The Secret Keeper

Shadows wander across the dark furniture in slanted lines, stretching to cover the entire front hall before the midday summer sun begins its slow rotation.  Fresh lilacs drape the air with a heavy fragrant scent.  Littered in the center of the large Persian carpet are various shoe-shaped imprints and my steps add to the odd arrangement. 

A woman sits behind a polished mahogany desk in the right corner of the expansive room.  She shoves aside her unruly gray bangs, smiles sweetly in my direction.  I give her my name and cross an oblong shadow on the carpet.   After choosing the middle of three straight-backed chairs, I sit down and wait, although I have no idea who I am waiting for. The latest gardening magazine beckons to be read and I succumb to its charms, not because of my green thumb, but because it’s the first on the pile.  Instead of reading up on the most popular eco-fertilizers, I vacantly stare at the smoke-tinted French doors and wonder about my first-time elderly companion.  At 25 years old, I realize I should possess the fine-tuned ability of taming reveries, but I don’t.   From the depths of my imagination, I envision an elderly masterpiece:  A woman too old and decrepit to speak complete sentences, too senile to remember her own name and too degenerated to urinate without the aid of a catheter... 

A noise startles me so much I lurch forward and the gardening magazine slips from my lap to the floor.  Phyllis the receptionist dropped a large black binder.  Instead of speaking, she smiles again in my direction.  I bend over and replace my magazine to the pile of other ignored periodicals and squeeze my eyes shut, asking myself why I volunteered for this program to begin with.  A crusty old lady is the last addition I need in my life right now.  Simplify, that’s what I keep telling myself.  The muzak distracts me and I try to relax.

“Excuse me, Ms. Michaels, I am sorry to disturb you, but you can go in now.  Last door on the left.” Phyllis is smiling again. Does she ever not smile?  I rise.  Phyllis moves a gray wisp from her eyes before giving me a slight push.  She whispers, “Don’t worry, love, Mrs. Hathaway will surprise you.”

When I reach her room, I try to peek in without anyone noticing me.  Mrs. Hathaway wears a royal blue silk bathrobe and gently rocks in a white wicker chair.   She faces the rustic country view while sipping iced-tea.  Her back is straight as a rod and her shoulders square.  I notice her shining white hair is coiled perfectly into a bun at the base of her neck.  She moves back and forth and stares out the window.   I stand for nearly a minute deciding whether to bolt or not before she realizes my presence.   Draped over the two remaining seats are colorful quilted blankets.  Well-worn classics ranging from Shakespeare to Chekhov line a small bookshelf.  Freshly picked flowers in an intricately sculpted alabaster vase sit atop a crocheted lace trimmed doily on her nightstand and several black and white pictures of two smiling little boys hang next to her bed.

Just as I decide to make a run for it, she turns and glances up at me with a mild expression of curiosity.  A liver-spotted hand emerges from a blue sleeve and waves me in.  I step forward, catch her gaze and say unsteadily, “My name is Cameron, and I’d like to talk with you, if that’s okay.”

She replies in a soft, commanding voice, “I am Mrs. Hathaway and of course my dear.  Please sit down.  We do have much to talk about.”

­­­–––

The following months flow much like the tides, often soothing, sometimes stormy. Instead of dreading my time in a convalescent home, I begin to treasure the hours once a week we spend together. I never really had grandparents and Mrs. Hathaway is the kind of person I can say anything to without fear of judgement. I actually try, unsuccessfully, to shock her. I find myself telling her all my fragile dreams and my deepest secrets.  As I talk, she rocks in her white wicker chair, listening intently. After several months, I realize that one of my best friends has become a 92-year old woman, but I still know very little about her. Every time I ask her to talk about her life or her past, she changes the subject back to me. Once, I get up the courage to ask her about the two smiling boys in the photos next to her bed.


She responds, "Strangers. They are strangers to me now."

