Burden of the Soul

7.

“Wake up, Caterpillar.” Her voice seemed to whisper in my ear, the warmth of her breath shivering over the contours of my neck as I shot straight up in bed clasping at the sheet. My eyes darted back and forth across the darkened room searching for her.

From within my deep sleep, I had felt her there. I felt the bed indent as if she had taken a seat next to me. I felt the warmth on my arm as if a hand was there on my shoulder and then the voice. Her voice.

But there was nothing. My bedroom was empty and silent, except for my quickened, choppy breaths.

My heart slowed as I plopped back down in bed kicking the sheets off. Though my room was cool, sweat beaded up in the insides of my elbows and behind my knees, making the sheets cling to my skin.

I took a deep breath, and then another.

It had been a year since I had last heard her voice, since she had last called me by the nickname she loved so much. And here I was, being haunted by it in my sleep.

My left hand fell to my chest, pushing the sudden emotion back to its origin when a glint of green light from my alarm clock flickered in the corner of my eye. I turned to the bedside table and reached for the glass of water I hadn’t finished when reading myself to sleep. It had taken hours to lure my mind away from its memories, its haunts. Although I finally did fall asleep, it was clear this night was going to be restless for me.

I pulled the glass of water up to my lips, crinking my neck up without lifting my back to prevent any spills and watched as the glowing green numbers of the clock clicked from 12:11 am to 12:12 am. I had barely been asleep for an hour.

“Happy birthday to me,” I said out loud for no one to hear. There it was. I was seventeen, although there would be no celebration. This wasn’t a day to celebrate anymore.

No parties. No gifts, really. No loved ones singing tingingly off-key renditions of “Happy Birthday” over sparkling candles and butter cream.

No. My birthday would bring mourning, in new waves that would undoubtedly overtake both my father and I. Waves that seemed to collapse upon our house carrying memories of that day a year ago when Mom had been taken.

I set the glass back down and lay with my eyes closed, my ears extending their reach into the quiet folds of our Upper West Side brownstone—a house, an extravagant one, but never a home. The silence was deafening and moist, the condensation of blame misplaced and words unspoken clinging to the air around me.

That’s when I heard the muffled whimpering. I had become accustomed to it, and honestly a bit numb to it over the past year.

Upstairs he was crying into his hands, his elbows resting on his knees like he had so many times before.

Had he heard her whisper too? Had the memory of her voice tickled him awake, or had he stayed awake as the clock moved closer and closer to this day?

The last few days had brought even more silence between us than normal. Usually he made a point to break the silence at least once per day with generic statements like, “I’ll pick up milk tomorrow,” or “It’s supposed to storm tonight,” as if rehearsed and scheduled when to deploy so our relationship wouldn’t become completely muted. Though questions such as “How was your day?” never seemed to come up.

We were doing the bare minimum. Sometimes less.

But the last few days had been different. The days leading up to the anniversary of her disappearance, or my birthday as it was once called, made the bare minimum impossible. There were no words.

Through the muffled sounds of his weeping, I heard her name. Claire. The sound was right above me so he must have at least made it to his bedroom, rather than locked away in his study.

My father and I were close in proximity, every night sleeping with only a ceiling and some space between us, but he had put distance there. Things between he and I had never been the same after she was taken. Neither of us had gotten answers. She was never found, and the mysterious attack went unexplained. I was never able to give him the clue or the detail he needed to bring the love of his life back.

My eyes felt weighted as I recalled the look of her arm as she stretched from the step stool to position the purple streamers she was hanging perfectly over the archway into the kitchen.

My lips parted, the lower lip gently kissing the upper lip creating the soft, rounded sound of the word.

“Mom.”

The word repeated over and over in my mind as my eyes succumbed to their weight and I was back in that apartment, our home. The only true home we ever had.

My bedroom slipped away as I fell back into a tortured sleep, mocked by the images of that day, the cracking of wood and metal laughing at me, the light pouring and consuming the apartment as if a living flame. Her face. Her arm throwing her bracelet out to me. Her eyes, filled with terror as the flame overtook her.

“Mom!” My scream rocked me awake for the second time that night. My eyes shot open taking in the darkness of my bedroom, the sheet twisted between my hands in front of me. I was lying on my side in the fetal position and sweating.

