Colors of the Shadow

by Nava Dijkstra

  “Your artist sister wants wet hair so that everybody will love it.” She pushed Esther’s head deep into the water. Bubbles rose from the water. Sherry tried to stop Nahid, but the two girls took hold of her and prevented her from rescuing Esther.

  Nahid pulled Esther’s hair and took her head out from the water. Esther immediately inhaled deeply to catch her breath while she was coughing constantly. “Do you want me to do it again, so that you can picture it in your head, lady painter?”

  “No, Nahid, leave her. Let her go! Do what you want to me, just don’t touch my sister.”

  “Your turn will come, too, but we will take care of your sister first.” She again stuck Esther’s head deep into the water, this time, for a longer period. Esther’s face showed up again, trying to take advantage of these moments to collect sufficient amounts of oxygen to survive. Sherry realized that all she could do was scream and hope someone would hear her. She prayed that Amir was hiding nearby and could help them. Her scream echoed through the area, but no one came.

  One of the girls shut her mouth with her hand, but Sherry bit her. She tried to kick them and beat them in order to free herself from their hands, but she failed. Esther’s head was shoved into the water again and again, her face popped up over and over, begging for a little oxygen to survive for the next minute. Slowly, her face lost its vitality and the desire to fight. Weakness was evident.

  “She’s still breathing,” Nahid said. She released Esther’s motionless body.

  “I think she’s dead,” Mina stuttered. “We have to escape.”

  But, Nahid was not in a hurry to leave. She walked slowly towards Sherry. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. This school is not for you.” The girls released her from their grasp and she ran straight to the body sunk into the shallow waters. Silence re-emerged; all traces of struggle between aggression and the desire for life had vanished. She heard Mina as she went away saying in a worried voice, “I think we killed her, she’s dead.” The offending girls ran off.

  The little body was lying in the water in a terrifying silence. Sherry pulled her sister out of the lake. She rested her head on her lap and stroked her lifeless face. She could not move. Darkness fell over the cruel lake. The lake that promised peace, serenity, and optimism, murdered her sister. The sun that witnessed the incident became silent and was eventually replaced by a rising full and sad moon.

  Rustling of grasses broke nearby, alerting her to someone’s approach. Amir stood next to her for a long time, shocked. “What happened?” He asked in a stunned voice, but Sherry did not move.

  “Was she drowned?”

  Sherry shook her head. Through the moonlight it was possible to see the tears that washed her face.

  “Nahid did this?” Amir asked in a weak and scared voice.

  Sherry nodded.

  Amir shockingly held his head. “I wish I came here earlier, but you told me not to come. When your father came to our house and asked about you and your sister, I suspected that something was wrong. It was very late, so I came running here.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Sherry, it’s not good for your father to know that she is dead. We must bury her. Wait here, I’ll go and bring a digging tool.” After several minutes he came back and started digging a hole in the bushes. He pulled Esther’s body and tried to put it gently into the small plot. He gathered her painting equipment. “Come on, we’ve got to go. Do not say anything to your father. It is better to leave him in hope that she will return one day, than to lose her forever.”

  Sherry entered her room and sat in the corner, rocking back and forth, closed her eyes as if she was trying to erase the horrible scene that she was conscious of.

  “Where were you?” Her father asked, and followed her into the room. Sherry continued to move back and forth, putting her hand to her ears, refusing to listen to his words, or hear the waters of the lake opening and closing the breath of her sister. But, she couldn’t muffle the voices. They came and drifted into her head, trying to drown her mind, to swallow her towards them.

  Her father looked at her, worried.

  “Where is Esther?” Her mother was horrified.

  Mentioning the name of Esther made Sherry move to larger fluctuations, while muttering incoherent sentences. “It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop...”

  “What do you mean?” Her father asked, but Sherry continued to mutter while still covering her ears tightly with her hands. “It does not stop, it does not stop...”

  “It’s not normal, the way she acts,” her father told her mother.

  “Do you think we should go to the police?” her mother asked.

  Her father took a deep breath. He was worried. His voice seemed to crack when he said to her mother, “They were both in the lake today. It’s possible that they argued. We will wait for a while. Maybe Sherry’s condition will get better, or maybe Esther will arrive and we will ask her what happened.”

  The mother nodded. She agreed with her husband, but the anxiety was evident in her face and in her hands. She rubbed them together in an obsessive motion.

  Two hours had passed, but Esther didn’t arrive. Sherry’s condition still did not improve. Her father’s attempts to persuade her to go to bed came to nothing. Each question about Esther induced her to a deeper shock, her body continuing to expel meaningless murmurs. The doctor informed them that she seemed to be suffering from trauma. “Something terrible happened to her.” He gave her sedatives and asked to report to him if her condition didn’t improve.

