Hilary Leichter

The old window gave a grand view of Yellow Tree, trunk to branch. They called it Yellow Tree even though the gingko was yellow for only about a week each year, its fan-shaped leaves rustling to the ground at the first suggestion of a breeze. Annie and Edward held the baby to the window and said, “See? Yellow!” But she was too small to say “yellow” in response. She just looked and watched and touched the glass. They wiped her fingerprints from the window and kissed the fingers that made the prints. Then the leaves fell, and the scenery changed. Some views show less than half of what needs seeing.

When the rent became unpayable, they went in search of a more affordable living situation. What’s your living situation? Annie turned the phrase over in her mind, the situation of their life. They had not saved nearly enough for a broker’s fee, let alone a security deposit.

“It looks smaller than it really is,” Edward said, leading Annie around the new apartment. A dimly lit lopsided square. “Give it some time, it might grow on you!”

“You mean it might literally grow?” Annie asked.

At the new apartment, there were no views of Yellow Tree. The introverted windows were gated and clasped and huddled around a central shaft that Edward dubbed Pigeon Tunnel. Edward and Annie liked inventing proper nouns for their world. Yellow Tree, Pigeon Tunnel, Closet Mystery. Closet Mystery was Annie’s term for the mystery of their single, overstuffed closet. Upon opening, what would catapult forth? It was a bona fide enigma. Edward and Annie picked a proper noun for their baby too. Her noun was Rose.

Stephanie does not remember the first time she made space. She was an infant in her crib, mesmerized by a mobile sewn of felted stars and moons. One night, without explanation, the ceiling rose an extra foot, and the mobile detached from its hook, landing on the baby like a mechanical claw around a toy. Luckily no one was harmed. Each of her parents blamed the incident on the other, not noticing or questioning the new expanse of air that soared above their heads. The mobile—reattached (“Did we need a ladder last time?”), then stuffed in a drawer (“Why did we hang this so high?”), then sold at a garage sale. Before long, Stephanie was a toddler, conscious of how she could warp a room to fit her desire. Come, she had been saying, before she could speak. Come hold me. I’ll make my nursery larger so you can find me here.

Then again—most beginnings, apocryphal. Almost always unobserved. Who can remember with any accuracy life’s initial drift toward its final shape? Before the incident in the crib. Earlier, her mother’s belly. Nothing horrible, just a surge of space hidden in an already expanding pattern. Whirling around the womb with inches to spare.