Winter in Full Bloom

by Anita Higman

  I swallowed my gasp. Why would Camille tell Mother what she’d hoped to keep a secret? Probably she felt desperately cornered.

  Mother’s face blazed red. “Who’s the father? Was it that ridiculous boyfriend of yours who tossed your flute into the river?”

  Camille covered her mouth with her napkin and ran from the room.

  Julie looked at me—confusion and fear consuming her lovely face.

  “It’ll be all right, Julie, but I need to see about Camille.” I gave Mother a sharp look, not caring in the least if it upset her sensibilities. I rose, slapped the napkin on the table, and stormed out of the room.

  I heard a chair move behind me. Julie must be following me, since she was surely afraid of staying in the same room with Mother when she was in such an agitated state.

  When I got to the bathroom door I tried the knob. The door was locked. “Camille, please let me in. I want to help.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’m just sick at my stomach.” Her voice sounded weak and desolate.

  Oh, Camille. I’m so sorry I brought you to this house, to America. I had wanted all to be well, for us to be a family. Would it never be? “I’ll stay right here if you need me.”

  Julie joined me by the bathroom door. “Mom, is Aunt Camy going to be okay?”

  “Yes.” But really, I had no idea if my sister would be all right. Since Camille was ill on and off, I had no idea what a pregnancy would do to her weakened condition.

  Cane in hand, Mother came marching full throttle toward us like a locomotive.

  I shuddered at the sight, since I knew she was about to spew more of her bile.

  “Please move out of my way.” She waved her cane at us, but I didn’t move an inch.

  Julie stepped aside.

  Mother banged on the door with the top of her cane. “What do you mean, you’re pregnant? How could you be so promiscuous?” she hollered through the door. “Here you’ve played your flute, trying to make me think you’re somebody special. You’re nobody. Worse than that … you’re a tramp. But then I guess you’re used to being on the streets.”

  If blood could boil, mine was at a full roll. At that moment I wanted to rail and scream at my mother—maybe even smack some sense into her. I couldn’t believe she’d said such unthinkably cruel things to Camille and in front of my Julie. “Mother, that has to be one of the most vulgar and heartless things I’ve ever heard a mother utter to her daughter.”

  Mother hissed, “She’s not my daughter.”

  “You’re right.” I nodded. “Nor should she be. You’re the last person on earth who deserves her.”

  “Bah. I should have listened to Dragan,” Mother said. “She told me it was a bad idea to have this tea.”

  “Oh she did. Well, I can tell you, I’ve heard enough about that woman. And just so you know, Camille is not promiscuous. Her former boyfriend raped her! But you would never know that, since you toss vicious accusations without care or concern for anyone. You live your life in judgment of your family without an ounce of love or mercy. I guess it’s because you’ve saved it all up for the hired help!” By the time I was finished, my breathing was raspy, and I felt dizzy. But I never should have told Mother that Camille was raped. It wasn’t my place to tell her, and it was certainly none of Mother’s business.

  Julie took another step back. Perhaps I had frightened her. Well, I had frightened myself. Mostly likely I’d unleashed forty years of repressed verbal abuse all in one sweep. It felt good and horrible all at the same time.

  Mother moved in closer to the door. “You should go home, Camille. Your sister will take you. Come out now. You’re so quiet. I know you want to punish us, but it would be better …” She rattled the knob again. “The lock on this door has never been right.” Mother yanked on the doorknob and then shoved on the door with her shoulder. “I’m coming in.” The door burst open but stopped midway as it slammed into Camille full force.

  The thrust of the door made Camille stumble forward onto the sharp edge of a standing towel rack. She screamed and crumpled to the ceramic floor.

  I ran to Camille and knelt down next to her. “Camille?”

  Julie put her arm over her face and began to cry.

  Camille clutched her lower abdomen, writhing on the hard floor. “Something’s not right. I’m feeling a contraction.” She looked up at me, her eyes filled with fear.

