The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren Page A

rubbed her face and reopened her eyes.
    “Ucchh, of course I am.” Irma took her daughter’s hand and held it to her chest. “This is where Jose wrote his best poem.”
     Her eyes shone with emotion. “It was only six lines long and it was about my hands. He called it ‘The Digits of Experience.’”
    She fanned her fingers out for Meredith to see. The knuckles on her third and fourth fingers were thick with arthritis. A
     liver spot on the back of her left palm looked like a tiny map of Africa cut adrift.
    “What did it say?”
    “I’m not sure. It was in Spanish. But it was beautiful. Poets communicate in a universal language.” Irma retreated across
     the room toward the whining kettle.
    As her mother puttered over the tea, Meredith fell asleep on the leaky beanbag chair in the corner of the flat. She awoke
     several minutes later and wandered into the kitchenette.
    “What is it, dear?” Irma had been reading a story in a tabloid newspaper about an eleven-year-old single mother of twins living
     in Yorkshire.
    “Nothing.”
    Meredith was overcome by a sudden need to tidy. To organize and itemize. She felt weightless, as though she were floating
     just outside her own body. Forget food—instead she would clean. If she could do something to introduce order, that would make
     her feel better. She would start with something small, a surmountable task at the core of the chaos.
    Irma vanished down the stairs to her bath (she had one every Sunday). Meredith observed her going as if from a great distance.
     She searched the room for where to start. Of course! She would defrost the freezer.
    Her mother’s icebox was a stout Frigidaire from the nineteen-sixties, a barrel-chested soldier of an appliance. Meredith held
     her breath, gripped the stainless steel handle, pulled down hard and felt the latch give and the door swing out toward her.
     Inside, the fridge was startlingly bare and bright. She sniffed. Nothing but the faint chemical smell of working electrical
     machinery. The appliance hummed a meditative
om
and Meredith exhaled in unison. She reached up and flicked open the smaller
     blue plastic freezer door—and was blinded by a glittering flash. There was a loud
crack,
a stab of pain and then, nothing.
    When she came to, she was staring into a house of glinting mirrors.
    “Silly goose!” her mother called from somewhere above her head. “Wake up and stop this nonsense, would you? There’ll be no
     dying on my kitchen floor.”
    She felt a hand on her forehead, but still the prisms glittered. In desperation she dragged herself a few inches along the
     floor, until her mother pulled her up by the shoulders and propped her against the cupboard like a doll. Oh, poor, poor head.
    “What were you doing in the freezer? You know I only use it to store the chandelier.”
    “The
what
?”
    “It must have fallen out and hit you on the head. It’s very valuable, you know. Edwardian.”
    Meredith noticed the dangling topaz crystals, now scattered over the floor. She opened her mouth to say something, but before
     she could do so, a longing moved through her. All the familiar sensations were there: the gaping belly yawn, the arterial
     fizz, the hardening of her nipples...
    “Mummy.”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you help me with something?”
    “What’s that?”
    “I want to have a baby of my own.”
    Irma pressed a damp, dirty washcloth over the bump on Meredith’s forehead. “Is that all?” She laughed and patted her daughter
     on the cheek. “Easy-peasy.”
    That night Meredith’s eyes snapped open in the dark. She raised herself from the bed and removed the plastic bite-plate she
     wore to bed each night in an effort to “deprogram” her from grinding her teeth. There would be no more sleep for now.
    Fumbling around in the dim chaos of her mother’s flat, she managed to open her binder-size laptop and dial up a modem connection.
     Cross-legged on the floor, Meredith logged on to the server and opened her