by Isla Morley
“God, God, God,” he keeps repeating, crying, through the sobs. He lets go. The floor is cool where my forehead bends to meet it, while a pool of tears collects in front of my knees: “No, no, no, no.”
“Where is she? Where is my daughter!” Greg demands somewhere above me. They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him, says the voice inside my head, and I am all the Marys aching to hold the stolen body.
Somebody lifts me and we pass the crowd of mourners standing outside the waiting room. One of the heads turns to watch us as we pass, a hand pressed against her mouth. It takes two blinks to recognize her: Theresa, held up by Jakes on one side and Jenny on the other. They all look like they have just awoken, eyes rubbed red from sleep and shame, aware that they have failed in only one simple thing: to keep watch.
It is into a room with glass walls that we are led. The tomb is dimly lit. Cleo is lying on a narrow bed, a white blanket pulled to her chin as if to ward off the chill in the air. Greg reaches under her, lifts her into his arms, and settles her into his lap on the floor. Kneeling next to him, I lean over to stroke away the blond curls and kiss her white forehead, feeling the last beams of sunlight retreat. A deep, long moan covers the air and Greg begins chanting her name.
“Give her to me,” I tell him. “She’s getting cold.”
“Don’t hold her,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Baby, don’t hold her.”
And then I know he is trying to save me from something awful, the evidence that some terrible monster in the night, the Tokoloshe from the veldt, crawled under the sheet and robbed Cleo of her body.
“Let me have her,” I insist.
THEY WERE THE SAME HANDS that held Cleo, bundled and quiet, up to my face three years ago. She was only minutes old, but already she seemed wise. “This is your mommy,” he said to her. “Mommy, this is Cleo.” Arms strapped to the operating table, body numb from the anesthetic, I looked at my child, swaddled in white, and croaked a teary “Hi.” No more than a whisper away, she peered at me through the ointment-clouded eyes, and in the haziness of the new world I knew she recognized me. Maybe it was the sound of that hushed greeting in a voice as familiar as the inside of a womb, perhaps the invisible cord that tied us together so that no words were necessary, no sight.
So light she was when I held her for the first time hours later, after the incision was stitched neatly together and the spasms and retching of the drugs had subsided, long after the emergency equipment had been packed away. So light. Yet the weight of her tiny frame made an indelible mark on me, like an embosser on rice paper. I let her sleep on my chest for hours, sending the nurses and their concerns back to their station. My anchor she was, securing me to the settled moment of the rise and fall of my chest, to the soft purr of her snoring, to the perfectly populated world of two.
“WAKE UP, wake up, wake up, darling,” I beg, tucking the blanket around her, frowning at what now feels like crushed eggshells where a firm hip used to be. My anchor has been wrenched loose and I am adrift.
“What have they done? Greg, what have they done to her?” I ask, but he is on his feet, anger flashing across his brow as the surgeon returns.
I peer down into her face, the usual flush on her creamy cheeks now gone. Her golden curls are mussed, except for one perfect spring across her brow. I slip one hand under her head, to cup that golden crown one more time, and touch what feels to be caked mud. As her head turns with my palm, I see it is blackened dried blood. Greg’s clipped words are running away from him and I hear a voice far away, on the moon, say, “Increased swelling in the brain . . . was stabilized . . . suddenly crashed . . . too late to operate . . . everything we could . . . ,” and I think they can leave now, all of them, and Cleo and I will stay here, like the ashy figures of Pompeii.
They drone on, Greg getting louder, the other more apologetic, until I turn around and shush them harshly.
“Tula tu tula baba tula sana, Tul’umam ’uzobuya ekuseni.” I begin to sing the African lullaby Beauty once sang to me, rocking my girl as though through a bad dream. “Sleep, baby, sleep, tomorrow your mommy will be with you again.”
PAST THE DOORWAY I see the others still knotted together, Theresa and Jenny. Sensing my glare, Theresa turns her head, still leaning on Jenny’s shoulder, and looks at me. See, my betrayer is at hand. She straightens up, lets go of her friend, and across the chasm seems to say something. Her hands clasp together—are they begging or praying? I swing back to Cleo as her arm falls from the blanket. That soft hand that used to reach for mine is limp, and her nails are the color of a twilight sky.
