Free The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma

accident story, or if he didn’t, he figured it wasn’t his problem. I was right to let Charlie come into the room with me to hear what the doctor said. When he asked about the accident, I could tell she wanted to believe me. It was too scary for her to think that I had cut off the finger myself. Next to the doctor, she looked older and grayer; with her hair pushed back, the frown line between her eyebrows looked like a scalpel nick, though the rest of her looked younger. She was wearing skinny pants I hadn’t seen before, a big improvement over her baggy old ones. She’d told me that while I was away, she’d hit the gym and been out every weekend with friends. Seeing those pants—black jeans, tight at the ankle—I didn’t know how to feel. I was glad, I guess, that she’d been taking care of herself, but it was strange to think of her having a life without me. At the first chance I got, I left her mooning in the apartment with my luggage exploded from one doorway to the next, grabbed the bus, and rode to Pen and Parchment.
    Niall was working and so was Katie O.; they grinned when they saw me and motioned to meet in the stockroom. Niall set down the box he was carrying and folded me in a hug that smelled happily of cigarettes and bike sweat. He was wearing his leather vest with the broken zipper and the two patch pockets he had slashed with a Cutco knife that he was trying to sell to a Presidio Heights housewife who had asked him to verify that his knives were better than Macy’s. His streaked hair was shorter and blonder; he’d gone surfing, he said, in Southern California, where the water was actually warm, not like the crazy cold of Ocean Beach and Pacifica.
    â€œMy God,” said Katie. “You look like a stick. Didn’t they feed you in China?”
    â€œIt was hot,” I offered. “But I really loved it. You can’t eat in weather like that. All the women carry these frilly umbrellas to keep the sun off their faces. They don’t want to get tan. They prize whiteness.” Katie laughed. She worked in the framing department. We used to recite the names of the mats people could choose from: stone white, Caribbean sands white, snowdrift white, true white. Prize white. That was the one she pushed on customers who brought in professional photographs of their children, the kids arranged in front of beach houses or vineyards, the teens always guarded, the babies doing that funny gummy smile with a couple of teeth like tiny tablets. I worked in paper and sometimes in blank books. Once in a while, Kurt told me to help Ines in the fine pens department, where Ines grudgingly let me handle a Parker or two.
    â€œLet me see you,” I said. I twirled Katie halfway around and admired her new tattoo. She had added a florid hummingbird to the back of her arm, a ballsy choice, since she was kind of pudgy and, over time, that hummingbird might grow to look like a pigeon. The greens made her skin tone look even pinker. She couldn’t see it herself except in a mirror. But Katie didn’t care. Gaze upon me, was her message to the world. You can do my looking for me.
    â€œYou’re home early,” Niall said. We’d agreed before I left to keep things loose between us.
    I told them about the accident. I showed them my clumsy bandage.
    â€œThen you need med-i-cine,” Katie suggested. “Come back at six o’clock.”
    I looked at Niall. He was glancing out the stockroom door, but he turned and nodded and said he’d stick around if I returned after Kurt left. I went out the back and walked ten blocks to a taqueria, hoping some of my favorite food would revive me. Starting in Beijing, I hadn’t been able to swallow very well. My throat felt tight all the time, like I had buttoned myself into a shrunken blouse or struggled into a hooded sweatshirt that didn’t fit me anymore. I ordered chicken and black beans and an agua fresca , but