Easter, she was five years old, Thanksgiving, six, and the following Christmas, seven years old, and each holiday the basement was where they locked her and they shushed the lights, too it never got old, her young fingers tapping the wallboards until her holiday shoe, the patent leather toe, it banged the bottom step: one step, two, the top step arriving, and bent-kneed she watched the light, a band wide as her three fingers—how it flickered—her mother’s high heels passing, her aunt’s higher heels, and now the old aunt’s low ones, too, each aunt aproned and stacking plastic plates with three compartments, meat, vegetable, starch, not so much divided as kept separate. Christmas, she had learned that her calls, halloos, her knuckles and the basement door all went unheard, the holiday songs so noisy. So, it was not her mother’s hand but the top unswept step that cupped her flushed cheek, and she waited, one eye watching the passing heels and the light flicker until an aunt needed this item or that the basement way and discovered the locked door and the little girl held prisoner. How the aunts would curse the baby savior, the reborn one, the American savior, but never their boys, that boy or the other one, and this was how the boys did a little girl a favor those holidays. This was how those boys taught her a way, her way, to give the dark a go. 

That was back when it was only the aunts’ boys and their holiday pranks. Now, with the advent of the Great Separation, every girl had to learn the dark way—fail to attend, she would perish.

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She knew that they called them widows, her and those other girls, but not because any husbands had died. Only the ones they called widows had died, most anyway, who had not made a go living the attic way or the crawlspace or basement way. Those who refused separation, who instead had made to claim the sunlit rooms, said the whole damn house was theirs, the heat, the meat, the vegetable and starch, all theirs, those widows were crushed, but not her. 

When the Great Separation began, the aunts and mothers had been allowed the kitchen way—the boys must be fed after all—but the women’s heels on the linoleum echoed and irritated. The boys, now men, crushed that. If only her mother and the others had cursed their boys’ holiday pranks, stopped the locking of little girls in dark basements, but boys will be boys. For all the flavoring of holiday meats, there was simply no pleasing those favored boys.

Plates cleansed with grace, the boys rejoiced and ordered take away, even holidays. The Great Separation was accomplished.

Like her, the widows that were still here kept themselves hidden the dark way. So much darkness caused direction loss, scrambled place sense, time sense, confused this space and that. Toes got banged, cheeks cut, raw attic wood serrated knuckles. The threshold creep, the low ceiling crawl, the spooled lines and the scaled wall, she bothered not much with walking, her knees better than feet at crawling the spaces she was left. She loomed the dark, the dark gave her cover. Who knew the chin whiskers would warn when spaces narrowed and thinned, that shaggy leg hairs could smell scents? She missed the shoes she had worn before the Great Separation, those heels, the high and the low, the holiday ones especially, those shiny patent leather toes. But the dark offered no light, no bounce, so there was no way for a shoe to shine, not a shine that counts. 

The dark did not need light. It glowed its own dim hot browns; it shone blacks going indigo, going cocoa, rot-colored, go, go, shaping specters—that other life—thresholds, bureaus, mouth open making no sound: dark smells and light smells, her nose shoved the dark this way and that. Except holidays—roasted lamb’s blood, incense, myrrh, and the Christmas peppermint twist. She could gobble Thanksgiving whole, but she knew better than that. She just sniffed the cracks and tongued a furred crumb that never got old. Crumbs from graced plates went pretty good with bugs and other dark grub. Sometimes, holidays, a purposeful morsel got left. Sometimes, the cracks were morsel-strewn. 

Thank you, she whispered to the flickers.

Often a morsel thrown, more than the usual crumb, meant a flicker wanted more. Though, mostly, the flickers did their honorable best to ignore the widows, but what stirred their thighs could not be so easily shushed. Peppermint and sizzling meat, those holiday feasts made the flickers hungrier than ever, luring them the widow way. 

Too bad the holiday scents could not bury the widow’s dark smell. You stink, a flicker complained, thank Jesus there’s no light down here. I can’t look, alright? 

But if only the flicker would look. See, she would tell the flicker, no blood comes out my hole. There is no moon the basement way. No moon, no blood, no worries. 

One flicker used her belly for his pillow. Sometimes he would leave a mint for her trouble.

