The Removed(39)

For a moment I had a sense of our mutual awareness of each other, of a state of confusion, although it felt way more definitive than that. When he turned and walked away, I got up and followed him. He walked into the bathroom, where he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He raised his hands to touch it, tilted his head, studying himself. I could see his reflection in the mirror, but it was much blurrier than he appeared. I reached to turn on the light, and he disappeared. When I turned it back off again, he was still gone. I turned the light on and off again. He didn’t reappear. “Where are you?” I whispered. I called for him, but he never responded. I turned and walked through the quiet house looking for him, my feet creaking on the old floors in the dark. I peeked into Jackson’s bedroom and saw him asleep with his back to me, snoring over the hum of a ceiling fan.

I stepped quietly back to the bathroom, but I couldn’t find the old man. Again I turned the light on and off, whispered for him. I returned to my bedroom and went to the window. Outside, at the back of the yard, a hawk was resting on a fence post, sitting very still. The moon shone blue in the dark sky. At one point something flashed by in the darkness, but I wasn’t able to tell what it was. I sat on the bed and saw that it was almost four in the morning. What was I supposed to think about the man I saw? I wasn’t able to go back to sleep, too unsettled by what I had witnessed, too afraid of whatever it meant.

I saw many people that night: apparitions of women and men with blankets over their shoulders, walking down the hallway. I saw children being carried. I saw people crawling and reaching out to me for help. They kept coming and coming, walking down the hallway past my bedroom. In the dark I couldn’t see their faces, but their bodies were struggling against a wind, pushing forward. My ancestors, I thought. My ancestors walking the Trail.

My ears were ringing when I got back under the covers. What did this mean? The ringing was as severe as it had ever been, growing louder. I pressed my hands against my ears and stared into the dark hall. I felt compelled to watch these people as they walked. They pushed forward and kept walking, falling.





Maria


SEPTEMBER 4

ERNEST USED TO TELL me I had always been good at maintaining composure even in times of extreme stress. After Ray-Ray died, I made it my sole purpose to do whatever I could to keep my children alive. I looked after them closely, watched them play outside even when they weren’t aware, listened at their bedroom doors if they talked on the phone or had friends over. My blood pressure rose; I developed panic attacks, something that I had never experienced before. I always made sure that if Sonja and Edgar left with friends, they called and checked in with me every hour. I kept photo albums near my chair and looked at pictures of all my children, including Ray-Ray. My sister Irene said it would always help me feel better, and I was surprised to discover she was correct.

After I took Wyatt to school, I returned home and sat in the living room and flipped through pictures of Edgar in the photo albums. The ones I enjoyed most were the ones when he was little, all the birthday parties and Christmases. They brought me joy no matter how many times I looked at them. When Ernest came into the room, he smiled at me. Something happened to the configuration of the room, and we felt what I thought was the slight trembling of an earthquake.

“Did you feel that?” he said.

“Was it an earthquake? It was an earthquake, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe so. It wasn’t too bad.”

I noticed that his eyes were dark and full of wonder. His eyes could speak to me better than his mouth sometimes, and I knew he was about to say something about Ray-Ray’s spirit.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

He sat in the recliner across the room and put on his sneakers. He bent forward to lace them. He sat back and looked at me.

“I have a good feeling Edgar will come home,” he said. “I feel better than I’ve felt in months. In years.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I have a hunch things will look up. And last night the boy wanted to sleep in bed with us.”

“Who, Wyatt?”

He nodded.

“Did I sleep through it? I don’t ever remember waking up last night.”

“You were asleep. He came to my side of the bed, like Ray-Ray did.”

“No, you dreamed of Ray-Ray. I do it all the time.”

“He walked into our room in the middle of the night,” he said. “He tapped my arm. I woke and saw him standing there. There he was, standing there like Ray-Ray.”

I looked deep into his face and tried to see what was happening to him. I remained quiet, looking at him.

“It was Wyatt, but it was also Ray-Ray standing there,” he said.

I felt my face flush. “What did he say?” I said quietly.

“I followed him in here,” he said. He looked around the room, gesturing with his hands. “Colored lights were hanging all over. There were balloons. I sat on the floor, and he brought me one. He brought me a rock that lit up in my hands. He told me to look into it.”

I shook my head. Now the Alzheimer’s was making him sound crazy again. I didn’t want to hear anything else.

“I held the rock in my hands,” he said. “I looked into that light. It was a yellow light. I held that rock like a bird in my hands. Then I gave it back, and he told me to go to bed, to rest, because I needed to get well.”