Essence

by Mandi Lynn

  Later my dad sits in a wooden rocking chair while hooked up to his IV and other wires—there are few; only enough to keep the pain away. Every night that I have to return to the lagoon, I’m afraid he’ll leave while I’m gone. There’s no way I can stay by his side until he dies, and I know it’s not my fault. If I had to choose a death for my dad, it would be in his sleep. That would be the least painful. I won’t be there to hold his hand or watch as he slips away, but I can go through the rest of eternity knowing that he had been dreaming of how it had once been before I died—when we were a family and went on camping trips, and there was no pull trying to take me away.

  My mom brings over a chair to sit next to him and holds his hand, his pointer finger encased in a device that measures blood pressure. She rubs his hands, scarred and bruised from IVs and needles, and keeps them warm while they talk. My mom does most of the talking—she tries to keep away from any subject that may pertain to his physical state. She reminds me what it means to truly love someone until the end. Here is my dad, unable to say I love you like he once had, but my mom is at his side, willing to be with him until the last moment.

  My dad looks out the window, and I swear he sees me. I don’t flinch away when he looks at me and neither does he. Instead he smiles and looks back toward my mom.

  “I’ll see her soon. My little Emma…” my dad whispers to himself in a quiet voice. I see a tear roll down my mom’s face and fall to the ground, as her eyes squint shut. She takes a quick breath, and I try to see if she remembers me.

  “I know…” she whispers back, as tears start to cover her face. She clutches his hands and looks at his scarred body. Countless surgeries have left him with red marks on every inch of his body. He looks so different.

  “I love you…” he says in a clear voice. It reminds me of how he had once been—the head of the house, going to work, making me breakfast. I wish I could go back to that. But when I look at his aged face, I remember I can’t change the past.

  Sitting in his rocking chair, I see him draw an elongated breath and know it’s his last. It’s peaceful, his death; almost dreamlike. My mom, still holding his hand firmly, starts to cry as my dad goes into an unending sleep—she doesn’t need to look at the monitor to know he’s gone. He slips into the place we call Heaven, where all of his worries are gone.…

  To be said, in the long run, it was a short fight.

  Chapter 24

  Senility

  Death, loss, and pain; something my family will always feel. It’s like there’s a curse on us. They say God does things for a reason; that there is a lesson to this. I’m not sure if this is true anymore.

  Eternity folds in on itself. The days are obscured and events overlap. The timeline of my life jumps around and no longer makes sense. Year pass, days pass, months pass. Time is a question.

  _________________

  Months later I still find myself unable to let my mom go. I’ve found my permanent spot sitting under a window that looks in through the kitchen, giving me the simple gift of hearing everything within. Eventually my mom finds her strength again, getting up out of her chair with a fury. The table around her is filled with our family that has taken it upon themselves to take care of her after my dad’s passing.

  “Get out of my house,” she says in a slow, angry voice. My aunt stares at her in disbelief.

  “Honey, please sit down,” my grandma says, motioning my mom to lower her voice.

  “I can take care of myself.” My family is shaken by her actions, but my grandparents—who have been staying with her—leave the table with a quiet good-bye. My aunt stands her ground, while my grandparents go around the house to pack their things. My mom sits at the table, falling apart in her own personal silence.

  “We’ll be back soon,” my grandma says with a smile, as if my mom isn’t uprooting them from the place they had lived for the past few weeks.

  My grandparents let themselves out, leaving my mom and aunt alone. “Please, just leave me,” my mom says, tears filling her eyes. They start to stream down the corner of her eyes, but she makes no attempt to conceal or hide them.

  “But…”

  “Please,” my mom says again, cutting off my aunt before she can finish.

  Some sort of understanding comes, and my aunt quietly gathers her things and departs.

  _________________

  My dad’s funeral was not like mine in any sense. I was determined to stay the entire time, but once it started, I knew I would not last.

  Everyone is quiet, silently crying to themselves. I find myself curled in a ball, in a bush near the church, trying not to burst out with an audible scream. I miss my dad and want to honor him today, but soon I find myself running back to the safety of my house, knowing everyone who might have been there before is now attending the funeral.

  Rubbing my eyes, my chest is heaving by the time I reach my house. In my empty yard I don’t know where to go but find myself climbing. Soon I’m in the trees above everything. I hug the branches, clinging to the bark with both fear and longing, looking over what is laid out in front of me. I want to scream, to yell to the world, “I’m alive.” I stand, hands clenched on a limb above, feet unstable on the rounded branch of the thick tree. I inhale and am about to shout until I feel something inside me slip. My grip lessens, but I don’t fall. Instead, I sit on the branch, my knees no longer strong. Leaning against the bark of the tree, I let myself release all the emotion I have been holding back since my dad got sick.

  The funeral started in the early bitter winter morning—snow is expected. An hour or two passes, and it’s like I’m frozen in place to the tree. I feel an odd sensation glide through my body and open my eyes to the first snowfall of the year. It’s different from how rain feels. In Phantom Lagoon rain feels as if bugs are crawling on you. Snow is light—like a breeze.

