the longest game of hide-and-seek

Alina Dunn was a very special child. Her mother always told her so, so there was no reason for her not to believe it. Even the teachers at school said she was special, but they didn’t tell her like her mother did. They whispered it to each other behind clipboards with pity in their eyes and sympathies spilling from their lips. They’d keep her back after all the kids had gone to lunch and bend down to be level with her eyes. Alina supposed they did it to make her feel bigger. She didn’t like that much. It didn’t make her feel bigger at all. If there’s anything I can do to help, they simpered, but Alina always smiled and said, “no thank you!” And it was true. Alina didn’t need help. She was special.

    When Alina got home, she did the same thing she did every day - ran to the kitchen cupboard beneath the stove and sat inside. She was always careful to close the door without even the slightest gap (Mother liked it better when it was perfectly shut) and sat in the cupboard until her mother called her to come out. It was a sort of game they played, a highly-staked routine. Alina’s mother explained it like a game of hide-and-seek, only every day, there’d be a new seeker, and Alina wouldn’t know what he looked like. It was always a he. Alina’s mother didn’t have female friends.

    Alina’s prize for staying hidden was Chinese take-out. They had Chinese take-out every night. Mrs Yee gave them extra soup - “My special treat, free of charge,” she smiled with a warmth practiced from seeing her own children grow up years ago - and patted Alina on the head and Mother on the arm before they went back home for supper. Sometimes Mother liked to eat dinner at Mrs Yee’s shop. She said she felt safer. Alina supposed smaller spaces made people feel safer. Like how Mother liked it when Alina was hidden in the kitchen cupboard.

    It was starting to be a tight fit under the stove; the pressure cooker might have to move. She decided she would tell Mother, once she called. Alina’s legs were growing longer, and she couldn’t sit as long in the cupboard before they started to cramp up. The house was quiet today. Maybe her mother wasn’t working.

    But she’d stay hidden. The man would leave, Mother would call, and they’d go to Mrs Yee’s like always.

    Maybe then she’d ask her mother what a prostitute was.