Sweet Soul

by Tillie Cole

  I cast my eyes over her body, noting how thin she had become in recent weeks. A lump built in my throat but I swallowed it back, wanting nothing more than a miracle to occur, and for her to get to her feet and walk.

  A soft noise came from her mouth, and I ran my hand down her face. She was cold. Real cold. My stomach flipped, not liking how cold she was.

  Seeing her rosary beads on her side table, I placed them in her hand, moving her fingers through the beads and locking them in place. “There you go, Mamma,” I said. “You got your beads with you now.” Mamma’s eyes widened, and I knew that was her sign for me to stay, to speak.

  Clearing my throat, I picked up my paper for school and said, “We’re studying the Roman Gods, Mamma. You’d like it.” My smile faded and I dropped the paper to the ground. The thunder clapped up ahead, and I unconsciously moved closer to my mamma, pressing my hand to lay over hers. Mamma’s eyes tracked my every move, flinching as the thunder exploded above.

  Forcing a smile, I said, “Don’t worry, Mamma. It’s just the Roman God’s telling the world they’re still here.” I waited, wanting to catch the humor, or even a sign of recognition in my mamma’s eyes. But there was no happiness. Instead I saw tiredness. Utter exhaustion.

  A teardrop fell from her eye, stabbing me like a knife. I watched the tear pass down her cheek. Then another fell. And another. Mamma’s face paled, and my heartbeat fired off, deep fear taking hold. I wondered what was going on. Then, in her brown eyes, I saw what I thought was—

  The sound of a car pulling up outside grabbed my attention. Unable to cope with that look in her eyes, the look that brought me more fear than any life in the gang or on the streets could bring, I jumped to my feet, leaving the rosary in her hand. Sucking in a breath, I burst into the dark trailer park, into the torrential rain, only to see Romeo Prince, Austin’s best friend, standing in front of his truck.

  And I ran to him. I ran to him and he pulled me to his chest. My heart thundered and I fought the tears threatening to pour. I wanted to stay out here, I was too afraid to go back inside.

  I was too afraid to see what had looked like the final goodbye in her eyes. At her body that no longer had the strength to keep going.

  But Austin ordered me back inside to check on Mamma. It was my duty tonight. Nodding my head at Austin, I walked back into the trailer. As soon as the trailer door shut, silence clogged the air.

  Forcing my heavy feet to take me to Mamma’s room, I pushed open the door, to see the rosary on the floor, Mamma’s hand limp and hanging over the edge of the bed. Her eyes were closed, and I ran forward, dropping to my knees.

  “No,” I whispered, and took Mamma’s hand in mine. “Mamma, open your eyes,” I pleaded, never prepared for this moment, not believing this moment could be real.

  “Mamma, please,” I whispered, but she didn’t move. I sat, frozen, intently watching her chest—it barely moved.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for her to leave. Axel was gone. Austin couldn’t cope… I was too young. I couldn’t… I couldn’t.

  But I knew this was it. I knew she was slipping away. My mamma was leaving us for good…

  I sucked in a deep breath, my chest feeling impossibly tight. “Levi, calm,” Elsie’s high-pitched voice caused me to exhale, the pent up breath causing my heart to hammer against my ribs. When I looked up at Elsie’s face, I realized that I was crying. That tears were streaming down my face.

  “I knew she was leaving me, Elsie. I saw it, I felt it.” A pained sound ripped from my throat, and I added, “And I left her, because I was young and naive and thought that if I left her, she might hang on… that it might never happen. That I could pretend it wasn’t happening.”

  “Levi—”

  “She closed her eyes alone, Elsie.” I searched for my lost breath, only to rasp, “She never woke up after that day. She died a week later. She died in hospital. But when her eyes closed she was all alone. All she’d had for comfort were these rosary beads, the rosary beads I can’t look at without feeling the guilt and the shame of leaving her to fade away, alone. But the rosary beads that I can’t let go. Because they were her; they are her to me. She wanted me to have them. Me, the son that allowed her fade alone.”

  Elsie gripped her hands in mine and squeezed. Her physical strength was nothing, but the emotional bravery that passed from her to me flowed strongly. It was armor strong.

