SIX YEARS AGO
SIXTEEN going on seventeen was supposed to be special. But Muse had been locked in her room all day.
The punishment this time was owed to the fact that she had stayed an hour late after high school ended. She'd told her grandmother she joined the environmental club. She'd even worn a green sweater in preparation for the lie.
But when she got home, unlocking the front door to the apartment, Nana had been sitting on the couch, an Arabic soap opera playing on the small TV in the living room. A woman wailed into a man's arms. Nana's head had swivelled, rotating like a vulture's.
"How was the earth club?" she asked in her deep, accented voice.
"Environmental club," Muse had corrected, in case it was a trick. "It was good. We talked about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
Slowly, carefully, she set down the apartment keys onto the table. The air had become tense and cold. Moving felt like wading through solid ice. She had just needed to make it to her room: safety.
Then Nana had said, "Unzip your sweater."
The green sweater. The stupid mint-green cotton green sweater. Muse should have worn a fucking hoodie.
"Nana, I have homework. I should really―"
"Unzip the sweater, Muse Marie."
The soap opera on TV dulled to white noise. Muse's blood roared. It felt like ice was sluicing down her back, freezing her from the inside out. She had already known she was a goner. Her hand had shaken as she reached for the zipper.
Beneath the green sweater, she wore a white camisole with a lace trim. She didn't have to look down to know the outline of her bra was visible. Her chest and shoulders were exposed. The tiny white spaghetti straps covered only a sliver of skin.
Nana didn't say anything for what must have been an eternity. She had stared at Muse with such barely veiled disgust, all through her thin, wiry, rectangular glasses. She may as well have been observing an insect under a magnifying glass. A cockroach under the light.
Muse hadn't breathed. Motionless under the flickering light of the kitchen.
"So you dress like a whore," Nana said softly, almost kindly. "How many boys did you fuck?"
And Muse had hated―hated―that tears welled up in her eyes. She had studied for biology with Lisa, who was in grade twelve. She'd had a crush on Lisa since tenth grade, and yesterday, she had asked Muse to meet her in the library. "Consider it a little study date," she had said.
"It was hot outside," said Muse.
"I didn't think your mother raised you to be a little slut," Nana hissed. She clicked off the TV. The sound of the woman crying vanished.
"It's just a tank top." Begging, but it was no use.
"It's just a tank top," Nana repeated, rising from the couch. Her bony, spidery hand gripped the armrest. "The boys at your high school must love you. Did you spread your legs for them? Did you let them touch you?"
At least Nana didn't know Muse liked girls.
It wasn't even like her and Lisa had even kissed.
Nana walked around the couch. Muse tried to keep her eyes on her face, and not her hand, which curled as if in preparation, fingertips digging into her palm.
In her tenth grade philosophy class, they had talked about religion. Muse had grown up Greek Orthodox. She'd worn a cross on her neck until thirteen. Mr. Herrera had asked her last Tuesday, "Do you think God is real, Muse?"
"I think so," she told him.
She thanked God then that Nana didn't have any rings on her fingers today. It hurt far more when the silver and gold bit into her skin.
"No," Muse had said to Nana. "Nobody touched me. I―"
Nana touched Muse's face, her hand almost caressing. "Your parents made a mistake when they agreed not to hit you. My mother hit me, and I turned out just fine. I hit your mother, too." She sounded sweet, loving, her voice a whisper: "The devil is in you. But I'm going to save you, Muse Marie. You're going to be okay."
She drew back her hand, and Muse had braced herself to see stars.
WHEN Nana locked her in her room―the most it had ever been was three days―she called it a fasting period. She didn't open the door at all, not even to feed Muse. It didn't seem to matter it was her birthday today. Birthdays were probably not important to the devil Nana believed lived inside her.
Muse was less concerned about her birthday and more concerned about her university applications, though. She had taken enough grade twelve credits that she could graduate sooner than she was supposed to. She had sent the applications in January, using crumpled bills from a piggy bank her mother had given her as a child.
Most people she knew had been accepted already. Or rejected. Or given some kind of response. But she was still waiting for her letters in the mail.
Darkness slid in through the window. The lights of the apartment complex across hers twinkled bright, dispelling the shadows. It had to be late. Muse's stomach was growling. She wished she had a birthday cake.
