by Angie Morel
D busted out laughing, slapping his leg a few times. “Oh my God, you should see your faces!” He laughed so hard he snorted. “Do you really think I believe a jolly white dude comes around the hood on Christmas Eve, delivering presents to us po’ black folk?” Shaking his head, he laughed again. “Dang, you guys are killin’ me.”
“D, you are twisted,” I said, smiling at him, glad he was back to his old self.
“I know…ho ho ho! Uh sorry, Snick, go on,” D said, waving his hand.
“That was funny, though,” Snick said with a grin before continuing. “Umm, let’s see, I guess I miss school. I know, I know, pretty lame huh? But I do. I was on the debate team and in the Young Inventors Association. We were just getting ready to start on some really wicked stuff in my robotics group, in which, I might add, I was made project manager. I met a lot of my geek friends through that. They were pretty cool. Anyway, those are the things I miss.” Smiling, Snick moved his attention to me, and then Rolo. Three more sets of eyes followed, looking between us, ready for the next one to lighten their load, so to speak.
It felt like bugs were crawling on my skin. I tried to keep my breathing slow and even. God, if they only knew. Me and Rolo, and to some extent D, were raised in a different universe than Cory, Claire, and Snick.
“Asha? Rolo?” Snick said.
I stared straight ahead, willing Rolo to speak first.
“I don’t miss nothin’.” Rolo said, as if reading my mind. Then he shrugged, leaving it at that.
Claire cocked her head and looked concerned, like she was waiting for him to say he was joking. I suddenly found the throw pillow in my lap fascinating. Eyes down, I pretended to study the intricate pattern of the stitching while the others stared at Rolo.
“True thing. Nothin’ at all,” he said. There was no venom in his voice, no regret whatsoever, which packed more of a punch than anything.
They were struggling with his statement. I didn’t need to look up to confirm that piece of knowledge…I could feel it. As if the words he spoke were a heavy object he handed them, they sat, uncomfortable with what it implied, weighed down by the complete foreignness of it. How could you not miss your parents, friends, prior activities, food—something. That’s what they were thinking.
I didn’t begrudge them the life they’d been lucky enough to be born into. And quite frankly, none of that mattered now with circumstances as they were. But I knew they would never get it. And I wouldn’t be the one to enlighten them. Neither would Rolo. A code of sorts, if you will, among the people who’d been dealt the shitty cards in life.
To hide their confusion, they moved on to the last person in the room yet to participate. I looked up, confirming the fact that their attention had indeed shifted to me.
Swallowing, I tried to think of something—anything—other than MARY-MARY-MARY-MARY-MARY that was screaming in my head. My sister was the only thing I missed, and with the intensity of a sledgehammer to the gut. But I wasn’t ready to talk about her yet. Not even close.
What else could I talk about? Not Harvey, not after what happened to him. Umm. Shit. Think! They were all looking at me…
Needing to say something, even if it was ditto to Rolo’s response, I opened my mouth, ready to wing it. Right before I spoke it hit me. The library! Mary and I used to love going to the library. We’d wander the aisles for what seemed like hours, pulling books here and there, making a big production of what each was about, as if the selections of the day were the most important thing ever. Then we’d take our bound treasures home and sit on the bed and I would read out loud and we’d fly up and out of our crappy little room and life and into whatever adventure awaited. For a brief moment anyway.
“Books! I miss books. I used to go to the public library all the time,” I said, leaving out the why. My face was hot from having everyone’s attention on me, but I didn’t care, too relieved that I actually came up with something solid to say. It was even the truth.
“Shut the front door! Oh, you have got to come with me!” Claire said excitedly, as she jumped up and grabbed my hand, tugging me up and towards the back of the house.
Startled, I let Claire pull me along, wondering where she was leading me. The others followed in our wake, all talking at once. During the journey an odd thought hit me. This is what it feels like to have friends. I looked at our clasped hands, at Claire’s smiling face flashing back at me every couple of seconds as she led the way, and listened to the happy chatter. It was odd. It was nice.
Two more turns down the hallway and we arrived at a part of the house I hadn’t been to yet. Claire stopped and let go of my hand. Beaming, she took a couple steps back until she was standing in front of a large, ornate wooden door.
“Close your eyes,” she said, clapping her hands together and practically bouncing in excitement. I rolled my eyes and grinned, caught up in her enthusiasm. I complied, and then heard the door open. A second later there were fingers on my shoulders, directing me into the room. After a few blind steps I was halted, and then made to wait a few extra seconds to build up my anticipation, I guessed.
“Open!”
Opening my eyes, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The grin of tolerance I’d been wearing fell off as my mouth dropped open. Holy. Shit.
How can something like this actually be in a person’s house?
It was a huge library with rich dark wood shelves climbing the walls, floor to ceiling. And the ceilings were high too, at least fifteen feet, I thought, looking up. There were even those attached ladders that you could slide along tracks hidden in the gleaming hardwood floor to access the books nestled in the shelves higher up. There had to be thousands of books.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” I said, dropping the f-bomb accidentally.
“No,” Claire laughed, “I’m not, ah, freaky-fracken kidding you!”
