It’s a familiar voice, a familiar,
precious voice, every shift in intonation and clipped vowel anticipated.
It’s the voice of a stranger.
“You were gone a long time,” the
stranger says, the stranger using Hara’s voice, Hara’s beloved golden voice,
that once whispered secrets in the night’s grey hush like honey pouring from a
jar. “It’s been a long time, Noli.”
Nolikka Toin hears her own voice
reply, and her own voice is a stranger’s as well, falling out of her mouth like
cold white pebbles and clattering into the silence. “I wasn’t
gone. I was a prisoner. I thought about
you every day, Hara. Didn’t you think about me a little?”
“Of course.” Hurt.
Wounded, even. The silence thickens and deepens until it’s
the color of blood and the sound of her thundering pulse. Past it, Nolikka
hears: “Of course I did. You know how I
feel about you.”
“I thought I did. You’re
married.” She can barely hear herself, the thin grey thread
of her voice winding through the storm of deep maroon enveloping her.
Hara’s words, though, Hara’s words
cut through the storm in jagged gold flashes. “It’s how it is, Noli, you know
that. It was just a phase, everyone goes through it.”
A phase. Her
throat is so tight the words will choke her. Warm salt on her lips surprises
her until she realizes tears.“I’m 37 years old, what sort of
phase do you call this?”
“Noli, suuli, don’t cry, don’t – ”
Hands on her arm then. Her skin
crawls and her stomach turns. “Don’t
touch me. Don’t touch me.”
The hands on her arm fall away. “Suuli,
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so – ”
“Sorry, spirits fuck
you’re sorry, how sorry do you think I am?” The room is too small. Hara is too
close. There is no air, just the roiling storm inside her. “Do you know what
they – do you know what – ancestors choke - ”
“Please don’t cry. Please don’t.”
And it breaks.
She is on her feet. “Don’t you
dare tell me not to cry, don’t you dare!”
Out. Now. The door is somewhere to her
left. Her feet catch on the coffee-table
as she tries to get to it. Her palms burn on the carpet and the shock of the
fall jars the sobs loose at last. Hara is trying to help her up and Nolikka
jerks away, slams into the wall and kicks out. A yielding impact beneath her
foot, a grunt. “Get away from me, get away, get away!”
The door. Open. Space. Air.
Hara’s stranger’s voice fading
behind her.
Fading into the cacophony of all
the strangers’ voices that fill the station.
