When she isn’t careful, Nadia’s feet unhinge from the ground. She feels it in her stomach first, and has to order her feet to stay, in the same hard way Roy talks to his dog. Must curl her toes, wherever she is—school gym, cheap carpet, pounded dirt—and grip the globe.
❦
Six years old, blinked awake by a crash in the kitchen, Nadia lies rigid in her bed. Her heartbeat squeezes her throat as Mom and Roy fight. It’s winding up, not down, so she pushes her pillow away and sits up. She’ll just go pee, flush the toilet, pretend she hasn’t heard a thing. They usually stop if they know she’s awake.
But as she steps towards her door, she starts to rise—lunges for the doorknob, misses, lifts until she crunches against the ceiling. Nubs of plaster press through her nightgown as she smothers her tears and waits for the argument to end. A door slams; the silence takes hours to leach anger from the air. No one checks on her. As the kicks of her sobs fade, Nadia floats down, crumples herself into bed, sleeps in scattered shadows.
❦
In grade seven gym class, Nadia’s better at wrestling than she has any right to be. Ms. Almeida urges her to try out, and for eight days, Nadia imagines earning a team hoodie she can wear slouchily like the sporty girls, travelling to tournaments, cheering on her mates, winning, or maybe losing. Hugs either way.
But at the first tryout, surrounded by muscly girls with smooth technique, Nadia can see only the problems of joining the team: practices that start before the busses are running, new friends she can never invite over, and what if Roy moves them again halfway through the year?
As she tries to find her stance, Nadia’s feet begin unlatching. She loses her balance, lets herself get pinned, wobbles when she stands. Stay, she commands, desperate for no one to see, and barely manages to lock back into gravity by walking away. The next day, Ms. Almeida makes her go to the nurse, and Nadia can’t tell them that they’re looking in the wrong place: the problem is in her feet, not her ears.
❦
She’s nineteen when her roommate upgrades their relationship and Nadia doesn’t know how to turn it down. Hannah has a boyfriend, so what she does with Nadia is extra, no big deal: drive-by kisses, casual groping, licking wherever. Nadia doesn’t even like Hannah, who hogs the fridge space and steals tips from work, but Nadia’s finally away from Roy and almost feels wanted.
When Hannah leaves to move in with her girlfriend (a real one), Nadia feels a familiar lift, her feet betraying her without Hannah’s anchoring lust. Nadia takes a week off sick, hiding from open skies and revising the new emptiness of her apartment.
❦
Six wedding invitations arrive the year she turns twenty-seven, but the last one is revoked after Nadia’s behaviour at the fifth. Screw them. She’s meant to dance when she’s drinking, or drink when she’s dancing, kick off whatever awful shoes she’ll swear to never wear again, blisters burning, stomach whirling, grab onto any sweat-hot body if she finds herself floating. The clock and the couple’s patience run out, but so what—stern looks and hands guiding her to a cab or hotel room, at least it means she’s seen, at least someone cares, she’ll be able to find the earth again when she’s punched through the barbed fuzz of her hangover.
❦
When she’s twenty-nine, Nadia marries Zach, a charmer from the year of weddings. She should have known that someone sweeping her off her feet was the wrong metaphor to build a future on. When she leaves for the first time, she makes it only a few steps down the sidewalk before she starts to drift. Luckily, the elm catches her. Eyes shut against the sky, she clings to the trunk so hard it scrapes bloody troughs into her skin. She has to practice her escape, staying firm, heels of conviction, until she’s able to leave him for good.
❦
At thirty-seven, Nadia doesn’t know where to put the nerve plant—a birthday gift from work—worried that she’ll kill it. She rearranges her bedroom to create the ideal spot and dotes on the plant for weeks, but then after a run of overtime shifts, she comes home to find it collapsed.
Her stomach ripples, but she hangs onto the edge of her dresser as she waters the limp stems. She sniffs away tears, catches the scent of moist soil, breathes out until she’s rooted again.
❦
She’s forty-three when she meets Jacob and the bald spot he’s so self-conscious of. Nadia kisses it often, loves the shy smile he gives her, the she-loves-me-anyway look, and Nadia answers with an I-love-you-because look, and it’s the same and worth it every time.
She doesn’t need forever with Jacob, just scraps of time: blowing on a coffee to cool it, his touch on her chin, a bowl of sun-warmed raspberries. Gathering tiny thoughts to share and trusting the safety of every small moment.
❦
Fifty-six. Home late from a show, blinkered with fatigue. Still, she takes a few moments to sit on her living room floor, alone with her feet. Eyes closed, her fingertips explore the slope of her tarsals, the crescent insteps, the nail and pad of each toe, the tough bark of her heel.
Her feet behaved tonight. They usually do these days. With her thumb, she draws a line down each sole. “Stay,” she mutters, and she tries to believe they will.
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