  I took hold of Camille as if she were a small child. “I’m right here. We should go to the hospital.”

  “No, I won’t go.” Camille grasped my arm. “Mom died in the hospital. I won’t go. Please don’t make me go.”

  “Okay. All right.” That decision seemed far from wise, but I hated to argue with her in such a frightened state. I swept the wispy curls from her cheek and rocked her back and forth. “I’m right here.”

  Julie stood in the doorway. Mother stood next to her, rigid and silent.

  As I whispered to Camille and hummed a lullaby, a spot of blood appeared on her dress. Then the stain turned into a coiling ribbon of blood across the floor.

  “Oh, dear God in heaven,” Camille said. “The fall. There’s blood. I’m going to lose the baby, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know, but we should go to the hospital right now.” God help us.

  Julie stood next to me. “Mom, please let me help. What can I do?”

  “Call 911. Now.”

  “I will.” Julie pulled out her cell phone and pushed in the number.

  Mother stood in the doorway, watching us with an expression of terror. She stepped away from us, looking white as death and murmuring one word. “Adongo.”

  Camille mashed the back of her hand to her eyes. Mascara-stained tears ran down her face. “Lily, I wanted this baby so much. If it’d been a girl, I would have named her Anne from your middle name. After you. Little Anne was my last chance to make a family.” She burrowed her face into the folds of my dress. “My last chance.”

  “It’s not your last chance. And you will always have me and Julie. You’ll always have us.” I continued to rock her in my arms. “We love you dearly.”

  Perspiration trickled down her face as her eyes became glossy with tears. I knew Camille hadn’t cried in a long time. But she did now. She cried for her baby.

  “You won’t leave me too … will you, Lils?” she asked in a childlike voice.

  “No, I’ll never leave you. Nothing will ever tear us apart again. Okay?” I stroked her damp curls away from her face. “But we have to go to the hospital in a minute. The ambulance will be here soon, and they’ll try to save the baby.”

  “Do you think they can?” Camille suddenly looked up and tugged on my dress.

  “I don’t know, but we have to try.”

  “Yes, we have to try,” Camille whispered.

  I held out my right palm, and she her left, and we met palm to palm. But this time I laced my fingers around her hand and didn’t let go.

  “Maybe we should pray,” Julie said softly.

  “Yes, pray, Julie,” Mother said. “It’s all we have left.”

  Reclining in the hospital chair, I half-opened my eyes to make sure Camille was still asleep in her bed. Earlier, she’d tossed and turned, looking exhausted, but now she seemed to have drifted off. I tucked my blanket around my neck, hoping to get a little shut-eye, but the odds weren’t in my favor. With my worry over Camille, the itchy woolen blanket, the antiseptic smells, and the not-so-amicable chair, sleep was unlikely. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

  It had been heartbreaking to see Camille’s grief during the loss of her child and then the D&C that the doctors had to follow up with after the miscarriage. To watch as her hope got snuffed out was unbearable. In my blind optimism, I’d had such expectations in bringing her home from Australia. And that hope had ended in tragedy. She had trusted me that I would help her, keep her safe. And even though the fall had not been from my hand, I felt somehow it was my fault. That I had failed her as a sister, and that I no longer deserved her trust. />
  Mother sat by Camille’s hospital bedside, refusing to take a break, even when I insisted. She was as stubborn as always but in an entirely new way—a way I’d never seen before nor could have even imagined. Mother said little, but her hands wrung into knots on the railing. Although there were many reasons for her torment, it was most likely connected with Camille’s fall and the loss of her baby.

  Outside a storm brewed with bouts of rumbling thunder. Raindrops ran down the windows in twisting rivulets. The gentle sounds of the storm along with the steady beeping of Camille’s heart monitor made me sleepy again. That is, until I heard Mother speak up.

