What is a name?
The sound of a mother calling. Jack could close his eyes and feel that. The way Jack sounded and the way the memory made him. Now on lonely nights he could close his eyes, sitting on the top of a swing-set, and feel her calling- a ghost all his own long passed to dust under the road. It felt like coming frost when autumn hung low and late; the trees bare with promise.
His name was his fathers and it meant "God is gracious".
Jack is the grace of snow and the sound of it falling silent among the trees.
How did he say her name? In the town she had called to him with exasperation-on the ice his name had torn, caught between her teeth, in fear. It graced the memory with nervous certainty and an inevitable ending.
Sister, it said, go home.
But there was no home to return to. The memory had long past.
And sister was sister-she didn't have a name.
What is a name?
The touch of a heavy hand on his shoulder-unyielding but never intentionally harsh. Like a lead on a stubborn horse and the brush of fingertips under his eyelid, brushing away the eyelashes. Make a wish, Jack. These were the signatures Jack put into snow-heavy blizzards and snowflake kisses like the double brush of mother and father in the morning. Jack, the touches said, we see you.
He had pretended to drown in the lake over summer. Held his breath as long as he could, leaking bubbles. When he broke the air sister had been there-shrieking and crying with her hands grasping and bundling into his shirt.
All the sounds were a wordless cry of don't go, Jack, don't go scraping raw against her throat.
Jack was cruel long before the frost. Unknowingly so, painfully so.
The memory said, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm alright-
But sister was sister and she didn't have a name.
What is a name?
Mother is a white smock over a brown dress with kind eyes the color of dark honey. Fingers brittle and cold she handed them eggs to paint, brushing around the kitchen table like a bundle of dried leaves tumbling in the wind. Moving. Moving. Always moving except at night when she thought he was asleep. He watched her watch the moon rise over the windowsill-still and thoughtful with her hair curved lose around her face.
Time had lighted upon her lips and curved smiles and worries into her eyes. This was the face that waited late into the night for the looming shadow named father to return. Back from where? Where. Jack could only remember him being as big as a mountain but cowed into a little boy by his wife's fingers.
He drew these in snowflakes. A line of memory and name that to anyone else would look like Jack Frost.
Wait for me. Sister. Two images pressed together-one toddling after the other. Always. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Hand up and reaching for him.
Little sister smiling with blood in her mouth and a crooked hole where a tooth should have been. A tooth not just lost but dropped in fresh spring grass as children shrieked over colored eggs. Jack, the fairy won't come if I can't find it.
They left the eggs to the other children, spun slowly on the fresh grass as they searched and searched-and came up empty.
The memory said: The fairy always comes-
But sister was sister and she didn't have a name.
What is a name?
His parents of cinnamon heat and earthy flour gave birth to an evergreen in frost. He wakes to the smells of cedar wood burning and the ginger candy turned sour on his baby sisters breath. Wake up, they say, and drag him out into the hall for warm milk and soft cookies.
The house is cold and sugar played in early morning light. The gifts are wrapped in cloth and hidden inside old socks that smell like salt and earth and the way the world is held together.
Jack presses these names into long icicles, preserving them at the core so they slip out slowly under sunlight as though that will preserve them longer.
I hit you! A singing voice on stinging snow, the hot touch of ginger laced in cold. I got you, Jack.
You got me. Warm body pressed to his, cold nose. Come on. Come on. Lets join the others.
Jack hated to be alone, even when he wasn't-not really. He swung her up along with him, dragging her so that her feet barely graced the snowdrifts and she said no, no.
The memory said, We'll spend all night together. We'll skate.
And sister was sister-she didn't have a name.
Sometimes in the twilight Jack listens to the voices of school. Those children that cusp around math, sullen over poetry, and he thinks of all the snow days that are always going to end up some days. He swings his feet over head, draws his name and his mother's name and his father's across the branches grappling with the Harvest moon overhead.
Sometimes the girls sigh, "I have to play Juliet tomorrow-and who cares? I mean. How stupid. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet." Who says that? Who says that?"
And Jack knows but does not say all the things that are in a name.
But not.