Robin's House

The sun was a golden coin that afternoon — if only it had never set. For her 10th birthday, Robin’s mom let her have a friend over for a sleepover. She chose me. Robin’s grandma came, and so did her uncle. He was very nice.

A cake with crisp scallops rested on the kitchen table, waiting for a wish. A phone hung on the kitchen wall, near the back door. Its long, tangled cord hung down dumbly. The nice uncle cut me a big piece of cake. Robin didn’t have a dad, so her uncle was especially close. Robin’s older cousin lived with them—thin and quiet, a bird who’d lost her beak. Robin and Cousin shared a bedroom, a twin bed for each girl. To make room for me, we pulled out the sleeper sofa for Robin and I. The sofa bed was in the living room, just off of the kitchen. From it, you could see directly through the house to the back door, where the phone hung.

Night came like a faithful pulse. We settled into the sofa bed. Robin’s uncle was staying the night, too. He said he’d take Robin’s twin bed, but lingered near our sofa instead. He laughed a lot and talked even more. He stood and talked. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and talked. Eventually, he crawled in and kept talking. I wanted him to stop talking.

Robin fell asleep, a new 10-year-old. I laid in the middle of the sofa bed, Robin asleep on one side, the talking uncle on the other. His voice was like a day that refused to end, and I was alone with it. I wanted his tongue to fall out of his face. Maybe he wasn’t so nice after all. I wanted to yell, “Shut up!” I didn’t. I didn’t want to bother anyone.

The phone by the back door stared at me expectantly. I wanted to use it to call my mom. I wanted to go home, away from the talking uncle. It was late. My mom was surely asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. I didn’t want to bother anyone.

Uncle finally quit talking when he placed his hand on my cake-filled belly. I wondered if it was still available for a wish, because I had a fierce one. My commonness was no deterrent. In fact, it seemed a delicacy. I wanted to get away from the thing that was happening to me. I collapsed into myself, trying to suck my very being into a golden box that existed somewhere near my spine. If I could just get inside, I’d slam the door shut and lock it with a lost key. I hoped to swallow myself up—shrink into a shimmering pinpoint lost in the covers. I would disappear like a shooting star in a slick sky. But I remained.

Time stood still, as it does for passion and violence. I had two choices. I chose to abandon myself. I didn’t have the courage for the other. A rabbit in a trance. No one was going to save me, not even myself. I knew the words, but couldn’t say them. The moon tugged at the words in my throat like the tide, but I’d thrown my voice into the night long ago. The phone waited for me. It said, “Use me. Tell someone.” But you have to know in order to tell and tell in order to know.

When my thoughts returned and the rabbit trance waned, I did the only other thing rabbits do in danger: I ran and hid. But the impulse was futile, the wound had already been delivered. A brown package I didn’t order. I got up from the sofa bed and found that both legs still worked. I headed to the bathroom but paused at Robin’s mother’s door—a hen who believed her eggs were safe. But this nest was haunted. I wanted to bang on the door, knock it down, tell her: there’s a coyote in here, eating her birds and her rabbit guest. I wanted to tell her I needed to go home. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to bother anyone. 

I discovered that Cousin had fallen asleep with her light on, a tawny owl sleeping on a bright day. Any other night, I’d have turned the light off. But on Robin’s birthday, I wanted it on. I wanted to turn every single light in the house on. I wanted to catch the house on fire and fuel it with the words I couldn’t say. I wanted to announce that the night was over and that everyone needed to wake up. But I didn’t want to bother anyone.

I shut myself up in the bathroom and sat on the cold floor. There was no clock in the bathroom. No windows to show sky-time. I needed neither to know that I sat in there long enough to live an entire lifetime. Surely everyone I knew had silver hair by now. Everyone I loved was in cozy coffins underground.

Feminine pads were rolled up in the trash beside the toilet. I looked quietly. I knew what they were, but not like this. Ashamed to see something so private to Cousin, I unrolled them and stared at the browned blood. I was introduced to many things that night.

The bathroom hours passed like sap. When I finally left the room’s safety, the windows were softened with dawn-blue—the color of a sky owned by neither moon nor sun, when anything is possible. The dawn was intelligent. She knew I was changed. I passed the sleeping tawny owl with her light still on. I passed Robin’s mother’s bedroom. I peeked into the living room and saw a sleeping Robin. The Coyote slept too, tired from a night of hunting small game. I passed the doorway to the kitchen, where the phone hung, disappointed. I stared at it, silently apologizing for my cowardice. Maybe now I could call home. No. Too late before. Too early now. I didn’t want to bother anyone.

My mom collected me as planned, no sooner. I sat numbly in the car. When she asked if I’d had fun at Robin’s birthday, I hesitated.

“I was awake all night. Robin’s Uncle touched me.”

Flash. In one second, my mother’s face was lost. Confused, saddened, slapped. But mostly, she was angry. At me? She couldn’t look at me. Not to ask if I was okay. Not to say she was sorry. Not to tell me it wasn’t my fault. She said one thing, then buried the night of Robin’s birthday in the dirt forever.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

*

A few years passed. Robin and I didn’t talk much, not because of that night. The wind simply blew me one way, her another—a bird and a rabbit. Elementary school was like that.

Before the elementary wind distanced us, I had told her about Uncle and it turns out she already knew all about Uncle’s ways. After I confided in her, she confided in me. We held each other’s secrets like precious rubies.

Years later, she passed me a note in class. I opened the paper and read, “My uncle went to jail for a long time.”

I looked up. Our eyes met across the desks, our gaze festooned with fire. I wanted to lunge across the room and hug her. I wanted to dispense high-fives to everyone within reach. I wanted to climb atop my desk and scatter mine and Robin's precious rubies everywhere for the whole world to see.

I didn’t.

I didn’t want to bother anyone. 

-Amanda Ashworth

Amanda Ashworth is an English teacher and writer raised in rural Tennessee. She keeps one foot in the classroom and the other in the creek. Rooted in Appalachian tradition and storytelling, her work explores memory, lineage, and Southern womanhood.