It’s Always So Silent Now
by Ella Crossland-Coghill
“I have $10 for ice cream. I can get two scoops on a waffle cone for that.”
Snow begins to fall like dandruff from the sky.
Lalisa searches her pockets, looking for spare change, but all she finds is a hole. Looking at her friend she says, “Can you buy me some?”
“You don’t have any money?” Geraldine says.
Lalisa shakes her head, looking past the other girl's shoulder, at a pigeon crossing the gum-spotted sidewalk. “One scoop only costs four dollars though,” she says.
Geraldine twists her face, visibly disappointed. Then, “Okay,” she huffs, “but you can’t get a waffle cone, and you have to let me try some of yours.”
“Alright,” Lalisa responds, her fingers picking at the hole inside her pocket.
She follows Geraldine into the Baskin Robbins, and is immediately hit with a warm embrace from the air vent. The inside is small and narrow, and draped in a heavy silence. There is no one else but herself, Geraldine, and the server in the store. A drowning hum radiates from the freezers. Lalisa looks at the Baskin Robbins server; he is young, bored, and sitting on a stool at the back watching something on his phone.
Geraldine and Lalisa look through the clear glass at the bins of colorful ice cream.
Lalisa turns her head as a presence passes from behind her like a cold ice cube against her neck. She makes contact with hooded eyes surrounded by layers of pale, wrinkled, skin. The man has his speckled hair combed back in a layer of oil, and is dressed in only his thin pajamas. Lalisa watches him drag himself to the back of the store.
“You ready to order?” Geraldine asks.
Lalisa follows her friend to the checkout. There is a bell sitting on the counter. Lalisa watches Geraldine ring it. Then ring it again. One more time for fun. The sound bounces off the empty walls like a rubber ball. The employee pulls himself off his stool and trudges over to them. His face looks plastic when he smiles and asks for their order. Lalisa’s voice feels like glue in her throat when she answers.
As they wait, Lalisa looks behind her shoulder. The old man sits at the back, pudgy and hunched at his seat, staring at the rows of ice cream, and rolling a gold ring between his fingers. He sits unfazed, as the bright light from outside shines past the window behind him, and through his leathered skin like rice paper. Lalisa’s gaze drifts to the floor beneath him, where his shadow is absent.
***
“Do you think your dad will come home for Christmas?”
“Mom doesn’t think so.” Lalisa licks at her chocolate ice cream, and shivers as a cold wind blows past her. The shrill voices of children carry from the playground.
“Does he know you moved houses?”
“Mom texted him, but he didn’t respond.”
The two girls turn their backs as the wind picks up, and blows the loose snow in circles around them.
“Why did he leave?” Geraldine looks to her friend.
Lalisa watches her own breath condense in the cold air, but doesn’t answer.
***
Amerie returns from work heavy with weariness. From the floor where they lay sprawled reading a J-14 magazine, Geraldine and Lalisa look up as Amerie tosses her jacket and bag onto the armchair, and drags herself straight to the kitchen. Lalisa says a quiet hello to her mom, which Amerie follows with a drained response.
Lifting her body from the floor, and brushing off the caked dust on her black t-shirt, Lalisa follows her mom to the next room with Geraldine behind her. They leave the magazine, where Niall Horan's blonde head grins from the page.
The small kitchen is barren except for a bottle of Merlot on the counter top, a circular table with two chairs, and a few dirty dishes piled in the sink. The pantry holds a box of Cheerios, a nearly empty tub of bouillon, a few Quaker granola bars, and a couple jars of Blue Menu Pad Thai sauce. Amerie leans next to the sink, pouring herself a glass of the Merlot, holding the bottle in her flimsy hand, and lifting the glass to her mouth. The ruby red liquid passes her chapped lips like water in August.
“Geraldine is going to sleep over, if that's alright?”
Amerie lolls her head towards the two girls standing in the doorway, small and scrawny.
“I haven't been able to get you a bed frame yet.”
“That’s alright. We can just sleep on the mattress.” Lalisa looks at Geraldine next to her. “Is that alright with you?”
“Yes, okay,” Geraldine nods, watching as Amerie takes another gulp of wine.
“I am ordering pizza,” Amerie says. “I will get groceries tomorrow.”
