probably three years old. One of the baboons disappeared and the other one stopped right in front of us by the little stream. He was all sad and confused and looking around like, ‘Oh, hey, where’s my friend?’ And then the other one just barreled out from behind a boulder and launched him into the stream. We were all laughing so hard. So hard that Natalie peed all down my dad’s back.” 

Bernadette stopped short. She grabbed for Teddy’s arm but missed. The gesture made him stop laughing at his own story. 

“I hear it again.” 

“What?” 

“That sound. That deep, big sound. Don’t you hear it?”

From the false safety of the trail, they surveyed their surroundings. The sound persisted. The wind picked up and rushed through the trees, the sound converging with the roar from the rivers below them. It was the first time Teddy and Bernadette noticed that, from this elevation, they could see three different waterfalls, smoking down the mountains. Now so quiet, they could hear the falls rush like faraway traffic.  They hadn’t seen other people in at least two hours and Teddy tracked their pace to mean they might have to be out there after dark. He didn’t tell her. Tall, iron trees with superb posture pierced the mountain in front of them. Though Teddy and Bernadette were stripped down to their lightest layers, they could see snow-capped peaks across the valley through a gap in the dense grove of green needles and burnt bark. The wind blew even stronger this time and clouds moved in, obscuring their view. The sound was clear and deep. A nearly human moan, like the natural rumble of sound through a throat, yet somehow mutated, violent. 

“No,” said Teddy. “No, I don’t hear anything.” And they continued in silence. 

A few miles down the trail, when she calmed down enough to feel hungry, Bernadette took a handful of dried blueberries and cashews from Teddy’s backpack.

“Let me get some of those,” said Teddy. She liked feeding him. He was sturdy and strong and she was jealous of the qualities he had that she lacked in herself.

“You should eat more. We have a long way to go.” Teddy looked at the map of the tremendous National Park, not sure where they were on it.

“Teddy, I get it. It’s far.” Bernadette looked out passed him, noticing the change in the light coming through the dense trees.

“You ok? Want to take a break or anything?” 

“I’m fine. Stop trying to — ” Bernadette stopped herself, in an effort to refrain from telling Teddy to stop trying to take care of her. She was ashamed to recognize she would need him to, because she had no clue where they were or where they were going. What she didn’t know was that he didn’t either. “Well, up there. That looks like a good spot to stop for a minute. I can’t believe we’re still going up. It seems like we should be going down by now.”

Teddy climbed ahead. 

“Holy shit,” she heard him say from beyond the ridge.

As Bernadette caught up, she learned what he meant. The warmth of the sun on her face again after so many miles of cover sent a chill through her body. The setting sun licked the mountains in gold. The magnitude, the stone, the three thousand year old trees, the mountain lions, the grizzlies, the grouses, the deer, the waterfalls, the rivers, the clouds, the controlled burns — gold. Completely gold.

“It’s heaven,” Bernadette whispered. The wind blew and the clouds lollygagged across the great big sky and what they saw was new and different than just a moment ago.

Bernadette turned to Teddy with tears in her eyes. He didn’t ask what was wrong because he thought he knew. He thought the tears showed that she had realized what the next few hours would be. How they might not find the short-cut on the John Muir trail, how they might accidentally pick up the Mist Trail and be forced to scale down the Falls they had admired earlier, how they might not make it out before the busses stopped at ten o’clock. He was certain that, staring out at the golden-lipped mouth of America, she had to be thinking that they might not make it out. He was petrified. 

He was wrong. Bernadette was hot with shame. This would be the place, the moment in all our vulnerability to each other and to everything in front of us. If he doesn’t want to marry me now, he may never, she thought. She wanted to vomit. She bent over at the waist and took a deep breath. She resented him for his limitations and resented herself for feeling this way. She needed him and that was terrifying. What was between them was no longer in their control. And it would only get worse as it got darker. The hot orange sun seared the tops of the snow-capped mountains across the valley. The gold glowed warmer and Bernadette shivered, though it was not yet cold. Teddy held her with both arms and she felt so heavy, so present and they watched the fading light wash across the mountains and the valley and the stone, the trees, the cats, the bears, the birds, the deer, the water.

“Can I have some water?” said Bernadette, fortifying her tear-streaked face with a deep breath.

Teddy removed the water bottle from his backpack. Earlier, he had told her that he liked being her Beast of Burden and they had laughed, hearing the song in their heads. It wasn’t funny now. She took a big drink because she needed it. 

“Thanks,” she said, offering him the water. They drank the water in silence and continued walking. I can’t believe we’re going to be out here in the dark, Bernadette thought. I can’t believe I got us into this situation, Teddy thought. I have to be brave enough to not make him feel bad, she thought. I have to get her back, he thought. I have to keep her calm. Fuck, they thought, and they kept going. 

Bernadette stopped short. She grabbed at Teddy’s arm again. She scolded herself for it.

“Bernie, I know. I hear it. Just keep going. Everything will be ok.” 

“Ok? But it’s fucking louder this time,” she said, deliberately even quieter than she normally spoke, and with venom. The fear hugged them in. It kept them focused. It kept them on the path, moving.

The light began to fade. The gold dissipated and gave way to a soft lavender. Teddy paused. Bernadette took the cue and waited several yards behind him, scanning the area. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, she thought. I can’t believe this is the real world. The same world. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe we thought we could do this so casually. Fuck. I can’t let him feel like this is his fault. I just followed him without any questions. I am smarter than that. She channeled her shame into courage for him. She surprised herself. Did it matter? she wondered.

Bernadette walked quietly up to Teddy, put her head in the crook of his neck, wrapped her arms around him for just a moment. 

“Thank you. Let’s keep going,” she said. 

He recognized a sweetness in her voice. She put her hand on his back and led him in the failing light for what seemed like a mile. He returned to the lead as they approached the Falls. They said nothing as they climbed down the long, flat stones, wet from the mist of the rushing waters. These stones would make a nice patio, Bernadette thought. Gray stone for miles. The light continued to soften. Less lavender as they descended, more gray. These stones are like caves, Bernadette thought. Like condos for lions at the zoo. She looked around, the full view, the view everyone came for. All the air escaped her lungs and panic seized her body. She had to stop but she couldn’t stop. So they continued to climb down through the wet rocks, both thinking about how it looked like a great home for mountain lions. 

As they reached the foot of the Falls, the light abandoned them completely. Teddy popped on the tiny flashlight. The fear Bernadette felt when she realized they would be out there in the dark seemed like a joke now. That was nothing. This was it. They could only focus on the step immediately in front of them, the glowing circumference of two feet of pooling yellow flashlight that they had purchased for $15 before tax at the lodge shop that morning. I have to keep her calm, Teddy thought. I have to keep us on this path. How is this the path? This has to be the path. Fuck. The river ripping past them just beyond the rocks and the blank darkness kept them alert. The sound was soothing and familiar, like falling asleep to the trucks and minivans and the #49 bus whirring by on Western Avenue, safe and cool in their comfortable apartment. Teddy imagined Bernadette slipping. In his mind, one wet rock came loose and was gone in an instant. Smack. One sound as she slipped into the almighty river.

“Slow down please, Teddy. Please,” said Bernadette.

