Chapter Ten-5 Days Ago

Tragedy strikes...

Chapter Ten

5 Days Ago-Sunday, June 12^th

           “Lex,” my mother called to me between coughs, immediately waking me from my restless slumber.  “Lex,” her voice came out more urgently in a blood-filled gurgle.  If I had been a bit disoriented from my sleep, that dreaded gurgle slapped me to my senses.  I got up from the fainting couch and rushed to her side. 

“What’s wrong mom?”  I asked her, surprised that my voice sounded so steady and strong, which was vastly different compared to how I felt inside.

“Lex, bring me to the bathroom.  I don’t want to wake your father…please,” she begged me as she lovingly glanced at my father. 

“Yeah…okay, anything you want,” I mumbled as I helped her stand up.  Only a few days had she been infected with this flu, and already it had sapped most of her energy.  It bothered me to feel how feather light my mother’s body was in my grasp.  If I allowed my mind to follow that line of thought, I would not have been able to assist my mother to the bathroom. 

With a few stumbles and stops to cough and to catch her breath, my mother dropped to the floor as soon as we entered the room.  “Close the door, Lex.”  I complied and closed the door.  In an effort, I tried to help her regain her feet, but she pushed me off.  “No, it’s all right.  Let me stay down here a few moments.”  Her struggle for air continued to worsen, and my fear deepened.  “I need,” my mother began, but was overcome with a fitful of wrecking coughs before she was able to speak again.  “I need you to promise me Lex.”

            “Promise you what, mom?”  Intuition told me that I was not going to like what my mother asked of me.

            “Lex,” my mother smiled at me through her tears, and she cupped my face in her hands.  Tears began to roll down my face at my mother’s gentleness and love.  “I know I’m dying…”

            “NO!  Mom you can’t die…they’re going to find a cure…and…”  Now denial was my new best friend.  I struggled to continue, because I just could not bear the thought of my mom not being there for me.  “Everything’s going to be fine, mom.  You just need to keep fighting for a few more days.”

            “Oh, my sweet girl,” my mother began to cry in earnest, “I wish everything would be okay, but I don’t have much longer.  Every breath I take is a fight, because each one is harder than the next.”

            “Please mom…p-please,” I shook my head in denial at her words.  “Please don’t say that.”  I was on my knees in front of my dainty mother, who had lost so much weight in just a few short days.  “Mom!”  I buried my head in her lap like I did when I was a girl after I had gotten a boo-boo. 

            Lifting my head from her lap, my mother smiled kindly, “I need you to make sure that neither Caleb nor your father sees my body once I’m gone.  I don’t think either of them would be able to take it.  Bury me in the backyard in Hope’s Garden.”  There was no trace of sadness for herself in my mother’s voice, only for us"her family. 

            “I’m not strong enough mom,” I pleaded in self-pity.

            “You’re able to do this.  Just these past few days, I have seen you grow and mature into a young woman that I am proud to call my daughter.”  Then my mother hugged me fiercely.  My arms stayed limply at my side, refusing to believe that my mother could die.  I did not hug her because I was not ready to say goodbye"not yet.  “I love you, my Lexxie girl,” my mother whispered into my hair, and finally my arms responded, holding on to my mother for dear life. 

            You know how they say that your life flashes before your eyes, when you’re about to die?  Well, I had flashes, all right; even though, I was not the one, who was…dying.  It was such a hard, abstract truth that I just did not want to believe could be fact.  Do you know how much I wanted to run out of the bathroom and not go back in?  But I could not.  My mother needed me.  All my life she was there for me.  How could I not be there for her in her time of need?

