Adnexa II

Adnexa II
                   
“In each generation a child will be born.  In each generation, the debt must be paid.”
         
Adnexa listened closely as she heard her mother, rise, get dressed, and scurry out the door to work.  She was late, as usual.  Of course, she hadn’t forgotten to lock the door at the top of the stairs, and comfortably, Adnexa curled back into a ball and proceeded to go back to sleep.  This was long before fears of fires and carbon monoxide prevented parents from foregoing prudent behavior.  Adnexa knew her Grandmother would be arising soon enough to make pancakes or waffles that would gloriously smothered in butter and molasses.  She needn’t remind herself to be hungry when she awoke.  Some things needed no reminding.

Somewhere deep in one of her colorful dreams she felt rather than heard the lock slide and the door swing open.  She was just beginning to remind herself to be polite to her grandmother when she noticed, or failed to notice, the gentle rustling of her grandmother’s heavy muslin dresses and as she furrowed her eyebrows, she realized she couldn’t imagine her grandmother wearing anything else. 

Obviously, even to a child as young as Adnexa, it was not her grandmother who was descending the stairs.  The sounds she heard were of corduroy and no woman would be caught dead in corduroy.  It was a texture of the impoverished dog-people and notably of men only.  Adnexa unfurled her brow, kept her eyes closed and resisted the urge to tighten them further; she knew that would make it obvious she was awake.  She just prayed she wouldn’t be noticed in her small metal bed in the small wooden box hidden behind the small wooden beams of the basement.

As she lay there quietly, she could swear she heard breathing, not human breathing, but the snorting she heard dogs do on the rare occasions she encountered one on the streets.  Someone or something was sniffing the air.  Could it be they were sniffing for her?  Maybe she was to be someone else’s waffles or pancakes?  Resisting the urge to tremble, she felt she could no longer resist the urge to open her eyes.  Maybe if she gently cracked them open a sliver, she could see, but still wouldn’t be seen. 

Just as she’d worked up the courage, she heard a deep snort and then a rapid ascent up the stairs.  She was amazed she could hear with her own heartbeat drubbing so loudly in her ears.  She sat up quickly and saw nothing but a blur in the darkness and couldn’t even be assured she’d seen anything, let alone a human.  For some reason, she had the distinct impression it wasn’t.  But now, as she heard the lock gently roll back into place, how could it not be human?  What animal did she know that could open a lock? 

The confusion was more than her little mind could handle and she slumped back down into her bed from sheer exhaustion, or was it confusion.  In either case, she rocked herself back to sleep and reverted to sucking her thumb; a habit she’d long since given up.

Later, when her grandmother descended, Adnexa couldn’t be sure she hadn’t dreamed the whole incident.  She found it equally implausible she had fallen back asleep, but there was the evidence; drool and sticky eye glue.  She giggled.  She decided it was best a dream and rejoiced in the approach of the all at once comforting and familiar rustle of the muslin.  She opened her eyes slowly, just in case, and was relieved to see her grandmother’s face peering over the side of the box. 

She’d always been told she looked like her grandmother and wondered if her face could ever look so kind.  She smiled deeply and warmed all over, and then she remembered and became hungry.  She leapt from the bed and reached up to bury herself in the safety of freshly laundered muslin.

Normally, Adnexa wouldn’t allow herself to be carried, but today, she decided to forgo independence.  Her dreams had eroded all the independence out of her for the day, maybe for the week.  She unconsciously decided she would snuggle close and allow herself to become a nuisance.  Grandma wouldn’t mind. 

As she sat at the table and devoured her waffles, she did as most children do when they’re happy and secure.  She blabbed.  She told her grandmother about her dream, about the sniffing of the air, and about just how odd it all was.  She even managed to giggle again, though she noticed an unusual silence.  Her grandmother was not smiling and it took a few moments for the frown to leave her eyes.  Adnexa thought she had said or done something wrong.  She began to get afraid again.  When her grandmother saw the tears welling up in her eyes, she softened her expression and once more became someone recognizable to Adnexa.  Her only comment was that the dream must have been frightening.  Adnexa anxiously nodded her head that it was.  Her grandmother suggested she forget all about it.  She touched the side of Adnexa’s head.  That was the best thing to do with bad dreams, otherwise the dreams became more powerful and conspired to control the daylight.  With that, Adnexa took another bite of her waffles.  Butter and syrup were wonderful inventions and forgetting felt so nice.

Later that evening when her mother returned, Adnexa noticed a concerned look on her face.  When she saw Adnexa staring, she immediately brushed the air as though pushing away a bad thought, then she reached down smilingly and snuggled Adnexa closely.  Her grandmother came swiftly into the room and the two women spoke softly, so softly Adnexa couldn’t hear.  She knew when they spoke like this, it was best to just go do something else.  She’d never been able to read their lips.  There weren’t like other people.  If she tried to focus too closely on what they were saying, she felt a buzz between her eyes that she found really uncomfortable, not painful or anything, just uncomfortable.  She sometimes even got nauseous and dizzy, so she gave it up on those two.  She was young enough to know fun was more pleasant than not fun.

Over the next several days, it seemed her mother never went to work.  She was sure she did, but Adnexa just never saw her leave the house, not that she complained.  They also didn’t go outside, which was fine with Adnexa, no blindfolds and no dark wraps.  She almost felt normal.

After a few days, Adnexa heard the door lock at the top of the stairs and heard her mother hurry off to work, late again, but for some reason, Adnexa didn’t go back to sleep.  She got out of her little bed and walked over to the other side of the basement and hid in another box, but this one had a lid.  No sooner had she climbed inside and closed the lid, but she heard the lock shift open.  Again, she heard the sounds of corduroy, and the scurrying sounds going toward where she normally would have been sleeping.  Next she heard the sniffing sounds and then everything went silent.  Adnexa was trying her best to breathe softly, but for some reason, it was becoming difficult.  Her head was beginning to spin and she felt nauseous, just like when was trying to listen in on her mom and grandmother.  She longed to open the box and take in a good deep breath, but she was scared, she could still feel the presence of someone who shouldn’t be there, and they seemed so close.

Then she felt the box move.  She was being carried across the floor and up the stairs.  Maybe it was just a thief and she had stupidly closed herself in the very thing the thief thought valuable.  If she made a noise, maybe the thief would just drop the box and run away.  Stealing in this society was a grave offense and she’d heard they cut off your hand.  As she thought about making a noise, she suddenly felt herself being placed on the floor.  She must be in the kitchen.  Then she heard a growl, or something like a growl.  The next thing she heard was her grandmother saying, “This will not happen and not today! You are not welcome here.”  It was said with such force and certainty that there could be no doubt. 

The next voice Adnexa heard was her mother’s.  She said, “We have spoken and so it is.  The end has become the beginning!”  Then she clapped her hands and it was like cannons were going off.  Adnexa heard a yelping scream of an animal in obvious pain.  She burst open the box and stared in amazement at the shrinking creature.  It looked like a large dog, but it was wearing clothes; corduroy pants, just as she thought.  But the animal was also familiar, but she couldn’t remember who it was or whom it reminded her of.  It was spinning around on the kitchen floor in pain as it shrank.  It also appeared to be dying.  Even at her young age, Adnexa had seen animals lying in the streets dying.  She’d always been saddened by it, but not today.  Somehow she knew she had been saved from something horrible.  One day she would be told what it was.  Instead of being torn asunder and fed upon by the dog-people, she would carry her blue eyes forward and pass them on to another.  No longer would the blue-eyed children be preyed upon for the sins of the fathers.  The mothers had finally spoken, “No more!”