The snow is about eight feet high. If we step lightly, we can float above it. The town is either sinking or rising, depending on how you view it. When we let the children out for recess, the benches, the teeter-totter and merry-go-round, they’re lost, but we all know they’re there as we carry on. The children walk in circles and I pace around them. Sometimes I imagine sprinting, leaping, transforming into a solid cannonball only to slip quietly under, my body meeting the frozen grass, like landing on a bed of rice. I’m never tempted to try, though. Quiet and solitude are easy to come by, this time of year. When people slink, when they tiptoe across the white, they don’t even whisper.
It’s the children we really have to watch out for. They don’t understand. Self control is a concept too immense. Each day a few fall through, arms stuck straight in the air like fence posts. The heavier ones sink to the bottom. The lighter ones sprout up, hair damp, cheeks red. The bluest eyes go dark, struggling with the possibility of play being so close. The other teacher and I grab a hand, legs apart to disperse our weight. Yank the child up and place the bruised body on a sheet of cardboard. Haul them off to the nurse for warm compresses and ginger tea.
On Friday the children gather around a bird by the top of the swing set. The bird doesn’t move. Its wings span the length of my left foot—which is shorter by one inch than my right. The bird lies there. There’s nothing impressive about it. It’s a regular swallow, varying shades of brown. There are millions of them in the world, perhaps billions. It’s not special. But still, two of the children are crying. Back in the school whose entrance is through the second floor library, I am required to explain the bird’s actions which leads to more questions which I cannot possibly all answer.
After work I have dinner with my neighbor Alain who pronounces my name in the French, [ʒan]. He laughs about the bird and I laugh, too, though I don’t see what’s funny. We dance in our underwear with bottles of wine, then when he stumbles and sobs for his old lover Benjamin I help him to bed and kiss his hair, wrap my legs around him and let his head fall to my breast.
On Saturday I work as a singing waitress at The Turntable Lounge which doesn’t have a turntable. It’s popular because the building is on stilts. We can all enter and leave through a door like civilized beings. We disregard what’s outside because when we look out a window all we see are our own warm faces laughing back. They ask me to sing Lizzie Miles. Sing Josephine Baker. They always request some tune that makes them nostalgic for an era that precedes them.
My students’ parents come in, too. They laugh and drink and radiate lust and blame the altitude. They drop their napkins. They talk with their mouths full. They proposition me, slide their hands up my dress and around my thighs because they’ve forgotten just how brilliant flesh shines by candlelight. When I tell them no they recoil. When I tell them we’re closing they head out into the darkness to once again skulk across the cold. And they are not happy about it. I’m escorted home by the owner’s son.
We arrive at my building and I give the son money for his trouble before squeezing through a window that leads to the second floor corridor—my apartment is on the third. At this time the lights are cut off and as I feel my way to the staircase doors open and shut behind me. I count the sounds then count the steps then count the sounds, let my chest expand when I finally reach my door. When I look outside my tracks are already erased. At the building adjacent I see my old lover Louis asleep in bed with his wife but I no longer cry over him but I do rest a hand on my abdomen and I do touch myself when I lay down.
On Sunday everyone in town goes to Church. My students slide from their parents’ pockets. They smile and I smile. I have lunch with the Pastor who asks me to join the choir as he loves the way I project. I say maybe after the New Year then return home where I listen to the radio with Alain. Alain asks if I believe what the Church tells me. I reply, Sometimes. He asks if sometimes is enough. I reply, Sometimes.
On Monday morning I receive twelve written complaints regarding the bird. The children keep their heads down. We hear the men pulling snow from the roof. They pound and the room begins to shake. Their labors rush through into our cores and build into a stampede, muscle and bone crashing, one after another after another. The children hide under their desks, awaiting tumbling shingles and twisting beams. I walk to the windows and draw the curtains. There is nothing, not even my own reflection in the glass. Only snow and ice. I walk to my desk and grab the notes. The children cry. I open a window and stuff the papers into the packed snow, pushing them deeper, as far as my body lets me, just past my shoulder blade. I peer in and wait for them to fall, but they don’t. I sit at my desk and watch the children still cowering beneath the thunder. I watch them until they stop watching me. I look down to see my hand frostbitten rouge. I close my fingers and my knuckles pearl. I open my fingers and hear my skin stretch. I can no longer recall the color of my eyes.
END
Nina Ficenec is a writer and illustrator currently residing in the Southeastern United States with her little boy.
–Art by Rona Keller