She called them flickers because that was what the men had become, shadows and light, the waver of heels, the sun’s echo, the shade of flames. But she never spoke the name, not out loud. She never spoke, not an utter, she just thought things. Words, songs, even a good laugh: no longer allowed. Speech had been outlawed. The sound of weeping got you crushed without so much as a whatfor. First, it had been declared that widows would no longer be seen. The trouble was, she and her kind could still be heard, a guilty floorboard hum. A new law was required: the widow language would no longer exist, no more fouling the flickers’ ears. All speech would be punished. 

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The air rose like a wave, and she got knocked. Somebody had kicked her. The dark that had held her, only her, now held another.

Good here, said the one who had come into her cellar. 

A dingy sock, wet-crotched, such odors. Where this other dark dweller loomed, how near or how far, she could not say. But the silence spoke bright teeth, tongue bloat, knucklebone. The dark did its thing, hid where the other widow was. But the dark also hid her, and she swore it would hold her safe. She hoped it would. But what the dark had never hidden was her heart. Even those locked-door basement holidays—because the locked-door basement holidays—she knew her heart better than most. Sooner or later, something would happen, her heart told her it must, the dark held promise. Now a thing had happened. The other had happened. 

Some widows, she had heard, lived the shared way, two widows together dividing attic or basement. But not her. This darkness was hers alone. The floor, the dirt, the stink of mold, her beloved. The cellar was wide; a body could lie end to end. A pair of forgotten mops, standing cornerwise, kept their tangled heads together. Sometimes she whispered softly to them, and the mops kept her whispers to themselves. 

Maybe she would make room for the one who had come, divide the dark, not share it, not that, but take a side. It was not like she was claiming the sunlit rooms. No! Just no more going the dark alone, the possibility, it could work, why not make a go? All this time, was this what she had wanted, her heart’s longing, not the flicker’s home, a clean lit place, but this dark company?

Good here, the other one said again. 

She heard the words but not as words, more like a rock someone had tripped and dropped. 

Did this other widow want the cellar to herself? This dark place where she had all these blind years of the Great Separation made do? All the fond plumping and dusting the dark, the tucking, the corner-turning she had done, had this other widow come here—it was good here—to take it? 

Some widows, she knew, had no flicker praise—was this interloper one of them? Those widows had made their way outdoors, had given the woods and that cold, hanging night orb a go. So long, cracks and crawlspaces, those widows hissed, and loudly. Screw conjoined dwellings. Only the moon did the widows worship, and the blood that flowed again out their holes. 

The very idea! Blood flowing out her hole revolted her more than the beetle’s bitter crunch between her sparse teeth. She loved the dark, nursed the dark and that dark-locked child, her basement girl-self; the dark was her birthright, her swaddle blanket, her mother. This girlhood had readied her, made her clever, but not light clever. Eyes open, nocturnal irises wide as serving plates, that sort of clever. Owning the dark silence, the sole territory the flickers had ceded, made her good and smart. Small comfort, a kind of trance, okay, but she took solace knowing the dark horrified the flickers. Why else burn so much gold light above? She could smell the flickers’ odor when night fell. Fear was their fragrance, and it was her perfume. 

Had the interloper entered through the rotted opening in the cellar wall? The size of a manhole, the opening wore her backside, invited the outdoor damp, the wind-stirred dust, the chirrup and buzz, a hot breeze, now a frost, shaping paddles and oars, snowflakes whipping the air, a humming vine’s tendril tap-tapping her shoulder. Owls beckoned and the woods, too, and on occasion moonlight—oh, that bright orb ruled the forest and its furnishings. How she hated those blanched nights when the moon silvered and scored her back. 

The dark bulged. The air thinned. The other widow loomed closer.

Really, there was no sharing the dark. Unity and widows, forget it, false solace, the cupped cheek. The other widow, the lousy interloper, would rob her spot. Should she let it? Should she crawl through the opening and tunnel into the woods? Once she had tried to, had let the green night wind prickle her skin. Let the moonlight bathe the filth she wore. She had gotten off her knees and onto her feet. How long since she had known the forgotten language of position, body upright and in relation to nice things, celestial and arboreal? How long since she could tell up from down, the boughs overhead, the roots below, heaven and hell? Only when the flickers had come for their holiday meat, and then it was only one position. It was in in in. 

