by Cory Hiles
“I think you’re down there, Johnny. I saw you in a dream. My name is June Devon, and I want to help you.”
At the mention of the name, ‘June’, I no longer had any choice in the matter of whether or not to remain concealed. My shock was so great that I threw the blanket off of me and sat bolt upright, staring towards the top of the stairs for a split second, before the brightness that shone through the doorway blinded me and forced me flinch and squeeze my eyes shut.
The sudden brightness and the discomfort that accompanied it surprised me nearly as much as did the mystery woman revealing to me that her name was June, and a small cry escaped me.
“Ahh!” I cried out as I covered my already squinting eyes in the crook of my elbow on my right arm.
Burnt into my retinas was an image that I was having trouble deciphering. I could see the doorway as a bright fire of light, but in the middle of the doorway was the silhouette of what appeared to be a woman.
The woman was shaped creepily similarly to my mother. She shared the same height, same build, and same general shape of my mother. I could see her shape clearly with my eyes closed, although it was impossible to focus on the image for long, as it seemed to keep shifting away from wherever I tried to focus my closed eyeballs.
The sudden movement and unintentional cry that escaped me frightened the poor woman at the top of the stairs nearly as much her sudden appearance in my house had frightened me. She let out a blood curdling scream and reeled backwards so hard that she fell over.
She continued to scream all the way to the floor, where she landed flat on her back with a solid thud. She stopped screaming when she hit the floor, but not because she was no longer frightened. She stopped because her wind had been knocked out.
I heard the scream, I heard the thump, and I was able to intuit what had happened. The whole scenario struck me as deliciously funny. I, who had been so longing for human contact, was terrified at the prospect of making contact. June, who had apparently been searching for me had been terrified when she finally found me.
Of course my sudden appearance, rising out of the blackness with all the speed of a trained assassin, and then hollering an instant later had not helped to put June’s mind at ease. And now she was lying on her back in the kitchen, at the top of the stairs, making funny gasping, and gulping noises as she struggled to recapture her breath, and I sat on my mattress at the bottom of the stairs, giggling.
My giggles started small; tiny snorts of laughter escaping me through my nose. The more I tried to contain my giggles, the more intense they became in response. Soon enough, there were big snorts escaping my nose, and finally laughter began escaping from my mouth in loud guffaws.
I could not remember the last time I had laughed at anything. It was certainly before my incarceration began, and probably quite awhile before at that. The laughter felt fantastic. It spread through my entire body, until my whole body was jiggling like a bowl of Jell-O.
Warmness was spreading through me with the laughter, and soon I was howling with laughter. Not just laughing at the irony of my fear, and June’s, but laughing just because it felt so damn good to laugh.
Pretty soon, I was gasping for breath, just like June had been doing at the top of the stairs a few moments before, but I still couldn’t stop laughing. I was laughing so hard, with my eyes still closed, that I neither saw, nor heard, June descending the stairs to stand beside me.
Suddenly, I heard a woman’s laughter beside me and a hand settled upon my shoulder. The sudden appearance of the noise and touch scared me half to death and converted my shrieking laughter into a shriek of terror.
I fell over backwards and got all tangled up in my blanket as I instinctively tried to scrabble away from my perceived pursuer. June laughed even louder and harder as I flopped around like a fish out of water, trying to get free of my blanket.
After a second or two, my fear locked brain unlocked and I realized who it was beside my bed, and that they meant me no harm, and I quit struggling and flopping. I lay there panting for a few seconds, listening to the rapturous sound of sweet laughter beside me.
Tears began leaking from my still clenched eyelids. I was afraid to dare to dream that this was real. That June had found me, and that the solution to my (Joe’s) odd statement, “June is coming, and then everything will be better”, was sitting beside me on my dirty mattress.
As I continued to lie there, still tangled in my blanket, I felt a soft hand tenderly stroke my naked and exposed back, and the giggling beside me began to subside. I didn’t dare to unwrap my tangled head from the blanket and look at my new acquaintance.
Her hand rubbed my back gently, but firmly, and it felt so amazing to have a hand touch me tenderly, and with such apparent love that I could not help but cry. It had been so long since I’d had any human contact, and even longer since I’d had any contact that felt like love, that I could have died in that moment, and that would have been ok, because all of my life’s ambitions were being met at that very moment, by a simple caress across my back.
“Johnny,” she said gently, while still caressing my back. “Johnny, are you ok?”
I was unable to speak because of my sobbing, but I nodded my head vigorously inside the blanket.
“Johnny, I need a big favor from you. Can you do me a big favor?”
‘Hey, Lady,’ I thought, ‘as long as you’re real, and you keep touching me, I can fly to the moon and bring you back a Martian if you’d like.’
I said nothing; I just nodded my head again.
“I haven’t had a good hug in a long time; do you think you could give me a hug?” I nodded my head for a third time, and as she removed her hand from my back, I rolled over towards her and sat up.
I tried to open my eyes and look at her, but the combination of light coming down the stairs, and tear blurred eyes, made it impossible to see her, so I left them closed as I thrust my entire body into her open arms.
