We’re excited to continue to share some work from the latest issue of NDQ. Molly Weisgau’s story “Little Fingers” from NDQ 90.3/4 invites you into the unsettling world of traumatic memories suffused with displacements and pain. It’s a haunting story that exemplifies the pressure that short fiction can exert on our hearts.

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Little Fingers

He knew his little sister didn’t mean to kill their mother. He also knew that every year, when his sister puffed her cheeks and blew out another candle on her pink-frosted birthday cake, he felt like a part of him died, too. It would be seven years tomorrow. Seven years his sister was alive, seven years his mother wasn’t.

***

The upcoming anniversary was heavy on his mind as he paced the hallway, trying to muster the courage to pick up the phone. Over time, grief demanded his attention less and less, but this day always pressed into him like the swell of a bitten lip. Every year he hoped it might be a little easier, and every year he was disappointed.

When he was finally bored of staring at the wood paneling and the peeling yellow paint, he plucked the phone from the wall and dialed. It rang only once before her voice came alive on the other end of the line.

He’d thought about making this call so many times that he’d memorized her number, but until now, never managed to actually press the buttons. “Rachel? It’s Harrison.” He walked down the hallway until the phone cord was pulled taut, then spun in circles as he stepped back, coiling it around his midsection.

“Finally,” she said.

“Are you busy this afternoon?”

“My brothers invited me fishing, but I could ditch.” He heard the muffled sounds of a TV in the background. “Why? You wanna see me?”

He twirled back down the hallway, unraveling himself. “If you wanna see me.”

They set their meeting place—the fallen birch tree that stretched like a bridge over the creek that intersected the train tracks behind his house— and he returned to his room to gather himself. Once a homely child, he’d never thrived in the social arena of public school. But when he grew five inches in three months and took on the broad shoulders of a teenager, he managed to catch her eye: a girl in his class who was known for downing shooters of cinnamon whiskey and stealing her dad’s car late at night to go drag racing with the boys from the high school. Back in May, on their last day of seventh grade, she passed him a note saying that he was the only boy in their class who has never been kissed, and to let her know when he was ready to change that. He didn’t really believe this, but he certainly wasn’t going to argue.

A dometop bird cage was set up in the corner of his room, just beyond the foot of his twin bed, and a red canary whistled from inside. His mother had purchased the bird for him when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy with his little sister, and it had been his loyal companion ever since. The orderliness of the cage, with its newspaper floor that he changed daily and staggered wooden perches whittled to the precise width to support canary feet, was in direct contrast with the messiness of its surroundings, where dirty clothes freckled the floor and three half-empty drinking glasses languished on his dusty bedside table. He crunched a seed between his teeth before sprinkling a handful into the bowl attached to the cage. Once satisfied, the bird settled into a beam of late-morning light, tiny claws disappearing under the weight of his belly.

Although he couldn’t see his father below the overhang of the roof under his open window, he heard the familiar creak of the porch swing. What he could see, on the skinny end of a tree branch that jutted parallel to the porch, was the small oval of a robin’s nest with two speckled eggs resting inside. From above it seemed so close, like he might be able to lean out the window and grab a twig right out of it. He sat and watched it until his heart slowed.

Still dressed only in his blue plaid boxer shorts, he descended the stairs and entered the kitchen. He assessed the contents of the refrigerator, finding nothing appetizing. A tub of plain yogurt, a carton of blueberries, a pile of plastic-wrapped cheese sticks, a browning head of celery, a mostly empty glass jug of milk, and some jars of varied sizes that contained pickles, jam, and spaghetti sauce. A cluster of frosty cans that had been sitting on the shelf for at least the last couple of months caught his attention. He’d once heard a character in a movie call beer liquid courage. He examined one for an expiration date and, finding nothing, popped the tab.

Courage in hand, he approached the front door. His father was dozing on the swing. Between his fingers was a barely-lit cigarette breathing smoke into a sooty circle on the roof above, a testament to his consistency. His sister lay beside his father, head resting on his lap, picking at a hangnail with her teeth. At the whine of the storm door, both turned their attention to him. He sauntered across the porch and took a seat on the top step.

“Whatcha got there?” his father asked.

“A Coors,” he said, running his hand up and down his leg, tugging at the thick hairs that were growing in to replace the blonde, downy ones that had been there all his life.

His father set the cigarette in the ashtray beside him and eased out of the swing. “And what are you doing with it?”

He took a gulp. “Drinking it.” Upon swallowing he sighed loudly, as though something in him was deeply refreshed, despite the real taste: bitter, watery unpleasantness.

He sipped a few more times before his father seized the can from his hands. “Try a Coke instead.”

“Hey,” he started, standing. The two of them were nearly eye-to-eye.