He apologized and stopped carefully on the rocky incline. He felt for her elbows to hold her still for just a minute and evaluate her calmness. The pause in forward motion let the adrenaline catch up with them. She started to breathe rapidly. Her arms felt different in Teddy’s hands, more tense. Teddy imagined himself falling. In his mind, he was overambitious. He tried to ascend two flat rocks at once but they were wet. He slipped. He smacked his head and tumbled back, knocking Bernadette over and he would have kept falling but his leg was caught in between the root of a tree and a rock. His leg twisted and broke like the tree root. The fall knocked him unconscious and left her alone and damaged. He would not leave her. And there it was again. That deep, sad moan. The loudest it had been. There was just enough light from their flashlight to notice the change in one another’s faces. 

“Let me go ahead and see what it is,” Teddy said.

“Absolutely not. No. No.” 

He looked into her eyes and nodded, holding tight to her clammy hand. They both breathed deeply, quietly and continued along the path. Teddy tossed the ray of his flashlight on the immediate distance in front of them. He swore to himself that he saw movement. 

“Please don’t do that. Please don’t dart the light around like that. Please, Teddy. It makes me think too much,” said Bernadette.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he said. What was it? He thought.  Something alive. Something fast. He could hear only the river. The moan had stopped. He slowed to make sure they were on the path still. Footprints. Shoe prints. He chose to be confident. The angle of the stones they were climbing down made his knees ache. He had sweat so much that salt caked his skin. It was getting cold. He stopped to listen. It’s back. It’s getting louder, he thought. It’s getting louder, Bernadette thought. What are we doing here? Bernadette thought. How did we get here? We like brunch. What are we doing in the wilderness? Her mind wandered and she slipped. Fuck. She grabbed Teddy’s backpack and he balanced them both still. She was furious with herself. Her eyes burned. Teddy held her still. I don’t know if I could do this with anyone else, or without her, he thought. They didn’t make a noise. The sound got louder, deeper.

Bernadette looked around. The trees seemed to reach and grab and mutate. It was suffocating. The terror of looking around and wondering was quickly replaced with the terror of looking up at the sky. The silhouettes of the trees and the mountains, certain and unmoving gentlemen, enormous, all pushed up against the sky. The stars were the closest to the wild any light could be. The stars were holes in the great big silken sky, a hot, burning hope on the other side of the darkness. They deserve fireworks, Bernadette thought. Or maybe that wouldn’t be fair to the fireworks. They could never live up to the stars. Brilliance. That’s what brilliance means, she thought.

“Teddy, look up,” said Bernadette. She watched his eyes turn to the sky.

He pulled her closer, turned off his flashlight and they stood, alone out there. He said nothing and that reminded her where they were.

“No. No let’s keep going. Do you hear it anymore?” she asked.

Still looking up, Teddy breathed in and shook his head no. He lied. He heard it. Softer but no less deep. He took her hand and aimed his flashlight ahead. His forearm was sore from holding her hand so tight for so many hours, so many miles. At this point, they must have hiked 12 miles since the sun went down. We’ve got to be close, he thought. He tossed the ray of his flashlight on the immediate distance in front of them again and caught something. 

There they were. The two deer stared at them. The light reflected back off the shine of their wet eyes. One deer tilted its head far to the right, as if rotating on a perfect axis anchored in its big black velvet nose. And then it moaned. That sound. Loud and deep, over and over and over. Bernadette squeezed his hand harder. The two pairs stood staring. They were not alone. Colossal mosquitos and other wild insects crossed the ray of the flashlight, making the air glitter. Teddy let the flashlight fall absentmindedly, illuminating a small circumference of earth and a beautiful wretched gnarled root. He lifted it back up to the deer and they were gone. 

Bernadette laughed in the darkness. She laughed and laughed until her stomach hurt and everything kind of hurt but all the air from all the laughing was good. Teddy scanned the area with the flashlight and realized they had lost the path. They laughed together and breathed deeply in the wilderness.

Aoife

Ava sat at the kitchen window, watching darkness invade her block. The streetlight outside the window flickered and failed to turn on, leaving a double gap in darkness between the lights down the hill. To Ava, it looked like all the lights might fall apart, like a necklace missing a pearl, held together by habit in the moment before they scatter. She leaned her forehead against the curtains, breathed in the perfume of dust, boxed Chianti on her breath, and the lingering presence of dinner smells, the dinner she cooked for her family and no one ate. She used to love those smells, the way the house would hold on to dinner long into the night. It made her feel safe. 

She turned her back to the window, removed her glasses and placed them on the kitchen counter. The plastic clicked on the laminate. The sound felt so obtrusive to the quiet she finally inhabited. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and rubbed the peaks of her eyebrows. Her hands felt alien on her own face.

She caught a hint of onion in the air. She had always especially loved the smell of onions being sautéed in butter. Ava’s mother was known for her lasagna. If tragedy befell anyone in the neighborhood, they could expect a week’s worth of frozen lasagnas from Rosemarie Sullivan. The lasagnas weren’t especially good but Rosemarie was reliable and loyal, two of the qualities most valued in the Irish Catholic Southside universe. Ava wondered if her mom would have had her brother deliver her a neat stack of Tupperware containers when Bridget was still sick, or if now was the time she would have felt obligated to step in with noodles and cheese and red sauce with butter-sautéed onions. 

Ava missed the unsolicited wisdom she could have relied on if she could have called her mother for lasagnas. She needed someone to tell her what to do now, now that her daughter’s cancer was in remission, now that her husband’s business was taking off, now that everything should feel back to normal. What was that, normal? The word made her feel slow-motion, like her mouth was full of peanut butter. Normal. 

Ava pulled a clean spoon out of the drying rack next to the sink. She opened the freezer, pulled out an actual jar of peanut butter and went out to the front porch. As a teenager, when her mom was sick, she had taken great solace in the time she could spend alone on the front porch before dawn with her private jar of frozen chunky peanut butter. Back then, she could house a jar a week and never feel like her ass looked like frozen chunky peanut butter. She wondered if Frank noticed she was looking different lately. The cement steps felt cold on her butt cheeks through her thin, striped pajama pants. She shivered and smirked, feeling her nipples get hard under her Mt. Calvary sweatshirt. Ava felt at the edges of her right sleeve where Maggie had chewed at it when she was a baby. She wondered if, in her tiny baby body, Maggie carried some of the pain of Bridget’s cancer, too. Kathleen, not the oldest daughter but the bossiest, had insisted that all four girls share a room when Bridget was sick. Maggie, only two at the time, couldn’t have understood what was happening, why her sister had no hair or why she hated to have her neck touched, but it had to be in all of them.  Mary Rose, Kathleen, Maggie, her and Frank. Probably even the dog. But Bridget was cancer free now. The words made her feel like a moth in an old lady’s closet. Cancer free.

The night Frank gave Ava that gray crew neck with the big white letters was now twenty years ago. She surprised herself with that calculation. They had been together for twenty years. A gush of wind rushed through the drying trees and a familiar electricity ran down Ava’s back. She closed her eyes and filled her mouth with peanut butter. The spoon clicked on her front teeth. She remembered their first kiss, how their teeth bumped together under the streetlight in the alley by the park, how Frank smelled faintly like chlorine and warm beer. 

The world seemed to move so slowly then. From the night she saw the pink plus sign on that pregnancy test in the bathroom at Keegan’s Pub, on Frank’s 21st birthday, until the day the doctors came back into Bridget’s hospital room with the words “cancer free,” life had moved at a screaming speed. They had been so good at that speed. Ava and Frank surprised everyone who had so expected them to fail. Four daughters, 12, 10, 8 and 3 - all healthy now - a dog, a bungalow in the neighborhood, Frank’s contractor business was even doing good. It all walked, talked and looked like success, like triumph over adversity even. That phrase sounded like the college essay she never wrote.

