THE SECRET TO HEAVEN
By Susan Burdorf
I?d forgotten how long the walk was when I started out that morning.
I reached into my backpack for the bottle of water I?d taken from the cooler earlier. Cold when I began three hours ago its temperature was closer to lukewarm now.
I swallowed the liquid anyway, grateful for the momentary reprieve from the onslaught of memories.
Brian, my betrothed, had suggested this trip, insisted on it, actually.
?You need to face this history sometime, might as well be now.? He?d said in his gentle way when I protested I had too much work to do.
His blue eyes, usually so warm and tender, were serious and wide. A psychologist by profession, he knew all about repressed memories and the damage they could do if not dealt with.
?Joke?s on you, babe,? Clara said as she stood on the hilltop just out of sight of the object of this trek, ?I?ve faced them, and found them too hard. Too sad. Anything worth salvaging died with my mother last year.? I shifted my backpack, its weight more imagined than real.
The only response to my comment was the wind tousling my short-cropped dark hair, another sign of my independence from tradition. All my life my mother reminded me that women of my tribe always wore their hair long and loose until marriage. An antiquated and stereotypical view of the Native American girl that I refused to adhere to once I reached my teen years. One of the first, of many, things my mother and I argued about once I became old enough to assert my adolescent independence.
But that wasn?t why I was here.
?She did the best she could, under the circumstances,? Brian?s voice echoed the old argument in my head as I stared ahead, tears forming, blurring the image in front of me into a kaleidoscope of images that grew from deep green to the orange of the small house standing sentinel on the hill, a guardian of my youth, a home lost to time.
My legacy.
A ghost-house of what might have been.
I half-smiled imaging a small girl playing in the dirt while a slender woman, her dark hair falling in a single braid down her back, hummed a song as she hung laundry on the line stretched between the house and a pole long since gone.
The picture dissolved into the air with my next step.
I was struck once again by the isolation and desolation of this place. Flowers were blooming in the scrub brush to my left, a reassurance that from despair might bloom hope. Tall trees bowed in greeting as the wind rippled the leaves, turning green to silver as the temperature cooled slightly, the petrichor-tinged aroma a hint of the rain to come.
I breathed deeply.
The sharp crackle of the water bottle reminded me that I was still holding it. I slipped it into the side pocket on the backpack and walked another few steps forward. Reaching out I touched the rough wall of the house, fingers tingling at the warmth left from the sun?s kiss.
Without letting go of the house I walked around until I found the front door of my birthplace, a small square structure devoid of decoration or adornment. A ragged curtain covering the glassless window blew in the breeze as I opened the door.
Inside I stood still, taking a moment to let my eyes adjust from the brightness outside to the gray interior devoid of any sign of habitation.
I bit my lip as the anticipated memory flooded back to the day my mother lost her battle with the demons who gathered in the corners of the house and in her mind. The day my world turned upside-down and I lost my beautiful, fragile mother forever.
I fell to the floor, tears spilling into the dirt floor as they had that fateful day. I rub my arm, comforting myself from imagined bruises long since healed.
I pull out my phone to call Brian just as the heavens above me open with their song, rain pounding on the tin roof in a melody I used to find comfort in when I was enveloped in the arms of the one I most trusted, and most feared.
?Mommy! Mommy, the thunder?s loud. I?m scared.? Little Clara cried.
Sobbing, I beg for the memory to leave me alone. But memories are relentless when they have a purpose.
?Shhh? shhh?my little Wren. You have nothing to fear. Mommy?s here. The thunder?s only the sound of the heavens opening their secrets to you. Listen? listen??
I whimper, my voice small and young in my ears, ?I?m listening, mommy. I?m listening.?
I begin humming, rocking on the dirt floor; her face shimmering before me. Her arms around me, warm and slender and so fragile, held me through my fears, through my trembling and tears.
I wrap my arms around myself - a poor imitation of her embrace, moaning for her touch once more, wishing I could hear her voice, raspy and deep as she aged thanks to the many cigarettes she?d smoked, a habit she?d picked up in rehab.
They?d taken me from her that night, in the middle of the storm, no wonder I hate thunder and lightning.
It?s only fitting I return her during one of her beloved storms to the place she loved most.
I reach into my backpack, brushing aside the letter from the funeral home. My fingers close on the mahogany box that bears all that remains of her.
Standing tall, wiping tears from my face I open the box sprinkling a little of her into the floor, ?Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? I love you, mommy. I miss you. I miss you most in the storms of life. I know the secret to heaven. It?s you.?
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