Four months after I begin visiting Mrs. Hathaway, everything changes. It’s a beautiful warm, clear day, and I can’t wait to take Mrs. Hathaway outside to the yellow chaise lounges for some fresh air.  But instead of seeing her knitting as I normally do when I arrive, she’s rocking to and fro, talking intimately to the open window.  I stand in the doorway and listen, not wanting to disturb her.

“There used to be a white house on the right side,” she says, motioning to the window like it’s a long lost companion.  “Do you see it?  The one with black shutters and guest house off to the side.  Salt Marsh Road banks softly to the left.  Above the small hill is a bridge.  It marks the beginning of the salt marshes.  Just to the right beyond the marshes is the house all alone, facing the water on its own point. I have always noticed the sand around it is mostly purple with browns and beiges of normal sand mixed in.  An odd combination for sand in these parts, don’t you think?  No, not exotic really, just different.  Very beautiful indeed.”

Her hands flutter around her face and she’s almost leaning out of her chair.  I consider coughing or clearing my throat, but before I’m able to do either, she straightens and continues. “People around here knew the couple who lived in that house,” she whispers to the window.  “The woman is mad, they say.  One of her sons was killed in a convenience store robbery.  He was 17, just 17.  Her other son died in a car accident three years later.  He was only 16.  Everyone said the younger was her favorite.  But he wasn’t.  They both were.”  Mrs. Hathaway’s voice shakes as she speaks.  She rises from her chair and resumes the tumble of words, still with her back to me.  

“When the younger son died,” she explains, “the woman vowed never to leave the house again.  Not even to walk on the beach.  Because of that, people were convinced she was crazy.”

Her head jerks suddenly, hair comes loose from her bun, and she immediately straightens her shoulders.  She crosses her arms and draws the blue robe tightly across her back.  I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath.

“Did you know,” she says, “when there’s a bad storm that particular house gets hit harder than any other house on the waterfront?  I don’t care.  I never cared.  The storms were beautiful.  Beautiful and powerful. We always rebuilt it.  We rebuilt because I always had to stand on the porch and taste the sea.  We rebuilt it because I had to dream of making love once again on the purple and beige sand.  We always rebuilt that house because in the music of the waves, I could hear my sons laughing.  Yes, I’ve always loved that house.  But now I’m here, thinking of that place.  Sometimes I sit in this room that I will die in and I wonder if my children can see me, because I can’t hear them laughing anymore.”

Mrs. Hathaway stares out the window lost on her own world, in her own past. I stand up, hoping to sneak away unnoticed. The floorboard creaks slightly and Mrs. Hathaway’s head swivels around.  Her mascara has run and her foundation is gone around her eyes and nose.  But her shoulders are still square underneath that royal blue bathrobe and her arms rest lamely at her sides.   

When she spots me standing in her doorway, she sighs, looks almost relieved.  Taking a tissue from the pocket of her robe, she smiles but the smile never reaches her eyes.  In a tired voice she says, “We’ve chatted Cameron and I didn’t even realize it.  Now you know all my secrets.”

I nod and try hard to gather myself.  “No, there is one other thing I don’t know.”

“What’s that, my dear?” she asks.

“Your first name. I don’t know your first name.”

“Siriana,” she whispers. “My mother used to call me Siri, which means secret. I always wondered if my mother knew something even then.”

As I turn, I see her take the pins from her hair.  In one shake of her head, waves of white hair cascade down her back.  Heading down the hallway toward the French doors, I wonder how many secrets we can all hold deep inside.

–––

The small hill and the bridge mark the beginning of the marshes.  Just at the end of the bridge on the right, is a paved opening that leads to a steep drop.  Carefully sliding down, I make it to the base of the bridge about 10 minutes before sunset.  I take off my shoes, drop them near the no trespassing sign and walk.  I walk as the beach curves right and water fills in to the left.  I go as far as I have to and sit with my feet tucked under me in the sand. 

