 |
Since it Must be So
The girl sits on the shore of the sea, her unfocused eyes resting on the reflection of the languid sun in the water as it sinks below the horizon. Her long, unkempt black hair blows in the dry, indifferent wind and falls into her eyes, but she doesn’t brush it away, and the lips of her wide, youthful mouth part slightly. She had wanted to climb the mountain, sit on top of it and rest with the work of her ancestors, but she is too young, too small. She could never make it to the top by herself. By herself... as the detached cloud of thought dissolves into something solid, the memories rush back.
The girl’s mother is lying on a bed, her long, pale, slim arm resting on the top of the silken cover. Already the pallor of death is creeping into her skin, but her eyes are still alive and they gaze at the girl. She hears her mother’s clear, gentle voice speak her name, and she smothers a sob as she clutches her mother’s hand to her face, the tears that flow unbidden from her eyes falling onto the graceful, delicate fingers. Her mother tries to reach out to her, wipe her tears away and smooth the hair from her wretched face. But she lacks the strength and her arm falls feebly back to the bed.
She speaks the girl’s name again, but it comes out only a fragile whisper. The girl leans over to hear the words and touches her mother’s flawless ivory face as gently as she can. "Don’t let it die," her mother is saying. "Never let it die." The girl does not have time to ask what she means. As the words leave her perfectly defined lips, her mother goes back, she goes back to be with her ancestors. They are waiting for her... In the second before she dies, the girl sees her mother’s eyes focus on some distant point, on something the girl can’t see, and she smiles with a real happiness that the girl hasn’t seen on her face since before she got sick. Yes, she would try to smile, to make the girl or her father feel better, but it was always wan, there was nothing behind it... But she smiles, an honest, pure, real smile. Then she is gone. Her body is empty. The expression of peace and contentment is frozen on her face. The girl doesn’t want to see it. She doesn’t want to see her mother’s face a shell, a rind of something that’s gone forever. She closes her eyes and doesn’t look, and she grasps at the dead hand, pouring her soul into a fervent wish that it would again be alive. She wants to watch it sew with the smooth, deft movements and write letters with elegant strokes, she wants it to straighten her always-askew obi, she wants it to slap her when she misbehaves and tie her long ebony hair with beautiful gold ribbons and intricate silk butterflies for special occasions.
The girl opens her large eyes, the usual mischievious spark doused by the incessant tears. Her mother lies there void, looking just as she did when the girl had closed her eyes. The girl almost leaps up, clumsily dropping the lifeless hand so that it falls haphazardly onto the thin covering. She stumbles back, squeezing her eyes shut so that she doesn’t see the body. It’s not her mother anymore. It’s not anything anymore but a corpse. She whirls around, almost losing her balance, and runs out of the room, out of the house, ignoring the voices of others as she flees from the thing which is not her mother. She runs until she can’t anymore, collapsing on the sand by the sea. She would have gone on running into the waves if she had the strength; gone on running to where the shelf of land drops off, to where the ocean would swallow her the way her misery is swallowing her.
The memories are hours old, but they feel years away. More. They feel as if they didn’t happen to her, didn’t happen during this century, didn’t even happen on this world, this world that she has only been a part of for six years. Six years with her perfect, beautiful mother with eyes that reflected shining rivers of warmth and love. A strangled sob escapes her throat and she falls forward on the gritty brown sand, clenching her small hands into tight fists while the salt of her tears mingles with the salt of the sea. Her hair spreads out and covers her back and head and arms like a blanket. Long black hair like silk that’s just like the hair of the dead woman back in the house, back in the town. The girl with hair like her mother’s beats the ground with her fists as if she were trying to break it and screams her pain and agony to the pitiless night sky.
The flood of tears leaves the girl’s face ugly and swollen. She creeps forward to the water’s edge and stares at her reflection. Her features are sharp and awkward, unlike the dead woman’s serene, gentle beauty. Her eyes are not shaped like the dead woman’s, but when she looks into their reflection on the lapping waves, she sees the dead woman. The girl hates her eyes for imitating her mother. She hates the long raven hair like her mother’s that cascades mildly down her back. She wants to rip it out of her head and throw it into the sea and watch it float on the surface and then sink into the depths. She hates her father for letting her mother die, and she hates her mother for leaving her here alone, alone under the vast canvas full of mocking stars, a solitary caricature of anguish and spite.
Limbs tremulous and unsteady, the girl stands slowly, weakly. She knows that the mother she used to have would have wanted her to grow up tall and beautiful and peaceful, and sew with deft fingers and write letters with graceful strokes and be the noble, intelligent lady of a distinguished house. She knows. But she doesn’t care, not anymore. Don’t let it die, the girl’s mother had said. The girl knows what she meant know. Don’t let her memory die; don’t ever forget her. The girl wants to forget her. She wants to go against the wishes of the dead woman and forget her. She wants to go against all the wishes of the dead woman who got sick and left her alone forever, and against the wishes of the man who let her die, who is her father but never loved her, who never spent time with her or told her anything. She wants to sleep here, listening to the chill night wind as it howls and weeps the loss of the dead woman. She wants to go back to the village in the morning and go into the house, and the thing which is not her mother will be gone then. She wants to cut off her long hair and burn her beautiful clothes and she wants to make her father unhappy. And wherever the dead woman is now, she wants her to be unhappy, too, even though the girl knows the dead woman will be happy forever now. And she wants to scream out to the planet that she doesn’t care.
But she can’t.
|
 |