She hadn't eaten cake in so long. She missed the vanilla kind, with sweet buttercream frosting smothered between fluffy, crumbly layers. Once, after moving in, she'd tried making a recipe she'd memorized from Aunt Aria; she'd found all the ingredients in Nana's kitchen.
She had been adding drops of vanilla extract to the batter when Nana had found her. She had smacked the vanilla from Muse's hand, scattering it over the counter.
"Only pigs eat cake," she had said coldly, pinching Muse's stomach. Then she had scraped Muse's batter from the bowl straight into the garbage.
It had been two years. Muse hadn't touched cake since. She could have had it secretly a million times over―at school, at a bakery nearby―but she always remembered the glaring look in Nana's eyes as she'd spat the word pig, and the feeling of her fingertips squeezing the skin of Muse's lower stomach.
The sky outside deepened into pure oil black. The city lights dimmed as, one by one, its inhabitants went to bed.
The thought of her university applications made Muse decide to knock on the door to her bedroom. She felt sure at least one had arrived today.
"Nana?"
She heard the familiar sounds of an Arabic soap opera playing on the TV in the living room. A man was yelling at his mistress for having gotten pregnant.
"Nana?" Muse repeated, knocking louder. "I just want to know if any of my university letters came in the mail."
The volume of the TV increased until she couldn't even hear herself knocking anymore.
BREAKFAST in the morning consisted of two eggs and a slice of toast with jam. Muse sat down at the table, her stomach growling, and dragged the prongs of her fork through the eggs. The yolks split, yellow rivulets snaking across the plate. She didn't even care about the eggs touching her toast.
"Good morning, Muse Marie."
"Good morning, Nana."
"Did you sleep well, habibi?" Habibi―a term of endearment. Nana had only ever called her that once, before breaking the news that Uncle Darius and Aunt Aria were dead.
Muse had turned over in her bed restlessly the whole night. She didn't feel like she'd slept at all. "Yes."
"Some letters arrived for you in the mail."
She looked up, runny eggs and toast forgotten. "Were they from―"
"The universities, yes," said Nana, still smiling serenely.
Something about the calmness of her expression made Muse feel like she was missing something. She didn't realize she was still dragging her fork across the plate until it screeched, the ceramic beneath the eggs scratched like a creature with talons had clawed at it.
"I opened them," Nana continued. Still smiling.
"Did I―"
"They rejected you, habibi. I'm very sorry."
If a person's entire world ended and nobody around her noticed, did it even really happen? "Oh," Muse said. "All―all of them?"
Her chest was heaving. Her marks hadn't been good enough. She had tried her best, and it wasn't good enough.
University had been her way out. Now she had nowhere else to go.
"All of them," Nana said, smiling broadly. "But, you know, habibi. I have a friend at the bakery who says you can waitress for him. It's right across the street."
"But―university―"
"This was a sign from God that you should stay home, like I told you. All the universities you applied to were very far, anyway. It's not right for a young girl with your inclinations to be all alone, away from home."
"My inclinations?"
Nana laughed. Her eyes were cold beneath her wiry glasses. "I prayed to God every night you would never leave home. You still need me, habibi. I will turn you into the perfect woman. And then perhaps we will find you a nice husband, and you two can take care of me for a change, hm?"
"I'm only seventeen," Muse said faintly.
"It's never too early to start looking. I married your grandfather when I was twelve and he was forty-two." She reached across the table and clasped Muse's hands in her own. "You don't need school. I never went."
Muse flinched at the touch. Her cheek still ached from the day before yesterday. She hoped it hadn't bruised.
"I love you, you know that, right?" Nana squeezed her hands so hard Muse lost sensation in her fingertips. "Everything will be okay, habibi. All you need is a rich man."
MUSE clutched her high school diploma numbly as the assembly dispersed. It had been months since her rejection letters, but she still felt like she was in a trance. It didn't matter she had graduated at seventeen, a year early. It didn't matter she had spent so many nights taking on the extra work, so she could escape her grandmother's home. It didn't matter how badly she had wanted to study at university. It had all been for nothing.
