Yukionna

Howard drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, a rhythmic patter that didn’t quite fit with the music on the radio. He sighed and straightened his arms, locking his elbows out in an attempt to ease the tension in his neck and shoulders, although nothing ever really dispelled the aches and pains anymore, and the cold was settling into his joints as though they themselves were turning slowly to ice. The windscreen wipers swept begrudgingly across in front of him, affording him a brief view of the back end of the same car he’d been sat behind for the last hour, brake lights flickering as they crept forward, one painstaking metre at a time. He sighed again. Outside, through breath steamed windows, he could see the dizzying swirl of snow that had brought the line of traffic, the city, the whole gods damned country to a sliding, grinding halt, all because no one, it seemed, could predict the bloody weather and make adequate preparations for it so that he, Howard, and everyone else in this bloody stupid line of bloody traffic could be at home in the warm rather than sat here in the bloody freezing cold, probably because some young fool didn’t know how to drive his stupid bloody flashy sports car in a bit of snow. He smacked his palm against the steering wheel and bowed his head, closed his eyes and tried to calm the heavy wheeze that passed for breathing nowadays.

“Howard, darling, calm down. You won’t make it go faster by getting yourself in a state.”

He knew she was right, but it didn’t bloody help. He never had been able to stand the forced idleness of sitting in a traffic jam, or illness, or anything that had slowed him down or made him face his own frailty, his insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe and how easily he could just be snuffed out like a fly, a moth, a snowflake held too long in a hot hand. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t coped well when...well, when she had…He shook the memories away, as if they could ever not cling to him as though frosted onto his very soul. A spike of irritation shot through him.

“I bloody well know that,” he snarled, “I’m not an idiot, despite what you may think.”

“Darling, I know you’re annoyed, but we’re nearly home and we can have tea when we get in, and some of that cake from the other day.”

“Tea,” he snorted “only if I bloody make it myself.”

She was silent. He knew he shouldn’t be so annoyed all the time, especially as he only had himself to blame, but since she’d fallen it was always his responsibility to make the tea, put the cat out, lock the door, all the dragging minutiae of a life together that he’d never really considered before. Not that he was being sexist at all, he’d not minded when there was a choice as to who it would fall to, to remember that they needed more sugar or… in fact, as he recalled it was always he who had made school lunches for their daughter, and later their granddaughter, until they had stopped seeing each other after… He shook himself again. It couldn’t have been helped, everybody had said that, it was just one of those terrible things.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled “I just…” He trailed off. She knew. He knew she knew. He felt her shift and longed for her to put her hand on his leg, to feel the soft press of fingertips against corduroy, but he knew she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Hadn’t been able to for some time now. He looked across to her side of the car, illuminated by the glow of the taillights ahead, and on past her to the endless dance of snowflakes outside. His mind dropped back to many years ago, when they’d all been together one winter, playing outside in the snow.

“Do you remember that time when Lily wanted go sledging down the big hill, but she wouldn’t wear her coat because you had been telling her about Japan, and about how they believe that clothes should close left over right, because clothes that close right over left are for the dead, and how they believe that if a person wears things that way, they’ll attract bad luck? She was terrified that she was going to die if she did her coat up the wrong way. It must have been when she was learning left and right, and I think you thought it would help her but do you remember the battle we had to get her to put it on and do it up?”

Howard startled. It always amazed him when his wife did that, seemed to read his mind. He did remember. Lily had been struggling to fix her lefts and rights in her mind, and he had drawn a big L and an R on her hands, stood behind her and tucked her dressing gown around her, left over right, and then shown her how to tie a reef knot with the belt; left over right and under, left over right and under. Then he’d sat her up on their bed and told her of the old Japanese belief, and of the story of the yukionna, a snow-spirit created when a woman dies from the cold.

“You can always tell,” he’d said “if it is a yukionna, because she will wear her clothes right over left, and she will leave no tracks in the snow.”

All the way up to the top of the big hill that afternoon, bundled up in her winter coat that fastened with a zip straight up the middle, Lily had kept checking behind her to make sure that she could see her footprints in between the sledge tracks.

“She had trouble sleeping for weeks that winter, because of that yukionna story,” she said with a smile in her voice “but it did help with the left and right I suppose.”

They had nearly reached the end of their road, Howard could almost see their house now with his parking space out the front, thankfully not taken today by some selfish bloody idiot who didn’t seem to grasp why he needed to park there. The garden gate stood open. There was no point shutting it anymore really. What was the saying about stable doors after the horse has bolted? His wife probably knew, but he couldn’t ask her, that would mean having to think about the day she’d slipped. He could still see her fall in his mind, when he forgot and allowed his memories to creep over him in the dark, could still hear the sickening crack as she hit the frozen pavement when he lay silent at night, still saw the icy blue lights of the ambulances slashing his life into a thousand tiny shards that day.

He was sure he’d locked the door the night before. Sure he’d tied a reef knot in the rope that held the garden gate shut - left over right, left over right, easy to remember, so easy a child could do it. It had snowed overnight, it was a Sunday morning and Ava must have woken early, crept out of her little room and past her mother’s to go downstairs to see the new snow. She was good at amusing herself, rarely disturbed Lily or her grandparents in the mornings, and she knew not to go outside without telling someone. But on this morning, the pull of that frostbitten landscape outside her window must have been too much, and she must have pulled on her shoes, her hat and the only glove she could find, picked up her cardigan with the colourful patches, wrapped it around herself left over right, or was it right over left? She always struggled to remember and Mummy hadn’t let Grandpa tell her a story that he said would help her learn it. 

If he had locked the door, the latch would have been too high for her to reach and she never would have been able to open it onto a still-dark world made into blues and silvers by the moon and the snow. When the sun was up, Lily would never have found the line of footprints that led out into the middle of the street, to the beginnings of a snowman, and a tiny frozen shape that only wore one glove. Lily would not have bent down to scoop her daughter up, wouldn’t have been in the way of the car with the terrified driver who couldn’t stop on the snow and the hill and he, Howard, would not have been woken by his wife screaming his daughter and granddaughter’s names as she tore down the stairs and outside onto the treacherous pavement as he stood helplessly at the window.

He turned onto their street.

She had shattered her pelvis and her right arm. It would seem that you get to an age where you don’t bounce back any more, Howard thought bitterly as he parked up right outside their house. Where the steps once were was now a gentle slope up into the garden to make it easier for the wheelchair. He helped his wife into it, careful of her ruined arm, and pushed her towards the untracked snowy path and the small pale figure that on snowy days always stood waiting by the door, one glove on, cardigan wrapped right over left.