She hugged me deeply, squeezing so hard that the air was nearly expelled from my lungs, but I didn’t care, I would die happily in June’s arms. I squeezed her back just as fiercely, and we stayed like that; locked together in a mutually needy embrace, rocking gently back and forth, each of our faces smashed into the shoulder of the other, and crying softly for about five minutes.
When we ended our embrace, I was fairly certain that we both had snot in our hair.
She initiated our disentanglement. I personally would have been perfectly content to stay there until Gabriel blew his horn and all the mountains tumbled into the sea. She placed a hand on each shoulder and pushed me back to arms length and said, “Let me get a good look at you, Johnny. I haven’t seen you since you were born.”
That statement struck me as odd and I tried to open my eyes and look at her again but my eyes were still too sensitive to the bright light. All I could see in the brief second that I opened my eyes was a blur of fair skin, red lips, and big, reddish blonde hair.
“Who are you?” I croaked in a sob choked voice. “How do you know who I am?”
“My name is June, and I’m your aunt. I’m your mom’s sister. I was there when you were born, but your mom hasn’t let me see you since then. She refused to have anything to do with me. She wouldn’t even let me come to Joe’s funeral.”
“I didn’t know Mama had a sister,” I said. “She never said anything about you. Did she disavow you?”
June pulled back in surprise and spoke in a shocked voice. “Disavow? Wow, that’s a mighty big word for such a small dude.”
I smiled proudly and said “I’ve been reading the dictionary a lot. I know a plethora of big words.”
June laughed warmly and pulled me back to her breast for a quick hug before releasing me.
“Well, Johnny, I can see that I’m gonna have to brush up on my vocabulary if we’re gonna be friends.” She laughed again, but ended the trill with a small sad sigh.
“But yes, your mom did, indeed, ‘disavow’ me. When John, Joe’s dad, died, I
made the mistake of trying to comfort your mom by telling her that John had gone on to a better place. Your mom freaked out on me. She slapped me right across the face and screamed at me that there was no better place for John than by her side.”
“She took his death extremely hard. In fact, I don’t think she ever recovered from it did she?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah, I thought not,” June continued. “At any rate, I had apparently committed some kind of mortal sin by accidentally suggesting that perhaps John was happier in death than he was in life, and your mom never forgave me for that. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that he’d been unhappy with her, I was only trying to give her some comfort.”
I opened my eyes a fraction of an inch, just enough to see June’s watery outline before me, and said matter-of-factly,
“Momma’s crazy now.”
I could perceive June’s head nodding in agreement. “I had suspected as much,” she said. “I tried to call, I tried to write; I even tried to come by the house a few times over the years, but she hung up when I called, returned my letters unopened, and threatened me with bodily harm when I showed up on her porch.”
June laughed sadly as she finished her last sentence.
“The only reason I was able to show up when you were born was because your mom had a friend for awhile, Katelyn was her name.”
“I know who that is, but I never met her,” I said, interrupting her.
“I’m not surprised that you didn’t meet her,” June continued. “Your mom grew to hate her, just like she hated me, and like she hated everybody else in the world that wasn’t John, or Joe.”
“But, at any rate, on my last attempt to visit your mom, Katelyn was just leaving the house as I was pulling up and we crossed each other on the sidewalk. We introduced ourselves to one another, and chatted for a moment before your mom glanced out the window and saw us.”
“Uh-oh,” I interrupted again. “I bet that didn’t go well for you or Katelyn.”
June laughed and said, “You could certainly say that again! Your mom came out of the house screaming loud enough to wake the dead. I was mortified to see how bad she looked. She looked like she’d aged ten years when it had only been about one year since I’d last seen her.”
“Anyway,” June continued, “She came out screaming and waving a broom around like she was gonna beat Katelyn and me to death with it, and we both ran for our cars before your mom could make contact with the broom or the neighbors could call the cops, assuming that we were up to no good.”
“Did you get away?” I asked breathlessly.
“Oh yeah, we made it,” June said. “We both got our cars started in record time and peeled away down the block like we were race car drivers.”
I giggled as I pictured the scene in my head. Two women in their late twenties running for their lives from a broom wielding maniac, and then racing their midsize sedans recklessly down the street in the middle of Suburbia, while little old men in coveralls and plaid shirts wearing John Deere baseball caps stood up from the work they were doing in their flower gardens and shook their fists towards the sky shouting, “Slow down, you darned fool idiots!”
June laughed with me, and then continued her story.
“Well we drove like maniacs for a couple of blocks until we came to the park that’s down the road from here. Do you know where that is?”
I nodded. I had been to the park with Joe quite a few times back in the good old days.
“Well,” she continued, “we pulled off there and got out of our cars, laughing like a couple of love-struck teenage girls. We had a good chat there and shared our stories about your mom, and we exchanged phone numbers. Katelyn and I agreed that it might not be wise for me to try and visit again, but Katelyn said she would keep me informed of important events in your mom’s life. That’s how I found out about her pregnancy with you.”
I was reveling in the history that I was hearing. My mother had been so tight lipped about any events in her life that didn’t involve John that it felt like I was only able to know her through the remembrances of others.
