Words by Fives

I liked to learn words by fives: Jerry, Perry, scary, betterment, elephant. 

'An elephant! Look, look!' I shouted in excitement. A elephant, a child of twilight, slowly plodded between bare trees across the road. Its tusks were not white as I saw in movies about animals but more like unhealthy grey. One tusk's end was broken. Elephant's eyes didn't look bright. They were dull as the tires of cars that passed beneath my window. 

I looked back toward the bathroom. There were no familiar sounds. I climbed from the stool and walked to the washing machine. Some buttons were red; I knew the washing cycle was over. I tried to open the washing machine's door to insert a new washing capsule, but it was locked. I had to wait five minutes for it to open. That was too much silence to bear. I stood still before the washing machine until all the lights were out and then pressed the 'on' button. I watched as a T-shirt that had colored other clothes red started to spin again. Tasmanian Devil on it scratched the washing machine's insides, its smile stretching and stretching, unable to follow its body. Finally, the T-shirt disappeared, replaced by a red bedsheet that once had been white. For a split second, I saw a tiny red leg of my hamster Jerry. It often escaped of its cave and hid in the basket for dirty clothes. Mom must have put it into the washing machine. I saw a video of a prank where boys put a cat into the washing machine and then took out what was left of the cat. It became red, and in some places, hair was torn out. Its eyes were red too.

For the first time, I thought that maybe, the clothes became red because of the hamster. It was so tiny, yet it had so much blood that it made all clothes red.

I listened to the humming sound of the working washing machine. I saw the buttons flaring one after another in the usual manner. The outside of the screen looked dusty, and I followed its contours with my finger. My mom promised to wash it every weekend, but then the weekend came, and she was too tired to do anything.

I saw Jerry's brown-black back stuck in the red T-shirt's sleeve. I could return to the window to watch the elephant.

Before I saw the elephant again, my face reflected at me from the window. There were five words with which my mom characterized me: too skinny, too wide-eyed, too freckled, too demanding, already 7-year-old.  

The elephant had disappeared. It must have gone down the hillside toward the river down below. Impenetrable darkness and its allies, shadows, filled the space where the elephant had once been. The melting snow lumps here and there, between dry last year's grass, resembled thrown-away diapers. The full, pale-yellow moon appeared in the sky. I knew the moon didn't go anywhere during the day; we just couldn't see it because of the bright sun. I saw a piece of bright-yellow strip stuck to one of the lower tree branches near the road. Depending on the wind, it entangled around the branch or limply hung from it. From my mom's telephone conversations, I knew a car had hit a pedestrian on the roadside two days before. If I squinted, I could see the yellow lights of lampposts becoming one shiny line, not isolated circles of color amidst the night. I thought there were so many hues of yellow: yellow-sun, yellow-moon, yellow-light, or yellow-strip - but I couldn't explain the beauty of colors in such simple words as 'yellow.' The difference between the elephant's grey and its trunks' grey was insurmountable. The dreadful grey of the last year's grass frightened me the most. The grass rustled underfoot, and a dead mouse could be under any hillock. There were so few words for so many hues of grey and yellow and red.

The hit pedestrian was a bunch of blue - her coat - and red, the hue of red as of the clothes in the washing machine.   

I didn't turn on the lights. Instead, I watched the world become dark grey. The road under the lampposts' lights glistened after the recent rain. Soon, the light frost would turn the road into a skating rink.

'A skating rink! I can skate!' I shouted and got afraid of how small my voice sounded. There were no calming sounds in the apartment. The clock had stopped working many months ago, and my mom always promised to repair it on the weekend, but when it came, she could do nothing.

Long thoughts without end in my head were my friends in the darkness, where space and words became irrelevant. I could go to the window in my mother's room which overlooked a neighboring building. I could have watched people watching TV in the distinctly recognizable TV-blue light. Their faces would have looked waxed, and their dogs that barked at me would have lied sleeplessly near the armchairs. I could have imagined the heavy dangling of the pans being pulled out of a cupboard and the aromas of frying potatoes and meatballs. I could have swallowed the saliva that still dripped onto the windowsill, no matter how hard I could have tried not to think about the pans and fries.

I didn't turn on the lights. In the darkness, words became irrelevant and came to me hurriedly, hiding in my head from the advancing shadows. The elephant could have been born only in the twilight, not at night.

I learned words by fives: daylight, twilight, night, mom's back, snack.  

I climbed from the stool and sneaked to the washing machine, side-stepping the dead-black corners. I squeaked when a mixture of grey and white, with dark-grey lines on its back, started to move toward the bathroom. I could have shouted or shrieked, but what was the point of screaming when nobody was around? The thought that no familiar sounds drowned out the silence made me cry out.

The ball stopped and stood on its hind legs, sniffing the air. Then the ever-moving shadows sucked it in. 

For the first time, I thought that maybe I had two hamsters instead of one. Some buttons glowed red in the darkness of the bathroom; I knew the washing cycle had ended. I tried to open the washing machine's door to insert a new washing capsule, but it was locked. I had to wait five minutes before the washing machine door would open. The tense silence of the apartment was becoming more and more unbearable. I could almost hear its buzzing in my ears, and it was becoming more and more pronounced. After the buttons switched off automatically, I pressed the 'on' button. The washing machine trembled faster and faster, and the red hamster's fur, pressed against the screen on the inside, wasn't white anymore.  

Mom's keys jingled behind the front door. The grey of her keys was akin to the grey of the spoiled mashed potatoes on the stove.