NINA DUNIC
NINA DUNIC // 18
BODIES A
li’s father woke him up early. “I need your help getting bags from the car, I forgot them,” he said. Ali put on his track pants and a hoodie and zipped it up close to his neck, and then pulled the hood over his head. He was sleepy and annoyed but not showing it to his father, or trying not to. It took him a few tries to get his shoes on. His father was already dressed for work and wearing a parka, holding the keys and waiting by the door. It was bitterly cold outside. It bit through Ali’s body and woke him up quickly. “What did you forget?” he asked his father, feeling that talking would keep him warm, and he kicked up his step a little as well. “The rice,” his father said. “I bought a lot of bags.” “It’s frozen now,” Ali said. “I think we can still cook it and eat it. Anyway, I can’t let it sit there all day again.”
In the mist, it was about the length of a person. Or a lot of crumpled clothes laid out in the shape of a person. “Okay.” Ali didn’t know how else to keep the conversation going. They had a red Nissan that was older than most cars you see around and had rust along the bottom of the passenger side. It was far away, beside the park, as they didn’t have a paid space in the building—his father found street parking each night. They approached the red car and, behind it, could see the park. There was a cold mist, thick, above the frozen white-tipped grass. A long, black object
lay in the field, not too far from the road. It was just past dawn and the light was still very blue. Ali’s father popped the trunk and started handing several cold, sagging sacks of rice to him. They were heavy and Ali took two in each hand. Ali’s father closed the trunk with a few bags to himself, but they both paused and looked again into the park. In the mist, it was about the length of a person. Or a lot of crumpled clothes laid out in the shape of a person. They started walking back to the building. “Was that a man in the park?” Ali asked. “I don’t think so,” his father said. “It’s too cold for that.” ///
A
li found it difficult to fall back asleep. He was still painfully cold under the blanket, though he curled his legs up closer to his body. After a while, he could sense that it was close to the time he would be getting up anyway. He got out of bed and took a shower. They lived in one of those older buildings that had small windows in the bathrooms. It seemed odd from the outside—all these tiny windows going up along the edge of the building where the bathrooms were—but in fact he loved it. Early in the morning, the bright blue air, or lazy and late in the summer, the golden light. It made him take long showers, longer than he needed to. He left the lights off and used only the early daylight in the small bathroom. He went to the kitchen where his mother was making a tea for herself. He didn’t know what to say to her about getting the rice and seeing something in the park. He stood next to her and started frying up some bread while she was stirring her tea and putting away things in the cupboard. She sat at the table and Ali followed her. It was quiet for a few moments—his mother was not a woman who spoke often—and then Ali cleared
