5
Isabel’s tears echo through the hallway, creating a chorus of white noise with the creaking branches outside. Mother refuses modern fixtures – ‘the breeze is enough!’ – and as a result the house is stifling and claustrophobic.
The yawning hallway feels threatening as I step through the shadows towards her. As if, should they wish it, I might just evaporate into smoke within their grasp.
I rap on Isa’s door with the intention to soothe her, but instead I stand in the darkened hall, my knocks remaining unanswered.
At only seventeen, she’s a mere babe in comparison to what I was at that age.
She is much smaller than Francesca and I – her hair mere wisps of almond strands, her eyes as big as a doe’s.
Her bones visible beneath her milky skin.
Where we share many traits – the hazel of our eyes, the plump of our lips – she is frail and childlike.
Someone who needs protection and care. She doesn’t have the vein of rebellion that Francesca and I had.
She believes in the scripture, believes in our mother’s teachings.
I can see it in the way her eyes downcast when mother scalds me for talking out of turn.
And now with Francesca gone, the requirement falls upon myself alone, I suppose. Though I haven’t a clue how to comfort her, how to make her feel joy after such immense loss.
She sniffles, the sound splintering through my chest.
Father’s death hit her harder than it did me.
It’s as though she hasn’t stopped crying since he left – heartbreak building brickwork of scar tissue inside her soul.
Her outsides have begun to portray it, too.
The veins in her cheeks creeping to the surface, the shadows beneath her eyes deepening as the days crawl past.
Sometimes I hear her sickness from the bathroom door, the quiet retching and gut-wrenching sobs as she dispels her sorrow.
I want to wipe away her tears and tell her it will all be okay, but how can I do that when it’s a lie even I don’t believe.
Nothing shall ever be okay again.
Memories of last Christmas reside inside me like a warmth I’ve never known. The laughter and spiced cider still glazing our lips as we counted the days to the Lord’s celebration.
We had spent our afternoon threading cinnamon stars onto red ribbon, wrapping the hand cut tree in the garland and singing merrily to Christmas hymns.
Mother smiled at us, occasionally, approving of our joyful resonance as we worked.
It was the only time of year that I felt sincerely happy.
Where we felt truly connected as kin. Francesca tied the ribbon to the tip of the tree, passing the length to Isabel with a smile and silent nod.
She would step back and watch as Isa circled the tree, skipping as the ribbon wove its way through the branches.
It always reminded me of a maypole, the way she danced around it.
“She’s grown up,” Francesca had said that year, when she was only seventeen herself, Isa only a year younger. Her lips shone with the deepest burgundy glaze, her lined eyes flashing with mischief for the smallest moment when I turned to her.
“She has, and I hate it,” I had declared, my hands slipping into my linen dress pockets.
“Everyone grows up, dear Rabbit. We must to survive the world. You, Isa, me.”
“You are still a child, Francesca. You have much of your life left to live.”
We both were, at heart – children. We thought we were ready for the dangers of the world, ready for the responsibilities. I wish I had known better, I wish I had been prepared for how quickly life can shift beneath you.
“Not, I am not,” She responded quietly, eyes leaving mine. I didn’t understand what she meant then.
But the forest taught me.
That was the last Christmas we spent together, before she was gone. One entire year ago this Christmas eve. She was missing before the next season began, leaving Isa and I wondering how she could leave with such ease. Leave everything she’s known. Leave us, without so much as a goodbye.
We had presumed she had fled the community, untying herself from the binds of their religion. That she was free, flourishing somewhere in the city with her brother who left five years prior.
Now, I look back on that time with such sorrow that it’s as though I can no longer breathe.
Isa remains locked inside her room, quiet sobs still muffled beyond her door.
I left her, no longer able to stomach the way she ignored me. I ache with her, my bones trembling and blood frozen as I try to decide what I should say. But words won’t come. They cling to my throat like rose vines. Thorns dug into my flesh, unable to be loosened.
In the kitchen, mother stands behind the now clean bench, trays of gingerbread cookies surrounding a large metal pressed tin lined with brown paper.
She has lit the array of devotion candles scattered through the room, flamelight dancing across her bony fingers as she works.
She hums as she scrapes the cookies and places them inside the tin, the melody making my skin crawl as I watch her.
I cough gently, but her focus remains steady on the repetition of scraping and placing the cookies within the paper lined tin.
Scents of ginger and nutmeg weave through the stifling air, the smell making my nose itch and my eyes water.
What was once a fragrance that made excitement brew, now makes nausea roll in my stomach.
Christmas isn’t the occasion it was as a child, now the sadness of the world has infiltrated my nostalgia.
Gone are the joyful mornings counting the days until we sing carols in the chapel and unwrap handmade gifts with the children of the community.
Instead a deep-rooted sadness has taken hold as I watch my mother tie ribbon to a tin of cookies instead. Cookies for my dead best friends family – a feeble gesture of condolences, even for my mother.
“Isabel!” She screams, still having not acknowledged my presence. “Come here.”
Moments pass as my mother sighs repeatedly, frustrated with Isa’s dallying.
“Yes mother?” Isa says quietly as she steps from the shadowed doorway, the sobs still clinging to her throat. She looks to me, eyes bleary, before glancing away with a sharp blink and wet sniffle.
I approach her, arms readying for embrace, to comfort her. But as I draw near, mother thrusts the tin into her hands with such force that Isabel winces, a tear slipping free from her lashes.
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