Sea Spell

Chapter Sixteen

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Vigilantly revealing herself, she shivered into the lukewarm heat rebounding from the lamp and nearly shouted, "Is that you?"
Beaming as attractively possible for a monster, the siren exclaimed surprisingly, "Oh Lana, you're so grown up!"
Her voice was exactly as Lanakila remembered it- perhaps dragging around many year's worth of weariness, but emotional and flowing all the same. It was soprano, almost sappily sweet, gooey and runny like maple sugar. It splattered in droplets, plopping onto warm edges and puddling at the base of a plate, scraped onto one's fork to be savored again.
Eventually, you'd grow tired of it's persistent sugariness, yearning to try breakfast without it. Some could never accustom their tastes to it in the first place, but those that had listened to her mother were dished out a temporary ease of corking a bottle with sticky fingers.
No matter what, it was the kind of voice that could be forgotten, couldn't ring across a slanted hallway for seven years, but could also bring back memories if you were lucky enough to hear it again.
At the quiet thud of her head on an unstable floorboard, and the wrinkled tickle of white, thick hairs dangling on her ribcage, she remembered.

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The sound of a suitcase rolling clumsily down the hallway was what woke the girl up. She yanked the itchy blanket over her head, breathing heavily before she recognized the noise and took gulps of damp air, squinting curiously at the splinter of yellow light shedding underthe bedroom door.
Fabric bunched up around her knees as she crouched down, admiring her second-hand Dora the Explorer pajama bottoms and spying down the hallway. A pair of wined-purple high heels echoed into the living area, a suitcase towed behind a pair of clumsily shaved pale legs.
Painstakingly slow to limit her noise, she opened the door barely and crept down the hallway, pausing to wait after every noise to avoid arising suspicion. The girl stuck her head out from behind the wall and watched her mother, dressed in a black button-up coat five sizes too big, set down a steaming mug on the table.
Her mother pulled out what the girl called a "spinny stool", and sat down, pressing one cloth-draped elbow into the table and lifting the other as she brought the mug to her lips, hovering for a moment before taking a long sip.
"Mama?"
The opposite, uglily decorated wall was covered in a spray of scalding coffee, running drools of brown instantly staining the paisley wallpaper.
Sputtering as coffee also leaked her coat, the woman kicked the suitcase behind the stool, sending her high heel flying midair and clattering on the floor. Her mother winced, a single strand of grey hair hanging beside her ear.
"Honey... you should go back to bed. Get some sleep."
The English was fluidic and practiced, a heavy American accent creeping in around the back of every syllable.
Pattering to side beside her mother, the girl looked into her drooping brown eyes that were slightly lopsided from lack of sleep. A vein bulged across her mother's lower eyelid, and wrinkles creased between her eyebrows.
She was thirty-two going on fifty with her achy sighs and dislike towards swimming, her discouraging eye-bags and uninvolved parenting style that flopped her on the couch after long days of work.
The girl shook her head ferociously, wrapping her arms around the woman's neck and hoisting herself onto the now-crowded stool. She poked her stubby fingernail at a styrofoam rip in the cushion, trying to ignore the look of urgency on her mother's face.
"Why," the little girl yawned, stretching her arms towards the ceiling and rubbing the underside of her eye, "should I go to sleep when I can stay up with you?" Scooting closer, she took a whiff of the coffee and tried to change the subject to lighthearted one. She knew well enough that her mother would protest, sending her stomping back to the hammock soon, and besides, talking to her mom like this felt normal.
Normal felt... nice.
"Can I try some of that thingamabob that you've got in your mug?" she pressed, sniffing as she tapped her fingers in a rhythm on its chipped rim.
Her mother tugged it away coldly, huffing, "That's coffee. You wouldn't like it."
The ceiling lap flickered off for a moment, then came back on slowly, illuminating the two as the little girl latched tightly around her mother's waist like a baby ape, feet slipping on the rocking stool.
Taking a few nervous glances at her huge leather wristwatch and rotating it on her thin wrist carefully (the glass had been shattered long ago,) the woman buttoned the top clasp of her coat. Sweat rolled down her face and absorbed on the brim of the black coat.
Looking more concerned than disgusted, the girl asked, "Mama, why are you wearing all of this-" she tugged at her mother's coat sleeve- "heavy clothing when it's so hot out?"
Pushing her daughter, who stubbornly crossed her legs and folded her arms, onto the floor, the woman stood up, twisting her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. She stuttered, "D-darling, you should go back to sleep now. I've got somewhere to be soon," and smiled weakly.
The woman pulled out a tube of dried, ancient orange lipstick and smeared it onto her upper lip, getting it in the crevices of her two-front-teeth in the process.
Disappointed, the girl looked at her mother, then the suitcase, then back at her mother again.
"Again? You'll be back for breakfast, right?" she whined.
Dropping the lipstick back into her pocket, the woman picked up her daughter with much effort, and marched brusquely down the hallway.
"Someday," she whispered, so silently that her daughter would not remember the response for a long, long time.
After tucking her daughter securely into bed, the woman in the wined-purple high heels stood underneath a flailing umbrella, set off on the cobblestone streets of Eastern Guadeloupe and disappeared into the night.
A two-story bedroom light snapped off as the little girl snuck back into her hammock, dreaming of pancakes and syrup with her mother at breakfast.