One Letter.

Through my particularly normal and oftentimes unsatisfactory childhood, I found my peace in counting things. 

Four cheerios under the bed. Two TVs in the house, with four talking heads arguing with each other about something. Twelve creaky steps to get to the attic. Three toilet paper rolls under the bathroom sink. 

I remember rationalizing my counting. On days where I felt my counting was stupid and unnecessary, I would remind myself that adults do it all the time. There were many times when I would tiptoe down to my dad’s little office downstairs and quietly listen to him count. He let me sit on the ground by him with a blanket and pillow as long as I was silent and didn’t interrupt him too much while he was working.

“We need three million, four hundred and fifty thousand units being shipped out every day. If we can’t make that quota, we will be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital by early next month.”

I liked to hear his voice. I liked to hear the echo of the walls as they’d mimic the sounds of my dad on the telephone. As I lay there watching him on my plush blanket in the corner of the fluorescent room, I imagined the echoes as a little tiny green creature in the air vent, repeating everything my dad said like a game of copycat. 

“This isn’t the way our business should be run!” My dad said. “This isn’t the way our business should be run!” The little creature mocked.

I enjoyed these times listening to my dad. I tried to repeat the large numbers he would say in my head. They were too long and complicated most times, so I would just stick to counting the little ants in the corner of the room, parading in a straight line across the floor and into the little hole in the yellow wall.

 Sixteen ants. One hole in the wall. Three breadcrumbs on the floor that the ants must have missed.

While I was able to see my dad often when he would return from work, I never saw my mom much. She recently left her job as a journalist, and when I asked my dad why, he paused for a moment and then told me that it was so she could spend more time with me. This turned out to not be the case, however, as she spent much of her time in the upstairs guestroom with the door locked. One time, many years ago, she had a huge fight with my dad in the downstairs kitchen, and what seemed like hours of continuous banging and screaming between the two of them turned into her marching herself into the guestroom and not coming out for the next three years.

Every hour or so, my grandma would cease reading her book and huff herself out of the rocking chair to meticulously water each plant, one by one. She counted them as she did it, and as the summers went by, I started to count along with her. 

Thirty-two plants. Thirty-two vases, twelve with stripes on them and four with polka dots. A zillion leaves sprouting from them like strands of hair from a knitted sweater.

Sometimes, my mind would tire and I would get audibly angry when my mind couldn’t count anymore. The thirty two plants would start to look like a thousand, my brain would begin to scatter and race under my forehead, and I’d begin crying to my grandmother to make it all stop. She always knew what to do, though—she would quickly scoop me up into her big arms, and hum a French tune until I calmed down. 

“Etre immobile et écouter.” She would whisper to me soothingly. “Be still and listen.” I would quietly cry into her arms until my mind started to slow down, my breathing began to regulate, and my eyes slowly closed.

A year or so later, when my grandmother started growing weaker, she began to water the plants even more frequently, and they flourished into big three foot long trees, almost as tall as me. After my grandma died, I wondered if my mother, who had taken over the space, spent her long days in there watering and counting the plants too. I wondered if the plants had grown as large as mountains.

Before she died, my grandma and I spent most of our nights reading a well-known French story called Le Petit Prince. It was about a young prince, roughly my age, who lived on a tiny planet the size of a small room. He spent his days tending to the lush and overgrown baobabs on his planet to try to keep himself busy, but nothing could stop him from the feeling that he was lonely up there all by himself. 

One day, like a quick and powerful beam of light, a beautiful and mysterious rose sprouted on the small planet, and the little prince fell in love with it. He placed a tall glass vase over the rose to keep it safe from the outside elements. He found out after a short period of time, however, that even a rose as beautiful as the one he loved couldn’t cure his loneliness, no matter how much he adored her. So he decided to set out to explore other planets in hopes of a more fulfilling future.

One of the little planets he visited, the fourth one to be exact, was that of a businessman. The businessman was so busy with work that, upon the little prince’s arrival, didn’t even look up from his papers. He was too busy counting things. 

“I know a planet where there is a red-faced gentleman,” the story read. “He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, “I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man—he is a mushroom!”

I wondered if when I grew up, I would be just like my dad and the businessman in the story. I wondered if everyone who grew up did their work in little fluorescent rooms, with complete silence, counting matters of consequence. I wasn’t sure if I loved that idea or hated it. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to grow up at all. But I kept counting anyway, like my grandma would, just for practice. I would doze off as my grandma’s soothing voice recited the words on the pages, her finger trailing the lines of each sentence. 