Looking down at the photograph in my hand, I make sure I’m in the right place before proceeding. I know I’m standing on Mrs. Hathaway’s beach.  The image in my hand is of the sun setting above a white house with shutters open and the ocean looking magnificent off to the left. In the picture is Mrs. Hathaway with her arms around two smiling boys.  I received the picture this morning, along with a brief explanation from Phyllis letting me know that Mrs. Hathaway died of heart failure yesterday, a few hours after I left her room.  According to Phyllis, Mrs. Hathaway walked into the reception area moments after I left and specifically instructed Phyllis to give me the photograph today.  On the back of the picture in precise cursive is written: Thank you for walking the beach for me. You are my secret-keeper now. –Siri  I accept those words as a direct command, and I know she had meant them to be.           

Beaches in this small tourist town are unique, and I’ve missed them desperately.  The sun will never rise or set on the water.  Instead, it chooses to go left to right.  A soft breeze glides off the water and the sky is streaked with all the colors of day and night whirled together.

Facing the white house on the point, I secretly want Mrs. Hathaway to emerge.  I imagine her standing on the jagged point with her head tilted to one side, straining to hear whatever voices talked to her and her alone.  While I stare at the empty weather-beaten house, the orange-red sun virtually rests on the highest peak of the roofline for nearly a minute.  Briefly, I scan the house for some sign of life, but nothing seems to move and the black shutters are closed.  I sit in the cooling sand, until the joggers and couples fade out of sight, until the street lights above the road click on.  I listen, half hoping to hear her voice on the waves. Who will I talk to now? Who will be my secret keeper? Instead, I hear the crickets and the waves, the tall grass shifting and gulls passing overhead. I stand up and brush the sand off my legs and I swear that somewhere within the depths of the waves, children are laughing, and so is Siri.           

Edge of the Earth

Wanda's greatest fear is that goddamned one-legged bird missing breakfast.  Each day at precisely 6 a.m., Wanda rises from bed, wraps herself in her old, ratty purple robe, puts on her rose colored glasses (really, they are rose colored) and looks for the bird on the deck railing.

“If he doesn’t show up it might mean he’s dead,” Wanda says out loud to the empty kitchen. “If he doesn’t show up it’ll mean that useless freeloader- you know, the healthy one with the big beak- might’ve finally done him in. Poor goddamned bird.  How will he survive without me feeding him? He does like his eggs. Fried eggs over easy with two slices of bacon. Never sausage. Once I gave him sausage. He threw it up in the air and squawked all day.”

7 a.m. and the bird still hasn’t shown. I’ve got to get myself a hobby, she thinks, twirling her gray hair over her fuchsia finger nails, staring at the railing where the bird usually sits. There are flights to Reno. Flights loaded with men, and they’ve got money. They go to gamble and play golf. I should spruce myself up and sit on that plane.  Back and forth. I could go just to find a husband. That would take my mind of this goddamned bird.

She walks from the kitchen to the upstairs in the living room, staring out a large picture window overlooking the Bandon Lighthouse. The fog is so thick you can cut it with a knife. It’s like living on the edge of the earth, she tells all her guests when they arrive at her bed and breakfast. When her guests complain about the fog, Wanda tells them, “What do I look like, Mother Nature? It’s foggy, BFD. So scrap your walk on the beach, find a bar and drink. It’s about all you can do in Bandon, Oregon. You can't even buy a pair of underwear here.”

Maybe that's where that damned bird is, she thinks, buying a pair of underwear for her. God knows she needs a few new pair- ones where the elastic isn’t shot. Put that on the grocery list- underwear and eggs. That goddamned bird goes through two-dozen eggs a week. Eats me out of house and home. It’s not right for a bird to eat eggs with such gusto. Its like me gnawing on an infant’s arm just because I’ve got a hunger pang. Oh, what the hell's the sense of wondering anymore. It’s late and the day is already shot. Time for a nap. The bird will come or he won’t. “It's that simple,” she says, sighing into her purple bathrobe.

Just as she walks into the bedroom and takes off her glasses, the seagull sets down on the railing.

The Timeline

This was published originally by the Survivor's Review in 2010 and was written for and about a close friend who suffered from cancer.