  With unstable legs I climb down from the tree and stand in the open expanse of my backyard. The sky is white, small puffs of snow floating down. Already the ground has a light layer blanketing the yard. Behind me there is the sound of footsteps and the rustle of tree branches. Turning around, I see Luna approach in her unmistakable ball gown. She wears a shawl to cover her shoulders in the cold.

  “How do you do it?” I find myself asking.

  She laughs and motions me to follow her to a picnic table near the back door of my house. I sit next to her and wait for an answer.

  Luna fumbles with the lace on her dress, recalling some memory unknown to me. “I was born in 1326 on a full moon during a solar eclipse. My parents named me Adia de Luna, but they always called me Adia. I grew up in Marseille, France. We were just peasants, wondering if we would be lucky enough to eat that day. It took me centuries to learn death is hard to come by.” She pauses, and I try to figure out what she means. Finally she looks down at her dress and rubs the floral pattern while speaking.

  “While I was still human, I lived through the Black Death. I watched my family fall to the sickness, and one by one they all died. I tried to save them but could only save myself. I discovered the magic that’s held on Earth, and now I live forever. It’s a curse I’ve brought upon every soul in Phantom Lagoon, and a day hasn’t gone by where I wish I hadn’t tried to save myself in 1348. I was ignorant to my actions, and I never dreamed I would’ve succeeded. I spent the better part of two hundred years in Europe exploring. There was a gentleman…and soon I was risking everything for him. I loved him—the feeling was mutual.” She pauses for the briefest moment, fumbling with her dress. “Horrible things happened, and I was forced to the New World. Even now I still wait for his return, thinking he will come for me. I know I can’t let myself fall in love again—not when I will live forever. Phantom Lagoon was made to protect souls from the deadly stones, but some still wonder…” she trails off, closing her eyes.

  She looks at me now. “Phantom Lagoon has different effects on people. Most become scared. Tyler is a unique soul. He was an orphan who worked in the mills before there were child la
bor laws. He was scared when he came but found his voice. He had no family to lose, so the lagoon became his playground. He became an annoyance to most, but we think of him as a part of our family. He’s not perfect, but here in Phantom Lagoon, his life is far better than it had been working in the mills.

  “Emma, you are just as Eliza. You two are so close to your families that it’s hard to let go. You both go the full extent to save them and hold on to them. Eliza’s father, David, is one who will be missed. When he came, he was not afraid. He took his soul and almost tossed it aside, when he saw the condition Eliza was in. He was willing to see her every day and tell her the secret, if he had to. He knew what could happen, and he tried his best to stop it. But Eliza did follow him one day, and now she’s part of this family. David was thought of badly after that. I wanted to help him and to convince the others to overlook what happened, but he convinced himself that he had murdered his daughter. Although I know Eliza was happier here. Once David disappeared from Phantom Lagoon, Eliza went through a lot of changes and began experimenting like you. She got through it, and so will you.”

  “Luna, did the moon really cause this?” I ask in a timid voice.

  “Yes, but there are things you wouldn’t understand—still things I don’t understand. The moon saved my life. I was born blind. During the eclipse of the sun, I looked up at it. I watched as the sun slowly came back into view. My grandfather grasped me immediately. He hadn’t known I was born blind—but I had. For some reason, even at that early age, I knew something was wrong with me. But the sun—it gave me sight. While others looked away from the harmful rays of the sun during the eclipse, I was drawn to it. I could not see colors, but I had sight.

  “My grandfather was superstitious—he blamed my loss of color on the day I was born. He said it was unnatural to birth life the same day the sky goes dark. I told him what happened, and he scoffed at me. ‘To be born blind for only seconds is preposterous. The eclipse stole your sight!’ He hated my parents for naming me after the moon. I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed blind—being handicapped was not an option during that era. I owed myself to the moon. When I became an Essence, I saw color and brilliancy for the first time in my life. That was when I realized my eyes were almost white. When I had looked to the moon, it had done something that can’t be explained. It’s not possible to be born with such eye pigmentation. It resembles the moon in ways that are uncanny. But to be able to live with sight…I would’ve given up more than just the color of my eyes.

  “Phantom Lagoon is not just from the moon though, Emma—some things have so much to tell us. Those stones aren’t for punishment. They’re just here.”

  I put my hand to my neck and feel the stone around it—its visible flaws. I wish I could correct them—correct me.

  “Emma, you have to realize people die. Some of us don’t. Eternity is neither a gift nor a curse. We just need to know how to use it.” She walks back to the forest without another word.

  The snow falls to the ground, and I let it glide through my body, until I hear the sound of a car pulling up. Without thinking, I run toward Phantom Lagoon, knowing my mom no longer believes I’m here.

  My mom is acting as if I’m dead; that there is no way on earth that I can exist. I do exist, but my mom ignores me. Once my dad became sick, I was forgotten—put on hold. Now she questions whether what happened between us is real and has come to the conclusion it isn’t. She told me not to forget her, but she has forgotten me instead. I knew it would happen—but, again, things have come too soon.

  I once stood in the middle of the room, determined to talk to her and get answers. But she walked by me without a second glance, acting like she had seen a ghost—which I suppose she had.

