Asking for Love by Robinson Roxana;

Author:Robinson, Roxana; [Robinson, Roxana;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-03-28T22:00:00+00:00

Halloween

I was alone in the house.

Usually I take Kate trick-or-treating myself, but this year she had been invited to go with a friend. Kate was, as always, a fairy queen, with rouge-pink cheeks and an aluminum-foil-covered cardboard crown. She wore a white lacy blouse and a long, tiered skirt of mine. Over her shoulders and clasped at her throat was a cape, made from another of my skirts, this one striped and ruffled taffeta.

When Kate was ready I knelt down in front of her, pulling up her lacy collar and settling the cape around her neck. She was excited and would not meet my eye. She waved her wand back and forth in an imperious figure eight.

“Palambanami,” she said mysteriously, making a dot in the air with the wand.

“You look beautiful,” I told her.

“Mananunu,” she said, fixing me with a cold, queenly gaze.

“I hope you have a lovely time,” I offered, but she turned away. She looked out the window into the darkness, seeing things that mortals could not, and making cabalistic signs in the air.

A car drove up the driveway, and I heard Stephanie give a brief, courteous honk. Kate, like a stately sleepwalker, stepped to the door and waited regally for me to open it. Her face was remote, and she was casting spells under her breath.

I took her out into the driveway and stood, shivering, while I admired Amanda’s ballerina costume.

“Oh, beautiful,” I said to her.

“And slippers,” Amanda replied, pointing her toe in the air. “Ballet,” she added severely.

The back seat was filled with the rustle and flounce of little girls in crowns and crinolines, their black-rimmed glances charged with mystery. Another mother was in the front with Stephanie. I went around to the driver’s side and Stephanie opened the window.

“Have fun,” I said to Stephanie, and she smiled.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

“Be careful,” I added.

Stephanie smiled again. “Don’t worry.”

There are dangers peculiar to Halloween. There are grown-ups who use this night to play their own sinister tricks; there are horror stories about drug-injected candy, razors inside apples. But we can’t avoid risks, can’t keep our children safe at home forever. We send our children—spangled with excitement, alight with hope—out into this dark, unknown world, where strangers wait. We must.

I waved good-bye to Kate, where she was deep among crowns and wands in the back seat, but she had already left me. She looked directly at me, but her gaze was cool and enigmatic. She would not wave or smile, or even nod. She would not acknowledge that I was there waving good-bye. Majestic in her ornate robes, head held high beneath her glittering silver crown, Kate spurned me as an empress would a beggar. Usually Kate is shy and dutiful, and I liked seeing her like this, so powerful, so splendid.

As Stephanie drove off, I stood in the dining-room window of the silent house. I watched the car slide slowly down the driveway; I watched its red taillights move away up our dirt road and vanish around the next corner.

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