His father took a sip before emptying the can over the side of the porch. “It’s eleven in the morning, Harry.”

He watched the mulched flower bed soak up the stream. He wondered if flowers could get drunk, if the buzzing in his own head was a product of the beer or the frustration itching in the back of his throat.

As the rhythmic squeaking of the porch swing ceased, he looked over to his sister, who seemed to have noticed the robin’s nest. She stood on the porch railing, leaning forward, steadying herself with one hand against the tree’s trunk, the other reaching out toward the end of the nested limb.

“Get away from there!” he yelled.

“Why?” she asked.

He ran over to her. “If the mom sees you, she won’t come back. She’ll think you’re going to take the eggs.”

“There are eggs in there?” Her hand found purchase on the branch just as he was able to wrap his arms around her waist and attempt to pull her away. But the harder he tugged, the more the branch wobbled, and he feared the struggle would overturn the nest completely.

“I’ll show them to you if you get down,” he bargained. “Please.”

She looked to him and then back to the tree, considering.

“Your brother’s right,” said his father, who was finally approaching the trouble. He leaned over to dislodge her fingers from their grasp and spun her around before setting her gingerly back onto the porch. She grabbed her brother by the hand and pulled him inside, but he stopped her at the base of the stairs and pushed past so that he could lead the way. This was his favor, not her due.

In his room, he perched her on the edge of his bed and knelt beside her, pointing her gaze to the nest and the eggs that were no bigger than her thumb. She grinned, flashing the gap between her front teeth, a gap that he knew was a smaller copy of the one in his mother’s mouth. When he was young, his mother would sit in his bed, lean her back against the wall, and read to him about robins from her encyclopedia. Although he could no longer recall how her voice sounded unless he heard it through one of their home videos, he could still feel the way her words made her body vibrate when he would lay his head against her chest. One of his last memories of her was like this, but instead of her chest he pressed his ear against her swollen stomach, listening for the tiny flutters of his baby sister.

The sound of rattling metal tore him from the memory. When he turned to find the sound, he discovered his sister shaking her fingers in the slats of the cage, trying to wake up the bird. It peeled open its eyes and stretched out a wing to steady itself. “Get out,” he said, prying her away once again.

“I want to hold Morty.”

“I have to get dressed.” He pulled open his dresser drawers, feigning contemplation as she sulked out of the room. After considering what to wear all morning, he finally settled on a pair of shorts cut off from some jeans that were once black but had faded to a pleasant smoky gray, a touch more mature than the typical blue denim, and a mustard tank top with a stretched neckline and arm holes that hung down at his ribs to expose the few dark hairs that spiraled from his armpits. He took a final look at himself in the mirror that hung on the wall at the top of the stairs, rolling his shoulders back, feeling suitably attractive, content with this being the version of himself he would always have to remember when he thought about his first kiss.

He found his father in the kitchen washing dishes. “Wear shoes if you’re going out,” he said. “I don’t want you picking up worms from that creek.”

He grabbed a cheese stick before heading for the back door. “I will,” he said, slipping his feet into an old pair of his father’s leather flip flops, which he kicked off as soon as he made his way through the trees that lined the edge of the backyard and approached the train tracks. The blazing steel beams stung the soles of his feet, but he walked on, peeling the mozzarella into stringy pieces. As school reconvened each year, the boys in his class would compare the calluses they built over the summer by challenging each other to walk on the sharpest rocks or the hottest spots of asphalt without flinching. He was the reigning champion the past two years, and he had no plans to relinquish the title. He didn’t win at many things, not basketball games or spelling bees or having a full, happy family. Detaching from the pain in his feet was the closest he came to feeling tough, like the real country kid he wanted to be.

As his house disappeared in the distance, he used the hem of his shirt to mop up the sweat that ran in beads from his nose, wishing he had worn a baseball cap so he didn’t have to squint. The Nebraska summers seemed to be getting hotter, and he feared that soon enough his feet would no longer be able to withstand the abuse.

“Harry!” a voice called from behind. He turned to find his sister skipping up the train tracks.

“Go away,” he said.

“Where are you going?” She took him by the hand again.

Again, he pulled away. “To see a friend.”

“Is it a girlfriend?” She dragged out the vowels of the word.

“Maybe.” He picked up a rock and tossed it in the air a few times, feel-

ing its heft as it landed in the palm of his hand. His girlfriend she was not, but he liked the way it sounded, the idea that someone might be defined by their affection for him.

“Do you love her?”

He turned around and threw the rock once more, letting it land with a crack as he walked away. “Maybe.”

The topic of love often troubled him. Love had once meant confusion so intense he felt his heart pound in his gums, or sadness so chasmic it made the room spin. Over time the overwhelm tempered, but the rawness still found him, made him feel like something delicate and breakable.

