I'm going to watch with my eyes closed (the book of life)

"Hey Pop. You know, the blue in the sky that is like ink and it comes every morning? It has a big brain so it knows when to come, and at night the blue stuff goes away and then you could see the space." She says, after being quiet the entire walk home. 

"The clouds cover the planets in the day." She adds.

Her face is puffy, shoulders slack. 

I take her every day at the same time, just after lunch and before the children take naps in a darkened room crammed with yellow beds. Lunch ended early today for some reason, and they went early. She thought I was not coming for her. Not even late, just not coming. I was actually right on time, but she was already a tangle of hair and hot tears, her body sloping into the shape of a wounded animal. 

She dresses in silence, thrusting a hand out to me as we go down the stairs and outside.

She will make worlds for the rest of the day, pausing at times to explain to me who lives where, who sleeps where, who owns what car, what room the kitchen is, the bathroom, the laundry. She will pull a handful of clean white paper from next to my desk and draw in silence, pictures of princesses and evil mothers, of a grey cat on a leash, of a castle. 

She will wake up crying late that night, standing in silhouette in the doorway and knocking lightly until I wake up. She is terrified of losing me, or being separated. She is scared of her mother, of harsh children, of being stuck here forever. 

"I just want to go to Brooklyn." She whispers to me as I carry her back to bed and tuck her in.

I kiss her cheek, and smooth the hair from her face. 

She stares at me for some time.

"We'll get there." I tell her. 

She nods once.

I put an old film on, the original Charlotte's Web. Sitting next her, I hold her tiny hand. I think of when I was about her age, and how I wrote a letter to E.B. White with a drawing I had made of a pig, or maybe a horse. I remember the letter that arrived months later, the paper translucent and almost pink. It was typed, thanking me for the drawing and saying how nice it was to hear from me. It was signed in tall loose letters. I remember carrying it around with me, ready to prove it existed.

"I'm gonna watch with my eyes closed." E tells me, and her face slumps against the pillow.

I sit there for some time, until her breathing shifts. 

Her hand goes loose and I slide my fingers from hers. 

The next morning, there is a film crew downstairs. We watch them from the kitchen window as a cold wind whips the trees around. A woman stands in a dress as lights are adjusted, as cameras roll back and forth on a set of silver track.
"What does illustrated mean?" She asks me, standing on a chair to see what is happening.
"It is when you draw something, to show what it is." I say.
She nods once, satisfied.
"You know." She says. "If there was a film of us it would be called Project of Life."
"OK." I say.
"Or maybe, Book of Life." She adds. "But then, we would have to make it."

the significance of egg sandwiches

"Hey Pop. You know - a long, long time before, I think I had a nanny with red hair. Big red hair." E says across the kitchen table, resting her egg sandwich on the plate. 

"Sometimes life is like five minutes and then you are thinking and you remember something and it is maybe a dream." She continues. "But maybe it isn't."

She never had a nanny with red hair.

There was a pony with red hair. His name was Rijik, and he had a giant belly.

Yesterday was Father's Day. I think of how I spent my first, when E was one. Her mother sent me off, telling me no one should have to be with their family on such a day, that I should be alone. She told me to go get drunk and write. Sleep-deprived, and easily manipulated I listened, warping myself to fit her logic, nodding my head and getting dressed. I went out, notebook tucked under my arm into the Sunday afternoon of Greenwich, Connecticut. I had not written in months, maybe years at that time.  

I sat at the bar in a restaurant I knew and ordered a martini, and a little something to eat. Spreading the notebook open, I rubbed the seams, to make it stay flat. I wrote the date at the top, and ruffled through the pages of a half-finished story, The Radio Hour. My editor at the time had convinced me to work in first person which I had never done before. It felt impossible. I downed the drink in sweaty gulps, finished the tiny plate of food and ordered another martini.

Tall blonde girls were entering, sliding onto the empty stools next to me. Their skin smooth, their straight hair pulled into upsweeps. I smelled light perfume. I could not remember seeing shirts so crisp and white before. The empty page hovered above the dark wood of the bar. I paid the check, and finished the drink in measured sips. Standing up, I felt the alcohol all at once and wandered out into the hot, sunny afternoon and Greenwich Avenue. I started to walk up the hill. I had been gone less than an hour. 

I turned around and headed home.

First, cut the edges from the bread and set them to toast in the oven. Scramble one egg. Drop a pat of butter in the pan, and swirl it around once it begins to foam. Drop the egg in and tilt the pan around until you have a thin pancake. As the edges cook, flip one third into the center, then the opposite third. Next, turn the long ends in, until you have a perfect square in the center of the pan. Take the toast out, and butter lightly. Put one piece of bacon in the empty space on the pan. The egg can go on the toast now. A light salting, and a quarter turn of fresh black pepper. Flip the bacon. Pour juice in her glass. Call her, tell her it is ready. The bacon goes right on the egg, a little bit of the fat seeping in. Cut it on the diagonal.

