Mirage(47)

Calls bounce down to us from somewhere above through the trees. “Hang on! We’re getting help!”

“Hurry!” I croak too quietly and try again. I don’t see blood on my grandmother, but who knows the extent of her injuries.

I have an eternity to think about what happened.

We are the center of the universe, and the sun rotates around us as we wait for help. My mother is in and out of consciousness. I’ve cried out to Gran, tried to reach her, wherever she is, but the longer she’s quiet, the more scared I become. She’s withstood the pains and hardships of life longer than any of us, but her age makes her seem more fragile.

The girl who follows me may or may not be real. I was sure before that she was, but how can she be so big that the entire lake was one staring eye? That’s not possible. Unless . . . unless I really am schizophrenic, and the drugs haven’t yet stomped down the illusions of my monstrous mind. All I know is that as we hang precariously on this slope, I realize that nearly everyone in my life has been hurt by me, or by her?. . .

But it doesn’t matter where I assign the blame. It’s all hurt. And it’s all me.

Is being alive worth it if you’re nothing but a wrecking ball?

The sounds of sirens wind up the mountain, getting louder and louder until they are screeching right above us. A choir of voices discusses the best way to help us. Bless the man who reaches us first, looks in my eyes, and says, “We’ve got you now. It’s gonna be okay.”

I nod and cling to his words.

“They’re here to help us, Ayida.”

“You never used to call me by my name. I don’t like it,” she says?—?her voice is a crack of dry wood?—?and blacks out again.

Beginning with Gran, and then my mother, we are eventually all pulled from the mangled car and hauled up to the road, where ambulances whisk us off to the hospital. I have a gash in my neck where the seat belt cut into me, but I can sit up, and so I do, wrapped in a blanket, riding along with Gran. She’s alive, the medic assures me of that, but still unconscious. Halfway down the mountain, my stomach heaves, and I throw up all over the floor.



“Am I dead yet?”

It’s the most beautiful sound, Gran talking to me from her hospital bed. The nurse tells my mother that Gran’s blood pressure is dangerously low.

“No,” I answer, tears rising in my eyes. Guilt squeezes my throat closed. I did this. If I hadn’t freaked out, we’d be winding back down the mountain, pleasantly tired after a day in the sun with the wind blowing in her gray hair. Not sitting in the hospital, where the smell of sickness makes me queasy.

“I never got to stick my toes in the mud.”

I sniff. “I know. There’s still time.”

“No.”

That word slams like gnarled hands on piano keys.

The beep of the heart-rate monitor keeps slow time.

“Instead of me singing my song, my song is singing to me.” Gran’s voice is a low, scratchy purr. “That’s how I know it’s time to go,” she says. “It’s calling me home.”

From behind me, my mother sobs into one hand. The other hand is in a cast. Tears seep through her fingers like she’s dipped her onyx palm into holy water. Her reaction tells me this is not just melodramatics. Gran isn’t the type for that. If she says she’s going to die, she is, and there’s nothing any of us are going to do about it.

My father paces restlessly across the room. Helplessness strikes a chord of anguish in me. I feel like we’re letting her die, and it’s strangely familiar, like I’ve lived this moment before. My awful dreams becoming real. I close my eyes, afraid my muddled thoughts will summon the face again.

Ayida sits alongside Gran and strokes her face with her working hand. Gran accepts the loving touch with gratitude, already looking relieved to have announced her imminent departure. She’s just broken every heart in the room, yet she looks peaceful.

“Tell me something true,” she demands.

My mother bows her head reverently and thinks a moment before raising herself up proudly. “Your mothering has been solid and mystical. Mama, you’ve been my rock, you’ve been the clear waters at its edge, and you’ve been the deep mysteries of the darker waters. I thank you for sharing your life with me.”

My father clears his throat. I have to look away from the glassy film of tears over his blue eyes. He clears his throat a second time. His legs are tented in a wide stance, like he needs help balancing. His hands are clasped low in front of him. “You’ve made me a better man.”

Gran nods appreciatively. “Burn a cigar with my body, Nolan.”

She inclines her head toward me, anticipating. I swallow hard. What do I tell her? I’m tortured? Screwed up? That I feel responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since I was lying in this same hospital weeks ago?

What’s true is that I don’t know what’s true.

Those things can’t be the last thing she wants to hear from me. “Gran?” I start, with a slight tremor. “Do you think people want to hear the truth no matter what it is? When someone is dying, it seems you should say what will bring them peace.”

Her weathered hand clasps my own. “That’s how I know you’re not yourself. I didn’t always agree with you, child, but I trusted you because you spoke your truth no matter how untrue it was for the rest of us. No matter how foolish or headstrong you were being.”