Every weekday at four PM, a small piece of Paulita Paulo died and went to heaven. At this time, she would be returning to her classroom after dismissal. After another afternoon of admonishments and anemic commands: “Don’t just run into the street!” “You see that yellow line? Keep behind it!” It was all so different from when she, Paulita Paulo, was young. Back then, when the bell rang at the end of the day, the children were simply set free – not unlike an ant farm dropped abruptly on the ground. But now – now kids had to be handed off to parents in a sort of bizarre and unspoken economic exchange, communicated through the eyes, with which parents liked to say, My taxes paid for this.
So it was with great relief that Paulita Paulo returned to her classroom at the end of the day: to clean the markings from the chalkboard; to straighten the picture books on the shelves; to right chairs upturned and askew. It was just that time of day – the sun angled in just such a position – that light passing through the windows illuminated bits of dust suspended in the air, and Paulita Paulo liked to imagine herself dancing through them as she worked, as if dancing through a fine mist, a few treasured moments of silence in an otherwise chaotic day. Why, just earlier this morning, Paulita Paulo had had to confiscate a notebook from Bonnie Bonnie and say to her, “Paper is not something that is meant to be eaten. We do not eat paper here in the second grade,” prompting Bonnie Bonnie to cry and Paulita Paulo to suspect that she would have to repeat this lesson again tomorrow. And yet (mercifully!) the day marched on; and still now (abhorrently!) the day marched on. Ah, thus is life. That is what Paulita Paulo thought as she picked up her coat, turned off the lights, and closed the door behind her.
* * *
Paulita Paulo walked both to and from work every day. She did not do this for the sake of exercise, nor did she care about the environment more or less than anyone else she knew. She did this because, just last spring, she sold her car, an old, beat-up Subaru Outback, for two thousand dollars. This had seemed reasonable at the time – where were these so-called outbacks in which she sojourned? The post office, the grocery, and the school demarcated the boundaries of her life; and her own legs could transport her to these places as well as any car. But now that the days were growing shorter, the weather colder, she was beginning to rethink her decision.
By the time Paulita arrived home, the day had largely collapsed into night, the sun almost wholly concealed behind the crests of nearby houses, casting the yard before her own humble cottage into a shady gloom. Mounting the stairs to the front door, Paulita noted that though the blinds were drawn, the sounds of hammers and demolition seeped through the windows into the chill of the evening air. In the past, Paulita had been alarmed by these sounds, but now she would be more concerned were they absent upon her return.
Dropping her keys in a basket by the door, Paulita crossed from the entrance into the living room, where HGTV had been left playing on the television, across from which slept Paulita’s mother all snuggled up in her Lazyboy recliner. The repository of much of Paulita’s two grand, it came programmed to perform a range of acrobatics; could produce both heat and vibrations; it even came (curiously) with a built in GPS tracker. Paulita suspected that, in its past life, it was likely a transformer or some incarnation of the Terminator. It was in this contraption that Paulita’s mother spent the majority of her time.
The move-in had been precipitated by a nasty fall during the winter of last year (black ice – broken hip); complacency had made it permanent. But rather than returning to good health, Paulita had the sense that her mother was only getting worse, perhaps even a bit confused. Chores might go inexplicably unfinished, or items absurdly relocated: hair dryer – oven; TV remote – bathtub. It was not a life wholly unlike Paulita’s pre-move-in life, if in her old life she’d had to constantly guard against innocent sabotage.
As she prepared herself an assortment of microwavable dishes, Paulita paused to wipe away a length of drool slipping down her mother’s chin. She would let her mother sleep here tonight, and after finishing her dinner, Paulita would retreat upstairs to review her lesson plans for tomorrow.
* * *
And now… a moment of clarification. It was not that Paulita Paulo disliked her job. Paulita Paulo was a teacher. Therefore, Paulita Paulo taught. Let’s talk examples: on a given day, Paulita might be standing at the front of her classroom, pointing at a map and saying, “This here is France. Its capital is Paris. Capitals are central locations of government.” And her students might murmur, “Yes, France; yes, Paris; gover-mit, right.” And it was – right, that is. Because on a given day, there was really nothing much else Paulita Paulo would rather be doing.
