by Rachel Coker
“Hello?”
“Please help us.” I gripped the phone, my fingers turning white.
“What is your emergency?” The voice on the line was calm and clipped.
I fought back a wave of nausea. “My brother fell from the second-floor railing. He’s still breathing, but he’s not moving. I don’t know if his brain is okay or if …” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me.
“Would you please give me your address and phone number?”
My address? Why can’t I remember my address? I gulped and racked my brain. After a few seconds, the information came back to me and I managed to give it to the operator before she hung up, assuring me that an ambulance was on its way. I dropped the phone and ran back to the hallway. I could faintly hear the handset hitting the cabinet door as it swung back and forth on its cord.
Dad was still on the floor with Cliff in his lap. Mama was sitting in the doorway, her head buried in her arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing.
“Is he going to be okay?” My voice sounded like it was a million miles away.
Dad didn’t answer. “Is the ambulance on its way?” he asked instead.
I nodded. My legs felt too weak to stand, so I collapsed on the floor.
“What’s going on?” Grandpop Barley shouted from the truck. I heard the door slam, and he came running into the house with his eyes wide. “What’s going on? What’s the ruckus? Did something happen to the peanut butter?”
He froze in the doorway, his eyes falling on the scene before him. A confused look flashed across his face. “What did you do with it? Where’s the peanut butter?”
I pressed my hand against my mouth to stop from crying out. My knees shaking, I got up and wrapped my arms around Grandpop Barley. He resisted at first, pulling away from my touch. But then he stiffened and let me keep my arms tight around him.
“It’s okay, Scarlett,” he said into my hair. “They’ll bring it back. We’ll get that peanut butter soon.”
A siren sounded in the distance, on its way up our long driveway. I turned my face into Grandpop Barley’s shoulder and began to cry.
I’d never been inside a hospital before.
Grandpop Barley sat next to me on a bench outside of Cliff’s room. Mama and Dad were allowed inside, but the staff told us that there was a room limit and that the two of us had to stay out as long as the doctors were in there.
So we sat on the cold wooden bench and waited for someone to come tell us what was going on. Grandpop Barley was snacking on a banana that one of the nurses had given him out of her lunch box. He was also rubbing at the bandages on his hands that Dad had put on after the fall a few nights ago. I kept slapping at his fingers to keep him from pulling the dressings off.
The clock at the end of the hallway seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace. We’d arrived here at quarter past five. Now it was almost seven, and my stomach was rumbling.
I buried my face in my hands. Not that it matters. I feel too sick to eat.
Cliff opened his eyes when they pulled him out of the ambulance. He looked right at me with those deep brown eyes and blinked. But he didn’t see me. There was no recognition there. No pain or fear or excitement. Just emptiness.
I shuddered, tightly wrapping my arms around my chest. God, please … I gulped. Did I really have any right to ask God for something? I never tried praying to him before, at least not like this, so wouldn’t starting now be like cheating? All those years of sermons came flooding back, warning me how God feels about people who take him for granted.
I didn’t care. God, please keep Cliff alive. Please don’t let him die. I need him to be all right. Please.
The door to Cliff’s room swung open, and Dad stepped out. Without saying a word, he scooped me up into his arms and gave me a big hug. My chest tightened. Does this mean … Is Cliff …?
“He’s going to be okay,” Dad said, his voice muffled in my hair.
I felt my whole body loosen until finally my knees gave out, buckling like a folding chair. I let my father hold me tightly and started to cry. He’s going to be okay. He’s fine. He’s going to survive.
All the anxiousness started to drain from my head. I’d never felt such relief.
“Now, there’s something I have to tell you.” Dad pulled back slowly, guiding me back toward the bench. He knelt on the floor by me, holding on to my hand with a tight trip.
My stomach sank. “What?”
Grandpop Barley took one last bite of the banana and smiled. “I’m finished!” He attempted to hand it to Dad, who didn’t pay any attention to him. “Hey!” His voice grew gruffer. “I said I’m finished.
