Squirrelled Away

The black fluffy tail tipped like a royal wave through a valley of snowdrifts. It would stop every couple of seconds and vibrate. Malaya squinted to see what was slowing the squirrel down. He was pulling and pushing something across the yard towards the woods and the tall oak tree beyond.

Thud – she heard the sound, grabbed her slippers, and half-slid up the grey stairs. Get to the kitchen, before he does, she thought.

“You stupid, lazy, bitch – where’s the coffee?” Slide to the sink. Fill up the pot. She saw his feet in their torn, plaid slippers move closer and turned to avoid the cuff to her head, knowing what would happen next. The right side of her face exploded in pain; red hot and loud. She felt the floor like a memory, her head skidding off the cabinet corner. Her fingers touched dust and needles. She would need to sweep under this side of the cabinet she thought, steely. The song her mother used to hum slid through her mind. She tried to grasp the words, the melody – hold on to the always flitting presence of her mama. Pushing herself up, she wrung out a cloth and held it to her face then leaned down and used it to wipe up the spit and blood. Make coffee. Bring it with creamer. Don’t look at his face. Focus on the slippers.

Malaya peeled off the sheets on the bed – yellowing and covered in dog hair, evidence that Blossom his old blind pug had snuck onto the bed after he had left it. It had been a few months since he had woken her up in the night, bellowing her name to come to his room, pulling her into the sweaty, dank sheets, grunting and pushing until he rolled off her muttering nothings in a beer-laden breath. She couldn’t remember when she stopped feeling frozen with fear, when the pain between her legs ended and when she just stopped existing when she entered the room on those nights. Night after night, her mind finding another place, the song of her mama humming through her ears, filling her, protecting her from the aching, dark chasm, she always leaned over.

Her mama had not thought this would happen. The Man had found them – trapped in his friend’s enormous and beautiful home, serving the family and sleeping in a small dark room next to the laundry room. There had been a loud argument and then they had both been bundled in blankets, their two small bags with them, and they had been brought here. To this dark, lonely house on the edge of the woods. Mama had looked so relieved – her dark softly crumpled face glowing with the thought that they could create a new life. Perhaps go home. He would help. He had said so. It just might take a little while. And so Mama had cleaned, and cooked, and swept, all the while waiting… waiting. Until he called her one night – in the darkness – and when she returned she was the same woman from Before. She said nothing about that night or any afterwards. She said less and less each day, but at night when they were face-to-face in the small cot in the room they were given, she would hum her song. She would look at Malaya and only the whites of her eyes, and the glow of her teeth would show through the darkness. And she would tell her the plan. She would make her repeat the steps to take, where to find the bus, whom to call. And she would describe the tree with the hollow center. The branches like a V, reaching out, the bark flaking off the right side, and a reddish circle on the left. Behind the V was the opening – not too big, just big enough to reach an arm into, where she had hidden a few small bills, coins, a small ring, and an old watch. Things he wouldn’t miss. It might not come to much – but perhaps it would cover the bus tickets for them to leave the nightmare that their lives had become.

When her mother died, Malaya first saw the dark chasm open in front of her. She knew her body was moving, her eyes were seeing, her hands and feet reaching and walking, but she also knew she was like an inverted tree. Dead on the inside and alive on the outside. She had felt her mother’s body cold and stiff that morning. She could hear the squirrels that she and her mother loved, chattering outside the sliding door of the basement. They were waiting for Malaya’s mother to come out and scatter the cracked corn and acorns that had been collected over the fall. He allowed her this one grace. It fit in with his idea that he lived in a Henry David Thoreau-esque world. He had the collected works and prints of Walden by local artists and scattered them throughout the house. He thought he was important, educated—a man of nature. He was often up in the night, the blue computer light leaking from beneath his door, finding rare editions, and lost drawings or notes that some collector of Thoreau’s works had available for sale. She and her mother heard him one-night haggling over the price of a book. “How the hell can a stolen pocket moleskin cost 20 grand?”, his voice tore through the silent house. Twenty thousand dollars – an amount that she couldn’t even picture. She heard his appreciative murmurs and his mumbling words, “I need to have it.” It never struck him that Thoreau who would likely have despised him. He could not see himself as he was.

She remembered her feet touching the cold concrete of the basement floor. Pulling on a sweatshirt and knocking on his door. She was seventeen, had never been to school, had never been to a store, had never been around other children, and had never been this alone. She told him through the door and waited to hear his grunt before going back downstairs. Her mama. Wrapped in a blanket. Eyes closed. As he dragged the body, the blanket straggling like a wretched tail, out the sliding door, she told herself that this was no longer her mother. Just the casing; just a vessel. Her mama was free. He buried the body somewhere out in the woods. The dark chasm she leaned over, grew larger.

