Hold On to the Ones Who Hold On to You

Sun drips over the new-to-them house. In the backyard, long trees hold up stained glass green. Underfoot, the dead leaves rest. Quick, say a prayer.

On the safety of the back deck, Mama holds herself, Baby Girl holds Mama, and Daddy holds the railing. When he turns to them, there is light in his eyes from another place.

He says, This is what I couldn’t wait to show you.

He reaches his arm out long toward a wall. The wall hulks wide. If Daddy stood in the center of the wall, its width would be from fingertip to fingertip. Its height would reach Daddy’s waste. Nothing holds the wall together except the weight of the stones stacked on each other. The structure begins in the center of the yard, unclear whether it will divide or guide. It winds and weaves through and around the trees. It stretches out, dipping with the landscape, then reappearing farther than expected. No, even farther. See? It’s still going.

Mama says something with her eyes, but Daddy doesn’t listen. Baby Girl looks from one to the other. She reads their storybook faces. Mama and Baby Girl go inside. Daddy does not.

***

Daddy is outside again. He picks up a rock and examines it. His fingers explore grooves and pockets in its surface. He sets the heavy thing down on the earth then picks up another. Puts it down. Then picks up another. Daddy sweats. His face is pink turning red.

Mama clutches a mug of warm comfort. She looks out through the kitchen window then turns away.

She says, Tell Daddy to come inside.

Mama’s mind is moving behind closed eyes. Baby Girl opens the back door and calls, Mama says to come inside.

Daddy has been wildered. He has forgotten things like how sometimes time passes, like how he has a house and a family inside that house. Daddy looks at Baby Girl and wrinkles his face, first in worry, then in smile. He tucks a long strand of hair behind his ear. The strand falls, lands on the stone wall.

He says, Okay, just a minute.

Daddy turns from his daughter as she closes the door. He must forget how long a minute is because he does not come back inside.

Mama holds herself, eyes still closed. Baby Girl would like to be held, but it’s Mama’s turn instead. Baby Girl snakes her arms around Mama’s middle. Hold on. Keep holding. They hold a long time while Daddy stays away.

***

It’s in between night and morning. Howls heave Baby Girl awake, pull her to the backyard.

Mama has a red silk alarm around her head. Her body rings under her thin T-shirt. Daddy is lost behind his own house. He is surrounded by weighty matters. Stones disarray. Daddy furls. He tempests.

Mama calls to him. Her voice is a rope, a life saver. She casts wide and catches nothing. The rocks stare as he bends and breaks and cries. Daddy is a gone man. His hands can’t hold himself, let alone Mama’s voice. She calls again, but he’s gone, still tight and loose, electric spasms lost and aching. Now her voice rips the distance, and Daddy comes home to her eyes. Gravity falls them together. They collide in the yard in the leaves in the rocks. Baby Girl watches, holds her softness. By her feet, dandelions drink up tears.

***

For a time, things are better. Mama works in her sunny days office. She types and clicks and calls behind the closed door. Daddy makes in the garage, pushing paint around, sticking things together. Sometimes Daddy plays with dead animals. He stuffs them, sews them back together, livens them up. In one better time, Daddy makes a sculpture from dead things while Baby Girl paints. The sculpture has a squirrel and a two-headed duckling. All three heads wear party hats. The squirrel and duckling face a miniature cauldron with green resin bubbles. Out of the cauldron, a big human toe juts out, complete with yellowing nail.

Baby Girl asks, Daddy, is that toe real?

Well, it’s real enough to touch.

Daaaaddy.

Baaaaby Girl.

You know what I mean.

That’s the fun part, isn’t it? Not knowing if it’s really real.

Baby Girl considers this, then says, Well, I think it’s really strange.

Daddy grins at Baby Girl and says, I like really real strange things.

Daddy paints on the base of the sculpture in red bubble letters Toetally Organic! Baby Girl takes some of the same paint and flowers her paper. The flowers have spindly stems that stretch the length of the page.

Daddy calls the flowers nice before saying go further. Push it stranger. Baby Girl stares at the flowers a while, then paints faces on them. Dot dot smile. Dot dot smile. Daddy’s lips smile, but his dots are sad.

***

Another better time, Baby Girl’s front tooth stirs. Her tongue presses it back forth back forth. The tongue explores the sharp edges where the roots have escaped the gum. One breakfast morning, Baby Girl shows that she can now lift the tooth like an old garage door.

Mama’s nose wrinkles. She says, Baby Girl, pull that tooth out. Mama looks to Daddy, but he just crunches toast, eyes in that other place. She turns back to Baby Girl, keeps on, It’ll fall out while you’re eating. You’ll just swallow it down.

