She walked slowly back to the apartment and went in and closed the door. Her mother got up from the man’s lap and clattered across the room. Her teeth shone and her chin was wet. She raised claws—not a hand, not a fist, but red, pointed claws.
Something happened inside Janie like the grinding of teeth, but deeper inside her than that. She was walking and she did not stop. She put her hands behind her and tilted her chin up so she could meet her mother’s eyes.
Wima’s voice ceased, snatched away. She loomed over the five-year-old, her claws out and forward, hanging, curving over, a blood-tipped wave about to break.
Janie walked past her and into her room, and quietly closed the door.
Wima’s arms drew back, strangely, as if they must follow the exact trajectory of their going. She repossessed them and the dissolving balance of her body and finally her voice. Behind her the man’s teeth clattered swiftly against a glass.
Wima turned and crossed the room to him, using the furniture like a series of canes and crutches. ‘Oh God,’ she murmured, ‘but she gives me the creeps…’
He said, ‘You got lots going on around here.’
Janie lay in bed as stiff and smooth and contained as a round toothpick. Nothing would get in, nothing could get out; somewhere she had found this surface that went all the way through, and as long as she had it, nothing was going to happen.
But if anything happens, came a whisper, you ’ ll break.
But if I don’t break, nothing will happen, she answered.