She missed her mom and dad. Maybe if she pinched herself, she'd wake up now and still be twelve. They'd still be alive. They'd come home with ice cream, and Dad would help her study for her math test.
The principal congratulated all the twelfth-graders. Graduation caps flung up into the air, showering the atrium.
This couldn't be real. This couldn't be her life.
A hand touched her arm. "Hey, Muse. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," said Muse automatically, looking up at Lisa.
"You just seem a little out of it. Congratulations, by the way." Lisa hugged her diploma to her chest, eyes shining. "It's really cool you graduated a year early. You're so smart. Where's your family?"
"It's just my grandma here."
Lisa nodded understandingly. "My mom couldn't get the time off work, either. It's just my dad and my brothers. Can I meet her?"
Muse hesitated. "It's probably not a good idea. She's . . . a little old-fashioned. And she's probably really tired. She's been sleeping a lot lately."
"Oh," said Lisa, blushing. "Old-fashioned. You mean she wouldn't like my piercings and my dyed hair and stuff?"
"No, she's just―"
"You should come over to my place sometime. I can't stand the idea I'll never see you again. Promise you'll text me?"
Muse still felt numb. "Promise."
And before she could even register it, before she had time to realize, Lisa had leaned over and kissed Muse lightly on the lips. Only for a second. But the crowd shifted―the students in their robes and their proud parents scattering―and Muse caught a glimpse of Nana.
Their eyes locked from across the atrium as Lisa pulled back.
"Bye, Muse! Happy summer."
"Happy summer," Muse repeated, as her stomach sank.
THE morning of her fourth night in her room, Muse opened her eyes and saw stars. Her head hurt.
The first four days of summer spent in her bed, the door locked―if only Lisa could see her now, could see her so-called happy summer.
She had banged on the door in the middle of the night, begging Nana to let her out. She had never been kept in her room for this long before. She had thought the limit was three days. But then, she had never seen Nana that furious before.
Nana had been quiet the entire ride home from graduation. Once the car had stopped outside their apartment complex, its shadow looming over them like an endless dark valley, Muse had prayed. She prayed for Mom and Dad, for Aunt Aria and Uncle Darius. For some spirit, some holy ghost, anyone to save her.
She didn't know why she kept trying. No divine force had ever saved her before.
Muse's hands had shaken uncontrollably as she'd unclipped her seatbelt. Trembling so hard that even when they'd gotten into the elevator, she had pressed three wrong buttons before hitting their floor. Unlocking the door to the apartment was worse―she had fumbled for the keys, trying desperately to fit them into the lock.
Nana hadn't even waited a second after Muse closed the apartment door. She hadn't even had time to set down the keys. Nana's hand was already raised. She had fallen back against the door.
"Nana, it wasn't what you think." She had to force the words out through her tears. "It wasn't like that."
"I saw your eyes when you looked at her. You are a filthy, disgusting thing." One of her bony hands had seized Muse by the collar of her graduation robes. "There is no saving you. You are nothing to me. I should have never taken you in."
It had been four days since then. Maybe Nana planned on letting her rot in her room, until she eventually died here―slowly, painfully, over weeks of starvation. At least she had a bathroom with running water.
She wondered if starving or dehydration would be worse.
Muse couldn't let that happen. She slipped out of bed, almost too dizzy to stand upright, and made herself knock on the door.
"Nana, please."
She banged harder.
"Nana, please."
A soap opera still played faintly from the living room.
"You can't leave me in here forever."
Was Nana still sleeping? Couldn't she hear her?
Muse knocked again, so fast her fist blurred in her vision. The door rattled, the hinges scraping against one another. If she wore it down enough, she could break it open. Nana couldn't hate her anymore than she did now anyway.
"Nana, please. Please let me out." She didn't realize she was crying again. The tears slipped down her arm, between her fingers. "Please let me out."
The door shuddered open, the hinges shrieking. Muse gasped, almost falling forward with the force. The soap opera was louder in the hallway. Someone on the TV screamed. The smell of rotten fish prickled in her nostrils.
"Nana?" said Muse, her voice broken.
Closer to the living room, she could see Nana's silhouette on the couch. Her head faced the TV. She still watched the show, unmoving.
"Nana, I'm sorry I broke the door," Muse said, pausing behind the couch.
