7
T here are fragments of time slipping away. Moments where it feels as though my mind has left my body and I’ve disappeared into an abyss of nothing.
Isa is crying again. Now home, looking through photo albums from our childhood. I sit beside her on the worn couch as she turns the pages, halting occasionally as she studies various still images of our family.
“Isa, are you okay?” I whisper, longing to brush the tears from her lashes.
She groans, shaking her head as she flips another stiff page, plastic crinkling beneath her fingers.
“I’m sorry Isa,” I say quietly, head downcast as my own tears begin. “I’m so sorry you must go through all this loss. I know how much you loved Francesca. It’s awful what happened. I hope the police can find who did it.”
Though, there’s a thread of knowing that tugs beneath my ribs. As though my body is urging me to remember, as though I already know.
I can’t recall the last time I saw her, the last six months still a puzzle I’m struggling to piece together.
The edges won’t fit, each memory not slotting into the last.
Part of me worries something inside me broke the day Francesca vanished.
That when she left, leaving me alone, the part that she filled became a void of nothing that has begun to eat away at the rest of me.
Isabel sniffles a wet, chesty sob beside me again, exhaling slowly as she turns another page. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, cheeks mottled with red. She traces our faces behind the plastic film, a fresh tear slipping down her cheek.
I haven’t any idea how long we’ve been here. I don’t recall even visiting Francesca’s parents to deliver the cookies. Yet here I am, my sister once again sorrowful beside me, Christmas music filtering in from the kitchen where mother hums quietly as she bakes.
The plastic catches receding sunlight for a moment, sparking the memory of when that photograph occurred.
She and I stand arm in arm, mother and father either side of us, in matching overalls between the tall sunflowers that grow in the property across the creek.
Smiles break across our youthful faces; dirt smeared on our foreheads as we pull each other into a tight embrace.
“Remember the bees?” I ask, recalling Isabel being stung on her lip, her mouth swelling so rapidly she could barely speak to tell us what happened.
I rushed home, skipping over river stones, slipping through weeds in my haste to collect supplies to help.
Tallow balm and ice cubes to reduce the sting and swelling.
Father applied it as she sat on a mossy rock at the creek’s edge, his hands uncharacteristically gentle and caring.
It took days for her lip to go back to normal, days of her sulking, days of me giggling at the absurdity of it.
Eventually, she found the humour in it. But for a while, it was as though the world had come to an end.
“Fucking bees,” she laughs through a sob, tears trickling down her fair cheek as she caresses fathers face behind the plastic film.
The mournfulness of her is so consuming, it feels as though I may hardly know her at all.
There is something to her that I don’t understand; that I can’t see through my fogged mind and the chill of my breath.
As though darkness has begun to invade all the spaces that once held joy.
A fog of anguish that reaches from her eyes to her fingertips, wrapping the small joyful child I once knew in a cloak of sadness she can’t seem to break free of.
Losing father took a toll on us all, the absence of him something that caused a rupture in the foundation of our lives.
He was gone faster than time should allow – walking out the door, to collapse on the pebbled driveway before he reached the car.
Dead before he hit the ground. God called him quickly, urgently.
And what was once a home ruled by male presence, suddenly became something else entirely. While still rigid in its expectations,
in its structure, there was a newfound gentleness to it.
The sharp edges of our lives had softened, just enough to allow us room to breathe, and that brought a heartache of its own kind.
Mother stepped into the role of leader as best she could, but our community had always been built upon the certainty of male authority. Without it, everything felt unsteady, as though the structure of our lives had shifted.
So, we resisted her. We fought back; our claws still stuck in the old ways. We questioned her decisions, pushed against her instructions, echoing the very arguments she had once taught us about order and obedience.
How were we meant to follow her now, when our whole lives had been spent learning to lower our voices, step aside, and let men lead? We had been forced into silence, taught that a woman’s place was in their shadows – and now we were expected to follow the lead of her.
And where she once was the light for us, the glisten of hope, of joy, she became something difficult with sharpened edges that made us fearful of stepping out of turn.
She became father, in the end. Demanding of us the same things he did, expecting us to fit into boxes we couldn’t break ourselves for.
But we loved her, we revered her. She showed us there was more to life than men shouting orders and blindly obeying.
She showed us, even without the intent, that women have the power to be more.
And after a while, with time softening our memories, thoughts of father became palatable, with her filling that void. But it’s difficult to miss someone when you can suddenly breathe easier with them gone.
When I was a small girl, before I understood the complexity of belief and rebellion, I followed my mother with adoration and respect.
I would watch her ready herself at first light, covering her skin with scratchy cloth, the garments near always hand sewn by an elder in the community.
We thrived on it – sharing and combining skills to have no need for the outside world.
And for a time, it was peaceful. I didn’t need anything else.
I had my mother, my father, my sister, my friend. We played in the woodland, avoiding the snakes in the grass and picking wildflowers to press into old books. It was simple, then, being grateful for what the universe, God, provided.
But through time, our curiosity grew and became intolerable. Our adolescence was spent discussing other theories of the world.
When I was near thirteen, a gentle faced man had slipped me a book of ancient myths and legends into my woven basket as we tarried through the market; an outsider thinking he was offering a kindness.
I remember the way he glanced around before handing it to me, as though the simple act carried an unspoken danger – wild promise and hope inked into the pages. His fingers brushed mine for a moment, our eyes meeting with my heart in my throat.
“For you,” he murmured softly, winking as he disappeared into the crowd.
I had never held a book that didn’t come from the church before – only bibles and children’s fables designed to teach Gods lessons. The cover was worn smooth with age, its leather cracked along the edges, the pages thin and yellowed.
It felt like a secret, and I cherished it.
But that kindness blossomed into an insatiable hunger for more.
The stories inside were unlike anything I had ever been taught.
Gods who created the world with thunder and flames, oceans that stretched farther than imagination could allow.
Entire civilizations rising and falling beneath the expanse of a starlit sky.
Gaia, Tartarus, Eros – Gods, Titans and Olympians. Stories I’d never felt so lost in, so seen and understood. Each page felt like opening a window in a room that only ever had cold cement walls. The world beyond suddenly glistened with promise.
I began reading at night by the subtle glow of candlelight, long after everyone had gone to sleep.
Sometimes I would brush my fingertip against the page, tracing the words as if they might disappear if I looked away.
If there were other concepts of the world, of where the stars came from, of how humans were made, and how population continued, perhaps there’s a whole world out there I should explore.
I had read the book from cover to cover, the ink fading where my fingers pressed to the pages, the spine cracked beyond repair. I adored those stories, so much that I offered them to my sister. I had hoped she would see beauty in knowing more than what they allow us.
Instead, she took it to mother, scared of the repercussions should she be found with it in her belongings.
Mother scalded me, my penance paid with lashings, then burned the book in the fireplace. My heart sank as I watched my hopes and dreams wither into nothing more than ash.
Isabel was mournful, regretful apologies being spilled into the night as I cried into my pillow.
She sat beside my bed long after the house had gone quiet, her small hands twisting nervously in the blanket.
The lamp light warbled against the walls, making her shadow stretch and shrink behind her as if it were breathing.
I wanted to be angry with her, and for a long time I was.
But beneath the anger there was something worse – understanding.