Snow Blind

Michelle Reale

I am still in bed with my husband when I hear the faint cry of our elderly neighbor outside. The snow that fell the night before snowed in her car.  In an attempt to dislodge it, she uses three things:  a broom, a small shovel and her gloved hand to try to free the snow from around it.  My husband watches from the window as if her misery was a spectator sport.

The dung colored hat she made with her own hands slopes downward barely clinging to her head.  She leans on the side of her small car, her tears like small rough diamonds.  Her tiny gold earrings catch the bit of sun straining to make it through the clouds that are still ominous and holding.

She looks up to see me taking large, careful steps toward her.  I hold my hand under my belly, still in my soft flannel nightgown and move towards her in my husbands large hunting boots.   She yells words in a language that sound like they have come from a mouth that has nothing left to say.  The sun becomes more brilliant and I am surprised to hear the soft chirping of a bird and wonder where it has taken cover.  When I reach her we hug one another.  She pulls back to look at me holding my face in her hands.  I try to get her to go back into the house, but she remains rooted in place, inconsolable.  I stay with her as long as I can.

After my first miscarriage she took my hands in her large-veined ones and offered what solace she could. She’d never had children, couldn’t rationalize bringing them into a world of madness.  Her lopsided mouth, fringed in the wispy hair of age ,betrayed a peculiar  sadness, but I might have seen a look of relief on her face.

The father of my child watches from the bedroom window smiling, but with a look of monumental unhappiness.

He had wanted a spring baby.

The old woman cries in the snow, and I cover my ears, the tips of which are icy hot.

By afternoon we will all be snow blind.

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Michelle Reale is an academic librarian. Her fiction has appeared in Verbsap, elimae, Eyeshot, Rumble, PANK, Monkeybicycle and others.

Also: Read our interview with Michelle.

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