Genes III: The Pleasantries

Rosie had to get a suit for a show. She was playing a man, a rich couple’s servant. All the suits in the little storage room they called a costume closet were far too big, swallowing Rosie within its thick fabric, hanging limp on her staggering four foot four frame, the exact same as her wingspan.

They had measured wingspans in science class. Mr. Colombo taught a lesson on genes, that the human evolved from a fish, to gorilla, and eventually to man. Rosie liked the cartoons he used, animals morphing into a guy that looked remarkably like her father. 

Mr. Colombo really liked Gorillas. His desk was littered with primate memorabilia - a stuffed gorilla with a tag poking out of its leg with the Franklin Park Zoo logo. A mug shaped like a gorilla, one of its arms acting as a handle, which Mr. Colombo drank his coffee out of every morning. The smell lingered on him for the rest of the day. A pen modeled after a branch, a rubber gorilla perched at the top. When you pressed on its head, the tip retracted. 

“Now, the average gorilla is four feet seven inches to almost six feet tall, but its arm span is seven foot seven inches to about eight and a half feet. A Silverback is five to six feet tall and a Western Lowland can have an arm span up to eight feet long!” As Mr. Colombo listed out the numbers, he contorted his body, knees slightly bent, arms out, shifting from side to side. Rosie thought he looked more like a bear than a gorilla. 

“How long do you think your wingspan is?”

“Six feet!” 

“Three feet. No, five.” 

“Close, but not quite! Human wingspans actually come very close to your height. Now, everyone, write down how long you think yours is. Then find a partner and together you will measure your height and wingspan. Remember to keep your arms straight as a stick!”

Rosie guessed four feet four inches. A five inch difference isn't too bad, she thought. She wouldn’t mind being five inches taller. 

Rosie needed a suit. Her brother had one, but his was even worse than the ones at school. She had to hold the pants up or they would fall at her ankles, the shirt so long it left her covered and decent even without the bottoms. 

“SuitBarn has some suits for rent. We can go after rehearsal tomorrow.”

“But I want a woman's suit. Suitbarn only has men's suits. I don’t want to look like a man!” 

“Oh, you'll look fine.”
“But I’ll look so ugly!”

“Don’t say that. You look beautiful in whatever you wear.”

“I’ll still look like a boy.”
“A beautiful boy, then.” 

Two years before, there was a blizzard. Rosie had never seen that much snow. She didn’t know there could be that much snow. It came up past her knees, gripping her thighs. She was only four foot two then. 

The first day back to school, the halls were slick, whatever snow that had been tracked in near instantly melting in the overheated building. Rosie shuffled her way to class, hopscotching between patches of dry tile. Blue, white, blue, blue, white. By the time she made it to her classroom, there were only a few kids left out at the lockers, hurriedly stripping their snow gear. Eliza shoved her thick coat into the bottom of her locker, backpack thrown on top, squishing it down even farther before running into class. Peter, Daniel, and Ryan all followed, closing the door behind them and leaving Rosie alone in the hall. She quickly got her hat, gloves, and jacket off. Bending over, she reached for her boots. Hands cold, the cord lock was even harder to press than normal. She pushed in on both sides, fingers straining. Pulled, but it didn't loosen. She sandwiched it between flat palms, pressing, pushing, pulling. It dug into her chapped hands. It didn’t move. Her head started to feel hot, heavy, too much time upside down, eyes level with knees. Palm heel to plastic, she pressed hard, harder. Movement. She wiggled her heel, pushing on the shoe’s sole with her toes, slowly extracting her foot from its tight grasp. The second boot came off faster, Rosie ignoring the raw stinging of her hands. Finally, finally, snow pants off and sneakers on, she rushed into class.

“You’re late. That’s a tardy.” Mrs. Millander didn’t look up from her laptop as she stuck out her hand, waving the little blue slip aimlessly in the air. 

“I’m sorry. I-uh… I couldn't get my boots off.”

“Well, you should have gone quicker then. Late to class means a tardy, for anyone. You know that.” 

“I’m sorry.”

Suitbarn was not nearly as bad as Rosie had expected. It had anything and everything Rosie thought a man could ever want. She counted seven different shades of blue jackets. Horizontal stripes, vertical stripes, plaid. Suits with patterns of dachshunds, golf clubs, skiers. 