Which is not to say there were not moments of disillusionment – for instance, that time Greg collapsed, his inhaler nowhere to be found; for instance, that morning Sharon threw a stapler through the window, afterwards wailing, “I only meant to pass it to Bonnie Bonnie!” – moments when Paulita railed against herself: I could have been a doctor. I should have gone to law school. But ultimately these sentiments were short-lived, materializing and dissolving in nearly the same instant, for how often did the reality of life ever live up to what one imagined it to be? E.g., could Paulita ever, in meeting someone, imagine herself saying, “Hello, I am an engineer… Everyday I engineer…” No, some things were best left in the abstract.
But this teaching business – this was her life. (Her real life.) And these kids were her kids, despite whatever she might say to the contrary now and again. That said, things were getting harder with each passing year, and this was something that Paulita felt confident was not just in her head. Since beginning her career as a teacher, Paulita’s students had called her many things: the appropriate – Ms. Paulo, Ms. Paulita, Ms. Paulita Paulo; the affectionate – Mrs. P, Double P, YoYo P; the illogical – Double D; the subversive – PeePee, P-Tree, P-Face; and most recently, perhaps most heartbreakingly, PussyPaulo.
Excuse me? PussyPaulo?
Undeniably, there had been an increasing trend towards meanness over time, though where it came from, Paulita Paulo could not say. (An older sibling? An angry parent?) These children had not seen enough of the world, had not lived enough years, to be so familiar with the crueler dialects of human interaction; and yet each fall they arrived on Paulita’s doorstep (so to speak) increasingly unsensitized, maliciously armed, and primed to fire.
All this is to say, thank god for kids like Ian, or more precisely, thank god for Ian, who with his family arrived in the spring of last year from god knows where (heaven, it’s whispered; yes, heaven seems appropriate). Paulita had heard about him unceasingly all last semester from first grade teacher Margie Heller (Margie Hell-Face to Paulita’s PussyPaulo. “They’re just acne scars!”) Margie would sit in the teacher’s lounge during lunch and explain, wide-eyed: “So last week I handed out this worksheet, right? And I said, ‘Now everyone fill this out.’ And would you believe he actually did it? The whole thing – front and back! And yesterday, when I said, ‘Everyone take out your books – quiet reading time’; he didn’t say a damn word … for nearly twenty minutes! Do you believe that?” And Paulita Paulo, seated across from Margie, a crushed packet of French dressing in her fist, would say, “No, Margie, I really can’t,” not only because it flew in the face of all her experience, but because she couldn’t help but feel jealous, and frankly cheated, because when would she, Paulita, get a student who could sit silently for twenty whole minutes, or fill out worksheets front and back? (It’s true – there had been Charles Doylie back in ’99, but even he had broken down five months in, when he unexpectedly devolved into a screaming frenzy and murdered Tim, the class tadpole, by biting him in two.)
So even in August, when Paulita found Ian’s name on her class roster, her doubts had lingered. Hope is for newbs and suckers, those were Paulita’s thoughts on the matter. But how wrong Paulita had been: Ian was everything Margie Hell-Face said he would be – he even colored in the lines! He made her think again that life really is a mixed bag – that it wasn’t just same, same, same, same, same, and then you die. More to the point, she had needed Ian; she didn’t even know how much she needed him until he was there, sitting small and quiet at his little child-desk. She needed him for times like this:
Paulita Paulo standing at the front of her classroom. Paulita Paulo leading a lesson on longitude and latitude, and saying, “Alright, now who can tell me which city lies at the coordinates of 50° N, 14° E?”
She calls on James, who perks up in his chair, pauses dramatically, then says, “Pluto!”
Laugh Laugh Laugh
Paulita Paulo responds pleasantly. Paulita Paulo responds gently. Encouragement…Patience – this is the mantra she repeats in her head.
