My eleven year old son and I are sitting a couch eroded by
time and evenings of wrestling and cuddling; it is eroded by the spilling over
of sickness and pet hair and declarations of endless love.
His bare legs are over mine; he has no sense of where his
space ends and mine begins. In my peripheral vision I see eyes made up of every
colour conceivable, eyes carefully sketched by the hands of a magnificent
god. They are gazing out the window at
people shuffling by with shopping carts filled with soon-to-be-cashed-in
televisions and empties that promise five dollar bills and tins of moist
tobacco. Children toddle far behind,
clutching coins sticky with sweat and anticipation, black hair gleaming like
the most beautiful fire. In front of the house next door, a man walks in
endless circles, like a restless dog on a chain. Noah can’t see him and I am glad. Instead he blinks and I watch his irises
contract against an aggressive sun; in my mind I picture this sun hunting my
child, lifting up chairs, searching in all shades of darkness.
I pull him against me and he is warm, and all is well again until
I hear my name. He speaks hesitantly, absently rubbing his feet on his sister’s
hair. She is seated on the floor, colouring a picture, and I wait for him to
finish.
“What will the world be like in a hundred years?”
Sasha looks to me, waiting for my answer, turning over her
picture so that I won’t see it, but I do anyway. It’s a unicorn. Be careful, Damien, I think to myself, and I
try to be but inside my heart the world speeds by in fast forward, and it is
nothing that I can speak aloud to my children.
Noah pulls me back again with a giggle. “It’s okay, Bob,” he says, idly
stroking my arm. “In a hundred years everyone we know will be dead.” Sasha
laughs too, and I hold my breath in waiting.
She glides on her knees on the worn wooden floors, to where
we are sitting, and smiles up at me, but I can see her eyes, coal black, turn
to liquid. Those eyes that I have studied like the most precious jewel; eyes
that, when she was born, I held up to the window, to see the colours held within, shaken but not
surprised by the iridescence of all that is hidden inside black – like a raven’s
wing in the sunlight. I speak to her with
my mind as my heart climbs into my throat. Come.
Noah moves and she crawls into my lap, wrapping her tiny
brown arms around me and squeezing as hard as she can. Her sobs fill my ears and I talk to her
softly about how there is never an ending – that she will never end. Noah reminds me – Bob, not everyone believes
that- but I keep rocking and whispering because I cannot bring myself, in this
moment, to take away what she is desperately clinging to; this hope that at the
end of all of this – there is something else.
I cannot tell her about my own sleepless nights and bargains with God –
that will come later, when her heart is mended and standing all on its own.
Later, after everyone is sleeping and I am washing my face
before bed, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My own eyes are shining,
despite knowing loss and fear for so many years. Theirs will too, I think, and
I am relieved – there is no ending.
