Walls ornate with white colored poster board, strung drawn figures, blue whimsical lockers filling one wall to the top reflecting clutter on other walls, where children would climb and scurry underfoot, the door never opens for long, only open cracks not to dismiss or accept into detaining, secret walls. A sister came in with an arm unoccupied to busy herself with unclean dishes then Kay’s tangled hair.
The tug and pull of Chelsea’s hands against clumps of dark brunette strands to form a crown of braids. Walls shook like thunder and lightning erupted in sudden shouts. Hands against my neck were wet, cold like the shivers that want for a warm bed. When she tucked in the last end of hair among the woven chaplet, her sobbing ceased in wetness, unable to put out tears. Carefully testing the shift of weight with my neck, I turned my head slowly to a broken, knowing face with morose eyes looking at me without substance, without discernment. An empty stranger sat, in reflection to a young face, with devout want to reach out with fingers to touch and caress, consoling. Though limbs didn’t move to or from their bodies and they went to sleep like that, separate persons in the midst of a raging storm.
Kay, Max, Lena, and Chris were in bed after wrestling, pleading, and tucking. Now that children were separated from her blind, searching, wanting hands Chelsea was now putting away the dishes, one after another, methodically, detached from surrounding happenings, including my entrance. A crash of china initiated a rigidness of figure as she stared at the shards in all their stillness. This time I know. This time I know. The noise was an awakening of the past, of the eradicated armistice, the yelling, the broken contract. Fragments were captured into a dustpan and swept away from the scene. She stood with the same frozen posture watching, looking for something among the tiles. In my hand I took hers, lead her to the couch in an empty family room. There she burst into relapse of lamentation, while I watched her clutched hands, shuddering torso, wringing feet, and understood. In my arms I took her, her and all she lived for, all we lived for in this house of secrets. Tears ran down knowing cheeks dropping onto a sister’s bare shoulders where strands of adumbral hair used to brush and sway.
During a shopping trip two weeks before, with the doting, ever present Joe, she cut her hair. “It feels so much lighter!” she said in explanation to the transformation. “Plus it doesn’t take as long to do in the morning.”
At her side, Joe wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. “Either way, I think she’s beautiful, no matter how she cuts her hair,” he said then kissed her on the cheek soft and comfortably.
“Ewww!” wailed the children covering their eyes in play, jumping among the cushions and smashing limbs against one another in the effort escape the act of affection.
“Oh you silly kids!” came Joe’s reply, grasping for the tender skin of youth to cause spasms of laughter and the vigor of high spirits. Chelsea watched him in adoration, arms crossed. Joe’s youth and carefree nature was liberating, a force that was literal and metaphoric as well. At hours just after dawn, he would take her across the threshold of the house. They would make a day of it, running various errands to please her parents, visit a restaurant here and there--like that really good Vietnamese place off of Stacy and Angel--always making sure to bring come the complimentary mints and small chocolate candies to please her siblings, slight souvenirs. There were also trips to dance practices and friends’ houses with hands thrust out the window, a gas pedal pressed down with quick roughness as if it were a battle between pedal and the joints of the little green car. His charm was another amiable attribute that made him fit into the complex jig-saw puzzle that was her life; her parents tolerated him.
Five years since my crown of braids, a sister takes her first opportunity at true freedom. I watch her leave through the window, pushing aside the newly straying wisps of hair that frame, instead of skim, dimples of a careful smile as I wave supportively, crushed.
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