The Suitbarn man was old, probably as old as Rosie’s grandparents. He wasn’t much taller than her, five foot two she would have guessed. She had no idea how long his wingspan was, though he had nice, soft hands that he shook Rosie’s with, a firm grip and warm smile. The man didn’t speak much English. He knew the pleasantries like hello and goodbye, but didn’t speak much more than that. 

When Rosie came out of the dressing room, wearing a suit that finally fit, he gestured to step up on the big carpet block half enclosed by mirrors. Rosie looked in and saw infinite reflections staring back. 

“Oh, it looks lovely, Rosie!” her mom exclaimed. “And see, you don’t look like a boy.” 

The man nodded and smiled. Rosie wasn't sure if he knew what they were saying or just trying to appear like he did. She thought it must be a very lonely way to live. Rosie tried to look herself in the eye through the mirror, but kept flitting back and forth between each eye, never getting hold. 

The man came over to her, kneeling down and adjusting the hem of her pant leg. He carefully took two pins from a little metal tin and folded up the bottom so it hit right at the top of Rosie’s sneaker. He looked up at Rosie through the mirror. She caught both eyes, nodded and smiled. 

A pin between his lips, Rosie felt soft, warm knuckles tickle the dimple of her back and a gentle tug at her waistband. She felt knuckles slide further, deeper, scraping against her bottom as a hand unfurled in the seat of her pants. She felt it wriggle around like a spider, or as if it was searching for something lost, something hidden. 

When Mrs. Millander let the class go for recess, all other kids rushed out in unison to their lockers, haphazardly pulling on the clothes they had haphazardly thrown off hours before. Rosie followed behind, a slow echo of the herd. 

Outside, the snow seemed to be even higher than at her house, almost up to her hip. She watched the herd bounding, leaping, diving, disappearing into the whiteness. 

“Mrs. Millander. What should I do?”

“Go play in the snow. It's recess. Do whatever you want.” 

“But I’m not supposed to go off the path.” Rosie gestured with a gloved-hand to the thin shoveled trail parallel to the wall. 

  “Oh um, Nick, come here,” Ms. Millander called out to the closest child. She had to shout so he could hear across the field. He bounded over, displacing swaths of snow with each step. 

“Come play with Rosie.”

Leaning forward to give it more room, Rosie waited as the spidered-hand squirmed. The hand pulled the man, too, his knee knocking over the tin of pins. The spidered-hand jumped out, tending to the pile of rolling metal. 

“Sorry!” he said, looking up at Rosie. “Sorry.”

Her mother grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the dressing room. “Oh my god are you okay? Did he touch you? What did he do? What did he touch?”

“I-”

“You didn’t even want to come here. I should have just listened to you!” Rosie’s mother ripped off the suit jacket, then shirt, then pants, leaving Rosie in only her underwear, the one with the little pink bow at the front. The dressing room was cold. 

She had veered from the path. Building snowmen and tossing a snowball back and forth was not, she thought, entertaining enough for Nick. Rosie wasn’t entertaining enough. 

“We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to,” he said, looking out at the nylon marshmallows bobbing across the field. 

“No. We’re going.”

Step after step after step. Foot after foot. Deeper and deeper into the white depths. She sank down in the center of the field, letting the snow embrace her tired limbs. Nick sank down next to her.

She sat in the car. Her mom was standing outside SuitBarn with two police officers. They stood tall and straight. Rosie could see a gun hanging on each of their hips. She had never seen a gun before. It was smaller than she expected. The policemen were as big as she thought they would be. Big and tall and straight and strong. She couldn't hear what her mom was saying but she waved her hands in the air. 

Rosie watched Mrs. Millander blow her whistle, her cheeks puffed and lips pursed. Rosie tipped forward, trying to extract herself. 

“We should really go back now.” Nick was standing, looking back and forth, watching Rosie trying to squirm herself loose as the class became a herd once more. She leaned all the way back, then rocked her body up as quickly as she could, praying the momentum would be enough to dislodge the snow gripping her, holding her down and stuck and fixed. 

“Uh, go without me. I’ll be there in a second.”

