An Absence of Stars

The two girls are arguing over a toy from the dollar store, a cheap plastic lizard that is now missing three toes and the tip of its tail. It is a shade of purple not normally found in nature, with glowing green eyes faded from smudged fingerprints. Gigi splits the air with her scream, and the mother look over at her cell phone lying discarded on the desk atop a pile of papers and books.

The phone does not ring.

“Who had it first?” asks the mother.

I should say me. I am the mother, but I am seeing this scene from a remove, from behind the faded lens of exhaustion. Gigi—not her real name, of course, but so nicknamed because her younger sister could not say “Georgina”—makes the exaggerated monster face that she’s been practicing in the mirror for a week. When she thinks I’m not looking, like when she’s brushing her teeth, she will twist her lips and her eyebrows up and out and make fierce little growling sounds.

“Use your words,” I say. “Not your hands.” Small fingers tugging at the toy, the tips of her nails dark with god-knows-what.

“Bedtime,” I tell them a minute later.

A stream of protest, a continuing hour-long whine that lasts through tooth brushing, bath time, story time (“Just one more! Daddy always reads two—”) and hugs and kisses and nosey-nosey and one last sip of water and finally, lights out. (“But Daddy always lets us—”)

“Daddy's not here,” I say abruptly. Their mouths close, and guilt shoots through me at the look on their faces. Not sad, just... resigned.

I would take the words back if I could. But I can't. I shut the door and lean against it, rubbing my scalp. I almost made it through the day. Almost.

The phone does not ring.

I sit in front of the television, flipping channels. Crime drama, crime drama, sports, news, and then a romance movie I’ve seen a million times, but pause at it anyway. The lure of the familiar, the comfort in knowing that the next minute, she will walk through the door and hate the man she sees there on sight, hate him with an undying passion that will shortly turn to love and flowers and white weddings and babies and happy, happy, happy ever after.

The movie ends, and I get up and wash the dishes in the sink. On a stack of bowls, there is crusted-on neon orange that bears only a passing resemblance to cheese, but more of a resemblance to the last time the little one was sick and she didn’t quite make it to the toilet, and I spent an hour on my hands and knees wondering how such a little body could produce such mass quantities of vomit.

The phone does not ring.

Upstairs, I count the seconds in my head as I turn on the electronic toothbrush. One potato, two potato, three potato, four. I linger longest on my front teeth. If all my back teeth rotted and fell out, my front teeth would still be shining like the moon every time I smiled, because appearances are so important to maintain.

The right side of the bed is stark with an untouched pillow, an unmussed sheet, and I turn away before my gaze lingers too long. As if my eyes have the power to change the way things have become. It's not a superstition if I don't really believe, is it?

I get into the left side of the bed and rest my head on my arm. I will wake in the middle of the night with my hand like a dead piece of meat and shake it until some life returns. But then I will put it back under my head, under my pillow, and my circulation will be cut off again, until the morning light wakes me and I fix the problem in the same way, not knowing what else to do.

Maybe I shouldn’t wait that long. Maybe I should just chop off my hand right now, not waiting for the numbness to overtake me.

The phone does not ring.

I close my eyes. Behind them, I see black—only black. Infinity without color, an endless expanse without light. There is no hate, no passion, no happy ever after.

After all the absentee nights, the hopes, the fights, the silence... nothing remains in that space anymore. Not a single star left to wish on.