A child was prattling on the upstairs balcony. Hella had never seen any children in the building and the noise unsettled her, made her wonder if there was a parent nearby or just that soft-skinned baby, crawling along the edge.
Not that it concerned her. She went inside with her cup of tea, closed the balcony door. Couldn’t sit outside for long anyway because of the gulls. She had thought of speaking to the landlord, but he’d been so rude last time she saw him, and she had a strong suspicion that he was actively looking for a reason to evict her. It had been different before, when Rakel was around. A lot of things had been different then.
The tea smelled flowery and sweet but was bitter when she sipped it, tannic acid and something else, fennel or licorice. It poured down the drain, steamy dark water that reminded her of the bottle she’d found under Rakel’s bed, and the row they’d had afterwards.
I’d rather die than stay here with you. Hella stretched out on the couch, feet hanging out over the armrest, those big feet her brothers had teased her about. Several lives ago, when her hair had been that girlhood brown that Rakel had inherited and dyed black. Though it might be a different shade now, platinum, fiery red. Her daughter was out there in the world somewhere with her colored hair, and Hella had no way of contacting her. The thought made her sit up, groaning, and make her way over to the fridge. The latest postcard had arrived three weeks ago, Mexican stamp, the front showing a painting of a crying girl. She was pale, had a fat dog on her lap, and her fingers were covered in rings. As usual, there was no message, just the address to the apartment jotted down in that same messy handwriting as always.
It seemed that every corner of the world had a postcard of a sad girl, just waiting for Rakel to buy it and send it to her mother. They lived on the fridge now, big-eyed, sulking. She hated them, wanted them to leave, but somehow they refused to let themselves be thrown away. Hella told herself that she kept them for Rakel’s sake, for Rakel to look at when she returned, but she knew that really wasn’t the reason at all. They had come because they were what she deserved.
As a teen she had travelled, too, riding buses into sunsets, hitchhiking with broken men. The coat had been hers then and she had been rosy, with some meat on her and a laugh like rain. The men had dozed in the backseat while she dug her hands deep into her pockets and sang, eyes closed, about a child she’d have when she was grown, with milk-breath and the softest feet. Those songs had little to do with the string of babies that were not to be, the blood on gas station floors. The late night calls to her mother, whose voice failed to curl around her like it used to.
Rakel never called. Well, she might, because whenever the phone rang and there was no one there when she picked it up, Hella imagined her daughter in a dusty phone booth somewhere, crying. Longing for home. She would have liked to ask Rakel about it and she sometimes did, lifting the handset and speaking into the silence. It was simple, talking when there was no one there to listen. To taunt and scream about scars and needles.
Hella’s father, the Sculptor, had used to say that she was a little slow. Not stupid, mind, but not particularly clever, either. He had enjoyed pinching her chubby little face, had frowned disapprovingly when she lost her baby fat. The coat, though, it had come from him. Carmine, long, the sort of garment that took you places.
“It’s supposed to be passed on from mother to daughter,” he’d said, throwing the coat on the bed where she’d been busy studying for a test. “But I had no sisters, so my mother gave it to me. And it’s only fair that I hand it over to you, since you’re my only daughter.”
Hella had never had any private conversations with her father, and didn’t know how to respond. The coat was too big for her and smelled of mothballs and dust, and she’d rather die than wear it to school.
“I suppose you’re wondering what’s so great about this coat,” her father said, as though he’d read her mind. “And you’re not really sure why I’m making a big deal about handing it over.”
She shrugged, recalling a conversation she’d overheard last night between her parents. Are you sure she’s mine? her father had said, possibly drunk. The boys are better-looking. And her mother had replied, Dear, unfortunately for her she’s all yours.
“My mother and her sisters called it the Library Coat,” her father said, stroking the wool. “They were always fighting over it, but Mother won in the end. Well, silly, don’t you want to know why they called it that? See, the coat is magic. Stick your hand in one of the pockets. Go on.”
Hella had done as she was told, because that was the sort of child she was. The wool was warm, much too thick for spring, and she enjoyed the feeling of it against her skin. It reminded her of the dogs and cats and bunnies she would have liked to have, if only her father had allowed it.
The coat’s front pocket was deeper than expected. She rummaged around, not sure what she was supposed to find, when something hard brushed against her hand. A sharp corner, the hiss of paper. A book. She pulled it out, frowning at the fact that it was big and heavy and couldn’t possibly fit inside the pocket. Norse Mythology, the cover said in gilded letters.
“Interesting!” Her father clapped his hands together. “The coat gives you the book you need at any given moment. Any idea why you were presented with this one?”
Hella lifted her textbook and showed him. The test she was studying for was about polytheistic religions of the past.