  _________________

  Two years pass, and I stop seeing my mom altogether. My mom lives alone and no longer wants to see her friends. At first they would come over to make sure she was okay, like my family had, but my mom didn’t want anyone around her.

  I don’t abandon her though. I’m there, always watching, making sure she is okay. She doesn’t know it, but I’m always close by.

  My mom’s life consists of staying in the house. She cries a lot; sometimes while holding my drawings, other times while she is holding something of my father’s. She will just curl up on the bed and cry while holding our belongings. She didn’t eat at first, and I began to worry about her—I knew I couldn’t sit and watch her starve. I tried my best to help her, so I contacted her doctor once, telling him to come over immediately. He didn’t question who I was or why I was calling.

  When the medics arrive, they found my mom sulking on the floor. She refused to move, and they were forced to remove her from the house. It pains me to see her dragged from her home and placed in an ambulance to be rushed to a hospital, but I know they can take care of her for me.

  They bring her to a “home” where she can stay and talk to others. It isn’t for the mentally ill, but it does have nurses. There are apartments and privacy, but everyday a nurse comes by with medication. It’s somewhere they can keep a close eye on her. Somewhere she can’t get hurt. Somewhere she isn’t alone. It’s where she’ll live from now on.

  She doesn’t like it. It takes her a month before she stops asking to go home. After that she realized there is no home to go to. With no one living there, family members decided to sell our house—a new family lives there now.

  They have two daughters and a son—he is the youngest. His name is Justin, and he is no older than Kenzie. He’s a handful and his two older sisters—one eight and the other eleven—enjoy helping him raid the house. I like watching them play in the backyard, but when they first moved in, it was hard to see my things taken away. All our furniture was put onto a moving truck and given to family members, since my mom has no use for it.

  My room—which had been left undisturbed after I died—had all its contents taken out, which were either thrown away or given to Goodwill. I can’t take anything with me or have a say in where they end up. The hardest thing to see go is a box that holds all my colored pencils and charcoal that I used for drawing. They are special to me, and it’s difficult to see the movers carelessly throw them into a garbage bin, along with so many other things I wish I could’ve saved.

  In a way I’m glad my mom isn’t the one to make the decision of what she is going to keep from our house—I know, if she was the one to throw out that box, it would’ve hurt more.

  _________________

  More years pass and things get better. My mom no longer locks herself in her room, refusing to come out and socialize. She’s made friends, and when family visits, she hugs and greets them. Sometimes she will ask when she gets to go home, but whoever is with her that day will just say that she already is home.

  There are still those days where the pain of loss will overcome and almost take her alive. She will stop eating, and when people talk to her, it is like she isn’t even there. Her eyes are so blank it is as if she’s on another planet. I wonder sometimes if she remembers when I had visited her. If she still questions whether I’m real or not. I feel as if I’ve already had to give her up and let go.

  Upon my mom’s seventy-sixth birthday, she is moved into a nursing home which can treat people who need intensive care. I, on the other hand, am frozen at the age of fifteen.

  Chapter 25

  North Conway

  I wander through town, watching as rain falls down from the sky and melts into the asphalt that lines the roads. Everything is quiet as people take refuge in restaurants and other buildings to get away from the dampness.

  I don’t know why I’m here. I’ve never visited town as an Essence, unless I was passing through to get somewhere else—which usually involved seeing my parents or family somewhere. But today I’m just walking through the forest, and eventually it opens up to a road. I forgot where it leads, and now here I am: North Conway. Shops line the street, and inside them people poke through the shelves, looking but not really buyin
g.

  The mountains line the perimeter, making the landscape background to this town a beautiful postcard picture. I wish the rain bothered me like it once had, but it doesn’t anymore. Once upon a time it felt like bugs crawling across my skin, but now…nothing. I don’t know if I got used to it, or if I just don’t care enough anymore, but the rain continues to pass through me, nothing more than a tickle.

  The air is cold but not enough to snow. The sky is dark, but it’s only because of the rain clouds that block the sun. Out in the distance I can only see the base of the mountains, the misty air hiding the peaks. I still have a few more hours until Phantom Lagoon calls me back.

  I step into a gift shop that sells T-shirts. They all say “New Hampshire” in bold, colorful letters and are overpriced for the simple design, but tourists still buy them. I look through the postcards, gazing at the photos of landscapes, bears, moose, and waterfalls.

  “You aren’t seriously going to buy that are you?”

  I turn to the voice, and see a man grab a winter hat that has moose antlers and then places it on his head.

  “What, I don’t look good?” he says, turning and putting on a winning smile. The woman with him laughs and takes off the hat.

  “Why do I go out in public with you?” she asks herself. When I see her face, I know her instantly. Sadie. After all these years she still has the same laugh. Her blond hair has light brown lowlights died for dimension and the length stops just shy of her shoulders. Everything about her is the same, yet amazingly different. On her left hand she wears a ring that is most likely a gift from the man she shops with now. They are both in their early forties.

  “Don’t you think Trish would love this?” the man says, holding out the moose hat again. He is about to model it, but Sadie takes it from his hands.