The Thunderproof Sky

by Loretta Lost

  “Oh, that’s a pretty name, dear. What should I call you?”

  I stare at her intently, hoping she will understand what I’m saying. “I don’t know. You were the person who was supposed to give me a name.”

  She hesitates. She freezes a little. “No. No, no, no, no. That never happened. It never happened. You have to tell Liam it never happened—it was all a bad dream. No, no, no, no, no.”

  She collapses to the floor, hugging her shoulders and rocking back and forth. “No, no, no no, no. Don’t tell Jim. Please don’t tell Jim. He’ll kill me. No, no, no, no.”

  Cole and I exchange looks.

  I take a deep breath of possibly-smallpox-infested air, and crouch down to look at the old woman. “About twenty-seven years ago, you left a baby in the snow to die,” I tell her gently, not wanting to cause her any further distress, but not knowing how much longer I can stay in this place. “Why did you do that?”

  “No!” she shouts, crawling away, behind the sofa and into a corner of the room that looks to be filled with mouse droppings. “No,” she moans, pressing her face against the wall, as tears begin sliding down her cheeks. “There is no baby. There never was a baby. Tell Liam he’s wrong. There is no baby. There never was a baby.”

  Watching this old woman huddled in a corner, crying and moaning, is strangely unsettling. I feel only pity for her—I think I just felt so much anger and hatred for her husband that I didn’t have much left to give to her.

  That’s unfair, isn’t it? I don’t know much about having parents, but aren’t you supposed to hate them both equally? Especially since she was the actual person who abandoned me, if we can trust the eyewitness account of Liam, who was only a very small child.

  All I know is that we can trust the DNA evidence.

  People lie, children lie, adults lie—but like bones, DNA doesn’t lie. Unfortunately.

  “Is that what I look like?” I ask Cole, pointing to the old woman huddled in the corner. She is wearing a dirty white nightgown, like a ghost from a horror movie, and her white hair is unkempt and frayed. She looks exactly like the crazy bag lady you’d expect to see pushing a shopping cart containing all her worldly belongings—which she carefully selected at a scrapyard, or from garbage cans. You might also find her feeding pigeons, and having very meaningful conversations with them, because they are the only creatures who truly understand the greatest struggles of her life. “Is that my future?”

  “No,” he says, but he does seem shaken. “I would never let you get like that. Look at her arms, Scar. Her neck.”

  I do look then, and I see what he’s referring to. Dozens of fading bluish-black bruises on her pale, wrinkled skin, everywhere. Bruises from being grabbed, or hit. They look exactly like the marks I always get, that Cole has always teased me for. I was covered in them, too, not long ago, after escaping from Benjamin.

  “But her husband’s been in the hospital for so long,” I muse. “He looks so weak.”

  “Not weak enough, apparently. Not long enough.”

  I shake my head in disbelief.

  Cole moves to my side, and places a hand on my lower back. “She could be taking longer to heal, due to her age, or lack of nutrition. Especially if she’s been consuming invisible tea, with cockroach sugar.”

  “Check her kitchen cupboards,” I tell Cole. “Check her fridge, and trash—find out what she’s been eating. If she’s been eating.”

  When he moves to follow my instruction, I call after him. “Try not to get E. coli, salmonella, norovirus, campylobacter, or cyclospora!”

  He looks back at me with puzzlement. “Cyclospora?”

  “Just trust me, you don’t want it. You could be stuck in the airplane bathroom with explosive diarrhea for hours while we cross the Atlantic. Airplane bathrooms are the worst.”

  “Yikes,” he responds. “I’ll try to avoid cholera and dysentery, too.”

  When I turn back to the woman who is huddled in the corner, all my enjoyment from witty banter with Cole dissipates. She is so out of it, that she could not even process anything we were saying. She is just shaking in the corner, rocking back and forth, and trying to convince herself that there is no baby. There was no baby. She keeps repeating this over and over, dozens of times, while crying and trembling.

  My heart aches.

  At least I know that what she did has affected her. She looks completely traumatized.

