Page 8 - WTP Vol. XI #6

In The Absence of Stars
The boy first noticed he was becoming invisible at breakfast. The feeling started in his tummy when his mom placed his pill beside his plate.
“It’s not working,” his father said, turning his back to stare out the kitchen window. Outside, the lake was frozen and wind-swept, the ice black and smooth.
The boy’s fingertips began to tingle. The sensation travelled up his arms into his cheeks, which began to smoulder, blue with heat, but neither of his parents noticed.
“It’s not three weeks yet,” his mother said, her hands clinging to her mug, as if it held all the answers she was needing.
The boy put down his toast and walked to the patio doors to stare into the yard, like his father. Blowing snow, almost sleet, pelted the glass as the wind became a screeching tenor. He realized he didn’t have a reflection, and he easily passed through the glass into the blizzard, out onto the ice, and laid down, looking up. There were no stars, so he began to light them, one by one, as if
they were all the candles he had ever blown out, only in reverse, galaxies upon galaxies of nothing but light.
Milk Tooth
Social workers steal children. I’d heard you say it a hundred times, but you were wrong. The day the worker came, that one with the curly brown hair and strained smile, it was you they took away in the back seat of a police car. You spit at the officer as he handcuffed you and called him a bad word. The same one you used to scream at Dad before he left. Except this time, it was you I never saw again.
I’m sitting parked across the street now, in my white minivan with my rounded belly, looking at the house. I was surprised to learn from a distant cousin you still live here. I wonder if she told you I was asking. Are
you expecting me?
The neighbourhood hasn’t changed. It’s shabby but quiet during the day. I know that as shadows start to fall, doors will start to slam. Cars will start to rev. Voices will emerge from the back lanes and garages. Eyes will watch those walking down the sidewalk, looking for gang colours. When we first moved in, you threw out every piece of red clothing I owned, even the baseball cap I got at school for being on the track team.
I can see the railway yard from here, row upon row of tracks running under the towering, steel bridge, cutting us off from the rest of the city. Homeless people once set up tents in a nearby field. I remember orange tarps and the sound of the train’s brakes screeching in the middle of the night, the bang of cars slamming together. I remember my baby sister crying. I can’t remember what she looked like, only the crying.
The house is faded pink. Salmon, you called it. Now, it’s almost gray, and the white porch is sagging in the middle. Footsteps have worn the=ver tried to find me. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all.
I remember the neighbour, who used to bring us
fresh fruit from the farmer’s market. Ripe red apples. Oranges. Grapes. Tight yellow bananas without any staining. I used to arrange them in a bowl on the countertop, like I’d seen in a magazine that time you took me to the dentist. I had a cavity. You didn’t have the money to fill it and said it didn’t matter. It was on
a baby tooth and would fall out anyway. For months I couldn’t stop sticking my tongue in the hole. You used to tap the back of my head and say stop it! The man who slept in your room during the day finally threatened to pull the tooth out with his pliers, so I left it alone after that. I don’t remember losing the tooth, and I have no idea what happened to that man.
I wonder if you ever think of that moment. The knock. How I ran to the door, thinking it was the neighbour, with fruit. Instead, it was the woman with the curly, brown hair, standing where I am now. Is your mommy home? Behind her were two police officers. It was me. I
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CARRIE HATLAND