“Alright,” Lalisa nods. Her voice feels so loud against the dense silence. She can feel Geraldine tapping her leg next to her.
It’s always so silent now.
“There are fresh sheets in one of the boxes in my room.” The words slip past red-stained lips.
“Alright.”
***
There is a thick black carpet that lines the basement floor.
The first day they moved in, Lalisa immediately hated the way its harsh bristles scratched at the soft skin of her sole, and she gagged at the cat puke stains left by previous tenants that were caked across its surface.
“What's that smell?” Geraldine wrinkles her nose.
Lalisa sits on her mattress, while Geraldine balances on her knees behind her, braiding her hair. Crusts of leftover pizza sit on a plate beside them. Similar to the rest of the house, the basement has yet to show any signs of her inhabitance. Large moving-boxes still stand scattered around the room, many yet unopened.
The odor has been lingering in the basement for a few days now, a sour undertone similar to cabbage.
“Maybe it's the carpet?” Geraldine suggests, accidentally tugging too hard on Lalisa’s braid and patting her head in apology when she flinches. “You should talk to your mom about it.”
It was past midnight. Amerie had told them that lights should be off at 11:00, but Lalisa knew by 10:00 that her mom had passed out on the couch upstairs, drunk on bitter distressing memories.
***
A week later, two men come knocking on their door.
Amerie answers, and Lalisa watches from the couch as the two giants trudge through the living room, one carrying a toolbox in his large, hairy, hand. Their dirty boots pull snow in from outside. Amerie directs them down to the basement, then comes and joins Lalisa on the couch.
The two workers spend an hour down in the basement, while Lalisa and Amerie watch “The Good Place”. The television was now put up, and so were some of Amerie’s books, and random trinkets that she placed on shelves around the room. No family photographs, though; Lalisa knew the box that Amerie held them in was still taped up.
The men had to make several trips up from the basement, each time dragging more pieces of the black, ripped-up carpet with them, and throwing them into the back of their truck outside. They suspected the odor came from the mold on the bottom of the carpet, and guaranteed that the smell would be gone now. Amerie thanked them.
When the men left, Lalisa was free to return to her room in the basement, laughing happily as her bare feet danced across the naked plywood floor.
***
“The smell has returned”
Lalisa and Amerie are at Leon’s Furniture.
“I know. I have begun to smell it upstairs as well.”
“It smells like eggs.” Loud Christmas music echoes throughout the store. “Or like the compost left in grandma's backyard.” Lalisa shivers as an unexpected chill bites the back of her neck, and goosebumps flare beneath her heavy jacket.
“It might be the plumbing. I’ll ask the man next door if he is having a similar issue.” Amerie stops in front of a simple, fawn-coloured bed frame. “This one will do, yeah?”
Lalisa doesn’t respond. Her eyes land on a familiar translucent figure, his speckled hair oiled in the same shape as before, and his face twisted as if he just ate a lemon.
“That man.” She pulls on her mom’s arm. “I have seen him before.”
“What man?” Amerie looks around, trying to flag down an employee.
“The one wearing his pajamas.”
“Pajamas?” Amerie questions, looking to where Lalisa points. “I don’t see anyone.”
Lalisa watches the old man pull himself past the arrangement of bed frames, turn down another aisle, and disappear.
***
Three days before Christmas Eve, Lalisa and Amerie finally buy a tree.
It's a skinny twig, sparsely needled, that they place in the corner of their living room. Amerie finds their box of decorations pushed under her bed.
Lalisa and Amerie dust off each trinket before hanging it on the tree. There is a small crochet pig, a collection of popsicle stick snowflakes, and heavy clay figurines of Santa and his eight reindeer that make the branches of the tree droop. There is a photograph of Lalisa as a baby with cake smeared across her expressive face, glass blown icicles that chime when they accidentally sway into one another, and a paper angel.
Lalisa pauses.
She sits on the hardwood floor, and looks down at the flimsy angel that lies, tinted yellow, in her pale palms. She stares at the empty dent where one of its googly eyes had once been.
“Do you think Dad will call on Christmas?” Her throat is tight.
She glances up at her mom, then at the glass being filled with a vinaceous red.
“I doubt it,” Amerie mutters, bringing the wine to her lips.