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes. Just go.”

She sat in the car crying. 

“Did he hurt you?” Her dad sat next to her, quiet, waiting. 

The tray in the dashboard needed to be cleaned out. There were five gum wrappers, two of which had old, shriveled pastel green balls in them. There were three pens. She knew none of them had ink, only the blue one still had a cap. Every time, her mom would go through the same cycle. She would be on the phone, talking to the dentist or the school or the vet. She would reach for a pen, uncapping the blue one with her teeth. She would scribble on a napkin or receipt. When no line followed, she would put it back and try again with the next. And try again. Eventually she would end up repeating whatever she had wanted to write down to herself under her breath as the doctor or plumber or mechanic finished what they had to say, then frantically write down whatever she could remember in an empty email. She had 132 in her drafts.

Rosie watched the herd form a fidgety line, done with the cold and anxious to get back inside. Roise watched the lined-herd begin to shuffle in, a procession of snow-flaking stomps and fogged breaths heating gloveless hands. Rosie watched twenty four heads spin around, eyes scanning for the missing calf. 

There was an old hospital bracelet from the day before when Rosie had to get her flu shot. Rosie didn’t mind needles but she did mind nurses. 

“Arm.” The nurse was wearing scrubs with big, laughing Santa faces on them. Rosie wasn’t sure if they were laughing at her or the nurse. 

“Don’t look at the needle,” Rosie’s brother had told her. “And take a big breath as it goes in. It won't hurt.” 

“Rosie. You know recess is over. What are you still doing out here? Get up and come get in line.”

“I-” she tried one last time. No movement. “I can’t get up. I’m sorry”

There were four and two thirds Goldfish. They must have been her brothers. Rosie hated feeling their little bodies break apart against her teeth. Fragile. Hollow. She much preferred Cheez-Its.

“Did he hurt you?” The shot still hurt. She had looked away, had breathed in, had even shut her eyes tight, tighter as it went in. Black and white and blue and grey. Static.   

They called his daughter. He didn’t speak much English. Only the pleasantries. They called his daughter. “He has never done anything like this before.” “It was a misunderstanding.” “I’m so sorry. I’ll be over as soon as I can.” 

“You’re crying. Did he hurt you?” There was a line of dust caught between the windowsill and the glass. Rosie swiped at it with her knuckle, rubbing what came off on the side of the seat. 

 She could only crack her left knuckles. She tried on her right. Pressing, wiggling, pulling. Only her left would ever crack. At rehearsal, Luc waved her over.

“Give me your hand," he said, reaching down and grabbing her right wrist, bringing it up to his waiting hand. “Make a fist.”

“What are you doing?” 

“Just do it.” He closed her fingers, covering her knuckles with his palms, and pressed. A swift succession of cracks popped in the silence.

“Ow! What the heck!” Sharp. Throbbing. 

“What? I’m just cracking your knuckles. Chill out. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Did it hurt? Did he go in your underwear? Or just your pants?” The gun was bigger up close. 

“Answer honey.” A hand on her shoulder, a hand on her back. 

“Where did he touch you?” A tear speckled on the pavement. 

“What did he do?” Throbbing knuckles. 

“What did he do?”

The herd was already in the classroom, sitting quietly at their pens when Rosie got to her locker. Gloves, hat, jacket off. The chord lock was cold and wet in Rosie’s hand, snow still stuck in the crevices. Wedged between the heels of her palms, she pushed. Flesh on plastic on flesh. It slipped out. Flesh on flesh. Elbows digging into thighs, she smushed it between her hands, pushing, pulling. Head thumping, blood pooling behind her eyes. Her breath was loud in her ears, lungs folded and air pushed out. 

Rosie slumped down, cushioned knees hitting blue tile. Sliding off her calves to the floor, she pulled snowpantsed-legs out from under her, the rubber sole of her boot catching on the ground. The locker’s metal was cold against her back. The floor needed to be mopped, puddles spotting the hall. Four locks were hanging loose on their lockers, forgotten, open. The top right corner of a poster had popped off the bulletin board, its missing tack on the ground below, laying straight on its back, needle up. Feet out in front, she brought a leg into her lap, cradling her booted-foot, gripping the edges, pulling, pulling, pulling.