  “Camille, I know you’re asleep or too groggy from the medicine to hear me,” Mother said, “but I have to say these things or I may lose my mind. Please, can you ever forgive me? I have not been a mother to you. I have been … odious. It’s true. And now I’ve failed you again, because I failed your baby. My own grandchild. Your child’s death was my fault, and for as long as I live, I will never forgive myself for what I did … for what I’ve become.”

  Since I’d never heard my mother utter such apologies I strained to hear every word. I didn’t rouse from the chair, though, since I didn’t want to break the flow of her repentance.

  “First,” Mother said, “I know how much you love music, so if you don’t mind listening to an old woman sing, I have this cradle song I want to share. It has always been my favorite. I can’t carry a tune worth anything anymore, but I’ll try.” Mother paused and then in a soft voice, sang,

  “Sleep, my babe, lie still and slumber,

  All through the night

  Guardian angels God will lend thee,

  All through the night

  Soft and drowsy hours are creeping,

  Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,

  Mother dear her watch is keeping,

  All through the night

  God is here, you’ll not be lonely,

  All through the night

  ’Tis not I who guards thee only,

  All through the night

  Night’s dark shades will soon be over …”

  Mother stopped singing, her voice choked with emotion. “I forgot the rest.”

  Her gray hair, taken down from its bun, now spilled around her shoulders. In all my years I couldn’t remember ever seeing Mother’s hair in such a relaxed style. It was wonderfully bewildering to see the changes. Not just in her hair but in her spirit.

  She cleared her gravelly throat. “I know there can be no justification for how I’ve been all these years, but I wish you could know a bit of me. Of my past. Maybe you will see how I came to be the way I am. Something I’ve kept hidden, and something I’ve spent my whole life guarding, trying to forget. But it’s always been there in the dark corners of my mind, like a devil lurking in the shadows, ready to devour me. If you could only know how it has chased me and hounded me like a beast.” Mother coughed and took a sip of her water from the nightstand. “After I graduated from college, but before I married, I was a missionary in Kenya. Hard to believe, I know.” She chuckled.

  My ears perked up until they ached.

  “I was dedicated to Christ,” Mother said, “and even though my parents were against my career choice, I went to Africa anyway. I was as headstrong back then as I am today. But different in spirit. Very different. I settled into a village there, helping as a teacher and as an assistant to the nurse. There were so many needs. But the people, they were grateful for everything and eager to know about my life and my God. It became a joy to share. They took me into their hearts, and I did the same.”

  When Camille turned over, Mother wiped a lock of hair from her cheek. Then she clutched the railing and continued her story. “But then one stormy day, very much like this one, as the children were singing together, making such a joyful noise that I knew heaven had heard us and was singing along… there was a massacre. A warring tribe swept through the village like a black flood. The men came with machetes and spears, and they brutally killed most of the people in our village. I’m not sure how I escaped, since I stayed to help the children get away. But my efforts failed. The Kenyan military came in, but they were too late. I heard later that this unspeakable violence was because of a dispute over land. Imagine.”

  Mother shook her head, her tears turning into quiet sobs.

  The sight of my mother in such an emotional state made my stomach constrict into a ball.

  “I remember holding one of the littlest ones as she died that day,” Mother said. “Her name was Adongo, which meant second of twins. She’d survived the birth, but the first twin had not. And since Adongo was considered a curse in her culture at the time, her mother had fled with her, hoping to save her from being killed. And she had. Adongo managed to survive it all … until that day.”

  Mother plucked a few tissues from the box on the nightstand. “I had grown to love all the children, but she had been special to me for so many reasons. I held Adongo that dreadful day as the blood flowed from a wound in her neck. I pressed my hand there, trying to stop it, but the cut was too deep. I held her to me as the tears and the rain and the blood got mixed together, and the big brown eyes of Adongo lost their light. As the life drained out of her, some part of me died that day along with her.”

