Nora & Kettle by Lauren Nicolle Taylor Page A

my knee and scoffs. “Don’t be dumb. I mean, up there in one of those brownstones.”
    I ignore him, thinking about the sky. How it’s temporary. It gives promise, but it also takes it away. That’s why I like to be up there, flying through the air on a container… but it’s also why I like to land.
    Kin nudges me. “Hey! Are you even listening to me?”
    My eyes droop heavily like they’re hooked to weights. “Sorry, just tired… No. I don’t think I would like to live up there. Besides, we’re doing okay, aren’t we?”
    It’s a lie. Of course I would like to live in a proper home, have security, food, warmth. But that’s not my life. It’s never going to be my life. This is better than where I was before and it’s probably all I’m going to get, so it has to be enough for me. I sigh and smile. It is.
    “One day,” Kin whispers. “One day, I’ll get up there. Maybe I’ll marry that pretty little thing we bumped into at the cake shop…”
    I chuckle quietly. “Don’t you think she was a little young for you?” I tease, thinking of the lively redheaded girl who snapped his suspenders. She looked like she had firecrackers in her eyes and hands made for mischief. I liked her.
    I get a clip over the head for that comment. “Don’t be daft. I was talkin’ about the blondie. The one with the rosy cheeks and haughty attitude.”
    I’m about to say, I don’t think she was haughty, just… protective and a little sad, but I don’t feel like sharing what I gained from our brief exchange. I shuffle closer to Kin for warmth as the night really starts to take hold and the stones bleed ice into my back. Let him have his fantasies. “Good luck with that!”
    “Luck? I’m too handsome for luck to play any part in our inevitable union.” His arms shoot out from his sides, and he starts gesticulating as he winds his way around to some sort of point. “You know what your problem is, Kettle? You…”
    I ‘mmhmm’ and nod and let him prattle on for the next half hour about how I need to relax, I’m too responsible, I need a woman’s touch, etc… etc, until he’s run out of words. Slowly, his breathing calms and so does mine. I drape our coats over our legs, keep my bag tucked between us, and drift off to sleep.
    ***
    My dreams are wishes. My nightmares are truths.
    There’s a song playing in the background. Strings and halos of music hum against rice-paper walls. Her voice is so soft and soothing. Her black hair pinned tightly to the nape of her neck balloons with weight and thickness. She scoops water from a bucket with a wooden ladle and pours it over my head. I shiver before it touches me but smile when I realize it’s warm and smells like jasmine. I hold my chubby two-year-old hands out in front of me, giggling as the water pools and pours away.
    A sucking sound, like water pulled down the drain, overpowers the music. Rice paper tears. A man yells ‘haji’. She grows smaller and smaller, her back rounded and smooth as a stone. She curls into a ball on the floor, bowing and apologizing as I stand there, dripping wet and crying. A towel is thrown around my shivering body and I am gathered up, pressed against the chest of an old man. An angry man. He says nothing but haji—shame—over and over again.
    Distance grows and grows. Her cries come from behind a door, behind a car window, and they peter out as I’m driven away.
    I wake suddenly. My mouth opens in a silent scream. I rub the back of my neck and feel sweat around my collar despite the cold. Kin snores beside me, rumbling like a dirty motor at my side.
    It takes a moment to orient myself, to come back to the real world, the one I’ve been placed in by authoritative hands. My breath is quick, and I have to remind myself to calm down. These dreams feel like early memories, but they may not be. Maybe they are wishes. An invented past so my brain, my heart, can believe that at some point, someone wanted me.
    I remind myself I’m not with