Henry's Battalion, Chapter One
We meet Emma and learn where the darkness came from (this time).
Alright, fair warning, this chapter is not a happy one. We meet the soul the battalion fought so fiercely to defend in the prologue, and learn what it was that broke her. It’s kind of heavy . And, again, I would have liked some more time to work with this, but I really want to stick with this Friday publishing thing I’ve got going. It helps with momentum and keeping me on track! I’m grateful you’re here; I know reading takes time and time is precious. I’m hoping to do some audio recordings of each chapter, but we’ll see…my house is never quiet!
Chapter One
I lay on the porch swing where I had fallen asleep the night before. I can feel the sunlight warming my face through the branches of the apricot trees and the wind swaying my makeshift bed. Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, I hear a young voice whisper.
“I think she’s waking up now!”
Another voice, this one just as gentle but much older and deeper, responds.
“We should let her be.”
“Oh, but I would so love to speak to her!” implores the young one.
“Come now, let her sleep. She needs her rest,” answers the other.
“I promised I would stay right by her side,” says the little one. “I won’t leave her.”
I feel something soft, like the fingers of a child, touch my open palm. As I close my hand around them, a door inside the house slams shut, and I come into full consciousness. The voices, the small hand, and the comfort of the invisible company disappear. With my eyes still firmly shut, I desperately try to pull them back to me, but they are gone. The porch door opens with a grating screech, and a shadow falls over me.
“We’re gonna be late,” my sister says. With great effort, I open one eye to look at her. Her dark hair is remarkably neat. She generally resorts to ponytails and braids, but today it is down and falls over her shoulders in gentle waves. She is wearing a simple light pink dress and a white cardigan. Her brown eyes are brave, but I see the tension in her jaw. She’s been like this ever since I got home the night before last.
I sigh and sit up, then pat the swing next to me. She hesitates a moment, then sits down. She stares into the space in front of us. The yard is big--two acres in all. There, past the apricot trees and behind the cottonwoods, stand two abandoned playhouses from our childhood. Abandoned, that is, unless you count the spiders, potato bugs, and earwigs. One is purple, the other is white and up on stilts. You had to climb up a wasp-infested ladder made of three old tires stacked end-on-end, or shimmy up the rusty fire pole, to get to the small platform protected by a deteriorating roof. Paint peeling and wood rotting, these little houses shelter so many memories. Starving pioneers, runaway orphans, brave firefighters, and amiable witches have all inhabited them.
Next to them is a huge sandbox. Scattered about in the sand are hundreds and hundreds of tiny sea shells. Mom used to bring them home in milk jugs, who knows from where, and spread them out in the sand so we could search for them. We had the better part of two decades to find them, but there are still plenty left behind.
Beyond that lies the spacious garden, filled mostly with weeds now. I guess Mom wasn’t feeling up to gardening this spring. Usually by now, it's full of far more bountiful plants. How frustrated I had been as a child to be woken up every morning in the summer before the sun had even crept over the mountains to pull weeds and water the garden. Nevermind that it was the nicest time of day anyway, or that when Mom didn’t wake me, I was sorry for it. By July, we had fresh tomatoes, carrots, peas, corn, peaches, raspberries, squash, and so many other delights to choose from. Oh, I kept complaining, but I also wandered the rows for mouthful after mouthful. Mom never shooed me away or scolded me for stealing her hard-won garden treasures. That part of the memory, for some reason, is extra painful.
Near the garden is the chicken coop. A dozen hens peck around, keeping themselves busy while they wait to be let out to forage. I wonder if anyone has gathered eggs these past few days. I remember many Saturdays spent shoveling out the wood shavings mingled with chicken poop so that Dad could haul in the fresh stuff. As bad as it had smelled before, the clean bedding smelled of pine, which always makes me think of the camping trips we used to take when I was younger.
Collecting eggs, on the other hand, was a daily job--and a dangerous one, too, or so it felt when I was a kid. Some of those hens were fierce, and that dang rooster...well, let’s just say my brother never did get over his fear of roosters. I didn’t mind them much, especially if I had my trusty dog with me. Maybe that’s why nobody has gathered the eggs. Jake hasn’t been in the mood to chase roosters.
Further on is the pasture and the barn. It is more or less a jungle back there, since it has been a year or two since any cow or goat or horse has roamed and grazed. It’s a grasshopper heaven. The giant weeds jerk and sway as the champion jumpers live the insect dream. The barn is sky blue instead of the typical red, and has two stalls, a loft, and an area for tack, hay, and tools. Climbing in those rafters, ironically, seemed less dangerous to little me than gathering chicken eggs, despite the twenty-foot drop to the stalls below.
In front of us are the apricot trees. Tiny, baby green apricots are beginning to form on the dark, twisted branches. Apricot jam is a particularly delicious prize that comes at the expense of the particularly hated task of picking up the rotten ones that fall on the grass below so that the lawn mower doesn't hit the rock-like pits. I wonder if we’ll still be here by the time they’re ripe.