Yet lately, Ava felt like she fell in fresh cement. Time didn’t drip by in that lollygagging lightning bugs first cigarettes and kisses hand holding honeyed kind of slowness, but in a suspected affair pediatric chemotherapy bills inexorable brutality kind of slowness. She remembered that she had forgotten to mail a check to Little Company Hospital today. She would do that when the sun came up. 

Ava sat up straight. She heard a crash from upstairs inside the house, an impossible sound like a thunderclap. She rushed back inside, leaving the peanut butter on the porch, but not forgetting to lock the door. She barreled up the stairs, the dog close at her heels, and went straight for the room her girls shared. Ava had a no-knobs-closed policy so she quietly slid open the door and the egg yolk of dim hall light cracked over her four babies, all sleeping. Kathleen had crawled into bed with Bridget and covered her with all her long, skinny limbs. 

It was surreal to watch them all breathe together, their tiny bellies rising and falling as God intended, Bridget’s face flushed with the heat of a room full of sisters. After so many nights of choreographed chaos, this peaceful moment struck a chord of fear in Ava.  She heard an echo of the thunderclap, fainter this time. The girls didn’t stir, so she closed the door carefully and went to check on her husband.

When Ava opened the door to her bedroom, the dog pushed past her and assumed her spot on the floor at the foot of their empty bed. The tidiness of the bed, still made, lit Ava up. He should have been home by now. Before her full frustration could register, Ava heard the rumble a third time. This time, she felt she knew it was coming from the room that had been Bridget’s during chemo. 

Ava walked across the hallway, all her senses heightened. She felt the carpet pile under her bare feet. She felt the headache pulse between her eyebrows. She pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and felt the peanut butter on the backs of her teeth. This time, the rumble carried on. It seemed to pulse as she walked closer to the door. This knob was always twisted shut. Ava reached for it and the dog crouched down and back in a hunting posture. 

Ava threw the door open without crossing into the room, as if she stood on a cliff above the sea. The room was filled with light despite the defective streetlight outside the window. The dog ran back into Ava and Frank’s room. A warm breeze floated Ava’s hair. The rocking chair she had spent so many nights in swayed and, on it, rippled the green scarf Bridget had worn around her head when she was sick, almost like it was reaching for Ava. 

The floor creaked behind her and Ava turned. 

“Mom, I had a bad dream.” It was Bridget, barefoot in her pink pajamas, rubbing her eyes. “Can I have a cup of water?”

Ava, relieved, scooped Bridget up in her arms. She was still small for an 8-year-old, though Ava was pleased to see her daughter gain a little something in her face again. She had been such a fat, happy baby. Bridget burrowed in her mother’s neck.

“Why are you so cold, mom?”

Ava didn’t answer. She drew back the blankets and laid Bridget in her empty bed.

“Mom?”

Ava walked to the bathroom and brought Bridget a paper cup of water. The cups had tiny black birds on them and felt soggy almost as soon as you filled them. Bridget gulped back the water and burped. She smiled at her mother and shrugged, her sweet face glowing in the light from the bathroom adjacent to Ava and Frank’s room. Ava didn’t notice and Bridget felt as though she had done something wrong.

“Sorry, momma.” 

Ava shuddered and snapped out of her reverie.

“Oh honey, no, no. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s ok. Lay down now, get some sleep.” 

Ava tucked her daughter in on all sides like a mummy, the way Bridget liked, and kissed her warm forehead. She held her face there, next to her daughter’s, and breathed her in. When Bridget was undergoing chemo, she had smelled like cotton candy mothballs made of metal. Ava remembered holding her in her rocking chair one night last summer, sitting awake all night trying to pick the words that fit the smell that her daughter’s swollen body radiated. She remembered feeling a near trance-like elation, so grateful that Bridget was safely asleep for a six solid hours. Tonight, Bridget smelled sweet and sweaty and healthy. Her scent was new. The sweetness was somehow different, yet connected to the chemo smell, like that smell had taken up residence inside Ava’s nose canals up to her brain. Ava wondered if she would ever not be haunted by that smell.

She padded over to the bathroom, flipped off the light, and crawled into bed beside Bridget. Her little body made the bed so warm. The dog walked in a circle at the foot of the bed and returned to her favorite spot. Soon, the whole house settled into sleep.

A low rumble awoke Ava. She blinked and tried to focus her eyes. Immediately in front of her face, she saw a form that immobilized her. She wanted to blink again but couldn’t. It was as if Bridget’s face had been rearranged, blue and choked. Ava couldn’t breathe. The form morphed and reached for Ava. She felt the urge to riot, yet like a paralytic poison had invaded her body. She rolled out of the bed and melted down the side of it.

Ava took three deep breaths. She felt the breath whistle through her nose and distend her belly. She thought of her baby in bed with that demon, fought to her knees and peered over the edge of the bed. 

All she saw was Bridget, sprawled out in a tangle of blankets and sheets. Ava exhaled and pulled herself up. Bridget twitched and pulled at the empty space beside her that her mother had left behind. 

Ava tidied the blankets around her daughter and mummied her back into a neat burrito form that only a mother could know her child craved, leaving the left side of the sheets loose so she could stick her foot out like Ava knew Bridget liked to. She stood there for a moment, feeling relieved, and realized that Frank was still not home. She walked downstairs to see if he was on the couch. 

Ava found no Frank, but saw the dog pawing at the back door — from the outside. They didn’t have a doggy door and Ava didn’t remember letting her out. She opened the door and the dog dropped something at Ava’s feet, then sat back on her haunches, proud, like she had delivered something important. Ava bent down in the darkness, the room only lit from the streetlight in the alley behind their house. A cold current cut through the open back door and made the skin on Ava’s hands tighten as she reached for the objects the dog had dropped. She picked up a piece of cloth — green, Bridget’s green scarf. Under it, Ava saw a dead black bird. She fell back and kicked the floor to create distance between herself and the carcass.

Ava clutched her chest, collected herself and went to the kitchen to get an oven mitt with which to pick up the bird and carry it to the alley. As she walked away, she heard a sound like flapping wings. She paused, thinking that it must be a bag blowing in the wind outside. She started to walk again and it grew louder. She turned around and saw the bird, dead on the ground. Ava admonished herself for her paranoid thoughts, turned and continued to the kitchen. As she walked, her back filled her back with the sensation of sunlight. A dark shape flamed past her. The flapping sound caught up with what she saw, more furious now. The bird cut past her again, so close she could smell the death on it. It ripped out the still-open back door. Ava heard a creak in the old kitchen floor over by the stairs. She looked back, saw Bridget standing there, and released a scream worth all the screams she had been swallowing into her guts for the last two years.

She collapsed on the ground like her bones had disappeared from her body, she was just a skull with guts and skin holding them together. When she stopped screaming, she had no idea how much time had passed, she heard the front door open behind Bridget. She looked up and could only see her daughter’s silhouette illuminated by light flooding in behind her. Ava felt nothing. She heard the rumble of her other daughters running down the stairs but couldn’t see them. She sensed all their hands reaching for her and all she could see was light.

It’s morning. Ava stands in the empty kitchen, filled with the loveliest morning light. She holds a mug of hot coffee in her hands. She breathes in the steam and can’t remember making the coffee or pouring it. The dog is asleep at her feet. There’s a note on the counter. “Thank you. I’ll be home early tonight xx.” She hears the floor creak upstairs. A familiar fear fills her body but she can’t place it. She follows the sound.