Baby Girl imagines the tooth sliding down her throat, wandering inside her belly. Would it hurt? Or would it be a fantastic voyage for the tooth? The tooth could see parts of her that she’s never seen.

Mama leans close, looks in Baby Girl’s mouth. She says, It’s nearly out already. Just needs a little tweak. You sure you don’t want me to pull it out?

Mama had yanked out Baby Girl’s two bottom teeth already. Those hadn’t hurt too bad. Plus, she got two dollars from the tooth fairy. Still, Baby Girl likes the intweenness of it all. She feels the borders of herself shifting, feels the emptiness between soft gum and sharp tooth. How sweet to be there but not there all at once. But Baby Girl can’t explain that, so she pulls her shoulders up, drops them, and looks away.

Mama sits back and says, Fine, but that tooth’s not helping you. Looks like it just hurts.

A spell later, Baby Girl watches her mouth in the mirror. Tongue pushes the tooth forward, then pulls back. Forward back, forward back. The tooth twinges and plunks down in the sink. She shoots her hand out to stop the drain from swallowing it. The tooth is small, a bloody white pebble. Baby Girl gets a washcloth and soaks it in cold water. She bites down on it, sucks the cloth, drinks her water and blood. Drink up. Enjoy. Can’t taste insides many times.

When she’s had her fill, Baby Girl wonders the house, baby tooth in a baby hand. She listens outside Mama’s office. Mama’s on a call, talking busy, busy talk. She wonders the house for Daddy. He’s not in the kitchen, not in the garage. Out in the backyard, Baby Girl almost misses him. He’s deep in the forest. She calls out, Daddy, Daddy, but he doesn’t hear. Baby Girl looks at this tiny weight in her hand. Put it in the wall. It seems the most natural thing, to place it with those other rocks. She approaches the wall, faces its beginning, looks at the top row of stones just taller than her. She examines the spaces between the rocks, wonders where the tooth would feel most cozy. The tooth tries one nook, starts nestling into place, but tooth fairy promises win out. Baby Girl snatches the tooth back, runs inside, and tucks the tooth under her pillow.

Morning comes. Baby Girl flings her pillow aside. No dollar. No baby tooth either. She shoves her tongue into the empty space between her teeth, checks that she didn’t dream it all somehow, checks which parts of herself are still in place.

***

Daddy starts losing his hair. Many daddies lose many hairs, but this is different. The hairs around Daddy’s forehead don’t erode, bare head slowly growing. Instead, Daddy has long wild tendrils that come off in clumps. And even though he’s Daddy, he begins to look like the bad guy in a kids’ movie, the kidnapper with stringy hair and scruffy face.

Daddy’s outside with the gnats, the sticky heat. Mosquitoes suck up bits of him, leaving red welts he forgets to scratch. Baby Girl tries to help. Alone on the ground, a rock waits. She claws her small fingers under its edges, wedging her fingertips underneath this weight. She cannot lift it. Instead she kneels down, pulls it toward her, flips it over. The ground underneath is moist but bare. On the bottom of the rock, pink earth worms strain up and away from the stone. They stretch in the air, willing themselves to fly. Baby Girl touches one, gently rubs away the dirt where the earthworm meets the stone. The worm is attached to the rock, half its body embedded inside. It’s straining, trying to flee. The pain is echoed in the other worms, each one lifting its blind eyes to the sun. Baby Girl presses her finger at the place where the worm connects with the stone, and though she doesn’t mean to, she splits the worm. She scoops up the panicked creature, feels it flinging back and forth inside her hand cup. The thing is all fear, all wriggling terror, but it sighs relief when placed on the earth, away from the rock. Is this a good thing? To save half a soul?

She’s still kneeling on the ground, upturned stone leaning against her knees when Daddy’s shadow covers her. Let’s put that back, he says. He takes the rock, places it so the worms are once again trapped under its weight. He keeps shifting the stone slightly, fitting the rock into a puzzle only he can see. Baby Girl whimpers, I was trying to help.

Well–Daddy exhales hot–I don’t need help with this.

He’s bent over, hands still on the rock, adjusting, adjusting. Daddy’s head is close to her, strings of hair parting and falling. His ear is missing. Not like it’s been cut off, there’s no scar, no blood. It’s as though he had an itch, scratched, and it simply fluttered off.

Daddy only sees the rock. He says, Go inside, okay?

Baby Girl obeys. She watches Daddy from the window. She studies his head as he moves, but his straggling hair gets in the way or maybe it’s too far to see or she just can’t tell what she can’t see. What is there to say? What to tell Mama?

