Leaving no footprints when we go.
(“No Footprints”, Bruce Cockburn)
The ordinariness of the last Tuesday that I was at Dorrie’s insults me as I’ve always thought that I’m an intuitive person. I’m usually aware of what goes on beneath the surface of life.
(“No Footprints”, Bruce Cockburn)
The ordinariness of the last Tuesday that I was at Dorrie’s insults me as I’ve always thought that I’m an intuitive person. I’m usually aware of what goes on beneath the surface of life.
We believe that we will suspect when monumental events will occur. On T.V. or in the movies, there are subtle clues in the light changes, a different focus or a shift in the background music. We hear with ominous foreboding, the parent whose last words to his child are harsh ones, or the fight between lovers before an accident, and we wonder how they could have missed the signs.
There are no signs when life is about to be turned upside down. I’ve come to believe that perhaps some people can pretend that there are, after the fact, but there really aren’t any signs. Just like when mom turned up at Sophie’s door in Scarborough to bring us back to B.C. with her, just as suddenly other turns in life can spring up to change things forever.
. . . . . . . . .
I’m walking on the road from Dorrie’s. I’m showered and shampooed; perhaps there’s a trace of oatmeal cookie left in the folds of my shirt and a touch of lemonade on my lips. The scent of Toby’s warmth is still on my fingers.
The road back to the farm seems too short this day. I don’t want to face the commotion just yet. The sun is warm but the breeze up from the water swirls around me, like a dancer, inviting me to sway in time to the ocean waves that I can hear in the distance. I smell the water, the salt, the cedar, the shampoo. I see the clouds, a cat scurrying into the bushes, the fields of tall grass and buttercups swaying in the wind like the golden fur of some amazing animal whose magnitude prevents me from identifying any other features but this mammoth furry back. Ordinary day, ordinary thoughts, ordinary things that I’ve seen, and heard, and smelled every other time that I’ve walked this road.
Then a voice calls, far away and muffled by trees rustling in the breeze and weakened by distance and reticence; something keeps the caller from committing to the call. I hear another voice – a single syllable lengthened with a musicality that changes it and sends it further off on the wind. The first voice again: “Claiaiaire.” Other voices join in. As I cross the road and go into the woods that we’ve explored together, I hear a choir of voices now, calling over and over, the different timbres and shapes of the word:
“Claire, CLAIRE, CA-LAI-RAH, Claiaiaire. »
They are disembodied voices that weave around the trees as if the forest itself is alerting me, accusing me, demanding of me an accounting of my whereabouts. At first I’m confused. I run to the voices to tell them: “Here I am, I’m okay!” then I realize that it’s not me; it’s not us that they’re calling. It’s you.
I see Ariel coming through the trees towards me. I’m surprised; she must be home early from her shift on the ferry. I call to her. I ask her why everyone is out here, why are they calling you, Claire? Ariel is curt, as usual; I always feel that she resents my presence in her life. She speaks to me in a firm, factual manner. She says you’re missing; the kids brought you out to the woods and now you’re missing. And at that moment I know that you are dead. As certain as I am of the presence of the tree beside me, or the earth beneath my feet, I know that you are dead. I know this because I feel you returning to me, your spirit seeping back inside me to take up your place there, beside my other selves.
I turn from Ariel and walk up the hill through the woods, absently clearing the brush before me. All the while I’m speaking to you, where you are within. I’m welcoming you back into my soul. I am tentative in my sense of release and my joy, but I feel that we are once again at peace and together.
With further steps, the details of your physical passing begin to sink in: I won’t be able to play with your curls anymore, I won’t have you to hold in my arms, but I know that it’s only my body that will miss you. You are closer to me now than you’ve been since you were born. For the first time in nearly two years, I am no longer worried for you. I hear you giggle as your squeals of laughter in my head drown out the fear that seeps in through the voices that keep calling you. I welcome you home.