Take it!”
Dad shot him a quick glance before taking the banana peel and placing it on his lap. He reached out to grab my hand again, but I snatched my hands away and sat on them. The warm heat of my body sank into my skin. I could feel my pulse quickening in my wrists.
“What do you have to tell me?” I said again, my voice shaking.
Dad took a breath and let it out in a short huff. “Cliff’s body is fine. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. He’s going to have a few cuts and bruises for a while, but the doctors said he should recover quickly without any problems.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“It’s his brain.” Dad winced as he said the words, as if shielding himself from my sadness and my hurt. “He doesn’t recognize us anymore. Doesn’t remember anything about us. Whatever was … wrong with him is even more wrong now. Does that make sense?”
Sense? The words coming out of Dad’s mouth were not registering in my ears. I shook my head slowly. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“I don’t know how else to say this, Scarlett.” He sounded frustrated now. I wondered if he was upset at me for not understanding or at himself for having to tell me everything. He leaned forward and placed a hand on my knee. “Your brother is never going to be the same Cliff we knew. He’ll be alive. Breathing and walking and possibly even talking. But he won’t ever be Cliff again. He’ll be someone else.”
I felt sick again, like a kid who had eaten one too many pieces of cake on her birthday. Only there was no buzz, no excitement, and it wasn’t my birthday. It was the worst day of my life. God had kept Cliff alive, but he’d taken him from me. I’d lost my little brother.
Dad drove us home from the hospital that night in Old Clunker. I was glad to get away from the sympathetic smiles from the nurses and the clock ticking in my ears.
They’d let me go in to see Cliff before I left. He’d been lying in the hospital bed, bandages on his face from where he’d gotten cut from falling. He looked up as I came in the room but didn’t smile. I’d told him hi, and he didn’t say anything back. He didn’t look happy to see me. He looked scared, if nothing else.
The doctors had confirmed what Dad told me: that Cliff didn’t recognize any of us. He had no concept of family or friends or conversation. To him, I was just a stranger with crazy hair, saying gibberish that he neither understood nor cared about.
I scooted as close to the car window as I could and pressed my nose against the glass. Mama sat next to me, her hands shaking in her lap. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fat tear roll down her cheek and fall on the edge of her black shirt, turning into a colorless puddle on the fabric.
I looked away, back out the window. We drove past the Leggetts’ peach farm. The smell of ripe peaches no longer filled the air. Nothing drifted through the truck’s open window but the smell of overturned soil and grass. All the peaches were picked. The farm was empty.
Mr. Leggett’s pickup truck sat parked in their driveway. The bed was filled with suitcases and other luggage. That’s right. Frank’s leaving for college. Today.
I pushed down the liquid building in my throat. Frank had showed up at the hospital as soon as he found out about Cliff. He sat next to me for a few minutes and gave me a quick hug. Said he was sorry and he wished he could undo what had happened. And then he left.
And that was it. He didn’t say he’d write. Didn’t promise to call.
It was like I’d never known him. Like all the memories of one wonderful summer—every day filled with just the three of us—had been magically erased and forgotten.
Cliff might forget. Frank might even forget. But I’ll always remember. No matter how hard I try, all of the memories of this summer will stay trapped in my head.
Chapter 15
I’d never really thought about what happened to people after someone they loved died. I guess I’d thought that they cried for a day or two and then went back to normal. Isn’t that what the rest of the world did?
Except our normal would never be normal, even if we did somehow recover that quickly. Cliff was very much alive. We went and visited him every day and tried to talk to him, but he never said a word back to us. He’d mutter to himself about people or places that we’d never heard of. Every now and then, he’d shout something at a nurse. Each visit was further proof the Cliff I’d loved was dead.