  “Breathe,” Levi, she said, but I could see her breaking too. I watched this little blonde silent girl, the one who didn’t talk because people told her she sounded bad. She hadn’t yet told me her life story. And here I was, breaking like a damn pussy, desperately in need of her support.

  “Shh,” she soothed, then surprising me all to hell, climbed on my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck. I was shocked into stillness, Elsie’s cheeks heating as she laid her head on my shoulder.

  Needing to feel her as close as possible, I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to my chest. I let her warmth seep in.

  “How old were you, Levi?” Elsie asked. “When she passed.”

  Gripping her tighter, I replied, “Fourteen.”

  Elsie stiffened, then admitted, “Me too. I was fourteen when my mom left me. I was fourteen and I was completely on my own. When they… when it all became too much.”

  I frowned, my sadness slowly fading. I wanted to know what she meant. I wanted to know why she was homeless. I wanted to know how her mamma died. I wanted to know how she’d ended up in Seattle. I wanted to know who ‘they’ were. Hell, I wanted to know it all.

  “She was deaf. Completely,” Elsie whispered, the volume of her voice almost non-existent, like she didn’t know if she should be confessing.

  My hold on her grew tighter.

  “She was born deaf, to hearing parents. They never understood her. But worse, they never helped her. They kept her hidden away, their dirty little secret. Until they sent her out on her own trapped in her silent world. Pushed into a world where people didn’t understand her.”

  “Elsie,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.

  “She fell pregnant with me—I don’t know my father. You see, my mom got involved with people that weren’t good for her. They made her take things that she wouldn’t ever shake.”

  “Elsie—”

  “But she loved me. Her half-hearing girl. The little girl she managed to get at least some help for. To get a hearing aid for, so I could at least understand some of what was happening the world,” Elsie’s voice hushed. “Sometimes I wish I’d never been given the miracle of hearing. When you can hear, you can hear what people say about you. You can hear their savage words. If you listen hard enough, you can even hear your fragile heart tear apart.”

  Needing to see her face, needing to show her that I was here, that I was here for her, I pushed her back and our gazes collided.

  Her bottom lip was trembling. “They never taught her to sign, Levi. She could barely read lips. They gave her no tools to survive, so she had to make them up.”

  My muscles froze, waiting for what came next. I didn’t know what she had to say would crush my soul. “So we had to make our own sign language. We had a secret language all to ourselves. It was ours, our secret language hidden in plain sight from the world that didn’t want us. That had no place for us—at least that’s what she’d tell me. We at least had our own language. We at least had that…” she trailed off. I was seeing Elsie in a completely different light.

  Because it was from the heart. She was confiding in me. I could tell by the tremor and wariness in her voice that she just didn’t talk about this stuff.

  Like me.

  A flicker of a smile hit her face, and Elsie said, “My mom didn’t talk much. She’d been told her entire life that her voice was horrible, embarrassing for those in her company. She’d been laughed at and mocked mercilessly until she would speak only to me. Even then it was rare. But she often told me she loved me. Even through the drugs that dominated
her life, she often told me she loved me.”

  Elsie’s arms dropped from my neck and she rose from my lap. I immediately felt the loss of not having her close, but the thought faded when I watched her walk toward my mamma’s statue, the one displaying the broken version of her life.

  The guilt I always felt began to rise. When Elsie kneeled down and pressed her palm to my mamma’s marble cheek, I felt something unfamiliar ignite inside.

  “She couldn’t tell me she loved me,” Elsie suddenly explained, talking about her mamma, “but she could show me. In our own way, she did.”

  I was transfixed as a blush crept up Elsie’s chest and neck, to land on her cheeks. Her blue eyes turned to the sculpture and holding her breath, she leaned in, pressing her forehead to Mamma’s.

  “Just like this,” she explained. “My mom would put her hand on my cheek, I would put my hand on hers, and our foreheads would touch. That was my mom telling me she loved me. It was how I told her I loved her back.”

  I watched Elsie’s eyes close and a distant smile tug at her lips. Then she drew back, sitting down on her heels, her hands on her thighs. She looked as if she were in prayer. Elsie sat this way for a few minutes, gathering herself.