“Sometimes it’s a burden being the only person who knows where you actually are.”

5:15 a.m.

We sit huddled on the beach, shoulder-to-shoulder, sand between our toes, wrapped in the bedspread that we just dragged outside with us. I want to see the sunrise with you. I want to feel you near me as we tip our heads back and drink up the first light the morning has to offer. The sky is wispy and pink with the light July breeze reminding us that later in the day, it will be blazing hot. For a moment, I wonder what you are thinking and almost nudge you to ask. Instead, I gently rest my head on your shoulder and feel you lean into me.

Sometimes it’s a burden being the only person who knows where you actually are. I don’t mean like on the corner of Lexington and 41^st, I mean where you really are in you mind, in your heart, in your soul. I never asked for that kind of power. I never really wanted that knowledge, yet here I am. Here we are.

8:46 a.m.

After we eat a light breakfast and drink the remainder of the coffee, I insist we take a walk in the woods behind the cottage, even though you protest the walk with your eyes, giving me that exasperated “oh please not now” expression. Undeterred, I march out the back porch of the house to find a narrow trail amidst the evergreens. Wanting to keep the peace, you good-naturedly follow, smiling at our non-verbal banter. The morning light filters softly through the treetops and I notice a young red-tailed hawk to our left. Excited, I turn to point out the hawk to you, but my breath catches in my chest when I see the way you are looking at me. Your eyes have always stopped me cold, and today is no exception. During our walk, we take turns leading, changing the pace and stopping to look at chipmunks or perfectly spun spider webs. You trip once on a stump and we laugh at your clumsiness, even though I’m more worried that you are beginning to tire. After about an hour, we turn back, both of us sweating and thirsty. I’m relieved when you pick up the pace considerably, knowing there is a cooling swim at the end of the line.

11:47 a.m.

We race to the beach (I win) and peel off our clothes, sprinting into the sharply cold water. We laugh, giddy in the coolness and the perfection of the day. After our bodies grow accustomed to the water, you swim over to me. I watch as you inch closer to me, the butterflies in my stomach jumping without warning. We stay like that, for what feels like an eternity to me, inches from one another, staring wide-eyed. I feel the electricity of your body through the water and want to curl up inside your soul. I watch the water run down your tanned face and marvel at how a droplet of water could stay so perfectly still on your eyelash. You lean into me and touch my lips with yours. Salty. Cool. Electrifying. I sigh and forget we are even in water.

4:19 p.m.

You are lying on your stomach, the sheet barely grazing the top of your thigh. I can still smell the salt water in your hair. Your left arm is over your head, but you are turned towards me, quietly looking at me with so much love and desire I have difficult time breathing. Your skin is so soft, so smooth, I run my hand over and over again from the base of your neck to that amazing curve in your lower back. Each time, my hand drifts lower and lower and I can feel your body respond and arch towards me. You slowly rise up on your elbows and turn towards me, gently rolling me over on my back. I let you place your weight on me, and close my eyes as you lower your head and kiss my neck, my throat, my lips. I want to feel you, all of you. I lean up towards you, into you and taste your kiss. Each minute pulls me deeper and deeper into you. It’s you I want, have wanted for so long that the power of our love shakes me. I have to concentrate. I have to let this go slowly and memorize it all. The first word I speak all day is your name. Over and over again until you know for certain, this need to be near you is not because I know I am losing you.

You are dying and it’s too much for me to take. It’s impossible for me to comprehend that a small tumor on your ribcage has turned into this-- this last weekend, these final moments before the cancer eats away your body and our love.

6:47 p.m.

I left you sleeping in bed. When you wake up, I know you’ll be starving, so I focus on making dinner. I open a bottle of red wine even though I know you’re not supposed to be drinking. What the hell, either the cancer will kill you or a glass of red wine will do it. If it has to happen at all, I vote for the red wine, especially after a day like this. I put on some music- Brandi Carlile. I sauté vegetables, make brown rice and a salad. I set the table outside with flowers and I sit down to write you a note, you know, the kind of note you bury with someone, the kind of note that lasts an eternity.