Unbidden, Bonnie Bonnie chimes in. “Did you know that Pluto is, like, not even a planet anymore?”
For reasons unclear, this offends James, whose father once told him there were some things you could not take sitting down. He says as much and stands in such a way that sends his chair crashing behind him.
Bonnie Bonnie tells James that she had just been stating a fact. She wants to know if James knows what that is – a fact. Still in her seat, Bonnie Bonnie’s face colors; the corners of her mouth begin to droop. The signs are clear: Paulita can see that the tears are liable to start at any moment, and though she recognizes the need for action, the afternoon suddenly stretches endlessly before her, like middle age, rendering her immobilized and mute. But just when she thought that the lesson was irrecoverable, the afternoon shot, there was Ian, silent and unassuming, his hand in the air, as if to say, Look, this is what I came to do. It’s like in the movies, when it seems Brendan Fraser will never make it in time to save Rachel Weisz from being ritually sacrificed by a lonely and undead Egyptian priest, but still he does – he really does! – and arriving on the scene, all he needs say is, “Prague. The answer is Prague.”
* * *
And here… a glimpse of purgatory, aka latchkey, aka APIPA – short for A Pain In Paulita’s Ass – a program Paulita Paulo crewed herself each Thursday after school and during which she practiced a strictly laissez-faire style of surveillance: at this very moment, Bonnie Bonnie was tearing across the schoolyard, in her outstretched hand an astoundingly long variety of earthworm; before her fled James, a look of terror on his face, screaming, “Keep it away! Keep it away!”; and spectating this was Paulita Paulo, who thought to herself, Yes, this is fine.
She had brought along her knitting to do, and if she was to finish this scarf before Christmas (a gift she was giving to herself), she had best set her priorities straight. After all, Paulita Paulo was by no means a natural born knitress (knitress?) so these things took her quite a while to finish.
But today was not to be a knitting day for Paulita Paulo, who had not completed even a dozen stitches before her eyes caught on a peculiar sight: Ian sitting alone with his back against the perimeter fence, a weighty-looking hardback resting in his lap, though it was not so much what he was doing as what he was not doing that drove Paulita’s interest. Where was his binder of trading cards? Where were his comics or action figures or other items seemingly so central to the identities of boys his age? Instead he sat there, a black parka wrapped around his shoulders, so engrossed that you half-expected to actually see the relay of information in the empty space between the book and his head. It made Paulita wonder: What set of circumstances, what amalgamation of experiences, could produce a child like Ian?
She was mulling this over when a black Jaguar skimmed into the parking lot by the schoolyard, and from its leathery interior emerged Ian’s father. This was not something Paulita needed to be told. All she could say was that, after so many years of teaching, one started to intuit these connections on sight alone – like each child was a puzzle piece and each parent an adjacent piece that, when combined, formed part of a larger, more intricate framework. And while this small flash of insight was usually enough – indeed, often more than enough for Paulita, who, upon meeting most parents, reflexively thought: Please, already I know too much! – today she felt struck by a sensation that had been absent from her life for some time.
But to her dismay, as the space between herself and Ian’s father shrank, Paulita struggled to think of something she might say. All of the overtures she typically fell back on – “It’s been such a pleasure having [child name] in class.” “[Child name] has been doing such excellent work lately!” – seemed suddenly so tired and transparent. So it was a relief, if also rather startling, when he spoke first, saying, “It’s Ms. Paulo, yes?” He smiled, leaving Paulita dumbfounded and unsure.
This was not at all how things were supposed to go. This was not how things usually went. Paulita could manage little more than, “Um, yes.” And then, recovering, “Paulita is fine, thank you.”
Sensing Paulita’s confusion (did she have to make it so obvious?) he went on, “We’ve seen you in the neighborhood, from time to time – walking.” By now Ian had joined them. His father placed his hand on Ian’s head. “Whenever Ian sees you, he goes, ‘Ahh, Ms. Paulo!’” Ian’s father started to laugh, a big open-mouthed, throw-your-head-back sort of laugh. “He talks about you all the time.”