The voices continue but they seem more distant, even as I approach them. Mom has noticed me and comes running, asking where I’ve been and if I’ve seen you. I suppose that I’m in my own sort of shock; I know what has not yet been revealed to the others. Mom is frantic. I can’t respond. She screams as she shakes me, trying to pry loose the information that I guard – she only thinks that she wants to know what I know. She shakes me, and slaps me, then shakes me again until her despair and fear turn her body limp as she lets go of my arms, one hand at a time. She crumples to the ground. One of the mothers, with her baby strapped to her back, comes to mom and helps her. She holds her and tries to keep her from sinking completely away from them and the job of finding you. As she wrestles with mom’s crumpling body, she asks me to go and stay in the house with the other children while the women continue their search. She’s afraid that the little ones might try to help and get lost in the process.
I make my way to the house, crossing the garden. I see the marigolds; is it possible that they are blooming brighter because they know of our secret? Are the shooting stars and the wild roses also affected by this shift in my universe? They all seem brighter today. Are they too, celebrating your return?
As I walk through the back door, the house is surprisingly quiet. I was expecting the usual ruckus with the kids being alone inside. I find Island in the living room amusing the younger ones, playing with the collection of wooden spoons and plastic measuring cups that today can serve as toys, all kitchen activity having stopped. Island comes to me and takes my hand and leads me to where they’re sitting on the floor. From the attic room, I hear the others as they talk, the odd words drifting, melding into the whisper that has settled on the house. We sit together waiting for time to pass.
One of the little ones, I don’t remember which one, climbs on my lap and lays her head in the crook below my shoulder. My body instinctively wraps an arm around her and clasps my fingers together around this child that is not you, and we wait. My body remembers your scent, your weight, your compliance to my every suggestion: come to the window; let’s get you dressed; let’s change your diaper; time to eat; let’s go outside. And one by one, I relinquish these responsibilities and release your care from that part of my brain that commands the need to protect.
We sit – probably for a long time, I don’t know – until we hear the trail of a cry carried in on the evening breeze that flows through the screen door. It’s a wail that contains the
essence of pain and loss. I assume that it’s mom’s cry and that they’ve found you. I lean my head back against the wall and let out a sigh. I can relax because now everyone knows our secret.
I contemplate the idea of going to find mom, to comfort her, to tell her that you are all right and that you are at peace, but I know that she wouldn’t understand my words. I realize that without the bond that you were between mom and me, I have no more connection to her than I have to any of these mothers who live here. I wouldn’t know what to say to this stranger who bore me then carried me into the maze of her distorted life and her own sense of reality.
So I sit and wait for her to come to me.
The piercing wails fill the early evening, tainting the sky that I can see through the jar of wildflowers on the kitchen windowsill. Mom’s cries are absorbed into the leaves on the trees as they take in the other poisons of our atmosphere and breathe out the oxygen, now infused with the perfume of suffering. I imagine her sobs seeping into the earth, robbing the garden of its sweetness and the flowers of their brilliant colour. And I hate her now for how she is destroying everything of beauty that surrounds her, as she always has, as she always will.
At dusk, the cries subside and I go to the back door. I see clusters of women coming from the woods. In twos and threes, they emerge into the field and into the world that will go on without you. They walk slowly, each woman’s head hangs down from her shoulders telling of their day of crouching and seeking, and of their evening of being seized by reality and surprised by death. One of them carries your body loosely in her arms, not tenderly. She holds you at waist height so that your face is turned towards her stomach, not her breast; your arm sways like a pendulum with each step that she takes. She lays you on the front seat of the truck; she doesn’t cover you. She joins the others as they enter the house.
Each one’s face bears the pain that is full of thoughts that begin with: “What if…”
“What if we had noticed her missing earlier?”
“What if we had helped Raven more with this odd child?”
“What if Starla had not gone today?”
“What if it were my child?”
And they carry these heavy thoughts as, one by one, they enter the house and gather their biological children to them, hugging them: some tenderly, some fiercely, all desperately, and they each find a corner in which to huddle together.
Mom and Ariel are the last to come in. I’ve returned to the living room. Ariel holds mom tightly as they come through the door and I remember thinking that I’m glad that Ariel’s a strong woman, so that mom won’t fall. Then a voice inside me says: “She will always fall. She needs someone who can keep picking her up.”