I try to write but the words don’t come. The pressure is too much. How do I tell you about deepness of my love? How do I explain this urgency, this heat, this unrelenting connection? I sit for a few minutes and scribble a sentence or two, only to cross them out. It’s a burden being the only person who knows where you actually are. Loving you is a burden and I wish I could walk away and save myself the pain, but this isn’t about me. Loving you is the only thing I’ve ever done right. When you are gone, the sky will never again be this shade of blue. The breeze will never feel this warm, and I will never feel so complete.

Suddenly, I feel your hands on my shoulders and I relax. I lean back into you and sigh. You bend forward and whisper in my ear, “Don’t write it. I already know.” You kiss me lightly on the ear and ask me what’s for dinner. 

The Torn Place in the Sky

Upstairs in Mama’s bedroom, it still smells like blood. Faintly metallic, rusty, stale. Mama’s things are thrown all over the floor. The tortoise brush lies shattered in the corner of the room. The stains dried on the jade green bedspread. Tiponi sits in the corner watching her breath trail over her head and waits for the house to tip on its side. It will swallow her up like it did Mama. The wanting, the needing better things than the other Indian women, the feel of fine silk on her legs finally ate Mama alive. The life by the river never satisfied her. Fine things come with a price and Mama made her daughter pay those debts to the house. For as long as she can remember, Tiponi’s sole existence was to serve the house, and she knew nothing of a life beyond it.

The old ones thought the blue house unnatural, mostly because of the women within it. Iroquois were known for loving the white life, but not the Huron. A Huron woman would not choose to live white, to wear fine clothes, furnish the home with meaningless trinkets and sell herself to anyone who would pay. A Huron woman would not build a house without a man and have the audacity to paint it blue, the color of the May sky.

Even still, the blue house on the corner of Stitch Road had plenty of visitors, although none of them talked much. Men mostly, but some women came too; they always slipped in the back door. When Mama was beaten and stabbed to death because she charged extra for the second blow job, they all stopped coming. Two weeks after her death, when the first frost had blanketed Mama’s fresh grave and the fields, Grandmother Silwa went to her daughter’s grave one last time, then walked West, naked, to the river where her ancestors waited and did not return.

The house creaks against the January wind. Grandmother Silwa’s spirit talks

quietly to Tiponi while the young girl sits in her Mama’s bedroom, waiting patiently for the orders that will never come. Grandmother Silwa whispers gently, recounting their people’s story of the good brother and the bad brother who fight each other using a bag of corn and the horn from a deer as weapons. The badgers and the frogs sit with Tiponi and watch with her as the story unfolds as if it is the first time they have heard this story too.

Tiponi leans against their warmth as her Grandmother’s voice echoes from somewhere just beyond the edge of the room, recounting this battle between good and evil, between life and death. Mama joins in the battle, swinging a bag full of corn, her ribs popping out from under her yellow skin, her face churned into a grimace. Tiponi waits for Grandmother Silwa to interfere, to pull her Mama away from the fighting, but Grandmother Silwa is long gone, past the eagle’s land to a place Tiponi cannot reach.

“Maybe that’s what I will do,” says Tiponi aloud in the empty room, while she picks absentmindedly at a scab on her knee. “I will walk west into the water. Walk west where Grandmother Silwa tells me all the Huron spirits go and live forever. Grandmother Silwa will be there, sitting at the bottom of the river, talking to the turtles. They will listen to her stories. Everyone listens to her stories.”

Tiponi closes her eyes and imagines laying her head in Grandmother Silwa’s lap, like she did as a little girl. She can almost feel her grandmother stroke her hair and sing to her of the torn place in the sky.

