Free Circle Nine by Anne Heltzel

sleep. He touches my hair for a very long time, until I drift away again.

Amanda’s going out. She’s slipping on a pair of shoes. They’re lovely; their fabric is a rich and creamy leather. They’re woven with a pretty space for her polished toes to poke through.
    Peep-toe,
she says.
    Then something changes. Something wriggles in the back of my mind, and I rush after it and fight with it, wrestling. I halfway want it and halfway want to get rid of it. It’s a memory. I am anxious and sweaty and teeming. It breaks its way in.
    I am in a large store.
    The shoes are all around me, but not the ones I want to find. I look down for them, because it is too far to look up for faces. That’s how small I am. There are greeting cards on the shelves next to me. They’re at eye level. Women’s thighs are also at eye level, but not the thigh I am looking for. I can tell by the shoes.
    I have gotten lost. Usually I wrap my arms around her cool, smooth knee, press my cheek right there against her, and don’t let go. But somehow I have let go, and I am lost, wandering around this store, looking for my mother. I can’t think what her shoes look like, but I will recognize them when I see them.
    I walk up and down the aisles, my head pointed toward the floor. Black high heels with little gold buckles, flashy against this worn, patterned carpet. Brown loafers. Sneakers. None of them my mother. Then I see it: two feet in flat, tan, woven shoes, with a hole in the front for the toe to poke through. I lunge at this pair of shoes and grab the leg attached to them. I am safe. I am home.
    Oh, hello,
a voice says. It is kind but unfamiliar. Only then do I look up. To my horror, I see a stranger’s face peering down at me. It is not her at all; the shoes deceived me! I burst into tears, and the world is black. I back away from this unfamiliar woman.
    And then there is a pair of arms around me, and I am scooped up onto her chest where I am able to bury my face in her shoulders and neck. She found me. I looked for her, and I couldn’t find her, but she came to me.
    It’s OK,
says the little girl who’s standing next to her, a little older than me. She looks up at us sweetly.
Don’t cry. Mommy’s got you now, see?
I nod down at her, and then there is the lovely feeling that no matter what, she will always come to me. I will always be found, never alone.
    The memory fades.
    But later, even long after the pain in my head is gone, an overwhelming and unexplained guilt remains.

It’s disgusting what you did, Sam.
Amanda’s voice reverberates into the room from outside where she sits. I can tell from her tone that she’s upset. That’s nothing new, though, so I don’t pay much attention. Amanda’s always upset, even when she’s not upset. She exudes tense energy that makes her look constantly ill at ease. And she’s especially frustrated all the time with me, because I am what she calls a
lethargic lump.
    And what exactly is that, Amanda? What is it that I
did? Sam’s tone warns her, but I know she isn’t done. They’re on the verge of another fight. I feel even more anger in the air than I did the last time they fought. I sketch harder in my journal, and the small girl peers up at me from one unfinished eye. The scene from my memory has been haunting me for days. It can only mean one thing: I had a family once. I let the knowledge roll around inside me where it makes me feel full and sickly empty all at once. I wonder and wonder how I got from who I was to who I am, from full to empty, connected to lonely; until the wonder is too much and I give up altogether, focusing on my drawing instead. It is an incomprehensible world in which we live.
    Are you kidding? And it’s not even just that. It’s what you do every day. I can’t believe I never noticed it before, how sick it is. You use her, you bait her, you encourage her fantasies. It’s
 . . . She trails off. Then, more calmly,
It’s sick, Sammy. Everything’s so fucked up