  Maybe it has even affected her more than it affected me.

  I slowly move closer to her, and crouch down to her level. I try to avoid any sudden movements, like I am about to pet a stray cat. “Janet Larson,” I say softly. “My name is Sophie. I just want to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

  She looks at me in shock, with her blue eyes extremely wide and glassy. She looks like she has forgotten that I was ever in the room. “You look just like me,” she whispers, reaching out with a shaky hand. “You need to let me braid your hair.”

  “Okay,” I say with a nod, hoping that will help her out of her nearly catatonic state. Or is it a psychotic episode? I’m not sure. But maybe braiding my hair will help calm her down, and ground her in reality. “Do you want to stand up?” I ask her. “Come sit on the couch?”

  She looks at me in surprise for several seconds, and then nods slowly. She reaches for me, and I have to grasp her frail arms, to help her stand, and help her wobble over to the couch. She smells terrible.

  I don’t know how old Janet and Jim Larson are, but they seem much older. I guess that’s what poverty will do. I feel like they are probably around the same age as the man in the gas station bathroom. Sixty-seven. But he seemed healthy and energetic, and in great condition. They could be a little older, but it is unlikely that my mother conceived naturally after the age of forty. Although, if they really were dirt poor, and living in dismal conditions—an unplanned pregnancy after age 40, when you already have a small child you can’t afford to feed—and you’ve been abused for decades, and you’re absolutely certain that life won’t get any better…

  I guess I’m starting to see the full picture.

  It’s not a pretty one.

  Benjamin was probably far older than both Janet and Jim Larson, but he was in excellent health. Too excellent. He had everything money could buy. A home gym, personal trainers, massages several times a week, the best healthcare, private chefs to cook his every meal, wealthy and educated friends of similar status to socialize with and play tennis or golf at the country club. Not to mention, underground dungeons for raping young girls, to stimulate his declining libido better than Viagra or Cialis ever could. I lift my hand to finger the bones hanging from my neck. Not anymore.

  “Sit on the floor,” my biological mother says gesturing. “So, I can braid your hair.”

  I flinch slightly, but I kneel before her on a grimy carpet. It looks like a carpet you would find in a building that was abandoned in a war-torn country. It’s stained with blood, and food, ashes from cigarette trays, and lots of miscellaneous dirt. I try to ignore it.

  When she touches my hair, and begins to braid it, I am expecting she will pull on my hair and hurt me. Instead, I am shocked to find that her hands are loving and gentle.

  She combs her fingers through my hair first, to loosen any tangles, and she seems to know what she’s doing. I feel my heart beating erratically, and I hold my breath. Something about the situation is simultaneously creepy and incredibly bittersweet. I don’t know how to feel.

  So, I try to feel nothing.

  “I used to braid my sister’s hair,” the old woman says. “When we were girls. She was so beautiful, just like you.”

  “What happened to her?” I ask.

  “She killed herself,” the old woman answers.

  I get a shiver of dread, as she continues braiding. Cole walks back into the room then, and we exchange a look.

  “Is there a lot of mental illness in your family?” I ask the woman.

  “Why? Why is your hair the wrong color?” she asks sudd
enly. “Why is your hair so dark?”

  I grimace. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re me,” she responds. “You’re me, when I was younger. Like the ghost of Christmas past. But you have the wrong hair color.”

  “I had to make it darker,” I tell her softly, never releasing eye contact with Cole.

  “It still looks nice,” she says, and I think she uses an elastic from around her wrist to tie the bottom of the braid, securely. “There you go, lovely. Are you here to take me away?”

  “Take you where?” I ask, rising to my feet and turning to face her.

  “To the other side,” she responds. “Is it my time? Can I die now?”

  I exhale slowly. “No. I just wanted to ask you some questions. About when I was born. Why you couldn’t keep me.”

  Something flashes across the old woman’s eyes, and recognition lights up her face. Her whole body begins rocking back and forth again, and she begins to chant her mantra of denial. “No, no, no, no, no. There is no baby. There was no baby.”

