The first time I saw Hilda, I was standing in my neighbor Nicole’s lawn discussing the neighborhood preschools while our daughters, Sabine and Amberley, squatted on the sidewalk. Nicole was weighing the merits of Reggio Emilia versus Montessori when Hilda came outside and stretched as if she had just woken from a deep sleep. Even though it was midday, our streets filled with a racket of lawnmowers. Hilda arched her chest and scratched her armpits, surveyed the bald and treeless patchwork of lawn and roof, then turned and shuffled back into the entrance to her home.
Apparently, she lived inside my chimney. Our crawl space was her home.
“I’m not sure if counting beads is going to do anything for Amberley,” said Nicole. “But I like the idea of her washing her own dishes.”
“Right,” I said.
“On the other hand, I’m a big believer in the influence of the environment,” said Nicole. “What do you think?”
“I totally agree with you,” I said.
I didn’t mention Hilda. I figured Nicole would suggest pest removal. She’d had a family of squirrels removed from her attic last winter. I watched while they were whisked away in the back of a pick-up truck, clinging upside down from the cage-wire.
Nicole informed me it was illegal to relocate wildlife. She said when it came to pests, they had to stay put or meet their doom. Then she drew her finger across her neck, a universal gesture.
* * *
Hilda made herself known again that night, her nocturnal perambulating a rude punctuation to my husband’s ministrations. Todd breathed beside me. Hilda dragged her body across the other side of our ceiling. I climbed out of bed and stood at the window, waiting for the chance to stand eye-to-eye with her as she shimmied down the side of the house. Up close, she was battle-worn, her left ear chewed to a nub. She took my measure, then lit off for the dumpster. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, dragged a wet washcloth between my thighs. Then I lay next to my sleeping husband, beneath the anxious cacophony of Hilda’s pups until she returned with her treasure: fast food wrappers, robins’ eggs, luckless frogs.
I decided not to tell Todd either. He was always worried about cost, about how long everything would hold out: chimneys, washing machines, gutters. Todd would say a squatter like Hilda was likely to bring us down.
* * *
Nicole and I both worked part-time from home. We arranged our lives so that our daughters could attend the important part of the school day, not the extra hours that were tacked on for the benefit of the working moms.
I’ve found one can’t be too picky about one’s neighbors or one’s mom-friends.
When I was pregnant with Sabine, I planned to return to work full-time. Then I toured the daycares. The one closest to our house consisted of a windowless room, where the babies crawled on top of each other like worms, their tiny faces shiny with snot and tears. The director insisted it wasn’t always like this.
“Usually my husband’s here too,” she said. “But today he’s out on a plumbing job.” I went home and cried at the dinner table.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right,” I said. Todd, of course, agreed. He was the one who kept his job.
Nicole said these were the years the girls wouldn’t remember. Rather, these years would imprint upon them, like a blueprint or a stain. Everything was important, preschool was no exception, nor were playgroups or toddler music lessons or the timbre of our voices. Meanwhile, Hilda lived with her pups in a filth of chimney dust and dragged their food up from various dumpsters. She bumped through the night, invisible, but if I managed to cross the street and stand in Nicole’s yard at just the right time, she would reveal herself, rising out of my chimney in her glorious disarray, flea-infested, and potbellied with pilfered maternal joy.
* * *
I followed her in my nightgown, my hair in rollers. I climbed out my bedroom window, I scaled the wall. Hilda paused halfway across my lawn. In a gesture of welcome, she lifted her front paw, then bounded across the road. I chased her barefoot over concrete and wet lawn, over tarry, velvet asphalt, through the darkened islands of our sleeping suburb, under the moon, and through the thick three-in-the-morning silence that gripped our town. Hilda raced through the streets and lawns, her girth belied by her speed, headed to the place where our suburb bled into the next, a border of fast food and drive-through banks, a four-lane, stoplight highway. She turned a corner, lost to me. I tripped over the curb. A gash on my left knee bloomed and throbbed, pocked with gravel. Hilda reappeared, leapt to the hood of an abandoned car. I wanted her to come for me while I picked the tiny pebbles from my skin, but she turned away, headed for the promise of the neon glow.
* * *
The next morning I woke early and surprised Todd and Sabine with apple-filled Dutch babies, dusted with powdered sugar, a recipe from my grandmother.
Todd said: “Thanks babe, wow.” Sabine dropped half of hers on the floor. I poured Todd a second cup of coffee, even though I knew he was trying to cut down. Lately, he complained of a creeping and persistent nausea. I bent over him, rested my chin on his shoulder. He kissed my cheek.
“Todd,” I said. “We have a problem.”
He looked at me like he’d heard it all before. A married look, as if there were nothing new I could say to him.
I drew my finger across my neck in a universal gesture. Then, with one hand, I picked up my serving spoon. With the other, I pointed at the ceiling.