One day long ago, when I was five, mom and dad were teaching Jared and me to ride a bike.  Jared was a natural; I, on the other hand, was not so apt at the maneuvering or steering part (or stopping for that matter).  Screaming, I had pedaled straight into a prickly bush.  Head first in the bush with only my flailing legs visible, I heard a musical, feminine laugh and sigh.  With the utmost care, my mother extracted me from Mother Nature’s prison and set me on the ground.  Wrapped up in my mother’s embrace, I forgot all about my confinement in that bush and just basked in the glow of my mother’s love like a tabby cat lounging in the sun.  With her hand, she wiped all traces of my tears away, hushing my hiccupping cries. 

Third grade was part of my ugly duckling phase.  I went to Center School, one of two elementary schools in Easton, and had Mrs. Moran, who was the most favorite teacher among the students.  Every year, she produced an America the Beautiful play that included everyone in the third grade, even those that were not in her class.  Loud and boisterous were a few of the adjectives that she used to describe me at a parent-teacher’s conference.  This was way she cast me as “narrator one”, which was the biggest part in the play.  As you can imagine, I was amazing, perfect and read all my lines, astonishing the crowd with my intelligence.  All right that did not happen.  I froze.  Yup, I froze again.  After the play, I was in tears, but my mom was there as she always had been.  She took me to Crescent Ridge, a family owned farm that created their own ice cream and processed their own milk, for a cone of my favorite flavor of ice cream: butter-crunch.  We sat there on the benches looking out on the pasture filled with cows mooing and eating grass.  My mother soothed my nerves with stories of embarrassment from her own childhood.  Of course, this, along with ice cream, worked and soon I was laughing with her.  Worries were so much easier when you were younger.  A simple solution such as a cone of sugary, tasty ice cream could solve any problem.  How I wished my current problems had such easy, childish solutions!

An ear-splitting cough interrupted my life flashes bringing me back to the present where I was with my mother, except in a position that I had never imagined I would be.  The coughing did not stop, but only grew louder and harsher in volume and intensity.  “MOM!”  I cried aloud, noticing my mother hunched over the toilet spewing large amounts of blood into it.  Moving her beautiful silky blonde hair out of her face, I held her as the coughing got worse.  There was so much blood…it scared me to see all that blood.  For one moment, she glanced up from the toilet and gave me a week smile.  Taking one of my hands, she gripped it tightly and I squeezed back to let her know I was there with her through it all. 

#

A little while later, I stood in front of Jared’s door.  My body was still shaking from what I had just witnessed.  I know Jared had come home late last night from Heather’s, so I assumed he was deep in sleep.  Just as I was about to barge in, Jared opened his door, looking ruffled at being woken up long before nine in the morning.  His eyes were in small slits against the bright light of the hallway.  “What?”  When I did not answer right away, he opened his eyes to take in my appearance"shaken and blood-smeared.  “What the f**k happened, Lex?”  He pulled me into his room and sat me on his bed. 

Several minutes passed while I just sat there staring off into space.  If I could not come to terms with what I just seen, how could Jared?  It had been horrible.  So much blood.  Too much of that life-giving liquid spewed out of her lips.  My mother coughed it up as her lungs strained for oxygen.  My ears tried to tune out the grotesque sounds; but those sounds…I would always remember.  During my mother’s last throes, my mind had turned off what it was seeing.  It had seemed like I was floating over my body watching my mother’s death in detachment.  Once it was all over, I returned to my body"numbed by the events.  The fact that my mother was dead on the floor in her own blood made me want to fall apart, but my feelings were frozen in ice.  Sounds heartless, I know, but my mind and heart were in denial of what happened.  I would have given anything to wake up from this nightmare.  With my thumb and index finger, I pinched myself, but I did not even feel that.  Looking down at my beloved mother, all I saw was her flawless face marred by the rash and the pus-filled blisters.  Stiffly as if I had aged a thousand years, I got up in search of my brother and his help.  For I had promised my mother to bury her, I had to fulfill her last request.   

The sound of the water faucet running made me jump from the horrors of my mind.  Jared came back into the room holding a glass of water in his hands.  Handing me the glass, he stood there--helpless--waiting for me to explain.  Several moments I just drank, grateful at the simple brotherly gesture from Jared.  The water soothed my aching throat"sore from crying and pleading my mother to fight for just a bit longer.

