3. Resounding Sadness
3
RESOUNDING SADNESS
SAYAH
O pening my eyes the following day, the first thing that floods my mind is those bright blue eyes.
That fire.
A vampire?
While I know there aren’t vampires in the world, the dream was so fucking real. So real. The ones you wake up from and wonder if part of you crawled out of your skin and entered a new dimension, fell from great heights, or flew around the sky.
Gods, the flying dreams are great!
That’s what this feels like.
I’ve had dreams that I’ve woken up from and they staggered me, my muscles still tense from that crippling fall or my heart still racing from the near drowning in a tsunami.
But this. . .
This is something else entirely.
My skin feels different. It feels like I’ve grown inside of it, stretched it out to be too big and now my existence is smaller somehow. It’s as though I’ve found a new part of me in this other dimension, part of me that clicks right into place like it was always supposed to be here.
Then there’s the pain.
What exquisite torture that fire had been!
One of those agonizing kinds of pain you hate and love—you love it because it makes you feel alive, a tangible force of nature that can bend and break and bleed and come back stronger from every rip, every slice, every burn.
The sting of the fire still scalds my every inch, the invisible blisters lap at the bends of my arms. I hold one out in front of me to check for singes of hair or marks, any indication I’ve been burned.
But there is nothing.
Is there some coincidence between dreaming of being burned alive and the way Mama died?
My mom’s face comes to mind and my chest constricts, breath caught in my throat as the wave of sadness drowns me once more, dousing the fire with a hiss.
The tears take hold and asphyxiate all other thoughts, and I struggle to keep moving, burying my face in the pillow to scream once more. Laying here with only the sound of the fan humming in the background, I picture Mama dying in an agonizing blaze of fire.
Please let there have been no pain.
Please, Freya, tell me you came to take her before she could feel anything at all.
I don’t know what to do now. How to move on. To rise and carry on as though nothing has changed even though my entire existence got upended.
I have to tell my aunts.
And Gauge.
For once, I am thankful for the split custody schedule. Gauge is currently with my ex, Derek. As much as I would love to snuggle my little guy up and hold him, the anguish I’m feeling is too much. It would seep off me and into him, and I don’t want that.
Grabbing my phone from the nightstand by my bed, I find my aunt Hilda’s name in my phone and press the green call button, steeling myself for this conversation.
“Hello? ”
“Hi, Aunt Hilda,” I say, though my voice doesn’t sound right. It’s higher than usual and strained.
“Sayah? What is it, what’s wrong?” That’s my aunt Maggie. They’re always together.
I try to hold on to my composure, but as the words form on my tongue they freeze. Splinters from the jaggedness of them slice me, knowing that after I utter these words, we’ll never be the same.
The world is different now.
Taking a deep breath, I say, “Mama and Dan passed away last night.” The words are no less frigid and venomous as they’d been unspoken.
“What?” they both say on a breath.
“What happened?” asks Maggie.
Tears prick my eyes as I borrow strength from the air to keep talking. “There was a fire. The police said someone left the stove on.”
“Oh my god,” Hilda sighs.
“That wrecked curse,” says Maggie in the background.
“Oh, Sayah,” Hilda replies. “Do you need us to come out there?” She sounds strange. As though her voice is caught in a vice, strained with a tension that could burst at any moment.
My brows pinch together as I stifle my sobs. “Yes, please,” I whisper, tears tumbling down my cheek.
It would be nice to have family around me. I have a small family. My dad is in Kansas with my stepmom, and my sister and I are estranged. Besides my aunts in Washington, the only other family I have is Claire, my best friend.
“We’ll leave right away,” Maggie says, her voice audibly contoured with sadness. This is their second sister and the third person in our family to have died by fire. “Just hang in there ’til we get there, okay?”
I nod like they can see me.
“Sweetie?” Maggie says, her sweet voice perforating the silence.
“Yeah?” I answer, my voice breaking.
“I know you’re barely hanging on right now.” She swallows as though she’s speaking of herself as well. “But do everything you can to not fall apart, okay? Do your magick, it will help. ”
Making a noncommittal noise, I sniffle and wipe the tears away with my sheet.
“We’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you,” they both say and end the call.