  Mother covered her face. After a moment she raised back up. “I went home to recover but never returned to Kenya … to the place and the people I loved. I’d come to believe that if God could allow such horror in the midst of my selfless deeds, then He was of no use to me or to anyone. Not worthy of love or trust or worship. I became disillusioned and despondent, but when I came out of that fog, a new philosophy emerged. Since living for God had no value, I would embrace a new theology … by living only for myself. Through the years since then, I haven’t been able to stand the sounds of singing. The lovelier the song, the sharper the flash in my memory of the children singing. Of her. All I wanted to do was forget.”

  Mother blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “When I gave birth, I resented having children. And, you, Camille, you were the second born of twins. You were like Adongo, and in my twisted thinking, I got it in my head that God was punishing me for disowning Him by making me conceive twins. You were a constant reminder of my past, that I was running from my faith. Then when my mother came up with the idea of adoption I gave in to it. I thought it was a way out, but in reality it kept me forever locked inside my misery.

  “And then when I saw all that blood flowing from you like Adongo, it was like I came to myself. And I knew what I’d become.” Mother rested her head on the railing, whispered something, and then raised back up again. “I could not have loathed myself any more than I did in that moment. The very evil I questioned God about, that I had shaken my fist to the heavens over, was inside me, not God. The very evil that I detested and fled from, well… I could see it in me.”

  Mother took Camille’s hand in hers, pressed it against her lips, and then placed it back down on the sheet. “Codladh samh a stór. Yes, my little treasure. Your hand is so pale, and there’s so little strength left. I wish I could give you the last of mine. I’m not sure I even want mine. I certainly don’t deserve it. I’m the old woman who turned her heart away from all that is good and lovely. Just as God turned away for a moment from the sin that Jesus bore, maybe Christ should look away from me. Maybe it’s too late for redemption, for someone wicked like me.”

  It felt unsettling to see Mother dissolve into a pool of helplessness. But the sight was also restorative. It was God’s hand reaching across the past. It was His rescue, His remolding, His mercy. “It’s not too late,” I whispered.

  Mother turned back and looked at me, her eyes red from crying. “You heard all that?”

  I nodded. “If I haven’t turned away from you, I know Christ hasn’t.”

  Her shoulders heaved a sigh of relief then.

  “But why didn’t you tell me this a long time ago?”

  Mother glanced at the rain outside. “I don’t know. Well, p
ride, I suppose. I hated looking weak.” She coughed and took another sip of water. “I’ve seen you and Julie and your sister be so vulnerable together. I’ve seen you pour out your affection on each other. Your light glows all around you, and I guess you could say that it has illuminated my darkness. You turned out well, a good mother to Julie, not because of me, but in spite of me.”

  Camille roused from her sleep, and this time her eyes seemed clearer as she stared at us. “I feel a little better.” But lingering in her expression was the sorrow of what had happened. The loss of her child—the emptiness of her womb. The pregnancy may have come from one man’s sin, but the child was no less precious—no less made in the image of God and worthy of grieving over. It would take some time to say goodbye.

  Mother rose from her chair and hovered over Camille. Then she burst into tears again.

  Julie came into the room, witnessed the amazing spectacle of her grandmother’s tears, and eased over to the other side of the bed as if walking on a fragile sheet of glass.

  A nurse stopped in, witnessed the scene, and quietly backed out of the room.

  Mother didn’t seem embarrassed by her tears. She didn’t stop or even try to justify her display of emotions. She took hold of Camille’s hand and brought it to her cheek.

  Julie and I drew closer and held hands by the bed. Then when Camille pulled the oxygen tubes from her nose and broke down in tears, it seemed to open the floodgates of our emotions as well. The rain continued to fall outside, coming down more heavily and looking very much like tears as it ran down the windows. Maybe all of heaven was weeping with us.

  We all cried softly around the bed, and in those precious moments, healing came to our family. In the midst of our loss God had come near—a divine moment had arrived. I embraced it and took a mental snapshot of the scene, so that I could bring it back whenever I needed to see it again, to be encouraged by our miracle.

  And I prayed for my mother, that devils would no longer lurk in the shadows of her soul.