  “I just wanted to know the truth. And to understand.”

  “There is no baby,” the woman says, shaking her head madly. “There was no baby.”

  Cole sighs. “Scar, I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere with her. There isn’t any food here that isn’t rotten, other than cereal. She can’t take care of herself. She’s not in good shape.”

  “I know,” I respond. “It looks like she’s been wearing that dress for weeks. The state of the house…”

  “We need to get her help,” Cole says. “There’s nothing we can do. It could be Alzheimer’s, dementia, schizophrenia, or just PTSD.”

  “Or DID?” I ask him, softly.

  “It doesn’t matter what it is. I don’t know if she can recover—it might be possible. But she needs help—she needs to be put in an old folks’ home or something. It really should be Liam’s job, and he should have done it a long time ago. But she needs help now, so maybe we can do something—and talk to him about it tomorrow in Switzerland.”

  “Okay,” I agree, moving closer to him and preparing to leave. “We’ll call a hospital or something, get some people to pick her up. Pay for her care.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get your answers,” Cole says, grasping my hand. “I’m sorry this was so rough.”

  “It’s okay. Now we know.” I glance back at the poor, pathetic woman who is my biological mother. “And now I know that I probably should get help, sooner rather than later. Or I’ll end up like that.”

  “You never will,” Cole says. “And even if you do—I’ll build your monument and castle way before then, so that we can enjoy it together before you go batshit crazy.”

  “Thanks?” I respond, with a sad smile, but it disappears quickly. “Let’s get out of here. It’s so depressing.”

  “Yeah. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to give Liam shit for this when we see him. No matter what your family is like, neglecting elders is not acceptable.”

  We are heading for the door, when we hear a voice behind us.

  “Liam?” the old woman whispers, and she sounds momentarily lucid. “He doesn’t talk to me. He never comes to see me. He’s never going to come see me again—now he knows about the baby. He remembers. He remembers the baby.”

  I turn back and I am surprised to see a certain clarity in her eyes. I move forward, and kneel on the carpet again, facing her. “Janet, I am your daughter. I’m the baby you abandoned in the snow. Can you tell me why you did that?”

  The old woman stares at me curiously. “Yes.”

  Both of her wizened, feeble hands, lift toward my face. They remain hovering in the air, shaking, as her features constrict with emotion. Finally, her hands rest on my skin, cupping my face as a torrent of tears begin to cascade down her wrinkled cheeks.

  “I left you in the snow because I loved you so much.”

  My chest constricts, and I find it suddenly very difficult to breathe.

  “I wanted you to die,” the old woman says. “I needed you to die.”

  As I watch the pain dance in her eyes, something snaps inside my heart.

  “Because,” she finishes, “it’s better to die than be a woman in this world.”

  I do not notice when the tears begin to gather in my own eyes. I understand her. Heaven help me, of course I understand her.

  “The things I’ve experienced,” she whispers. “How could I hold my baby daughter, and know that she would grow up to suffer the same?”

  She stares off into the distance, as though she is right back in that moment. Her body trembles, as though she can feel the cold wind of winter. Her face is contorted with agony, and resolve. She holds the memory with absolute perfect precision, and all the years fall away, until it is 1989 again.

  “I loved that baby so much. I loved her from her first breath, when she cried out in joy.” The old woman smiles through her tears, and gazes into my eyes. “She wasn’t afraid, you know? She wasn’t afraid of anything. She was full of love, just pure excitement and wonder to be here, in the world, alive. But if she came home with me, if she met her father… all of that would be gone.”

  She touches my face, tracing the tears that I don’t even realize I have been shedding.

  “I wanted her to die so she would never have to face it. I wanted to save her from all that pain and heartache, so that she would never be destroyed. So that she would never lose her innocence, lose her joy. I couldn’t bear that—and I knew—I knew I was too weak to protect her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did to you.”

  My head moves up and down, with the motion of nodding, I can only stare.