Genes II: Waited, waiting.

Strong, soft hands carefully wedging the sheet between the mattress and the bed frame. 

“Hand me the other side.” He stretches out his arm, taking the worn cotton from Rosie’s hands. The fabric has little Batmen printed all over its body, a hundred different crimes and a hundred different lives changed. 

It is the old Batman, like the shows Rosie watches in art when Ms. Mariano is too tired to teach. She hands out markers and pads of paper, turns off the lights so the drawings are barely visible, and plays reruns of the original series. 

“He's so strong!” Eliza exclaims, watching Adam West pull himself up the side of a building. 

“They’re just walking, stupid,” Jake tells her, scribbling over his entire paper with a dried out black marker that only produces a frazzled greenish grey. 

“What?”
“They turned the camera to the side. So it looks like he's going up.”

“No,” Daniel says, “they built the building on its side. All they have to do is walk and hold the rope up.”

“Oh,” Eliza says, capping her marker and pushing her drawing of a heavily shaded sphere to the side. “He still looks strong.”

He pulls the sheet taut across the top bunk too close to the ceiling for anyone to actually get in, securing the other side and letting the rest fall down, enclosing Rosie inside a box of filtered light and dark wood. She can see his shadow in front of her, then fading away. She waits, waits, waiting for his figure to materialize again. 

“Peekaboo!” His disembodied head pokes in. Rosie laughs deep from her stomach, doubling over, relief of his return surpassing the fright of surprise. “Scooch over,” he says, swinging a leg over the railing and squeezing in next to Rosie. 

“What do you want to hear about today, my darling?”

“What were you telling me last time?”

“Hmmmm. I don’t remember…”
“It was about twins!” 

“Ah yes! Do you remember their names?”
“Ummmm. Voila and ummmm.”

“Viola. And Sebastian."

“Right. Voila and Sebastian.”

“Well, Voila and Sebastian were twins…” 

Rosie falls asleep halfway through act three. Soft, strong hands slip her under the covers. Soft, strong hands smooth her hair and close the door so gently she doesn’t even know he’s gone. 

Hot, stuffy air. The sheet keeps ticking her nose, being pulled in, pushed back, and pulled in again as she breathes. Shallow, to not use up the air she has left under the cover. Rosie tries to match her breath to the sounds of the voices downstairs. Loud voices. She breathes in on her mother’s lines, breathes out her uncle. In, out, in, out. Out again. Out, out, out. Her stomach suctioning, she wishes her mom would say something. 

Rosie rips off the cover, gulping in cold fresh air. She breathes in until her lungs press against her ribs, chest puffed in the dark. Pressing her pointer fingers in her ears, the yelling is quieter. Quieter than under the covers. Muffled, like when she tries to talk to her brother underwater at the pool. She can hear his voice, but no words. A faint gargle while the water presses in. 

She looks over at her brother in the bed next to hers, but his back is turned. His spine rises and falls slowly, evenly, every breath rolling down across shoulders rounded, disappearing under the covers. She traces the air's journey along the curve of a curled knee, finger catching in each small groove though his back falls even. She matches her breathing to his.

“Max,” she whispers into the darkness, her voice too loud in her blocked ears. His spine rises and falls. Rises and falls. 

“Max.” Her voice is much quieter without her fingers in her ears, much quieter than the voices marching in from downstairs. 

Turning her spine to his, she faces the chipping wallpaper. She likes picking at it in tiny flecks, taking off one petal at a time. He loves me, he loves me not. The flecks fall down, getting lost within the dust-yarned carpet, eventually becoming dust itself. 

—

“Come on, we're late.” Rosie's mom comes into the room, shaking out her wet hair with her hands. A drop lands on Rosie's cheek. She lets it stay.

“The shirt looks nice,” Rosie says. 

“Oh I don't know. It's black, that's all that matters. Why aren't you dressed?”

“I don't want to come.”  Her mom pauses, arms hanging in the air. 

“Its the last time you'll ever see him.”
“But it's not really him.”

“You may regret it when you're older.”

“I just… it's not him.”

