curtains, pink eyelet curtains hanging in a window.
Pink eyelet curtains is not a feeling.
But there’s more — laughing, a baby laughing, that kind of laugh they get where you think they’re going to pee, they’re laughing so hard. And a man laughing, a sweet, delighted kind of laugh. I recognize it. Dad. My throat closes up a bit, thinking of Dad.
“Don’t let your own feelings interfere,” Mom says.
Pink. Laughter. Warmth. I can feel what it is to her. “Joy,” I say finally. I open my eyes.
She smiles. “Yes,” she says. “That was joy.”
“Mom—”
“Now try to block it out.”
I close my eyes again, but this time I visualize building an invisible wall in the space between us, brick by brick, thought by thought, until there’s nothing left behind my eyelids, no color, no feeling, nothing but a gray and empty void.
“Okay, I don’t feel anything.” I open my eyes again and she has a strange expression on her face: relief.
“Well done,” she says, and pulls her hand from mine. “Now you’ll just have to practice it until you can shut out who you want to, when you want to.” That would certainly be handy.
So all that next week, whenever I feel Samjeeza at school, I work on erecting a spiritual barrier between us. At first, absolutely nothing happens. Samjeeza’s sorrow continues to flow into me, making it hard to think about anything at all. But slowly but surely I begin to feel the ways in which I am connected with the life around me, with that energy inside me where the glory is, and when I recognize it in myself I can then work on shutting it down. It’s like the opposite of using glory, in some ways. To bring glory, you have to still the inner voices. To shut it off, you have to keep yourself completely occupied by your thoughts. It’s hard work.
What makes it even worse is that on Friday, Mom lies down and never really gets back up.
She stays in bed in her pajamas, laid back on the pillows like a porcelain doll. Sometimes she reads but mostly she sleeps, for hours, day and night. It becomes a rare thing to catch her awake.
In the middle of the next week a nurse shows up, Carolyn. I’d seen her before at the congregational meetings. Her specialty seems to be end-of-life care for angel-bloods.
“I don’t want you to worry about any of the details,” Mom says one day when Jeffrey and I are both keeping her company. “Billy is going to take care of everything, okay? Just be there for each other. That’s what I want. Hold fast to each other. Help each other through. Can you do that?”
“Okay,” I say. I turn and look at Jeffrey.
“Fine,” he mutters, and then leaves the room.
He’s been pacing around our house all week like a caged animal. Sometimes I feel his rage like a blast of heat, at how unfair this all is, our mom dying because of a stupid rule, our lives dictated by some force that doesn’t seem to care that it’s ruining everything. He hates his own powerlessness. And he especially hates all this isolation, having to stay inside, hiding out. I think he’d rather just go out there and face Samjeeza and have it over with.
Mom sighs. “I wish he wasn’t so angry. It’s only going to make things harder for him.” But truth be told, the isolation is starting to get to me too. All I have now is school, where the presence of Samjeeza keeps me on constant alert, and then home, where the thought that Mom’s about to die is always with me. I talk to Angela on the phone, but we decided it was best for her to lie low since Samjeeza showed up, since he doesn’t know about her. Plus she’s been quiet in an offended way since I told her about Aspen Hill Cemetery.
“I have a theory,” she says to me one night over the phone. “About your dream.”
“Okay.”
“You keep thinking that the reason Tucker’s not there is because he’s hurt or something.”
“Or something,” I say. “What’s your point?”
“What if he’s not there because the two of you break up?” It’s funny that somehow that thought scares me even more than the idea that he’ll be hurt.
“Why would we break up?” I ask.
“Because you’re supposed to be with Christian,” she says. “Maybe that’s what the dream is telling you.”
It hurts me, that thought. I know I could make it better by going to see Tucker in person, by kissing him and assuring him that I love him and letting him hold me, but I don’t dare. It doesn’t matter what Angela thinks. I can’t risk putting him in danger. Again.
I’m upstairs doing the laundry, sorting the whites from the darks, and all I can think about is what Angela said. Maybe we break up. And not because I’m “supposed to be with Christian,” I think then, but because I want him to be safe. I want him to be happy. I want him to have a normal life, and I’d have to be tripping to think that kind of thing is possible with me. I toss the whites in the washer and put in some bleach and I feel such a heaviness and a sense of dread that I want to scream, fill this silent house with my noise. This is not another person’s sorrow, not a Black Wing’s, but my own. I’m bringing it on myself.
I go to my room to take a crack at my homework, and I’m sad.
I talk on the phone with Wendy, and I’m sad. She’s all excited about college, going on about what the dorms are like at WSU and how awesome it’s going to be, and I’m sad. I try to play along, act like I’m excited too, but all I feel is sad.
Sad, sad, sad.
Later, the washing machine beeps. I go to transfer the clothes to the dryer. I’m elbow deep in damp clothes when suddenly the sadness lifts. Instead I feel this incredible, permeating joy, warmth flooding me, a sense of well-being, a whirl of true happiness so overwhelming it makes me want to laugh out loud. I put my hand over my mouth and close my eyes as the feelings wash over me. I don’t understand why. Something strange is happening.