A picture on Jared’s desk caught my attention.  It was of Jared, Caleb, and me.  This picture was from the trip last summer to Hershey Park and I almost smiled at the memory.  Almost.  In the picture, Jared and I were reluctant to stand too close together, but Caleb was in between us, grinning from ear to ear.  He had his arms around Jared and me, which had caused the both of us to smirk just a bit at our younger brother’s joyfulness.  A spasm of pain shot through me as I compared that Caleb to the Caleb, who I found asleep in a drug-induced slumber last night.  I envied Caleb’s crutch, and I wished for one second that my mom had not made me promise her. 

An unusual anger overtook me.  I was angry at my mother for asking me to bury her just because I was the oldest...and at her for dying.  Why was she not stronger than that virus?  Why did she leave me here to pick up the pieces?  Poor dad, who was so sick, he had no idea what was going on.  Most of the time he was sleeping, and fighting, I hope.  Everything was so unfair!  My mind screamed: WHY?! 

At long last, I took a long gulp of the shockingly cold water, finally able to speak.  “Jared, I need your help.”

“Sure, with what?”  Jared asked in a careful, controlled voice.

“Mom is…”  Tears choked me and I fell apart, while Jared awkwardly patted my back.  For a several long moments, I could not talk; I only sobbed in anguish. 

Jared had enough.  The anxiety brought him to the edge, and he shook me and asked, “Mom’s what?”

“D-dead,” I whispered through my crying fits.  My tears soon turned to bouts of hysterical laughter.  Even I could tell that Jared was un-amused by my behavior, but everything seemed to be one big cosmic joke.  Laughing, I stammered, “Y-you should s-see your f-face!”  A vein on Jared’s forehead throbbed in annoyance.  Approaching me, he raised his hand and slapped me, cutting off my laughter.  Shocked, I placed a hand on the wounded cheek, glaring daggers at my brother.

Immediately, he backed away from me, shaking in fury.  “Alexia, get a hold of yourself!  This is not something to joke about.”

“I’m not joking!”  My wrath prevailed throughout my grief and delirious laughter.  “She’s dead!  I was there!  I held her hand the entire time!  Do you think that was easy?!”  I screamed in rising irritation, as I poked Jared in the middle of his chest.  “Well, do you?!”

His head shook in utter denial.  “No, you’re wrong.  That is impossible.  I just checked on her before I went to bed.”

“I was there with her…as she…”  With a deep breath, I tried to steady my voice and my rage, but it was useless.  “She’s dead.  I need your help, please, Jared.”

“With what?”  His voice was sharp and full of anger and grief.

“I need you to help me.  She did not want dad or Caleb to see her body.  Nor do I think it’s a good idea for Greg to see her either.  He lost both his parents yesterday.  You are the only one who is not drugged up…the only one who can help me.”  I managed to get out.  My voice began to tremble again. 

Plopping himself wearily in his desk chair, I heard him sniffle, before clearing his throat.  “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to help me dig a hole.”

#

Almost an hour later, we had cleaned and wrapped my mother’s body, similar to burial rituals from ancient cultures.  I doubted if we would be able to get her out to the garden, not saying she was fat, because she certainly was not...but I was not sure if we were mentally up for it.  Her body weighed less than a sack of flour and I saw Jared’s grimace at how light our mother’s weight had been depleted to.  It only took us a few covert minutes to get her out of the house.  We had to be careful to get her out of the bathroom, but dad was still sleeping in peaceful bliss.  While I cleaned up my mother, I had to separate myself from what I was doing or I would fall apart--yet again.  Jared washed down the bathroom to rid it of our mother’s blood, so if dad was able to get up…he would not see what happened. 