But Ruby isn’t looking at any of that. Not really.
“Your hair’s cute,” I say.
“Thanks. I showered,” she responds flatly. I give a low whistle to show how impressed I am.
“Wow.”
She finally looks at me, and despite ourselves, we laugh. Just for a second or two, but we laugh. Showers generally aren’t a priority. Not for Ruby. We go in the house together, she helps me with my hair, I put on my blue dress, and we leave. As we drive down the long driveway, over the bridge with the creek running under it, I scowl at the dozens of new houses and roads that fill what once was farmland. Civilization encroaches on our little paradise and I wonder if it’s better that we’re leaving now before we have to witness its total destruction.
**********
So many tears, some sad smiles, soft voices, hugs and kisses--I feel like I’m drowning in it all. One after another they come. I know some of them, though many of them are strangers or nearly so. Maybe I’ve seen them once or twice, or they knew me when I was a baby. I can’t say.
I feel split. Part of me rages like the wildest of hurricanes with grief and anger, the other part is still and calm, like dawn in a mountain meadow. Part of me is relieved to be here, part of me wishes I was still far, far away. I’m not sure how the different versions of myself coincide in my body, but somehow they do, and somehow I keep standing here, next to the casket, next to my sister and my brother.
My mind drifts as I shake hands, smile, nod, even give the occasional hug, always reverently folding my hands in between, genuinely grateful for the show of love and support but nonetheless irritated by it. A week ago everything was normal; Ruby was in high school, Peter was slaving away at his corporate job, Mom was working part time at the surgical center, Dad was building a new house, and I was away again. This time I was teaching English in a small village in Ukraine. Before that, China. Before that, nannying in London. Before that, exploring California. It’s been over a year since I've been home.
It wasn’t easy in Ukraine. It was a boarding school, and the kids I was teaching were difficult. I bonded with some, but others just refused to accept me and constantly made my class a misery. The last time I spoke with my mom was Mother’s Day. We did a video chat. It took ages to get it working, even though we’d done it a dozen times before. She wasn’t exactly technologically inclined, and the internet at the school was infuriatingly finicky. I tried to be brave. I told her things were okay, they were tough, but okay. I was happy, I lied. She knew I was lying. She said she was proud of me for helping others, but that I mustn’t forget to help myself as well. She didn’t look so well. She was pale, and the light in her eyes was faded and weak. I was too wrapped up in my own troubles to really notice, though. I only realized it later. Too much later. After we said goodbye, I felt better--ready to give teaching those little menaces another go.
Then, a few days ago, the call came. She was gone, just like that. No one could tell me what happened, just that she was gone. I called my brother, my dad, my best friend, no one knew what exactly happened, what caused it. I threw the few belongings I had with me into my suitcase and left the school. At the airport they told me I had to pay to check my bag. Fifteen dollars per kilo. I tried to explain that there had to be some mix up, I hadn’t had to pay that much for luggage before, but I didn’t know any Russian or Ukrainian and their English was dismal. My blood boiled and my head fogged and I thought I might actually explode. My chest felt like it was rapidly expanding and pretty soon my skin wouldn’t be able to hold me together any more. I didn’t have money, I was volunteering and had paid my last penny five minutes before to get my plane ticket home.
“Forget it!” I shouted, and stalked off with my suitcase in tow. The airport staff and all the passengers nearby watched as I tossed the suitcase and everything inside--souvenirs, clothes, books--into a dumpster just outside the doors. I stormed back and put on the kindest, calmest smile I could and said coldly, “May I please board the plane now?”
A layover in Paris, another one in Dallas, all in all it was about twenty-four hours of time by myself to think. I thought mostly about Ruby. She had been the one to find her. I heard the story mostly from others, a little bit from her. It was her last day of high school--yearbook day. She had been staying at Dad’s house that week, but came by that morning. I wasn’t there. I wish I had been there. I was on the other side of the globe, trying to do some good in the world, or so I told myself. Trying to escape real life and responsibility was more like it. When I called her after I’d heard what happened, she didn’t say much. She said she was okay. Lying about how we feel is sort of a family vice. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to come home thinking everything was like it always was, only to have your entire world shattered to pieces right in front of your eyes.
She had stopped by after a sleepover on the softball diamond with her team to pick something up before heading to the school to sign yearbooks. Immediately she realized that Mom wasn’t where she usually was, in that horrible, broken recliner where she slept every night. The lamp on the little table next to the recliner was still on, and the tv was a static screen. Even when she saw her, lying on the floor next to the computer in the other room, it didn’t register. She bustled about, saying, “Mom,” over and over again, almost annoyed, thinking she had fallen asleep there on her meds. “Mom, Mom, MOM!” she said as she put her bag down in the kitchen. Then she noticed Jake, the neurotic border collie lab mix that owed his life to my mom. All of us had imagined up clever ways to off that nuisance. He had chewed up hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of furniture, pillows, toys, books--you name it--as he transitioned from an abusive home to her loving one. When Ruby realized Jake was huddled under the computer table, acting “psycho” and licking Mom’s hand, her heart must have sunk to the core of the earth. Annoyance turned dramatically to devastation and panic upon realizing that something was horribly, horribly wrong.