I blinked a few times forcing the light’s brightness to fade from my mind’s eye. I focused on the dim outline of my bedroom door, counting my breaths, reassuring myself it was just the dream again.

I heard footsteps above me, and then a gurgle of running water come to life in Dad’s bathroom. My heart sank as I thought of the pain it would cause him if he had heard me calling for her again. But just as I had become accustomed to his muffled crying, maybe he had also become accustomed to my cries each time I had that dream.

And maybe, like me, he chose to ignore it.

I turned my hips, shifting my weight back to the middle of the bed and wiped the sweat off my forehead; I turned onto my back with a gritty exhale.

The green glow guided my eyes as I looked for the time. 3:41 am. I stuffed the pillow behind my neck and pulled it up to its crook. I listened as his footsteps padded back to bed. Listening to him, I realized this was the most interaction he and I had these past few days—me listening to his movements.

Throw some eye contact into the mix and we could have celebrated some real progress.

We had become acquaintances that wished the other were a stranger. The grief we had in common kept us separate. When we had moved from that apartment to this brownstone after her disappearance, I’m sure his intent had been to make things easier on both of us—to remove our relationship from the scene of the crime and rebuild.

It hadn’t turned out that way, though.

Her absence followed us, packed away in each of the belongings we had brought, or the absence of those we left behind. Tucked back in the crevices of my maturing face and build, we could see her. We saw her in the patch of freckles that stretched across the bridge of my nose. We saw her in the curve of my eyelashes over green eyes. We saw her in my smile.

I stopped smiling in our house sometime last winter. That was the last time I smiled in front of my father, and accidentally, no less. I had brought home my school pictures and absentmindedly left them on the kitchen counter, the top photo turned over so only the clear white of the photo’s back could be seen through the envelope’s clear film window.

I was watching TV in the family room adjacent to the kitchen when he came in from work without a word. When his footsteps had stopped for an awkward amount of time, I turned up from the TV and saw his back to me… the curve of his shoulders, folding into his body as they had after her disappearance.

I realized then what he had found on the counter, and assumed he had taken the photo out. I was right.

With resolution, his spine straightened and I heard the rustle of the photo being slid back into its packaging. He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. But we both knew.

I had her smile.

I decided to never smile again, not even for photos, to the disappointment of every friend or classmate that took amateur group photos with their phones.

The resolution in his shoulders was our new housemate, it seemed. It was cold and stern. It was blank and lifeless, yet took up any empty space in the room. Its presence was always felt.

4:27am. My eyes were still heavy as I sifted through the memories. Having broken the seal, they all came pouring out to the forefront of my mind. With a yawn, I turned onto my side facing the clock and tucked my hands under the pillow, finally giving in to sleep.

Just as I passed the crossover between wake and sleep, I felt a warm tingle at my cheek and heard a whisper slide across my ear.

“Sleep, Caterpillar.”

It brought back the images, the memories—a montage of Mom’s last moments. Her screams begging me to run, and then the wave of light curling around my body as if considering me. Then instantly my dream carried me to that cold, stone room and I looked up at the cylinder of inviting light falling from the ceiling. A vast contrast between its frightening twin that captured my mother.

My eyes shot open once again at the sound of a beep coming from the nightstand, the tears fresh around my bubbled cheeks. I had never told anyone about that experience in the room, but I ended up there in my dreams often, though it hadn’t felt like a dream at the time.

I would find myself in that cold, stone room when the grief was too much to bear. It had become my private place in my mind to escape to—to rest and to cry.

It had been Aunt Grace who found me that day, huddled in my closet, and pulled me back. And as I reached for my nightstand and closed my hand around my cell phone, I realized it was her.

Super Sweet 17! See you soon… -Your favorite aunt

“My only aunt,” I mumbled to myself after reading her text. I set the phone back with a clunk on the nightstand and looked at the clock once more.

5:52 am. I had more than my fair share of dreams at that point, so gave up on trying to sleep.

I slid my legs over the side of the bed and pulled my grey tank top down to my hips, smoothing out the crinkles of where it had bunched up in the night. I clicked on the small lamp over the clock and walked toward my bathroom, flipping on the light over the shower to help my eyes adjust without a shock.

