Dead River (19 page)

I study Trey. Compared to the new souls who’ve just traversed the river, he is faded, bluish.

“Other things affect your shine. Your body being laid to rest is one of them. And, of course, you got to want to move on,” he says. “Some people keep their shine.”

In answer to my questioning look, he says, “Some people don’t want to go. Either they want to be alive or they want something else they could only get in life, and it eats away at them. They become evil spirits. Fiends.”

“Fiends?” I murmur, thinking of Jack, of how brightly he shone, how intensely hard it was to even look at him. But Trey had shone brightly, too. “What do they do that’s so evil?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but stops when he reaches the top of the hill. I come up behind him, and I can see stone walls, crumbling as much as the headstones on the riverbank. It’s a small house, or what remains of it. There is no roof, but the branches of old trees with fresh new leaves hang over it like a canopy. Ivy crawls up the black stones, almost completely claiming them. Here, the only sound is the twittering of birds. The line of people winds up ahead, but it’s perfectly silent; every one of them looks around, awestruck. It’s so peaceful and lush and green. I think I could fall asleep on this carpet of soft spring grass and never wake up.

I forget what we’re talking about when I see her. She is
a small woman, as unremarkable in appearance now as she was in life. And yet I can’t take my eyes off her. The world slows and silences. She smiles and welcomes each person with a hug. Her hair and face are fair, and despite the limited sunlight leaking through the leaves above, something about her glitters like gold. She moves like a leaf on the wind, so gracefully, and those she smiles at seem to be affected by her, as immediately they begin to smile, too. She’s wearing an ordinary white baseball shirt with red sleeves, with a giant P on it, for the Phillies. I know it because she’d worn it all the time. She’d gotten it at my first—and last—baseball game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Somehow I’d expected her to be wearing a long, regal robe, or a crown, or something. But no, it’s just her, just my mom, looking exactly the same. The same as the day she died.

Suddenly I’m back in my bedroom, lying flat on my back in bed, with the summer heat pressing down on me and the iridescent ripples on the walls. My parents were weirdly absent from my life that summer, talking in hushed whispers about “adult things” they said I didn’t need to know about, so Lannie became my best and only friend. One day I’d been playing with Lannie all afternoon, and Lannie had been playing her usual games, pretending to be hanging by the neck from trees, making herself invisible when we played hide-and-seek. It put me in a foul mood, and I just wanted to get away from her. So I was alone in my bedroom with a pillow over my head to keep the visions away when my mother walked in. My mother tried to take the pillow off my
head but I yelled at her. She told me she had something to say, something important, but I screamed at her to leave me alone.

I thought she’d fight it, tell me to behave or something, but she just did as I told her to. She put her cold, clammy hand on my bare knee and whispered an “I love you,” then walked out of my room. There wasn’t anything different about that, she was constantly saying she loved me, so much that I forgot what it meant. A minute later I heard the screen door slam and feet swishing on the grass. I scrambled to look out my window. In that red-and-white baseball shirt, she was walking toward the river. The way she moved should have made me nervous; she walked very deliberately, not like she was just going for a stroll. And she wouldn’t ever leave me alone in the house, not even for a minute, to go get the mail. But I was so angry, partly at Lannie and partly at myself for not having made any real friends, that I turned away and shoved the pillow over my head and held it there until the sirens screamed me back into reality.

I ran downstairs. I can still remember the look on my father’s face when he came home from work and the police told him that several people had seen his wife walk into the river. Some had dove in to rescue her, but she’d never been found. His body kind of crumpled and he grabbed my shoulder so tight that pain rocketed down my arm. “I didn’t think she’d go so soon,” he sobbed. I’d found those words strange at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew what he meant. Maybe it was how sad my mother always
seemed. She always smiled at me, but it was as if she worked to achieve that smile. Whenever she thought she was alone, I’d catch her frowning, her brow furrowed as if the weight of everything was on her shoulders. Deep down, I guess we both always knew she’d leave us.

I’m so engrossed in the memory, I don’t see anything else around me, only her form, coming nearer. When she is close to me, she puts a hand on my cheek. Her hand is cold and clammy, as I remember it. “Kiandra,” she says. “How I’ve missed you.” She pulls me into a hug. Her smell is the same, sweet and clean.