Cliff was worse off than Grandpop Barley now. After a week of dutiful visits, my parents decided that Cliff would take Grandpop Barley’s place at the facility for the mentally ill, and Grandpop would have to come home and live with us again. It made more sense to put him in Cliff’s room, where he’d be closer to us, but no one could step in there anymore. That door remained firmly shut.
We drove to the home one Saturday afternoon in late September, after Cliff had been there for about a month. It was a good hour’s drive for us, but we had been coming every weekend we could—even if he often acted like we weren’t even there.
Like always, Stacey, the blonde girl behind the reception desk, looked up and beamed when she saw us come in. She had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen outside of a dental commercial.
“Oh, hey there!” she said, giving us a little wave. “I was wondering when Cliff’s family would get here. Just follow me and I’ll take you up to see him. Though just so you’re aware, I think he figured out that they’re going to take him on a walk this afternoon, so he may be a little wound up.”
She led us up the stairs to Cliff’s room on the second floor. Another young man, named Albert, stayed in the same room as Cliff. He was about twenty-five years old and had some kind of mental condition that made him think we were all apparitions, so he was pretty freaked out most of the time. I tried to focus more on Cliff than Albert whenever we were there.
Stacey knocked on Cliff’s door and beamed at us. “Cliff, there’s someone here to see you.”
Another nurse opened the door and motioned us in. Mama, Dad, Grandpop Barley, and I filled up a large chunk of the room once we were situated inside. Cliff was sitting on his bed in the corner, attempting to pull on a jacket. He was vibrating, practically shaking in excitement as he tugged at the sleeves. He grunted a few times and looked at the nurse with wild eyes.
For the first time, he seemed interested in something going on around him. Maybe the therapy is working, maybe this hospital is a good thing … maybe he’ll recover enough to be Cliff again.
The nurse walked toward my brother. “Oh, let me help you with that.”
Instinctively, I stepped forward at the same time as her, reaching out to help Cliff with his jacket. He blinked at me and jerked away. My skin froze.
The nurse smiled at me apologetically, then stepped forward and helped Cliff into his jacket, zipping it up for him. “There you go, bud.”
Mama lifted a hand to her throat, pressing her lips together. “Why—” Her voice was raspy. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Why doesn’t he ever respond to any of us, but he lets the nurses get near him?”
Stacey’s eyes became soft as she leaned against the door. I noticed she had little laugh wrinkles around her mouth, but she couldn’t have been older than thirty-five. “You’re not familiar to him.”
“Not familiar?” Mama’s face crumpled.
Dad stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “He saw our faces every day for ten years. How could we not be familiar?”
The nurse who’d helped Cliff with his jacket folded her arms. “He doesn’t have any memory of the last ten years. He doesn’t have any memory of the last ten hours. Cliff operates on a minute-by-minute basis. By the time you leave today, he’ll probably let you near him. He’ll recognize you. But when you come again next week, he won’t.” She let out a little sigh. “If doctors could explain it or fix it, he wouldn’t be here.”
Mama gasped and pulled her thin cardigan close. She turned to Dad and muttered, “Well, that was an extremely rude thing to say. Very insensitive.”
I watched the nurse closely to see if she cared. She didn’t seem to. Instead of apologizing, she grabbed a baseball cap off of a hook on the wall and placed it on Cliff’s head. “I’m sorry you folks can’t stay longer today, but he’s due for his daily exercise. Three loops around the building ought to do it. Stacey, will you hold the door?”
Stacey did as she was told and stood back as the nurse guided Cliff past us. “Say good-bye to your family, kid. They’ll be back next week.”
No one reached out to hug Cliff. Mama had tried that once and now had a small scar on her cheek from where Cliff had clawed at her. Instead, we all stood there mutely, watching a strange woman escort him away.
He brushed past me, his light denim jacket touching my skin. My heart stopped, and my stomach felt like it was in my throat. Then he looked at me and smiled. It was brief, but it was there, from the little curve of his mouth to the twinkle in his deep brown eyes.
