Survivor Song(74)
Lily goes to Gramp first. He always sits at the end of the table facing out into the room because it’s easier for him to get out of that chair, the only one at the table with armrests. His cane leans against his right leg. The arthritis in his shoulders bothers him more than he lets on. Many mornings Gramp will ask Lily if he’s become the cute little old man he always wanted to be. She agrees but will include a cheeky quip about his level of cuteness. When younger, she chafed at his describing himself as “little.”
After a peck on his stubbly cheek she announces that she saw the Vampire Rabbit. Gran shakes her head but does not tell them of her sneaking away from the group to see it.
Gramp says, “Sounds better than any of my school trips.” He fluffs his paper, his own punctuation mark to the brief discussion, and disappears behind it.
Lily shimmies behind Gramp to get to Auntie Rams. She always sits in the chair with her back to the wall, hemmed in between her parents as though resigned to being trapped. While all adults are old, Lily knows Auntie Rams is younger than her nearly totally gray hair belies.
“Come give me a peck, luv.” Auntie holds her arms wide. It’s the safest place Lily knows to be. Auntie groans like she’s squeezing as hard as she can, but she’s gentle as always. “You’re getting so big.”
“Ugh, you say that every day.”
“It’s true every day.”
Lily asks, “Home before me? Did you cut classes again, Dr. Auntie?” She giggles at her own joke. Auntie Rams teaches biology and life sciences at the small marine university. Lily only recently learned that she used to be a children’s doctor but gave it up before they moved to England.
“Don’t be clever. I only had one lab this morning. No vampire rabbits to be seen, unfortunately.”
After a bit more light banter, more for the adults’ sake than hers, Lily escapes the table, leaving Gramp, Auntie, and Gran, totems in their spots at the old table. There they will remain until it’s time to prepare dinner.
Lily wonders what they will talk about when she leaves, but she will not spy on them today.
*
The morning after Lily’s birth, Dr. Awolesi finally responded to Ramola’s texts. An ambulance escorted by two army jeeps later arrived at the farmhouse. Ramola and Lily were thoroughly screened and transported to the hospital in North Attleboro.
During the first eighteen months post-rescue, with each day that passed—some more frightening, frustrating, and improbable than others—Ramola kept waiting for Natalie’s parents or Paul’s siblings to lay claim to Lily. None of them did; honoring Natalie’s recorded wishes. Still, Ramola assumed someone of authority would eventually step in with a definitive, irrevocable “no,” and take Lily away. While she has never and would never admit this to anyone, she desperately wanted to hear that “no.”
During those earliest days, while Ramola dutifully filled out the reams of paperwork and participated in countless interviews and hearings, she daydreamed about the various ways in which the final “no” would happen. She felt a mix of guilt and an existential relief at the prospect of failing to keep her promise yet being able to say to herself and to the Natalie she keeps in her head, “I did my best. I tried.”
Ten years on, Ramola is still trying and doing her best.
*
When Ramola wakes alone in her bedroom, in that liminal dead-of-night space where one exists and where one doesn’t at the same time, the surgery Ramola performed often replays in her head so vividly as to demonstrate part of her is still there in that farmhouse. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the surgery is instead a part of her, connecting wings and floors within her memory palace and it will do so for as long as the structure stands. Accompanying will be a memory of who she was before that day changed her. On these nights, which occur with varying frequency, Ramola sometimes gets out of bed and splashes cold water on her face and does her best to stubbornly bury that which won’t remain in the ground, or she walks aimlessly, haunting the hallways and rooms of her childhood house—the one she never wanted to move back to—or she stays in bed and allows herself to wallow and wade deeper into those dark waters, indulging in the loss of her friend and the loss of who Ramola used to be and who she will never be again.
Ten years on, Ramola is still trying and doing her best.
*
Lily’s bedroom is in the converted attic. She closes the door quietly. Gran would ask [her ask is a demand] that the door remain open unless she is napping.
The walls of Lily’s small bedroom are covered with travel posters from cities and countries she’s never been to. The first set was a gift from Auntie. Apparently, they had once hung in her American flats. Lily has taken over the collection. She also has a globe on which she places pushpins. Boston has a green pushpin because she has been there, even if she doesn’t remember it. Red pushpins represent the cities she wants to travel to with Auntie, and they include Athens and Los Angeles. The blue pins are stuck into the farthest-away places [Easter Island, New Zealand, Antarctica] she’ll go to on her own when she’s older.
On her unmade bed, waiting patiently by her pillows, is an ancient stuffed-animal fox.
Lily runs across the room and plops heavily into the seat at her wooden desk, undermining her earlier quietness when shutting the door. She can only be quiet for so long.
She wakes her sleeping tablet and inserts earbuds into the bowls of her ears. With a tap and swipe of fingers, she opens the streaming service and then navigates to a private set of recently uploaded audio files.