“A pianist’s fingers,” Theresa had said when she and Jenny came to the hospital the day Cleo was born and unwrapped the blanket to examine their prize.
“Save your pennies then, because you’re going to help pay for piano lessons,” I said.
“She’s going to make the world cry one day with her beautiful music,” Theresa said.
“Or for writing the next Gone With the Wind,” I added.
“Whatever she does, she’ll make us cry!”
“CAN THEY SEE HER?” Dr. Demalka asks as she enters the room, but before Greg can answer I hiss, “Nobody sees her. Tell them to go home.”
Home. My home is gone now. This is home; let the ashes fall from the heavens and settle over us in this sterile, infinite home. Far away there is a wail of an animal caught in a snare. When Greg touches my shoulder, I realize it is me.
Cleo’s lower lip is crooked, weighted to the right as it always was when she was asleep or when she was scared. Exactly how it was when she was born.
“Cleo!” I cry, calling into the abyss, calling her back from the void; a loud clear call. “Wake up, Cleo; open your eyes, darling; it’s time to go home.”
But she has gone to the burial grounds of drowned boys and crucified Lords.
THREE
When Cleo starts to stiffen, face-first, my hold on her relaxes as if it knows that she is more resolute on being dead than on coming back to life. Concrete-cold she is. Greg places her back on the bed, helps me out of the armchair where I have cradled her, arranges for the ride back to the house. I stand for a long time beside her bed, checking still for the briefest flickering of her lashes, unwilling to say goodbye, to walk away, to leave her, as if leaving her again will exact another great price. It is only five steps to the door, and after I have made them I turn around again to watch my daughter, lying as though on an altar. Greg’s hand grips my shoulder and suddenly I lean into him, clutching his shirt, the world tilting.
The dark sky at the tip of the horizon is becoming gray, as though the day will wake up to a 1920s black-and-white talkie. A different policeman drives us home, and when he pulls into the small cul-de-sac, I can’t imagine why it is that everything looks the same. Even the shaking of Mrs. Chung’s blinds where she has stolen a glance. Our garage door is up and someone has parked our car to the left and put buckets to catch the leaks on the right. The officer sees us to the front door, mumbles, and then retreats to the sound of Solly’s fierce barking. The front door is unlocked, and a vase of ghost-colored lilies is centered on the telephone table alongside the keys and a note with my name written on it. In the kitchen Jenny is washing yesterday’s dishes. I walk into her soapy arms, which fold around me and try to contain the shaking.
Gently, Jenny leads me upstairs and helps me into bed, then hands me Cleo’s stuffed rainbow turtle, Tow-Tow, and puts a box of tissues next to my pillow. She opens a small brown paper bag, the sound loud and annoying. I shake my head when she retrieves from it an orange prescription bottle. She puts it down on the nightstand (“If you need it”) and reflexively I think about putting it higher, out of Cleo’s reach. Instead, I sit up, twist and turn the childproof lid, pop two tiny pills in my mouth, and swallow. When I lie back Jenny picks up the discarded clothes from the chair and begins to fold them. I watch from a few light-years away as she softly pushes drawers back in the bureau, puts strewn jewelry in their boxes, p
icks up Greg’s socks, and tosses them in the laundry basket. Tucking everything away. It is when she bends to the abandoned pair of strappy high heels that I say suddenly, “No.” She looks at me and reaches instead for the pantyhose lying next to them. “No,” I tell her again. “Just leave them. Please.” I want to picture Cleo as she was yesterday morning, clip-clopping around in my shoes, pantyhose pulled on her head, finger pointed in command. Her last morning. I choke on the thought and wish never to awaken to one again.
Sleep does not come, not the sleep I want. Not oblivion. Through the haze of exhaustion, I keep stirring, hearing Cleo sing on the deck outside our bedroom or call to me from her bed. Through lashes weighed down by leaden eyelids, I see her shadow sweeping across the foot of the bed, in hot pursuit of Pilgrim. When my eyes are sealed tight, Cleo is underwater, drifting away like kelp in a current. One time she is climbing into bed with me, patting my face, pressing her nose against mine, but my arms are strapped down and I cannot embrace her.
