Safe House by Alain Kerfs

She holds up her hand to the bathroom window, feels cold air piercing. Early morning, still dark, the children asleep. She unspools a strip of foam, one-handed. At her feet, a diagram displayed on her mobile phone. Using a screwdriver, she pries off ragged remnants of the original weather-stripping. When she stretches to reach the top rail, her ribs ache.

She works quietly, not wishing to wake the children – nine-year-old daughter, six-year-old son – she likes this image of them: sleeping, warm, peaceful. She cleans the rails. Cold air intrudes. Yesterday, with children in school and her husband asleep, she bought foam insulation that she kept in the car’s trunk; her husband would see it as an affront.

Wind tugs the clothesline, the nylon cord trembling the anchor bolt, throbbing through clapboard siding, the house’s pulse. It makes her jumpy.

Through the window, black sky lightens. Soon, it will be time to make breakfast, get the children to school. Then she will wait for the sound of the front door, the tread of boots in the hallway, the arrival of her husband from the graveyard shift. She knows the house, its creaks provide warning, floorboards transmitting the shuffle of weariness or the stomp of anger, but the house can’t help her.

Nothing can. Her family, in another country, wouldn’t understand. Her friends are his friends. The police, when called by neighbors, ask the usual questions, get the usual answers, shake their heads when they leave.

As she applies the insulation, her swollen left hand can do little more than anchor one end of the strip while her right hand pulls it taut, presses along its length. Not pretty, but no wind whistles through.   

She is aware that her husband, after suffering perceived injustices at work, comes home heated up, like a steam pipe needing venting. The yelling, the cursing, the doors slammed and tables pounded have become the discordant soundtrack to their marriage. Nothing she does is good enough.

Last month, when neighbors called the police, a new officer came. While his partner talked with her husband in the kitchen, the young officer handed her a business card, deposited immediately in her pocket. On the card a drawing of arms extending from a telephone and the words “Women’s Shelter. Twenty-four hours a day, help is here. You’re never alone.”

The house sighs around her, light filters through blinds. She’s rushing; the screwdriver slips, smashing a finger against the window rail. She bleeds onto the window sill. The house bears witness to the hurts.

She called for the first time a few hours ago. Talked to a stranger.

“He’s a good man,” she said. “With a bad temper.”

“There are appropriate ways to deal with anger,” said the stranger. “He could get counseling.”

“Even the suggestion… he’d be so angry.”

“That’s the point, right? What do your children know about this?”

Everything, she thought. She said, “I don’t know.”

“Probably everything. And what are they learning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stay in our safe house,” said the stranger. “With your kids. Sort things out. There’s a program, men talking about anger. He’s not a bad guy? Then, he’ll do this for you and the kids.”

She sucks her fingertip until the bleeding stops. She can’t use a bandage, too obvious. She looks at the window. The foam strip on the left side, where she started, meanders, veering close and then away until tightening at the top, melding against window. The window glides easily, no wind encroaching. It’s good enough.

She thinks of crawling in the attic, mask over her face, gloves on her hands, spreading out roles of pink insulation. She thinks of removing the front door to plane the corner where it sticks.  With videos on the internet, she feels confident, she could fix every whistling window, every wallboard crack, every sticking door. It’s a mother’s job to provide a safe environment for her children, an environment that keeps out wind and cold and danger.

She wipes blood specks off the sill. She thinks of the life she has made for herself, for her children. Lives, like the house, neglected, allowed to settle, crack, deteriorate. There has been a lack of intervention.

She remembers a summer night before they had children, a storm knocking out the electricity, the house sweltering, and even naked she was too uncomfortable to sleep. Her husband licked his fingertips, drew them lightly over her ridges – ribs, pelvic bones, clavicles – his breath following his moist touch, finger-painting cool lines across her body, his touch patient, never demanding, never expecting. Is that man still there, she wonders, like a house with a sturdy foundation, just needing a little maintenance?

She holds the screwdriver in her good hand, feels its heft, its cold utility. She knows this house, she can fix it, but by herself she cannot make it a safe house. She picks up her phone, dials a number used once before. Twenty-four hours a day, you’re not alone.

Wind blows through a gap in the kitchen door, moaning, making it difficult to hear children’s voices or footsteps in the hallway or a voice on the phone that says, “Can I help you?” Her answer forms in her throat as she pictures those words flowing on radio waves from cell tower to cell tower, those words speeding toward her unseen above morning traffic, above solitary joggers, above dog walkers, above houses where people sit together, eating breakfast.

Alain Kerfs

Image by Leopictures from Pixabay Sticking plasters crossed over on top of house bricks – a desperate temporary repair.