  Her hand drifted to the locket on her neck and she held it in her clenched fist.

  When a bolt of lightning grounded outside the warehouse, eschewing the darkness, Elsie’s eyelids fluttered open. She rose to her feet and walked over to me. Bending down, Elsie tilted her head to the side and regarded me.

  I waited, waited for her to speak, when she finally said, “What a blessing.”

  My eyebrows pulled down in confusion. After everything I’d told her, I couldn’t see how I was blessed. She must have seen it on my face, because she said, “Your mom died, but your brother created for you a blessing. You get to visit her whenever you want.” Her eyes drifted to the statue and she sighed. Her face paled and pain shattered her pretty smile. “I wasn’t with my mom when she died. Nobody was.” On hearing these words, pain griped in my stomach.

  Elsie’s finger pointed to the locket. “All I have left of my mom is this small picture, inside of my locket. There’s nothing else. No photo albums for me to remember her by,” she pointed at the sculpture of my mamma, “no sculpture for me to smile at every day. To hold her cheek and press my forehead to… to show her our ‘I love you’.” Her eyes met mine. “It’s a blessing, Levi. A true blessing to have this in your life.”

  I would have argued that it was this sweet blonde who was the blessing. My blessing that was stitching together the hole in my heart, healing the hole that I’d carried at its center for too many years.

  Elsie kept watching me, until I inched forward, taking her by surprise. Pushing a loose strand of hair back that had fallen over her eyes, I said, “I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

  Elsie turned her face toward my hand that still remained on the side of her face. Her cheek nuzzled my palm, and she whispered, “I’d really like that too.”

  I fought a smile. Before I allowed it to form, I pressed forward and took Elsie’s mouth with my own. This time there were no nerves. We’d smashed through those barriers tonight. She’d spoken. I’d shown her this place. She’d started to open up about her past. Our walls were coming down.

  Elsie’s hands threaded through my hair, just as another crash of thunder sounded up above. It was quieter this time, the storm beginning to pass. Wrapping my hands around her waist, I pulled her on my lap, Elsie’s surprised cry separating our kiss.

  Elsie’s gaze was locked on mine, and swore I heard her heart racing as fast as mine. Nothing was said. I couldn’t think. I needed to have her lips back on mine. I needed it so bad.

  I smoothed my lips back over Elsie’s, a soft sigh sounding in her chest. Taking a chance, I tentatively pushed my tongue inside her mouth, Elsie’s shy tongue, sliding softly against mine. As every minute passed, I felt more and more at ease. And as every minute passed, I felt myself letting her in.

  She was becoming my girl.

  Elsie shifted, and our mouths broke apart. Elsie’s head fell against mine, as our breathing came hard.

  “Elsie,” I whispered tightly.

  Elsie’s eyes momentarily closed. When they opened, she pressed her fingertips over my lips, and confessed, “I really like your accent.” I stilled, surprised by her words and the feel of her fingers on my lips. She smiled. “I love the way you say my name. It’s probably the best thing I’ve heard since I could hear.”

  I stared, dumbfounded, until my cheek twitched, and I laughed. She’d made me laugh.

  I hadn’t laughed in years.

  Elsie laughed too, her high-pitched tone sounding so cute to my ears. My laughing eventually stopped as I strived to hear more. Then Elsie forced herself to stop—rapidly.

  It was instantaneous, like the flick of a switch. The freedom with which she laughed vanished and just as quickly morphed into fear. I could see it written on her face, the fear. No, the terror, so clear in her expression as I listened to her laugh freely.

  Elsie’s head fell forward and she tried to shuffle off my lap. I tightened my arms around her back and kept her in place.

  “Don’t,” she sniffed, her pretty voice broken into pieces.

  “No,” I said. “I wasn’t judging you, Elsie. Hell,” I sighed in frustration, “I was adoring you. Your laugh. How you make me feel. I was thinking real clear about the fact you were my girl. Damn prideful thinking how you were my beautiful, silent pretty girl.”