There are so many questions I want to ask, but for now I just allow her arms to swallow me up and I press my cheek against her shoulder so hard that it hurts. “Mom,” I say. It comes out hoarse and watery, and I realize I’m crying.

It’s only then I see Trey standing beside me, fidgeting nervously. When I pull back, my mother’s giving him a look I often had directed at me whenever I did something wrong. Quickly I say, “It’s not Trey’s fault. He wanted me to leave but I’m too stubborn.”

She contemplates this for a moment. “That is true,” she says with a hint of a smile.

I frown. I don’t like her professing to know me. She
left
me. When I was seven, I wanted her so much,
ached
for her. The pain from those days was so bad, I can still feel it, but it’s an old wound. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted her. Now, standing in front of her, hugging her, it’s like being presented to someone only slightly more familiar than a stranger. All
I know is that I don’t want those wounds to be reopened. I don’t want to get so close that I ache and ache and nothing can fill that hole.

Trey speaks up. “I thought I’d show her around.”

I’m relieved by the suggestion, but my mother shakes her head. “I need to talk to my daughter in private.”

The thought makes my stomach tighten. Trey is already turning back down the path when my mother tells him to wait a moment. She takes him aside and says, “I have a job for you. On the east side,” then whispers something into his ear. He listens intently, gives me a nervous glance, and then heads out. I’m amazed. Here, she is a leader. At home, I was the only person she was in charge of, and she was gentle, quiet, even when I misbehaved. She certainly never ordered me around. It just seems so unlike her. I refuse to be impressed. Before I can stop my gaping, she turns her eyes toward my face. She motions for me to follow her, but it’s like my feet have rooted in the ground. I don’t want to go. I need to get away. Just be alone. To sort out this whirlwind of emotions inside me. She gives me a look as if to say
What are you waiting for?

But I can’t. I can’t bring myself to move. This is my mother. The mother I lost so many years ago.
Standing in front of me
.

“I, um, have to use the bathroom,” I manage.

Her face breaks into a small smile before melting into a frown. She shakes her head. “Kiandra …”

I can tell by her expression that I’ve flubbed, that obviously dead people don’t need to do such things. Heat rises in my
face. I peel my feet from the ground and trail behind her into the woods. As we walk she says, “How is your father?” as if he’s some acquaintance and not the man she was married to for ten years.

“Fine,” I say, forcing the word out of my throat.

“I miss him,” she says softly. Then she stops and looks at me. “I missed you. You’ve grown up so well. You’re beautiful.”

“And you missed it all,” I mutter.

She nods. “I know. I feel bad about that. But obviously your father didn’t do such a bad—”

“No. He didn’t. You’re right.” I don’t mean to snap, but my words come out that way. Once again I feel like I’m seven years old, back in that house on the river, having a tantrum.

She stares at me. “You’re angry.”

With her eyes boring into me, I get a familiar feeling. I feel the waterworks starting. I’m going to cry again. Whenever she would look at me that way, for breaking a vase in the living room, for hiding my new dress when I ripped it, or whatever, I would always stare into those eyes and cave. I’d run into her arms and beg her for forgiveness, beg her to love me again. But not now. Now I’m beyond that. I don’t need her approval anymore. And I’m not going to cry for her. “Wouldn’t
you
be?”

She sucks in her bottom lip. “Your father didn’t tell you anything.”

“No,” I say, looking away and hardening myself. “And after a while I stopped asking. I know why he wouldn’t. Suicide isn’t something you discuss with a seven-year-old.”

“I’ll never forgive myself for not saying goodbye to you properly. It was just … too hard. I wanted to. But I knew if you cried and begged me to stay, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. And I needed to.” She stares hard at me. “I
needed
to. For you.”

I squint at her. “For me? That’s stupid.”

“I know it might have been cruel to leave. But it would have been even crueler if I’d stayed.” She sighs. “I had a brain stem glioma. Do you know what that is?”