I notice that mom’s skirt is torn to shreds and her face is blotchy and red. As I stand to go to her, I have no idea what I expect of her, only that it’s my responsibility to stand before her as she comes in. They stop at the doorway into the living room. Mom raises her head and looks at me for a moment. She is empty, her eyes are vacant and lifeless and her head drops back down to her chest with a force that drags her whole body with it. Ariel must quickly bend at the knees and grasp mom’s sagging shoulder with her free hand to support them both. Ariel looks at me, our exchange as void of compassion as any that has ever passed between us. She tells me with complete directness, that you have drowned in the creek in the woods, and that she is putting mom to bed.
I stand alone in the archway, hearing the murmurs of the mothers and their children all around me and I go upstairs, wondering how long this aura of the unexpected will hold hunger at bay for the children who neither understand nor care what their mothers have witnessed.
In the attic room, the disarray of blankets, pillows and clothing covering the floor is comforting somehow in the semi darkness, with its feel of draped and silent stillness on a windless night. I look for your blanket, the one that Molly gave you; it could be anywhere. I resent, for the hundredth time that week, the communal attitude that encourages the children to take whatever they want. Your blanket is no longer yours; it’s tainted by the smells of many other small hands that don’t deserve to share in its history. I find it under a mattress along the back wall and I shake it out, trying to free it from its most recent memories, calling back your touch, your scent and Molly’s care. I bring it with me to my mattress and I lie down, rolling the blanket up under my face, against my cheek.
Late in the night, the moon is high above the house and washes the room with light. I wake up to notice that everything is different. Mothers have come up here to spend this night close to their children. Others have stayed downstairs to sleep in the corner where they settled when they came in from the woods. Each one is somewhere other than her own bed, marking the unusual nature of this night.
I get up and wrap myself in your blanket. I go over to kneel by the window from where we first saw the farm and its surroundings not so long ago. Everything is washed in a silvery brightness: I see the outline of the gardens and the flowerbeds, I see the open mouth of the barn door and the old apple tree that stands beside it, I see that the truck is gone.
I notice what is probably the glow from the light above John Ross’s workshop: a weak wash of electric light, competing with the brilliant moonlight to make its mark. I pick up my shoes and clutch your blanket around me with my other hand. I make my way down the stairs, not worrying about the sounds of the creaking stairs. I am leaving this place and I’m taking you with me, now that I can. I will find us a home and someone who will allow us to get through this time, while I’m waiting for my age to catch up with what I’ve seen and what I know.
The springs on the screen door whine as I close it behind me. I sit on the stoop to tie up my sneakers. I make my way along the lane to the road, adjusting the blanket around my shoulders like a shawl. And we set out together.
I love you, Claire.
Starla.
There are no signs when life is about to be turned upside down. I’ve come to believe that perhaps some people can pretend that there are, after the fact, but there really aren’t any signs. Just like when mom turned up at Sophie’s door in Scarborough to bring us back to B.C. with her, just as suddenly other turns in life can spring up to change things forever.
. . . . . . . . .
I’m walking on the road from Dorrie’s. I’m showered and shampooed; perhaps there’s a trace of oatmeal cookie left in the folds of my shirt and a touch of lemonade on my lips. The scent of Toby’s warmth is still on my fingers.
The road back to the farm seems too short this day. I don’t want to face the commotion just yet. The sun is warm but the breeze up from the water swirls around me, like a dancer, inviting me to sway in time to the ocean waves that I can hear in the distance. I smell the water, the salt, the cedar, the shampoo. I see the clouds, a cat scurrying into the bushes, the fields of tall grass and buttercups swaying in the wind like the golden fur of some amazing animal whose magnitude prevents me from identifying any other features but this mammoth furry back. Ordinary day, ordinary thoughts, ordinary things that I’ve seen, and heard, and smelled every other time that I’ve walked this road.
Then a voice calls, far away and muffled by trees rustling in the breeze and weakened by distance and reticence; something keeps the caller from committing to the call. I hear another voice – a single syllable lengthened with a musicality that changes it and sends it further off on the wind. The first voice again: “Claiaiaire.” Other voices join in. As I cross the road and go into the woods that we’ve explored together, I hear a choir of voices now, calling over and over, the different timbres and shapes of the word:
“Claire, CLAIRE, CA-LAI-RAH, Claiaiaire. »
They are disembodied voices that weave around the trees as if the forest itself is alerting me, accusing me, demanding of me an accounting of my whereabouts. At first I’m confused. I run to the voices to tell them: “Here I am, I’m okay!” then I realize that it’s not me; it’s not us that they’re calling. It’s you.