  Elsie’s breathing hitched. She then breathed in and out eight times until she raised her head—I counted. Tears were tracking down her face, but she ignored the dampness on her skin to question, “Your… g-girl?” she asked, a nervous stutter in her voice.

  “Yeah,” I rasped, feeling a weight in my stomach at the horror that she might just say no.

  “Your girl?” she repeated. I sighed.

  “My girl.”

  I loosened my hold on her back, assuming she was saying no, that she didn’t want me like that, when she pressed her hand over her heart and nodded her head.

  My blood heated and rushed through me, knowing exactly what that gesture meant. She was in this too. She was saying ‘yes’, yes to being my girl.

  I kissed her again, but as the rain pelted harder on the roof of the warehouse, I pulled back to suggest, “We’d better get home.”

  Elsie nodded her head and rose from my lap. I jumped to my feet, and quickly covered the sculptures with their sheets. Taking Elsie’s hand, I led her to the door and we made our way home.

  By the time we got back, the place was in darkness. The whole drive home I kept hold of Elsie’s hand. Even now, as I walked her to the kitchen door in the backyard, I didn’t want to let her go.

  Elsie turned to me and I leaned down to press a kiss to the tip of her nose. I couldn’t resist, not when she was looking this cute. Pulling back, I shuffled my feet, and said, “Thanks for coming with me today.”

  Elsie shook her head. “No. Thank you for taking me. It was… I’ve never had a day like this in my life.”

  Contentment surged through me and I stared down at our joined hands. “I don’t wanna let you go,” I rasped, feeling the usual blush spread across my face.

  Elsie sighed. “Neither do I.”

  I smiled, looking up with my head still lowered. Moving forward she kissed me, then backed away, releasing my hand. As she opened the door, I glanced up to her bedroom window. I smiled, noticing the homemade lightning bug jar still shining through the open curtains.

  Seeing Elsie follow what had caught my attention, I pointed up and explained, “I look at that light every time I walk past your window. It tells me you’re there, up in your room. Safe.”

  Elsie stared at the neon glow. “I refill it every night, just as you showed me. It helps me sleep. It keeps the nightmares at bay.”

  “Then I’m real glad I showed you it,” I replied, and began to step back. I pointed to the pool house, a
nd said, “I better get back. I’ll see you in safe.”

  Elsie disappeared through the door to the main house. I walked back to the pool house feeling a huge sense of loss. I wanted her by my side. I wanted her to talk more. I just wanted to spend all of my time with Elsie, period. After years alone, it felt nice to have another by my side.

  I opened my door, and left the curtains open. Elsie’s jar was visible from my bed. After brushing my teeth and changing into my sleep sweats, I climbed into bed, immediately searching for the jar’s glow… which had disappeared.

  I sat bolt upright in bed, frowning at where the hell it’d gone. Then I spotted the light making its way through the backyard. My heart beat faster as the light neared my door. Elsie slipped through. Shutting the door behind her, she held the little mason jar of light in her hands.

  Her face flushed when her eyes landed on my bare torso. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Cautiously, Elsie stepped forward, then again, to explain, “I didn’t want to be alone in my room when you were down here.” She edged closer, but stopped at the foot of the bed. The expression on her face had become serious. “I didn’t feel comfortable up there on my own. I wanted to be near you. But I didn’t… I haven’t… I don’t know if I can…”

  I sighed, knowing what she was getting at. I held up my hands. “It’s alright, Elsie. I ain’t expecting that... from you.”

  Elsie’s shoulders relaxed. She walked to the other side of my bed. She carefully placed the mason jar on the side table and sat down. Kicking off her shoes, she lay down, and turned to face me.

  I lay on my pillow, facing her right back.

  It felt strange having her in my bed, yet it was so welcomed. Elsie smiled shyly when I reached out to run my hand down her face. Elsie caught my hand and brought it to her chest. She had changed into her pajamas, and she looked so cute lying in front of me, right here, right now, just like this.

  “Let’s sleep,” I said, and I turned off the lamp on my side of the bed. Elsie’s jar of course gave off its dull glow. I moved to face her once again.

  I waited for Elsie to close her eyes and try to sleep. Instead, she whispered, “Yellow stars on the ceiling.”