The Truth Against the World

by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

  He sat down on the bed, heavily, wiping beads of sweat from the back of his neck.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have hung up. Maybe he should have listened.

  17

  Y gwir yn erbyn y byd.

  The truth against the world.

  Motto of the Gorsedd (society)

  of Bards of the Isle of Britain

  “Why don’t you take a break?” Mom said, hovering in the doorway of Gee Gee’s bedroom.

  I glanced outside. Drizzle was pinging the windows, and a draft seeped in from somewhere. I pulled my crocheted shawl closer around my shoulders and huddled in the armchair. My mind felt dull and my body heavy, too heavy to bother going to the farmhouse to check email.

  “I’m worried about you. You’ve been quiet the last couple of days.” Mom came over to the chair and leaned down, putting an arm around me.

  I shrugged and turned my face away. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”

  “Well, I want you to know you can talk to me,” she said. She knelt next to the chair and put a gentle hand on my cheek, stroking it with her thumb before standing up.

  I didn’t know what to say. Mom was always the one who did the talking. Even when I tried … with Dad, for instance. I’d asked him about Great-Grandpa John, tried to start a conversation. But I could hardly get more than a few words out. He’d been abrupt, distracted, as if he wasn’t able to deal with anything beyond the immediate situation.

  “Mom,” I said. And then I stopped. There was a movement from Gee Gee’s bed.

  I turned to look, and my mother’s head turned to follow my gaze.

  Gee Gee’s eyes were open, staring right at me, her mouth working as if to try to speak. I rushed over to the bed and picked up the tumbler on the nightstand.

  “Gee Gee, do you need some water?” I asked. But when I held the cup to her lips, she just shook her head.

  “Rhys,” Mom called in a strained voice. Dad hurried in from the neighboring bedroom. Gee Gee just continued looking at me, two small tears now running down her papery, lined cheeks.

  “My Olwen,” she croaked, barely audible. “Olwen, Olwen. Wela i ti.”

  I sank down on the bed and put my arms around her, but she’d already closed her eyes again and drifted back into sleep, into dreams that made her flutter her eyelids and breathe in rapid, shallow gasps.

  “What was that? What did she say?” Mom sounded panicked now. “Do I need to call the nurse?”

  “I don’t know. She’s still breathing. I think she’s asleep,” I said. I could feel the rise and fall of her chest, the beating of her heart like a small animal.

  “She said ‘wela i ti,’ which means goodbye,” Dad said hoarsely. He came over to me and gently tugged me upright so that we were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed. He leaned against me. “Your Gee Gee loves you very much. You know that, right?”

  I nodded, but my throat was too tight to respond.

  “She hasn’t spoken at all for a day and a half. She—” He paused and took a deep breath. “She must have really wanted to say goodbye to you.”

  I couldn’t move. Gee Gee’s words kept ringing in my ears. Olwen, she’d said, not Wyn. And wela i ti—it did mean goodbye, true, but according to Hugh, it was more like saying “I’ll see you.”

  Tiny goose bumps appeared on my arms. Of course, Mom and Dad didn’t notice. They had no idea there was another Olwen. Only Gareth knew. And Rhiannon, but she wasn’t going to tell.

  I wanted to tell them. My heart felt like it was going to burst inside my chest, and I clutched my hands into a knot in my lap. But what if they didn’t believe me? And why would they, anyway? I had no evidence. I had Gareth’s photo of the graveside and the plaque, but they’d probably dismiss that as circumstantial, as coincidence. Plus, I remembered what had happened when I’d tried to talk to my dad about Great-Grandpa John. I didn’t want to make him any unhappier.

  But I couldn’t help feeling that Gee Gee hadn’t actually been talking to me.

  It felt like she was talking to the other Olwen. To some unseen daughter she hoped was waiting for her somewhere. It seemed plain to me, now, that one of the reasons Gee Gee wanted to come back here was to get some kind of closure, put her mind at rest.