Lalisa turns the angel over in her hand. The back is marked in faded blue pen - December 24th, 2014.
Despite knowing the answer, Lalisa asks, “Why did he leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know, Lalisa.”
“He could be all alone.” Lalisa tightens her grip on the angel. The wood floor digs into the bones of her heel. Her head sits heavy on her shoulders, and her chin dips into her chest.
Fingertips softly rest on the middle of her back as Amerie crouches down beside Lalisa.
“Let’s put that on the tree,” Amerie murmurs tenderly.
Lalisa places the decoration in her mother’s waiting palm, then watches as Amerie effortlessly positions it atop the crown of the tree. The angel's body droops slightly, its head protruding at an awkward angle. With her wine glass in hand, Amerie plugs the Christmas lights into the outlet and lowers herself to the ground next to Lalisa. She rests her hand on top of Lalisa’s back, softly rubbing the base of her daughter's neck with her thumb, and Lalisa lowers her head to her mother’s bony shoulder.
They sit and listen as a siren echoes from the dark outside, and stare at the small Christmas tree illuminating the room in a warm, melancholy glow.
***
Lalisa wakes in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, tense from the trail of ice creeping down her spine. In the blue darkness, she can only see the wall, and the shadow of the large stuffed tiger her dad bought her when she was five leaning in the corner. The silence buzzes in her ears, and a car’s tires hit the pavement outside. The hairs on her arms stand up with the sense of some unnatural presence in the room with her.
With her heart pounding in her throat, she slowly turns her head. The bed creaks with her movement. A small gasp leaves her mouth and her eyes grow wide at the old man, standing in his pajamas at the bottom of the staircase. He stares absently at the floor in front of him.
“You,” Lalisa whispers. “I have seen you.”
The old man turns his head towards her, his eyes empty of any emotion.
Silence.
He stares with a paralyzed expression.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Her voice feels like peanut butter at the back of her throat.
There is no response. She wonders if he heard her.
He turns his whole body towards her, and takes a slow, unsteady, step towards her bed.
Instinctively, she squeezes her eyes shut, and listens to his movements. There is nothing, and slowly she pulls her right eyelid open. Then both eyes when she is met with complete darkness once again. Lurching up, her gaze darts around the room, but she only sees the familiar black shadows, nothing hauntingly blue.
Lying back down, her heartbeat begins to settle, but the feeling of cold ice on her skin sticks like popsicle juice.
***
“We discovered what the smell was.”
It's the last day of the winter break. Geraldine and her family just got back yesterday from their trip to Mexico. Lalisa sits with her friend at the swings. The playground is empty except for them and a young boy with his dad. It's a warm winter day and the sun kisses Lalisa’s exposed face.
“It wasn’t the carpet?” Geraldine asks.
“No,” Lalisa shakes her head. “The old man next door died, and it was his body rotting in his basement.”
The chains of Geraldine’s swing screech to a stop. She stares at her friend, mouth hanging open like a puppet. “Who found him?”
“The landlord.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.” Lalisa looks down at the frozen sand beneath her boots. “The plumber needed to get into his house, but he wouldn’t answer the door.”
“No one came to check on him? No family? Friends?”
“Not that we saw,” Lalisa says, shaking her head.
“So he was all alone.”
Lalisa nods slowly. She hears the young boy call to his dad from the top of the slide, and gazes at a flock of pigeons that drift across the light blue of the sky. The winter wind pinches her ears as she sits on the still swing, watching the remnant of the snow sparkling under the sun.
“Wanna get ice cream?” Lalisa asks.
“I guess,” Geraldine responds. “Want me to pay?”
Lalisa shakes her head, pulling out a ten dollar bill from her pocket. “Grandma sent me money for Christmas.”
“Alright,” Geraldine says, “Would I be able to sleep over? Will your mom mind?”
“No, she won't mind,” Lalisa says. “She is working late anyways.” She feels Geraldine get off the swing.
Lalisa lingers, watching the dad embrace his son at the bottom of the slide. She listens to the sparrows chatter in the bare trees, and breathes in the fresh, crisp air.
Lalisa pulls herself off the plastic seat, and walks with Geraldine towards the Baskin Robbins.