  “I lost other babies, too. Before and after you. I kept getting pregnant. He would beat them out of me, you know. He would throw me against the wall, throw me on the floor, until the baby came out—and I saw it. Just a tiny little red blob, like a baby bird without wings.”

  I am so horrified at this image that I have to look away. I feel dizzy and faint.

  “Cole,” I whisper, reaching for him. He is already behind me, holding my hand, squeezing it to give me strength.

  “But you,” the old woman says, touching my shoulder. “When I had you, he was away at war. He didn’t know. I was able to keep you safe, keep you alive inside me—because no one was beating the shit out of me constantly.” She pauses. “I had this little fantasy in my mind, that he would die. I prayed every day, for him to die, and never return so that I could have my life back, and keep my baby. But when they phoned me and said he was coming home soon…” The old woman starts gasping and sobbing with the memory. “I went into labor. I was panicked. I didn’t know what to do—I wanted to run away, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. And I had Liam. I didn’t know what else to do. I swear to you, I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to take care of myself, how to survive. I didn’t even want to survive, but I had to, for Liam. I just knew that if I didn’t kill you, right there and then—he would do even worse.”

  She starts rocking back and forth again, gasping for breath and crying. “And if he didn’t do worse, someone else would. Because that’s just the way it always is. That’s the way it always has been, for me. That’s the way it is. I wanted to save you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The woman reaches for me again, grasping my face so hard it hurts. Her whole body is shaking with sobs. She leans forward and presses her forehead against mine. “Please forgive me. Please forgive me. You can kill me—take revenge. I deserve it. Please. It would be an act of mercy. Kill me now and put me out of my misery. I can’t live like this anymore, knowing how weak I have been. I never deserved my life—I couldn’t protect my little sister, and I couldn’t protect you. It should have been me. I know I deserve to die. Every single day, that’s all I do. I just wait for the end, I just wait for my punishment.”

  “No,” I tell her, in a hoarse whisper, peeling her off me, and looking into her face. “No, listen. Listen to me. You did the right thing.
You really—did the right thing.”

  I hold her shoulders firmly, so I can look into her eyes. “My life has been good, and I have been lucky,” I tell her softly, smiling as a few tears slide down my cheeks. “Thank you so much for being strong enough to give birth to me, seeing it through to the end of the pregnancy. I still do have joy. I am so thankful for my life. You did everything perfectly right.”

  She looks at me in utter confusion, and I just smile, and reach forward to give her a hug. I hug the frail old woman tightly, as I struggle to breathe through my tears. “Thank you… Mom. Thank you for leaving me to die in the snow. It made me strong enough to face everything—and I am so strong, you have no idea. You couldn’t even imagine how strong I am. That’s all because of you.”

  “Really?” she asks, and her body is trembling.

  “Yes. I forgive you, and I thank you. Because my life is so wonderful. You would be amazed, if you knew all the wonderful things that have happened to me. Since that moment in the snow, it has only been good things. Only good things.” I stare forward, at the dirty wall behind her. I stare so hard that my vision grows distorted. I stare so hard that I am surprised the wall hasn’t burst into flames.

  I pull away, and smile at her, into her pale blue eyes that are so much like mine. “You did the right thing. I forgive you. You caused me absolutely no harm—not even frostbite. The family who found me—they were so kind. They were wealthy, and they raised me like their own daughter. I was never hungry, I was never cold, I was never sad. Not even for one day. I’ve had the most remarkable life.”

  “You have?” she asks, gripping my hands desperately.

  “Yes. You see—my life was like a fairytale, right from the very start. I was like Snow White, who lost her mother. But I found my prince—see? This is Cole, my husband.” I gesture behind myself, with a bright smile, and eyes filled with tears. “Isn’t he handsome? I met him when I was only thirteen. Can you imagine meeting the love of your life when you’re only thirteen? And we got married so young, because we both knew. We knew we’d love each other forever. And we’ve been inseparable ever since—we’ve never been apart for even one day. And he’s been so good to me. He’s like a hero straight out of a Hollywood movie. You wouldn’t believe how amazing he is, even if I told you.”