Fiction

BIRTH

The doctor tells me she is small, underweight. In those brief fragments of the day where she is asleep, I’m afraid of something I cannot name; I place my hand over her heart, requiring those quiet fists of reassurance to know she is still here. The visitors—bearing an assortment of pink items and dinner platters—tell me she is beautiful. A blessing, they say. God’s child. Yes—but I am not the right one for this child. I worry she will slip through my hands, shatter like a glass vase in front of me, that soon I will bear witness to my faults. I feel she is safer in my mother’s or sister’s hands. Why isn’t she growing? It’s only a matter of time, the doctor says. Time. This is what they tell my husband about his visa, too: wait for your time, wait until America wants you. My husband waits with sleepless nights and a restless mind. I wait with a foreign body; it’s an exercise, I suppose, preparing me before I am once again foreign to a new country. I cannot recognize these rough patches of skin that had once emerged as barriers, sensing my daughter as an invasion. Now, her presence is enough to make me forget myself. I awaken to her cries, and when she drifts back to sleep, her fingers are wrapped around mine. At that moment, I feel she is melting me, softening me in all the hard places.

CRAWLING

We are here in America, here where the baby first begins to eat the soft rice I mash with my hands. American food is cardboard, the doctor said to me. Feed her what you eat. I wish for the doctor here besides me. I wish for my mother and sister, too, but these are the choices we made. Life is a trading game, my mother once said to me: you give up one thing for another. I do not have enough time to wonder if we have given up too much. The baby exhausts me. Every waking moment she is shoving something down her mouth. She thinks she is invincible, unaware of the harm she is capable of inflicting upon herself, oblivious to anything beyond her needs and wants. Slow down, I want to tell her, along with the other women in the apartment whose English I cannot understand. I am reduced to a nod and smile in front of them, suddenly missing something everyone else seems to have.

ADOLESCENCE

When she begins to take the yellow school bus in the mornings, she forgets about me quickly. I am reminded of all those sleepless nights I once spent with my hand over her heart, realizing she will never know of them. When I first begin to drive—in front of the wheel—I am reminded of those first months with the baby in my hands: my heart pounding with fear, afraid of what I would do. My daughter wants a good, fast, TV mom, but I am nothing like that. She is embarrassed by my English, by the kind of mother I am. I try to do what I can for her; I cook the pasta and bread she asks for. She wants it bland, tasteless: a replica of the image on the back of the cardboard box. Don’t follow your friends, I tell her. What do you know, she says. I don’t know many things, I say. I tell you what I know.

TEENAGE

She begins to come home later now, performing in the theater at her school. It makes me proud to see her on stage. Her English is clean, sharp: comes out wrapped graciously in slick film. It is nothing like mine. But when my husband and I go to see her, she meets us in an empty hallway before rushing us home. She does not want us there.

With my empty days, I begin to work at a department store. There are clear glass cases holding diamonds and creams, and in a long time, I wish for something I cannot have. Instead, I buy my daughter a few things she wants: a phone, some nice shoes, some makeup for her shows. Thank you, she says, before disappearing into her room. Americans say thank you only because they must.

On the rides to and back from the department store, my body begins to ache: a pain I recognize only from my daughters’ birth many years ago. Because of these winters, I tell my husband. I tell him not to worry; he is tired enough, and I do not want to burden him with my inconveniences. On a day the pain is particularly bad, my daughter comes home crying. She shuts the door behind her. You don’t understand, she says. You will never understand. I say no more. I have become a burden: something unwanted, incapable. Her sobs slip through the door, and all I can do is listen.

AFTER

Osteogenesis Imperfecta: this is what my doctor tells me is breaking my bones. I call my daughter to tell her; she is in New York studying English Literature. I keep the phone call brief, not wanting to disturb her studies. With my daughter gone now, it is only my husband and I. We go on long walks before we go to bed early. Too early. I am reminded of all those sleepless nights we once endured with our visa’s pending, our daughter crying. There was a time she made me afraid, but now, she is strong enough to follow her dreams, to get what she wants. America lets her follow her dreams. This is what it was all for, I suppose. What we have given and what we have received. My daughter comes home one Friday. She is older now—beautiful in the way everyone said she would be. We are watching TV and she takes my hand, wraps her finger around mine.

