Maria Haskins
1. THE DISPATCHThe Parlor
There’s a police car parked in the street outside Belinda’s house. Belinda can see it from the sagging living room couch where she has just finished her after-school snack–peanut butter and raspberry jam on toast, again. She peeks over the back of the couch, through the curtains, through the window where the black flies bump insistently against the glass, watching as one police officer stays put in the driver’s seat, while the other gets out of the car and heads up the driveway, her blond ponytail bobbing as she walks. The police officer tugs at her belt, and Belinda knows there’s both a gun and a pair of handcuffs in that belt.
Grandma used to say she’d come and get Belinda if the cops ever took her away, but she’s been dead for over a year and can’t rescue anyone anymore.
Belinda hears the knock, the doorbell too, but doesn’t move from the couch. The police officer tries the handle, and because Belinda was in such a hurry to get to the bathroom and away from that nosy neighbor lady when she came home from school, the door is unlocked. Belinda hears the officer enter, hears her calling “hello?” into the hallway, getting no answer from the house besides the persistent buzzing of the flies. She hears the footsteps on the stairs, the creak of the floorboards as the officer stops in the living room’s doorway.
“Hi. You must be Belinda. My name’s Julie. I’m a police officer. Can we talk?”
Belinda doesn’t answer. She’s still draped over the back of the couch, watching the flies bustling on the windowsill. The flies can go anywhere in the house, and yet they stay in the living room window, beating their shiny wings and bodies against the glass. Belinda wonders if they can see outside. If they can see Dad’s dented old Toyota, Mom’s bicycle leaning against the crumbling retaining wall, the garbage cans Belinda forgot to bring inside on Thursday, and now the parked police car. She wonders if the flies believe they can get outside if they hit the glass enough times.
Julie kneels beside the couch.
“I have some questions about your mom and dad.”
It’s never good when an adult kneels to talk to you. That’s something Belinda learned at the ER the third time Mom brought her there with a broken wrist.
Julie keeps talking, but Belinda doesn’t want to answer any questions about Mom and Dad. She watches the flies instead. The flies remind her of Grandma. There were always lots of flies in Grandma’s house. Fat, glossy flies, buzzing against the windows in Grandma’s living room, though Grandma always called it “the parlor”. Dad thought the flies were gross. So did Mom. “Get some fly spray or something for god’s sake”, Mom would say when she picked Belinda up after work, or after what Grandma called her “payday benders”, but Belinda liked watching the flies.
“Do you know where your mom is?”
Belinda doesn’t answer. She peeks over her shoulder at Julie, then back at the window. Julie looks nice. She smells nice, too, like the coffee shop Grandma used to take Belinda to sometimes: coffee, cinnamon, cigarettes. It almost makes Belinda wish she could tell Julie everything.
“I know your dad’s been gone for a few months,” Julie says. “And Mrs. Peterson next door says your mom’s not been around since last week. Did your dad come visit you and your mom? Did they go somewhere together?”
Belinda doesn’t want to think about Dad. She thought Mom would be happier without him, nicer maybe, but it didn’t work like that. Mom still thought Belinda was bad.
All her life, Belinda has tried her best to be good, but she was never good enough for Mom or Dad. Only Grandma ever thought she was good enough just the way she is. Even if Belinda forgot to do as she was told, even if she forgot to say please and thank you, even if she spilled a whole glass of milk on the kitchen floor, Grandma never shouted at her. Sometimes, Grandma would even let Belinda put some sugar-water on the windowsill in the parlor and they’d watch together as the flies crowded around while Grandma told a story.
Grandma’s best stories were about the flies. She could tell all her flies apart—even though they looked mostly the same to Belinda—and she would tell Belinda their names, explain how they’d ended up in the parlor, and why she’d never let them go.
Last year, after Grandma died, when they went to her house after the funeral, all the flies were dead. Their tiny, desiccated bodies littered the windowsills, and the parlor was silent. Belinda hadn’t cried at the funeral, not even when they made her look at Grandma in the coffin—her familiar face distorted by lipstick and rouge—but she cried then.
One of the flies in the living room has stopped buzzing against the glass. He just sits there, looking out the window. Maybe he’s hungry. Belinda hasn’t fed him for days, and she’s not sure if she ever wants to feed him again. She could grind him into a wet spot on the glass with her hand, but she doesn’t.
“You can pack some things,” Julie says, “and then someone will pick you up and you can stay with them until we figure out where your mom is, OK? I know it must be scary and I am sorry.”
Belinda is sorry too. Closing her eyes, she breathes in the smell of Julie and wishes she could tell her that she doesn’t want to go. That even though she knows she can’t be good, she can take care of herself, go to school and brush her teeth and make toast every day, but she knows it won’t matter. No one besides Grandma has ever cared about what Belinda wants. Not Julie, and certainly not Mom and Dad.
Once, here in the living room, Dad grabbed Belinda’s arm the way he always did when he was shouting, twisting it until she cried. Belinda doesn’t remember what she’d done that time. All she remembers is curling up on the floor, closing her eyes, and wishing she was in the parlor with Grandma and the flies. She lay on the floor until Dad’s angry voice turned into an angry buzz, and eventually the buzz was all that was left of him. It was the same with Mom, in the end. And now, while Julie talks to someone on her walkie-talkie about “an unattended eight-year-old”, and “temporary care”, it’s happening again. Julie’s words run together and dissolve until they’ve lost their original shape, until all Belinda hears is the buzzing of flies, until all Belinda sees is the new fat fly bumping against the window with the others, until the smell of coffee and cinnamon and cigarettes is gone.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYA very small, very old address book
A certified translator’s stamp
A black stone shaped like a heart
A googly-eyed pet rock
An old passport photo
3. BIOGRAPHYMaria Haskins is a Swedish-Canadian writer and reviewer of speculative fiction. She currently lives just outside Vancouver with a husband, two kids, a snake, several birds, and a very large black dog.
Her short story collection Six Dreams About the Train is out now from Trepidatio Publishing. Maria’s work has appeared in The Best Horror of the Year Volume 13, Black Static, Interzone, Fireside, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online, Shimmer, Mythic Delirium, Cast of Wonders, and elsewhere. Find out more on her website, mariahaskins.com, or follow her on Twitter, @mariahaskins.