Shannon Baker Luther College
Habits
The elephant pressed up against Sadie where she sat on the couch, its rough white skin scratching her thighs.
It was too big to fit on the loveseat, so its knobby knees and gnarled feet were twisted underneath its massive barrel body. Its great head lolled atop broad shoulders, nodding to the quiet notes of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony on the kitchen radio. As the elephant’s leather ear brushed against her face, the tiny hairs tickled. The couch creaked and sank, tipping her closer so Sadie was practically on the elephant’s lap, her own knees bent, her own head gravitating towards its gigantic belly, which pulsed with great breaths.
*** Sadie was used to the elephant by now, though it didn’t used to be that way. Two years ago, after an emergency trip to Sal’s Marketplace downtown, she’d muscled open the stiff front door and stumbled her way into the flat. Stepping over the threshold, she took care to watch the heaping bag of groceries balanced in each arm, only to trip over something long and grey-white stretched out across the entryway. Her heart had jumped into her throat and six Granny Smiths had tumbled out of the bags. Slinking along the floor, receding around the corner and into the miniature laundry closet, had appeared to be a... she’d blinked a few times, certain she was mistaken. With heat flushing her cheeks, she’d crept to the closet and peeked in. The closet was crammed with jackets and winter boots no one had bothered to store away (even in mid-July), a rickety old washer and dryer that rubbed together and made a humming sound whenever they were finishing a load, and piles of collapsed cardboard boxes from when she and Dex had moved in the previous year, all shoved wherever there was an inch of space. She’d never gotten around to cleaning the laundry closet. There had been a time when it was on her weekend agenda, but something else had always come up and by now, the cluttered space was habitual, almost endearing. Still, every Thursday evening when she put in Dex’s and her own weekly load, Sadie felt an equally habitual twinge of annoyance. Peering into the closet that summer afternoon in search of an elephant’s trunk, she’d felt that twinge. She’d also felt dismayed when no trunk appeared. It was absurd, Sadie had thought, shaking her head and ducking back out. No elephant could ever fit in that closet. That had been two years ago, but since then, she’d caught other glimpses. That following Christmas Eve, after Dex had gone to the bedroom to watch Pay-per-view, she’d been picking up scraps of wrapping paper on her hands and knees. Near the little living room fireplace, behind her favorite orange armchair, was a pan-shaped foot with five cornified boulders for toes embedded in leathery flesh. Her head jerked up, but it was gone. Then, on Valentine’s Day, after what Dex jokingly called (to her feigned amusement) the Lovers’ Ritual, Sadie had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water and, when filling her cup with ice, was sure she saw an alabaster tusk glowing blue in the refrigerator light. Two months later, on her birthday, after serving her signature marble-mint brownies and ice cream to Dex where he was settled in the loveseat, she’d retreated back to the kitchen counter to fix herself a bowl when she felt something rough, pancake-flat, and floppy rest upon her head. Sticking out of the cupboard where she kept the dusty old wine glasses was an elephant’s profile. As its ear slipped off of her head, it gave a great sneeze, blinked a few times, and regarded her plaintively. She fed it a brownie. Over the course of the year that followed, the elephant had slowly become whole. Its head would poke