“I get it.” Her mom sighs and pulls Rosie in close to her. They stand there, in the center of the room on the red shag carpet, strands wiggling up in between their toes. “You’re still coming to the funeral, though. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Are you alright to stay here by yourself?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”

“It's not him.” Rosie’s mom squeezes her harder, breathing in the top of her head, before releasing her. 

“I’ll call you when we're done.”

“Okay.”

Once Rosie hears the garage door close, she goes out into the hall to the linen closet. The sheet is at the very bottom, in the far right corner. Rosie doesn't know when she stopped seeing it show up on her bed, but she hasn’t been reunited with Batman in years. 

She has to stand on her suitcase to reach, messily stuffing the sheet in against the top bunk until it seems to hold. It hangs down unevenly, the right side nearly touching the floor, but it covers the opening and that's all Rosie cares about. Sliding up under the sheeted-wall, she sits in the center of the mattress, slumping down and tucking in her chin so she doesn’t hit her head on the slats above. She counts the scenes before her, looking for her favorite - Batman on a ladder saving a kitten from a tree. Instead, she sees Batman stopping a thief, holding a thankful woman’s purse in one hand and the criminal in the other by the collar. Batman scaling the side of a burning building, the flames almost completely faded out against time. Batman standing alone, back to Rosie, triumphant with his fists on his hips. 

She waits for his figure to materialize in front of her, for his shadow to block out the light and come into focus. She waits, waiting.

Genes I: Braids

Rosie was looking for something she deemed ‘grown up’. That year, she asked for an adding machine for her birthday. She walked the aisles of Best Buy, searching for the one that looked the most complicated. It ended up being a dull gray, the plastic less important looking than the one at grandma's house. That one was a deep blue metal that was always cold to the touch, even if it had been left out in the sun all day on the red shag carpet that never quite became clean, no matter how often her mom vacuumed. Rosie didn't mind. She would sit in the middle of the room and try to braid the endless yarn. Every so often, she would slowly pivot, so that by the end, she was encircled in tiny braids like an ancient ruin or something from the fairy tales her mom read to her every night. 

Her cousin Hannah taught her how to braid the summer before. Hannah’s hair was straighter and smoother than Rosie’s, braids slipping out before she even moved her head. 

“Here, like this.” Hannah took Rosie’s little hands in hers. They were up in the half-furnished attic of the old beach house they returned to every summer. They sat criss-cross apple sauce together in the center of the floor on a pale woven rug, knee to knee, an old doll with shiny hair like Hannah’s in between them. They could hear the waves even with the window closed. Sand stuck in between Rosie’s toes, a funny tickle when she wiggled them.

Rosie’s first ten or so braids ended in a big rat tail Hannah had to comb out. It took Rosie years, probably fifteen, to learn how to french braid. Hannah tried to teach her the following summer, but it never stuck. Rosie’s fingers would end up tangled amongst her sections and she would give up altogether. One day, years and years later, without even trying, it clicked. She just knew what to do. She instinctively reached out a hand, the other holding her braid together, to call Hannah. Rosie remembered she and Hannah don’t talk anymore. A natural drift, as they say, after everyone grew up and those summers ended. 

Rosie still thinks of Hannah every time she braids her hair.

—

Her grandma’s adding machine was running out of ink. Rosie didn’t know how it ever stayed alive as long as it did. It had been used in grandma’s store - half pharmacy, half gift shop. She wanted Rosie’s mom to take it over, or her aunt, one of them. Keep it in the family. But they both grew up and left and the store closed. So Rosie got the adding machine. Her mom always said that she would have loved working in the store. Rosie agreed. She liked monotony, the feeling of being important and having a lot of big business things to manage. She also just liked to press the buttons and hear them click. 

The person who presses the buttons is always important.

—

Rosie was looking for something grown up. She had her adding machine, far better than any calculator, so she was looking for something new. Probably a wallet or a pair of pumps. CVS does not have a good wallet or high heel selection, so she had to be content with a can of hairspray. Women on the go use hairspray. They need their hair to last the commute on the train or their bikes, clicking and clacking through the big lobby with marble floors to get to their fancy offices with big bright windows. Meetings all day, a real whirlwind, before catching a cab to go to dinner with their friends and drink wine. A business woman has a busy day. CVS does have a good hairspray selection. Long tubes in perfect rows, standing at attention. Rosie ran her finger over one row, then up a level, and so on, serpentining her way until it was too tall for her to reach. 