I shake myself back to reality after a funeral guest says hello to me for the second time. I didn’t hear him at first. I smile politely and say, “Oh how nice,” when he tells me how he knew my mom from her days as an ER nurse. He moves on to Ruby and Peter.
I think of the first funeral I ever attended. I was nine years old. My oldest cousin was in a car accident, and for eleven days we waited and waited while she was on life support, wondering and hoping and praying. Her heart kept beating, but the doctors eventually told her parents that she wasn’t going to wake up again. At her funeral, my grandma passed each of us granddaughters a handkerchief, and my youngest aunt, who had been closest to Stephanie, followed behind her and snatched each one of them back because, she said, she was going to need all of them. I remember how pale she was, lying in her casket. I remember wishing she didn’t have to go--she was so nice, and she had the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. I remember feeling sorry that I wished she wasn’t gone, thinking that she must be so happy where she is now, with Heavenly Father, why wouldn’t she? My nine-year-old self was much more accepting of death than my adult self.
Another smile and a kind, encouraging squeeze of my hand from a stranger, and my mind drifts back to the present again. I try to listen to the things people are saying to me, I try to accept their condolences, their advice, their well-wishes, but none of it sinks in, none of it really even makes it all the way to my brain before I discard it. Back into the depths and security of my mind I go.
Ruby, Peter, and his wife, Amelia, picked me up from the airport and immediately began discussing the funeral. It was in a day and a half, and they wanted me to do the life sketch and sing a song. I’d been gone for a year but there was no time for acclimating to home or catching up. We had to plan and arrange and decide and facilitate--there was no time. I felt numb all the way up until the viewing last night. That’s when I first started to feel irritated by the sentiments of those wanting to grieve with us. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t kind, but I just didn’t want to be smothered by their feelings. I needed to deal with my own. I reminded myself over and over again that this wasn’t about me, it was about Mom, and these were her friends, and our family, and they loved her, too. And they loved me and my siblings. They were there to support us, to care for us. And yet...I was still irritated.
Last night, after the viewing, we pulled down the long driveway to Mom’s house. Peter put the car into park and I jumped out and stormed off into the night. I glared at the cheerful leaves on the apricot trees, shimmering in the moonlight. I ignored the daffodils and the tulips bouncing their lovely heads in the gentle, cool breeze. I gritted my teeth and cursed the lilac bush, towering over my head and wrapping me up in its heavenly scent, kindly inviting me to relax on the old bench beneath it.
I collapsed on the grass near the garden and cried and cried, for the first time since I heard the news. When we pulled up to her house, and she wasn’t there because we’d left her back at the mortuary, I was through. I was done. I wanted no more of this nonsense, I wanted things to go back to the way they were, I wanted to see her again. I wanted my mom. The grass was soft and sweet. My tears were bitter and angry.
My hands clenched together in prayer. Not really the faithful, humble kind of prayer. Not at first, at least. More the confused, desperate kind. I didn’t really pray in words, just feelings. I felt like all the light was draining from the world and I couldn’t do anything to keep it here. Why was this happening? I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t prepared, I hadn’t agreed to this. I didn’t want this. This anger was a new emotion for me. At least, one I had never really allowed myself to fully experience. Since I was very young and had learned I could control, or at least conceal, my emotions, I had snuffed this particular one out before it was barely more than a spark. For the first time, it was a raging wildfire, and it felt good. Cleansing, almost, in its fury. And yet every speck of my soul was severely scorched.
Slowly, as I continued to pour out my broken heart in that messy, tearful prayer, something started to change. I don’t know how long I was there on the grass, but as the time passed, the darkness didn’t seem so loud, and the light seemed to fight for its place. I don’t know how the turmoil in my soul changed to peace, but somehow it did, and I awoke the next morning on the porch swing with sweet voices in my head and warm, nurturing sunlight on my face.
Now I’m here, at my mother’s funeral. Peace and turmoil battle inside me once more, but overall I manage to stay calm. Those that speak share things about her that I never knew or didn’t realize. I get to know her a little better. I look at my tiny nephew in Amelia’s arms, sitting down the bench from me, and realize I’m not the only one who lost something so dear. What a grandma she would have been. I keep thinking about those voices I heard this morning, that child that vowed to stay by my side...I could swear I was actually hearing her voice, and the other voice, too. They were familiar, but I can’t place them. And the hand that touched mine...I actually felt that. Yet all of it was gone in a flash. A dream, I suppose. A lovely, comforting dream. Those voices had seemed like they could calm every storm that raged in my heart, but they were just a dream.
Phew...that brought me to tears! Great writing Hannah and also great to see Emma's perspective on things.
I felt the collapse in the grass so deeply... You've captured the reality of grief in all its complexity with extraordinary accuracy, Hannah 💜