The Storm

Is there ever a moment when you feel truth, not know truth, but feel it? When everything becomes clear and a decision is finally reached, there's a calm, but it has to be the right decision, otherwise it's just the calm before the storm. Problem is, you never know if it really is the right decision. I guess that's all life really is, one long string of decisions and choices, with a splash of fate and a dollop of destiny mixed in.

As I sat there that day listening to the porch swing squeak in harmony with the traffic and watching the storm roll in, I had no idea what would happen. Whether it would be good or bad was a mystery, but my decision was already reached by that point and I was feeling that truth, that crystal clarity.

I remember the storm because it was like happy tears, something that never quite made sense, at least not to me. Tears had always been saved for pain, and fear, and sometimes they were just locked up inside of me, waiting to explode.

The sun wasn't terribly bright, but it was there. I felt as if I had stepped over a threshold into a dream. Sunshine, thunder and lightning, it was surreal, unnatural. I watched my nephew jump as the first clap of thunder rolled over head. He shrieked and toddled over to my feet. I picked him up and placed him firmly against my chest.

"It's alright Sammy, God's just real mad."

As if to throw the comment back in my face, a lightning bolt sizzled to the ground and I could almost hear God laughing, saying "You're damn right I am." Then the rain started. Pitter-patter, crash and sizzle all piled on top of one another. But it never got dark. I never noticed any threatening clouds, and the air never cooled. Nothing like the dark, stormy nights with a chill in the air we all read about. Just a sunny, warm, July afternoon with barely any clouds and a raging thunderstorm perched just above the roof.

Storms had always terrified me, yet intrigued me all in the same emotion. The storm always made it's way back into my mind every time I heard the clap of thunder signaling danger. That was what had made me come home that day, the thunder. I had run through the woods, dodging the bushes and stray vines in my path, heaving with every step, petrified that I would be caught in the menacing downpour and threatening lightning. As I approached the house I knew there was something wrong, I could feel it with every fiber of my soul. Daddy's car was gone and the house was silent. I called out for mama and Dee but there was never any answer, until I made my way into the bedroom and found them both bloody and unconscious.

No one did anything. Mama refused to press charges, not against Daddy she would say. Dee didn't talk so much after that, just kind of always sat there with a distant look on her face. Then one day she just started pretending it never happened, but she never looked at him again, she wouldn't meet his eyes and when he hit her, she was like a statue, no tears or screams or movements, just still.

I shivered and yanked myself back into the present. I squeezed Sammy so tight I thought I might crush him. We sat there through the storm, clutching one another. His baby eyes so big, yet they never cried. His tiny body shuddering with every crash, yet he never screamed. And my skin warm with goose bumps from the chill that tickled my spine.

I watched as the storm finally subsided and rolled on to terrorize the next town, the next house, the next child. All that remained was that green and that smell and that sadness. Things never look so green or smell so pure until after a storm.

Small drops of rainwater rolled slowly down the leaves until they reached the tip where they would cling for life until the soft breeze became too much and overpowered their weak form. Then they would fall to the grass making tiny unheard splashes.

"See, all better." I whispered into his soft blonde fluff. His blue eyes looked at me and then turned to the world as if no one could be trusted ever again. He gazed back at me, then giggled and clapped as if to express the excitement his little mouth could not yet say. He slid off my lap and returned to the blocks he had been banging until the thunder took center stage, as if nothing had happened. And maybe, to him, nothing had. All that remained was that electricity that shot through his little bones. He stopped banging and his grin faded as he looked around disappointed.

His head cocked to the side, he questioned me, "Mama? Mama?" His little fingers balling into a fist and releasing, over and over. His own small way of fighting off tears.

I had no answer for him. Honestly I didn't know. No I did know; to us she no longer existed. But how do you show that to a child? How do you look in that innocence and tell that story?

He continued with his mama chant as he built a towering skyscraper with no chance of survival. I noticed again, the large blue mark peeking out from under his shorts and the past week flooded back to me. Bad thing about floods, first your covered with no understanding of direction or escape, and then the air is gone, and you drown.

That night I had shot out of bed, grateful for the intermission to the horror film playing on the big screen inside my head, but anxious to shut the phone up, and scared all the while.

The voice on the other end was matter of fact and professional. I asked over and over "Who," "What," "When," but got little answered. All I could make out was Saint Andrew's, Dee, and unconscious. It wasn't until after I hung up that I could fully understand what the woman had been telling me. Dee was unconscious at Saint Andrew's Hospital. It would take a couple of hours to get there, so only grabbing absolute necessities, I was out the door and in my car before any of it had a chance to sink in. So many questions bounced back and forth through my skull. How had this happened? An accident? No she would have said accident. When? Why wasn't I told sooner? Did my parents know? Had she called me first? Sammy? Where was he? Was he ok? Continuous questions all the way to Atlanta.