I do not know what time it is when I get up. Jenny, in keeping with her tradition from Jamaica, has covered the clock on the wall with an old pillowcase. There is a tray of uneaten food next to the bed and crumpled tissues like paper roses strewn around it. I open the blinds and not day but a starless night peers in: an impenetrable curtain that separates me from my mother, my grandmother, and now my child. For a moment I think I might go downstairs, where an amber glow keeps watch and the voices of late-night TV drone on. Greg will be down there, on the couch; Jenny too. The thought of even the most banal verbal exchange makes the dizziness return, so I go pee and climb back into the dark sea.
Day and night blur into an endless gloaming from which I cannot escape, not even with the help of the contents of this little bottle. Has it been a day? A week? A month? The pills are yellow. The color of cowardice, I think as I swallow two more and replace the bottle on the nightstand. Why is the song about a yellow ribbon on the old oak tree? Why do the bumpers of cars have yellow ribbons that say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS on them? Blue ribbons are more appropriate for boys out fighting a war, for the color of their lips and nails when they are zipped up in their body bags. Blue for the code that signals no vital signs, blue for the music of inconsolable lamentation. Yellow is the color of desert sand before the blood of the fallen soaks into it; the color for mommies who cannot get up when their children are stuck in icy drawers in cold cellars. Yellow is the color of bile, the lingering hue of a bruise. The color of a kite.
Blue was always Cleo’s favorite color. The first color she learned to name. Cinderella wore a ball gown of the sweetest shade of cerulean blue, a replica of which Cleo wore every other day. In the tiny Catholic chapel at the retreat center where Greg once conducted an ecumenical worship service for those living with HIV/AIDS, she went up to the statue of the Holy Mother and with almost reverence stroked her blue tunic.
“What’s her name?” she asked.
“That’s Mary, Jesus’ mommy,” I answered.
“Is she sad?” she wanted to know, glancing up at the Holy Mother with her downcast eyes.
“I’m not sure,” I said after a pause.
But I know now. I know that Mary’s grief is a thousand fathoms deep, where blue is so dense it becomes black. So vast is her sorrow that she cannot speak but only part her robe and reveal the crimson heart that in its stubbornness will not cease its beat.
“WHAT DAY IS IT?” I ask when I walk into the kitchen, squinting out at the sheets of rain.
“Sunday, honey,” says Jenny, cleaning the oven.
It has been two days, then, which makes it Easter Sunday. But there is no resurrection today, the timing is all wrong. I am standing in the midst of the empty tomb, but there is no angel asking, Why do you look for the living among the dead? and no gardener calling my name.
“Did you get some sleep?” Jenny asks.
I shrug. “Where’s Greg?”
“In the garden,” she says. “He hasn’t slept much.”
“How about you?”
“Here and there,” she says, and smiles weakly at me, her coffee-colored face dim.
“Rhiaan called, and someone from your work—he wouldn’t leave his name. Also, several people from church. I wrote it all down on the pad. I told them you’re not up for company yet.”
“Thank you,” I say, taking the cup of coffee she has just poured.
“I called most of the people in your address book and a few others Greg made a list of. He called his family.”
We sit at the kitchen table and peer into our mugs, silent enough to hear the mynah birds arguing on the porch.
“If you would rather me go home, I will. I don’t want to intrude,” she says. “I want to do what’s helpful.”
“No, please don’t leave; I’m glad you are here.”
We each take an end of the quiet, as though it were a tablecloth that needed laying.
“I wanted to see her,” Jenny says finally, looking up. “I wanted to hold her one last time.” And suddenly she cries and I realize it is the first time in the ten years we have been friends that I have ever seen her weep. Isn’t this the part where I apologize for refusing to allow her to hold Cleo in the hospital? Where I say sorry? She wipes her nose with the back of her wrist, and I picture her sitting at the table holding Cleo in one hand and eating with the other. “She was my baby too.”
“Yes,” I muster. “Yes, she was.”
