|
'Entwined'
By
Joyce Scott
Excerpt from: 'The Colors of Gone'
The sheet is cold — cold all the way to the edge.
Outside I can see only the shadow of the giant Blue Spruce that stands
guard over our room, the center of our universe, our sanctuary from the greater
world beyond. It may be the
leafless branches of the old maple tree beside the house scraping against the
shingles that has wakened me as the cool morning light starts to filter
imperceptibly through the curtained window.
I stir, moving myself deeper into the bed to find my sister’s warmth.
For more than seven years Judy and I have slept together, always as small
curved spoons, soft twin spoons. But
now I feel cold, very cold. I reach
my hand out across the bed to pull her close — reach further — and further still. She
is not there beside me.
I
slip quickly out of bed, my bare feet scarcely touching the floor, and tiptoe to
the bathroom, wondering if she is there. The
towels from our last night’s bath are still lying damp on the floor; and the
yellow duck we pushed back and forth lies abandoned.
But she is not there. Nor is
she in the next room, waking our sleeping brothers. She is not in the kitchen, and neither is Daddy.
No smells of bacon or toast today, no pancakes.
I see Mommy standing alone. She
is smoking a cigarette, holding her coffee.
Her hands are shaking. The
kitchen is warm, but she leans huddled against the stove — the kettle boils
unnoticed. Steam fogs the windows; even the crack left open for
fresh air is shut. The white islet
curtains hang limp and still. The radio is silent. Jimmy’s
ragged gray cat does not stir. I
touch his warm fur as he sleeps on the chair by the stove.
It’s way too quiet — something’s wrong.
Where is she?
“Where’s
Judy?” I ask.
“I can’t find her anywhere.”
Her
eyes red and distant, Mommy looks away, towards the window and the sound of rain
in the backyard. She is speaking to
the air, and I don’t know if she even sees me.
“Judy’s gone away. Daddy
took her early this morning - to a special school.
She’s going to stay there now. They’ll
help her learn to talk. Won’t
that be good?”
I
cannot understand what she is saying. Judy
gone? Gone away?
That’s impossible. I
cannot imagine Judy gone. I don’t
know about gone, don’t know about alone.
For now I can feel only cold. The
feeling of alone, the meaning of gone, would grow and last another thirty-five
years. Yet always it is Judy who
would be the most alone.
Years
later, when time had begun to unfreeze her lips, Mom will tell me about that
morning, how sweet Judy had looked, how she’d dressed her in a bright yellow
smock with tiny white flowers — and how her heart was breaking as she tied
Judy’s bow for one last time, But she never saw Judy go, never drew back the
curtains and looked out of the window to see her climb into the car — at the
end Mommy had turned away.
I
didn't see Judy go either, didn't ride with her.
But in my mind I could see her, sitting beside Daddy in the car, babbling
quietly, happily unaware of where this journey would end.
Slowly my confusion at Judy’s sudden departure began to tighten into
anxiety. Instinctively I knew that
Judy must be feeling the same, knew she must have sensed something.
Must have. Judy always knew
when someone was upset — although she never knew the words, she always
understood. Daddy would have pulled
nervously at his moustache and not said anything.
He’d be all the time tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
She would have realized something bad was about to happen.
Judy would have patted his shoulder as she did mine when I was unhappy.
She would have tried to comfort him.
That
night when Daddy returns, I hide in the hall and hear him talking to Mommy.
“It was awful, Lil. She
was scared and clung to me in the elevator.
Then, when the sheriff’s deputy took her from me and carried her
through the swinging doors, she cried. I
heard her crying down the hall, all the way.
It was terrible, so terrible.”
Daddy’s
voice went quiet, and there was no reply. I
feel ice run through my chest. I
know how frightened Judy must have been because I was frightened too and
weren’t we the same? That night,
in my sleep, I feel my body reaching for Judy and finding nothing, and I can
feel her reaching for me, I know she is.
The
next day — and day after day —
Mommy sits in the kitchen while the rest of us dress for school.
She is still there, frozen, when we leave. At the Formica table, on her padded chair with the cracked
plastic cover, she smokes and sips her coffee, clutching it in both hands as
though she is afraid she might lose it. She
sips with that funny slurpy noise she makes when she draws her breath in at the
same time. After her sip, she
sighs. Such a sad sigh.
I see her sipping and later, I imagine her slowly, carefully, closing the
doors to her loss, to her pain, closing the doors to her heart.
From
that first day after Judy was gone, an unnatural sense of order takes over our
house; order and a deep chill. There
is an emptiness, a feeling of everything frozen in time and space.
We are snowmen; I am a snow girl, living in an igloo enclosed with red
bricks that on the outside still looks like our house.
I keep quiet and listen for the sound of snow.
I think it is falling softly, inside my room, on my covers, on the place
where Judy had slept beside me, falling softly everywhere.
In
the years that follow, Mommy will become a champion bridge player. I see her frowning in concentration as she fills her mind
with classic plays and skilful maneuvers, memorizing the cards and remembering
the foibles of each player. She and
Daddy would replay and discuss endlessly the games from the night before, cards
spread out all over the living room floor when he came home from work.
“Shhh…shh.
Just wait, we’re busy now”. I
hate bridge.
| |
Home Page
Judith's
Story
Exhibitions
Books, articles and films
Judith's
Artwork
Outsider
Art
Down
Syndrome
|