Ava checks in on her girls. Bridget and Kathleen are in one bed, Mary Rose and Maggie are in their own beds. They’re all sleeping. Ava hears a flutter of wings and follows the sound to Bridget’s old bedroom. The dog is guarding the door, but she moves out of the way when Ava approaches. 

When Ava opens the door, she finds the room flooded with sunlight. The windows are wide open, the curtains flutter gracelessly, and everything is washed in gold. She feels a bird rush past her but never sees it because she is focused on the green scarf on the floor beside the rocking chair. Ava walks over, sits down, holds the scarf in her hands and breaths in its smell. She ties the scarf around her eyes, lays back, and feels the room fill with moths, the cool current drafting off their wings makes her feel so young.

Fisher Fest

You’re flying at the city. Colossal, unbreakable, all black, white and iron from up there. You’re looking the skyscrapers dead in the eye, the lake stretches out beyond the structures, mighty, oceanic — it’s irresistible. If you look straight down, your shadow passing over the neighborhoods, you see a near-perfect grid, like a chain-link fence. Look close and, on the chains, you see matchbox bungalows with postage stamp yards, linked by lawns, well cared for. You see the streets, imagining the century-old cobblestones showing beneath the cracked tar of winter’s potholes. And if you get right down in close, landing on a tree branch outside one of those bungalows, maybe shaking loose some rain water gathered there in the night as it might in the summertime, you see, in the front upstairs window, Michael Boyle splayed out like a starfish on the grayed carpet of his bedroom floor.

He stretched his long, skinny limbs wide and flat, trying to cool himself down. When that failed, Michael groaned and sat up, still hotter than he imagined anyone had ever been. He cupped the backs of his knees with his palms, brought them to his face and breathed. He liked that smell, the smell of himself. He looked out the window. South Seeley Street was wide open. The morning sky was a just lick lighter green than the shivering leaves. Rain was coming. 

Michael rolled over and snatched a St. Rita t-shirt from the pile on his floor. He took a quick whiff, decided it was fine, and pulled it over his head as he walked down the stairs and out the door to sit on the front porch.  The cement stoop felt cool and rough on his legs through his gym shorts. The hot wind swept a can down the block, an Old Style. Michael hocked a loogey two squares down the sidewalk and felt pretty all right about the distance he got on it. 

Across the street, Sully’s sister, Ava, emerged on the front porch — with those shapes. Her shapes were such shapes. Still in her pajamas, she sat down to paint her toenails. Bright purple. Her tiny boxer shorts had green bunnies on them and she wore a gray Mt. Calvary football shirt. Varsity. Her dark hair fell in her face and she flipped it back without using her hands. Shit, she was cool. The boys from the block approached and, noticing her, waited on the Boyle’s lawn. Michael’s dad came out, almost hitting Michael with the door as he tossed it open. 

“Get off the fricking lawn, you savages,” he said it straight, without yelling. The boys scattered like rats in an alley, aimlessly. Michael found himself standing beneath Ava on the lower steps of the Sullivan’s front stoop. 

“Hey boy, excited for today?” she said. 

“Yeah, me? Yeah. What?” he said, watching Sully wrestle his brother Joey in the gangway.

“Hello?” she said.

He stared at her feet. She wasn’t very good at painting her nails. There was purple all over her toes.

 “Fisher Fest,” she said. “You’re going. I mean, everyone goes.” 

Michael did not know what a Fisher Fest was. The only kids he knew who went to St. John Fisher, the next school west of his, were on his Little League team but they never told him about a Fisher Fest. He pictured the St. John Fisher parking lot filled with baby pools full of salmon, flopping for their lives. He pictured himself catching one in each of his bare hands. He pictured Sully’s sister very into it.

“Oh, yeah. Everyone goes,” he lied.

“Everyone but me,” she said. He tried to count the freckles on the bridge of her nose to distract him from how he could see her underpants because of the way she was sitting with her knees up under her chin. She rocked on her hips and he could see more than he was ready for. 21 freckles. 

“Grounded. Can’t go,” she sighed, gathering up her the purple polish, cotton balls, pink remover stuff, paper towel. 

“If I go, I’ll, like, bring you something from it or something?” Michael said, surprising himself. What? He wished he could shove the words right back down his throat.

Sully walked up, laughing and breathing heavily. Joey was gone.

“Yeah, she’s grounded ‘cause she got caught with – “ Joey ran up behind him and clocked his brother and then tackled him onto the lawn before he could finish. Michael had to know. This was the most important end of a sentence he had been deprived of since Kevin Doherty’s brother Jimmy started to tell the boys what blow job meant but was interrupted by Sister Ralph selling bags of rice for starving kids in Africa. He found that one out soon after. But this. What had she been caught with? What could Sully’s sister do wrong? 

She flipped open the storm door and held it with her hip while she settled all the things in her arms. She looked right at Michael, like a panther looking at a squirrel, then went inside. The door yawned and smacked shut. 

Next door, Mr. Doherty dropped a big white cooler off his truck, wheeled it back towards his garage. The dads were playing poker today. Michael heard him dump in dollar bags of ice from South Town Liquors — on the other side of Western, his dad told him one time, because there’s no booze allowed on the east side of Western Avenue in the 51st Ward. Fisher is on the west side of Western. Michael wondered if they would have booze at Fisher Fest. Maybe that’s what he could get for Ava. 

Michael walked back through his yard, out to the newly-paved alley where they had a basketball hoop done up on the garage. The boys shot around for a while, though both basketballs had been deflated some by the heat. The thud of thirsty leather against the cement made it feel even hotter out. 

Michael couldn’t look Sully in the face. All he could think about was Ava’s legs, bare under her boxer shorts on the porch, the lacy edge of her underpants peeking out in flashes as she rocked those tan, bare legs. Michael kneeled down to tie the laces of his knock-off Jordans. He looked down the gang way between houses and he could see her through her bedroom window, trying on dresses in front of the mirror. Her bra was pink and she wore the same white underpants from earlier. She slipped on a white dress and studied herself from different angles. Michael got to see all of them. She paused, pulled off the dress, then reached back to unhook her bra. A bug flew in front of him and Michael clapped his hands together to kill it. He held them there, down on one knee, when Sully passed the basketball to him. Michael fell forward. His chin hit the cement and busted open. The flat ball plopped next to him and didn’t even roll away.

“Holy shit, boy, you ok?” Sully said, as Michael wiped his chin with his bare, dirty arm. Blood. And gnats in front of his eyes, dizzy.

He pulled himself up, went into the house to clean himself off. He snuck into the basement so his dad wouldn’t see him. He must have, though, because he came down and smacked Michael in the back of the head before Michael even knew he was standing there. He hit his busted chin on the sink and the blood spread on the porcelain. The hurt made everything quiet, radiating from his chin out to his ears like they were filled with cotton. Michael’s father spoke but he couldn’t hear him. He grabbed Michael’s face, wiped his chin with an old towel.

“Hold it there,” he said. “You ok?” 