 

Dedeepya is a high school student from Minneapolis. She finds inspiration in busy streets and warm weather. She loves coffee mugs (although not coffee!) and long bike rides.

It’s Friday morning and you haven’t called once. I keep looking at my phone and expecting to see at least a drive safe, baby, but all my recent messages are from my friends and my mom. I call you twice (not more because I don’t want to feel desperate) and go on with my day and think I’ll probably drunk text my best friend about how annoying you’re being.

It’s Friday afternoon when you text me: can you get to the hospital?

            I call you twice more and you don’t answer, so I just drive over, hoping I picked the right one. When I walk in, I don’t know what to say: my girlfriend is here and she’s visiting someone and she didn’t call me and I was supposed to go on a ten-hour drive today and I’ll have to wait until tomorrow because I’m her backup.

            My girlfriend is visiting a resident. I think she needs to be checked in too.

            My girlfriend is visiting a resident and I’m still jealous she gets all her attention.

            Finally, I decide not to say anything — how can I, anyway, when I only know your best friend secondhand — and go back to my car. I drive around aimlessly until I find a Starbucks and pick up two coffees, one black and one with four creams and two sugars because you’ve always liked your coffee too sweet. By the time I get back to the hospital, you’re standing outside. Your nose is stained pink from the cold even though you’re wearing a huge scarf, easily as big as you are when it’s unraveled.

“Hey,” you say, and then, “sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I say this often: I can’t make you feel guilty because you didn’t text me back in time or show up to our date or call me when I’m going on a drive upstate, not when the alternative is letting your friend die. It’s okay being second-choice when it’s like this, I think, so I add, “Seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

Your smile is small and reminds me of one of those wobbly cartoon ones. This is the part where you should say something like you’re the best or even just thank you, but instead you fidget with the hem of your skirt before turning the radio on and half-heartedly humming to the top forty song that starts playing, too loud and too fast. It’s the kind of song I’d be belting with you if your best friend didn’t try to kill herself again today, but she did, so I just stare at the road and wonder how long it’ll take before one of us gives up.

“You should talk to someone.” I can’t say you should talk to me because it feels self-obsessed and I can’t afford to be, not now. “Even, like, those online sessions would be better than nothing.”

“I know.” It’s always here where we start sounding like broken records, scratch and repeat and scratch and repeat. “I will when I’m ready.”

Two and a half months later, you’ll call me and say you can’t do this anymore: because you feel bad about always leaving me on hold, because you can’t make a relationship your top priority when someone’s using you as a lifeline, because you still don’t know how to talk to someone. I’ll say I understand even though I want to yell at you or cry or do something insane, at least a little bit, and then I’ll consider blocking your number but I won’t, just in case you end up needing me again.

Six months later, you’ll text me: thank you. I’ll draft eight different texts back, some of them angry, some of them upset, one of them asking how you’re doing, how she’s doing, and then I’ll just say no problem. I’ve never been good at tying up loose ends, especially not with you.

Right now, though, we’re in my car drinking lukewarm Starbucks outside your garage. “Drive safe tomorrow,” you say. You kiss my cheek and something about it feels like I love you, though maybe it’s just wishful thinking. I say I will, don’t worry, and I watch you go in until the garage door closes behind you, a long, low hum.

I drive home. I text my best friend. I think about yours.

 

 

Mrinal Pattanaik is a senior at Neuqua Valley High School. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Sandpiper Magazine, and Up North Lit, amongst others.

 

Lending him my laptop was easy. Letting him lean on me for the rest of the year was not.

I became the Laptev Sea that his little lolling boat could sail onto lie after lie. And I lacked in linguistics to let him learn of my level of loathing.

 

 

Rita Chernikova is a writer from Wicklow, Ireland. She writes in two languages, English and Russian but hopes that her persistent study of French will become her third linguistic funnel for thoughts in the future. When she isn’t fanatically hitting the keys of her laptop she likes to play guitar, hula-hoop or do whacky art with bird feathers.