A Miracle in the Snow
It is always winter for Hannah, sometimes she feels it in her body other times she feels it in her soul. During times when she feels its cold pooling at her feet, frosting her nose, Albert her husband would feel it too. Impervious, though he was to her begging or to her tears, the snow always had a way of getting to him.
Such justice, God’s perfect plan to cool a hot engine of a man, freeze his “destroy Hannah” thought processes for a little while and just let her breathe. Let her put on her jacket and her mitts and go out into the snow.
There was always home in the snow for Hannah. We see Hannah, Hannah as a baby catching the snow on her little palms, Hannah as a little child making snow angels with her mother, Hannah as a teen falling in love with skating and a gangly brown haired boy, Hannah as an adult, making out under the snow, fishing inside a man for warmth she didn’t need.
Hannah, Hannah, Hannah bleeding in the snow because she fell out of love, Hannah kissing snow and proclaiming it lover, then salvation. Hannah writing her deepest secrets in snow for preservation. Hannah making little snow babies look just like the ones she lost, Hannah wishing she was snow.
***
October 2015
Hannah walks through the length and breadth of their house twice before she realizes she should be doing the dishes. She checks the time on her wristwatch and gasps, moving hurriedly towards the kitchen. Albert hates to come home and meet any chore undone. It sends him into a rage that is bad for his heart, Hannah hates to be punished so washing the dishes on time puts them both in a win-win situation.
She stares at her reflection in the mirror in front of the sink, two years ago Albert had directed the interior decorators to put it there because standing in front of the sink would remind her she needed to do the dishes. He was a cruel cruel man she knew, but had God not also been cruel for bringing her to this moment?
Watching her in front of this sink remembering herself in this same position with a different man behind her rubbing soap suds into her hands, all those men running into each other in her mind. All the sex in the kitchen after washing up, on the floor, on the countertops and she could have had a baby then just one baby.
One girl or even a boy. Present enough now for her to feel his/her silky hair between her fingers, bathe him/her like she was bathing these plates now over and over. A tear slips down her cheek and the plate falls from her hand and shatters, a huge shard sticking to her foot. Blood everywhere, blood that reminded her of those times when she would hold her not fully formed baby in her fingers and watch her flow between her legs like a river.
Once, after a miscarriage she goes for confession and tells the back of the priest how much she hates her husband, how much she hates her babies for leaving her with him, lonely and hurt. Many years later, watching the blood flow, she tells God she hates him, tells him she hates her life and wants to end it. Yet she does nothing to change her situation, and that is her weakness, her hate and her curse.
***
December 1999
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A dog barks and Hannah turns to look. She is eleven years old at this time, her face is rosy pink like her jacket, her hair is auburn like her shoes, her trousers are purple like the plastic hibiscus flowers she holds tenderly in her hands. It has just started to snow and her dog is skipping happily into the field, dragging her mother along.
Hannah looks at her mother, eleven years though she is, she does not want to be like her mother. Professional dancer turned housewife. Father made sure of that, her mother used to be Protestant before they got married, now she was Catholic, wearing grey dresses and counting rosaries like a nun.
Her mother reaches Hannah and ruffles her hair.
“Hey mom” she says, hugging her mother around her middle.
“How is my little baby girl?” Her mother coos fondly.
“Watching the snow” Hannah replies.
It is a very familiar response. This too, is something of a yearly ritual. Every year, Hannah brings an object to the fields before the first snow falls. Her mother teaches her what she calls a “hard truth” using the object to illustrate it.
Last year, Hannah had brought a pebble and they both had to wait in the snow for a while before it was deep enough for the illustration.
Her mother had thrown the pebble as if expecting it to skip on the snow. It didn’t. Then she said, stones skip on water, and sink in snow. Not everything will work for you. Not everyone will be good for you.
Now, her mother takes the plastic hibiscus from her and sticks it into the snow. She is smiling wryly as she says. Sometimes, for something to grow, another has to die. They both watch the snow cover the field till it swallows their hibiscus whole.
January 2013
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Hannah didn’t plan to find love at the bar that day. Her plan was drink, get wasted and leave the bar early enough to stagger back home. Then Albert came into her life. He’d walked up to her while she was sitting by the bar, drunk. His smile was a proposition. He bought himself a vodka and said
“Let’s play a game, a beautiful woman like you should have a special name. You’ll make this name by combining the colour of your dress with the name of the next thing you want to drink”
“Blue water” that was what she chose, what he called her that night as they made love on his bed.
The next morning she wakes up to a splitting headache and Albert tends to her, she lets him have his way, lets him bathe her, feed her. They talk and talk, about life and philosophy. She talks to him about her writing and he listens with interest. Yes she writes poetry, yes she’d feel empty without it. He told her he’d feel empty if she walked out the door now. Told her he never wanted to let her go.
She stayed, they made love again and again, they listened to each other. By the end of the week she was so deeply in love with him, she took him to England and snow. To warm baths and the mad dash back into bed so you wouldn’t freeze up mid-walk.
All these while she was writing, happier poems than she had written in fifteen years. She sent them to magazines and before their wedding a lot of them got accepted for publication. When they got back to America she had lost her job as an elementary school teacher. Then two months later she got another job as an editor at Night and Gale magazine.
Her office was a tiny cubicle. It was in this tiny cubicle that she took short breaks from editing manuscripts to email love letters to her husband.
April 2013
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Hannah’s mother called her one afternoon when she stood feet deep in the sand at the beach. Albert was behind her, caressing the spot where her back met her butt. They were picturesque, they were always picturesque. Him tall and dark with chestnut brown hair and a beard that gave him this rugged sexiness. Her white and a little plump around the edges, her auburn hair falling around her shoulders in waves.