After sponging down the bathroom, Jared checked on Caleb and Greg to see if they were in fact still in la-la land, which they were.  It was around six in the morning, so the sun had just begun to rise.  The dew was still on the grass, making our sneakers squeak on the grass, but we eventually made it to Hope’s Garden.  Carefully, we set our mother’s body down on the grass.  We knew from our studious positioning that no one from the house would be able to detect our position or what we were doing.  Grabbing some shovels from the garden shed, we got to work.

Several hours later, we had a hole deep enough for the body.  It was hard to refer to her body as our mother for she was no longer housed there.  Plus, it was easier to do what we were doing if we just called it “the body”.  What we were doing was difficult enough, and it was hard for Jared and me not to fall apart.  Would you be able to bury your mother?  Jared jumped into the hole and opened his arms to receive our mother.  As gently as I could, I lifted her body and placed her in Jared’s arms.  He lowered her body to the ground and I finally sank to the ground in mental exhaustion. 

Jared jumped out of the hole and to my side.  “Go back in the house; I will take care of the rest.”

I squinted up into the bright sun and into Jared’s weary face.  “Are you sure?”

“No, but dad, Caleb, and Greg need you right now, so go.”

As cowardly as it was I turned tail and ran.

#

Although, I knew I should check on my father…I could not.  Instead, I went to my bathroom, slamming the door, which woke up Greg.  At that precise second, I could not care less about anyone else.  With a jerky turn of the shower’s knobs, the blast of the hot water sprayed on my skin, cleansing me in a twisted ritual.  Finally, the tears came.  I scrunched myself up into a ball and sat in the corner, tears and water pouring down my face. 

How would I survive without my mother?  What would I tell my father, when he realized she was not next to him anymore?  There was a knock at the door.  Greg popped his head in to see me in a fetal position in the shower.  “Oh, Lexxie!”  Even though he was wearing Dolce and Gabbana, he ran into the water to pick me up.  “What’s wrong?”  He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me.

“Greg, she’s dead…my mom’s dead,” I whispered as I finally collapsed into Greg’s arms.

When I came to Greg was sitting on the bed next to me watching the news, but he switched it off when he saw that I was awake.  “How are you?”

“I’m a bit better.”

“That water was scalding hot, you could have burned yourself,” reprimanded the ever practical Greg.  I was secretly glad that he was back to himself…well, almost.  His eyes still showed his heart-wrenching grief, but he was composed and calm.  “Jared came in a few minutes ago to see how you were…he said he was taking care of your dad…but…”

I sat up and noticed Greg had draped one of my bathrobes around me, covering my nakedness.  “But what?”

“He’s not sure what to tell your dad, so he wants you there as soon as possible.”  Greg’s eyes grew concerned for me, afraid that I might fall apart again. 

With some effort, I managed a smile.  “Ok.  I’ll go see to him now.  I’ll be back in a bit.”

Once I stepped out of my bedroom, I tightened my robe around me.  My feet treaded lightly on the soft carpeted hallway.  I heard voices in my parents’--now my dad’s--bedroom.  When I walked in, Jared jumped up in relief, and he quickly exited the room.  With a deep breath, I ambled toward my father and took a seat at his side.  “Hey dad!”  I said a bit too brightly and my father eyed me knowingly.  “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he lied so smoothly that I almost believed him.  “Where’s your mother?”

The time had come for some quick thinking.  The wheels in my head where turning on warp speed.  “Um…”  Yeah that was brilliant and believable.  I tried again, “I had to take her to the hospital…she was having trouble breathing.”  That was the truth anyway.  “At the hospital, they gave her a breathing treatment like they did for Caleb, when he was younger and his asthma was out of control.”

“How is she feeling?”

“Peaceful…she’s sleeping.  I decided to come back to grab a few of her things to bring to the hospital.”  Going along with my lies, I took one of my mother’s enormous bags and put several changes of clothes in, while my father carefully watched me.  Satisfied that I put on a good show, I was about to leave the room, when my father stopped me.

