The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

room spinning, everything going fast fast fast too fast like she would break apart, and she wrapped her arms around her head to keep from flying off the floor. She rocked and hummed. She recited her tree names and the trees surrounded her. The alphabet letters in the names circled around her and she was safe inside them. The butternut tree is Juglans cinereal. The eastern white pine is Pinus strobus. The sweet birch is Betula lenta. Its caterpillar catkins are yellow, not green.

Everyone was gone except Mom, under the table with Mirela, not touching her, just there.

“I remember someone hit me,” she told Mom.

“Who?” Mom asked. “Who hit you, my love?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

Mom’s voice was wobbly. “I’m sorry, Mirela. No one should hit anyone. No one will ever hit you.”

“Dad was going to hit PJ.”

“That was wrong. Dad should not have acted like that. Dad has never hit anyone in his life, and he never will.”

“Why did Dad want to hit PJ?”

“He didn’t want to—something came over him.”

“Why did something come over him?”

“PJ said bad words. It was mean, and PJ shouldn’t have said it. It made Dad angry. But it was no reason for Dad to act likethat. Hitting is always wrong. Even wanting to hit is wrong.”

“I hit you.”

“No—you used to. You don’t anymore.”

“Sometimes I want to hit you.”

“I know. Something comes over you, like it came over Dad. But you fight it. You fight it and it makes you stronger until you’reso strong that you don’t ever feel that way anymore.”

What did Mom know? How could she say that she knew? She wasn’t inside.

“Can I give you a hug, Mirela?” Mom asks, and she knows she’s always supposed to say yes.

And then she says, “Are you ready to look at Mommy, Mirela?”

 

It was late October. Mom and Mirela were going to the Saint Mary’s playground to meet Mom’s friend and her new baby. Laurenwas home from college even though she wasn’t supposed to be.

“Can I come, too?” Lauren asked. She wasn’t really asking. When Mom and Mirela came into the garage, Lauren was already curledup in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, knees drawn to her chest.

Mom asked Lauren how she was feeling, and Lauren didn’t answer. She was pretending to be sad and lonely. She’d been followingMom around all afternoon like she was on a leash.

“Stop stop stop stop don’t be mean,” Mirela murmured to herself as Mom was backing the car out of the garage.

“Whatever it is, Mirela, stop beating yourself up about it,” Mom said, smiling at Mirela in the rearview. Like she could letherself inside Mirela’s head when she felt like it, poke around at her stuff, act like she knew where everything went.

“No, you stop!” Mirela screamed, kicking the back of Mom’s seat, and Mom halted the car in the driveway and folded her hands in herlap and counted aloud to ten, and Lauren turned in her seat away from Mom.

“It’s okay to get mad sometimes, Mirela,” Lauren said quietly.

Lauren was being fake—she was annoyed with Mirela, but she was fighting how she felt, pretending to be understanding. Mirelafought how she felt all the time, so maybe Lauren thought Mirela was fake, too. The one who didn’t fight was Dad. Dad felthow he seemed.

They got to Saint Mary’s as the sun was getting low in the sky. Mom’s friend was taking her baby out of a bucket swing. Mom’s voice went all high-pitched as she hugged her friend and asked to hold the baby. “Elise, she’s gorgeous!” Mom said. Lauren smiled at the baby and held her tiny foot in its pink sock.

“Hello, Mirela, it’s nice to meet you,” Mom’s friend said.

“Yes, thank you,” Mirela said.

“Ah, she wants your necklace.” Mom’s friend laughed as the baby pawed at Mom’s collarbone. But they didn’t really know whatthe baby wanted. Babies can’t say. Lauren held the baby while Mom and her friend stood around talking about what time thebaby goes to bed and how the baby was learning to use a spoon. Mirela was angry because Mom was pretending to care about someoneelse’s baby—being fake, with her hooting laugh. When Mirela was a baby, no one ever showed her off to their friends, no oneever thought about her like they were thinking about this baby—it was like she was never a baby at all. None of it was fair.

She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth like Dr. Delia showed her. From inside sheasked to hold the baby, because that was fair. She wasn’t sure if they could hear her, but they did. She opened her eyes,and Mom and her friend were looking at her.

“Would that be okay, Elise?” Mom asked her friend, who nodded. The nod was a lie. It wasn’t okay with her. Mom’s friend wasfighting how she felt. And Mom was anxious about it, too. Mirela smiled to reassure them, and also because she was glad theywere anxious—they were wrong to feel the way they did, so it was right for them to be uncomfortable. It was fair. Mom askedMirela to sit down on a bench, and then Lauren carefully laid the baby down on her lap, the back of the baby’s head nestledin the crook of Mirela’s arm. She concentrated. She smoothed the baby’s romper, which had pink and white checks. She adjustedthe brim of the baby’s hat to make sure her face was in shadow. She nudged one finger under the strap of the hat to checkthat it wasn’t too snug beneath the baby’s chin.

The baby had big brown eyes and shiny black hair. If she had ever been a baby, she would have looked like this.

She held the baby and they looked at each other’s eyes and it didn’t hurt. She didn’t want to look away. She did look away to check on Mom’s friend. Her eyes were wide and her body was stiff. Mirela noticed this and she felt the twin pinpricks, the heat of