“I’m coming to see you” was all her mother said, but Hannah heard disappointment in it, heard the accusation that said: if we are falling apart it is your fault not mine. She had not invited her mother or any of her family members to her wedding. Perhaps, if her father were alive she would have had him by her side but he was rotting away somewhere.
Her mother stood in their kitchen at 3pm, she looked very different from the last time Hannah had seen her. Her suit was crisp and fitted, she wore 2 inch heels, her salt and pepper hair was done into an impeccable bun and she looked so young.
They stood there staring at each other, a huge chasm between them. Hannah knew that her marriage to Albert had widened that chasm. She knew it when her mother took one look at him and said; “he’ll be just like your father”. She didn’t stay long after that, she took the next flight home.
June 2014
The day she found out she was pregnant was one of the happiest days of Hannah’s life. A baby. A baby! She screamed and ran jubilating to meet Albert in their backyard. He was tending to her garden.
I’m going to have a baby. Hannah felt those were the most perfect words in the world when she said them. Hannah felt Albert’s were the most perfect arms when he spun her around and hugged her close, cupping her belly with one hand as if the baby was already grown. Again, they were picturesque. Standing there beaming at each other, happy tears sliding down their cheeks, a garden of flowers in front of them.
They went shopping for baby clothes. The scan said the baby was a girl. Hannah bought knitting yarn, she would do it the old fashioned way, she would knit caps and socks for her little girl. She picked out pink dresses, shoes and toys. Albert helped her renovate one of the rooms in their house. Painting it and taking out the furniture.
She bought a pink cot and placed it close to the window, where she sat every evening imagining the time when her baby would be babbling in the cot beside her.
Hannah told her mother the news and she came to visit. She brought caps and socks she had knitted for the baby herself. She smiled at Hannah, they both tended the garden together, they both sat by the window talking about their old home, their old lives.
August 2014
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Hannah gets up from her office seat and feels blood running down her legs. For a moment she stands frozen staring at the blood and then she screams.
She screams into Albert’s shirt when he comes to visit her at the hospital. Heart wrenching sobs racking her body. Her mother phones from England, she is too ill to fly. She begs Albert to take care of her daughter.
Hannah leaves the hospital feeling like rubble from a collapsed building. She feels hollow, like something dipped its hands into her insides and scooped everything out. Albert helps her into the car. He tucks her into bed, feeds her, bathes her. Two weeks later, Hannah looks up from the pillow to see him bringing her things from work.
She sinks back into the bed and barely hears him tell her why he’d made the decision. Her job was too stressful for her, he wanted her to be fully rested and in optimum health for the new baby. Hannah bursts into fresh sobs and he gets into bed with her, hugging her close.
Hannah goes to church for the first time in five years. She lies on the altar and weeps until a priest comes and leads her away. He prays with her and she goes back home nursing a little spark of hope. There would be another baby, she was still young.
***
July 2015
Six months ago, Hannah began to work from home. Her recovery period had been a very long and painful one. She still found it difficult to communicate with her mother and her former co-workers. Thankfully, she had never had any friends so there was no one calling to check on her, noone bringing cookies or cakes to comfort her.
Hannah was mostly home alone when Albert went out to work. Then she would do the dishes and clean the house. She had boarded up the door to the baby’s room so there was nothing to do but stay in bed writing on her laptop or go outside and tend the already dying flowers, caressing them as if begging them to resurrect. They were her only companions,
Albert had changed in the last year. He no longer held her, he stayed late at work. Even making love had become a chore for both of them. That spark was long gone and the only time she confronts him on the matter he yells at her. Telling her all she was good for was nagging and losing babies.
When she finds out she is pregnant again, Hannah takes the strip and shows it to him. For a moment he just stares at her, then as an afterthought, he rubs the small of her back and gave her a small smile.
Later that evening he tells her he can no longer let her have her PC anymore because working online would stress her and that could harm the baby. Hannah feels her world slipping away from her. Then she thinks of her baby she too wants this baby to live. He promises her he’d give it back as soon as the baby is born and for the first time in many months he hugs her to himself.
December 2015
Albert meets Hannah splayed on the snow. Blood all around her. She is clutching a snow baby as she weeps. He picks her up and takes her into the house. He is in a rage. He takes her clothes off roughly and throws her in the bath. He hits her when she refuses to stop crying. Then he offers to take her for an operation so the “offending womb” can be removed.
Hannah sits with her knees under her chin listening to Albert lament. He is tired of her continued behaviour. He married her because he wanted her for himself and not because he wanted her to give him children. He bans her from leaving the house.
When he looks Hannah in the eye she flinches. Then he tells her to snap out of her daze quickly or he would resort to hitting her.
During
Hannah takes the tea out to Albert. He is digging out the sand in her garden. He wants to do that before the first snow falls. He tells her, no more gardens, no more flowers. Yesterday he tore the poems she wrote in notebooks to shreds. He told her poems or no poems she’s empty anyway.
He looks crazed to Hannah. She cannot ask. She can only act now. It is one year after she lost her last baby. She has lost many things since then, she is ready to lose one more.
Albert reaches for the tea and she hands it to him. She watches him drink and notes that he is still so handsome. She wishes they could be picturesque in this moment. Wishes someone somewhere was taking a picture of Albert, looking very much like his old loving self just before it all ends. She walks back into the house and watches the snow fall from the windows.
After
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There has always been home in the snow for Hannah. She remembers her mother planting the plastic purple hibiscus flowers. Her mother motioning to her in faux seriousness as the snow gently buried the flowers. See! For something to grow sometimes, another must die.
Hannah stares at the place where her garden used to be. Where Albert now rested. She touches her belly and imagines her baby’s heart beating. Yes, sometimes for something to grow, another had to die.
This one would live.
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