  Olwen, though, the little girl—she clearly wasn’t at rest. Maybe she was waiting for her mother. She seemed to want us to help her. But why Gareth? What was the connection? Was it just that he’d dropped his phone where Olwen happened to be buried, or was there something else we were missing?

  Maybe there was something we had to do, something more we had to find out that would somehow free Olwen. I hung my head and put my hand on Gee Gee’s arm, feeling the bones just under the skin. I wanted it all to fit together somehow, to make sense. And I’d have to hope that knowing the truth would set us all free.

  I tossed a tuppence coin onto the tiny round table in front of the armchair.

  “Ante up,” I said. Dad put in his two pence and glared at the cards in his hand. He did not have a poker face. I looked at my hand: a pair of tens, a jack, a four, and a seven. I decided to get rid of the four and seven.

  “Are you sure this is a complete deck?” Dad grumbled.

  I hid a smile behind my fanned-out cards. “You’re just resentful because you already lost a pile of pennies. I bet five.”

  More coins clinked into the center of the table. It was the only sound in the back bedroom besides our occasional comments, Gee Gee’s hoarse breathing, and the droplets pelting the windows. Yesterday’s drizzle had turned into yet more rain overnight, covering everything outside with a fine sheen of water. There was a break in the clouds off in the distance, though, and the sun was lighting up the tops of the hills to the east.

  We’d been taking turns around the clock watching over Gee Gee since she’d spoken. Mom was out in the front room working on her laptop. Technically it was Dad’s turn this morning, but I felt like keeping him company.

  “I fold,” Dad said.

  “Jeez, what a wimp.” I grinned and threw my cards down. “All I had was a pair of tens.”

  “You must get your poker face from your mother,” he said. “You should consider a career in law.”

  Then I heard a small sound from the bed. Gee Gee had shifted slightly, and her breathing suddenly became more ragged and labored. Her eyes were bleary and half-open, and there were tiny beads of sweat on her forehead.

  Dad got up and used a soft hand towel to gently wipe her forehead, his face a mask of worry. I patted her neck with the lightest touch of her lily-scented powder, trying to hide the stuffy smell of the room. Her hair hung white and lank against the rose-colored pillowcase. She no longer had the bright-eyed, sharp gaze that she’d had even when we’d first arrived at the cottage, and my heart twisted.

  “Gran, do you need to move to a better position?” Dad asked softly. She made a very faint noise in reply, which might have been “mmm-hmm.” Together, we gingerly turned her onto her side. At first, her breathing eased, but then it became shallow and rapid, and I looked up at my dad, feeling helpless and terrified.

  “Wyn, go get Mom and then call the nurse,” he said, his voice too calm. “I’ll stay here. Come right back when you’re done.”

  I managed to hold it together long enough to talk to Mom, but my voice trembled as I asked for Lisa Morgan. In the middle of telling her to please come now, tears spilled over my cheeks.

  “I’ll be there in five minutes,” she said. “You did the right thing calling straight away. Take some breaths now and go drink a glass of water and I’ll be there in a jiff. Hwyl nawr.” Her brisk, lilting voice was soothing, and I managed to pull a few deep, hitching breaths into my lungs before hurrying back into Gee Gee’s bedroom.

  My parents stood over Gee Gee’s bed, silently, watching her breathe. Dad was cradling one of her hands in his own. I joined them, hoping wit
h each inhalation that there would be another breath and another.

  I didn’t even hear the front door open and close. I looked up briefly when the nurse walked in, but turned quickly back to Gee Gee. Not a moment too soon, because then I heard her sigh, heavily and deeply, as if she were exhaling from every nook and cranny of her body. And then she stopped breathing.

  We waited. Nobody moved for what seemed like an eternity, listening for the slightest sound from Rhiannon’s motionless figure on the bed. But everything remained silent. She might have been asleep, except there was a strange sort of stillness about her—no breath, no movement. Silence.

  I heard a sudden inhalation from my dad, and turned to see his head bowed and his hand clutching Mom’s. Mom lay her head on his shoulder, looking smaller somehow.

  I felt dazed. Distantly, I realized I should be sad, or maybe scared. But I couldn’t seem to muster any emotions except for puzzlement. What was going to happen now?