Now we’re alone among the tall pines. The wind rustles through them but makes no sound, so I swear I can hear my heart beating. “Brain stem? You mean …”

“A tumor. In my brain. A very serious one. The prognosis was bad, and some days the pain was unbearable. I talked it over with your father. If I was going to die, I wanted to have some control over it. So that was what I planned. I meant to say goodbye. Really, I did.”

I swallow. “Why didn’t Dad tell me?”

“Did you ask him?”

“I didn’t think I had to! I thought I knew what happened. I thought you …” I know I didn’t think anything at the time. I thought my mom had gone away, and my father wouldn’t say more than that. Over time, though, I put the pieces together, and it formed a picture that could mean only one thing. Suicide. And it
was
suicide. She didn’t
have
to do it. She could have had more time with me, and she chose something else. Even a day more, an hour, a minute—all that precious time
we could have had together was thrown away. I stand there on the path, shaking. “You should have stayed with us.”

“And have you see me so weak? So sick? I wasn’t your mother anymore. I couldn’t care for you. I was helpless.”

“I wouldn’t have cared! I just wanted you. Sick or healthy. I didn’t care!” I shout.

“You wouldn’t have had me either way. The doctors gave me three months to live. I was beyond chemotherapy. It was too late.”

“But even a few more days,” I protest, but it comes out soft because suddenly I feel very weak.

“You’re tired,” she says. “You need rest.”

I remember how she used to usher me up to my bedroom every time I acted out of line, saying, “You’re tired and need to rest.” No, she just wants to be done with me. I bet ghosts don’t even need to rest, just like they don’t need to use the bathroom. The thought makes me more bitter than ever. “I’m fine. I wish you would have stayed.”

She is silent for a moment. “And I wish you had stayed alive. You should have left when Trey told you. But we all can’t have what we want, now, can we?” She sounds like she did whenever I told her I wanted dessert, never mean, just sweetly condescending. In my mind’s eye, I’m in the kitchen, reaching for a bag of cookies in the pantry. She slams the door and smiles at me.
We all can’t have what we want, now, can we?

I feel a new wash of tears fall over my cheeks. It was futile
to think I could harden myself against her. She is my mother. I was deluding myself when I said I didn’t care. She is my sun. Even if she hated me, that fact would never change.

“You don’t even want me here now. You sent Trey to make sure I stayed away, because you didn’t want me with you.”

She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Listen to me, Kiandra. I want you. It hurts me terribly not to be with you, but it made me happy to know that you were having a life. More than anything, I wanted you to live. To be happy and
live
.” She enunciates the last word as if teaching it to me for the first time. “You were happy there, without me, weren’t you?”

I wipe the tears from my cheeks and look out toward the east bank. I think of Justin, and my father. I wonder if Dad has made it up to the river yet. I wonder how I’ll look when they find my body. How they’ll react. The thought of my father seeing me that way twists my heart. I’m his everything. That’s what he said to me, about a thousand times, on that ride up from New Jersey. He kept chewing on the inside of his cheek and looking over at me with crazed eyes.
You’re my everything. I won’t let anything happen to you
. I nod.

She smiles a little. “You had a boyfriend, didn’t you? What is his name?”

I nod again, less forcefully this time. I’m not really sure what we were, as of last night. I guess we were still boyfriend and girlfriend. “Justin,” I say, but I’m back to thinking about my dad.
You’re my everything
. More tears slide over my cheeks. “But I can’t stop thinking about Dad. This will kill him.”

“Yes. I know it will.” She bows her head for a moment, then moves closer to me, and I think she’s going to hug me again. Instead, she leans in close to my ear. I feel the familiar sweep of her lips on my cheek. It sends the world reeling for me, but not as much as her next words. Very quietly, she says, “And that is why I am going to send you back.”

It takes a moment to register. I search for another meaning, but can’t think of one. “What … You don’t mean that …”

“Oh, Kiandra. It’s not that I don’t want you.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s …” Maybe this is a misunderstanding. She didn’t see the wound in my body. She didn’t see how much blood I lost. There’s no way I could go back to
living
. That’s not possible. I’ve heard of people who die for a few minutes and come back to life, but I’ve been dead for hours. “What are you talking about?”