Page 14

14.

By the time I’d finished gouging the wall, it was lunchtime, so I forced myself to make something for Stella. Sometimes when I cooked, I felt as if my mother were standing in the kitchen watching me. She did this when I was growing up, and later, on the rare occasions she visited us or we stayed with her. Sometimes she said, “Is that how you chop an onion?” or “Will Stella eat that?” Someone else might not even have recognized these comments as criticisms. Mostly she just watched, her eyes following me as I chose a knife, as I chopped, as I heated oil in a pan or grated cheese. If you have something to say, say it, I thought now, and then gave one of those small starts as my brain realized that this particular thought groove had expired. Pete said that for months after his dad died, he thought of funny or interesting things to tell his dad, then remembered with a jolt that he was dead. I thought of Edith telling me I was using the wrong spatula.

I tried to perk up, but everything reeked. The sponge smelled moldy, even though it was a new one I’d unwrapped yesterday, and its smell fought with that of biodegradable peppermint dish soap. I texted Cherie and told her about Lurid Leggings’ video. Emmy threw me out of FOMHS. I’m a pariah! Confused face, melting face.

The old Cherie would have responded with a tears-of-laughter face and OMG I wish she’d banish me too. Btw did you see what she was wearing yesterday? She looked like a walking zebra crossing.

Nothing.

Cherie could have offered to text Emmy and set her straight about what had happened. But I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t. That thumbs-up the previous day had clearly meant what I thought: she didn’t really forgive me after all.

I was starting to regret apologizing to her. Normally I apologized for everything, including things I hadn’t done. I apologized when someone stepped in front of me to grab the last shopping basket at the supermarket. I apologized to Pete when he came home late. I apologized to Stella when the bath temperature wasn’t to her liking. Charlotte Says: If in doubt, apologize. It doesn’t cost you anything.

I felt that this apology had cost me something: I’d put myself in the wrong. Cherie could stand to apologize too.

I finished making Stella’s lunch and delivered it to her room. Then I flopped on my bed. If my friendship with Cherie was still intact, I could return to our running joke and text: “Never mind, a spot of eyebrow reshaping will cheer me up.” Instead, I scrolled through home-organization photos, my eyes stinging. I aspired to cupboards and drawers where the entire contents were visible at first glance. I hated losing things that I knew were somewhere inside my house.

My bedroom door banged as a breeze blew through the hall. How long had I been lying here? “Stella!” I went to her room. Everything was as usual: the birds of California poster, her collection of mussel shells that looked identical but weren’t (she noticed when I tried to throw a couple away), the stuffed owl we’d sewn together, made from some fluffy fabric that molted everywhere. But no Stella. A trickle of cold in my chest.

Was she in the alone-time cupboard? No. Back to the living room. Could she have crept behind the curtains when I was sleeping?

The front door was wide open. Hence the breeze.

I had the strange sensation that what was happening was preordained. This was always going to happen. From the first night of her life, I’d wondered how I could deserve such glorious riches. When I got to take her home from the hospital, I could hardly believe it. It was like a mythical creature had come to live with us, a phoenix. Now she had flown.

I ran out the front gate. There was no one on the street. “Stella!” No sign of her. Which way should I go? Could she have walked somewhere on her own? But she was eight years old and had never gone anywhere alone. She’d never even walked to the toilet in a restaurant by herself.

“Stella!” I screamed. All the houses seemed to contain people who were watching and thinking, Cray-cray bitch. There was no one I could even ask for help. I felt as if cold water poured down my throat and into my belly, at such a tremendous speed I would burst.

Two blocks up, an older woman with Russian-doll hair and a dark-brown skirt turned onto our street. “Help!” I screamed. The woman waved. It was Irina.

Then there was Stella, dancing around the corner. I charged up the street and threw myself upon her, pressed my face into her hair, wanting to press her back into my body, into my flesh, where she would be safe. She actually let me hold her, though she didn’t hug me back.

I fought to catch my breath. “Where were you going, darling?”

“To my swimming class. But Irina said I should go home.”