His sister jogged to keep up with him. “More than you love me?”

His father and sister told him they loved him, and he said it back, though sometimes he wasn’t sure what it meant to love someone without missing them. “Yes,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“More than you love daddy?”

“Stop.”

He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

She was out of breath and beginning to drag behind.

Something inside him shriveled. He used all his strength to shove her to the ground. The force was such that she didn’t even stumble, just fell. She clutched the arm that she used to catch herself but didn’t cry out. “Get up,” he demanded. The heat seemed to bolster his resolve. Once she was on her feet, he pointed in the direction of the house. “Go.”

Her chin wobbled, but he didn’t stick around to see the tears fall.

***

She arrived back at her house and approached her father, who was pulling weeds in the front yard. “Harry pushed me,” she said, showing him the scrape ornamenting her elbow.

He took her arm between his fingers and examined the damage. The dirt caked underneath his nails made them look like little rotten moons. “Harry’s a big mean grump,” he said.

She took a seat on his knee and rubbed her hand along his rough cheek. “Why does he hate me?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” her father said. “He’s having a hard day. I think we should try our best to be patient.” She nodded, though she wasn’t sure she entirely believed him. “I know what might help.” He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the house, where he set her down on the sagging paisley sofa and stepped into the bathroom. A moment later he returned and stuck a Band-Aid right over her hurt. “There,” he said, kissing her head.

She had to admit, her arm did feel better, but something was still unsettled inside, as if some of her brother’s sadness had rubbed off on her. “Can I have a dollar for the ice cream truck?” she asked. Her father reached into his pocket and pushed a folded bill into her hand before heading back out the door, leaving her to occupy herself once again. Soon boredom set in, and though she knew she was never, under any circumstances, to enter her brother’s room without his permission, she found herself wiggling the knob of his door, just to see what might happen.

The door creaked open a few inches as the latch slid out of the jamb, and she peeked inside. The room felt larger, stiller than when she had been there just a couple hours earlier. The air hummed with the energy of her misbehavior. She tiptoed in, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could manage. She ran her fingers along the spines of his books, cuddled the dusty stuffed animals he buried in his closet. A picture frame sat on the bedside table. A younger, pudgier version of her brother was sandwiched between a man who she knew was her father, although she had never seen him clean shaven and smiling like he was in front of her now. Next to them was a woman with suntanned skin in a red dress. The woman gazed at her brother with a wide, gap-toothed smile.

Hunkered in the back of the cage, the canary chirped at her. She wrapped her fingers around the metal wires. Carefully, she eased the latch on the door of the cage, surprised to see it pop open, sure it would only work under her brother’s touch. She stuck her hand inside. The bird prodded her with the tip of its beak, but she kept her index finger stiff and strong, a tiny branch, just like her brother had taught her. One pale talon after another wrapped around. It looked at her with a glassy eye as she slowly drew her hand out of the cage. She tried to imagine the woman in the photo in this room, holding this red bird that matched her red dress, but she couldn’t animate the image. That woman was a stranger. Or even worse than a stranger, a ghost—something that lurked around her but was never really there, that made her different from her classmates, that made her father cry on her birthday.

When she heard the familiar jingle of the ice cream truck in the distance, she dropped the bird back into its cage, shaking her finger to loosen the grip of its claws, and sprinted out of the room.

***

He underestimated how far the walk to their meeting point would be, and the heat was deflating him. When he finally reached the skinny dirt path that took him down the small hill away from the train tracks and onto the shaded creek bed, he scooped up a handful of water to rinse the sweat off his face. The burning soles of his feet sank into the cool mud.

He trudged on a ways, until he came around a bend. She was sitting cross-legged beneath the fallen birch, braiding sweetgrass, one end of the skinny clump stabilized in her mouth while her hands worked. She stood when she saw him approach, pinching the grass between her fingers to keep it from separating. “I’ve been waiting.”

The shallow water made sucking sounds as he shifted his weight. “Sorry,” he said. “My sister was following me. I had to get rid of her.” He curled his toes and felt the silt slide between them.

“This is for you.” She took his arm and flipped it over, running her thumb in circles on the tender underside of his wrist a couple of times before tying the braid around it. Her breath tickled the end of his nose.

He fingered the notches, slid it up and down. The sticky honeydew tugged at his arm hairs. “Thank you,” he said, but it came out a whisper, so he had to repeat himself. He’d never received a gift like this—divorced from a gift-giving occasion—not from a girl, not even from his friends.