I wondered if when I grew up, I would be just like my dad and the businessman in the story. I wondered if everyone who grew up did their work in little fluorescent rooms, with complete silence, counting matters of consequence. I wasn’t sure if I loved that idea or hated it. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to grow up at all. But I kept counting anyway, like my grandma would, just for practice. I would doze off as my grandma’s soothing voice recited the words on the pages, her finger trailing the lines of each sentence. 

Two door stoppers, one for each door in my bedroom. Twenty-two stuffed animals, with two ears and one tail and four legs. One bright white moon casting shadows through the window.

***

For some reason, I remember everything from the first day of second grade. What I first remember is the patter of rain on the car roof as my father and I made our journey to Coralville Elementary for the first time. The car twisted and turned itself through suburban neighborhoods and rural highways. The damp streets were illuminated by dim orange street lamps. 

I thought about one of the characters that the little prince met on his journey in the book—a lamplighter that lived on his own little planet, much like the prince’s, but with nothing but a streetlamp.

“The fifth planet was very strange,” the story read. “There was just enough room on it for a streetlamp and a lamplighter…”

I never knew what came of that room once my mother moved in there. The room used to belong to my grandmother, who lived with us the first six years of my life before she died suddenly after a long battle with cervical cancer. My grandma, during her time with us, always kept a variety of colorful plants in that room, ones with funny names like Bertha or Juniper. Their long leaves drooped over the shelves and windowsills and tinted the air with a green, flowery odor.

I remember spending most of my time in that room with her during my preschool years, while my mom and dad were away at work. I would sit on the floor with my markers and paper, and draw pictures of a green, mysterious jungle filled with funky animals of all sorts of shapes and colors.

For some reason, I remember everything from the first day of second grade. What I first remember is the patter of rain on the car roof as my father and I made our journey to Coralville Central Elementary for the first time. The car twisted and turned itself through suburban neighborhoods and rural highways. The damp streets were illuminated by dim orange streetlamps. 

I thought about one of the characters that the little prince met on his journey in the book—a lamplighter that lived on his own little planet, much like the prince’s, but with nothing but a streetlamp.

“The fifth planet was very strange,” the story read. “There was just enough room on it for a streetlamp and a lamplighter…”

I counted the lamps on our way to the school, and slowly their soft glows faded as the sun came up. The last of the rain dissipated as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Do you want me to walk you in?” My father asked, his eyes glued to the phone as I gathered my backpack and lunchbox into my tiny arms. I had counted the wrinkles on his face before, but there looked to be more as he turned around and half smiled at me from the driver’s seat. His eyes looked tired. I wondered if he had gotten much sleep the night before.

“I’m okay,” I replied as I jumped out of the car and closed the door. I heard the car zoom off as I began the long walk towards the school entrance. I focused my eyes on the deep cracks in the sidewalk. 

***

I saw Mrs. Kohl for the first time ever when I entered her classroom. 

Mrs. Kohl was an old and portly little woman, with curly short gray hair that seemed to be damp. A few specks of sweat glittered around her temples, and I wondered if she too had to make the long and grueling trek up the stairs by the entrance. She had a big smile on her face, a smile that had been weathered down by trials and tribulations that a second-grade child could never know the extent of. 

I was one of the first kids to enter the classroom—my father never shied away from getting me to school at a ridiculously early time, that way he could make it to work before 9 am.

“Well hello there, sweetie. What’s your name?” Mrs. Kohl asked me as I stepped into the room. It was a vivacious, colorful space, with alphabet letters and educational posters pinned half-hazardly against the walls. I remember ignoring her question out of shyness, and I began scanning the room for things to count.

Twenty-two desks. One teacher’s desk. Three kids with their parents, getting all their school supplies organized into their little cubbies.

Mrs. Kohl looked behind me, towards the door, and frowned slightly.

“Are your parents here? I’d like to meet them and say hello.”

I shook my head and proceeded towards the desk with my name on it and began to unpack all the school supplies from my backpack. I dodged most of her friendly questions by busying myself with the giraffe eraser on one of my pencils. Eventually I just buried my head in my desk.

Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, students filed in and began taking their seats. There was an aura of happiness and excitability within the room, but the feeling stopped with me. I kept my head buried in my desk, and looked down at my toes and watched them wiggle in my pink flip flops. 

