windowpane and screen. Insomnia was always easier than sleep, but tomorrow I’d dread the guests asking for glasses and soap, the ones who’d have to be turned away, and the tedious job of counting the money.
I pasted details onto the facts I was sure of. We still lived in the white house with the trellis. It was fall. A day when yellow leaves lay thick in halos around tree trunks, and the shivering leaves still on the branches made a sound like falling water. Behind the house, there was a wooden duck whose wings spun frantically in the wind. The wheelbarrow and rake would have looked heavy and immovable the way objects do on overcast, empty days. There was a garden inside a scalloped wire fence. When my mother bent down to pull up a weed, I saw the arched wires bend in against her ankles.
I wasn’t sure what was invention or dream, but a few things always came back to me: the breeze under my dress, the way I’d turned out my ankle and stood on the side of my foot, the veined crest at the back of my mother’s knee.
Then there were speculations. My mother might have been reaching for a soft, overripe tomato, her face hidden in the plants.
She might not have heard me walk away, because of a freight truck that clattered by or someone blaring their radio. I ran toward what
THE FIRES / 79
must have looked to me then like bright birds rising into the trees, that lacy flutter of shiny feathers, and when my mother saw me fall into the neighbor’s burning leaf pile, the flames were struggling and had almost gone out. I always stopped there.
I pulled the blanket around my body, drew up my knees, and curled around them, cocooned the scars as if they might unfurl into something else by the morning: strands of pearls, scarves.
Sometimes this was how I tricked myself into sleeping. A dog was barking somewhere down the street, and the small ring swayed at the end of the shade pull. I thought of that banker again, his wheedling voice, poor girl, his eyes shallow and dull as old nickels, she’ll never get anyone.
I tossed to the edge of the bed. The bedsprings squeaked, and the mattress sank in beneath me. I heard a scratching noise in the next room. It was an old hotel; there were mice and spiders, small, thick ones that looked like metal rivets.
As I burrowed under the covers, the scene assembled again in my mind, though the structure never held; it would fall in on itself in a second. Maybe: At breakfast, my parents had argued. My mother had that tight half smile as my father screamed at her.
Her hand would shake as she poured the coffee, and when it spilled, he’d get up to leave for school. After lunch, we would have gone outside. Strolling the yard, she picked up dead leaves and crumbled them in her hand, letting the pieces fly behind her.
The grass scratched at my ankles. My mother had become a stranger with a hard mouth and a stiff walk. As I moved into the neighbor’s yard, I would look back to see if the stranger was still there, if it was she or my mother. Surely my mother would have noticed by now how far I’d gone. But it was the stranger with her head bent toward the ground, her lips moving slightly. Her hair flagged in the breeze, and then I lost her in the smoke.
On the walls of the room, the moon cast a filmy green light.
80 / RENÉ STEINKE
Under the weight of my head, my arm had grown numb. I let the stiff hand drop off the bed, and slowly the blood prickled back to it. Somewhere down the street, a car horn blared. I squinted to see the hands of the clock in the dark: 5:10. In three hours I would get up and dress. Dark pants and a red sweater, comfortable shoes.
Each time I thought of the fire, the picture was new, pieces of other memories constellating around the things I was sure of, rearranging themselves and then shaken up and scattered again like the designs in the end of a kaleidoscope. I wanted to remember so my mother could forget. It was unseasonably cold, the sunlight brittle. A thin
I pasted details onto the facts I was sure of. We still lived in the white house with the trellis. It was fall. A day when yellow leaves lay thick in halos around tree trunks, and the shivering leaves still on the branches made a sound like falling water. Behind the house, there was a wooden duck whose wings spun frantically in the wind. The wheelbarrow and rake would have looked heavy and immovable the way objects do on overcast, empty days. There was a garden inside a scalloped wire fence. When my mother bent down to pull up a weed, I saw the arched wires bend in against her ankles.
I wasn’t sure what was invention or dream, but a few things always came back to me: the breeze under my dress, the way I’d turned out my ankle and stood on the side of my foot, the veined crest at the back of my mother’s knee.
Then there were speculations. My mother might have been reaching for a soft, overripe tomato, her face hidden in the plants.
She might not have heard me walk away, because of a freight truck that clattered by or someone blaring their radio. I ran toward what
THE FIRES / 79
must have looked to me then like bright birds rising into the trees, that lacy flutter of shiny feathers, and when my mother saw me fall into the neighbor’s burning leaf pile, the flames were struggling and had almost gone out. I always stopped there.
I pulled the blanket around my body, drew up my knees, and curled around them, cocooned the scars as if they might unfurl into something else by the morning: strands of pearls, scarves.
Sometimes this was how I tricked myself into sleeping. A dog was barking somewhere down the street, and the small ring swayed at the end of the shade pull. I thought of that banker again, his wheedling voice, poor girl, his eyes shallow and dull as old nickels, she’ll never get anyone.
I tossed to the edge of the bed. The bedsprings squeaked, and the mattress sank in beneath me. I heard a scratching noise in the next room. It was an old hotel; there were mice and spiders, small, thick ones that looked like metal rivets.
As I burrowed under the covers, the scene assembled again in my mind, though the structure never held; it would fall in on itself in a second. Maybe: At breakfast, my parents had argued. My mother had that tight half smile as my father screamed at her.
Her hand would shake as she poured the coffee, and when it spilled, he’d get up to leave for school. After lunch, we would have gone outside. Strolling the yard, she picked up dead leaves and crumbled them in her hand, letting the pieces fly behind her.
The grass scratched at my ankles. My mother had become a stranger with a hard mouth and a stiff walk. As I moved into the neighbor’s yard, I would look back to see if the stranger was still there, if it was she or my mother. Surely my mother would have noticed by now how far I’d gone. But it was the stranger with her head bent toward the ground, her lips moving slightly. Her hair flagged in the breeze, and then I lost her in the smoke.
On the walls of the room, the moon cast a filmy green light.
80 / RENÉ STEINKE
Under the weight of my head, my arm had grown numb. I let the stiff hand drop off the bed, and slowly the blood prickled back to it. Somewhere down the street, a car horn blared. I squinted to see the hands of the clock in the dark: 5:10. In three hours I would get up and dress. Dark pants and a red sweater, comfortable shoes.
Each time I thought of the fire, the picture was new, pieces of other memories constellating around the things I was sure of, rearranging themselves and then shaken up and scattered again like the designs in the end of a kaleidoscope. I wanted to remember so my mother could forget. It was unseasonably cold, the sunlight brittle. A thin
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