Wrapping my arms around my shoulders, I let myself fall apart.
A s I topple out of bed a few hours later and descend the stairs, I glance through the windows. The winter storm has unleashed chaos on the outside world. A thick blanket of twelve inches of snow veils the ground, transforming roads into slushy, icy paths. Given the early hours, the snowplows have yet to reach the neighborhoods. I find my driveway untouched, a stark reminder of mundane tasks deferred, relics of average days when the world wasn’t on the brink of upheaval.
After making some coffee and snuggling with my cat, I go to my spell cabinet. When my aunt mentioned magick on our call, it sounded like a good idea. Maybe it will help me feel better. Magick is like coffee for your soul.
I’ve always known my aunts are witches, but because I didn’t fully embrace the craft, memories seem hidden away, like I’ve been under a spell. Every time I practiced, more of that fog lifted and memories would resurface of my childhood and my mom.
One time, I was doing a healing spell and a memory of Hilda and Maggie cut through my vision and took over my mind. They talked to my mom in my old childhood house while I listened through a crack in my bedroom door…
“You’re either fully in or fully out; there is no in-between,” Maggie told Mama.
“But she’s just a child; she doesn’t know what she wants yet,” my mom answered .
“She’s too powerful, Fran. She can’t be halfway in. It will eventually consume her even if she is out right now. She is the balance. She has to fully want it, or it will never work. Time will bring her into it when she’s ready. We have to trust that.”
While I have no idea what that memory means, it still haunts me.
Grabbing the sage, a few herbs, some incense, and the oil I need for my altar spell, I begin to arrange them on a small wooden table by the floor-length window. The plants in my dining room give me the most comfort when I do spells.
Magick certainly isn’t a new concept to me. I’ve known I’m a witch for a long time, but the idea of spell casting, herbs, and magick circles hadn’t called to me until I almost died. Even when my aunts would come out twice a year to work magick with Mama on solstices, there was something about it I couldn’t wrap my mind around—almost as if an invisible force wouldn’t let my mind embrace it until the right time. Now that I’m finally embracing it, my instructors aren’t around to guide me.
Even though I don’t know if I’m doing it right, practicing magick makes me feel better. It’s as though I am getting reacquainted with an old friend; like I’m getting in tune with the world around me, and the moon herself is locking into my veins and seeping comfort into my blood.
Mama didn’t practice the craft after she met Dan, and my aunts stopped visiting around that time as well. It wasn’t that she was hiding it from Dan; he didn’t believe in it and made us feel sillier for it.
Magick had been one of the best parts of my mom. The sheer power of Mama’s soul could knock people over when she entered the room. When I was a kid, I loved watching her conduct spells.
Even though I loved watching Mama practice, the few times I did it with her or my aunts, I didn’t feel I was doing anything. I felt silly. For that reason, I never participated, and because Mama always left it up to me to choose my path, she never forced it on me.
Once Mama met Dan and stopped practicing her magick, it saddened me. When I got sick and began to embrace that side of me, I felt something was blocking me, like a fog surrounding some aspects of my witchy side.
I read everything I could about the craft and kept it under wraps as to what I was reading and discovering. But my mom must have picked up on things because she began to give me candles and incense on my birthdays instead of clothes and jewelry.
When I found my ex-husband, and we had Gauge, I began showing more and more of my true colors; knowing he was cool with me, my craft, and my spirituality. Though, after the cancer diagnosis, everything changed. I wasn’t afraid to let people know that I was a witch and practiced magick; that was what I believed in and how I live my life now.
Anointing the candles with violet oil, I light the same scented incense and place it in the holder.
As the incense burns, I close my eyes and picture Mama.
She’s in the park she grew up near as a kid—Bartram’s Garden. The park is brightly lit and littered with daffodils. The trees bend in the breeze like they are whispering secrets to each other. Her sister, mom, and dad are waiting for her.
The sweet, pungent aroma of violets swirls around my nostrils, and I tilt my head back, trying to hitch the crescendo of grief at the thought Mama is heading to a place where she will be with her sister, Janet, again.
As I clear my mind and think of only that, a vision of fire flashes, and a sharp whisper—almost a beckon—cuts into my reverie.
There is light in the darkness.