Despite the suffocating air, goosebumps rose on his skin as she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled his face toward hers until the sides of their noses touched. Her eyelids slowly drifted closed. He tried to kiss like he saw in the movies: wet and open-mouthed, but the tension in his lips and the sucking of the mud distracted him and he forgot to close his eyes. He didn’t realize he was also forgetting to breathe until his lungs started to burn, and when she grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast, he let out a sigh that sounded more like a wheeze.

Eventually they broke apart. “Come over for dinner,” she said, lacing her fingers through his. He tried to quiet his breathing. He hoped she couldn’t feel the way his hands, his legs, his whole body was shaking. He nodded and leaned back into her, closing his eyes this time, really trying to do it right.

“Harry!” His sister was running toward him, slipping on the mud in her pink plastic sandals, doubling over to catch her breath. The Band-Aid on her elbow had come unstuck.

“Morty’s gone,” she said between gasps. “Gone?”

“Well–”

“You went into my room?”

She dropped her face into her hands and began to cry. “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

He turned back to Rachel, who was dragging her toe through the stream. “It’s going to get dark soon,” she said.

“Maybe another day?” He reached toward her, pleading for her to take pity on his situation.

She bit her bottom lip and gave a shallow nod, wiped her hands on her shorts, and walked toward home.

***

She jogged to keep pace with her brother once again. If she could, she would take it all back. The bird’s nest, sneaking into his room, the Bomb Pop. Perhaps this was the punishment for all the time she spent following him around, begging for the attention he would never give.

When his whistles didn’t will the bird to arrive, he resorted to rattling tree branches, shining a flashlight under the porch, opening the cans of birdseed that sat near the outside feeders, hoping that it had somehow pried the lid open and tucked itself inside. His sister tried to copy the whistle, but she couldn’t shape her lips right and mostly just blew air and spit.

Finally, when they had to move their search inside the house, he had no choice but to tell his father, who was in the middle of mixing batter for a birthday cake. Night was closing in, and he felt his rage begin to give way to numbness. His father told him to retrieve the ladder from the shed and drag it to the side of the house so that he could check the roof. His sister dragged over a chair and climbed onto the kitchen counter. He watched motionless as she blindly swatted her hands on top of the cabinets, kicking up dust but no red canaries. “I’m trying,” she said.

“Stop,” he said. “He won’t come to you anyway.”

She hopped down from the counter and wrapped her arms around him, grasping his belt loops in her fists. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He gently untangled himself from her grip and slunk away. The tears threatened to slip out as he climbed the stairs, but he blinked them away and shut himself into his room. Morty was a final relic of the before, a reminder that at one time summer nights didn’t revolve around a bitter countdown.

At first he didn’t believe it when he heard the sound of claws scratching underneath his bed. He lay on his stomach and reached into the darkness, sure his mind was inventing things. There was the bird, resting comfortably on a bit of splintered wood. It whistled a sunny tweet as he coaxed it onto his finger and slithered out from under the bed. He looked it over, searching for an injury, for signs of fear, but it seemed completely unbothered. He held it gently, a whole little life that was barely heavier than his school pencil, but what he felt was not relief or gratitude or happiness.

***

She was crawling around on her hands and knees, checking vents and corners and underneath furniture. Her father was still outside and she could see the beam of his flashlight periodically through the window.

Her brother called her name, startling her. She rose to her feet and bounded up the stairs, hoping to discover that Morty was sleeping peacefully in his cage, that maybe the entire thing never really happened.

When she entered his room for the third time that day, she found him kneeling on the floor next to his bed. He clutched something against his chest, though she couldn’t see what it was. She tiptoed in. “He’s dead,” he said when she reached his side.

She sank to her knees. “No,” was all she could say in response.

He lowered his hands. The canary’s head lolled and his talons clenched as if he was perching on an imaginary branch. Something in her brother’s gaze seemed blurry around the edges. She rubbed her eyes, which were itchy from all of the dust, but the effect remained.

He laid the bird’s body, still warm, in her hands. “This is all your fault,” he said.

At first she didn’t want to touch it, this precious dead thing, for fear that she would break it. She could not afford to make another mistake. But her brother was watching, so she ran her hand along the silky red feathers, knowing she deserved to sit in the discomfort.

***

When he heard his father shutting the door to the mudroom, he ran downstairs and stood in front of him. He opened his mouth to explain but didn’t know how. His father pulled him close and cradled the back of his head, the way he always had when he was small, and he hoped that somehow he understood. The floor of the house seemed to sigh under their weight. He pressed his eyes into his father’s salty neck and cried.

~

Molly Weisgrau is a writer from Lawrence, Kansas. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University, where she was managing editor of the literary magazine 45th Parallel. Her work appears in Hobart, Waif Magazine, Every Day Fiction, and elsewhere. Read more at mollyweisgrau.com.

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