“How about that!” Her father beamed, then motioned for her to put the coat on. “Weighs nothing, does it? But there’s an infinite number of books in there, just waiting for you to pick them up. And when you’re done reading, you just put the book back into your pocket and it disappears.”
The coat reached almost to her ankles, but Hella didn’t mind. She felt, in a strange way, completely safe. As if she’d always searched for a home, and here it was, woolen and red.
“It’s yours now,” her father said, patting her shoulder. “And when you have a daughter, you will pass it on.”
So she had, and now the Library Coat was as lost as her only child. Sometimes, in the moments between waking and dreaming, she wondered which one she missed most—her daughter, or the coat. One that was warmth and softness, and one that was knife-tip sharp.
The tea crawled around her mouth still, bitter like the lines in her mother’s face. Her hips ached, her bony shoulders, there was no part left that wasn’t aching. The next time a postcard arrived she’d tell it about the pain, the winter mornings when she couldn’t get out of bed. The silver light painting the walls, slipping in through the curtains. She’d talk to the sad girl Rakel sent her and pretend the tears were coincidental, and that Rakel was forever smiling.
Rakel needed to smile, because Hella couldn’t be around forever. Hella was on her way out.
I’m going. That’s what Rakel had used to say in the folds of this apartment in another life, the middle one, the one with stitches. Because that was what she’d done, wasn’t it? Make me well, shiny needle, make me whole again. Rakel hadn’t spoken to her for weeks. Just that scar on her cheek, the hair, and the nails that grew. Hella had already started collecting then, just a box at first, a pink container at the back of the medicine cabinet. It started when Rakel was a baby, those tiny claws, the dirt packed under them.
Keep your nails short, the book had said, because of Naglfar. A ship filled with monsters, made out of the nails of the dead. Die with long, untended nails, and you will contribute to that ship being built. Hella had never put her book on Norse mythology back in the coat pocket, because there was an illustration of Naglfar riding the waves, and it had claimed her. The sea was stormy, it beat against the hull but couldn’t damage it. That ship, she thought, was what she wanted from life but couldn’t have. A home unlike the woolen one that had been stolen from her; a home that withstood it all. Ugly like her and far removed from postcards and the silent phone.
Rakel had found the box, the second one that Hella had bought when the nails spilled over the rim of the pink container. The second box was black, sturdy; it fit behind the laundry basket but only just. Hella had been in bed, headache passing through, when her daughter screamed. That beastly cry, the words that were too cruel for a Sunday morning. Sick, twisted, revolting. Hella had wanted to tell Rakel about the birth, the sacrifice she’d made, and the body fluids that had smeared her daughter’s skin, the fluids that had been all her. If you think that box is revolting, you should have seen yourself when you were born.
Rakel had whirled away with her books and her scars, the hidden wounds and the ones she flaunted. The trashcan beneath her desk was filled with toenails, hair. Hella gathered them all and added them to her collection. It took years, but the black box got crammed one day and she saw no other solution than to use the bathtub. Rakel showered two times a day but she was gone, and Hella had never enjoyed the sensation of soaking herself in water anyway. The tub was perfect for storage, a vast space, a cool surface she could lean her head on, as she dipped her hands into the gatherings and waited for her ship to come.
It had been a few years now, and the tub’s sides weren’t gleaming white anymore. She came into the bathroom and the smell greeted her, the one she had grown accustomed to and loved.
“Baby smell,” she murmured, chuckling as she stepped out of her pants. Sagging, worn-out polyester—when they heaped at her feet they looked like a bundle of something that had been alive but was no more. The t-shirt landed on top, holes at the seams, label sticking out. Hella didn’t watch her face in the mirror, because the mirror had been smashed into pieces at some point, by Rakel or herself or someone else, someone temporary.
The tub beckoned her. The gray mass inside it beckoned, too, a sculptor’s clay, and as she stepped toward it she remembered her father’s thumb as he pinched her cheek, that one long, thick nail. How it sank into her skin and how he smiled, and she smiled back to mask the pain.
The mass clung to her feet, ankles, shins. Hella laughed as it swelled, grew, trickled over the edge of the tub as she lowered herself into it. It burrowed in her long hair, tickled her arms and breasts. As she closed her eyes she heard the waves, lapping, rising.
She was going on her trip at last. Rakel had the coat and didn’t need her; she needed a lot of things, but not her. When she came back to the apartment she might be sad, she might scream and cry. A postcard girl in a lonely bathroom, red wool hugging her close. And if she ever wondered why it had happened that way, she would only have to put her hand into her pocket, and the coat would tell her.
And she would know that her mother was free.