Michael nodded. His father sprayed the sink and wiped it down, filling the bathroom with the smell of the St. Rita lunchroom, late in the afternoon when no one was in there. Michael would’ve liked to be in the lunchroom with Sully’s sister, just alone. She never wore a t-shirt under her uniform shirt like the other girls did. He imagined them in the lunchroom, his lungs full of ammonia and lemon smell, her in just her pink bra and lacy-edged underpants, walking across the cold linoleum like it was a beach. He would watch her from across the room, like a movie. His eyes burned. His father turned to him and breathed deeply. Holding the bloody rag in his hands, he kissed his son on the top of his head and hugged him close. He gave Michael a look as if to evaluate his state of ok-ness without having to ask.

“Clean up the stairs and the yard.” He started to walk away. “Don’t let your mother see that shit.”

“Dad,” Michael said, causing his father to stop on the steps. He didn’t turn around. “Can I go to Fisher Fest tonight?”

“Who’s gonna take you?” he said, still facing the stairs.

“I’m just gonna go with my friends?” The towel on Michael’s chin bobbed up and down when he talked, making him feel like a puppet.

“No,” he said. “And don’t ask me again.” He ascended the stairs. 

All the air left Michael’s body. He pulled the towel away and felt his bare chin, half-expecting to touch the bone. It was just crusty. He grabbed a clean shirt from the laundry room and stood there, alone in the dark for a moment.

When he returned to the street, the clouds had blown away. It was so bright, he couldn’t see down the block at first. When his eyes caught up, Michael saw that block was on. Everybody was out. Someone had unscrewed the hydrant. The full force of the Seeley water supply rushed out, creaming in the street, first yellow and green and brown and then white and clean, washing away the hopscotch the Doherty girls had drawn in pink chalk. 

The two girls didn’t even notice. They didn’t bother to mourn the loss of their hopscotch, they just ran at and over and through the gushing water in their swimsuits and Velcro sandals. Their hair flipped around all wild, matted across their faces in hydrant water and summer sweat. One of them had red popsicle running down her face and arms and belly between the brightly colored halves of her watermelon two-piece suit. Michael wondered about the last time he felt that way, and his thoughts returned to Ava. He imagined that she was sitting in her room eating peanut butter with a spoon, wearing just her underpants and the t-shirt he had gotten blood on - but with no blood on it - her room filled with the smell of ammonia and lemon.

The gold light in the street streaked through the trees more precisely and the air grew a little cooler. The dusk bugs began to buzz. Michael’s second shirt of the day clung to his sweaty body. He set out to find his dad, flapping his shirt to try to generate a breeze. He spotted him. From the end of the Doherty’s gangway, Michael watched his dad gesture to the table to offer for a round from the cooler. He stood on his hind legs like a bear, self-conscious about his balance. Two big fat raindrops plopped on the street. It was still sunny and the wet street glittered like the yellow brick road.

“You get something to eat, hon?” Michael’s mom came up behind him. She held a plate of pink and green Jello-O and pasta salad. The contents slid around on the waxy plate. It was for his little brother, who stood close at her side. “Patrick’s gonna eat. Why don’t you sit with him on the porch and have a hot dog?” 

Michael knew he had to play all the right moves, so he agreed. He went inside but bypassed the kitchen for his bedroom. He had $64 dollars hidden in his sock drawer that he had saved since his First Communion. Michael jammed the crisp, untouched bills into his pocket and ran back down into the kitchen. He got some grapes and a hot dog from the paper plates his mom had set out. He thought maybe, if he got there early enough, there might be a game he could win to get a stuffed animal at for Ava. From her shorts — she liked bunnies? He wondered.

He returned to the porch.

“Where’d you go?” Patrick said.

“Shut up,” Michael said. 

“Wanna play egg toss?” Patrick said, pushing his pasta salad around on the red and white paper plate with his clear plastic fork. The oil from the pasta salad picked up a hint of a rainbow on the plate.

Michael said nothing.

 “Wanna play catch?” 

Mom smiled at the boys from across the street, smoking a not-so-sneaky cigarette with ladies from the block. 

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s play catch, Pat,” Michael said, setting his plate down. 

He grabbed a football from under the porch and the boys tossed the ball across a few lawns. Patrick struggled to grip his hand between the laces. Back and forth and Michael thought of how Ava’s hair might smell. Like grape pop and girl sweat. She would probably like the bunny if he could win it. Michael focused on throwing the football in a perfect spiral. He might win the bunny that way. He finally heard his dad laugh, that big belly laugh that shook the house when he drank shots in the kitchen with his brothers and Michael knew it was now or never. Pat tossed the football back his way as the late afternoon light faded more in the street. Michael grabbed it, squared up, settled his fingers back in the laces and spiraled the ball as far as he could. It turned and turned and turned and Patrick turned his back to his brother and watched it crash into the Doherty’s bushes. 

Michael was gone. He ran down Seeley so fast he could swear his heart beat him to 103rd Street. He flew. His gym shoes hardly hit the cement. Around the corner, he turned onto 103rd Street, emerging from the quiet side streets between his block and the traffic of the next busy street. Cars whipped by, cut the air. Michael kept running west and, as soon as he hit Hoyne, he ducked into the alley and worked his way towards Fisher Fest.

He had failed to find out what Fisher Fest actually was. Still, Michael was certain that he had to win the bunny in the football toss and bring it home for Ava. Hoyne, Hamilton, Leavitt, Bell. The alleys echoed the sounds of a summer dusk. He could hear the Cha Cha Slide from the block party on 102nd and Bell. As he reached the cross streets, Michael checked to make sure no aunts or uncles or cousins or neighbors might be there, sipping a Miller Lite and Cha Cha-ing real smooth, trying to get funky, ready to get in his way. He checked left, checked right – Uncle Dan was out on his lawn, watering flowers, his Pyrenees mountain dog Santa breathing heavy in the heat, looking like the saddest polar bear in Chicago. 

Michael had to make a run for it. A raindrop splatted on his eye. Why was he watering his flowers? No time. With a deep breath, Michael sprinted across Bell, through the alley, and out onto Oakley. No one would know him there. He walked in the shadows down Oakley, showing his pre-braces teeth to every squirrel and bird that dared cross his path. 

At 101st Street, he crossed west of Western and looked down the busy street at all the bar lights, shouting and shining in the purple of early night. 

“Hey yo! Hey man!” he heard and jumped behind a parked Buick, scanning the area. Two men shook hands outside McNally’s bar. One of them was Jean Jacket Rogowski, Michael’s neighbor across the alley who drove a van around picking up the neighborhood’s dry cleaning. Michael breathed deeply, smelling his sweat and that dirty, fresh smell of being outside all day, liking it, and watching the orange of the guys’ cigarettes glow from down the block. 

He continued on his way and reached the park quickly. St. John Fisher was only a few more blocks and he would have to cut through the park to get there. He approached the night softball league crowd with confidence, focused on his goal. 

As he got close, a car passed the playground, washing the orange and blue slide in light and there she was. Sully’s sister, Ava, standing in her white dress and at the top of the slide. Michael heard her laugh. He thought she was grounded and seeing her at the park confused his plans. Would she even care if he brought her the bunny now? 

Michael shoved his hands in his pocket and played with the $64, the bills now soft as a puppy’s ears. He imagined what else he could buy her - maybe a boat? - and he wondered if it mattered. Another car swept passed the playground, washing Ava in light again. Michael could see the straps of her bra — blue. Not pink. He had missed something.

“Oh my God, hey! Hey boy!” she said. 

