Chapter 32

hey :) its been awhile! :)

         Days went by. Dad didn't insist I go to school yet, and I wasn't begging him to make me. I was content staying at home. Wallowing in loneliness. My grandfather will never sit next to me again, he'll never wake me up in the morning again, and he'll never call me baby girl again. He was gone, and I had to accept that.

        But I couldn't.

        I pushed myself off the couch and walked up the stairs. Although I was in a bit of a hurry, and not paying much attention to where I was going, I found my way to my bedroom well enough. When I stepped through the door, all hell broke loose. 

        I don't know what I grabbed first, or how important it was to me, but I grabbed it and chucked it across my room. 

        Why was I the one person in the world who got everything taken away from me? My sight, then my mother, and now my grandfather? How did God, or whoever was up there making the decisions, justify this? 

        There were crashes and bangs and thuds everywhere. I was just grabbing, and throwing, and grabbing, and throwing. An endless cycle of deranged behavior. Then I grabbed something more important to me then anything else in the entire world. 

        My mother's picture. 

        I froze. 

        The familiar wooden frame, that had no threat of splinter, was cleanly carved, with rigid edges. The glass, which was so smooth and thick that a baby could crawl on it, if small enough, and not worry about anything. 

        And although I could not see it, I knew my mother's smiling face sat inside. Not a wrinkle on it, and utterly beautiful. Her soft, wispy hair, was tied back in to a pony tail with a ribbon, of which felt of the finest silk. I remember the day perfectly.

        Just as I remember sitting on her lap, as mum had said “Smile, baby. Your Father is taking a picture!” So I did. I opened my mouth, and I smiled: even though I knew I was missing one of my two front teeth, just because my mom told me to. 

        I remember grandfather, after mom told me the picture was done being taken saying “Oh, baby girl, that's beautiful. You look just like your momma.” 

        And then I smiled again, but this time it was real.

        Thinking back, as I sit here on my bedroom floor, in my now destroyed room, I feel like crying, but I don't. All I've done is cry, and it isn't getting me anywhere. 

        It's not making me see, it's not bringing my mom back, and it didn't stop grandfather's cancer from spreading and killing him. 

        I finger the familiar frame and face it, still seeing nothing. I try to imagine what it might look like, but I can't. I have no recognition of anything that what give me any idea of what it looked like. 

        My foot began to tremble underneath my skin so I stood up to prevent it from falling asleep. I stood awkwardly, or what felt that way anyway, and placed the photo frame on my bed sheet. 

        I opened my door and walked down the stairs slowly, stiffly.

        Dad's voice echoed through my head as he asked. “Are you okay?”

        I didn't answer knowing that my answer would be one he disliked, so instead I said “I'm sorry.”

        “For what?”

        “I um...I ruined my bedroom...a little, I think.” I wasn't making a coherent sentence, and I didn't exactly want to try to. 

        “Okay.” He hugged me. “I'll go survey the damage.”