Everything was a blur for the next few hours. Math time came and went, then lunch, then P.E. I spent my time trying to find my peace in counting things. My heart would beat rapidly and angrily whenever Mrs. Kohl or any of the other kids made an effort to talk to me. I just wanted to go home. I wished my grandmother was still alive so she could pick me up instead of my dad, like she always did. I wanted to dance in her room with the plants, or maybe run through the Sahara desert like the little prince did, feeling the warm sand beneath my toes. 

I remember the next part like it was yesterday. To this day, I don’t know what snapped in my little self, what made the jungle inside me erupt like a century old volcano. It happened towards the end of the day, fifteen minutes before the bell rang for dismissal. I had spent the entire day avoiding anyone and everyone and keeping to myself, and it was finally almost time to go home. 

After what seemed like hours, the dismissal bell finally rang. Kids laughed and joked as they gathered up their backpacks and filed out the door. Looking back, I don’t know why I stayed at my desk. I had wanted to leave the entire day, I had prayed to my grandma that I could leave the entire day, but something inside me stirred and I remained in my seat. Soon enough the room was empty, and all that remained was Mrs. Kohl, me, and the twenty-two empty desks scattered about the room.

A few moments passed before she spoke. I could sense her watching me from her giant desk, unsure of what to say.

“Do you have someone to pick you up, Faith?” She finally asked. I stayed in my desk and a lump in my throat began to form. I nodded my head. I could feel the pulsing of my own heart, beating faster and faster as I shifted in my seat.

“Are you okay?” She asked. Those words echoed through my mind for a bit, and swirled throughout my body until I collapsed on the floor in an uncontrollable heap of tears.

For the first time all day, a floodgate of words, not numbers, spilled from my mouth. I cried about my dad, how I didn’t want to grow up to count numbers all day like he did. I cried about my mom, and how she would never let me into the guestroom to water grandma’s plants with her. I cried about the little prince, who got bitten by a snake at the end of the story and died. I cried about how unfair it was that the little prince got to disappear and go back to his beloved rose when he died, but how my grandma had to be wheeled out of our house under a sheet. I cried about how my head hurt, and my chest ached, and how my breathing was so fast I could feel my limbs grow weaker with every gasp of air.

Mrs. Kohl gathered me in her big arms. While she didn’t pick me up like my grandma, she sat on the floor and cried with me. Our tears fell like raindrops on the dark carpet. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to.

***

Mrs. Kohl wrote me a letter more than a decade after the incident. It arrived at my house on a gloomy Thursday afternoon in the middle of November, when the winter air had already started to leave frosty marks on our windowpanes. I would be leaving my house to attend college for the first time next semester. 

The letter itself was written on dark, wintry green paper, but it came addressed in a bright red envelope-- a telltale sign that she had probably dug up the template from a stack of identical blank Christmas cards. 

One letter. Three pages filled with large, wonky writing. One envelope.

 In the letter she wrote about her current life. She discussed in length her pets, her hobbies since retirement, even the results of the most recent Cubs’ game. She rambled a bit in certain places, and her punctuation was not as crisp and fine-tuned as I remembered it being in second grade. I could feel her mind aging through my fingertips as I held onto the card.

She spoke mostly about her husband. He had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, one I can't remember the name of, and was getting sicker and sicker by the day. She wondered aloud to me how she would keep herself busy when he was gone. When the letter was over, she addressed it: 

"I hope to hear from you. Have you been watering any good plants lately? Have a good Thanksgiving, Mrs. Kohl.”

I held onto those last words in my head. A week after the incident at school, I had  snuck into the guest room for the first time in years while my mom was at a dentist appointment. The room was dark and musty. Trails of old food and used tissues lined the hardwood floors. All of the plants that had once filled the bright, airy room had withered away into nothing. They just sat there, dead in their rusty vases. It was now just an empty, dark room. My relationship with my mother died that day.

I wondered why Mrs. Kohl decided to write to me. I turned my bracelet around and around on my wrist, over a brand new tattoo I had just gotten for my 18th birthday-- a bright red rose with a clear, shiny vase over it. I wondered why Mrs. Kohl had decided to write to me now, at this specific time in our lives. It had been years since I'd seen her kind face, and years since I even thought of her. I never thought of myself as a particularly special student of hers, yet alone one that would be deserving of a letter eleven years into the future. 

I never wrote back to her on that rigidly cold afternoon. I never wrote back, ever. Sometimes, when I’m alone in my dorm room, trying to count sheep, it keeps me up at night.