Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

Author:Alisa Alering
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books

SHEILA TAKES THE steps down into the cool darkness of the cellar, where the air smells like roots and stone. She likes to visit the money she has earned, both in her head and in person. She doesn’t know yet what it is for, but she knows that each dollar she tucks into the paint can gets her closer to the prize.

It’s like there’s an empty space in her head, like a blank, black panel in one of Angie’s comics. A square without a light on. Sheila’s first paycheck—the money left in her hand after she made her purchases at the IGA and stored the rest down here—sparked a glow that lit one corner of that dark square.

Each dollar she adds to the can enlarges the radiance, pushing back the edges of darkness to reveal more of the picture. Each dollar gives her more room to explore and lessens the scratch of the rope around her neck.

Thinking of each week’s new total is like scrying the next stroke of the pen. Fifteen dollars, and rough outlines form. Thirty-six dollars, and blurry smudges resolve into sharp lines.

When she crosses one hundred dollars—$102.50 to be exact—the edges of the next frame come into view. Every dollar, every nickel, peels back a sliver of darkness and exposes more of the story.

Sheila holds the current total in her head when she leans into clouds of steam at the asylum sink, when she meets the boy behind the laurels, when she is half dozing to Tanya Tucker’s lament as she leans against the window on the drive home. She cradles that number close at night when the moths fling themselves at the windows and gnats fry themselves under the shade of the lamp and fall crisp and lifeless to the floor.

How many dollars would it take to get to Baltimore? To take the bus, to buy a car. To go away for a few days. To see the ocean. To never come back. How much would it take to bring Juanita with her? Two hundred? Five hundred? How many dishes until that?

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