I’d forgotten about the private swim lesson I’d scheduled on Sunday afternoons. Usually, I had to drag her to the pool. But never mind. “You can’t go by yourself. You know that,” I said. I couldn’t get my heart to stop thumping: What if she’d tried to cross a busy road?

Stella said calmly, “I’ve gone out by myself lots and lots of times.”

This was patently untrue—her first barefaced lie. I didn’t know what to do. Should I punish her? I didn’t have the parenting techniques for this. Putting Stella in a time-out would be no hardship for her. Was she openly defying me, trying to get a rise out of me? Was that what the cross was? Her refusing to eat at the table?

I looked at Irina hopelessly. She seemed to understand what was needed. She crouched down so her face was at the same height as Stella’s, and she took her firmly by the shoulders. “Now you listen,” she said, her voice fierce. I stared. I had never once spoken to Stella in a voice like that. I was about to intervene: How dare this woman talk to Stella like that? But something stopped me. Irina made sure she had Stella’s full attention. Then she barked, “In this country, child cannot walk alone. Understand?”

I waited for Stella to lash out, but she nodded solemnly. I was stunned. Is this what I should have been doing all along? When Stella displeased Pete’s mother, Dianne, she suggested CBD oil, convinced this was the balm for all ills. When Stella displeased my mother, she turned to me and said things like, “She certainly talks a lot,” and “Is that all she’s going to eat?” Stella turned up her nose at Dianne’s CBD gummies, and my mother’s little comments made her worse. But she seemed to take Irina’s words to heart.

“OK,” she said.

Irina stood up and laid a hand on my shoulder. Her hand felt warm and heavy. My eyes pricked, but I pulled myself together. “Thank you,” I said. “Are you going out somewhere?”

She looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. Her hair was darker, carefully dyed and neatly pinned back. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt, tan tights and what looked like men’s business shoes. She had the same blue eye shadow as when I’d seen her on Friday, but on both eyelids this time.

“I come to see you,” Irina said. She held up something mummified in cheesecloth. She nodded at Stella. “And Little Wolf, of course.”

Stella howled obligingly. “What’s that you’re holding?”

“Sorry, this is not nazook. This I make for your mother,” Irina said. “This is”—and then she said something that sounded as if she were trying to get a hair off her tongue. Stella and I stared at her, and she said, “In English, I translate as oily bread.”

“I like nazook,” Stella said.

Irina smiled. “Next time, maybe. Today I bring oily bread. My husband’s recipe. Makes mothers feel better.”

It did not sound at all appetizing, but I was touched. “Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you,” I said, meaning it. “I can’t wait to try it.” I reached out for the bread, but she held on to it.

“Blanka’s father has bakery. Long time ago. He teach me many breads. This is how I make oily bread: I roll dough to size of table, very, very, very thin. Then I roll it up and make…” She shook her head. “Shape like snail?”

“A spiral!” Stella said.

She nodded. “And then I roll out to size of table again and again roll up like snail.” She cradled the bread. “This I do seven times.”

“Seven,” I said. “Gosh.” Of course she wanted to watch me sample something she had worked so hard on. It was the least I could do after she had helped find Stella. And now that she had mentioned Blanka, I couldn’t send her away, a grieving mother who nonetheless had found the energy to make bread for me.

“Stella, will you draw me picture?” Irina asked once we got back to our house. “Maybe nice picture I can take home?” Stella beamed and trotted off to get her drawing supplies. Irina sat down on the sofa and unwound the bread from its wrappings. It looked like greasy, greyish pita. I’d written an etiquette column on how to politely choke down foods you don’t like. Charlotte Says: Take a tiny bite, so you can swallow it without tasting it, like a pill.

Then I smelled it, and for the first time in days, my stomach growled. It smelled like funnel cakes at a fair on a summer evening or french fries when you’re drunk. I picked it up in both hands and tore into it. It was rich and flaky and unbelievably delicious.

“This is amazing,” I said with my mouth full. I ate until the bread was gone.

Finally, I sank back into the sofa. I didn’t feel sick. I felt like a scurvy-ridden sailor who had eaten an orange. I was weak with gratitude.

“Where I come from, bread is holy,” Irina said.