I felt my stomach garble as I flipped on the water and brushed my teeth. I was overcome with a craving for pancakes suddenly, which made me sad. But my stomach wanted what it wanted.

I took to the hall and down the stairway onto the first floor, feeling my way in the darkness hoping to keep from waking Dad. I had nearly a half hour before his alarm would go off and he would start getting ready for work.

For a moment I thought about having a plate of pancakes ready for him when he walked down the stairs doing his necktie, but then I thought better of it.

I reached into the pantry and grabbed the mix then went about gathering the eggs and milk from the fridge, lining them up across the counter. I measured out the pancake mix and dumped it into a large silver boil.

The scent tickled my noise, and reminded me of her.

I turned on the stovetop after laying the griddle quietly across the burners, then stirred the contents in the bowl and measured out each cake with a 1/4 cup, just like she had.

I was watching the creamy surface bubble up when I heard Dad’s softened footsteps descending the stairs. He probably couldn’t sleep either. I flipped the pancakes and saw the darkened bottoms. Apparently this was yet another thing I wasn’t very good at.

“Oh, I… I didn’t know you were awake. Isn’t it a bit early for you?” He turned his body slightly after seeing me in the kitchen so as not to address me directly. I couldn’t see his face straight on, but the skin around his eyes looked pink and swollen.

“I was hungry,” I said, shoveling the doomed batch into the sink for the garbage disposal.

“A bit over the top for a Thursday, don’t you think?” He was reaching into a cupboard for his stainless steel coffee mug he took with him to work every day.

Pancakes on a Thursday morning were a bit over the top, but I didn’t feel the need to correct him to the day’s importance. He already knew. His puffy eyes gave him away.

“It’s what I wanted, and I couldn’t sleep.”

“You couldn’t sleep?”

He assumed I always slept, because I mostly spent my time in my room quiet, but really I was avoiding his attempts at avoiding me.

“A text woke me up. Couldn’t fall back asleep after that.”

“Who was texting you this early?”

I had walked into it and now couldn’t back my way out. Dad didn’t like the mention of Aunt Grace, and he certainly wasn’t a fan of her spontaneous visits, which had become more frequent over the past year. His only memories with Aunt Grace were also with Mom, he couldn’t separate the two in his mind and therefore tried to erase her from his life.

“She was just saying hello, is all,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

I didn’t need to say her name, he knew. He turned so his back blocked my view of his face as he set about pouring coffee from the timed maker he had set the night before, as he always did. Anything to shave away at the moments we spent in the house together. A coffee machine set to a timer. A gym membership, though he amazingly became more doughy and soft for someone who went to the gym five nights out of the week. A laundry service that came to pick up loads and dropped them off clean and folded hours later leaving the washer and dryer tucked behind the kitchen untouched by him.

“Is she coming?” His shoulders stiffened as he asked.

“Not sure. Maybe.”

He put the lid on his mug and walked to the kitchen table to gather his jacket and leather messenger bag filled with the work he brought home to hide behind.

“Well… keep me posted,” he said as he turned toward the hall heading to the front door. But he stopped.

“Allison is meeting you, yes?”

Now it had been arranged that she would meet me at my door and leave me right back where she found me after school—never a moment outside the doors of the brownstone without some sort of guardian. That’s how he preferred it.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to add “As always,” but bit my lip instead.

“Okay.” With that, he headed to the front door. I heard the beeping of the alarm system as he disarmed it, and then set it again, slipping out and locking the door from the outside while the alarm beeped a warning before arming again.

I stood over the griddle, the heat rising to my face and warming my already reddened cheeks. My jaw was tight with frustration.

“Good morning, Clara,” I said, mimicking his deep voice. “Have a great day, sweetheart. I love you, Caterpillar.”

I hadn’t been much of a fan of the nickname once I grew up, but now I longed to hear it. Really hear it and see someone’s lips form the name to fill the void the ghostly whisper had created through the night.

I reached back into the pantry and searched around with my hands until I felt the plastic, yellow bag I was looking for. I took it back over to the bowl of batter to start my second round of birthday pancakes. I opened the bag and listened as the pouring chocolate chips clanged against the metal bowl.

“Happy Birthday, Caterpillar,” I said to myself as I folded the batter over and over, sinking the dark brown specks.