Orphan

The funeral was small, brief, driven by the pandemic although Hank was not one of its victims. He died of a massive heart attack in his sleep. Or rather, Maya speculated, the heart attack woke him up and then put him back to sleep. She was not with him. She had made her near nightly trudge down the hallway to the narrow bed in the guest room to escape Hank’s snoring when it entered her dreams, a see-sawing back and forth through consciousness that left her irritable, exhausted, depleted. When she got up in the morning, she found him.

It was a relief to take off the mask although it proved convenient during the funeral, shielding her from probing eyes seeking to determine whether she was crying, whether she was sad enough. Alone in her house (her house---she said it aloud), her hands itched to gather up Hank’s debris and haul it away in a dumpster. A massive cleansing couldn’t be undertaken for at least a couple of months. Later, when no one could condemn it, she would eliminate every reminder that he had once dwelled in her home. She could not pinpoint when Hank’s clutter had become more important than he was. She was aware for some time of a growing rigidity within herself, a need for order and simplicity at almost any cost, she'd thought it a good thing.

Hank’s mother named him Hiram (an old man’s name) and dropped him off shortly after his birth at an orphanage run by an order of cranky nuns before disappearing into history. Hank never talked about his mother and expressed no curiosity about why she'd left him. Maya used to think this was the key that would unlock his secrets. In retrospect, the tale yielded no valuable information. A woman gets pregnant, has a child, and gets rid of the evidence. End of story.

Her own history was more mundane. Her father, who aspired to become an archeologist (hence her exotic name), became instead what was then called a green-grocer. He left Maya and her mother when Maya entered kindergarten, moving into a boarding house closer to his work. If he embarked on a romantic relationship thereafter, they never heard of it. Once a week, he would spend an hour or two with Maya, always in public, where their interactions could be witnessed. As her mother bitterly observed, he never crossed their threshold again. The way she said it made it seem as if they had something contagious that Maya’s father was afraid of catching.

She did not remember much from the years she spent alone with her mother. Working at a chewing gum factory on the outskirts of town, her mother rose at dawn to take the bus to work, leaving Maya to get ready for school by herself. When she was older, she did the chores so that everything was tidy when her mother came home from work. In silence, they ate the simple meals Maya prepared, her mother staring blankly across the kitchen table in a stupor after a day on her feet. After dinner while Maya cleaned up, her mother sat in her straight-backed chair, fretting about money in a loud and rancorous voice, fueled by a rapid succession of beers downed in a manner considered unladylike at the time. Maya was tasked with getting rid of the empties. Slinking out of their apartment after nightfall, she scurried down a dark alley with a bag to the garbage cans behind the building. Trying not to rattle the glass bottles, she stashed them in a neighbor’s trash can, knowing her mother cared less about who might find them and more about the sight of them lined up at her feet.

When she was twelve, her mother was killed in a bus accident, the sole passenger who sustained fatal injuries although others were hurt. Maya’s father told her he could not take her in because his boarding house did not allow children. He dropped her off at an orphanage converted from a former prison in a remote section of the county without another building in sight. The orphanage had a good reputation for turning out obedient, respectful children and a bad reputation for everything else.

Hank was one of the first people Maya met at the orphanage. At fifteen, he was almost a man. Tall, muscular, and handsome, he intimidated the elderly women who once paddled his bottom. From the day he met her, he shielded Maya from the bullies who policed the orphanage’s pecking order. After it became apparent that Maya was under his protection, even the nuns ceased dispensing the casual cruelty with which they treated their other charges. Fishing for compliments, Maya asked Hank why he’d chosen her, why she was the one taken under his wing. “You needed me,” he said. She didn’t like his response.

On the day Hank turned seventeen, he purchased his freedom by enlisting in the U.S. Navy. On the day Maya turned sixteen, he returned to the orphanage to collect her.  Not one word had passed between them since he’d left. She nonetheless understood her duty to go with him. With the Mother Superior acting in loco parentis, they married a week later. Although everyone thought their story romantic, Maya regarded it with suspicion, telling herself that Hank had merely reclaimed a package he thought belonged to him. Later, when her thoughts turned darker, she regarded the whole episode as nothing better than a prison guard escorting her from one cell to another.

