What Makes Us by Rafi Mittlefehldt

Author:Rafi Mittlefehldt [Mittlefehldt, Rafi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780763699024
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2019-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

My room is darker than normal when I wake up.

I like to leave the curtains open when I sleep, at least this time of year. My bed’s right near the window, so at night I watch the stars and the moon arc across the slice of sky I can see. The nearest streetlamp is a few houses down, so the pinpricks of light show up crisp and undiluted. I fall asleep watching them, and then the sun rises right around seven. It’s a more gentle and gradual wake-up than an alarm.

Last night I left the curtains closed. It was a clear night with just the thinnest wisp of cloud, pierced by the stars behind it even before it evaporated into nothing. But you can see the street from my window. Just barely, at a sharp angle, but enough to see the cars parked out front.

A woman replaced Roland Stoops yesterday morning, tagging him out like they were wrestling partners. The other reporters came toward the evening. Whether out of a sense of duty or optimism, they each rang the doorbell at their arrival to try for an interview. With each, Eema and I stopped whatever we were doing, which was nothing anyway, and looked up. We sat still, waiting for the moment to pass, until we heard whoever it was retreating back to their car.

I peek out now, exposing a sliver of glass in the curtains, just enough for one eye to see through. There are three old sedans and one news van. I think one of the sedans wasn’t there last night. I try to make out faces in the windows, but give up after a minute and let the curtain fall back. The room gets subtly darker.

I guess it’s nice to sleep in.

Eema mostly watches TV and works on puzzles. Crosswords, Sudoku, random word games on pages she tears from newspapers and one-a-day calendars. I don’t get how she’s not driving herself crazy, just sitting around and being.

I try to picture our house in Queens.

From faded stills of what I used to think were dreams, from Eema’s description of the day my dad blew everything up.

I can see part of one room in my mind. The room with all the light.

The rest I make up, filling in the holes of my own history, like I’ve done all my life.

I never realized how small this house is. There is nowhere to go.

So I sit in the backyard.

It’s outside, at least. Fenced in, out of view, private. The prison yard for our house.

But at least it’s a yard.

I’m leaning against the wishbone tree. It’s one of six trees that line the back wooden fence, each one different from the one next to it but all evenly spaced, all lined up like hastily assembled army recruits.

We used to live in an apartment before this place. It was a tiny thing, cramped and suffocating, but at age five I didn’t know that. I just knew it didn’t have a backyard and a chimney, two things that TV had taught me all homes must have.

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