When I open my eyes again, I’m not in my living room anymore.
Green grass is all around me and the sun is cascading her warmth down, oozing into me and filling me with overwhelming ease.
I feel comforted.
Gazing up at the robin’s-egg-blue sky, birds flit across my vision and call out a sound.
A sound I recognize.
Mama’s favorite bird, the Red-Winged Black Bird, soars in the air and frees her beautiful song; the melody mingling with the sun’s rays, adding to the depth of ease I’m feeling.
Tilting my gaze back level with the rolling hills of the park, Mama is sitting with me on a blanket.
We’re having a picnic.
“Mama?” I say questioningly as she digs in the basket for something.
Looking up, her eyes are young again, her wrinkles gone, hair bright and curly. “Yes, darling?”
Taking a deep breath in to stanch the unraveling, I say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
The sobs threaten to rip me apart and I’m afraid if I let it out, I may never stop.
“You’ll never lose me, punkin,” she says through a smile, and I feel the seams straining against the weight of my sorrow, threatening to burst.
She reaches out and strokes my face; her hands feel soft and tender. I lean into the embrace and close my eyes again. A tear determinedly leaves my eyes and she wipes it away, pulling at my chin.
“Why are you so sad?”
“I don’t know what to do,” I repeat, clinging to the calm in her voice. That soothing agent in only my mother’s words that can quell whatever’s ailing me. That balm to my burns.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispers, clasping my hands in hers. “You will always prevail. I know you. You have the strength within you to overcome whatever is in front of you. Remember leukemia?” She lets out a slight laugh. “You kicked its ass and made it your bitch, remember?”
My chest lightens with the memory. “I did make it my bitch.”
It was one of the things I said to her when I first found out I had cancer.
I called her and told her, and while she fell apart I told her not to worry. I said, “Fuck you, Leukemia, I’m coming for you. You can come in for now and teach me things, but you cannot stay. I will kick your ass and make you my bitch. ”
“See,” she says, nudging me with her shoulder. “I’ve watched you rise up after being knocked down and come back stronger since the day you were born. It’s been the greatest honor of my life, being the witness to your soul’s authority. No matter what comes for you, it stands no chance. Especially now that you’re a mother too. That fire in your being only got brighter with Gauge. And for him, you would dismantle the world. Just like I would dismantle the stars for you.”
I heave a sorrowful sigh. “I don’t know how to do this without you, Mama.”
The pause in her smile stuns me, the look in her eyes telling me she believes in me and is forever proud of everything I do.
“Of course you do, darling. You’re you. That’s always been your answer. When things get dark, you find the light and keep on keeping on. Your own well of strength comes from the essence of who you are. I knew I’d made something special when I made you. You are destined for greatness.”
“Yes, but I’ve always had you to cheer me on, to hype me up. I can’t fathom a life that doesn’t contain my biggest fan.” My shoulders slump and my head falls to my chest, the sadness enveloping me.
Her arms embrace me, pulling me into her and it mimics the feelings the sun gave me. “Shhh,” she says, rocking me. “I’ll always be there, even if you can’t see me. I exist in you.” She pulls my chin up again, her green eyes searching. “No one can ever take me from you; we’re bonded, you and I. Remember? I’m the Cooder to your Wade.”
The laugh that spills is soaked with that memory of her and me, telling a joke, reenacting southern accents to each other, and laughing so hard our cheeks hurt.
“Okay, Cooder,” I say with the accent, though this time it’s dejected and sad.
“I love you, punkin pie.” She then recites the poem we’d adopted from a children’s book we read when I was young. It’s how we ended every letter, every text.
I recited the poem with her and let her rock me some more.
“Everything will be all right,” she says, and the weight of her arms lessens like she’s fading away .
“No, Mama, don’t go, please,” I plea, grasping at straws as she dissipates.
“Keep on your path,” she whispers, her face fading into the clouds. “We did not have you crawl through shards of your own brokenness to prepare you for mediocre magick.”
A chill through the air gnaws me out of my vision and places me back at my house, before my altar.
I shiver and collapse back on my knees, physically feeling the effects of seeing Mama.
The candles are dancing in the ghosts of the air, and even though I know it was a vision, it feels like she was here.
That was Mama.