quivering indignantly, her dark eyes searching mine for a measure of how bad her fall was. I smile to show it was nothing and tip up my head to find the shapes in the sky.
“See the dog? Standing up—see his head, there? And his tail?”
She won’t cry. She never cries. Instead, she gets angry, inarticulate screams making it my fault, always my fault. Or she’ll run into the road, to prove something only she understands. That I love her? That I don’t love her?
She follows my gaze. A plane slices through the sky, clipping the clouds that seem solid enough to stop its path.
“747,” Sophia says.
I breathe out. The distraction has worked. “Nope, that’s an A380. No bump at the front—see?” I set her gently down, and she shows me her gloves, soaked through from the snow.
“Poor Sophia. Look, there’s the church. What comes next?”
“Th-then school.”
“So we’re nearly there,” I say, my bright smile a carpet for the mess swept beneath it. My bag—Sophia’s bag, really—has tipped over, its contents spilled on the pavement. I stuff her change of clothes back in and retrieve the water bottle rolling away from us, my daughter’s name playing peekaboo with each rotation.
“Is this yours?”
The man I bumped into is holding something toward Sophia. It’s Elephant, his trunk fist-squashed and shiny from five years of love.
“Give it back!” Sophia yells even as she takes a step back, hiding behind me.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry.” The man seems unfazed by my daughter’s rudeness. I’m not supposed to apologize for her. It contradicts what she’s feeling, when what she needs is support. But it’s hard to stay silent before raised eyebrows and judgment raining down on you for not teaching your child manners. I take Elephant, and Sophia snatches him from me, burying her face in him.
Elephant came from the house where Sophia spent the first four months of her life. He’s the only thing she has from that time, although nobody knows if he really belonged to Sophia or whether he was scooped up the day she was placed in emergency care. Either way, they’re inseparable now.
She holds Elephant by his trunk until we get to school, where she shows Miss Jessop her wet gloves, and I hang up Sophia’s coat and put her hat and scarf into her bag. It’s December 17, and the school hums with anticipation. Cotton ball snowmen dance across sheets of sugar paper stapled to display boards, and several teachers wear festive earrings, their flashing lobes sending a signal that could be celebration or alarm. The tiled floor is wet, chunks of snow stamped loose at the door then trodden through to the coat pegs.
I take Sophia’s lunch box and give it to Miss Jessop as I continue to hunt through the contents of the bag. Katya used to empty it at the end of each day, wiping away sticky fingerprints and discreetly recycling the less desirable pieces of artwork. I always mean to do the same, then I sling the bag in the hall each afternoon and don’t think about it until we’re walking to school the next morning.
“All ready for Christmas?” Sophia’s teacher is very slight, with smooth skin that could mean midtwenties or a well-kept thirty. I think of all the duty-free Clarins I’ve bought over the years and all the skincare routines I’ve started with good intentions, only to go back to wet wipes. I bet Miss Jessop cleanses, tones, and moisturizes.
“Sort of.”
There’s a clump of ice clinging to Sophia’s spare jumper, the fabric around it damp and cold. I shake it out, then resume my fruitless hunt through bits of egg carton and empty juice cartons. “I can’t find her EpiPen. Do you still have the one I gave you?”
“Yes, don’t worry. It’s in the medicine cabinet, with Sophia’s name on it.”
“My hair bands are the wrong color,” Sophia announces.
Miss Jessop bends to inspect Sophia’s plaits, one secured by a red band and the other with a blue one. “They’re very nice hair bands.”
“I always have two blue ones for school.”
“Well, I like these ones very much.” Miss Jessop turns her attention back to me, and I marvel at a teacher’s ability to have the last word, when my own discussions with Sophia over “hair-band-gate” had lasted an entire breakfast and most of our walk to school. “Don’t forget, we’ve got our Christmas lunch tomorrow, so no packed lunch.”
“Got it. It’ll be our babysitter picking up today. Becca. You’ve met her before, I think.”