“You said you were there when I was born,” I said. “But how did you know I was being born? Mama had already excommunicated Katelyn from her life before that.”
June laughed again. I loved her laugh. Then she said, “There you go with your big words again. That’s gonna take some getting used to, my little friend. You’re right though, Katelyn didn’t know when your mom went into labor, because your mom wouldn’t talk to her, but Joe understood what was happening when your mom started having labor pains, and he called Katelyn. Katelyn called an ambulance and then she called me.”
“I got to the hospital about twenty minutes after the ambulance had dropped off your mom, but I stayed out of the way until after you were born. I talked to the doctor that was overseeing the delivery and asked him to alert me after you were born, and then I went to wait in the cafeteria with Katelyn, who’d also come.”
I listened to her story in rapt silence, hanging on every word. Learning anything about my past was fascinating to me. I was never able to ask my mother about my past because the only answer I would get before the Sickness took her completely was a bunch of screaming about “poison”, and “good for nothing sex fiends”, and after the Sickness took her I was liable to get a thrashing if I asked. And while asking Joe was a lot safer route, he didn’t have a lot of answers for me either. He told me what he knew, of course, but he could only remember so much.
“Did Momma know that you and Katelyn were there?” I asked.
June shook her head emphatically as she answered. “No way! We made sure and stay out of sight until after you were born. We were afraid that if we upset your mom while she was in labor, it might complicate the birth somehow.”
“At any rate,” June continued, “the doctor came down to the cafeteria about two hours later and told Katelyn and I that your mom had delivered a healthy young baby boy, and she was now sleeping peacefully in room 612. We decided that if she was sleeping, that was a perfect time to sneak a peek at you without your mom freaking out on us, so we went up.”
“We opened her door up just a little bit and peeked in; all we could see of your mom was her feet. The way the room was built, there was a bathroom right next to the entry door, and the rest of her room didn’t open up until about ten feet further in. But, we could see you.”
“Where was I?” I asked in awe.
“You, my dear,” June said while giving my hair a little ruffling, just the way Joe used to, “were in a crib, up against the wall, across the room from your mom’s smelly feet.”
I laughed at joke, and waited for her to continue her story.
“Katelyn and I walked in as quietly as we could, so we could get a closer look at you without waking your mom up, but unfortunately, she was already awake.”
“Uh-oh”, I said.
“Yeah,” June laughed, “uh-oh indeed. She didn’t have a broom nearby, and she was still too sore from having just given birth to put up much fight, but she sure could scream!”
I laughed loudly as I said, “Yeah! She still has a special capacity for ululation.”
June laughed and ruffled my hair again as she said, “You need to stop with the vocabulary, Dude! I’ll never know what you’re talking about!”
“Sorry,” I said, smiling. “I’ll try to be better.”
I was well aware that I had no intentions of trying to be better.
My whole life had been spent being a second class citizen, I could never hope to be as wonderful as my namesake, and I was never going to be as wonderful as Joe, who shared a blood connection with my namesake. But in my communicative skills, I had surpassed nearly average citizen and had become a bit of a prodigy. I was not going to let my one advantage over the common man go very easily. I rather enjoyed being special, even if I was only special because of my unconventional vocabulary.
“But, yeah,” June said, “she screamed like a banshee and
threw her water glass at us. Luckily her aim sucked!”
I giggled again.
“She just kept screaming obscenities at us, threatening us with death; you know…the usual.”
I smiled knowingly.
“Eventually, the doctor came rushing in and told us we had to leave. I screamed at your mom as I was being ushered out to tell me your name, but she told me I could rot in Hell and she’d never give me your name. Then the doctor ran us out and I never talked to your mom again, or even tried to for that matter.”
At this last little bit of history I cocked my head and managed to open my eyes all the way up without so much pain. My sensitivity to light was slowly diminishing, though it was still uncomfortable.
I looked at June more clearly, and saw for the first time how much she resembled my mother. Her face was similar to my mother’s, although without all the wrinkles and without the mask of malice that my mother had worn.
She had the same facial features; cheekbones, nose, mouth, eye shape. But her eyes were not the same color as my mother’s. June’s eyes were a bluish grey, just like Kim Basinger’s had been on the Playboy cover. And June had different hair.
My mother’s hair had been dark and stringy, but June’s hair was lush, honey colored, and hung thickly about her face in loose ringlets. Her hair was the finishing touch that accentuated her beautiful face like the artfully crafted roses on wedding cake.
Though June was stunningly pretty, I was suddenly beginning to doubt the veracity of all her claims, and said, “But you knew my name when you came down here. How did you know my name? And how did you even know where to look, and what you’d find?”
June must have sensed the doubt in my voice because she bent down just slightly and made sure that our eyes were locked and she said, “I told you, Johnny, I saw you in a dream. I have had the same dream for the last five nights. In the dream, I’m always standing in darkness and this teenage boy with long blonde hair walks up behind me and gently tugs on my sleeve. When I turn around and look at him, he smiles and reaches out for my hand.”