  I opened my mouth, fully intending to ask a whole series of questions, but when I tried to speak, the room tipped and swayed around me. I leaned against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. Maybe I’d just rest here for a minute.

  The next moment, Nurse Lisa was supporting my arm, and I heard her as if from far away.

  “Better for you to get to bed now,” she said, and I didn’t protest. I was exhausted.

  It was over. It felt like everything was over. I let Lisa lead me to my tiny bedroom and followed her suggestion to lie down on the bed. She tuned the clock radio at my bedside to something soothing. It sounded like folk music in Welsh, and I tried to let the music wash over me, the words flickering in and out of my understanding in a language I’d only half learned, or maybe half forgotten.

  I opened my eyes, after a while, when I heard a vehicle pull up outside. My mother opened the door, and I heard her speaking officiously to someone. All I caught was “before the funeral Friday,” then a bustle of movement. After that, all was quiet again in the little cottage. I felt an incredible lassitude and closed my eyes again.

  The next time I opened them, it was dark. I must have slept, but I had no idea what time it was. After tiptoeing to the bathroom in the dark, I refilled my water glass, put on my pajamas, and slid under the covers. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the wind was rustling the leaves right outside my window. It felt like I was in a forest.

  Then I thought of my dream about Gee Gee slipping off into the woods with some young man, and my chest ached with tears I was too tired to shed. What really did happen that night? Was the man Great-Grandpa John? If not, then who?

  What if I never found out?

  After I finally dropped off, my sleep kept getting interrupted by dreams: trying to revive Gee Gee as part of a CPR test, and failing; running along the gravel path trying to get to the cottage for some urgent reason but not getting anywhere; trying to explain to Rae and Gareth that I’d had an important dream but they didn’t seem to care. I kept shouting Welsh words instead, words that made no sense.

  Traeth. Beach.

  Cerrig. Stones.

  Ysbryd. Ghost.

  As I slipped between dreams of anxiety and grief, there was one lucid moment of clarity, almost too vivid to be a dream. I saw myself packing away Gee Gee’s things, lifting and folding dresses and pants and shirts. The room took form around me: the empty hospital bed, the profusion of doilies on the furniture. Sadness overtook me like a tide and tears ran down my cheeks. I looked up, trying to force the tears away.

  The square of sky visible through the window was pearly gray with a mist that made the village, the whole world, eerily nonexistent. Gee Gee was gone, and maybe everything and everyone else I knew was gone, too.

  I shivered, watching myself as if it were an out-of-body experience. I saw myself lifting a metal box, laying the box in my lap, and opening it.

  My doppelganger reached into the box as if to draw something out, and then everything dissolved into an incoherent swirl of images. Only one stood out—the little girl Olwen, her expression pleading. It felt more like a dream now, and I had a sudden overwhelming feeling of urgency, that there was something I had to find, or do. I opened my mouth to ask, but I was back in the dream trying to explain to Gareth that I had something important to tell him. We were walking along a grassy path, the sea roaring in the distance. I was urging Gareth to listen to my dream about the metal box, saying something about how we had to find it now because Olwen wanted us to. He was looking at me seriously, nodding, when I noticed that the sky above was darkening moment by moment. I stopped talking, stopped moving forward. One by one, the stars winked out.

  There was total darkness. I couldn’t even see Gareth beside me. I involuntarily reached out for him and clutched his hand, relieved he was still there. He squeezed back, and then the quality of the darkness changed. The breeze stopped, and I had the feeling we were no longer outdoors but in an enclosed space. I reached out my left hand, the one that wasn’t holding tightly to Gareth’s, and felt cool, rough stone.

  Then I felt an overwhelming loneliness so keen that I nearly dropped to my knees in despair. Somehow I knew it wasn’t coming from inside myself, but from outside, and I moved even closer to Gareth, grasping his arm with my other hand. Then the loneliness gained a desperate, wild quality, and a small girl’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

  “I want my mum! You promised, you promised!”

