The Familiar Dark(8)

The door swung closed behind me, and I paused, took in the cracked linoleum floor with a drain in the center, the rolling cart I assumed held instruments no one wanted me to see because it had been haphazardly draped with a cloth, the same flickering fluorescent lights as the hallway. And two rolling stretchers in front of me, one on the left, one on the right, the bodies still encased in black body bags, although the one on the left had been unzipped.

I stared at the points of Junie’s toes sticking up from the open body bag. Wondered, fleetingly, if she’d lost her shoes somewhere along the way or if they’d taken them off of her once she got here. Keeping my eyes on the lower half of her body, I moved up next to her, let my hand hover over her arm. I could feel the coldness radiating off her. My girl, who always ran hot, even on the most frigid days.

“This isn’t fair,” I said, voice low and choked. But it was a stupid thing to say, a worthless lament. Life was never fair. I knew that better than anyone. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and then raised my eyes slowly upward, girding myself one inch at a time. But it wasn’t as terrible as I’d expected, because it wasn’t really my daughter lying there. My daughter—who loved pasta and the color yellow, who was prone to headaches and worried her legs were too long, who snorted when she laughed and hated her freckles—wasn’t there anymore. This was the shell of a girl, one I hardly recognized as my own. Chestnut hair matted with blood, face chalky white from the nose up, a red horror below. Blood smeared across her chin and caked on her left cheek, her shirt soaked black. Her throat was laid open, almost ear to ear.

I had been the first person to hold her when she came into the world. I witnessed her first word, her first steps, her first fever, laugh, tantrum, crush, disappointment. But not this. Her last breath, her final seconds on earth. I wasn’t there in the moment when she needed me the most. All my years of trying hadn’t mattered because in the end, I had failed her. I leaned forward and kissed the air above her unmarred forehead. I breathed in, hoping for some last remnant of her. But all I could smell was blood and new-fallen snow.



* * *



? ? ?

    Cal wouldn’t let me spend the night alone, trudged after me up the cracked sidewalk to my apartment building, even when I told him I was fine (a lie so pathetic, neither one of us acknowledged it), that I wanted to be alone, to please go home. Most of the outside lights on my building had long since burned out, and repeated calls to the manager hadn’t produced anything other than half-hearted promises to come check it out. The only illumination was from the lone streetlight in the parking lot, but it was enough for me to spy a plate of something left on my front doormat. Word traveled fast around here. Heart-shaped cookies, it turned out, each one frosted in pale pink. More appropriate for the birth of a daughter than the death of one. I kicked the plate out of the way, cookies sailing out onto the cigarette-butt-littered concrete.

“Hey,” Cal said, and then seemed to think better of it, his voice trailing off into silence.

The apartment looked the same as when I’d walked out this morning, and completely forever changed at the same time. It had always been the apartment of a family who only escaped true poverty through sheer stubbornness and the generosity of others. Others being Cal, who bought my groceries half the time and made sure the electricity was never shut off. But the shabbiness felt new to me. The lumpy brown sofa and nicked dining table. The thin curtains and scuffed paint. Had it always looked this threadbare and colorless? This empty? Of course it hasn’t, my mind whispered. Because Junie used to be here. Filling it up with her sound and her voice and her smells. Junie, who was never going to be here again.

Cal made a noise behind me, something deep and guttural, and I spun, my heart hammering in my throat. He’d slid down onto the floor, his back against the now-closed front door, hands held out in front of him, cupping something invisible.

“Remember when she was born?” he asked. He didn’t take his eyes from his hands, couldn’t see me nod. Of course I do, I wanted to shout. How could I ever forget? But I reminded myself that he was grieving, too. That although the loss of Junie was something I wanted to clutch tight in my palm, whisper mine through bared teeth, such selfishness would be unfair. She loved Cal, and he loved her. He had a right to his sorrow, but I couldn’t find room inside myself to care about his pain. Not now. Not yet. “She fit right here,” he said, lifting his palms. “She was tiny. I mean, I’d seen babies before, but not like that. Not so new and small and fragile.”

I’d had the same thoughts the first time I’d held her. I’d wanted to roll her into a ball and pop her into my mouth, swallow her back down into my belly, where she’d been protected. Keep her there, where I could stand between her and the world’s shadows. Maybe somehow I’d known, even then, what was waiting for her. Or maybe I just didn’t know how to hope for the best. God knows I’d never been taught.

“I told her I was her Uncle Cal and she was my Junie-bug. I’d always love her and I’d always take care of her.” He paused, a sob sliding out of his mouth. “I promised her she’d always be safe.”

“You did take care of her,” I managed. “You kept her safe.”

“Before.” His hands dropped to his sides. “But then today came along and made a liar out of me.”