He looked up. He felt full-body, girl-attention paralysis. Ava waved at him, gestured for him to come to her. She held a bottle of red Gatorade in her left hand and used her right to swing her light body into the tube of the slide. Michael stood on the other side of the fence that surrounded the playground and watched her emerge from the glowing ring of the slide, a flash of white skirt and legs. He curved his fingers into the fence and felt the green rubber that had survived on some of the links. She inched herself to the mouth of the slide after losing momentum and laughed when she reached the edge and her bare skin made a fart sound. She rocked her legs off the end. Her feet were bare and her toes, purple. Michael didn’t care where her shoes were.

She hopped down and walked towards him.

“Hey what are you doing at the park right now?” she said.

Her skirt flashed up. 98 freckles.

“Going to Fisher Fest?” she said. Michael couldn’t believe she knew him off the block. As she came closer to the fence, Michael could see her hair sweated to her face. Her lips were dry and she licked them, biting the bottom one as she leaned her forehead against the fence. Her breath was hot and sweet and bad when she laughed. He could smell the vodka in the Gatorade bottle. Lemon.

“Hey boy, what are you doing here?” she asked again, leaning into the fence with her body, her shapes. Her girl shapes, so close to him. She hung her arms on the top of the fence and swayed her body back and forth, leaning closer to Michael like laundry on a line. She leaned in and bumped against him through the fence. She was warm and soft. She dropped the bottle and it splashed red everywhere.  She tried to jump back but she was slow and she fell into the fence. Michael tried to catch her. Ava’s back against his arms, with the fence between them, was like butter on hot corn. She laughed again and turned into the fence, slinking down it until she was sitting in a pool of Gatorade and vodka and woodchips and body butter. She pulled her skirt up to show him through the fence how sticky her legs were. Her legs. They were strong. Tan. 

“I was going to —“ he started, but she reached her fingers through the fence to touch his lips, shushing him. With her salty vodka fingers jammed through the links in the fence, held against his lips, she looked around the park and leaned her whole weight against him. Their faces were so close. 122 freckles. He breathed her in. She smelled sour but like she would taste like glitter too. She tilted her head, her mess of hair falling beside her face. 

She grinned and said, “Listen.” The whole world stopped. No traffic. No softball. No cicadas. Just Sully’s sister. Ava. “Everybody knows about the rainbow banana.”

She cackled and her girlfriends ran over to find out what was funny. All the sound rushed back.

Michael leaned back from the fence. He shoved his hand in his pocket, rubbed the soft dollar bills together. The girls gaggled together, whispering. He watched their shapes, bumping and swaying. Gnats swarmed above them. The park sprinkler, a smiling plastic whale, spit at them. The sound of the water on the cement could have been the gnats, applauding with their tiny gnat hands. 

 He took off. Slow at first. But as he ran west, Michael ran harder than he thought he could, harder than he had on his way to the park, harder than any baseball game ever, harder than the heat. As he swoomed down the street, his ears filled with the night and he thought he could still hear the girls back on the playground. The sirens of the cicadas began to moan as dusk fell above the treetops, swaying in the slow, thick breeze. The darker it got, the greener it became. And the cicadas. No one expects them to be there in an off year. 

Michael looked ahead down the street at the dark greenness and fireflies. A little boy rode a white cooler strapped to a motor-scooter down the middle of the street and another kid chased behind him with three flashlights like maracas. Michael turned his head to watch the flashlights down the darkening street but continued moving forward. A crack exploded in the alley and Michael stumbled. As he fell towards the cement, the streetlights flickered and then hung on, humming. The crack boomed — a firecracker — and spidered smoke in the purple sky, now darker, sizzling.  His flesh tore on the street, gravel digging into the heels of his hands, his forearm, his right elbow. He could hear nothing but his own heart in his head. He laid out, facedown on the street and craned his neck up. The American flags on the front of every bungalow hung motionless. He thought of Sully’s sister’s legs. He should’ve counted those freckles. Michael felt cold water touch the backs of his knees and he thought it had finally started to rain but when he rolled over onto his back, he realized it was only a sprinkler.

Your Body is Mighty and Beautiful and Yours

YOUR BODY IS MIGHTY AND BEAUTIFUL AND YOURS

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.”
— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Madeleine slipped a purple plastic yo-yo into the pocket of her scratchy plaid jumper and slid out the back door of the toy store into the alley. The cold air carried that dusty smell, like just before it snows, but mostly it smelled like pee. Facing the toy store door, the name WONDERCHILD painted on it in yellow block letters, Madeleine kept her hand in her pocket, feeling the smooth spaceship shapes of the yo-yo, the strong string, and the shriveling bit of orange peel she kept in there for good luck. The sacred disc beneath the yo-yo went undetected.

She moonwalked backwards, making sure no one had seen her, and backed into what she realized was somebody’s body. She held her breath, twisted on her heels and looked up. Mr. Wonder, smoking. The end of his cigarette, a hot amber against his gray skin and the gray sky. She never could figure out why a toy storeowner wore a lab coat. 

He grinned down at her, his hands in his slacks’ pockets, his cigarette stuck to his bottom lip, flat and pink on the bottom of his face. He took a deep, crackling drag, flipping the amber end up towards his hook nose, then reached up, peeled the cigarette loose and offered it to her. She let go of her held-breath, but couldn’t say anything. He slid closer to her. She inched back. The salt crunched beneath her shuffling school shoes, making a sound like a slow, sad tambourine.

Maxing out her inch-back space, she felt the cold brick of the building on her legs through the thin pajama pants she wore beneath her jumper. A bus stopped on the street out in front of the store. Madeleine longed to be on that bus. 

Mr. Wonder leaned his right arm against the brick of his store, bringing his body just inches from Madeleine. The wind blew and his lab coat flapped and brushed across her dry lips. He smelled like her brother’s hockey bag and gyros and ash. Hand still in her jumper pocket, Madeleine rubbed her finger in the space between the two halves of the yoyo, praying she could rub it out of existence.  

Getting out of bed this morning was for real impossible. Madeleine knew her Mom was working the early shift because Dad woke her and Finn up like he always did: walking through the house in his work boots, turning on all the lights and fans, including in their bedroom. Cool darkness and the alien splendor of plastic stars and moons above Madeleine ’s bed were replaced with hot light and the blast of the dusty ceiling fan. Madeleine pulled her uniform on under the covers, then pulled her doll close and tried to remain in her dream.

Just before she woke up, Madeleine had been on the moon with Nicky Quick. Walking the dog on the moon was even easier than at home because: no gravity. They both had two yo-yos going. Nicky chewed a chunk of moon like gum. Madeleine knew it tasted cold like vanilla mint mixed with the white juice inside glowsticks. She could see the brilliant pulse of real stars through the transparent plastic halves as they whipped the yo-yos around in space like total pros. A Christmas tree blinked colored lights on the horizon, just before the drop-off of the curve to the other side. The moon felt spongey beneath her bare feet. Madeleine bounce-walked to the edge of a crater, trailing crushed-sugar footprints and moonsprays behind her. Inside the crater, she saw millions of yo-yos, blue, green, red, orange, gold. They glistened in the glow the moon gave off, almost as if the yo-yos were shimmying around in there like fish. She wondered what it would be like to jump in and swim backstroke in the yo-yo crater like Scrooge McDuck in his piles of money when something unimaginable geysered up from the depths of the crater. Curls of color floated away from Madeleine, with the sound of plastic clacking like thousands of heeled women walking up a church aisle, so loud against the quiet of outer space. She wanted to fall back asleep, to understand the flash and what happened to Nicky Quick and all those yo-yos out in our universe. Before she slid on her white uniform socks, she checked the bottoms of her feet to see if they were blue. 

