The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder

Author:Carrie Snyder [Snyder, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Short Stories, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9781770890022
Publisher: House of Anansi Pr
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The clock over the sink points its short hand just shy of a quarter past, and its long hand centimetres beyond the number twelve. It is Wednesday, the twelfth of June. Juliet, a girl in her twelfth year of life, sits at her grandmother’s table, alone. Before her is a glass of milk and half a soggy tuna salad sandwich prepared with sweet pickle relish on bought white bread.

Juliet stands. Standing, she swallows the milk and wipes the skin above her upper lip with her turned wrist. She wears blue jeans, a white short-sleeved shirt that buttons up the front, and a green corduroy vest with a pocket over each hip. Into the right pocket she places the remaining half of her tuna sandwich.

She is filled with something that is not courage; it is not determination; it is not sadness or questioning or the desire to err. It is the perfect calm of a girl who knows what she is about to attempt and who is being pulled onward by the inevitable. It is the perfect calm of a girl who neither guesses the consequences nor suspects that there will be any.

The front door to Oma Friesen’s apartment opens onto a stairwell that leads to the front entryway. On the other side of the stairwell is a cavelike laundry room shared by all the tenants. The washer and dryer are not being used right now, but when they are, their thump and whirr can be heard dimly inside Oma Friesen’s apartment.

The smooth plastic railing beside the stairs slides under Juliet’s hand.

She thinks, Oma Friesen, what a big house you have.

At street level, noon light pours through tall windows and heats the small foyer. Juliet steps directly up to the closed door marked with a brass number one. She tries the handle, hot under her palm, and it turns. The door is open. The threshold beckons. The girl steps silently across it and into otherness.

She pushes the door shut behind herself. She is in a room darkened by a blind drawn down over a square window that would otherwise gaze onto the street. An aura of illuminated dust motes marks its outline.

The girl feels her way past heavy lumps of furniture to the kitchen, where a plate of bread crusts rests on the counter. Everything in the room is grey, lit dimly by a rectangle of glass high in the wall above the cupboards. A cat leaps on silent, padded paws to the gold-flecked Formica, startling the girl, but only for a moment.

“Hello,” says the girl. The sound of her own voice, alive in the still air, claims this place.

Boldly she presses her fingers over the bones of the cat’s pulsing skull, flattening its ears. The cat is telling the girl exactly what it wants, its soft body beneath her hand seeking pressure. The warmth of its interior motor hums as the cat noses her sweater, bats at her pocket; it finds what’s hidden. It wants the sandwich. The girl is happy to share.

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