by S. L. Naeole
Janice said nothing during dinner—which turned out to be a carefully prepared, and meticulously stirred pot of canned vegetable soup— and Dad simply watched as she spooned the tinny meal into her mouth, never looking at him, or us, instead staring blankly at some invisible spot on the table. Robert made several attempts to strike up a conversation with her about anything—the weather, sports, Matthew—but she responded only with flat smiles and semi-courteous nods before continuing to eat in silence.
When she stood up and announced in a monotone voice that she was going to bed, I offered to go up with her to check on Matthew. She looked at me and smiled sadly. “No, it’s okay Grace. He’ll be fine. He’s not like you.”
Those four little words caught me off guard and I felt frozen in place as she sidled past me. Her steps were careful and slow, her shoulders hunched down with a depression that we had all seen coming on and yet had been unable to prevent from taking its hold of her. How could we? Dad had grown up with this life and had accepted its consequences, while I had willingly invited it into my life when I began my relationship with Robert.
But Janice had done neither. Instead, she had been pulled in unknowingly simply by marrying Dad and inheriting me as a step-daughter. No one explained to her the costs; no one told her that she could lose people she loved. Katie had been just the beginning—her sister’s death at the hands of Sam was the initiation into the life that she had not volunteered for—and now she had to contend with the very genuine fear that at any moment, someone, some unseen figure from her nightmares could come swooping in to take from her someone else she loved, even before she had time to fully grieve Katie.
Initially, she seemed to have taken it all in very well, but as the days passed, one turning into several, several turning into weeks, she had grown even more sullen and reserved. The night when the seraphim came to our house to speak to Dad and I about what was expected of me now that Sam was gone had marked the noticeable beginning of Janice’s descent. She stayed in her room for two days after that visit, emerging on the third day looking thinner despite having just given birth to Matthew only weeks before.
Less than twenty-four hours later, she began to remove certain things from the house, odd and seemingly inconsequential things that made little sense to me until I found the silver winged pendant that she’d bought for Matthew, its twin still hanging around my neck, in the trash atop a pile of torn photos.
She was purging the house of anything that reminded her of angels. Books, pictures, even the plastic Jell-O mold that Ameila had brought over last Christmas were dumped, buried in the garbage can that was then rolled onto the street for the trash guys the next day.
I tried to speak to Dad about this, but he brushed it off as her way of dealing with everything. “Does that mean ignoring her own kid?” I asked in retort and began to point out that she hadn’t done so much as change a diaper in a week. The responsibility of caring for Matthew had fallen wholly on me and Dad. He changed his schedule around, working nights so that he could stay home during the day, while I took care of him while Dad was gone.
Janice acted like Matthew didn’t exist and now, after hearing her comment and seeing the vacant look in her eye as she said it, my chest and heart ached because she was acknowledging that our connection had been severed as well; she looked at me differently now. It was the first time I recognized the fact that Janice had never looked at me like that before, never spoke to me like that before; I had always been James’ daughter to her, and that meant an extension of him to love. Now I was something else. I wasn’t James and Abigail Shelley’s daughter anymore. I was the daughter of James, electus patronus, and Avi, former angel. I was…different.
“Grace…”
Robert stood behind me and placed a consoling hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it off. “No. Don’t say it’s not true. I used to say that I was different because everyone else thought so. Everyone else made me feel like it was the truth and they were right; I am different.”
I turned to look at him, and Dad, who now stood beside him with a distressed distortion to his face. “I’m not supposed to be like everyone else; Mom knew that. She never planned on me growing up and being normal. She never intended on me being like the other girls here because she knew that I wasn’t. I’m not supposed to want the same things they do; I’m not supposed to have the same dreams. She stole the only thing I ever wanted from me; she stole having a normal life from me.
“But she couldn’t leave it at that, could she? She had to steal herself from me too, and then made sure that no one else could have me either—not even you.” I huffed with frustration. “She took everything from me because she had to have me, she had this big plan and it didn’t matter how I felt about it. She ruined my life and I hate her for it! I. Hate. Her!”
I ran upstairs to my room, dashing away the fat, sticky tears that slipped past my lids, and threw open my closet door. I fell in front of it, landing roughly on my knees and began digging through a large box that sat on the floor. I pulled out an old photo album that I hadn’t looked in since before Matthew was born and took it to my bed. I opened it angrily and stared at the photos inside.
Each one that I had foolishly believed held an image of a supposed family member now revealed the truth to me as my mother’s face appeared, clear to me as it had never been before. The smile on her face in every image seemed phony, forced, and yet even through the aged photographs I could see the pale aura of light that clung to her, extending outwards like a shadow would.
It was the sign that I should have noticed right away but didn’t because I hadn’t been looking for it. Why would I?
Furious at the betrayal that I finally could admit to feeling, I began to tear the photos out, methodically ripping each one into tiny pieces. When I came to the final few pages holding the most recent of the photos, images of the two of us together, I hesitated only momentarily before those, too, became confetti on the comforter.
