I was four, almost five when Mom died. That’s the foggiest year in my recollection. Between CPS and getting placed into a local orphanage and meeting Silva, it all just blurred together.
I remember not knowing why Mom never picked Lucy and I up from school. From school we went straight to CPS. We were picked up by an older woman in a strawberry dress. Only two weeks later were we allowed to go back home to pick up our stuff.
And we never got adopted. But that was ok because Lucy and I had each other. Even though we watched all our friends get chosen and welcomed into loving families. Even though we never celebrated the holidays by a fireplace with a tree full of presents. Even though… even though…
But I remember when Silva first came into our lives, or rather, when we stumbled right into hers. She was in the park nearby and Lucy and I had become pros at escaping the orphanage. And barely anyone would look for us anyway. Because we weren’t the little kids anymore.
She was feeding pigeons and smelled of lilacs and lemongrass and something sweet. I was captivated by her and her wise eyes and long, black hair.
“Here,” she said when she caught me staring. “Would you like to feed them too?” I did. So I held out my hands and she placed some seeds in the palms of them, Lucy’s too. And I couldn’t help but feel like a plant was going to sprout right from my open hands. It didn’t. I tossed the birdseed around my feet and watched with wide eyes as the birds came right up to me to eat.
“Try this,” she said and held a hand with birdseed out. A small bird had swooped down and perched atop her fingertips. She pecked happily until satisfied, and flew away. I took some more seed from her hand, watching as a large pigeon mimicked the smaller bird's actions. I laughed as Lucy squealed. She reached to touch the bird but scared it. And I’m still laughing when it flies away.
“Auntie did you see that!” I gasped and her eyes sparkled like diamonds. It was the first thing I said.
“I did,” she said, smiling.
“Do you always feed the birds here?” Lucy asked.
“Most days. More so lately. I’ve been waiting here.”
“Waiting for what?” I found myself asking. She smiled at me.
“Someone. Something.”
“Who?” Lucy asks. Auntie’s smile widened. The warm look in her eyes reminded me of my mother.
“She’s gone now. But I swear I still see her some days… It was her final request of me.”
“Who?”
“Well aren’t you children full of questions?”
“We’ve got nothing better to do,” Lucy pouted. I nodded.
“And why is that?”
“Cuz the orphanage is boring. We’ve been there for years ya’ know?”
“Well I’m sure that’s only because you haven’t played the right games,” She said with a lift of her cheeks and a wink of her eye.
After that, Lucy and I snuck out almost every evening. And, almost every evening, Silva was there on that bench, waiting. And then, in the blink of an eye, years passed. We went to middle school and Silva would sign the two of us out to take us to the movies and go roller skating and eat home cooked meals. Lucy and I would celebrate birthdays with her, holidays with her. And we found something we didn’t even realize we were missing.
Silva became family to us, as we did to her. We were the kids she never had while she was like another mother to us. And we were a mismatched ménage. A loving one.
But in my later years of highschool I began distancing myself from Silva and Lucy. Because of raging teenage hormones and a few bad decisions and one thing led to the next… before I knew it I lost contact with Silva entirely in my last year of college. And she never went to my graduation because I never told her when it was and I think I lost something that day. I don’t know what it was. But it felt like a piece of myself.
And now that I finally have my Aunt Silva back…
“Hello, anybody home?” I brush Lucy’s hand aside, the one she was waving in front of my face, and hide my hands back in my sleeves.
…I feel like I’ve lost her again.
“Why did you call me out here?” I ask her, walking through the naked trees with her, side by side. “It’s freezing and I had a long day.”
“Yeah you look like you took quite the beating.”
I glare at her but her eyes are already elsewhere, on the setting sun and the pink clouds and bare branches. She bites the nail on her thumb, a habit she’s always had when lost in thought.
“I-” she starts and clears her throat before trying again. “I wanted to apologize. For… well, you know.”
“It was my fault too,” I add.
“Yeah but I didn’t mean it. I was just scared. Afraid of losing home again.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
I shrug. Her eyes are wide, shimmering with tears. I blink, startled by their transparency, but keep going.
“I was just thinking about that. About Greenlake.”
“The orphanage?”
“Yeah. About Silva too.”
She laughs softly for a moment. I catch a tear fall from the corner of her eye but ignore it just like she does.
“I miss her too, you know.” She adds after a beat. I nod.
“I know that too.” The words fill the space between us. I feel like I have her back again, my sister. But not in the same way. There’s still something separating us. There always is, I guess.
“She’s ok though, Luce,” I say with a confidence that surprises even me.
“How do you know?” She asks and I shrug.
“Gut feeling.”
We walk back to the campus in silence. But a question is still gnawing at my chest, one I’ve been thinking about since the first day here. We never talked about this. Never.
“Lucy-”
“Hm?”
“About Mom. How did she die?”
Lucy stopped and I stayed behind, watching her look up at the sky with a pained look on her face.
“I’m not sure I should be the one to tell you this.”
“Luce, you’re the only person I would want to hear this from. Not the cops, not the orphanage, not even Silva.”
Now she finally looks at me. And her tears multiply, leaving streaks down her ruddy cheeks. A billow of cold smoke falls from her lips as she chokes back a sob. It tells me everything I need to know. Oddly enough, I’m calm. Maybe time has made me indifferent to it.
But some part of me is still crying out, screaming in agony for his mother.
“She was killed, wasn’t she?” I ask. It barely sounds like my voice but Lucy crumbles.
I gather her into my arms. I already know. But her nod against my shoulder just confirms it. Mom didn’t die in an accident. It was planned. She was murdered.
And her two kids were left with no one. No mom. No dad, he split when she was pregnant. I wonder what she would think of us now. I wonder if she’d be proud. In my head she is. I’d like her to be.
“You remember-?” I ask Lucy in a daze as she sobs into my jacket. “Remember when she would throw us over her shoulder when it was time for bed and would carry us like a sack of flour to our room? And we would rush out of bed all the way to the kitchen so she would do it again.”
My sister laughs between her cries. And finally, finally, I feel something in me break. I hug her back and taste the tears before I even feel them. All these years I never let myself mourn. Even as a child, I knew I had to be the bigger sibling for Lucy. I had to be strong for her. Even though I was just as weak. Even though I was hurting just as much.
I don’t know how long we stay that way but it’s well past dark by the time we make it back to the dormitories.
“Are you going to eat?” I ask her when we get to the elevators.
“Already did. I’m just going to get a head start on sleep.”
I nod and press my floor. “What floor?” I ask.
“Six.”
The elevator doors open on the second floor and I step out. I stop for a moment, looking behind me at her marshmallow coat and blond braid and shiny eyes.
“Aiden-” she says, holding her hand out to keep the doors from closing. “I love you. And I’m proud of you. I hope you know that.”
And then she’s gone. That pit in my chest opens up again, threatening to strangle me in tears. I take a deep breath and step out of the elevator lobby, toward the food hall. I move to sit with my new friends, a little band of misfits. I’m proud of you. How long have I been waiting to hear those words? It feels like a lifetime.
For a moment she sounded just like Mom, the way I remember her.
<<<>>>
Comments (1)
See all