  I was scared, really scared. My heart was pounding frantically and there seemed to be no escape. Stone walled us in, all around. But then the darkness started to fade, and gradually I slipped back into a regular dream about home and Rae and scarfing onion rings at the school cafeteria.

  For some reason, in the dream, I was crying.

  The next morning I woke up early, before six. My movements felt mechanical, my limbs like they weren’t attached to me, as I pulled on a robe over my pajamas and brushed my teeth at the basin in my room.

  When I looked at myself in the mirror above the faucet, I had the odd sensation I was looking at a stranger. I saw a flash of fear cross my face, and then suddenly my dream came flooding back. Along with it came the insistent feeling that there was something I still had to do. Something Olwen wanted from Gareth, from me. My legs felt wobbly and I leaned my hands on the edge of the basin.

  The metal box—that had to be important. I’d never dreamed about it before; I was positive of that. Maybe it was something Gareth knew about, something he’d forgotten to tell me. Maybe it was symbolic.

  If that was symbolic, then what about the part where I’d clutched Gareth’s hand? I knew what Rae would say about it, but Rae wasn’t here to tease me. In fact, besides my parents, I didn’t really have anyone except Gareth.

  Maybe that was all the dream was about. Maybe it was my subconscious telling me I did have someone I could talk to. And I did have a phone. This was what it was for.

  I glanced at the clock and grimaced. Not at 6 a.m. That would be just plain rude.

  I splashed cold water on my face and pulled my hair back into a sloppy bun before emerging into the front room.

  Mom and Dad were already up, sitting at the table looking exhausted. Dad had a half-empty bowl of cereal in front of him and was flipping through a newspaper. Mom was working on her laptop, but she looked up long enough to insist I eat something. I took a banana from the fruit bowl and ate it standing up, leaning against the counter.

  The banana sat heavily in my stomach as the three of us gathered in Gee Gee’s bedroom half an hour later. The room only held objects now—the hospital bed and the clothes and belongings the only reminder that Gee Gee had been alive there just a day ago.

  “You’re very lucky you had a chance to say goodbye, you know,” Mom said softly, running a hand across the quilt before sitting at the foot of the bed.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I know.”

  “Your mom and I said our last
goodbyes before the van came to take her to the mortuary yesterday,” Dad said. He sounded matter-of-fact, but the lines around his eyes looked deeper than ever, and my heart ached for him.

  “We’re going to go through your Gee Gee’s things today, maybe box some of them up and see what we want to keep,” Mom said, sounding uncharacteristically tentative. She stole a quick look at Dad. “Why don’t you spend some time outside

  and get some fresh air? You probably won’t want to hang around all day while we sort through clothes and papers.”

  A tiny alarm bell went off in my mind.

  The metal box. What if it was with Gee Gee’s things? I had to find it, or whatever it might once have held. At the very least, I could find something out about Rhiannon’s life before.

  “I can help,” I said. “I don’t really feel like going out, anyway.”

  Dad looked at me with a slight frown and then shrugged. “Okay. We could use another pair of hands.”

  I tried to explain. “I want to see if she has any old letters or diaries, or anything interesting. Maybe pictures.”

  “You’re welcome to anything like that,” Dad said, “but as far as I know she never was much for keeping mementos.”

  I glanced at the wooden lovespoon, sitting forlornly on the bedside table, and I knew he was wrong.

  But after a few hours of packing clothes into bags, and emptying some boxes that Gee Gee had shipped here but never unpacked, we’d come up empty-handed as far as interesting documents were concerned. I had a moment of hope when Mom unearthed a stack of papers from one of the boxes in the closet, but when I dove into it, I only found old utility bills, receipts, and a smattering of random magazine articles about everything from quilting to the Welsh National Assembly. None of it gave me any proof of what Gee Gee had been hiding. If there had been any letters or pictures, she’d hidden them well—or destroyed the evidence.

  I couldn’t help it; frustrated tears spilled out. I’d been sure I didn’t have any more tears left to cry, but apparently I was wrong. Mom and Dad both sat down next to me on the bed and Dad hugged me to his side, letting me cry.