It was when I reached the last page, the last photo slot empty with a caption written on the bottom hinting at the future she knew I would never have; the mocking words and the emptiness of the page taunted me until I screamed and threw the album at the window. I swallowed my cry of surprise when it sailed through the glass, shattering it and sending shards and slivers of my pain raining down outside and onto my floor.
As the tinkling sound filled the room, I became aware that I wasn’t alone. Robert was with me, appearing the instant the glass cracked before it disintegrated; his arms were around me, holding me against him as tightly as he dared as I continued to scream, every ounce of anger and hate and disgust turning into piercing shrieks that escaped me and flooded the street.
I cried; wallowing in my self-pity before the Matthew’s equally pitiful wails just behind the wall beside me brought me back to the reality that no matter how I felt, no matter what I might still need to get out, I had a responsibility to someone else besides me.
Robert, his arms tense around me, waited until he was certain that I was done throwing things before he let me go to examine the scraps of paper that littered my bed. “You destroyed them all?” he remarked as he picked up the torn fragment of what looked like my left eye.
I sniffed, hiccupped, and then nodded. “She was trying to sell me a lie with that album. I thought this was her way of helping me to connect with my past, to help me understand the family she left behind, the family I couldn’t know because they were too far away. Instead, every single photograph is a lie, even the one that wasn’t there. I have no family from Korea—my God, I’m not even Korean! I don’t know who or even what I am anymore. I tried to pretend that nothing had changed, but everything has. Everything has changed and it took Janice to make me see that.”
Robert once again took me into his arms and brought me against his chest, the embrace he held me in strong and supportive, yet there was also a sense of separation there that I didn’t know I needed. I turned my head into the hollow curve beneath his chin and felt m
y body twitch with each hiccup, feeling it absorbed through him as he took within him my suffering.
“Janice is in a state of shock, Grace. She’s been forced to accept a change in her life that no one should have to deal with. She loves your father, she loves you; she just needs time now to grieve for her sister, and for the life she once knew. She didn’t mean what she said.”
“I don’t care if she meant it or not,” I informed him. “I’m not like her. I’m not like you. I’m not like anyone; she was right.”
“I wish I could make this easier for you,” he said into my hair.
“There is one way…”
“Grace-”
“Robert, hear me out. If we got married right after graduation like we planned, I could stay with you, and then Janice wouldn’t have to see me around anymore. That would make things easier for Dad, and it would make summer school a whole hell of a lot easier to deal with because I’d be coming home to you every day. We’d be free—no more sneaking around, no more floating into windows or misting under doors.”
I looked at him hopefully and he seemed to weaken ever so slightly before his iron reserve returned, and I was shut down. “No, Grace. We agreed that we’d get married after graduation.”
“Yeah, but only one of us will be graduating, remember?” I grumbled before squirming out of his arms and assessing the mess I had created. “I guess I should go and get the dust pan or something to clean this all up.”
“You’re changing the subject, Grace. You always do that when you don’t want to face something. What’s wrong, aside from the obvious?”
I laughed before the tears started to fall down my face once more, my hands dashing them away frantically as my head tossed back and forth at the ridiculousness of my reason. “It’s just that, I never really cared about graduation before, and now that I know I won’t be going to mine…I’ve never wanted to go more. It’s like a cruel, reverse psychology joke or something. I know I deserved to pass Mr. Branke’s class, and to know that I won’t graduate because of him—I feel so angry and so dumb all at the same time. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut about the shoes? Why couldn’t I have just waited a couple of more days?”
“Because, despite everything, you’re human, and as a human you make human mistakes. You saw what you saw and that doesn’t make you wrong, just mistaken. You made it as right as you could, you apologized.”
He touched the tip of my nose with a warm finger and then caught a tear in the palm of his hand, smiling as the crystal liquid turned solid, shimmering in the lamplight.
“This part of you, this special part of you that makes you different is what makes you feel things far more deeply than anyone else could. You feel hurt, love, joy and sorrow much more intuitively, much more sincerely than anyone else could.
“It’s why you cannot help but feel so profoundly guilty about what’s happened, even though you still cannot let go of the anger you feel towards Mr. Branke for not changing your grade when he had the chance. But I also know that you can forgive much more completely as well because this part of you doesn’t just make you different; it makes you special.”
He plucked the tiny tear drop from his palm and crushed it between his two fingers, turning the crystal into sparkling dust. He looked at me and playfully tipped my chin with his free hand. “Make a wish,” he told me before a puff of air left his lips, pushing the dust towards the window. I watched the faint glitter float outside and quickly made a wish that I knew he could not hear.
“That’s not fair,” he exclaimed while I laughed and shook my head.
“Uh-uh. It’s my wish and if I want to keep it a secret, I can. Besides, it’s bad luck to tell.”
“Fine. If you won’t tell me your wish, I won’t tell you mine,” he teased.
“That’s fine with me since you’ll probably end up telling me anyway,” I teased back.
A mischievous smile crossed his lips before he tackled me and pinned me to the bed, my giddy laughter soon replaced with the rapid thumping of my heart. The silver ring of his eyes turned liquid, his pupils dilating as his gaze roamed over my face, fixating on my lips that parted when I realized his intent.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he groaned.