“It’s the opposite of here,” I murmured dreamily. Emmy said gluten was bad for you, regardless of whether you had celiac, and Lulu had to bring her own personal “cake” to other kids’ birthday parties: a puck of sunflower seeds and psyllium that was like some nutrient-dense substance you would take on a trek across Antarctica.

“When you marry, you put bread on shoulders of man and woman like cape. For luck,” Irina said.

“Did you wear a bread cape when you married?” Stella had come down the stairs so quietly we hadn’t heard her.

“Of course,” said Irina. “My husband and I are very happy. We live in little house in forest.” I was puzzled. A little house in the forest? It sounded like the beginning of a fairy tale.

Sure enough, Stella said, “What happened next? Did something bad happen? Was there story trouble?” Story trouble was an idea they’d taught her in writing class at school.

“Sweetie, Irina was telling us about her life, it’s not a story.” Though I reflected that because the husband was no longer with us and Irina had left her country, something bad obviously did happen. I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to ignore her suffering. But I also didn’t want to revive her trauma. Or worse, betray an appetite for it.

I would let her choose how much she wanted to tell me. And apparently, she’d told me enough.

“You rest now.” She turned to Stella: “Little Wolf, you want to make doll?” I tensed. Stella loathed dolls. But she bounced up and down, almost shrieking. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Really?” I said. Irina picked up 50 Stress-Relieving Designs from the coffee table and opened it to a mandala I had completed.

“You do this? Beautiful. Like window in church.” She nodded approvingly, handed the book to me, and followed Stella back to her room. I could hear Stella chirping and Irina murmuring back. My mother had never played with Stella like that. I still had to tell Irina not to mention Blanka’s death, but surely it wouldn’t come up. I didn’t want to bring her down by talking about Blanka, not when she was clearly enjoying the distraction. I decided to spoil myself by taking 50 Stress-Relieving Designs to work on in bed.

Usually, I was on high alert for any sign that Stella needed me. But with Irina in charge, I lost myself in a swirl of goldenrod and magenta.

A knock on the door roused me from my trance. Just over an hour had passed. “Stella wants to show you something,” Irina said. I followed her to Stella’s room, where Stella held something aloft, like a trophy. “We got stuff from outside, and look what I made!” It looked like a bundle of twigs tied together with dried grass. I was perplexed: Why not use her craft supplies? She handed it to me, and as I examined it, crude arms and legs emerged. If you looked at it right, you could see that it had a dead leaf for a dress, an acorn for a head, hair of moss glued on with sap. I smiled as I gave it back to her. “What are you going to call it? Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Stick Thing,” Stella said.

Irina smiled. “Is good to make doll when baby comes.”

Stella laid out her softest hoodie on the bed and began to swaddle Stick Thing. It was a little odd to see her playing with that poky dark bundle. But I told myself it was only my cultural blinkers that made me think dolls had to be cheerful and lifelike. Maybe it was a folk tradition from Irina’s homeland for a soon-to-be older sibling to make a doll.

I’d told Stella about the baby when I reached the end of the first trimester. She didn’t ask what the baby’s name would be or if it would share her room. She asked what would happen if the baby came out too soon. She’d focused on the possibility of something bad happening. Irina was teaching her that a new baby was something to look forward to.

Not to mention the fact that it was pretty amazing to see Stella playing with a doll. She spent so much time reading, and maybe Pete was right, maybe she didn’t play enough. Maybe if she learned to play, she would connect better with other kids.

Irina said she had to go, and I suddenly realized it was time to make Stella’s dinner. The afternoon had flown by with Irina here. I walked her to the door. “I can’t thank you enough.” For the bread, for getting Stella to act like a kid for once, for the hour in which I was free from anxiety about her.

Irina paused on the threshold. “In my country, if mother is sick, she is not alone. She has mother, aunts, grandmother.” She was close enough for me to smell her, and she didn’t smell bad: sensible soap, stewed tea, something vaguely spicy underneath. She reached up and touched my cheek. Out of nowhere, I remembered that my mother once gave me two jars of mustard as a combined Christmas and birthday gift. It was gourmet mustard, but still, clearly a regift. She couldn’t even shop for a present for me, let alone make one. I swiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “When can you come back?” I asked. “Tomorrow?”