Paulita couldn’t tell if this was supposed to make her feel at ease; she just knew she didn’t. “Yes,” she said. “I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint.”
“You weren’t planning to walk home today, were you?” He removed his hand from Ian’s head; stuffed both hands in his coat pockets. “It feels a little cold for that.”
This was true: the wind had picked up since the morning, adding some bite to an otherwise temperate day. Nevertheless, she told him that she was, all the while acting out her best impression of nonchalance, as if her ancestors were Vikings and she ate crushed ice for breakfast.
But Ian’s father wouldn’t hear of it: “We’ll wait in the car,” he said. “I have some emails to send out, and Ian has his studies. When you’re ready, we’ll take off together,” and before Paulita could respond, he turned and walked back towards the parking lot with Ian, leaving Paulita feeling flustered and alone, albeit with a small handful of children, including James, who for some reason was now lying face down and motionless in the mud while Bonnie Bonnie danced around him, laughing.
* * *
His name was Julian. He specialized in banking law. Sitting in the passenger’s seat next to him, Paulita could see that he was well-built, not overweight by any means, but clearly he would not be removed from the driver’s seat of his Jaguar Saloon unless he willed it. He was wearing a burgundy overcoat with horn buttons and a pair of Chelsea boots, both of which possessed that veneer reserved to a class of items Paulita knew she could never afford. Ian sat in the back, rarely looking away from the window.
“I’d like to start walking more myself one of these days,” Julian said. “It’s like I’ve been telling Ian lately, ‘We have but this one planet—we have to do our part.’ But then I always think to myself, what if I had to get somewhere on the fly… say, the airport?” He gave Paulita a wink. “That last part was a joke.”
Paulita laughed. She felt a bit caught off guard, but pleasantly so, as if she’d just found out someone was endeavoring to throw her a surprise party. No one had ever thrown Paulita a surprise party before.
When they pulled up in front of Paulita’s house, Julian reached over the console to place a hand on Paulita’s wrist. “Do you think we could get your number?” he said. “It’d be so nice if we had someone we could call if Ian ever has trouble with his homework.”
Paulita thought this was preposterous. Ian was not the type of kid who would ever need help with his homework. But still, it was like Paulita had been suddenly transported into space or some strange place where, stripped of all her most familiar ways of being, she could divine no mode of locomotion, and that Julian had appeared out of nowhere to say to her, “This is how you do it. This is how it’s done.”
* * *
The first messages began arriving only days later, initially impersonal – fyi watch for rain today – but on the heels of that … a rapid and salacious escalation – I think of you. I need you. Now.
These messages came as quite a surprise to Paulita, not only because they came in the middle of math class, but also because Paulita had never before received from a parent more than a B&N gift card or, once, a beautifully wrapped assortment of out-of-season citrus fruits. She was made to feel shaken and thought, instinctively, OMG, as if she were once again young and juvenile, with a whole world of firsts ahead of her, which may explain why the first time Paulita slept with Julian really did feel like her first time, or at least a sort of rediscovered first time. (That was how hard she orgasmed.)
They had been in the penthouse of a hotel downtown, and afterwards they got into the bath together. Paulita felt giddy and emboldened by the penis knocking at her thigh. She teased Julian’s nipple and said, “I’ve never screwed a banking lawyer before.”
Julian smiled. He smiled like he was saying, That’s really cute. You’re really cute. And then, “Tell me more, Paulita Paulo,” he said. “Tell me more about Paulita Paulo.”
And just like that Paulita was mortified, because what exactly was she supposed to tell him?
Actually, I don’t have a car. No.
Or perhaps: I live with my mother. Double no.
Eventually, she leaned in so that the water swelled to their chins and her lips brushed the tip of his ear as she whispered, “I’m a knitress.”