Everyone wanted a piece of Cleo when she was a baby. The women at the church, young and old, lined up to hold her, passing her from one bosom to the next, leaning into her smell and taking deep breaths. Sylvia Horton almost had one of her hyperventilating spells the Sunday Cleo smiled at her, and ran into the choir room for rehearsal an uncharacteristic ten minutes late. She might not have hurried—only the three old tenors sat there, britches up to their rib cages, gumming their way through the music sheets—the warbly sopranos and altos still lined up to see Cleo smile at them from Jenny’s cradling embrace. But Jenny had wanted more than a piece. Maybe it was because her nest was still warm from Leroy’s flight to UCLA, her second son to leave the island. Maybe it was because Cleo was the little girl she’d never had.
“The other mother,” the women at church called her. Taking leave from her teaching job, Jenny moved into our home the first few weeks of Cleo’s life. She gave Cleo her first bath, showing me how to hold her with one hand and wash around the little clothespin attached to Cleo’s navel with the other. She prepared an old Jamaican remedy that eased Cleo’s colicky cries and gave me herb tea supposedly to make my milk sweeter. Her omnipresence that first month eased our transition from couplet to trinity, and forged a thick-as-blood bond between her and Cleo of which everyone was envious. Even me. After Jenny returned to her own home and went back to teaching her first-graders, she insisted every Friday was her time with the baby. So we would drop Cleo off at her boxy two-bedroom cottage after I had nursed her from both breasts, and go to the mall, aimless and dazed. Cleo-less. Looking at other people’s babies and our watches till it was time to pick her up again.
But in the last few months the Friday ritual had ceased. I tried not to chalk it up to the New Year’s Eve incident because we had been friends too long for that to change things and also because Jenny started taking care of the retired high school principal who had first hired her twenty-five years ago, taking a risk on a poorly educated but keen Jamaican girl running from her past. Now the old man, living alone and without family to help him, was forgetting to eat and bathe, and lucky for him, Jenny was a believer in repaying debts. Five nights a week she walked to Mr. Finnegan’s house on the slope of Diamond Head, finding him often naked and disoriented, sometimes soiled, in his leather chair. She helped him wash, cooked him a modest meal, and then read Dickens or Auden till he settled enough to go to sleep. Then she walked back home and waited for the ritual to repeat itself the next day.
The worn look of a housemaid had etched itself on Jenny’s face since then. Her mother’s face, she
had told Theresa and me a few weeks ago, stared out from her bathroom mirror each morning, and her mother’s back began to make her limp almost imperceptibly. “Hey, girl, if that’s all you inherited from your mom, you got off light,” I had told her. The doctor told her otherwise: she was not to lift anything heavier than ten pounds, no children. What he had not told her was the effect the carrying out of his orders was to have on Cleo. Cleo began to miss riding on Jenny’s hip, and would frequently beg to go to Jenny’s house. Just last week I had called. “When can Cleo come visit?” I asked. “She’s nagging me about going to your house.”
“I can’t do this weekend, Abbe. My back is acting up something terrible,” she said. “How about next weekend?”
“Okay,” I said, feeling as though into my cupped hands a copper coin had fallen.
And that is why when Jenny sits opposite me at the dining room table across the stack of unopened cards and talks to me of “my baby” that I come close to grabbing her arm and clawing my way through the layers of flesh and fat to the bone. It is your fault, I want to say. You and your crooked back! Next weekend never came and now there would be no next weekends! You, who hand-stitched her baptism gown and took her up to the chancel while Greg murmured holy words and sprinkled ordinary water, are to blame too!
“It’s my fault,” she suddenly confesses, as though she had read my mind.
“What?”
“The night before the accident, I woke up and saw a woman standing in the corner of my room. I asked her who she was and she just stood there and pointed to the picture of Cleo on my dressing table. Oh dear Lord, Abbe, it must have been Cleo’s grandmother. She was coming to warn me, but I didn’t listen.”
Without saying a word, I get up from the table and go to the shelves in the laundry room, from where I retrieve the old photo album of my family. A chill pricks my skin. I return to the table and open it to the first page, where a young bride, unsmiling, stands next to a surly boar of a man on the steps of the Cape Town courthouse. Chosen to conceal the swell of her belly, her outfit is as stiff as their pose. Jenny hesitates, then shakes her head. “No, not her.”