Nana didn't respond. Muse's heart slammed against her chest. She could barely breathe as she rounded the curve of the side stand. Nana's eyes were open, fixed unblinkingly upon the TV, so glossy they reflected the scene playing: A little girl tugging on her father's coat in a winter-coated city, her face bright with icy white light and tears.
"Don't leave me and Mom," she begged her father.
"I have to," he said, in a deep, stoic voice. "I have to go, darling."
Muse grabbed the remote and turned off the TV.
"Nana? Are you okay?"
Nana still didn't move. Muse leaned over and touched her shoulder. Her skin was cold beneath her shirt. Her bones cracked softly. Nana's head lolled sideways, eyes wide―as if she could see right through her. Muse would never forget that sound, that look. She opened her mouth, a question still in her throat―"Nana?"―but nothing came out except a scream.
THE police told her to stay in the apartment until Child Protective Services could collect her. Muse had sat at the kitchen table while they carried away the body.
She was twelve, watching the clock on the oven tick to 10:38 p.m. She was fifteen, sitting at her desk as Nana touched her shoulder at noon. Death lingered around her, inside of her, like a separate disembodied heart―interwoven within her every fibre, lacing around her limbs, breathing into her blood vessels.
"What do I do now?" she had asked the police officer, Ted.
He hadn't seemed sure of the answer himself. "You just hang on, kid. It'll be alright." He'd tilted his head, as if pondering. "Maybe have a snack," he'd said at last. "Your blood sugar's probably low. Shock will do that to you."
Muse stood from the table and opened the fridge. Leftover vegetables and rice. Raw chicken breasts. Butter. She moved to the cabinets. Canned soup. A bag of flour. Sugar.
Maybe she was still in shock. She didn't care. She suddenly wanted to make a fucking cake.
The butter, milk, sugar, flour, and vanilla extract were easy to find. Eggs, baking soda, and salt were next. She gathered the ingredients onto the counter, sugar already dusting her fingertips, and grabbed a measuring cup and a bowl. She left all the cabinet doors open, and didn't wipe the countertops after spilling flour. Nana would have hated that.
She dumped milk, eggs, and butter into the bowl. Her hands trembled.
Nana was dead. She couldn't believe Nana was dead.
She didn't know if she should be sad, or relieved, or angry, or fucking ecstatic.
With both hands, she lifted the five-pound jar of sugar and tilted it into the bowl. Sugar slipped out, the granules chiming as they rained down over the mixture. Sugar, and―
Rolls of paper, bound by an elastic, dropped into the bowl.
Muse gingerly picked the paper out of the batter, its edges dusted in liquid cake. Her vision blurred as she stripped the elastic and unrolled them.
The first paper was a rejection letter from Princeton. Why had her grandmother hidden it in a jar of sugar?
She unrolled the second, third, and fourth papers. Acceptance letters from Colombia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University. Sugar pelted her palms.
Nana had lied. "This was a sign from God you should stay home," she had said.
The deadline for all the letters dated to over a month ago. It was too late to accept any of them.
Muse set the papers down, and kept mixing the cake.
"I didn't think your mother had raised you to be a little slut."
The sugar sweetened the mixture, turning it paler.
"The devil is in you."
She cracked the eggs.
"You are a filthy, disgusting thing."
Two drops of vanilla extract.
"You are nothing to me."
She poured the cake in the pan and slid it into the oven.
"I should have never taken you in."
Nana had lied to her, the same way her aunt and uncle had. They were supposed to love her, and they had lied to her. It felt worse than a betrayal. They had lied to her, and then left her. How was it possible to lie to someone you loved? How could you love someone, and hurt them like that?
After thirty minutes, the smell of vanilla wafted through the apartment. Muse took the cake out of the oven.
She made a promise to herself, then. She was only seventeen, but she swore she would never, ever be with someone who lied to her. It didn't matter how much they loved her. She couldn't do this again. She never wanted to feel like this for the rest of her life.
"Only pigs eat cake."
Muse grabbed a fork, and ate the whole fucking cake.
***
Merry Christmas Eve <3 My gf is so itty bitty mini teeny tiny angel cake princess plum sugar mini baby.
From the moon and back,
Sarai