Peter Pan collar blouse: buttoned. Itchy plaid jumper: zipped. Hair: pony-tailed. Teeth: brushed. Socks: on boring white feet. Madeleine wondered if toothpaste was free on the moon, since you could probably just smoosh your toothbrush into the ground and when you pulled it out, it would be covered in blue, glittering peppermint goo. No amount of free moonpaste would save Madeleine from tonight’s doom. She had to find something to confess at her First Reconciliation because lying to a Mexican priest had to be the quickest way to hell. And if she didn’t come up with a real life sin by tonight, she would have to live the rest of her life knowing she was going to burn for eternity. She had only gotten in eight years so far but she thought life was pretty ok the way it was and eternity sounded terrifying, even without the fires of hell.

Dad breakfast was always a secret treat. At the kitchen table, Madeleine found waiting for her: one orange, peeling jump-started by Dad and a half-eaten pink frosted donut. Finn sat across from her plate, pink frosting on his chubby face, which was haloed in a furry hood and hat. Coat and boots on, red mittens clipped to the ends of his coat sleeves, Finn ready to go. He stared at a particularly meaty booger that he pulled like taffy between his pink finger and thumb. Madeleine, appetite now victim to little brother-grossness, politely said nothing, picked up her orange, breathed in its smell, and pocketed a piece of the peel for good luck later. 

She put on her coat and tried to leave before her dad noticed she had skipped her donut. As she stepped out the side door, a sharp wind made Madeleine realize she had failed to put shorts on under the pajama pants she sported beneath her jumper. She grew very much aware of the way her butt cheeks felt in the cold, with only the protection of her seriously out-dated Little Mermaid underpants.

“Maddie,” her dad called from the cracked kitchen window. “Straight home from school today. Walk your brother to the door, no dilly dallying. You gotta help clean for tonight. Everyone will be coming over for beef sandwiches and mostacholis after your Penance.”

Madeleine looked down at the spider-web ice beneath her feet and thought about the moon crater. Her dad stuck his big noggin out the window. He worried about his youngest daughter. Of all his kids, he felt he needed to protect her more, show her that the world can be a dark place. But for now, he wanted to keep her safe, shrouded in sweetness. He hoped she’d play with dolls until she was 32.

“Yeah, Dad?” 

“What was that?”

“Yes. I said yes, Dad.”

“That’s right. Yeah is for friends. Yes is for your father.” He paused. She turned her face up towards the window. Her ponytail felt cold against her bare neck. Her dad nodded and she raced back to the side door. He met her there, kissed her atop her head, zipped her coat up to her chin and handed her a hat.

A hand-me-down, the hat had lived too many days in the bottom of a big brother’s hockey bag. Far enough from the house, Madeleine shoved the pilly green knit thing into her backpack. 

Nicky Quick walked the dog on the way down the hill. The sound of The Brain inside his premium cherry red yo-yo whirred as he whipped that weighty piece of plastic around with his thick, soft hands. He barely even had knuckles. Madeleine pretended to ignore him as they walked towards school. She recited the Act of Contrition in her head for the test this afternoon. Artfully sorry? Heartfully sorry? Partly sorry? Sister Marie Ralph had given warning that she would test them today, so they wouldn’t embarrass her in front of the Mon Señor  - Madeleine  guessed he was the Mexican priest she had heard about - when the time came for the First Reconciliations tonight. Nicky tossed the yo-yo into the air and it came down hard on Madeleine ’s hatless head. Finn laughed into his mittens.

“Oh shit, sorry Maddie Murphy,” he said. She turned at him. “Fuck you,” she could say. That would give her something to confess. But she thought of the taste of Dial last time she told Finn to shut up and original sin and all the dead babies in Purgatory and decided against it. Her face fell soft in defeat and then narrowed in a burst of genius. She knew what she would do to find something to confess. She spun on the salt beneath her saddle shoes and continued on her way to school, listening to Nicky Quick do his tricks and try to rap but never getting the words right. It’s the remix to contrition, hot and fresh out the kitchen. Mama rolling that body got every man in here whipping. Whipping out. Finn’s backpack sounded like a drum as he chased after them, pencils and empty folder bobbing around inside, keeping Nicky’s imperfect beat.

Madeleine walked Finn to the kindergarten line as her dad had asked, then joined her classmates, who lined up outside the first through third grade doors on the west side of St. Dismas. The February air cut through the plaid pajama pants she wore beneath her plaid jumper. She looked down at the salt patterns on her saddle shoes, wondering how everyone didn’t go to hell. Kicking at the broken sidewalk, a hand-drawn image of Satan from the Saints Alive! video series made her question the yo-yo plan she had just come up with. He had oil-black eyes that feathered like a raven’s wings, a hook nose, bone-white knots blooming from his bald, grey forehead. She examined her conscience, especially considering the mortal conundrum of being asked to remove her pajama pants in a few minutes, to comply with dress code. The bell rang and the children filed in. 

At her locker, Madeleine pushed aside rolls of paper towels to hang her pea coat and backpack. She pulled at her pajama pants and decided to keep them on. The ends of the pants were ragged, wet and salt-white. 

“Madeleine Murphy, please recall dress code,” said Sister Ralph from across the room. How did she know? Madeleine felt the divine power of those pants as she slipped them off from under her jumper and tossed them in the bottom of her locker.

Her lockermate, Samantha Wu, arrived just as the second bell rang. Sam lived across the alley from Madeleine, just up the hill from school, but she was always late. This morning, her straight black hair was frozen into chunks, her highly-coveted Orlando Magic Starter jacket unzipped, her cheeks and bare legs flushed. As Sam clanged her backpack into their locker, taking her seat at their four-desk table, Madeleine could smell the cold on her. 

“Sam, pssst, Sam,” whispered Nicky Quick, leaning across his desk, kiddie-corner from Sam’s, directly across from Madeleine. Sister Marie Ralph put Madeleine at a table with four hooligans, she said, because she was to lead by example. Madeleine shrunk at that table. They almost never got the colored chalk when they practiced cursive because Sam, Nicky Quick and Breea “DaBoss” Fullilove were always in on something.

“Sam, lemme touch your hair,” Nicky Quick said, reaching across their desks.

Principal McKenna coughed over the old loudspeakers.

“NO.” Sam leaned back and scooted her chair away from her desk, towards the radiator, the temperature and color of old lunchmeat like everything in St. Dismas.

Sr. Marie Ralph, sitting at her mint metal desk beneath a bronze crucifix with serious wounds, shot them a look. 

“Table six. Watch it,” she said, returning her gaze to her graph-paper grade book.

Nicky Quick plopped back in his chair. The padded feet of it clapped against the faux-marble floor. Sam grinned at him, pursing her lips, still purplish from the cold. Principal McKenna read the morning announcements but Madeleine didn’t hear any of the birthdays or who scored in last night’s basketball game against St. John Fisher. She stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, hand over heart, but couldn’t even mouth the words. Blue eyes fixed on the crucifix above Sister Ralph’s desk, all she could fit in her 8-year-old brain was yo-yos and the blood of Christ. 

As the class returned to their seats, with liberty and justice for all, Nicky Quick reached across the desks, grabbing at Sam’s defrosting hair, which had melted a little, creating a puddle under their desks. Madeleine stepped out of the way, slipped, and fell back into the radiator. Her jumper flew up, showing the whole class those Little Mermaid underpants she had failed to cover with shorts this morning. 