I can’t see Daddy’s ear.

Do people lose ears like hair or teeth?

Does Daddy have two ears? Can you check?

Baby Girl creeps to the door of Mama’s office and listens. Mama’s voice is bright but firm. She’s talking business talk. Baby Girl curls up by the door and listens to Mama’s confidence, soaks it up through the door. She falls asleep there, so she doesn’t hear when the call ends how Mama takes a deep breath in, how it catches when she lets it out.

***

These days Daddy follows the wall deeper into the forest, out of sight. Mama hides in the office, out of sight. So in her own hot summer out-of-sightness, Baby Girl decides to follow the rocks. She runs her hand along them, and they reply by scratching her fingers. The top of the wall rises, dips, sometimes taller than her, sometimes shorter. Baby Girl and the wall slink. Their eyes peek. The house gets smaller, but it’s still there. Her hand rests on one rock that nestles into her palm. Go on. Climb on top. There’s a thrill in contemplating the forbidden. Mama would say it’s dangerous. Daddy wouldn’t like it because, well, he loves the rocks or maybe he just wants them for himself. He wouldn’t want Baby Girl up there, tottering on top of them, dirty little sneakers scuffing them.

Her hands hug the rocks. The toe of one foot finds a hold. The other toe soon follows. Baby Girl scrapes her knees, leaves a bit of skin behind. She pulls with her little arms and wriggles along on her belly until she’s on top of the structure, standing triumphant on the carefully balanced stones. Broken rules taste sweet.

She cobbles along until the house is gone, hidden behind land surging up and down. Small feet balance on gray stone after gray stone until there is an interruption of rocks stained the color of rust. Baby Girl crouches down and fingers the color. Most of it feels dry and powdery, but in one pocket, there is liquid. A ruby droplet dots her finger. She looks again at the stained area and notices a white pebble. She picks it up, rubs it clean to find grooves and ridges. Her tongue instinctively reaches for the gap between her own teeth. But this is larger than her missing tooth. This tooth has long roots reaching for something. Baby Girl moves the tooth from hand to hand. She doesn’t want to keep this burden, but it seems wrong to simply throw it away. She plants it carefully between two rocks, roots down. Maybe it will grow.

More walking. Sunbeams descend through the trees. Baby Girl hears a buzzing then notices the smell of rot. Flies flurry up ahead. She moves toward them, gently parting their swarm. Wedged in between the rocks are two pale peach cylinders, or perhaps it’s one thing as they seem connected at the base. Elements snap into focus: strong knuckles, fingernails, tiny hairs dotting the fingers, because that’s what they are, two fingers joined with a bit of palm, and it looks familiar, like, no, oh, no–

Big-eyed Baby Girl leaps off the wall, landing feet then hands, and she’s off, running, running, fleeing, lungs gulping, feet pounding, pumping her little legs left right left right, that’s it now, keep running, run home, but, but...

She slows, limply stops, looks around. In every direction, stranger trees say nothing. She had sprinted as far from the wall as she could get. Now, there’s no sign of it, no sign of the house. No signs at all.

Little body shakes. The light’s all amber honey low in the sky. Long shadows hide her. She walks back one way, turns and tries another direction, but no, there’s no use. She’s lost in the woods, a fable come to life. She crumbles by a tree. She lets the mosquitoes bite. She cries.

Dark seeps in. It blurs the objects around her until she’s not sure where she begins and the ground, the tree, the air start. She shuts her eyes tight. Don’t look. Separate. Close. At first the forest sounds familiar. Owls calling. Furry things scurrying. But the animals quiet. The trees ache, leaves whisper, but after a while, those quiet, too. It’s a silent forest, if it still is a forest. Time wobbles. It stretches and compresses, the silent dark lasting minutes or years. Last. Wait. Hold.

A moan terrors through the darkness. It turns howl, growing in volume and pain. It crescendos high into the night, sets every bit of life on edge. Baby Girl recognizes the sound, its familiar monstrosity. Her body becomes chattering teeth. She clamps her hands over her mouth, holds in her own sounds of horror. After minutes or years, the moan stops. She exhales, unclenches, stills. The sweating blanket of silence settles again. Baby Girl sleeps.

***

A crash wakes her. A crunching bumbling breaking thing, something churning through the forest, something searching. Baby Girl sinks down, listens. A light thrashes in the black, flashing from behind trees, throwing itself left and right. The light stumbles through the brambles getting closer, then turns again, moves on. The light calls out Baby Girl, Baby Girl, and it’s Mama’s voice, oh Mama, crashing through this forest, looking for her. Baby Girl cries out, stumbles toward the light. She’s blinded when it finds her, squints into its gaze, but soon she’s in Mama’s arms. Mama scolds her and loves on her and wraps her tight and holds her square. She looks deep in Baby Girl’s eyes and asks, Have you seen Daddy?