I gasped. Everything in me lit up, spinning around at a hundred miles an hour and singing. And then he turned away and walked out the door, his face solemn again.
Still, it was there. He may not have recognized me, but he smiled at me. And that was something.
I’d imagined that the house would be different with Grandpop Barley gone, and had even braced myself for it. But nothing prepared me for what it felt like with Cliff missing.
Some days, I could handle it. I’d get home from school early, watch Mama leave for work, and sit upstairs with Grandpop Barley. Or I’d let him nap, and keep myself busy around the kitchen, baking and cleaning the counters until they shone.
But other times I’d wander the house like a ghost, once everyone was gone and Grandpop Barley was asleep. When I was alone, everything seemed to make me think of Cliff.
I sat on the couch and stared at the spot on the floor where Cliff used to sit and look at the pictures in his Spanish dictionary. His spot. I stood by the sink, my eyes fixed on the pile of cans waiting to be taken out to the trash. Those used to be Cliff’s cans.
His spot. His chair. I was going crazy. I was pretty sure I’d read a book about someone who thought like that, and in the last few chapters, they’d ended up going crazy and jumping off a cliff. I wasn’t sure if there were any high places like that in Georgia, but even just thinking about cliffs made me sad.
Maybe I was losing my sanity too. Maybe I would have a heart attack and die because Dad couldn’t get me to the hospital fast enough in Old Clunker.
I wondered if death would be a good thing.
Dad’s Bible was sitting on the coffee table next to the couch. I picked it up and flipped it open. The pages weren’t worn at all; gold still glistened on the edges of the paper, undimmed by use.
Pastor Greene had announced he was preaching out of Psalm 25 on Sunday. Checking the table of contents, I flipped to the right page and started to read.
The words on the page tore at my chest: “Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses.”
I felt the affliction. I felt the distress. Cliff was alive, but it wasn’t good enough. Grandpop Barley was home and fairly happy, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Because my life still felt shattered and broken and empty.
My eyes slid shut, tears pulling at the corners. Why won’t the pain go away?
Why does it hurt so much for me, God? Why can’t you take away the hurt and the sadness?
I closed the Bible and left my hand on the cover, feeling the cool leather beneath my fingertips. I couldn’t understand how everything had turned so black. I ached to know—to know the answers. To understand what God was saying and to hear from him directly why this had to happen.
I thought about what Mrs. Greene had said a few days before Cliff’s accident. Sometimes it takes more than just your own strength to find true peace and contentment. I knew what she’d meant. She’d wanted me to trust in God’s strength.
Wrapping my arms across my chest, I glanced out the window. Nearly bare trees lined the driveway, leading to the road; no cars or people were in sight. I wished I could see Cliff come running back down the driveway. Or maybe Juli. It was hard to separate it all in my head anymore.
I woke up the next morning before the sun had risen and wandered to Grandpop Barley’s room. I pushed open the door and stood in the threshold, peering into the darkness. His large, bumpy figure curled into a tight ball filled the bed.
Closing the door gently behind me, I crossed the bedroom and sat by his bed. The last few moonbeams of the night cast their shadows across the hardwood floor at my feet, turning my skin an eerie white.
I sat silently, watching Grandpop Barley’s chest rise and fall in sleep. His face looked so peaceful. The faithful red necktie lie loosely tightened on his neck and the sheets were clutched in his gnarly hands.
The sun slowly rose in the window behind me, illuminating the room in rosy pink sunlight. I watched the shadows moving across the floor as the hours passed. Every time I got up to leave, I felt something tug me back to the floor. I didn’t know what it was, but there was something in that room that made me feel at least a little bit better.
Maybe it was the look on Grandpop Barley’s face. That slight smile that made me wonder what he was dreaming about. Where he was, which was so much more wonderful than this house and all its bad memories. Maybe in his dreams he was flying above Neverland or eating giant jars of peanut butter without getting any on his fingers. He hated having sticky fingers.
