“Are you afraid of the dark?” he’d ask once they were both tucked up beneath the blue sleeping bag she’d been given for Christmas, a gift from her father, who had promised to take them camping.

“No,” she’d say softly, knowing that when he asked these questions that he was looking for a specific answer. Her little brother often quizzed her about the things she was afraid of, as though her being scared of it gave the thing life. She knew this, and she answered accordingly, but to this question her reply was the truth. She wasn’t afraid of the dark; it was the things that happened in the dark that frightened her most.

“Come on. Wake up.”

She could hear her mother’s voice, somewhere in the distance; she tried to turn to face the sound, but the words seemed to be tossed at her from different directions. Each syllable pelting her skin like tiny bits of wet sand. Then she felt the side of the mattress cave in, her body sinking with the weight of another person sitting next to her. She tried to open her eyes, but they seemed stuck somehow, as though someone had sewn them shut while she’d been sleeping. She thought of prying them open, but couldn’t work out how. Then there were hands on her shoulders shaking her, until finally, she was awake.

She could see that her mother was fully dressed, so she did the same before waking her brother. Within minutes the three of them were walking down the gravel alley way behind their house, which led south before emptying into Chamber’s street which, if followed long enough, led downtown. No one asked where they were going.

She and her brother did not share a room, but for as long as she could remember he’d had a habit of finding his way to hers just shortly after they’d been told off to bed. He’d crawl in beside her, ask her a litany of questions, and then, hopefully, fall asleep, before it was too late for her to do the same. Sometimes, when one or the other of them needed it, she sang to him. She only knew a few songs by heart, and she’d sing them over and over again, but that didn’t seem to matter. In the dark, she could hear when his breathing changed and on most nights she stopped singing then; other times, when the sounds outside leaked through the crack beneath her door, she kept singing, until someone gave up.

Sylvester Park was located in the center of the little town where they lived. By the time they reached it the traffic lights had stopped changing; with no cars to direct, they blinked blindly, yellow, then red. On the far end, was a bench that faced the street. When her mother stopped, they watched her so they would know what to do. And when she finally sat, the two of them scrambled onto the bench next to her.

She only nodded. She didn’t always understand what her mother meant when she spoke this way, but her voice always turned confidential and wicked, as though some valuable secret was being passed between them. Sometimes she’d look down at her daughter and wink. Other times, her mother would hold out her hand so they could clench pinkies.

“Partners?” she’d ask.

This word was magic to her.
Partners.
It’s what they were.
This thing that could never be severed.

“Yes” she’d say. “Partners.” And she meant it.

The apartment building across the street bared a painted advertisement for cigarettes on one of its brick facades, the same brand that her mother kept, always, slipped in one of the outside pockets of her purse. She’d taken one once, when her mother was asleep, and snuck outside, behind the shed, to the center of the tall grass that never got mowed, where she and her brother had used a cardboard box to flatten a wholly hidden hideaway. For a long time she’d just held the thing in her mouth, feeling the dry paper soften between her lips, too afraid to light a match, for fear of setting the world on fire. Even unlit, she could taste the tobacco on her tongue. Her mother had smoked her whole life, but somehow this taste reminded her of her father, it was grey and sweet smelling and she wanted that smell inside her.

Moments later, when she returned to the house, coughing and gasping for water, she found her mother waiting for her in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, her own cigarette burning between two fingers, a trail of silver smoke punctuating her words as she spoke. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready,” was all she said before walking away.

In the dark, she could hardly see the advertisement on the side of the building, but she knew it was there. The man her mother was seeing lived in that building. She didn’t know his name. She had a rule about learning their names and he’d not been around long enough yet, but they’d been there before and she knew why they were there now.

Years ago, before her father had left, they’d lived in an apartment building with a metal fire escape trailing up the side. Both she and her brother were forbidden from playing on it, but sometimes in the early mornings, her mother would wake her with a hushed finger to her lips. Together, they’d tip toe on bare feet out the living room window and on to the metal grating that linked their tiny world to the metal beanstalk that climbed from the street to the sky. There they’d perch, just the two of them, wrapped in a blanket and a thousand whispers until the sun began to melt the tops of the buildings and the church down the street filled the air with bells.

Across the street, the light came on in his apartment. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear her mother’s footsteps across the floor. She knew the sounds they made at night. The way their feet seemed to shake the whole house as they paced around each other; the way her mother’s voice grew sharper, but less controlled. In the dark, with her brother sleeping next to her, she could hear the words being flung back and forth between them, and the sound of glass crashing to the floor with each landed punch. She knew these sounds, and the others. The sounds of voices without words, the grunts and moans that meant she’d have to learn his name.

Next to her, her brother wrestled with dreams of his own. She looked down at him and tried to think of the worst thing she could imagine happening to him and then prayed for God to protect him from it. In the trees, she could hear the rustling of things waking up. Above her, the sky began to change; each tiny star blinking softly off to sleep until the sky was completely black. Then grey. Then pink. Across the street, the light was off in the apartment. She searched the shadows for her mother. But she didn’t come.