Page 77 of Your Echo
21Got To Lose || Hollerado
STÉPHANIE
“Of courseif it’s not working for your schedule anymore I understand, but... Stéphanie, are you sure there’s not something else going on here?”
Guita and I are sitting at the kitchen table in the AMM house. I’ve just told her that I can’t keep giving lessons to Ace anymore, and I’ve also resigned from teaching my Sunday class. It’s not fair to be pretending to guide people when I can’t even guide myself. I haven’t been able to sit still for more than thirty seconds since I visited Ace at the hospital, and that was almost a week ago now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find ‘inner peace’ again. If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I ever found it in the first place.
“I’m sure,” I tell Guita, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
My face probably gives me away, though. My eyes have been puffy and red for days. I didn’t know that I could cry so much for so long. I feel so weak every time I let the tears spill onto my cheeks, but the emotions boiling inside me are too strong to keep bottled up. My choices are either tears or screaming, and at least I can cry quietly.
“You know you can talk to me, right,ma belle?” Guita reaches across the table and places her hand on top of mine. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
The concern on her face threatens to make me start sobbing for the third time today. I have to look away before I can answer.
“I’m just busy with the studio, and I’ll have to start taking more shifts at the grocery store now that the summer dance classes are over.”
She pats my hand a few times. “If you’re sure, then of course. It will be getting cold outside soon, anyway. We’ll have to stop the park sessions in a few weeks, and I think Luc can fill in until then. About your private class...”
I tense up and Guita pauses. I’m sure she noticed my reaction.
“Ace Turner sent an email just yesterday saying he can’t make it to his sessions anymore, so that’s that problem solved. I thought he might have told you?”
I got a text and a missed call from Ace a few hours after I left the hospital. All the text said was for me to call him so he could explain.
What the fuck is there to explain? You watched my mother fall down a staircase and then you went back to playing in your rich boy bedroom.
I didn’t text him that, though. I didn’t say anything. There are no words for a situation like this. There’s only pain, and pain doesn’t speak any language besides the tears and screams I refuse to let him witness. If he’s cancelled his classes here, the futility of trying to fix this must have sunk in for him too.
“That’s that problem solved,” I repeat.
Guita takes her hand away and stands up beside the table.
“Will you meditate with me?” she asks.
I start to scramble for excuses. “I should get going. I have to...be...”
“Please, Stéphanie, if you’re able to stay, I would appreciate some company.”
I can’t say no to her, especially after I’ve just dropped out of teaching a class. It’s the least I can do to sit in the meditation room with her for awhile, even if she’s the only one meditating.
We’re alone in the house right now. The worn out floorboards groan as we pad on our socked feet to the circle of pillows in the next room. I settle myself down on one while Guita lights a stick of incense.
“Sandalwood,” I say, after catching a whiff. “It’s my favourite.”
Guita smiles. “I know.”
She tucks her feet under herself on her pillow and smoothes out her long skirt. After giving my knee a quick pat, she closes her eyes and starts to hum. I close mine too, trying to focus on the rhythm of the sounds she’s making.
Usually the scent of sandalwood brings me an instant sense of calm. No matter where I am when I smell it, it brings me back to this room and seems to clear all my muddled thoughts away, like the drifting clouds I’m always telling my students to visualize.
Today the smell just makes me frustrated. I should be able to let go. I should be able to hum along with Guita and unleash all this tension inside me before moving on with my life.
You’re not there anymore. You’re here. You’re here.
That’s not true, though. I’ve been trying to use that mantra as a rock, sculpting it into a foundation to support my future, but it’s wrong. The words are a lie, and I watch them crumble into dust as everything I’ve built on top of them crashes to the ground.
I might beherenow, but even after all this time, I’m stillthere. Hereisthere. There’s no distinction between my present and my past. There’s never been a day where everything just stopped hurting, where I could draw a line and point to a definite ‘before’ and ‘after.’ The only lines in my life are the deep gouges made by the claws of trauma and pain. They split me open that day I watched my mother fall, and the scars they left shaped me into who I am.