* * *
The following week, when she wasn’t working or picking up after her mother, Paulita was at her kitchen table, newly and utterly committed to her knitting and absolutely swamped in a jubilee of multi-colored yarns. And to show for her efforts – a lumpy and misshapen abomination, a wooly grotesque. And though she had no one to blame for this predicament but herself, to do so seemed cruelly unreasonable, for how could she (or anyone, for that matter) resist Julian when, taking her hands in his, he had said to her, “Paulita, do you think you might knit something for me?” Might she? For Julian, Paulita would have swam the shark-infested waters of Smyrna or braved the coldest ranges of Mount McKinley. What was there to say but, “Uh, sure.”
What followed was a process of discovery and reduction: what was to be a sweater became instead a pair of gloves, which in turn gave way to socks. But even these were proving beyond Paulita’s means. Weighing it in her hands, Paulita’s creation struck her as something more fit to star in an avant-garde craft fair than be worn on someone’s feet. She thought of her scarf, now relegated to a closet shelf, equally crude and grotesque, but intended (crucially) only for herself and therefore a thing of quiet pleasure.
Meanwhile, Paulita’s kitchen had gone straight to hell: the crumbs of several days’ meals were scattered across the floor and plastered to the soles of her feet; a rotten smell rose from the sink; and in the silverware drawer – not a singular clean butter knife. It was like her kitchen had been claimed by the Twilight Zone or, unbeknownst to Paulita, become the setting of a Terrence Davies film. And while her mother was just in the next room, Paulita knew better than to ask for help from her, whose attention was presently captivated by an episode of House Hunters International (Japan Edition) and for whom little else seemed to exist.
No, in these matters Paulita was on her own. Much later, she would think back on these evenings as the beginning of the end of her brief affair, and that perhaps a brief affair was the best type of affair one could have. At the time, however, she only felt nagged by a creeping intimation of doors opening and closing, of choices being proffered and decisions being made, and she suspected this had nothing to do with her question of red yarn versus blue (though if it did, it was a question of Matrix-esque implications). Paulita would have spent more time puzzling these feelings out were her thoughts not then seized by a sudden awareness of a new photo tacked to the refrigerator. Undefinable from a distance, upon closer inspection Paulita could see it was a photo of Julian, his arm slung over Ian’s shoulders, the Duomo looming in the background. And while under normal circumstances, Paulita likely would have found such a photo arrestingly beautiful, in the immediate her discovery occasioned only alarm and questions, such as Where on earth did this come from? and What the fuck?
* * *
By the next time Paulita met with Julian, a number of weeks had passed, and the effects of time had begun to erode some of that magic that so often accompanies initial encounters. Paulita could see now that Julian was the sort of man who liked to take the initiative, which was a nice way of saying that he was the sort of man who liked to put others on the back foot. When they arrived together in the lobby of the hotel that evening and been told by the clerk that their room needed an additional twenty minutes to be turned down, Julian said, “Would you care to explain to me why it’s not ready now?” And then, leaning across the desk, “I’d like to speak with your supervisor, immediately.”
In bed, Paulita began to wonder what it was about herself that could possibly appeal to a man like Julian – certainly not her wardrobe, nor her appreciation for arts and crafts. And for that matter, what explained her attraction to Julian, if but the gloss of high-end consumerism – she thrilled at the rush of his sports car and the crackle of the exhaust popping like a gun – and the smells of money and bourbon, exotic to Paulita, which rolled off Julian in waves. For Paulita, being with Julian was like sitting in a front row seat of a Broadway show with her knees clutched to her chest, but now she was getting the sense that the performance was coming to an end and that it was time for her to go home. So when she was certain he’d fallen asleep, Paulita gathered her things and made for the elevator.
In the taxi, she thought of their final moments together – him at the precipice of sleep, her hand resting gently on his chest. “Julian,” she whispered. “Julian, how did we even come to be here today – you and I?” And when he answered, she could hear something in the sound of his voice, something like a diminishment or an increasing distance, like he was falling away from the earth, like he was falling back into himself. “Oh god, Paulita. My little Ita. You have such beautiful, beautiful teeth.”
