Page 80 of Tell Me Softly
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to even think about it. Kami had said we would try. She had told me she loved me, dammit. I knew, though: thatI love youwas the one you said to a friend, not a boyfriend, a lover, whatever it was I wished we were.
Everything was topsy-turvy, but she was my best friend, and I trusted her. I was certain that she was happier when we were together. We had always gotten through adversity together. Almost always.
I heard the front door close, and I hurried out of my brother’s room, running downstairs and catching him. He avoided my eyes. I knew there was something he didn’t want to tell me. And I felt something ugly inside. Something you shouldn’t feel about a brother. Something you shouldn’t feel at all.
“Where’s Mom?” he asked, hanging his jacket on the coat tree and stepping onto the first stair.
“Lucy’s room.” My voice was cold, and he could tell. But I guess he decided to ignore it.
“We need to do something,” he said as he kept climbing. “She can’t go on like this.”
“I tried to talk to her, but she doesn’t care. None of what we said yesterday seems to matter to her.”
Thiago walked down the hall to the door at the end, opened it slowly, and went inside.
I followed because I knew he needed me. I followed, even though my heart broke every time I entered that room.
The first thing I saw were the faded red letters, cut from construction paper, that readLUCYin an arch. My mother was on the floor, leaning against my sister’s bed, with the pink sheetsand the frame Dad had built by hand to look like a castle… She’d given him no choice; it was the only way they could ever get her to stop sleeping in the crib.
Her toys were exactly where they’d been eight years before. She’d been having a tea party before her birthday started: the little cups and teapot were still on the ground, and her stuffed animals were sitting around the wooden table with their tiny dishes, waiting for their owner to come back and fill their cups. But their owner never would come back.
My mother was holding her pajamas, smelling them, even though there couldn’t be any scent left but dust in those sky-blue polka dots.
I remember when we moved away, she’d put a padlock on that room and told the renters we were using it for storage. I’d just assumed that was true. It never occurred to me that she’d left my little sister’s room perfectly intact all those years.
If I closed my eyes, I could still see her coming downstairs, groggy, holding her favorite stuffed animal, Otto the Otter, rubbing her eyes and trying to wake herself up so she could play.
How she used to play. How full of life she’d been.
I could still see her laying out those teacups and forcing my brother and me to sit down for endless teatimes. It bored me to tears, and I’d complain the whole time, but Thiago was so patient…
Lucy would follow us everywhere and complain when Mom said she had to stay home because we played too rough and she’d end up getting hurt.
We loved her with all our hearts.
And we missed her all day, all the time.
But we had to get on with our lives.
“Mom,” Thiago said, sitting down next to her on the pink rugDad had bought for Lucy because she said the hardwood floor hurt her knees. “You need to eat something.”
Mom closed her eyes and cried.
“Mom.” I sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. It hurt so much to see the woman I loved most suffering like that. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
She shook her head, holding Lucy’s pajamas tighter.
“My baby,” she said, breathing deep, trying so hard to get the air she’d needed the whole time she’d been mourning. “Why did she have to go? Why did I have to lose her?”
Neither Thiago nor I had an answer. We all asked ourselves these questions. None of us could understand.
“Mom, it’s time to let her go. We need to get rid of this stuff. You made a promise to us.” Thiago was stern with her. I was always surprised that he knew so well how to talk to our mother, how he could be so sweet yet so firm when he needed to be. “When we talked about coming back to Carsville, we agreed we’d start over for real. And we can’t if you keep holding onto your grief.”
“I know…” she said. And after a while she stood. Wiped her tears. Looked at us both.
“You two mean more to me than anything.” She smiled. It was a sad smile, but at least it was a smile. “I love you more than you can imagine. Tomorrow we’ll get this stuff out of here and donate it to the church. Just let me cry for her one more time today. I keep thinking how today I should be baking her a cake with twelve candles on it…”
My heart ached as I visualized that.