She liked the bumps along her fingers, like the lockers at school. They were the same dark blue as the adding machine, but not as cold and didn’t have any buttons. Only a handle that was always stuck. She had to wiggle it just right - usually left, right, slightly up, then press all the way in - to get it to finally unlatch. When Rosie was in first grade, she was new and didn’t know many people yet. Celia Morin took an interest in her. 

“You’re coming over on Wednesday. After school. Tell your mom.”

“I am?”

“Yes.”

Celia's house was big and white and very, very clean. The girls sat on Celia’s queen-sized bed in her very very messy room and talked about everyone they didn't like and why.

“Mae is a b-word,” Celia whispered the last bit, even though her mom was out in the garden. “She cheats at dodgeball.”

“How do you cheat at dodgeball?”

“I don’t know. But she does. She wins every time.” Celia took one of her many dolls in her lap, slowly petting its tangled hair. “Who don’t you like?” 

Rosie didn’t know anyone enough to dislike them, so she said that Jane smelled like poop. She did, sometimes, but Rosie still liked her. Celia laughed, though, so Rosie said Grace had bad breath. She didn’t. Grace was nice and they tried to do the splits together at recess. She smelled like lavender laundry detergent and had very white, straight teeth. Celia laughed at that, too.

Rosie’s mom had put a magnetic white board on the back of her locker door, a cheetah print border. Most of the other kids had whiteboards, but no one else had cheetah. Her mom would write her notes every morning when she walked Rosie to class, letters scribbled in her rush to leave for work. “Have a Great Day!”, “Love you!”, “You got this!”. Rosie liked writing notes back - having a secret only they two knew of - even though she would see her mom a few moments later when all the parents lined up in the gym to collect whichever child was theirs.  

Thursday, Celia said Rosie wasn’t allowed to play with her at recess or eat with her at lunch, so when Rosie was getting her backpack before pick up, she wrote “I have no real friends,” a big sad face underneath. Celia’s locker was three doors down from hers, and even though Rosie tried to keep the door only slightly ajar, hiding her secret from view, Celia saw.

“What do you mean you have no friends?” she yelled. “I am your friend. You’re so mean!” 

“But you said I couldn-”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be friends, then. If that's how you really feel.”

“No I-”

Mrs. Reed came out before Rosie could say any more.

 “What’s going on? What's the big commotion?”

 “She's bullying me!” Celia cried out, pointing to Rosie’s locker.

“Now Rosie, that is not a nice thing to say. Why would you write that?”

Rosie opened her mouth, but the bell rang before she could say anything at all.

—

Rosie liked the hairspray with the dark brown cap. It looked the most mature, like a cup of morning coffee. The bottle was black with a big white swoosh across the center. It read “Maximum Hold” in small letters. She liked the font. When she pulled it down, another immediately snapped into its place, a perfect wall of polymer.

When Rosie was little, she was obsessed with drinking coffee. It wasn't about the taste, she had never actually tried it. She just wanted to bring a steaming cup to her lips and drink what everyone else was, to drink from the fountain of age - she had too much youth already. The smell enticed her. It smelled like pantsuits and important phone calls and her mom. Her parents weren't as thrilled at her new obsession.

“You can’t drink coffee yet. You’re too young,” her mom said.

“Why?” 

“It's bad for you.”

“Why?”

 “It makes your breath stinky and your teeth yellow and it makes you short.”

“You drink it. All the time.”

“Yes. It's bad for me, too.” Her mom sighed, taking a big swig from her mug.

“But you're tall.”

“I didn’t drink coffee until I was in college.”

“But I won't be in college for forever,” Rosie whined. She ran over to the cabinet, nearly too tall for her little limbs, fingertips just barely grasping the handle of her child-sized mug with the skyline of Chicago painted on the front. She had never been to Chicago, but she liked the blues and greens and the way the windows were painted as tiny yellow dots against globs of black buildings. She brought over the mug to the countertop, placing it down delicately. She wrapped both hands against the kettle’s big gray handle and with a grunt pulled it out of its cradle. She let its weight take over, pitching it slightly forward and watching the water run out. 

