Big Girl

Makayla tried going back to sleep, but the wind had picked up, wild gusts playing the neighborhood like a pan flute, hitting the double wide hard enough to make the bed frame rattle. She tried guessing the untethered debris knocking around outside: milk crate, trash lid, patio chair. The radio clock turned 3:33 when the power went out. Makayla didn’t scream. Big girls aren’t afraid of the dark, mama says. Big girls do their homework, brush their teeth, and hush their mouths when mama says, or they get the belt. She wriggled one arm out of her blanket cocoon and reached for the flashlight in the nightstand.

The old transformer feeding the fourteen trailers on their road did okay in the rain, but strong winds always took it out, so Makayla was used to it. She could hear generators starting to rumble, but mama didn’t have money for a generator. With the outside gusting in through the trailer’s loose seams, Makayla was wide awake now. When mama had trouble sleeping, she took pills and drank from her bottles on the top shelf in the kitchen. Makayla didn’t drink, even though she had a top shelf in her bedroom, too. But her shelf was for Patricia, a Victorian doll with a milky porcelain face, a gift from one of the guests mama brought home sometimes. Patricia had jet-black hair topped with a straw hat with red ribbon around its crown and floating marble eyes with lids that moved, looking right at Makayla, no matter how she turned Patricia’s head. Patricia was top shelf, just like mama’s bottles. 

More generators turned on, their growls rattling the floor, curtain shadows dancing across the windowsills. The flashlight’s metal body was warm in her hand and she needed to pee. She swung her bare feet onto the floor, and the floor ached. She scanned the underside of the bed with the flashlight: no monsters. She exhaled, pretending her breath was cigarette smoke, like mama. She looked up at Patricia and wondered if big girls ever climbed in bed with their mama when it was cold. Patricia didn’t answer.

Mama didn’t snuggle, hug, or say I love you. When Makayla was little and mama worked late, she pretended to fall asleep in front of the TV. Mama would come home and carry her to bed while Makayla tried not to smile. Mama’s work dress smelled of fry oil and coffee, her breath of beer, cigarettes, and home. When Makayla became a big girl, if mama found her sleeping in front of the TV, she’d wake her and make her walk to bed: don’t whine, big girls don’t whine. There was a lot big girls weren’t supposed to do, or they got the belt. But mama did love Makayla: on her birthday, mama made her box-cake shaped like a tree trunk, with bark made of chocolate frosting, grooved with fork tines, and covered in moss out of ground walnut greened with food coloring. And the belt was love too, just like the cake.

Makayla stopped in front of mama’s bedroom door. Mama was snoring, face down on top of the covers. The snores and the generators outside made the hallway vibrate in a low purr. Makayla shivered at the sight of mama’s naked back. She walked in and checked underneath the bed with her flashlight: no monsters. Relieved, Makayla planted a small kiss on mama’s shoulder. The shoulder was ice-cold. Makayla pulled the blanket over mama’s back and worried. Darkness scurried across the walls. 

I’m a big girl, mama, Makayla whispered, tucking the blanket under the edges of mama’s body. She climbed on the bed and tucked the blanket more, under mama’s feet, around knees and thighs. The bed quaked. Makayla tucked under mama’s belly and breasts, under the wet slime on mama’s chin. The bed hung in the air, throbbing. Makayla wanted her flashlight, but it was on the floor, and the floor wasn’t there anymore. The bed floated on darkness. Mama’s floating marble eyes looked right at her and they were darkness. Makayla looked for Patricia on the top shelf, but the walls had come apart at the seams, darkness clawing at the gaps. Makayla wanted mama to tell her what big girls were meant to do with all this darkness. She reached for mama’s body, but the body wasn’t there anymore. The ceiling popped like a bottle cap, sucking the room into star-pricked darkness. Makayla peered around, and the foot of the bed was now gone. The bed was darkness writhing on darkness, and the room was gone, and the house was gone, and the street was gone, and mama was gone, and Makayla closed her eyes and wished she didn’t have to be a big girl anymore.

Andreea Ceplinschi is a Romanian immigrant writer, photographer, graphic designer, waitress, and kitchen witch living and working at the tip of Cape Cod. Her writing includes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, published or forthcoming in Solstice Literary Magazine, 86logic, One Art, Wild Roof Journal, The Quarter(ly), The Keeping Room, and elsewhere. You can access a more comprehensive publication history HERE.