I had most of my answers by the time my footsteps echoed in the hallway of the intensive care unit. Answers that your head knows but your heart hides. Answers that had always been there, when Dee had run into a door, or fallen off the porch, or slipped on the steps. All the bruises and broken bones that deep down I knew were inflicted upon her, but I wanted to believe that she was just accident prone. It was as if every time I saw her there was a new story, and every time she sounded more and more like our mother…making excuses, hiding her face, denying the truth but too afraid and weak to do anything about it. I was the only one who had really survived, so far. Sammy sat perched on my mother's lap, wide-awake. His eyes glazed over by his own horror film. My father saw me first.

My questions came rapidly, firing out of my mouth before the previous was finished. He grabbed my shoulders and said, "Calm yourself Cecelia." I went stiff and cold all at once. Here I was a grown woman, and he could still paralyze me.

I shook him and the feeling off of me, then looked around the room for my brother-in-law. "Where is he?" I whispered.

"Now we don't know any…"

"No! I know! I feel it." He opened his mouth to preserve the name of the precious boy he never raised.

"Don't you dare protect him." I screamed before he could take a breath and speak. His mouth closed and he just stared at me, disappointed.

I brushed past him and down the corridor to the nurse. She showed me to Dee and then quietly left the room.

What I saw will be burned behind my eyelids for the rest of my life, and anytime I think of the way my sister looked, my heart will bleed, and all those scary little girl feelings that we had known so well, will get caught in my throat until they choke me.

My eyes brimmed with pools, but I pulled back and managed to croak out her name.

"Dee?" It was a whisper, a plea, that only God could hear.

Both eyes were black and fresh blood ran from her nose. I pulled a Kleenex from my pocket book and dabbed, careful not to disturb the shattered bones that lay beneath her translucent skin. I saw every vein in her face, felt every place that he had hit her in my own body. The bruises ran together, her skin was a shattered array of blues and purples.

The tears betrayed me and began falling without my consent. Slowly they slid down the paths on my face, and then clung to my chin, holding on just like the raindrops, until they could fight no more and fell; splashing my sister's broken hand.

I could feel her watching me. I lifted my head and met her gaze. We continued for a small eternity. Nothing was said and I could feel that this was an important time in both our lives. She blinked first, then spoke.

"Take him CiCi. Take the baby, take him." She repeated it over and over then closed her eyes and fell back into unconsciousness. I sat for a few minutes and studied her through blurry eyes, took in her features, the same features that stared back at me in the mirror. But at this moment they seemed so foreign to me, so strange, like I didn't even recognize myself, let alone her. Then I closed my eyes and saw her on her wedding day, dancing and laughing. It was a good day. A good decision at the time, but just the calm before the storm. She had fallen in the middle of the dance floor her white fluff of a dress flying above her head, and she just laughed. Laughed like I never heard her laugh before. So I laughed with her. I sat in that hospital and laughed with her. I grazed her forehead with my lips and whispered my love, then turned and walked out of the room without looking back. My last vision would be of her laughing.

"I'm taking the baby and getting a hotel room." My mother silently protested but said nothing. She had never stood up to anyone, not even her daughters. Maybe that was because she had never stood up for us either. I said nothing else to either of them, just picked up Sammy and stepped onto the elevator.

It wasn't until the next morning that I saw the bruise on Sammy and knew exactly what Dee had been asking. Do for her son, what she couldn't, what our mother had never been able to do for us, because she had no right protecting a child, when in front of his angry fists, she was nothing but a little girl herself.

So there I sat, after the storm, watching Sammy, listening to him laugh. That's what finally made my decision to run with him. His laugh. Beyond all my fears and questions of what if and where and how, lied his laugh. If we stayed he'd loose it, loose it to the hands of his own father, and grandfather. The same way his mother and I had lost ours.

I halted the swing and walked slowly over to him, kneeling to help him place the blocks in the bag. Then I scooped him and the bag in my arms and carried him to the car. I fastened him in and tried not to look back at the house as I slid into the front seat. I pulled out of the driveway, the Uhaul bouncing behind us, and it wasn't ten minutes before we were on the interstate heading out of Georgia. I never really thought about leaving there, but when I actually was, I felt very free. All those scary images of my parents and my sister, all those ghosts from the past, couldn't catch me. I left them somewhere near Atlanta.

Someday he would probably ask me why I had taken him and a simple "Your mother asked me to," wouldn't do. At that moment I had no solid idea of how I would answer him. Right now all that mattered was leaving, the questions and answers and problems would work out later. In my heart I was doing the right thing, even if my head kept screaming at me. This time I would follow my heart. I had awhile to figure it out but I guess I would say to preserve your laugh. To shield you from the same fate that fell on your mother and me. Or was it more selfish, not so altruistic after all. To replace the babies I would never have. Something else my father stole from me with a few swift kicks to the abdomen when he found out I was pregnant at seventeen. The only child I would ever conceive or carry. To have someone finally love me unconditionally.

I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him sleeping soundly. "I'll explain it all one day Sammy. Promise." I whispered more for myself then him. How the day she gave you to me was her strongest day, because she had my mother's weak eyes and frail posture. Because it was the only way she could love you without killing everything good in you. Because it was fate that made us sisters, and I had finally decided to fulfill my destiny and my duty. And whether the decision was right or wrong, I had decided and at that moment I felt the truth, breathed in the calm, and sped up as I crossed the Georgia State line.