---

The last time Tiponi looks at the sickening baby blue house she’s standing at the edge of the gravel driveway, her chest heaving, her lungs hurting from the early winter cold. She stares at the house steely-eyed, sizing up her enemy, waiting for it to make its move, expecting it to lift itself off the foundation and pull her back inside. The house she hates does not budge. Its white shutters unblinking, its large oak double doors curving into a slow, wide smirk as if to say, “You will not stay away from here for long.”

Stitch Road is silent for a moment, cold and silent, watching Tiponi make her first independent decision. No hawks or crows, no wind, nobody yelling in the house on the corner or the shacks down the street. No men shuffling along to pay a visit. No muffled crying from within.

In its day, Stitch Road was a busy thoroughfare to town. Four thousand people made this place by the river and mountains home, by force or by choice. Iroquois settled here mostly, some Algonquins and Hurons, and even a few Chinooks who came east when the salmon chose not to let the nets take them. Little by little, the old women died, defeated and lost. The men, without their mothers, left drunk and hunched over, to shacks built on other people’s homelands. Now, Stitch Road is a single stitch on the land’s curving breast. The only remaining squatters are the scavengers and the pests– foxes, buzzards and fire ants, and they stand at attention as Tiponi flies past, her long braid rolling from shoulder to shoulder as she runs.

            She runs down the road, dirt trailing in a cloud behind her, legs pulling, arms propelling her farther and faster. Away. In this moment, Tiponi finally understands the meaning of leave– of never come back. The last time she tried to run, it was mid-summer when the warm breeze and the smell of the river made everything feel open and flowing. She left at midnight when the moon was full, but only reached the outskirts of town. That time, Mama caught up to her in their old Ford pickup. As she drove both of them home, she held her only child to her chest, whispering to her or to some spirit behind the wide-eyed moon, “You are my daughter. My wind-song girl. When you were born, you would not breath. Grandmother Silwa pushed air into your lungs and you sang your first song, long and clear. My daughter, you are all I ever done right in this world.”

---

            Grandmother Silwa has eaten the last of the pole beans. She has forgotten the time or the day and has not bathed in so long that her hair is matted to her head, and even she can smell herself– the dank odor reminding her of the caves near the creek where the wild men are. She dreams the great turtle has swallowed her, eaten her whole where she lives forever in its stomach with no one to talk with or sing to. She looks up and no longer sees daylight, but something else, farther away than the sun where nothing grows but the nothingness. In this place, the deer turn to dogs, the hawks into slugs. The water pushes hard against the sky to raise it up. Silwa stops wandering and stands tall, knowing that none of her ancestors have ever seen it so.  The old ones often spoke of the place in time when all that is great and unknown in the world would force itself upon the people and crush them.

Soon, the milky white sky turns a pale shade of blue while Silwa scrapes the dry earth in search of something to eat. The sky turns deep blue, dark blue, then the clouds shift behind the mountain. Silwa believes it is the first time anyone has seen the sky talk to the water, and she is the first person to witness it. Excited, she begins to walk west, toward the high mountain place. When she finds the old ones, they will rejoice because in their lifetime someone has seen the sky and the earth talk, and it will be her, small Silwa of the creek.

A whining, crying sound stops Silwa in her tracks. A whimpering really. Silwa sits in the dirt and tries to force the sound from her mind. “Stop. Stop. Stop!” she cries to the sky, clutching her head with filthy hands. She knows this sound. Recognizing it from somewhere so far beyond, it rests at the fringes of her memory. The crying becomes more demanding, more insistent. Silwa looks up to the sky, and it cracks down the center, the dark blue giving way to a familiar blackness. From deep within, she vaguely sees a girl that looks like her own granddaughter on her hands and knees, crying in the middle of a dirt road.

Silwa sighs as she watches the young girl’s shoulders heave. She knows now that she will not go to her ancestors so that they may rejoice in her vision. Instead, she begins to climb back into the torn place in the sky. Tiponi hears a humming in the distance. She raises her head and wipes the tears from her eyes. Straining to see the figure walking toward her, Tiponi picks herself up and begins to run toward the old woman, her Grandmother, finally feeling as though everything will be all right.