That orb overhead, would it console her loneliness? 

No. Give her back the walls, the crumbs from their graced plates and the warmth of their holiday disgust, not this cold odor of evergreens. She had tucked under the branches of a furred pine, but the moonlight got in. Boy o’ boy, could she hear the moon’s awful call. Stay out much longer and the blood was sure to flow out her hole. Every widow knew that if the blood flowed, a baby soon followed. One peep out an infant’s mouth and she would be crushed. 

She had scurried back through the opening to her cellar to huddle around a flickering light. She dreamt of crumbs.

Now a tidbit dropped from a flicker’s plate. The threshold lit the furred crumb, glistened it. A suck and a gulp, the crumb was gulleted, gone. Had the other widow bothered to ask if she might have the crumb?        

Three compartments, the holiday plate divvied the meat: the starch, the vegetable, and this was what she would propose. They—how strange the word they, the sound tugged the unused tongue—they would live as one plate, divided. Okay, it was true, no walls defined the cellar, but they would make do, she and her spot, the other widow and hers, living as if walls. Perhaps if they had agreed, made terms, living and feeding together off the flickers’ discards, but all she heard? 

Good here.

Mine, she told the one who had come. 

That is, she thought she spoke out loud, thought she heard that tardy milkish child basement voice of hers say, Mine. What she was sure of, what she did hear, was the other widow’s pout. It seemed she had gotten the message and would go. 

She relaxed again and watched the passing doings of the flickers: her eye, the golden light, it never got old. Watching the flickers calmed her like a hand cupping the cheek. 

Something cupped her cheek. Fingers probing as if her cheek were meat. She bit through flesh. The finger jerked between her teeth. The widow grunted. She kept biting, biting down to the humming bone. She opened her mouth and spat. The finger plopped. It folded and balled. 

She pictured the other widow’s writhing pride. Ow, ow, ow! 

The widow had better hush. The flickers would not like the fouling sounds. Their punishment was quick. The widow must go, or they would both be crushed. She made her way, brushing the loose cement from the wall, each step, each step, until her toe banged into the other widow. 

Beat it, she whispered. 

But the widow only rolled away and not too quick. All she had was this small dark territory and the dust-flecked light. It was all the flickers would allow: it was everything. 

She squatted, thighs akimbo. She let go the stored urine, the precious stream, souring and sizzling the other widow. The widow hissed and shook, spit back, but recoiled all the same. Now the opening in the wall went dark with the passing of the interloper from the basement into the moonlight and snow. 

That other widow had gone, slinked out, of this she had no doubt.

Glo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ria, in excelsis de-o, the flickers belted out a song. The Christmas scent of peppermint so lulling. Rest and dream, she told herself, you kept your dark place safe. Though she must confess, she had felt a forgotten fondness for those whose holes bled.

No sleep came. She eyed the cellar opening, the blinding snow beyond, and she saw piebald. She saw herself turning to the wall as she had once hoped to turn to a lover. The corkscrew vine a lock of hair curling from the crown of the open wall. 

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She woke. The dark greeted her. So did a blood smell. She waved it away, but it came back fleshy. Must be the holiday scents, the red meat, the white fat. But why the pain in her belly, why such such pain? Had a flicker come? Did he want some holiday meat, her belly his pillow? 

The widow, the other widow, still here, was making snuffling and sucking sounds. Lips smacking against her belly. 

She dropped her hands belly-wise, and her hands came away cupping the other widow’s head. The interloper had been biting her, chewing her way into the belly flesh. The interloper twisted out of her hands—the reek of sweet meat-scented bowel on the cheeks—and dove deeper for more, biting and biting the insides.

She screamed, the interloper was feeding on her belly, but no sound came from her mouth. Anyway, her calls would go unheard. The flickers around their plastic holiday tree were yodeling a Christmas song, Let it snow, let it snow, let it—

She shoved the other widow, kneed and kicked and punched her, knocking her into the tangled mops. The interloper hissed and skittered cornerwise. 

One hand holding her belly, the other hand showing the way, she crawled out from the cellar and crawled into and into and into the moonlight, her flesh reddening the snow as she packed fistfuls of cold into her belly hole. Nothing cleaner than snow, clean as the baby savior, the reborn one.