* * *
It was after midnight when the taxi pulled up in front of Paulita’s home. There was a dull throbbing behind her eyes, and the arches of her feet ached. So, she couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed when, coming through the front door, the basket where she dumped her keys was nowhere to be seen, and she thought to herself, Enough is enough. These things appearing and disappearing...that weird photo that came from god knows where...She thought she would never say it, but it was time for a return to everyday life. That’s what she was thinking as she marched towards the living room to confront her mother. She would tell her that this had to stop, that actions beget consequences and that, failing drastic change, Paulita would pawn the Lazyboy recliner or throw the TV out the window. “Kiss the TV goodbye.” That’s what she would say, what she was about to say when, crossing the threshold into the living room, there was Ian, and she felt suddenly like the victim of a considerable theft, or that she’d stepped through a portal into an alternate reality, one that closely resembled in many ways her own, but in which nothing belonged to her. He was sitting on the recliner next to Paulita’s mother, who was staring vacantly at the television screen, where Hilary Farr was pitching to a starry-eyed couple a hot pink three-seater that would serve as the focal point of a completely renovated entertainment space.
“That’ll never do,” Ian said, shaking his head. Then, noticing Paulita, “Oh, hello Ms. Paulo,” as if their meeting in Paulita’s living room was the most natural thing in the world, like he was greeting her in class after a weekend’s absence.
He slipped off the recliner and moved into the kitchen, balancing himself on the edge of a chair before which sat Paulita’s failed knitting project, her erstwhile gift to Julian; and beside this – a book. Paulita recognized it as the one she’d seen Ian studying in the schoolyard, but at this distance, she could see that it was not a book, but rather a large, leather-bound photo album, the cover embossed with the letters I-A-N.
He picked up the lumps of knitting and, holding them up to the light, said, “Do you wrap your hands in these? Are they hand warmers?”
“Socks, actually,” said Paulita. She felt her mind was racing, but her thoughts could only trip along: How would she explain this situation to anyone? And, more urgently, what was she to do now with this little boy, sitting here in her kitchen? Then, another thought: “Ian, did your mother bring you here?”
“My mother?” He set the knitting down and frowned at Paulita. “No,” he said, as if such a suggestion were completely nonsensical and that that would be the element of this situation that existed wholly outside the realm of possibility.
Opening the album, he said, “Winter break is coming soon.”
“I suppose it is.” Paulita was unsure of what else to say, though she thought this hardly seemed the time for casual observations.
Flipping to the last page, he seemed to deliberate a moment before removing one of the photos, sliding it across the table to Paulita. “That’s us,” he said. “In Breckinridge last winter. We went skiing with Ms. Heller.”
This struck a chord of disbelief in Paulita. With Margie? As in, Margie Hell-Face? But it was true – there was Margie Heller, an oversized pair of ski goggles perched on her head. Posed between Ian and Julian, she was like an ironically miscast femme fatale to Julian’s James Bond. It was a photo at once sickening and revelatory, but what really caught Paulita in that moment was the look on Ian’s face as he watched her pick up the photo. Beneath a placid exterior – a sort of menacing glee, like he was waiting for her to break down and was willing to do whatever he could to help this along.
It would have been challenging for Paulita to give a definitive account of her emotions in the immediate, but with the benefit of distance, she may have described a strange feeling of nakedness, a stripping away of presumptions and understandings until all that was left was a conflicting sense of pity and violation. That much, though, would come later. In the present, it was all she could do to say, “Get out,” and stand off to the side, watching Ian as he tucked his album beneath his arm and ventured out into the dark.
