The first time I remember she was bent over me with serious pupils popping out of her face, and I kept asking the nice lady who she was.
“I’m your Mama,” she said, and the winter sun shone through the window’s doilies and the milky rice with raisins she brought smelled of cinnamon and of hot. I examined everything. Her pooled pupils. The pink rim of her eyes. The spoon in my hand that should have been familiar. The loud bedsheets in preschool colors. The muttered whispers when they came to look at me swimming in this bed that apparently was mine. I wasn’t sure who they were. “What do you remember?” they asked and I thought, Not much. The nice eyes. The way the warm rice felt on my tongue.
Then I slept.
“What do you remember?” they asked again and time felt enigmatic, like a shape that framed me from snapshot to snapshot. Here, a fluffed pillow. There, a chickadee in the spruce tree. A mug I was supposed to recognize. Tea that smelled of honey but tasted of bitter. I swished – no, I swish from moment to moment. A warm hand on my forehead. Legs like jello. The thought that I don’t like jello. Especially not pink tapioca. That makes me gag. Or skin on my milk. Or itchy skin beneath scabs. Or throbbing foreheads.
“What do you remember?” she asks, and I look and tell her that I remember the milky rice and the raisins, but not how winter came with a great dumping and how we yanked the three-generation antlered sled from the coal shed and how, after four runs down the hill at the end of our dead-end street, she said, “Enough. You’re a big girl. If you really want to go again, go it alone.” And he said, “It’s easy. You just steer.”
I don’t tell how I sat on top of the hill, red ski overalls chafing my thighs against the wide sides of great-grandma’s sled and how I forgot to breathe and potato soup sloshed in my stomach and how the big kids in line behind me said, “go-go-go” and how someone or something gave me a shove and how the sled tipped over the sparkly edge and how I gathered speed – oh, how I gathered speed – how my booted feet tucked into the curved wood and my gloved hands grasped the frayed rope and my tucked brain wondered how do I steer – oh, how do I steer – how it all flew by faster on waxed runners and how I didn’t feel the happy I wanted to feel in my tummy and how the world stopped breathing and the trees stopped crinkling beneath their ice dresses and I wondered will I ever stop when I sped through the bottomed-out road and missed the turn but didn’t miss the stone pillar of the neighbor’s property – oh no, I did.not.miss.it.with.my.bouncy.head.
My head on this poofy pillow, my mouth eating white warm mush and not saying what it remembers. But I’m thinking, Her eyes, Mama’s eyes – oh, they are big.
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Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize and recently appeared in SAND, Sierra Nevada Review, Door Is A Jar, and Another Chicago Magazine. She has upcoming publications in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Thimble, and Tint. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.
© 2025, Alina Zollfrank
Halfway Down the Stairs 