“It's cold! Why is it cold?”

“You need to boil it, silly.”

“Help me. Please.” 

“Okay, okay. When making coffee, I always put it on boil. But these buttons will make it different temperatures. Some teas taste better with water that isn't so hot.” Rosie pressed the farthest button.

“Now, while we wait, we measure out our coffee. You, my dear, are having decaf.” Her mom pointed to a little glass bottle with a green label. Rosie picked it up and listened to it twinkle as she tipped it from end to end, watching the brown crystals falling over each other. 

“What’s decaf?”

“It has less caffeine, so you’ll still be able to sleep tonight.”

“But it's still coffee?”

“Still coffee.”

“Okay. How much?”

“A big spoonful.” Rosie took her favorite spoon, the one with green and white stripes on the handle, and dove it into the bottle. Careful, as to not spill a single splendid morsel, she transferred the coffee into her cup.

“Does this look right?” she asked.

“Perfecto! And the water’s done boiling. Great timing.” Her mom reached out and snatched up the kettle. “Let me do this part. It's very hot, so don’t touch it right away.”

“Okay.” As the now boiling water dribbled into her cup, Rosie breathed in that beloved scent - early morning banana pancakes, late night kisses, her mom. 

“Do you want any milk?”

“What do you do?”

“I like a splash.”

“Me too.” Rosie let her mom grab the milk from the fridge, too preoccupied with standing over her mug, letting the steam warm her face and flood her nose. The surface rippled as the milk went in, at first hidden at the bottom before coming up in white globs, turning her coffee a dark tan, like the color of the horses she rode every Friday. 

“Okay, go ahead.” She brought the cup to her lips, waiting at the precipice, savoring the moment. 

“Ew!” 

—

Rosie tripped walking out of the CVS. Her toe caught on the ribbed weather mat, pitching her body forward. She went down hard, skin scraping the carpet. Her mom tried to grab out for her as she fell, but she wasn't quick enough this time. When Rosie was much younger, she was standing on the old red stepstool helping her mom make pancakes. She reached for an egg across the counter and lost her balance, falling backward. Before she could even yell out, her mom had caught her, pulling her up in a hug. Her mom’s heart beat loud and fast and steady against Rosie’s ear. 

Her mom wasn’t fast enough this time - no one can do it all. She kneeled down in front of her. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. “What hurts?” 

Rosie pulled her legs out from underneath her, blood already seeping out of her knee. Little pebbles and sand were stuck to its surface, unearthed from the rug. Blood, her blood, was redder than Rosie thought it would be. Did you know blood is blue when it's in your veins and only turns red when it's out in the air? At least, that's what Grace said. There was no blue in her blood, only thick, hot red. A curious finger touched the scrape, wiping away a particularly dark pebble. It burned and she started to cry. Her mom wiped the tears from Rosie’s eyes with her pinky, the rest of her cheek with her palm. Gently, taking her time to catch the tears before they fell. 

“Come her.,” She scooped Rosie into her arm, picking up the rolled away hairspray with the other, bringing the three of them to the car. Rosie took the hairspray back, clutching it with both hands. Her mom opened the trunk and set her down amongst the shopping bags. 

“Oy,” she muttered, more to herself than Rosie. “It's better than it looks.” The car’s metal was hot under Rosie’s thighs. Her shorts must have ridden up when she fell, bunching unevenly beneath her. The roof, at least, blocked the sun from her already crying eyes. She has very sensitive eyes. Her mom ran around to the front of the car, leaving her and her hairspray, before coming back with a water bottle. 

“This will hurt, but it's better we clean it now. Be strong for me.” She dripped the water down, washing away the crusting blood. Rosie squeezed the hairspray till the top popped off and landed in the pink hued puddle at her feet. 

“That's no good,” her mom scooped it up with a finger and wiped it off on her pant leg. Rosie couldn’t get it back on herself, so her mom took Rosie’s hands in hers and helped her press down. The lid dug into Rosie’s palm, leaving a red line parallel to the ones permanent.
“See, that wasn't so bad. I knew you could do it.” She bent down again, blowing the knee dry. “A kiss to make it better.”