She stayed there, on the floor in the puddle of Sam’s frozen hair water, as Nicky Quick and Samantha Wu scuffled. Breea whooped a big bossy laugh. A chunk of black hair fell into Madeleine ’s bare-legged lap. With a deep breath, she swept it aside, fixed her skirt, reached into her pocket and rolled the orange peel on her thumb like a rosary bead. 

Madeleine flipped the lock on the stall and let the tears roll down her face. She breathed deeply, taking in the salty tears and the smell of the pink lemon powder cleaner that the janitors used on barfs. 

“Somebody crying in there?” Madeleine knew it was her cousin Lucy. She did not know how she had heard her. Ashamed, she stepped out of the stall.

“Maddie! What’s the matter with you? Did Nicky Quick tell you there’s no Santa Claus or something?” That was the first Madeleine had heard that Santa Claus might not be real. 

“No,” Madeleine said. “I slipped in a puddle. Hit my head. I’m ok.” Lucy stared at her little cousin. Madeleine looked everywhere but at Lucy. There wasn’t much to see.

“We’re coming over tonight, after your thing,” Lucy said, munching on something from her skirt pocket. Girls in grades higher than fourth wore skirts instead of jumpers. They also used the upstairs bathroom but Madeleine didn’t want to ask questions.

“Hello? Earth to Madeleine?” Lucy pulled something out of her pocket and held it in front of Madeleine ’s face. “Body of Christ?”

“Lucy! You can’t have Communion in your pocket! I can’t eat that. I —“

“Cool it, loser. It’s a good snack. Part of my diet. Whatever.”

Madeleine could not worry about that right now.

“Lucy, do you know any sins I’ve done?” 

“Maddie. You are, like, a baby angel kitten pie. Your only sin is probably like forgetting to brush your teeth.” Madeleine always brushed her teeth.

“What do I say to the Señor though?”

“Whatever, just make something up.”

“What did you say at yours?”

“Oh, God. Taking the Lord’s name in vain; forgetting to say my prayers; skipping Mass so I could go all glutton on some French toast with Captain Crunch in it; telling my mom to shut up; telling my brothers to shut up; looking at porn on Kristi Quick’s cell phone; stealing cigs from Charlie’s. Whatever.”

“The last thing —“

“Porn?  You’re too little to see porn still, Maddie.”

“No, the stealing.”

“You are so not trying to bum cigs from me in the bathroom, second grader!”

A group of other 5th graders gathered outside the bathroom window. Madeleine could tell Lucy was paying more attention to them than to her.

“No just I thought maybe I could steal a yo-yo from Wonderchild and then I would have something to confess.”

“Yeah, whatever, sounds like a great plan. Good talk, Maddie. See you tonight after your thing.” Lucy hugged her, slipping a Eucharist host into her jumper pocket and cracking herself up at thought of her sweet little cousin discovering this object of sin while trying to learn about God’s mercy from that lesbian, Sister Marie Ralph. Also, she thought it might give Madeleine something to confess.  

Madeleine returned to class. Sister Ralph was writing the word GRACE on the board, her arthritic hands as powdery as the chalk she held. She had already written the word CONCUPISCIENCE. Madeleine sat down and her table-mates snickered. While Sister Ralph talked with her back to the room, spitballs flew and Foster Brown moonwalked in place at his desk. “FOSTER BROWN,” Sister said, disrupting her lecture. Foster collapsed in his chair like a clipped marionette. She continued.

Madeleine sat with her hands folded, as they were taught that idle hands are the devil’s something, whatever it was, she wasn’t taking any risks. Trying to listen, the word light took Madeleine back to the beam in the crater. She wondered what it could be? She remembered the tree in the distance and thought about last Christmas with Grandpa Marty. He had been a cold man, quiet, far away; good for calling with social studies homework questions, but even that was pretty scary. That Christmas had been the only time Madeleine remembered ever hugging him. 

Everyone else was laughing in the front room and Grandpa Marty had found her in the kitchen, alone, trying to stack oranges. One stray orange rolled off the kitchen table. He picked it up and carried it back to Madeleine. He set his drink down and they wordlessly built a tree out Tom Collins straws and oranges. Their hands grew sticky, so Grandpa Marty lifted Madeleine up at the kitchen sink and helped her wash her hands. The soap smelled like Christmas trees but it couldn’t mask the oranges. Standing beside the steaming sink, Madeleine looked up at her grandfather, the stern old man, and he smiled, revealing a crescent of orange peel where his teeth should have been. 

Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around his middle. She surprised herself but didn’t pull away. He felt softer than she expected, warmer. He bent down to her level, removed the stretch of peel from his mouth, and offered her a peeled orange with his other hand like a magic trick. They sat on the kitchen floor and shared it, making up a story together about the wedges as spaceships and the peels as the key to living forever. 

Madeleine walked home slowly. She wrestled with her decision. Going to the toy store seemed wrong. Not going to the toy store seemed wrong. Finn and his friends played cowboys, parachutes and aliens on the hill ahead of her. They were almost in front of their house. Nicky Quick flipped his yo-yo in a huge Ferris wheel circle over the little boys’ heads. Kristi, Nicky’s sister, giggled at something on her phone with Lucy. The screen bleached their faces blue. Madeleine turned and took off.

Back against the building, Madeleine’s ponytail stuck to the brick like Velcro. She rolled the orange peel with her cold, bare fingers, knocking her knuckles against the plastic yo-yo. She feared that he could hear it. She feared that he could hear her heart beat beneath her jumper. Mr. Wonder leaned closer. His grey face was pocked with craters.

“What color, honey pie?” 

She tried to look away but he took up all the space in front of her eyes.

“Lemme guess,” he said, kissing out smoke clouds in circles like a Cheshire Cat. “Purple, like your pretty little eyes.” Madeleine’s eyes were blue. She liked her blue eyes. Her mom and Grandpa Marty had blue eyes too. Madeleine closed her eyes, hoping her blink would stop time. She imagined that Mr. Wonder wore the lab coat so he could cook children’s eyes until they were all purple, like the yo-yo in her pocket, without splattering eye goo on his wrinkle-free short-sleeved man blouses. She imagined him in the basement of his apartment building by the train tracks, shelves stacked with jars of purple eyeballs, watching him, begging him to take them. He’d smoke a long, rubber cigarette. It would have a loop-de-loop in the middle and the smoke would come out glowing. He stirred a copper pot and in it was only light.  

He bent down to her level and, crouching like an animal, he pushed her hair out of her face. 

“Ok, kitty cat, we can wait all day.”

Madeleine unfolded her coiled fingers, expanding her clammy hand in her jumper pocket. She was surprised to feel something round, delicate and crisp. With her thumb, she rubbed the face of the object. She felt the grooves of a cross in it and remembered Lucy, snacking on the body of Christ in the St. Dismas lower grades’ girls’ bathroom. A rusted-out Crown Victoria rolled by the edge of the alley, cracking the ice and filthy snow.

“You know what, we can’t wait. What’s in your fucking pocket? What are you so ashamed of that you won’t take your tiny little pink fist out of there and hit me?”

Madeleine pulled out the host. She held it up in the narrowing space between their faces. Then, she closed her eyes and tried to conjure Christmas oranges on the moon. She looked up.

Mr. Wonder, smoking.

Madeleine put the host back in her pock, took out yo-yo out and handed it to him. She turned and walked away with nothing to be sorry about. She felt like she had moonbeams firing from her every bend.