It had been two years since that morning. Every night she would kneel before her cot and go over the plan. Where the bus stop was, who to call, how to find a place to live. She fed the squirrels and birds every morning as her mother had. Then the days would always be the same – making coffee, breakfast, laundry, sweeping, mopping, cleaning toilets, cleaning up after his poor blind dog, making lunch, supper, more clean up, and then - whatever else he wanted. His words were always the same, a brief directive or screaming words of ridicule, anger, frustration. He avoided her unless it was to push her, slap her, punch her, or push himself into her. When she was briefly outside she tried with all her might not to look over at the tall oak. His eyes were always watching. It was only her mama’s humming that slept in her ears, carrying her from movement to movement – like a hand staying her from crossing into that chasm.

Malaya put the sheets in the washer and looked across the dark basement through the glass sliding doors. She could see the squirrels chasing each other on the other side of the hole-no-longer-a-hole. He had dug this hole just before the snow had come. It was very deep and at least a few feet wide. She had no idea why he had dug it but she was careful when feeding the squirrels to go around it. Especially now when it was filled with soft snow covered with a sheen of ice. You could barely tell it was there. If she hurt herself badly by falling in it – she wasn’t sure what he would do. She and her mother didn’t exist. They weren’t on a database anywhere. No health cards, no drivers’ licenses. As she neared the vent in the ceiling, she could hear his voice on the phone upstairs. Clear as a bell. “Sold? Fantastic, I’ll book a moving van for next month.” Sold? The house? What did this mean? Was he taking her somewhere new? At the back of her mind, resting at the edge of the chasm, she already knew the truth. She wasn’t going anywhere. Her eyes moved to the snow-filled hole. The sun had slipped behind the greyness and the woods had that late afternoon shadow, the hole-no-longer-a-hole looking innocently blue in the light.

Then her name. Screamed. Like never before. She could feel her shins tingling, her stomach curled inwards; fear like an animal hiding in her throat. “Where is it! Where is the book?!” She didn’t know what he was talking about but she recognized the sound of murder in his voice. She had felt it over the last few weeks after he had dug the hole. Everything was collapsing into this moment. She heard his feet on the stairs and pulled the sliding door open. Cold air enveloped her as she ran in her slippers across the yard –ice sliding under her, soaking her feet. As she jumped over the snowy hole, she heard the squirrels railing angrily from the branches, tails shaking, voices shrill. “You thieving bitch!”, his voice echoed through the silent freezing air. She felt more than heard his jump just behind her and clenched her eyes waiting for the ground to meet her body, even while her numb feet tried to keep moving over the ground. Run. Run. Then she heard his cry, the sound of ice sliding, and then silence. Turn around. Turn around. Malaya turned slowly; he was nowhere in sight. As she moved towards the hole she saw the ice was gone and in the pit was a pile of clothing covered in blood, ice, and snow. A plaid cloth-slippered foot leaned out on one side.

Stepping away and walking back into the house, Malaya dried and warmed her feet with a towel. Numbly, she held onto the only thing that she knew for sure – the plan. She packed her items, cleaned the basement, and removed any evidence of her and her mother’s existence from the house. Throwing her things into a cloth backpack, she put on her shoes, her flannel coat, and headed out to the tall oak tree. She walked carefully around the hole. The afternoon sun had returned and was melting the snow around it. Soon her tracks wouldn’t be there. The squirrels greeted her as they always did, and Malaya threw the last acorns she had in her pocket out to them. She reached the V branches – this tree that her mother had always spoken of. Malaya reached behind, finding the hole – just as she had been told. It was filled with acorns - the squirrels had coveted this place as well. Her fingers found the dollar bills - $80. She hoped it would be enough. And then they touched something else. Malaya pulled out a small black book – a moleskin notebook. Her breath caught in her throat. The once-black cover was soft and wrinkled and the writing faded on the yellowed pages. Twenty thousand dollars. How? Her mother? Her thoughts flew back to the black squirrel she’d seen this morning. Squirrels? Was it possible?

She slid the book into her backpack and whispered the plan over again to herself. Her fingers closed around the two acorns she had slipped into her pocket. As her arm tightened around Blossom, her mother’s humming filled her mind and sunlight glinted off the branches. She was free .