the girl with silver hands

When I wake up this morning something feels different. I’m shaking but I don't feel cold. My muscles are tight from sleeping cramped in a ball and I lost all feeling in my left shoulder. I try to stretch the cramps out of my legs and look over to the other bed where my parents are sleeping. His arm is trapped under her weight, her face obscured by hair and half hidden in the pillow. The blanket got scrunched up between them in the night. He lies with his face pointed to the ceiling, breathing so slowly that for a moment I think he might have stopped. I feel nauseous. I’m seeing flesh-eating parasites every time I close my eyes.

I tread softly over to my drawer. It creaks when it opens but my parents don’t wake up. I get dressed in the bathroom. The tiles feel freezing on my warm feet so I hop up and down to get my clothes on minus frostbite. I slip out of our apartment and wander down the hall. One of our neighbors almost comes out, sees me, and shuts her door. I tread heavy past her door so she’ll know when it's safe.

Outside the breeze nips at me and tingles where it meets my burning skin. I strip off my jumper and pull my hair back from my face. Something’s wrong. I look around, flexing my hands, for something to change, for the expanded space to breathe a clear head into me like an impatient school teacher. It just feels the same. The courtyard was supposed to be a communal space but no one ever uses it. There’s nothing there but dirty concrete and one pot plant with a tree in it sitting a little way out behind our apartment window. I think it’s an apple tree. I think I would have liked to grow up somewhere green.

The city feels weird to me. I can’t breathe as slowly as I want to. We’ve been moving from place to place most of my life. Same-same grey, sad apartments close to wherever there’s work and a school district. I tilt my head back and pull my hands through my hair. The sky looks like our walls, just blank grey without variation. It’s strange not seeing any shifts in colour, even different tones of grey moving together in the sky. It’s just endless, blank grey like an asylum wall. I huff out a breath and spit on the ground. Those parasites are crawling down from the inside of my eyes, gnawing out paths under my skin to wiggle from place to place. It’s so fucking awful I want to scream until my eyes bleed. I try stomping up and down but the frustration won’t go away so I go to pick up the apple tree, maybe throw it into the wall.

There’s a brown cardboard next to it. I put the tree back down – god, it’s heavy, this was a bad idea – and pick up the box instead. I open it and there’s nothing but some used chalks inside.

I draw a whale first, I don’t know why. It comes out kind of okay so I draw a lot of them, a whole pod. Pack? Fleet? Whatever. I draw some orcas but there’s no black chalk so they’re yellow and white, like a completely fucked attempt at a bumblebee-fish hybrid. Then I get sick of water so I go to draw a forest next but there’s no green or brown either. I make the trees blue and some misshaped attempt at a wolf pack red. I draw a big yellow heart under our apartment window and colour it in completely.

I’m spread out on the concrete sketching clouds when mum leaves for work.

“Clean that up when you’re done,” she says, stepping over me, "love you sweetheart, have a good day.”

I decide I’m not so great at pictures of things so I sketch a lot of swirly purple lines and blue and red dots everywhere. Dad almost trips over me on his way to the car.

“Fuck, sorry hon, see you at eight.”

I draw a red snowman. A white butterfly. A blue unicorn. They look like shit. I draw more swirls.

Later some kids who live in the building come out and yell stuff at me. They spill the chalks all over the courtyard and stomp on them. I’m still kneeling down and one boy grabs the pink chalk from my hand and smashes it into my head so hard it crumbles all through my hair. It hurts. After they leave I get a damp rag from inside and come out to clean it up. My mum walks past while I’m scrubbing the ground.

“Have you been drawing all day?” She asks me. “You're a funny kid. I hope you ate.”

She ruffles my hair and walks inside. I hear her sigh through the window as she sits and takes her shoes off. I forgot to make the bed. I squeeze water from the rag onto the yellow heart and swirl it around until the chalk makes a sun. It trickles into the patterns and turns brown and green.

When my father comes home I’m still cleaning.

“You’re early tonight,” I hear my mother’s voice through the window.

“Something amazing’s happened,” he tells her, “You won’t believe it, love.”

“Just try me,” she’s laughing.

I glance up. He’s moved around so his back is facing me. I can see him clutching both her shoulders. She’s smiling. He’s too muffled to hear now, but he sounds excited. He talks for a long time, waving his arms.

“The apple tree? What are you on about?"

As she speaks mum looks out the window and catches my eyes. I duck my head down right away and stare down at my smeared hands and the muddy golden sun beneath them. There is a hushed few words, loudening steps, and the window slams shut.

I shiver.

My clothes are damp and streaked with chalk. All the drawings are gone. I empty the bucket on the water onto the concrete and chuck in the washrag, then walk slowly back inside. The neighbor is re-entering her apartment when I pass. She glances back at me with darting eyes and misses the keyhole three times before she manages to unlock it. She rushes in and shuts the door like a hurricane.

Well, I don’t like you either.

I approach the door of our apartment and sit outside, bucket in my lap. I can hear them still talking through the door. It’s muffled. I lie down and put my ear to the crack between the door and the floor. They’re stressed, talking over each other. Something slams down hard and their voices get louder.

“… die if…” my father yells over her furious words.

“…how can you even consider …”

“… not my fault, I …”

“… what the fuck where you even …”

“I didn’t know, he …”

“… thinking, you …”

“tricked me, I …”

“No way in hell -"

"we have to..."

"That's our -”

“- or we're both dead!”

There is a long, sad, silence. The cold spikes, and my body starts to heat. I look down at my skin, purple and orange. Footsteps approach the door. I jump up and grab the bucket from the floor. Look up at my father, staring down at me, past me, to the concrete floor.

“Hi sweetheart,” he whispers, “come inside."

We have a guest.