* * *
It was difficult for Paulita to return to work come Monday. Nevertheless, she did. There are some things in life that are painful but necessary, but in time, if we are so lucky, they may become less painful if not less necessary. She actually told herself this, and in some ways, Paulita was exceedingly lucky indeed. She found solace in routine and returned to her scarf, pleased that it was shaping up to be warm and functional, if also rather homely. She did her best to treat Ian like every other child in her class, at times even passing over his raised hand, saying “Let the others have the spotlight too, Ian.” And Ian, for his part, acted as if their nighttime encounter had never happened, or that it was something that had taken place only inside the confines of Paulita’s mind, a prospect that seemed to gain in plausibility over time. By all accounts, it seemed Paulita had emerged on the other side of a tempest, relieved to find before her a seascape at once calm and familiar. It pleased her to think that things would go on this way – that is to say, peacefully, smoothly – and for a while, they did. Until one early spring afternoon.
It was a day when the return of green vegetation no longer seemed an unlikely and desperate proposition, the snow having retreated to but a few withering strongholds – snow banks in the process of collapsing in on themselves. In two or three weeks, Paulita would have to contend with the encroaching whir of neighborhood lawnmowers, but on this day she had to deal with another matter entirely. It began with an introduction to multiplication, boring certainly, but altogether harmless, Paulita thought. She was explaining the concept of carrying – “You remember this from addition, yes?” – when she noticed Sharon fidgeting at her desk, her hands playing with something in her lap, and Paulita felt that today she could not just let this go. (Earlier she had stubbed her toe on a dresser leg and later forgot her coffee thermos in the kitchen.) “Sharon, what are you holding?” she said. “What did you just hide beneath your desk?”
Sheepishly, Sharon held out her hand, in the palm of which rested a figurine horse. It looked as though it had once been brown, but its paint was so worn its coat now sported gray and white spots.
“Can you solve the problem on the board? No? Please save your games for recess and pay attention during class.” Paulita was ready to leave things at that. She was turning to call on another student when, just audibly enough for everyone to hear, Sharon said, “There goes the Pussy again,” and Paulita knew this was a challenge that could not go unanswered.
She turned back to Sharon, saying, “Excuse me, Sharon? What did you say?” expecting Sharon to balk, to blush and to sink back into her seat. But instead she sat up. “I said, ‘Pussy,’ ” this time more loudly, a smile spreading across her face.
Laugh Laugh Laugh
And at that moment Paulita felt there was nothing for her to fall back on, and even if there was, she wasn’t sure she could (or even would) reach for this unnamed thing, feeling as she did suddenly consumed by a dark cloud, some toxic smog, against which she was ill-prepared and defenseless. And though she recognized that at the heart of this matter were not the words of a little girl (these represented merely the next cruel step in an ostensibly fixed trajectory), she could not escape the feeling that she had failed in some large way, had allowed herself to be sold on a hot pink centerpiece, only to realize too late that it was simply too much; and though she’d done her best to correct the offending action, she could not deny the fact that it had happened and that, in some corner of her mind, it was still happening, was constantly happening. PussyPaulo? PussyPaulo indeed.
Drawing herself up, looming over Sharon, Paulita said, “Tell me, Sharon, do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”
Now, it would be an overstatement to say that this was not the sort of response Sharon was expecting (after all, she was still coming to terms with the relationship between action and reaction), but perhaps as a consequence of biological evolution, Sharon could sense that something was not quite right. She leaned away from Paulita and said, “I wanna raise horses.” She hesitated. “I want a whole ranch of horses.”
A whole ranch of horses? Paulita snorted, was about to address Sharon again—
“No Sharon,” Ian interrupted. “You should say ‘horseman.’ You want to be a horseman when you grow up.”
And just like that, Paulita felt her anger evaporate. She saw Ian sitting there, as if in a radiance of innocence, and she thought of how much Sharon had still to learn, and how so much of that learning would have to happen alone. A whole ranch of horses? My god, this child, this little girl. Paulita put her hand on top of Sharon’s and smiled at her. “I think that’s wonderful, Sharon,” she said. “I’m positive you’ll grow up to be a wonderful horse rancher one day.”
Thomas Cardamone’s fiction has previously appeared in Moon City Review, Front Porch Journal, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Houston.
Photo by naosuke ii on Foter.com / CC BY