She smiles, sighs and bites into it.
"My favorite." She says, between mouthfuls.

the liar, the lie

In the kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water, I smell the garbage. It stinks of chicken bones and rotting fruit. Tying it closed, I leave it there. I leave it there because that is what people do. I will throw it away tomorrow in the light of day, when I am dressed. 

When I am ready.

Monday is a holiday. Russia Day, the day the USSR went back to being called Russia. Another day of great change, or no change at all. There was a screaming argument with E's mother, with E joining in, begging to stay in my house. Her tears, her pleas mean nothing. There is a ruler, and the ruled. Decisions are handed down, unopen to discussion. The madwoman flashes her grin, her teeth, her fear tactics. She told me she reads the blog, that soon a lawyer will contact me or maybe not as she pretends to display mercy for dramatic effect. At one point, all that matters is what we believe. It becomes the truth. 

The liar and the lie create a perfect circle.

There is nothing to do but scream back, to reject her madness outright. There can be no surrender. The fight is all I have to defend E. The fight is what keeps me whole.

E stares at me with giant eyes. 

"Don't let her take me." She says, under her breath.

I want to tell her "the good guys always win". I want to tell her that "love is the strongest force in the universe". I want to tell her that her mother is just toying with us, as she has no friends, and no love in her life except for money. This game of tyranny is all she has left. 

This is why she is so dangerous. She has nothing to lose.

"Let's learn how to make a peanut butter sandwich." I tell E, messing up her hair and nudging her towards the kitchen.

"Nutella and peanut butter." She corrects me, bouncing on one leg and following.

"First you open the nutella, and let it get soft." I tell her, pulling it from the fridge.

She nods, suddenly serious.

"If you learn to cook something, you always feel better if you are sad." I tell her. "And if you already feel good, then you feel really great."

She looks up at me, resting one hand on my elbow.

She smiles.

I see the garbage, tied up and leaning against the cabinet. I take it outside, and dump it down the chute. The safety pin is still there. A man smokes a cigarette in the hallway as he reads a book. He is always on this windowsill, avoiding someone, hovering for hours by the glass bottle that has become an ashtray. 

Back inside, E holds the lopsided sandwich up to me.

"Do you want half?" She asks.

the myth of sisyphus (accordions and safety pins)

There is only one perehod (underpass) we take on the way to school each morning. In winter, it looms dank and wet. In summer it is cool, under sputtering fluorescents and a low ceiling. A man sits halfway down on a tiny folding stool playing the accordion. It is the same brisk song. An old Soviet one, happily ironic. His face is lost in some unblinking slow motion. He has no smile, no sadness. It is as if he is a blank piece of paper. Empty. Motionless. Just his fingers moving and his body making a little sway right and a little sway left. If someone drops a ruble, he does not react. If you stare at him, or stop for a moment he does not look at you. 

On some mornings his song brings a sort of breath to our walk. We are almost there. I will pull E's long messy hair into a ponytail, kiss her once on the top of her head and agree what time I will take her in the afternoon. Some mornings his song makes me depressed. I keep hoping he will play a new one, or he will do something different. I try to imagine how many years he has been playing this urgent, forlorn waltz. 

Lately, he makes me angry. Every morning, sitting with his insect eyes poking out from his face. Every morning with that sideways tilt of his head. No suntan. No different stubble on his chin. The same pants. The same shoes. I want to respect him for his commitment. He is running a marathon that will never offer a finish line, or a silk ribbon to break. I think he will just lean over very slowly one day in this tunnel and die. A flame of embarrassment runs under my face, and along my arms at these cruel thoughts. He is a father, I guess. He found something to do, and he does it. He is not a quitter. Maybe he hates playing this song, but has no choice. Maybe this is the only song he knows. I can't expect him to improvise a new one. I can't expect him to do anything more than what he can. 

I pass him, thinking to drop a coin in the little cardboard box but I do not. I need small change to buy milk downstairs and they refuse to change bills.

I wonder how the accordion man sees all of us, scurrying to work, to bring children to school before they stop serving breakfast, to the market, to the bank. Maybe he feels sorry for us, running around like insects every morning. I wonder if he is bored of my face, sour and tired after I have brought E to school, my hands in my pockets, gazing at my feet as I go home to an empty apartment, to scramble some eggs and make a living. 

I am haunted by his half-lidded eyes that day. Taking the garbage to the chute in the hallway, the heavy metal door flops open. There is a safety pin at the bottom. It has been there for months now. Every time the door slams shut and wine bottles clang furiously down, I wonder if it has unloosed itself. A day or two passes, then the next garbage bag goes down. It is still there. A North star in a dark sky. Someone must need this safety pin. Someone must take it, I tell myself.

But they never do.

It is safe. It survives, maybe by luck or chance. Maybe by grace.
I hope it is there tomorrow.