During the first years of their marriage, while Hank was at work, Maya was free to do as she liked. Hank did not expect her to do housework or cook; he could do both for himself. He said he didn’t marry her so that she could keep house for him. Sensing some veiled criticism in his words, she devoted herself to proving him wrong, making sure their home was spotlessly clean and he never cooked another meal.

Hank did not want children and made this clear from the start. Maya tricked him by getting pregnant, although the joke was on her when she discovered she would be having twins. A boy and a girl; one for each of them. After the first humbling and exhausting years, it had all worked out more or less. Hank was an electrician who made a decent living. She stayed home, kept house, and raised the twins.

In those early days she loved Hank too much, hungered for him, waited too eagerly for his return. He was like a delicious cluster of grapes dangling just above her head, she jumped up for him, her mouth open and ravenous, missing every time. She blamed him for her failure, accusing him of withholding his love on purpose, to discipline or punish her, to deprive her of something she needed to survive. It was decades before she understood that her complaints were useless. She would never get what she wanted from him. Hank did not offer what he could not give. At any rate, the grapes were an illusion; she had placed them above her head and made herself jump.

The years of need became years of no need. Maya saw Hank as her jailor and chafed at her confinement while doing nothing to set herself free. Although the twins were keenly aware of Maya’s faults and failings, they had only praise for their father. He was, in their words, “solid as a rock.” Oh, they were right about that, she thought sourly. Hank had no crevices, no pockets, no seams, no soft place where water could pool and wear away at the hard-packed surface. When they were old enough to understand, she tried to explain this to the twins but they wouldn’t listen so she ceased trying.

After Hank’s death, the twins took turns looking in on her a couple of times a week, calling first to let her know they were coming because they knew she didn’t like surprises. Her daughter came with her husband or alone. If the latter, she was often shouting at Maya by the time she left. Her son usually brought a girlfriend, not always the same one. They did not stay long, did not have much to say. Mostly they asked her what she was doing with herself, how often she left the house, who she saw. Maya resented their questions but answered them nonetheless. They were not unlike the questions Hank used to ask her when he came home from work. She'd answered those questions as well.

Three months after Hank’s death, Maya cleaned out his closet and drawers, getting rid of everything she found there. Leaving their bedroom free from all signs of him, she scoured the rest of the house for his belongings, giving away his fishing and hunting gear, the poles and guns, the flies and bullets, putting it all on the front lawn with a “free” sign on days when she did not expect a visit from one of the twins. She went to church without Hank for the first time since their marriage. He had insisted that they attend weekly Mass out of some misguided loyalty to a religion which the nuns had shoved down their throats. He was raised in the faith while she was forced to convert just when she was beginning to know her own mind. It was strange to be in their church without Hank’s anchoring presence. Without him, it was an empty place; the priest’s words meant nothing.

When the twins insisted on meeting with her, a kind of reverse parent-teacher conference where her own misdeeds would be discussed, Maya reluctantly agreed. It would not be the same without Hank to run interference. “Two against two,” he used to say when the twins tattled to him about their mother’s shortcomings. Looking over their heads to catch her eye, he expected credit for taking her side. He did not understand that this merely underscored Maya’s need for his continuing protection. It made her feel powerless and afraid. She had no experience with children outside of the orphanage. Wasn’t it enough to have two parents? Did they expect her to be perfect as well?

On the date and time selected for the meeting, the twins arrived in the same vehicle which meant they had time to rehearse and conspire on their way to her home. As soon as they entered Maya’s living room, they sat her down in Hank’s chair and then sat across from her on the couch. Her daughter spoke first. Maya suspected this was planned, maybe even negotiated, before their arrival.

“We’re worried about you,” her daughter announced. “You don’t seem to be progressing through the stages of grief.”

Maya shook her head sadly. She knew the twins might misinterpret this gesture, which was perhaps her intent.

“We are all devastated by Dad’s death,” her son assured her.

There was no doubt of that, Maya thought as she offered them a fragment of a smile that seemed, in particular, to bewilder her son. The boy hero worshipped his father. She never understood why. What little Hank had was doled out sparingly to Maya with the expectation that she would then parcel out this meager meal to the twins instead of hoarding it all to herself. It was a starvation diet. She could not share it with her children without sacrificing herself.

“He’s gone, Ma,” her daughter chimed in. “You need to find a way to get on with your life.”

