Coin Toss

This story contains themes of sexual violence, childbirth, and infant harm.

COIN TOSS

My enclosure is shrinking.

Once I could drift without touching its boundaries. Now the walls find me everywhere, curving against my back, my shoulders, the soles of my feet. I have no notion of how long I've been here, only that this place seemed endless and doesn’t anymore.

Beyond these walls, something tumbles over and over through the night accompanied by the metallic complaint of machines. Pipes knock. Rain worries against the windows like tiny fists. Every so often something rushes past outside, followed by a silence in which I can hear the beating that has accompanied me for as long as memory allows.

Mama calls the world beyond us the clothes place.

She has described it so often; I believe I know it. Silver machines with round glass doors like big, dark eyes. Plastic chairs beneath windows cloaked in black by night. Tables where people fold things. A machine that sells soap and another that steals quarters.

Most important, the clothes place is warm. So Mama comes here at night.

Sometimes she brings things that are already clean and feeds them into a dryer anyway, one quarter at a time. A few coins can buy an hour of warmth, perhaps enough hours to reach morning.

I understand cold only through Mama. My own closed space has always been warm, filled with darkness and the slow movement of liquid. Darkness comforts me because I have never known light.

The beating comforts me too. Sometimes it quickens when unfamiliar voices come near. Sometimes it trembles when Mama cries. At night it grows slow and deep, and I have learned to remain still because Mama is tired.

She doesn't know I do this. It is one of the few secrets I keep from her.

Mama has secrets too. Some have names.

Rent.

Stepdaddy.

Pastor.

Sin.

Shame.

I know the words by the silences that follow them.

I also know the man's voice. It belongs to one of my earliest memories, when I was so small my closed space felt like it had no boundaries.

“Well, ain't this a mess.”

Another woman answered him. Mama's older sister. “She’s only thirteen years old.”

“Nearly fourteen.”

“She was raped.”

“I understand the circumstances.”

“You saw what he did to her.”

“I took an oath to first do no harm.”

Then Mama's voice came, so small I almost didn't hear it.

“Please, doctor.”

The man spoke for a long time after that. Consequences. Responsibility. God's will.

Mama said nothing further.

Later she wrapped both arms around my enclosure and whispered apologies until she fell asleep.

That was when I first wondered whether I might be the mess.

Since then, I have tried to cause as little trouble as possible. When Mama sleeps, I stay quiet. When she cries, I listen. When her hand rests against the wall between us, I move toward it. Sometimes she laughs when I do, so I do it again.

Tonight Mama is reading aloud beneath a single buzzing light. She carries schoolbooks and pencils in a brown paper sack because she says she will go back someday. She will finish school and become somebody.

She reads to me about places people pass through on their way somewhere else. Waiting rooms. Railway stations. Doorways. Places not meant for remaining.

Mama stops reading and says, “I reckon that's us.”

The clothes place seems made for waiting, and Mama has been waiting here on many nights.

A buzzer sounds. She closes her book and rises, and my whole world tilts with her. Then she stops. The familiar beating changes, quickens.

“Oh.”

The walls close tighter around me. I wait for them to release. They do, but not completely.

“No.”

Mama takes several steps before they tighten again.

“No, no. Not here.”

I wonder why. Here is warm. Here is where Mama reads to me. Where we sleep sometimes. Here is where nobody asks questions.

The pressure returns deeper now, forcing me lower toward somewhere I’ve never been.

Mama cries out as coins scatter across the floor. She hurries somewhere as another tightening seizes us both, and something gives way. The warm liquid I've been suspended in rushes past me. What has always protected me becomes harder and less forgiving.

“Help!” Mama cries. “Somebody please help me!”

In the distance, something loud passes through the teeming rain and disappears. Then Mama is on the floor.

I don’t understand why the walls that held me safely for so long have turned against me, why Mama is crying, or why I am being forced toward an opening I never knew existed.

I resist.

Mama has taught me what lies outside. Hunger. Cold. People who hurt you. People who call you a mess. Once, when Mama thought no one but me could hear, she whispered, “I wish you could stay inside me forever.”

So I try. I fold myself smaller, but the walls squeeze harder.

Mama screams, and I push back.

“Please, Lord, help us.”

I no longer know if she wants me to stay.

After that, I can’t tell how much time passes. There’s only Mama's heartbeat, her crying, and the walls pushing me somewhere I don't want to go.

Eventually her voice changes. “Come on,” she shouts. “Please, baby. Come on.”

Baby. I know that word. Mama's sister had used it that day so long ago.

I understand the baby is innocent in all this, but so is my kid sister. She's still just a child herself.

The walls contract. Mama bears down. Something opens. Cold touches the top of my head.

I understand then that this is where my closed space ends. Beyond it is the clothes place. Beyond that is everything else.

I’m afraid.

Mama cries out once more, and the walls release me.

Light arrives before sight, followed by cold air and sounds that no longer have to pass through Mama before they reach me.

The clothes place is too large. I choke and cry. Mama does too. She trembles and laughs while I squeeze my eyes shut against the light as her hands find me. She does something with scissors from her pencil case and a clothespin she finds under the folding table. For a while we lie together on the floor.

“Oh. Look at you.” Her voice sounds strange without walls between us. But I know it.

She gathers me against her chest, and there it is again, faint and racing beneath her skin, the steady beat. I settle.

“You know me,” Mama whispers.

I do.

She wraps me in an old towel from a laundry cart. It's thin, and I shiver.

“No.” Mama rubs my back. “I won't let you be cold.”

She is shivering too. Her dress is wet, and something dark spreads beneath her across the tile floor. For a while she holds me against her chest. No one comes.

Eventually Mama gets to her feet and carefully carries me toward the windows. The road is empty. She looks at the door, then at me, then toward the machines. The dryer has stopped turning.

Mama carries me to it and opens the round glass door. Warm air touches my face. She closes her eyes and stands there for a moment, bracing herself.

Then she removes the clothes one by one. A blouse. A dress. Underwear. Socks. The pale pink sweater someone once told her was pretty. Each piece is warm. Mama wraps the sweater around me.

She reaches into the empty drum and presses her palm against the metal.

“Still warm.”

Then she lines the curved bottom with the towel and folds the soft sweater around my sides. She gently puts me inside the closed space. The drum fits me much like the walls did, although this new enclosure smells of detergent and hot cotton instead of Mama.

She crouches before the open dryer. For the first time, I see her face clearly. I know her. Not her eyes, mouth, or nose. Just her.

I become still because I know how to do that.

Mama stands. She sways and catches herself against the machine. There is red on her hands. She glances toward the front door. Then back at me.

I wait inside the warm drum.

Mama carefully gathers her school things from the floor and slides them into the brown paper sack. She puts her tattered coat on, but after a few steps, she stops. She reaches into her pocket, and her fingers emerge closed around something. She opens them. A quarter rests in her palm.

I don’t know what a quarter is. I know only that Mama has fed them to the machines all night and warmth has always followed. Mama looks at the coin. Then at me.

For a long time, neither of us moves. I begin to cry. Mama comes to me immediately.

“I'm right here, baby girl.” She bends and kisses my forehead. Tears roll down her face.

When she straightens, the quarter is still between her fingers.

Outside, the rain is thinning. The black glass has begun to turn gray. The laundromat is empty but Mama and me.

Her clothes place. My closed space.

Mama raises her hand toward the machine. Overhead lights flicker, and the room disappears. For a moment there is only darkness. I’m no longer frightened because darkness is the first thing I ever knew.

Somewhere beyond my enclosure comes the small metallic sound of a coin falling into place.