Baby Girl doesn’t need the flashlight to see the fear in Mama’s eyes, see how the joy of their reunion was temporary. She wishes she could be enough or that she knew where Daddy got lost to, but she doesn’t. She sticks out her sweet bottom lip, shakes her head.

Mama says, Okay. That’s okay.

Mama stands up straight, looks out at the night. She holds Baby Girl’s hand in hers and says, Let’s get ourselves home.

Mama’s phone signal is weak, but the map points them in the right direction. Brave flashlight beam shines on. They traipse and trudge. Rain spatters down, of course it does, and soon it’s a proper storm. Still, Mama and Baby Girl keep moving forward, holding each other up, plodding their steps. Until finally, finally through the rain and the trees, they see the house lit up like a lantern. Their feet move a little faster, a little swifter. Run now! Hurry home. But the wall is close, too. It’s racing past them, daring to get there first. The trees are backing away. Mama and Baby Girl are nearly to the house, when oh, no, that moan from before, it’s back here in the light. The moan sounds. It’s keening, hurtling at them. Poor Mama, poor Baby Girl. They turn now, turn from the warm glow of the house and look behind them. An almost Daddy shambles toward them. Lightning snapshots the unimaginable.

Daddy’s body lopsides. The rain presses Daddy’s clothes to him, but the shape isn’t right. His shirt droops down where his right shoulder should be. He limps forward as if one leg is shorter than the other.

Mama thunders, runs to him until her knees fail.

Lightning flash again, and it’s clear now. So much of Daddy is missing. He’s let go of so much, shed fingers, hair, half a jaw, most of an arm, one eye. Mama’s voice whips him, but Daddy says nothing. He’s an incompletion staggering to her. Baby Girl tries to piece together the half of Daddy’s face that remains. Too many parts are gone. The wall leans in and smiles. But something of Daddy is there. It must be because now he’s sunk down on the ground, facing Mama, his half-mouth making sounds, trying to comfort from his broken place. Mama caresses his missing parts. She leans close, kisses the cheek that’s still there, turns to press his half-lips to hers, but it’s obvious, isn’t it? These losses are unrecoverable.

Baby Girl stands back, not understanding. Daddy’s still staring deep into Mama with his eye. In his hand lives a rock. He whispers anguishes, but his hand is fingering that rock like so many others before it. Now that broken Daddy hand grips it, lifts it slowly, raises it up. The rock is wild now, dark eyes searching for what to plummet into. The rock leans forward. It wants to spill out and break Mama. But Mama’s too upset, too unseeing. She’s grief-blind, can’t see anything except what she’s losing in this moment. She can’t see the danger she’s in, devil rock in Daddy hand. Oh, but Baby Girl, brave Baby Girl sees. Baby Girl sirens, and Mama looks to her, then follows the aim of her small finger to the big hulking rock in Daddy’s hand. Mama falls back, hides in the muddy earth. She presses her arms up, thin bones facing such an awful weight. Baby Girl’s voice brushes Daddy’s ear, and he turns his head to her. Daddy looks at Baby Girl like he’s seeing her through a cloud, like he might have met her once, but he can’t be sure. He doesn’t notice Mama on the ground, screaming, terrified of what this version of him might do. Instead the cloud between him and Baby Girl thickens. Finally, he turns away. He softens into the rock. It becomes his world. The weight captivates him, so heavy, so solid. The sorrows in hand are so perfect. He gazes into the rock, looking for something, reading its surface with his remaining fingers, finding beautiful fissures of pain. Slowly Daddy rises, shuffles off in the rain, the rock pulling him away. He’s back at the wall, placing it here, not here, that’s not it. He keeps moving along the wall, farther and farther, the heavy things never fitting quite right. Baby Girl sprints to Mama. They sit there in the flooding earth. They hold each other. Their hearts ask the questions they can’t say.

Where is he going?

I don’t know.

Should we go after him?

He left a long time ago.

But we still love him, right?

Of course, he’s just...

He needs to find his pieces?

That’s right.

Mama and Baby Girl root into the earth. They vine around each other, tangle, twist, hold. They watch Daddy leave, lightning illuminating what he’s shed. Breathe. Release. Let go.

K.A. Nielsen is a writer living in Sweden, though she has also called the U.S., Turkey, and Indonesia home. Her work has appeared in The Collidescope and Cobra Milk. You can be her internet friend on Instagram and Twitter at @_kanielsen_.