Maya shook her head again. Couldn’t they see that she was doing that? Couldn’t they see it was almost done? Other than his chair, all signs of Hank had been removed from the room.

“Your father,” Maya said, her voice coming out in a croak. Clearing her throat, “your father,” she said more forcefully, “left me alone.”

What she meant by this was that she had always been alone. This new set of circumstances was no different. It was true, of course, that unlike her own father, she never had to worry whether Hank would come home at the end of the day. He did not go to bars like other men. He did not flirt with other women. If he said he would do something, you could count on it being done. But it was not enough, it had never been enough. It was easier now that it had all been taken away.

“Dad had a heart attack,” her son pointed out. In his baffled expression, there was censure as well.

“He did not want to leave you,” her daughter added. “Remember how he used to come home and we would beg him to pick us up? He’d always say, ‘I need to see your mother first. She’s the first person I need to see.’ You had him all those years. Dwell on that instead.”

Her daughter’s voice was taking on that aggressive tone Maya so disliked. She offered her a pitying smile. Her daughter returned the favor with a hard, unblinking stare.

“You don’t understand me. You don’t understand what I'm feeling,” Maya said at last.

It was something that she used to say to Hank, causing him to regard her searchingly, not unlike the twins were doing now. She felt powerful when she had him in her grip; she felt powerful now.

“We are trying to understand you,” her son replied, his voice a notch above a whisper. “Dad would have wanted us to take care of you.”

In her son’s somber gaze, there was the loyalty he owed to his father but no debt to herself.

Sitting back in Hank’s chair, Maya closed her eyes as the twins took turns explaining her world, her marriage, as if they knew what they were talking about. Her daughter spoke the most, at times vehemently, telling Maya how lucky she was in her choice of husbands even though there had been no choice, only acquiescence to a will much stronger than her own. She had given up, given in to her captor. The flashes of envy in her daughter’s eyes told Maya that she’d gotten something her daughter wanted, needed, and thought she deserved. Her son spoke in Hank’s quiet, reserved voice, explaining to Maya her loss, her dreadful, irredeemable loss. When the twins’ words dwindled in the face of unequivocal signals that she'd heard enough, Maya kept her eyes closed and let her expression go blank. The tension in the room became palpable; she luxuriated in it. She had pulled this same stunt with Hank many times. It had always worked. When nothing else reached him, she would shut him out and watch as he squirmed to get back in.

She opened her eyes to see the twins rising to their feet. Her son looked despondent. Her daughter’s face was flinted with disgust. Although Maya had taken pleasure in vexing them, she may have taken it too far. The twins were not like Hank, her Hank, who put up with anything she chose to dish out.

“I am sorry,” Maya said without meaning it. “I'm not up to this kind of discussion right now.”

Pushing herself out of Hank’s chair, followed by the twins, she shuffled to the front door as if she’d aged a decade since their arrival. Showing them out, she waved wanly as they backed the car out of the driveway. They did not see her wave; they were focused on their exit. When they were out of sight, she returned to Hank’s chair and sat down, the worn leather cushion letting out a soft hiss beneath her.

“You’re an orphan now,” she told herself in the quiet of the room. She felt a sharp pang in her chest that seemed to knot then twist. Looking around the room, she searched for some sign of Hank and found none. She thought she’d feel better when the temptation was gone, when what she craved the most was out of sight. Instead, the craving had only grown stronger. She needed Hank to take her into his arms and soothe her, talking to her in his slow, soft voice, taming her wild, desperate fears.

She thought she might go to bed, might rest a little, stop her fluttering heart, or at least slow it down. Her frantic gaze settled on the staircase at the far end of the room, its wrought iron spindles supporting a wood railing which she could grasp as she made her way upstairs. As she stared at the fixture, she recalled the orphanage with its barred windows, the feel of those sturdy metal rods in her small hands.

“Why didn’t they take down the bars when they converted it from a prison?” she asked herself. Why were the bars needed? What purpose did they serve? The children could not escape, they had nowhere to go. The bars kept no one out, there was nobody trying to get in.

“You’re an orphan now,” she said again, this time louder and with conviction. “An orphan.”

It calmed her to say it, the finality of having nothing more to lose, so she said it again and again as she ascended the stairs.