  The pills sent Sherry into a deep sleep, so her father’s thoughts turned to his worries about Esther. He rushed to the police station. But after giving information on the case, he found out that the search for someone who is missing begins forty-eight hours after the disappearance. He tried to convince the investigating officer that it’s an exceptional and critical case, but the officer unequivocally explained that those were the laws. Shlomo went back home, disappointed and helpless. He spent the night between the room where Sherry slept and in the bushes by the lake, calling Esther’s name and mourning his bitter fate. His two daughters, the apples of his eyes, were in trouble and he couldn’t do anything to help them. He got up and made his way back to the lake, to the school and back home, until the morning light slowly filtered into his consciousness, prompting his awareness of Esther’s disappearance.

  He looked at Sherry. When she opened her eyes, she seemed not to remember anything from yesterday. She was silent, but her silence roared to the skies. Her father looked at her, waiting to see what she would do. Will she keep rocking and murmuring incoherent sentences? She stopped mumbling and fluctuating. He did not know if this was a good or bad omen.

  “She feels good,” her mother said. “Maybe we’ll talk to her? I’m going crazy. I need to know where my daughter is.” She sat in bed where Sherry laid in a fetal position. “How do you feel?”

  Sherry did not answer.

  Her mother put her hand on Sherry’s head. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Sherry did not respond.

  “Did you quarrel yesterday?”

  Silence.

  “Just tell me one thing. Is Esther alive? Is everything okay with her?”

  Sherry remembered the words of Amir that it was better that her parents think that she was alive. Sherry nodded and she could hear the sigh of relief from her mother. “Then where is she? Do not worry. We won’t do anything to you if you did something to her, as long as we can find her.”

  Silence.

  “Sherry, please,” her mother begged.

  Sherry closed her eyes and again huddled.

  Two days after Esther’s disappearance, her father went to the police again. But, Sherry’s lack of cooperation prevented them from properly investigating the case.

  In the following days, Sherry continued to lie down in bed silently. Her father realized that every day that passed was another day that he was losing his daughter, Esther. Now, he was the one who wa
s swinging in his bed, unable to close his eyes, weeping to the disappearance of Esther, fearing that his attitude made her run away from home. He brushed off his idea that she died and he would never know where the grave was. He preferred to believe that she was alive.

  He saw that Sherry entered the shower and got dressed. He decided to start a routine conversation to prepare the ground for a more reasonable conversation. “Are you going to school?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to go to another school,” she said in a suffocated voice.

  He looked at her wondering. “Why?”

  “Because I want to,” she replied in a whisper. Tears streamed down from her eyes.

  He ran his hand over her cheeks and wiped away her tears. “Is there something you want to tell me? You can trust me. Is it something about your sister?” Tears spilled from her eyes.

  He examined her face, considering if it was worth it to continue the conversation. He decided to take the risk. He needed to know what happened to his daughter, Esther. “You went to the lake with your sister to paint her, and you came back without her. Something happened there.”

  “I do not remember,” she answered, still crying.

  Her answers aggravated his frustration. He knew that there were cases where people who experienced difficult things forgot everything. He hoped that this was not what happened to Sherry. It was not good that the information about the fate of Esther would settle in the subconscious of Sherry and disappear forever.

  He noticed that she was slipping away from him with hesitant steps and left.

  Sherry sat at the opposite side of the lake, self-absorbed. Just before the sun went down, she saw her father make his way to the bushes. He walked through the valley of tears. He didn’t know that beyond those tall weeds rested his daughter’s body. He fell on his knees. His head was down and his hands were over his head. Tears drenched Sherry’s eyes. Her father got up and went to school. She came out from the bushes and walked back home. She passed by Amir, who was standing near the gate of his house, without saying a word.

  Sherry was in the living room when her father walked through the door, smiling and trying to convey a feeling that everything was fine. But, sadness was in every corner of the house. Sounds of cries and silent prayers came from his room during the night, and Sherry knew that his prayer would never be answered.

  5

  Two months after Esther’s disappearance, her mother said that her uncles and grandfather fled to America. The faint hope that could have helped them to go back and live a better life gave way to its end. Sherry saw that her father couldn’t bear the blows that fell on him one after the other. He deteriorated from day to day, stopped working, and no longer tried to smile to his family. Saturday night dinners were sad and the stories that he used to tell in the past stopped. The eyes of her father, that in the past Sherry was sure could illuminate the darkness, went blind. For days, he sat in the couch and waited to die. He ate and drank only a little, just for survival. The warehouse, the source of their miseries, seemed to enforce its appearance on their lives.

  The burden on the shoulders of her mother grew, as did the back pain and the asthma attacks. Sherry asked her to let her clean the house of Nazir, even though she wanted to be away from Amir. But, she refused. A week later, as she fell sick and lay in bed, Sherry was left with no choice.

  “You should not do such things; you are a great painter. One day, your paintings will be worth a lot of money,” Nazir said when she came to clean his house.

  “And until the day will come, I have to make a living.” Sherry didn’t believe any promises. Since her father stopped admiring her, her aspirations and confidence died.

