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Here I sit in the most secluded, quiet part of Huntsville Cemetery, surrounded by a circle of talle, flowering magnolia trees, whose leaves and blooms rustle and moan in the soft breeze. A small, clear stream runs through the glade, making almost no sound as it slides by me. I turn towards the one marker here; a small, rectangular tablet of polished blue-black stone. It shimmers slightly as the morning sun touches the smooth face. I am hypnotized by the scintillating sparkle of sun and stone, and my mind is free to journey down paths of memory...
Alice was the new girl n the street that year. She and her dad arrived at the beginning of summer, when the magnolia trees in our area begin to flower. Their house was the one at the top of a tree-dotted hill, where the biggest and most beautiful blossoms were found. I only actually saw her for the first time about a week after they had settled in. I was wandering from tree to tree, admiring the lovely shades of pink and violet of the magnolias, when I saw her sitting at the foot of the tallest, oldest tree. I could just see her face among the dense curtain of rosy flowers. Slowly, I pushed aside the branches at the tree's base.
"Hi," I said cheerfully. She didn't answer. "My name's Casey, what's yours?" I persisted.
"Alice", came the girl's monotone reply. She still didn't look at me when she answered. I pushed aside a few more branches, and I clearly saw Alice for the fist time.
She was small for her age, which seemed to be around 14, the same as me. Her hazel brown hair was short, and in loose ringlets around her pale face. She had deep green eyes that reminded me of mossy rock by the clear stream that ran near to my house. She wore a plain black T-shirt and clean white corduroy pants. I sat down beside her, and she turned towards me. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. I didn't blame her. I was, after all, nearly six feet tall with misty blue eyes and long, staggly black hair that covered my eyes. I must have looked like a werewolf to her. I broke the awkward silence with a question.
"So," I asked, "you're new 'round here?"
"Yes," Alice replied, still looking in disbelief at the girl-giant next to her.
"Why'd you move here?" I questioned further. I didn't know that this was all that Alice needed to hear. She looked me in the eye, and told me her story.
Alice was an only child, and was the only in her immediate family as well, with no cousins or relations her age to play with. Her parents had wanted a boy, but instead got a girl. Although her parents never mentioned it around Alice, she could tell that she was unwanted, a reject, a failure on their part for a proper family. In school, the only class she ever really enjoyed was Art., where she perfected her drawing and inking skills to the level where she could ink the slightest hint of sweat on a horse's shoulder or lightning in a swirling stormcloud. Still, her parents did not warm up to their artisan daughter. They wanted an athletic son whose trophies and MVP awards would be displayed throughout their house. Unloved, Alice stayed in her shell with her drawings.
Then her verdant eyes clouded over as she told me of the day her mother was killed in a car crash. Alice could not make it to the hospital, as she was on a class trip at the time at an art gallery hundreds of miles away. At the funeral here were many whispered comments about her being the only one who could have given her mother the strength to fight , and that Alice was an "unloving" and "selfish" child. She thought they could have said the same things about themselves, and using Alice as the scapegoat for all their grievances. She told me of her father packing her mothers clothes and trinkets and hauling them off to be resold. Then they had moved here as quickly as possible, where her dad could keep close to his job but be far way enough for any memories of his wife to persist.
"So that's why I'm here," she said, or rather gasped, as if a great weight had been lifted off her. "I...have to go back now. My father needs me back." Alice turned away from me and vanished through the curtain of branches.
The next day I found Alice again at the base of the magnolia tree. This time, though her eyes still had a haunted look about them, she seemed brighter that before. She was the first to say Hi, and to ask me about my past. I told her about how I'd lived here for all my life, among the streams and magnolias in the summer and shoulder-high snowdrifts and frozen ponds in winter. I talked about the many Christmases, Summer vacations, and Halloweens that held so many memories. I talked about the people who lived here, from old Mr. Jacobs, who used to manage Mustang herds out West, to Melissa Woods, who appeared in many plays and musicals in the area and was on her way to becoming a great actress, to the five boys who hung outside the convenience store and washed cars. Alice sat there, absorbing every word and detail.
When I finally finished my tale, she told me that she never knew someone could have so many wonderful memories about a place. I showed her around the neighborhood in the weeks that followed, and she showed me the skilled drawings and sketches of her former home. Our friendship grew and flourished over the summer, just us two roaming the hills and woods, talking about ambitions, experiences and fantasies that we kept secret from others. One such conversation I will always remember as if it were yesterday.
It was raining heavily for July, and we were lounging around in Alice's room, flipping through old teen magazines and talking about nothing in particular.
"I wish the rain would stop, it's just so depressing," I moaned. Alice looked up at me, seemingly intrigued at my comment.
"Don't hate the rain, Casey," she began,"It might seem dreary and sad, but the way I see it, rain washes away all the dirt, dust and pain in the world, so that we can start again. Same thing with tears; if you're sad, crying takes some of the sting away."
I swear I'll never forget those wise, wise words.
Then one day in August, about a week before school began, Alice told me that her father was remarrying. She was a woman with a son of her own. If Alice was ignored before, now she was completely left out in the dark. My poor friend was more down that ever, and at the time when she needed me the most, I couldn't help her. I was preparing for high school, and I was up to my eyes in deciding what classes to take and extracurricular activities to nix. On the day I came home from getting my student I.D., I saw my parents comforting Alice's dad, who was sitting on our couch looking stunned, with his fiancee and her son, clearly annoyed.
"Casey," I remember my mother's voice saying quietly, "Alice is dead." The news pulled me under like a huge wave of dark water.
They had found her on the banks of the stream, broken in the deepest water and among the sharpest, slipperiest rocks. The police ruled it out as an accidental death, but I think she took her own life, seeing no point in living in a loveless world. What kills me inside is that I could have talked her out of it and saved her life.
On the day of the funeral, there was no crying, no whispered comforts for her family, at least what remained of it. That very day her father packed up and moved out of the house on the hill with his fiancee and her son. As they drove down and away from the hill, it began to rain, an angry, strong downpour that became a thunderstorm, ripping chunks of soil out of the ground and tearing branches off of the magnolia trees. I can still feel the drops striking my face...
I am snapped out of my dreaming as a huge drop hits me square between the eyes. I look up to see that a fierce storm is coming in from the North. As the first few raindrops strike the earth around the stone, I remember Alice's words to me:
"...Rain washes away all the dirt, dust, and pain in the world, so that we can start again..."
Smiling a little, I walk away from the stand of magnolias, and turn around just in time to see the trees bend towards each other in the rising gale. The blue-black stone is hidden from my view.
 12-String Pony · Fri Jun 30, 2006 @ 10:00pm · 0 Comments |
