Spookygirls

Against the Evil Eye

Zyna Koprowski stared at shadows on the ceiling and hummed, deep and low in her throat, trying to drown out the sound of crying. Casmir never woke to the crying, not even when it reached a fever pitch and the baby struggled to breathe, and tonight was no different.

She slid out of bed and into her slippers, then padded down the hallway of their little apartment. She peeked inside the nursery, though she knew exactly what she would see. Little Halina was fast asleep, perfect and still, only the shallow movements of her chest betraying life.

She went in only to check the bag of stones nestled at the foot of the bed, to push a tip of the whirling clover mobile above the baby’s head, and slide a finger over the horseshoes hung over the window and door. Everything in place, she padded out and closed the door behind her. She crossed herself in the darkness.

When she slid back under the quilt and shut her eyes, the crying started again. She covered her ears with her hands and curled into a tight ball against her husband’s back, knowing that when the crying ceased, she would sleep, and when she slept, the nightmares would come pouring back like the black ink of the ocean in burning lungs.

She could still see his face, and the piercing knowledge in those round eyes that stared up at her, even with her eyes slammed shut. He would only stop crying when the milk was gone and the blood came. She wondered, in the weeks before his death, if one day he would simply gulp the life out of her body and her husband would find them there on the floor of the nursery, she a bloodied shrunken corpse and the baby grown full and strong, a man with the same face as his father. The men would bury her in a plain box with no marking, as if her life was only to create him. Ryszard.

When she woke, Casmir was gone and she was alone in the apartment again. Alone but for Halina, who never made a noise, who could go a full day hungry without a whimper. The blistering rash that broke out when Zyna forgot to change her diaper didn’t even make the girl wince. She was a quiet, uncomplaining being, and Zyna despised her the more for it.

Nevertheless, she dropped her feet to the floor and went about her duties. She tidied the bed, washed her face, brushed her teeth and dressed. She walked past Halina’s room without a look in, down the hallway and into the kitchen, where she made breakfast and ate by herself with the morning’s paper. Finished, she cleaned the dishes and the kitchen, then grabbed a bottle of breast milk from the refrigerator for Halina.

The baby was sitting upright, peering out the window when Zyna opened the door, and she stopped mid-stride as the child pulled her eyes from the view and the golden, piercing orbs descended on her. Taking a deep breath, she walked to the crib and handed the icy bottle to the stern child, then turned and walked back out, tapping the horseshoe above the door before closing it tight.

Ryszard had refused the bottle from day one, and despite her body’s aching insistence that she rest from the arduous delivery, he nursed greedily. He was consistent, wailing every two hours for another feeding, a shriek that made the neighbors stumble or start when they heard it. For the first few months, Ryszard seemed a healthy, albeit demanding, child. True, he pushed away from her maternal embraces and growled when she cooed over his crib, but without her mother or husband to tell her different, Zyna almost believed he was just a typically mean little boy.

Zyna stopped her ironing, Casmir’s work shirts, when she heard the soft thud of the empty bottle hitting the nursery floor. She waited, not moving even to blink or breathe, straining to hear the wail of need that never came. When she began to feel faint, she sucked in a breath and continued on, chastising herself on the burn where she’d carelessly left the hot iron.

If Casmir would have had a say, Ryszard’s life would’ve been held above hers in delivery, and the baby born blue and still would have been more important than the traumatized woman on the bed. But the doctor stayed with her, and left the child to the busy nurses as they wheeled her to surgery. Of course they revived him, and she heard him cry for the first time racing down the hall with a mask on her face. Even then she knew something was wrong, but she dismissed the thought in an opiate cloud.

When she was awake and feeling almost human, they wheeled her into the NICU to see him. His limbs were still tinged blue, but he screamed and kicked like a healthy baby.

“Been crying all night, won’t take a bottle,” the nurse told her when she left him there. “You need to feed him.”

Zyna struggled, the writhing bundle in her arms screeching until the nurse stepped forward and, with hard, calloused hands, helped him latch on. He went silent save for the grateful gulping, and an occasional wet cough as he breathed in the milk. The nurse laughed, brushing her hands on her uniform and shaking a head in amusement.

“A healthy appetite, after all that fuss with the bottles. He’s just a breast man, no worry there. He’ll be a fine son,” she finished, patting Zyna roughly on the shoulder and shuffling out on her worn white sneakers.

In her apartment, Zyna broke free of her reverie, startled she was still at the nursery door, then walked downstairs, leaving Halina in her crib. She slipped two letters into the OUT box and jimmied an old key into her post slot, then left the building. She would shop, have lunch, and maybe stop off for a movie after. All the while, little Halina would barely move, never making a sound to alert the neighbors. No one would ever know that the soft spoken foreigner from 3G abandoned her baby for hours at a time.

With Ryszard, there had never been a moment’s rest. A feeding came between every task and every chore, every necessary bodily function, every meal and every nap. He would shriek and wail until she dropped a section of her top and picked him up. He gnashed at her breast like a lion tearing at a gazelle corpse, and even without teeth, left her nipples torn, bleeding and sore. He would always look not at her but at her breasts, as if the rest of her existence was meaningless; she was nothing more than his personal milk machine.

Zyna stopped at the little produce cart to chat with the boy there before she bought the same full bag she ordered every week and went on her way. Halina was curious about food, and for that Zyna was thankful. She mashed fruits and vegetables by hand and tried a new item every week. Halina never showed any aversion. Ryszard had fought the mush so hard he injured himself.

After shopping she strolled, full of sunshine and fresh air and life, back to the dreaded building that held her. When she got in, Casmir would still be gone and Halina would be waiting, mouth closed, her eyes wide as saucers as she analyzed her surroundings. The thought dampened her mood, but she kept up the pace, her smile a plaster mold by the time she was again in front of the shabby building.

At the door of the apartment, Zyna stopped and put her sack of groceries down. She stared at the doorknob, her reflection haunting on the polished brass, beckoning her away from this place, these people. Some part of her wondered if Casmir had been cursed, or if she had, or if their travel to America had doomed their offspring. Could she have broken a mirror or been crossed by a black cat unknowingly? She grunted and jammed the key in the lock, jerking up her groceries as the door opened.

Casmir’s hat and coat on the rack startled her. Her mouth went dry. What would he say when he found out she’d left the baby alone? How long had he been home? She slid the grocery sack onto the counter and peered down the hall. The nursery was open, but quiet.

She slipped off her low heels and walked on the balls of her feet to the nursery. If he was holding the baby, he wouldn’t strike her and she had time to get away. If Halina was asleep in her crib, Zyna would be locked in the apartment again. The last time he punished her, Ryszard had passed in the night; he strangled on a slip knot tied to his sleeping dress. It was meant to ward away evil and was particularly effective against the evil eye. She wondered if Ryszard had done it to punish her as Casmir beat her one way then another, her muffled cries as much from pain as relief.

But in her confinement, he’d kept her tied spread eagle on the bed. He had created Halina in that bed, slamming up against her aching thighs and laughing as her skull banged rhythmically against the wall. When the doctor diagnosed her concussion weeks later it was with additional congratulations: she was pregnant again.

Holding her breath in the dim hallway, Zyna peered around the door into the room Casmir had painted twice, from Little Boy Blue to Rosy Cheeks Pink. Only it wasn’t pink, it was red. Red, brown and black smeared the walls, the furniture, even the glass of the window. Halina sat amidst it all, on top of the meat sack that had once been her father, sucking a clot off one dainty finger. When Zyna picked her up, instead of turning away in disinterest as she always had, the little girl locked eyes with her mother and smiled, her two new teeth glistening under a sheen of vermilion.