Dear Hanna

by Zoje Stage

People trusted a naturally pretty face, an easy smile, and being perceived as approachable helped her move through life.

The animals are innocent, and they have just as much right to live on earth as we do—if not more! I mean, they don’t HUNT us, they don’t DESTROY our territory, they don’t EAT us, they don’t POISON the land and water and everything they touch, and they certainly aren’t the cause of catastrophic climate change. Really, it’s so unfair how much all the animals suffer because of humans. It makes me very sad sometimes. And very mad that people are so cruel and indifferent.

but since Hanna’s own actions were very intentional, she assumed her husband’s were too.

I fill sketchbooks with the worlds inside my head. I wish we could visit them, you and me . . . disappear into another realm.

Being sixteen felt much older than watching sixteen. Joelle often seemed immature for her age, and Hanna alternated between disapproving of how Jacob sheltered her, and admiring how he’d helped to preserve her innocence when the world around her was a catastrophic shit show.

Sometimes she thought of herself as a constellation—an arrangement of stars that didn’t actually look like anything until someone looked skyward and connected the dots. In spite of her ambivalence about the human race, she needed to be around people.

Perhaps Joelle wasn’t so much a liar but a hider, afraid of what people—her father, especially—would think of her multidimensional self.

It worried her a little that sometimes she wasn’t certain if she’d actually vocalized all the thoughts she’d meant to say;

But her memory of actual conversations could be a little slippery.

Hanna envisioned grabbing the bottle from him and smashing it against his skull. No, that was too violent a thought. Excessive. She rewound the footage in her mind and imagined dumping the cabernet over his head instead.

“I don’t know, Jacob—did you discuss it with her? Did you take her to her pediatrician? Is this my domain because I have a uterus and it was singularly my job to handle everything that involves girl parts?”

Perhaps not surprisingly, many of my demons are oddly reminiscent of UnderSlumberBumbleBeasts—

I'm calling it here- goose isn't real

not trying to shame you for being a terrible babysitter. And she responded in her head, I know.

Hmmmmmmm

We’ll make it your problem. And in the layer beneath that she heard, The domestic duties are your job—isn’t that what you’re here for? And beneath that, You aren’t the priority here, so it doesn’t matter what you want.

He was fully invested now, hopeful of hearing Hanna’s confession. Confessions were a currency better than gossip, and almost better than sex.

Jacob had agreed not to bring up Goose’s name—the missing member of the Jensen family

mhmnmmmmn

Now she understood all the mistakes she’d made, but at seven she’d been naive and impatient. Now she knew that if you were going to kill someone, you needed to be both more competent and more subtle about it.

Everyone but Hanna enjoyed the meal. They gushed over each dish while Hanna silently processed her failure. She didn’t like failing. And her Other self was angry now and kept punching her in the ribs for being too soft, too weak. Too domesticated.

The Other self smiled at Ashley—who must’ve seen something cold blooded and reptilian in Hanna’s eyes.

Was she trying to become the person she missed?

She was self-aware enough to understand that she didn’t evolve like other people. She was never going to be fundamentally different from who she’d been at seven, when she’d tried to kill her mother.

But I don’t want to tell him—I don’t want him to know—the damage I once caused.

Hanna met her husband in the middle of the room. She stood too close, hoping he’d take a step back—or retreat all the way into the hall.

They’d warn them to keep Hanna away from the baby. So she couldn’t do it any harm.

“Parents, even imperfect ones, don’t hate their kids.” I might have given them good reason. But she said nothing, and pretended she was asleep.

Hanna had no choice but to quickly concede; the last thing she wanted was for Jacob to ask questions about Goose that she’d be forced to make up lies for. It was stupid of her to have used her brother as an excuse, but he’d been on her mind a lot recently. Certain memories were haunting her with greater frequency and intensity, like how Goose had been a shining beacon—for the whole family—in the years after she returned home from the school for peculiar children.

Mommy didn’t care what the therapists said; she always gave Hanna the skeptical eye, not trusting that she’d been cured of her capacity to commit bodily harm. In a way, Mommy always knew her a bit too well.

There were other memories, darker ones that lived half-smothered beneath a heavy blanket so Hanna wouldn’t have to think about them. She still didn’t want to think about them, but the months of talk about having (or not having) children had set them free. It had all fallen apart years ago, but she wished more than ever that she could go back in time and change it. She’d do it all perfectly if she had a second chance.

If she hadn’t messed everything up she might—might—even still have a relationship with her parents. With Daddy, at least. Now all she had was her special correspondence with Goose, which she cherished—but she wished she could be a better big sister to him.

At this point if she didn't kill or disable goose I would be shocked.

Had she actually liked Goose when he was little? Or had she reframed the memories based on her love for him now?

Hanna wished she had some sort of superpower, one that allowed her to Taser people by blinking at them.

She swallowed. And swallowed again. Would that keep it inside? She didn’t feel a lump. Her throat wasn’t full, like it was when she didn’t chew well and a chunk of food escaped down her gullet.

Omg does she have crohns

The sunflower seeds beckoned, but the creatures wouldn’t come, not with the man of the house standing so near, dressed to impress—repelling all life-forms.

Her husband came with a lot of emotions—so many that she sometimes struggled to sort them all out. But she liked the tender side of him.

The water is like amniotic fluid.

“You’re afraid to be around a baby.”

And why would you say that?

Okay, so maybe as a young child, Hanna hadn’t known better. But shouldn’t she have wised up by the time she was a teen?

She’d become a wine stain on everyone’s white tablecloth, unsure how to remove herself.

Goose should be an actual secret.

Hanna had used the antifreeze on the wrong person.

On some level would the good doctor be proud of her that she’d evolved and instead of hurting other people, she was now hurting herself? Probably not.

due to his untimely destruction.

butterscotch candy.

I wish they would’ve given Butty to you for safekeeping instead of throwing him away.

Please don’t do anything in your desperation that would leave me drifting alone through the dark, cold void of space.

how Hanna’s love could be too obsessive, her attempts to protect people too misguided.

He melted just enough to look wistful, and bereaved. This was how she left the people in her wake.