  Nazir stared at the ceiling. “You have a gift from heaven. You paint images that can be looked at for hours. They cause a person to connect to his deepest feelings.” He lapsed into silence, thinking about something. Then he seemed to wake up and turned back to Sherry. “Look, I don’t need more paintings for my hotel.”

  Sherry was sad.

  “I took the last one that I bought from you to a friend of mine named Hidan. He has a large gallery in Tehran and more galleries in Isfahan and in other places. He also sells paintings to private and public institutions. I showed him your paintings. He loved them very much and would like to work with you. We agreed on a price.” Nazir smiled and gave her an amount that caused Sherry to hold her breath.

  “But, it’s a lot of money,” she said with amazement.

  “There’s only one problem. How will you handle so many orders?”

  An idea popped into Sherry’s mind. “I think my mom could help me. But then, no one will clean your house.” Sherry hoped that despite this, Nazir would agree. It was a golden opportunity to take her mother away from the hard cleaning job that only aggravated her suffering from asthma.

  “Your mother can paint?” Nazir was surprised. “I know that she was a talented jewelry designer, but I did not know that she is also a painter.”

  “She paints a lot better than me. She was once an art teacher, until she met my father and started working in the shop of my father and my grandfather. From that time on, she learned how to design jewelry.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to find another cleaner.”

  Sherry ran towards her mother who was lying in bed. “Nazir got me a great job. I’ll earn lots of money,” she said enthusiastically. “I told him that if I can’t stand the workload, you would help me. That way, you don’t have to work so hard in cleaning. But, he must first find another worker to replace you.”

  Her mother looked at her with admiration, but she doubted whether there would be enough work for both of them. “Good for you, but let’s wait for the extra work to come, and we will think what to do.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Anyway, he must first find another worker to replace you.”

  Sherry went to her father and hugged him gently. “We’ll have money, I got a good job.” She felt his weak hands taking her away from him; his pupils were burning her. Their softness was gone. His face dwindled just like his happiness that faded away, and he was only 39. She brought food from the kitchen, hoping that if she persevered and fed him, he would become strong and go back to the way he was. He ate from her hands as he fastened his gaze on her. His eyes were stabbing her. Sherry convinced herself that they were just melancholy from his condition and not looks of blame. But one day, he held her hand so hard that he seemed to gather all his strength that remained in him, as if he took his last breath before death. “Where’s your sister?”

  His question froze her body. Now it was her turn to flinch and stare at him with frightened eyes. She twisted her arm gently, trying to free it from his grasp. He lifted the upper part of his body, his face close to her, but he only managed to rise long enough to let his head fall back down. He grabbed her shirt in his last attempt to look into her eyes and uncover her hidden secret. She ran away, terrified. In her room, she leaned against the door, feeling as if her father’s accusations were piercing through the door and passing through her chilling body. She needed to talk to Amir, but she was unable to go through her father’s penetrating looks; she went out the window.

  “My father knows that I am to be blamed for what happened to Esther,” she told Amir.

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill her. You are just hiding the truth for his sake. A daughter who disappeared is preferable to a daughter who is dead.”

  “I’m not sure you’re right. I see him go and disappear, losing his human image,” she said in a broken voice.

  Amir shrugged. “If you’re worried about him, then don’t tell him. It will knock him down.”

  She went back to the house through the front door, then through the room that turned to be a living room. Her father sent her piercing glances. She looked down and went to her room with small and hesitant steps.

  One day when she was busy preparing another painting for Nazir’s frie
nd, her mother asked to get her father out under the sun. Sherry was happy for the opportunity to get close to her father through painting. She took off the easel and headed to the backyard. Sherry led her father out into the yard, trying not to meet his eyes. She sat him down in a position that allowed him to watch her paint, hoping that this would make him happy like before. He actually looked at the painting with lots of interest. Sherry took those moments that had become rare, in order to earn appreciation from him. She told him that the paintings were ordered by Nazir’s friend, who would in exchange pay them a sum that could help the family. Sherry was sure that her ability to support her family through her paintings would impress her father. She hoped he would express his admiration to her and to her paintings, but her father did not respond.

  One compliment from him would be more worthy than the words of a million people. It was important for her to hear him say that she is a talented painter, and that she will go far. Her father’s gaze was fixed in the brush that was in her hand, dipped in red paint. Suddenly, out from the underworld, his voice was heard, low, yet with horror. “You killed your sister. You had a quarrel that day, and you killed her by mistake.”

  Sherry felt a storm in her body. The events of her sister’s murder passed through her mind just like a horror movie. She lifted her hand in an attempt to beat her father who accused her of murdering her sister, who dared to attribute to her the murderous instincts of Nahid, but her hand stopped. In a flash, her father’s threatening expression was changed to a frightened look.

  Sherry went into her room and lay in bed crying. That was it─she must tell her father all that happened. He must not think that she was the one who killed Esther. It was true that she didn’t tell him about her death and buried her to hide the truth from him. She was willing to bear this guilt, but, by no means, was she to bear the burden of taking Esther’s life.