I looked in every direction, hardly believing it was real. A fireplace with an intricately carved mantle divided the shelves along the wall opposite of me, and two matching desks that looked heavy and dignified stood facing each other, sandwiching the fireplace. A couple of deep lounging couches sat atop plush gray area rugs, balancing out the large space. The couches were placed at odd angles to the walls and to each other, probably to define separate reading areas. Coffee tables and floor lamps were grouped by them, looking like they were just plopped there without a thought, but perfectly placed somehow. I strolled over to the couch closest to me and sat, looking around at the warmth and comfort of the room as well as the endless possibilities of all the books.
“I call this room,” I heard myself say jokingly (but not really) as I kicked off my shoes and socks. My toes sunk into the deep pile of the rug. It felt like a cloud.
Chapter 16
Mary’s puzzling words from the dream kept coming back to me. They circled around, mostly on the outer rim of my awareness, constantly seeking out a logical place to live within my rational-thinking mind. However, no matter how many times I dissected it, I couldn’t figure out what any of it meant.
Don’t head south because “he” was down there, doing…something.
He who?
I still had things to do, and needed to “open” myself.
Open myself how?
And then there was the sign I was supposed to watch for, which had to be Ghost. The timing of his appearance later that very day couldn’t be a mere coincidence. The two were connected, but I didn’t know how or why. And then there was the damn bridge I kept seeing.
The whole business was troublesome to me—Mary with her messages from beyond the grave, a phantom dog appearing before me. It was troublesome because of the fact that I didn’t believe in God. So if Mary was behind it, was there indeed an afterlife? If there was an afterlife, was there a God?
And if there was a God, then where in the hell was He when I was younger and needed his goddamn help?
There was a large framed “Footprints” story that adorned the wall at Healthy Minds Happy Hearts Daycare
and Preschool. In it, the person wondered why, during the hardest times in life, they saw only one set of footprints in the sand. God said that He was carrying that person during those trying times, the story went.
Really? I read that perplexing tale so many times I could recite it word for word. If that were indeed true, then my entire life would be comprised of a single trail of prints. Or maybe I needed to be a better disciple in order for that to happen. Maybe a person actually needed to go to church to receive that kind of support. Because it certainly didn’t feel like anyone had ever been carrying me, that’s for damn sure. Maybe dragging—that seemed more likely.
The faith of others was a mystery to me. What life was about why we were here and what purpose we served was a big unknown. God or evolution? Bigger purpose—or nothing but a group of cells coming together with a bang, living for a brief period of time, and then evolving?
These were things I pondered during the long winter weeks when the days were short and the snow was heavy and the wind alternated between howling in rage and humming lullabies.
I wasn’t used to seeing this much snow. Well, I wasn’t used to seeing this much clean, undisturbed snow. After it snowed in the city you were left with plowed mounds that turned black after a while and finally disappeared around mid-summer, or so it seemed. Out here the flakes either dropped fat and slow or ran around chasing each other like crazy before settling down to sleep on the ground, stirring only when the wind sculpted them into drifts, some taller than I stood, making the entire landscape look like a frozen white ocean.
The library was my Eden, and I could lose hours in there without even realizing it. I’d peruse the shelves—which held everything from how to crochet, grow produce organically, mix the perfect cocktail, to all the categories of fiction and non-fiction, psychology, law, and everything in-between—and pull out books here and there to add to my growing stack I created on one of the desks. I made sure to read a few hours a day—not for enjoyment though, but for learning. Being stuck in the house during the winter produced quite a bit of down time, and I made sure to fill it with anything that could possibly make me stronger and smarter. In other words, make me someone that Rolo, D, Snick, and the twins could count on. My confidence took a beating after I let Mary die. Never again.
Recently I’d been reading books on self-defense and combat fighting, and couldn’t get enough, devouring the pages. I even made Rolo spar with me, so I could practice the moves shown in the books. He was actually learning a few things too, although you’d never hear him admit it. What made it even better was the fact that Claire told me that those were her mom’s books—she’d been the tough one in the family.
There were two places to work out in the house; the basement gym and the empty space upstairs that I dubbed the “warm-up” room. The room itself was perfect. In addition to the hardwood flooring, it had a wide-open feel because it was totally empty. Four dormers poked out on the sides and there were four skylights cut into the ceiling above so the room was saturated with natural light, even on days when the sun hid behind clouds.
Claire informed me that its previous purpose was as a craft room and the reason for the complete emptiness was because they’d been in the process of redesigning it into Claire’s cheerleading-slash-workout room. Claire and her mother were working on the color scheme a week before the world ended, which was noticeable because of the dozen or so vibrant patches of paint on the wall beside the door, their test area. Claire made the off-handed comment while explaining this to me that she’d chosen the “Birds of a Feather” yellow. Nodding, I made some sort hmm noise. On the inside I was cringing. If the blindingly bright yellow patch that glowed from the test area was actually covering all the walls in this big room—well, let’s just say it had the potential to make eyeballs bleed from the intensity. In fact, the room wouldn’t be able to contain that color—it would burst right out of the skylights and give the sun a run for its money.