“Don’t forget her diary.  She never goes anywhere without it.”  My back was facing my father, so he did not see me close my eyes in pain.  I turned back to retrieve my mother’s diary and my dad smiled.  “You’re such a good daughter, Lex.  I’m a lucky man to have such three great kids.  I love you.”

“I love you too, dad,” I mumbled the words too afraid that I would breakdown and tell him the truth.  He placed a kiss on my forehead and I left the room to find Jared waiting outside.  “It’s all right…he thinks she’s at the hospital,” I whispered as I held up the bag filled with clothes.  Jared’s breath escaped in release, and he went back in to sit at our father’s side. 

A single tear rolled down my cheek as I looked out the hallway window to see an obstructed view of Hope’s Garden.  Mom…  Pressing my head on the window pane, I let a few tears flow freely.  Once I staunched my tears, I looked up to see a familiar figure standing in the garden…not too far from where I buried my mom.  Blinking several times, I opened my eyes to see that no one was there.  It must have been a trick of my over-worked mind or wishful thinking…  But for a moment, I thought I saw the girl with green eyes looking up at me. 

Author's Note

This chapter was definitely a hard one to write...and I am not finished with it yet. I will go back to spruce it up once I am completely finished. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Tell me what you liked or didnt like. Like always, any grammatical mistakes or other discrepancies, please let me know.

Reviews

[A.D. Wilson]

Hey, I can't believe I get to do the grammer on this chapter. Usually, everyone beats me to it. Ok, here goes...The only mistakes I saw were places where you need to switch quotation marks for commas.
-I did not hug her because I was not ready to say goodbye(") not yet
-Handing me the glass, he stood there(") helpless(") waiting for me to explain
-The water soothed my aching throat(") sore from crying and pleading
-While I cleaned up my mother, I had to separate myself from what I was doing or I would fall apart(") yet again

Other than that, the only thing I would change is one sentence from the section where they buried their mother. It said, "The dew was still on the grass, making our sneakers squeak on the grass, but we..." There is too much "grass" there. I would change it to "The dew was still on the grass, making our sneakers squeak as we walked, but we..."

This was a really moving chapter. Very powerful. No child should ever have to watch a parent die that way, then bury them, and shield their younger siblings (and father) from the fact of that death. The flashbacks were so sweet and sad because of the situation (her mother dying). A truly amazing chapter.

[TL Boehm]

After losing my dad - I don't think I could touch losing a parent in a piece of fiction - you have a gut wrenching chapter here. Well done.

[Jim]

Excellent writing. You do a tremendous job of allowing us to feel Lexxie's emotions.

"'I need,' my mother began, but was overcome with a fitful of wrecking coughs before she was able to speak again." I'd use ellipsis after "need" to show that her mother is interrupted by the coughs: "I need . . . "

“I need you to promise me[,] Lex.”

“Promise you what, mom?” Should be "Mom," because you're using it as a proper noun.

This was way she cast me as “narrator one”, which was the biggest part in the play.--The comma should come before the quotation mark, not after it.

[melissa]

Such a great story I wish I could write stories this good well I am on my way to read the next chapter can't wait ti see that happends next

[A.E. Surdam]

Loved it. :)

[dreaming dame]

The girl with the green eyes, like her :)

[kdpgrahi]

A good story indeed

[SheWhoWillNotBeNamed]

I like how there is something off about the whole family. Maybe it's just me, dunno...
I'm enjoying how the story unravels:)

[Patches I'm not so new..]

You're doing a fine job here as far as story telling goes IMO you are a born story teller I have said this before and will say it again I'm no grammarian so I will leave that to thiose who are.

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

I cannot even begin to imagine the horror of having to throw the first dirt on the grave of your mother. This is an excellent story Vanessa

[Imara]

I can't say anything bad about this, it was amazing I only read this chapter yet I felt so passionatly for all the characeters. Superb.