I can feel her moving in my bones, straining to be set free. If I
close my eyes any longer than it takes to blink, she will overtake me.
I will open my eyes, but she will be the one examining the world. She
will be living and I will be gone.
How long have you been having these hallucinations? the doctor asks.
Hallucinations are flying pigs and dancing mushrooms, not tingling
fingers and itchy skin. I shrug. The paper under my bottom crinkles.
He takes a notepad from his pocket.
I can write a prescription, he says. But I think you should talk to
someone. Jolene can give you a list of names on your way out.
The door slams shut. I crumple the three-by-five inch square into a
tiny ball and shove it in my mouth. Suck until the paper softens and
starts to disintegrate. Swallow.
***
I clutch the sink and stare into the mirror expecting to see her
staring back, but it's only me: sallow skin, sunken cheeks, bruised
eyes. Are you there? I whisper. A toilet flushes and someone farts.
I dry my hands on the back of my jeans before entering the priest's
office.
I only have a few minutes before my next appointment, he says,
checking his watch.
He sprinkles holy water over my face and prays, In the name of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Her laughter echoes inside my chest.
Let God be your peace. Find your rest in Him.
I don't tell him I stopped believing in God three years ago when Nancy
Colberg said, The Lord giveth. And the Lord taketh away.
***
She arrived last week, the morning of my daughter's birthday party.
The party we have every year even though we have no daughter. Jack
thinks it will help me remember, even though Id rather forget. We
light four candles and I see the bright beams twisting on top of the
ambulance. We blow out the flames and I hear her final, gasping
breath. The vanilla cake so much like the soft blanket they wrapped
around her still, gray body just before they took her from me. Why
does she need a blanket? I remember thinking. She feels nothing.
I don't do ghosts, the psychic says.
She closes her eyes and waves her hand over a smoky, crystal ball.
I tell her, Neither do I.
She says, Thirty dollars please.
I pay with a jar of quarters and dimes. Nickels and pennies. Coins I
started collecting after her tiny fist first punched the inside of my
womb. Ballet lessons, I thought. Or boxing. A summer at space camp.
The world was ours. Now I pay a phony to tell me I will live a long,
happy life and have many, beautiful children.
***
I touch the blade of the paring knife to my wrist, then pull it away
again. Touch. Lift. Inside, she is safe and innocent, undiscovered.
Touch. Press down. I wince and throw the knife across the room. She
seeps out of me: thin and red and terrified. Outside, she is a
spectacle. They will stare and whisper and pity us. They will tell us
it is unhealthy to still be grieving after all this time.
You don't belong here, I say.
She slides down the drain and I wash her away.
***
Jack lights five candles, then takes my hand. Squeezes. He runs his
thumb over my wrist and says, Happy Birthday, Little One.
I dig at the lint in my pocket and stare out the window. The sirens
are loud now, right outside our door. She never stays away for too
long. Already I can feel her swimming in my blood again. Clawing at my
chest. Straining to be set free.
Valerie Geary's short fiction has appeared in The Absent Willow Review, Colored Chalk and Menda City Review. Read more of her work as well as book reviews and author interviews at: http://www.valeriegeary.blogspot.com.
| Death inspires
me. Universally, it is the most common thing in the world, so innocuous
and every day. Yet individually, it is the deepest, darkest well into
which the human spirit can descend. The ones we've loved and lost don't disappear. Not really. They are always around, crawling and scratching beneath the surface of things, wanting to be heard, waiting for someone to tell their story. |
