Page 182 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

it up, but it soared away. She tried again, and this time she got hold of it. But
what she grasped wasn’t the bird; it was snow. She stood there holding the snow,
thinking to herself, This isn’t a dream. She took another look: the other four
“snow birds” had stopped not far from her and were looking at her curiously.
They weren’t an off-white color, but a bright silver that stood out in the shadows
of the wall.
“Daisy! Daisy!” That unknown voice called again from the kitchen.
Once again, she heard the chilly sound of water being poured back and forth
between containers.
She glanced past the wall into the distance: a river was there. The surface of
the river water was also light, fusing with the light of the sky, and river and sky
were indistinguishable. The river water was probably frozen. Now except for the

voice in the kitchen calling her every so often, it was curiously quiet all around.
Daisy motioned the birds away. She jumped on the stairs to frighten them, but
the birds didn’t respond.
Daisy didn’t want to go back to the house. When her gaze stopped at the
river, she recalled crossing it with her brother. The ice was so slippery that they
had slid back and forth on it, playing wildly. And then her brother had made his
way into an ice cave. She saw him go in and knew it wasn’t an accident. At that
time, it was as quiet as it was now all around. And the sky was dazzling. She
remembered it all so well.
“She got up so early. This child has too much on her mind.”
It was Dad speaking. Daisy’s nose was already numb from cold. She went
back to the kitchen. How odd: her dad wasn’t in the kitchen. She heard snoring
from the bedroom over there; he was still sound asleep. Who was impersonating
Dad? Daisy was amused.
Mama got up and came to the kitchen to cook breakfast.
Daisy took off her boots and helped Mama start the fire. She warmed up

quickly.
“Mama, last night someone was making a disturbance in the kitchen,” she
said.
“That’s okay. Your grandpa used to live here.”
As Daisy watched the flames, her heart constricted.

It was a snowy morning. Dad and Mama went to the river to see relatives. Daisy
stayed at home, a little bored. She was also tired of looking out at the snow
covering earth and sky. She embroidered for a while, and then put her
embroidery away and sighed. A thought came to her: she would go and look at
the tombs. She didn’t like going to that kind of place. Every spring on the grave-