I see Ariel coming through the trees towards me. I’m surprised; she must be home early from her shift on the ferry. I call to her. I ask her why everyone is out here, why are they calling you, Claire? Ariel is curt, as usual; I always feel that she resents my presence in her life. She speaks to me in a firm, factual manner. She says you’re missing; the kids brought you out to the woods and now you’re missing. And at that moment I know that you are dead. As certain as I am of the presence of the tree beside me, or the earth beneath my feet, I know that you are dead. I know this because I feel you returning to me, your spirit seeping back inside me to take up your place there, beside my other selves.
I turn from Ariel and walk up the hill through the woods, absently clearing the brush before me. All the while I’m speaking to you, where you are within. I’m welcoming you back into my soul. I am tentative in my sense of release and my joy, but I feel that we are once again at peace and together.
With further steps, the details of your physical passing begin to sink in: I won’t be able to play with your curls anymore, I won’t have you to hold in my arms, but I know that it’s only my body that will miss you. You are closer to me now than you’ve been since you were born. For the first time in nearly two years, I am no longer worried for you. I hear you giggle as your squeals of laughter in my head drown out the fear that seeps in through the voices that keep calling you. I welcome you home.
The voices continue but they seem more distant, even as I approach them. Mom has noticed me and comes running, asking where I’ve been and if I’ve seen you. I suppose that I’m in my own sort of shock; I know what has not yet been revealed to the others. Mom is frantic. I can’t respond. She screams as she shakes me, trying to pry loose the information that I guard – she only thinks that she wants to know what I know. She shakes me, and slaps me, then shakes me again until her despair and fear turn her body limp as she lets go of my arms, one hand at a time. She crumples to the ground. One of the mothers, with her baby strapped to her back, comes to mom and helps her. She holds her and tries to keep her from sinking completely away from them and the job of finding you. As she wrestles with mom’s crumpling body, she asks me to go and stay in the house with the other children while the women continue their search. She’s afraid that the little ones might try to help and get lost in the process.
I make my way to the house, crossing the garden. I see the marigolds; is it possible that they are blooming brighter because they know of our secret? Are the shooting stars and the wild roses also affected by this shift in my universe? They all seem brighter today. Are they too, celebrating your return?
As I walk through the back door, the house is surprisingly quiet. I was expecting the usual ruckus with the kids being alone inside. I find Island in the living room amusing the younger ones, playing with the collection of wooden spoons and plastic measuring cups that today can serve as toys, all kitchen activity having stopped. Island comes to me and takes my hand and leads me to where they’re sitting on the floor. From the attic room, I hear the others as they talk, the odd words drifting, melding into the whisper that has settled on the house. We sit together waiting for time to pass.
One of the little ones, I don’t remember which one, climbs on my lap and lays her head in the crook below my shoulder. My body instinctively wraps an arm around her and clasps my fingers together around this child that is not you, and we wait. My body remembers your scent, your weight, your compliance to my every suggestion: come to the window; let’s get you dressed; let’s change your diaper; time to eat; let’s go outside. And one by one, I relinquish these responsibilities and release your care from that part of my brain that commands the need to protect.
We sit – probably for a long time, I don’t know – until we hear the trail of a cry carried in on the evening breeze that flows through the screen door. It’s a wail that contains the
essence of pain and loss. I assume that it’s mom’s cry and that they’ve found you. I lean my head back against the wall and let out a sigh. I can relax because now everyone knows our secret.
I contemplate the idea of going to find mom, to comfort her, to tell her that you are all right and that you are at peace, but I know that she wouldn’t understand my words. I realize that without the bond that you were between mom and me, I have no more connection to her than I have to any of these mothers who live here. I wouldn’t know what to say to this stranger who bore me then carried me into the maze of her distorted life and her own sense of reality.
So I sit and wait for her to come to me.