“No…we shouldn’t,” I agreed, my own voice nothing more than air.
And then his mouth was crushing mine, this kiss desperate, needy. Our promise to be good was quickly forgotten once the taste of his lips on mine, my lips on his filled our senses. I could feel the weight of him and knew that nothing could ever feel so wonderful. That is, until he began to grow lighter. My hands that had flattened against his back, desperately trying to bring him closer, began to sink lower, into him, through him. When they finally lowered down onto my chest, I inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet smelling mist that now hovered over me like my own personal fog. It trembled—actually trembled—as it drifted over my body and down the sides of the bed.
“Robert, don’t do this again,” I moaned when slowly the dark smoke disappeared.
“I have to,” a muffled voice replied from beneath me after a period of silence passed.
Grunting, I rolled over and leaned my head towards the underside of the bed, pulling up the bed skirt and glaring at the glowing figure that lay behind it in the shadows.
“Hiding under my bed is pretty crappy,” I told him before the blood began to pool in my face.
“You don’t understand how difficult this is for me.”
“I can imagine,” I replied sarcastically.
His head turned to face me, his eyes glaring at the insensitive tone in my voice. “No. You can’t. It physically hurts to deny myself being with you, Grace; almost as much as lying to you does. But you promised my mother that you wouldn’t become intimate with me, and we promised each other that we’d wait until we were married before we did anything else…again.”
“It was a moment of weakness when I made that promise with you,” I huffed before pulling myself back up onto the bed. I stared at the ceiling and frowned. “You told me that if we waited just one more week, we’d never have to wait again. One more week, you said, remember? And now look at us—five weeks. One week has turned into five, and you’re still hiding under my bed, talking about ‘it hurts’. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I hurt, too?”
I waited for his response, but when he said nothing I sighed and rolled over onto my stomach, letting my arm dangle to the floor. “I’m sorry. I just don’t like rejection.”
I wiggled my fingers and waited for his to reach out to take mine but he didn’t. “Robert? Robert, I said I was sorry—all of this has just been a bit aggravating for me and knowing that I have to wait even longer isn’t exactly making things easier. I’m not helping things, am I? Robert?” I slid off of the bed and peeked beneath it, gasping when I found it empty. “Where’d you go?”
Standing up, I spun around in a circle, looking at every corner, every wall to see if he was merely hiding before heading to the window to look outside. “Ow, crap!” I yelped as my right foot dropped down and mingled with the forgotten glass on the floor. I fell onto the bed, clasping my ankle in my hands and watching the blood ooze from a large gash in my sole. A larger piece of glass was protruding from it, surrounded by smaller, tinier shards of sparkling pain that grew darker as the blood seeped through the tiny cuts that they’d created.
A thumping sound came from Matthew’s room, and I suddenly realized that the crying that I had heard earlier had stopped. With nervous fingers, I pulled the largest piece of glass out of my foot and tossed it onto the bed. I hobbled towards the door and opened it, finding the hallway dark. There was no light coming from downstairs, and the light that should have been glowing from beneath Dad and Janice’s door was absent. I turned to the left and limped to Matthew’s door, grabbing the handle and attempting to turn it. It was locked.
“Janice?” I called out, but no response came. I jiggled the doorknob once more, and found it just as inflexible. “Janice, open the door!”
I pushed against the door with my shoulder but it wouldn’t budge. Leaning down, I braced myself against it, planting my bleeding foot on the wooden floor and pushing, biting through the pain that shot through me as the glass embedded deeper, but the blood that had pooled beneath me caused me to slip, and I fell, holding onto the doorknob to keep from landing on my face. “Janice!” I shouted, and began pounding on the door.
From behind the wooden surface, I could hear muffled crying. This spurred me on and I scrambled to my feet, limping away from the door a bit and then charging towards it, leaning my head and shoulder down and slamming into the dubiously solid door. The force of the impact reverberated through me and I fell once more. The wailing grew louder, and I shook off the pain to stand up once more, this time putting more space between the me and the door.
With a heavy, forceful grunt, I ran, shoving my entire right side into the door. It gave and I crashed into the room, tumbling into the closet door and bouncing off, landing on my back. A loud bang followed as the door slammed into the wall, the doorknob embedding into the plaster getting trapped there.
Groaning, I rolled over and reached for the crib, using it as leverage to pull myself up. Matthew lay inside, his legs and arms flailing as his red face and puckered lips warned me of the coming scream. My hip and shoulder were throbbing, while my foot felt like it was on fire. Ignoring the pain, I reached into the crib to pick the baby up, cradling him against my chest securely before turning around to take in the state of the room.
Janice wasn’t there; the rocking chair that sat in the corner was empty. The window was shut, and the air in the room was stale and stifling. Matthew’s diaper was full, his pajamas wet. He screamed in my ear and I knew I had to remedy the cause of his discomfort before anything else. I worked quickly, removing his clothes and changing his diaper. Almost immediately, the baby calmed down, his cries turning into small whimpers as he adjusted to being dry and warm once more.