We kept the house at a cool 45 degrees, not wanting to use up too much gas. On a frigid February morning, I made my way up to the warm-up room. Following my normal routine, I ran in place to get the blood flowing. Next, stretching. This quiet time allowed me to explore a recently discovered feeling. I didn’t trust it yet, for it had snuck up so quietly and settled in before I had a chance to realize it.
This was considered my meditation time (I read a book on that very thing, written by the esteemed Dr. Catherine Malone). According to her, yoga and meditation were the way to understand and harmonize the mind and body. I never had the luxury of trying to figure out my internal workings before, not with the day to day survival prior to, and immediately following, the RESET, as we now called it, thanks to D.
The discovery of this new feeling arrived a few days ago when I was enveloped in the soft cushions of the library couch, feet tucked in and an open book cradled on my lap. My eyes weren’t down and reading the words in the book though, they were gazing out the window while random, uncluttered thoughts about nothing in particular circulated around inside my head. I became aware of the ease of my jaw and brow, and the slight smile that curved my lips for no apparent reason. I felt…what was the word? It was like a snowball in the face when it hit me.
Content.
I felt content. Not happy—I didn’t think it was in my personal make-up to be that type of person, especially after Mary—but…solid, more at ease.
When had that happened? Where was that perpetual dark cloud that always threatened overhead? It had been there as long as I could remember; looming, letting loose devastating storms time and time again, particularly when Mary died.
But since then?
Dissipated.
Not completely gone. I could feel it in the distance, but far away.
The pain of losing Mary was still there. In fact, it had the ability to take my breath away at times. Aside from that I felt…okay. Almost like someone had been sneaking into some of the dark places inside, scrubbing them, removing the clutter little by little, making them more presentable. An airing out, I decided.
This could probably be attributed to one thing in particular. For the first time in my life I had a family unit that cared about me. Whereas before I had only Mary, and intentional or not, I’d created a small, isolated world for us. What I had now was an entire family, not born of blood, but tragedy. A family I’d do anything to protect. A family I’d come to love.
An old soul. For as long as I could remember, that’s how I’ve felt. Blame it on the fact that my childhood was never touched in any way with wonder and security and happiness. My earliest memories were of darkness and fear and feeling trapped. That’s because a good portion of my days were spent inside a locked closet so my mom could sleep off hangovers.
She’d shove me in quickly, armed with only a fresh diaper and sippy cup filled with tepid water, and close the door with a clunk and a metal scraping sound. In her perfect planning of What to do With a Troublesome Toddler When You Can’t/Won’t/Are Not Capable of Watching Her, she screwed in one of those slide locks far up on the door so I’d stay locked in and Harvey couldn’t reach it to free me. There was probably a sizzle in some part of her boozy brain that told her she was a genius for thinking of it.
A scratchy woven blanket had been folded to fit the empty space on the floor of the closet, which was about four feet long by two feet wide, and ratty clothes hung from bent hangers on the rod above me. I could still recall—in vivid, choppy detail—blindly reaching up on tippy-toes, bumping into the walls and closet door at times like a pinball, feeling those mysterious dangling fabrics in the darkness above as they brushed against my fingertips. My little hands would grip those swaying, moving items and yank, making them drop on me like snakes. Mom wasn’t happy about that, and would smack me for messing up the coats and clothes. She’d hang them up again, promptly forgetting that I was able to pull them down, which I would, day after day.
Until one day she remembered, or was too lazy to hang the clothes back up, which lef
t me trying to avoid the wire hangers that poked out of the lumpy mess on the floor. It was only after a hanger punctured the back of my thigh, and another caused a deep scrape near my eye during restless closet nap, that mom finally scooped up the nest of clothing and hangers from the bottom of the closet in a fit of fury, no doubt spitting about the stupidity of having children, as she threw the armload into the corner of her bedroom. Unfortunately the blanket, coarse as it was, ended up being scooped along with everything else, which left the hard linoleum as the only cushion for my little body after that.
Harvey, on the other hand, being a couple of years older than me, was left to wander around the apartment playing “Find the Cheerios”, with a generic version of the cereal, of course. A game I was familiar with playing after I was deemed old enough to be closet-free while mom slept. Good ol’ Mom of the Year would fling handfuls of the cereal out onto the dirty kitchen and living room floors and furniture, and we would need to find them all and eat them before she got up, or if she was up already, find them all and eat them to leave mommy alone. As this was our primary food source, Harvey and I made sure to find them all, popping the little O’s into our mouths like junkies popping pills.
Funny how the memories of that time were so clear. Scars in my psyche, I’d guess.
Finishing my stretches, I grabbed the jump rope that I’d found in the garage one day while exploring. I started swinging it around slowly, building up speed until the rope was a blur and my feet looked like they were suspended two inches from the floor.
I knew I had issues. A person could not come away from the life I had and not be fucked up. Rolo too—probably more so.
Focusing on my breathing, I jumped until sweat dotted and then fully soaked my clothing. Slowing down, I jumped a couple more minutes and then stopped, dropping to the floor and closing my eyes; focusing on my lungs rapidly expanding and deflating. After my breathing returned to normal, I stared up and out through the skylight directly above my head.