The piercing wails fill the early evening, tainting the sky that I can see through the jar of wildflowers on the kitchen windowsill. Mom’s cries are absorbed into the leaves on the trees as they take in the other poisons of our atmosphere and breathe out the oxygen, now infused with the perfume of suffering. I imagine her sobs seeping into the earth, robbing the garden of its sweetness and the flowers of their brilliant colour. And I hate her now for how she is destroying everything of beauty that surrounds her, as she always has, as she always will.
At dusk, the cries subside and I go to the back door. I see clusters of women coming from the woods. In twos and threes, they emerge into the field and into the world that will go on without you. They walk slowly, each woman’s head hangs down from her shoulders telling of their day of crouching and seeking, and of their evening of being seized by reality and surprised by death. One of them carries your body loosely in her arms, not tenderly. She holds you at waist height so that your face is turned towards her stomach, not her breast; your arm sways like a pendulum with each step that she takes. She lays you on the front seat of the truck; she doesn’t cover you. She joins the others as they enter the house.
Each one’s face bears the pain that is full of thoughts that begin with: “What if…”
“What if we had noticed her missing earlier?”
“What if we had helped Raven more with this odd child?”
“What if Starla had not gone today?”
“What if it were my child?”
And they carry these heavy thoughts as, one by one, they enter the house and gather their biological children to them, hugging them: some tenderly, some fiercely, all desperately, and they each find a corner in which to huddle together.
Mom and Ariel are the last to come in. I’ve returned to the living room. Ariel holds mom tightly as they come through the door and I remember thinking that I’m glad that Ariel’s a strong woman, so that mom won’t fall. Then a voice inside me says: “She will always fall. She needs someone who can keep picking her up.”
I notice that mom’s skirt is torn to shreds and her face is blotchy and red. As I stand to go to her, I have no idea what I expect of her, only that it’s my responsibility to stand before her as she comes in. They stop at the doorway into the living room. Mom raises her head and looks at me for a moment. She is empty, her eyes are vacant and lifeless and her head drops back down to her chest with a force that drags her whole body with it. Ariel must quickly bend at the knees and grasp mom’s sagging shoulder with her free hand to support them both. Ariel looks at me, our exchange as void of compassion as any that has ever passed between us. She tells me with complete directness, that you have drowned in the creek in the woods, and that she is putting mom to bed.
I stand alone in the archway, hearing the murmurs of the mothers and their children all around me and I go upstairs, wondering how long this aura of the unexpected will hold hunger at bay for the children who neither understand nor care what their mothers have witnessed.
In the attic room, the disarray of blankets, pillows and clothing covering the floor is comforting somehow in the semi darkness, with its feel of draped and silent stillness on a windless night. I look for your blanket, the one that Molly gave you; it could be anywhere. I resent, for the hundredth time that week, the communal attitude that encourages the children to take whatever they want. Your blanket is no longer yours; it’s tainted by the smells of many other small hands that don’t deserve to share in its history. I find it under a mattress along the back wall and I shake it out, trying to free it from its most recent memories, calling back your touch, your scent and Molly’s care. I bring it with me to my mattress and I lie down, rolling the blanket up under my face, against my cheek.
Late in the night, the moon is high above the house and washes the room with light. I wake up to notice that everything is different. Mothers have come up here to spend this night close to their children. Others have stayed downstairs to sleep in the corner where they settled when they came in from the woods. Each one is somewhere other than her own bed, marking the unusual nature of this night.
I get up and wrap myself in your blanket. I go over to kneel by the window from where we first saw the farm and its surroundings not so long ago. Everything is washed in a silvery brightness: I see the outline of the gardens and the flowerbeds, I see the open mouth of the barn door and the old apple tree that stands beside it, I see that the truck is gone.
I notice what is probably the glow from the light above John Ross’s workshop: a weak wash of electric light, competing with the brilliant moonlight to make its mark. I pick up my shoes and clutch your blanket around me with my other hand. I make my way down the stairs, not worrying about the sounds of the creaking stairs. I am leaving this place and I’m taking you with me, now that I can. I will find us a home and someone who will allow us to get through this time, while I’m waiting for my age to catch up with what I’ve seen and what I know.
The springs on the screen door whine as I close it behind me. I sit on the stoop to tie up my sneakers. I make my way along the lane to the road, adjusting the blanket around my shoulders like a shawl. And we set out together.
I love you, Claire.
Starla.
Copyright 2003
