Laura Kasischke: Mind of Winter

SHE WOKE UP late that morning, and knew :

Something had followed them home from Russia.

This scrappy bit of information had been offered up to Holly in a dream, she supposed, a glimpse into a truth she’d carried with her for—how long?

Thirteen years?

Thirteen years!

For thirteen years she’d known this, and not known—or so it seemed to her in her half-awake state on Christmas morning. She rose from bed and went down the hallway to her daughter’s bedroom, anxious to see that she was there, still asleep, perfectly safe.

Yes, there she was, Tatiana, one pale arm thrown over a pale coverlet. Dark hair spilled over a pillow. She was so still she could have been a painting. So peaceful she could have been—

But she wasn’t. She was fine. Holly felt reassured and went back to the bedroom, slipped into bed beside her husband again—but as soon as she did, she thought it once more:

It had followed them home!

This was something Holly had known, apparently, in her heart, or in her subconscious, or wherever it was inside her where bits of information like this hid themselves for years, until something made her aware of what she’d forgotten, or repressed, or—

Or was it something she’d willfully overlooked? Now she saw it:

Something had followed them home from Russia!

But what?

And then Holly thought, I must write this down before it slips away . It was that feeling she used to have when she was younger—the almost panicked desire to write about something she’d half glimpsed, to get it on the page before it dashed away again. Sometimes it had felt nearly nauseating, that desire to yank it out of herself and put it into written words before it hid away behind some organ deep inside her—some maroonish, liverish, gillish organ she’d have to pry behind, as if fingering it out of a turkey carcass, ever to get at it again. That’s what writing a poem used to feel like to Holly, and why she’d quit writing poems.

My God, though, this thought was like a poem—a secret, a truth, just out of reach. Holly would need time to pluck this out and examine it in the light, but it was in her, whether she’d known it or not until now. Like a poem that wanted to be written. A truth insisting on recognition.

Something had followed them home from Russia!

It was the explanation for so many things!

The cat, crawling off. Her back legs, her tail.

And her husband. The bump on the back of his hand, like a tiny third fist—a homunculus’s!—growing. They’d said it was benign, but how could such a thing be benign ? They’d said to ignore it, but how? Something was bearing fruit inside her husband, or trying to claw its way out. How were they to ignore it?

(Although, to be fair to Dr. Fujimura, they had learned to ignore it, and it had eventually stopped growing, just as she’d said it would.)

And Aunt Rose. How her language had changed. How she’d begun to speak in a foreign language. How Holly’d had to stop taking her calls because she couldn’t stand it anymore, and how angry her cousins had been, saying She loved to talk to you. You were her favorite. You abandoned her while she was dying.

And then the hens. Ganging up on the other one, on the hen she’d so stupidly, so cavalierly, named Sally. Six weeks, and then—

Don’t think about Sally. Never think of that hen and her horrible name again.

And the water stain over the dining room table in the shape of a shadowy face—although they could never find anywhere that water would have seeped through their skintight, warranty-guaranteed roof. The roof company men had stood around in their filthy boots and stared up at it, refusing to take any blame.

Also, without explanation, the wallpaper had curled away in the bathroom. Just that one edge. You could never do anything to keep it in place. They’d tried every adhesive on the market, but the daisy wallpaper would stick fast for exactly three days and nights before it peeled away again.

Holly needed to write down these things, this evidence! The cat, Aunt Rose, the bump on her husband’s hand, the hens, the water stain, the wallpaper—along with the clue provided to her by her dream:

Something had followed them home from Russia .

How long had it been since she’d woken up needing to write? God, how Holly used to need to write. Now she needed to write again. What time was it? She was still in bed, or in bed again. Had she already risen, looked in on her daughter? Or had that been a dream? She’d come back to bed and slipped again into sleep? Perhaps. Now she didn’t need to open her eyes to know that it was morning, that it was snowing.

Was there a pen in this room? If she found a pen before Eric and Tatiana woke up, would she be able to actually sit down and write? That broken habit. That abandoned necessity.

Holly thought she could. She would be able to write. She could feel it—the bitter ache of it. There was some awful pressure on her lungs. There was, she felt, something stoppered up in her torso. She imagined vomiting it out of herself, like vomiting up a swan—something with a long, tangled throat nestled inside her own throat—choking on its feathers and all its bony quills. How relieved she would feel afterward, lying on the bedroom floor beside the swan she’d vomited out of herself into the world.

Outside, the wind sounded like a nerve being yanked through the tree. It was Christmas morning, but late. It must be nearly nine o’clock. They never slept this late on Christmas morning! Far too much rum and eggnog last night. Was Tatty still asleep in her bed? Her pale arm, pale coverlet, pale pillow with a splash of dark hair, still. Holly had looked in on her, she remembered this, but it had been hours ago, hadn’t it? Surely Tatty would be up by now, ready to open presents. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come into the room to wake them up?

Because she was fifteen, of course. She was probably also still asleep. There would never again be a Christmas morning, crack of dawn Tatty coming in to slap their faces lightly with her damp, new, tiny hands. Instead, they’d all overslept on Christmas morning, and Holly had woken up with this little horror in her mind, that something had followed them home from Russia.

Something evil?

Well, perhaps not evil. But it had sapped them. It continued to sap them.

“Oh, that’s motherhood,” Thuy would say. “You’re just talking about motherhood. Children, they’re energy vampires…”

But don’t forget the cat. The wallpaper. Aunt Rose. Even when she was semi-lucid, even when the words were familiar English words, Aunt Rose had seemed to Holly to be reciting lines from “The Fire Sermon”: On Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing the broken finger-nails of dirty hands my people humble people who expect nothing la la…

And there had also been their CDs, hadn’t there? All their favorites had been scratched, as if overnight—although, surely, it had been over a long period of time? Every one of their favorites had been ruined, and they’d never even bothered to replace them. They’d just left them there on a shelf, like their books, which they never took down to read now, or even to blow the dust off.