Uchenna's Apples (23 page)

He flopped down on the sofa with the laptop open again, and Uchenna’s Mam flopped down beside him, reaching for the TV remote. Uchenna took the newspaper off the kitchen table and wandered upstairs with it. She finished her homework for the evening, websurfed a little while, listlessly, and eventually went to bed before her Mam came upstairs and made her. But for quite a while before she turned off the light, she lay reading and rereading the newspaper story, looking at the grainy little picture of the Mammy Horse.

When she woke up the next morning, it was early: much too early—her alarm wasn’t anywhere near going off yet. But the room was full of pale colorless light, and Uchenna yawned and rubbed her eyes and went over to the front window, idly looking out it.

The streetlight there was still on, though it was faint and flickering, about to go out because of how bright it was now. What surprised Uchenna was the fog.
Still there,
she thought.
I thought Mam said it was supposed to stop today…
It was lighter, though: not as thick or impenetrable as it had been the day before. She yawned again and was about to turn away from the window —

— when in the fog, something moved. Uchenna stared. Something white? It was hard to see in that uncertain light. Uchenna peered harder into the mist: rubbed her eyes again.

A dark eye, looking up at her: placid. A big white shape, tail swishing; and a smaller shape beside it, gamboling up beside its Mammy out of the mist, then kicking its little pale hind hooves up into the air, turning and running into the fog again. The bigger white shape gathered a curl of mist around itself, turned a broad side to Uchenna’s view: faded away…

The mist swirled a little more, started to lift. Uchenna stood there holding her breath.
Maybe Daddy’s right,
she thought after a moment, as the sun started to break through, showing her nothing beyond the wall but empty field, dew on the grass, the new morning coming along once more at its usual pace.
Maybe you never really know what’s going to happen here.

And that’s so cool!

Uchenna went to get her bathrobe, and on the way out of her bedroom, caught a glimpse out the back window of something bright among the leaves of her tree: an apple, green normally, but in that morning light, gone golden.

Uchenna went out and shut the bedroom door behind her, smiling a secret smile.