Wherever You Go

Her boys had curly, dark hair, like their father’s. The three of them had looked golden as they ran through the fields that day, the light of the setting sun reflecting off their perfect heads amidst the sound of their roaring laughter. She stood in the creek that flowed beside their home, holding the damp hem of her skirt in her hands, cooling her feet and catching her breath. Her smile was plastered so severely to her face, it was difficult for her to imagine how she’d ever frown again.

Eli had always wanted sons; their names had once been dreams he’d whispered to her from the sanctuary of their sweet bedtime exchanges. The hope and joy her husband held himself with was his most striking quality; it radiated against the backdrop of their town, which was otherwise overshadowed by the normalcy of long, heat-burdened working days. She’d always thought herself to be very lucky to have been chosen by him, vowing that she’d do anything not to lose the goodness in which he coated her life.

Ian was like him. She could see their matching spirits then as Eli lifted him from the ground, tossing him into the air as his little bare toes wiggled to the rhythm of his delight. He begged his father to throw him higher, as if he believed that if only he could touch the clouds, he’d become one of the grand egrets that soared through the sky.

As he tore his face away from his flying brother, Lon caught her eye and ran to the bank of the creek. Lon resembled his father in face and stature, but he was like her: careful, slow to speak, with a persistent soft crease nestled between his brows. She motioned for him to join her in the water, and he took a long pause to roll his blue jeans up to his knees before waddling towards her. With her feet planted firmly in the sandy clay beneath her, she lifted her son into her arms and placed a kiss against his forehead, salty and sticky from sweat.

She remembered when they’d found out she was pregnant. She’d told Eli she was scared of being a bad mother. He’d kissed her forehead through his teary eyes and provided soft reassurance that they would all be just fine.

Then Ian was born. He’d looked so fragile, cradled in her arms as she rested in the hospital bed. She’d been terrified that if she made one wrong move, he’d shatter into a million little pieces. She’d thought she could break him, ruin him. Her mother had commented from the corner of the room that she had a tendency to see the worst in things. She preferred to call herself realistic. Ian had grown up bold and strong and fearless regardless.

When she glanced up then, Eli was looking at her and Lon. He was as beautiful as he’d been when they were the children running through these woods, sitting under the pecan trees with the flavor of honeysuckle on their lips. He took her unoccupied hand, then, to guide her out of the water, and the four of them made their way back to the little house.

In those days, it was difficult for her to imagine ever leaving that place. The occasional hunger in her belly and dirt under her fingernails were shadows of a burden, buried under the happiness of their perfect children and simple love. Her husband’s fantasies of another life, a better world, seemed foolish in comparison to their overflowing joy.

-

She slid the door behind her, careful not to stir anyone else out of their slumber. It was yet another sunny morning, and its brightness was a plague falling into her eyes as she sat in one of the folding chairs on the apartment balcony. Most days, she woke hoping it wouldn’t come up at all, but it was to no avail. Her prayers went unanswered, as they always did.

The table and chairs were one of the few things not packed into boxes, not that there were many of those either. She lifted a terracotta flower pot off the dirty plastic surface. The dirt was dry, and the plant it once contained was long dead, withering into a shell of itself. She dug the pack of cigarettes and the accompanying stashed lighter out of the perfect circle in the pot’s bottom and brought one to her mouth, watching the little trail of smoke dance in the light in front of her face.

The balcony overlooked the parking lot of the apartment complex, with a little grassy area at the center that technically qualified as a park, according to the rent price they were paying to access it. There was a slightly rusty swing set and a picnic table, and she watched as some man sat, talking on the phone, while his dog sniffed around in front of him.

It was almost never quiet, not even that early. She could hear the honks and whooshes of traffic on the highway, an ambulance siren in the distance, the couple arguing in the place next door. It’d always been strange to her how she could be constantly surrounded by people and know absolutely none of them. It’d made their family closer when they’d moved there, all the strangerhood amongst them.

But that almost didn’t matter anymore.

“Hey, Naomi.”

The voice came out sheepishly from behind her. Ruth stood with a paper cup of instant coffee in each hand, awkwardly using her bare foot to shut the door. Something in Naomi’s gut stirred with guilt over the vice between her fingers, aware that she’d been caught with a secret, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t worth the energy. “You’re up early.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Ruth said, sliding the second cup in front of the empty one Naomi used to tap the ash into. “Figured I could use some air.”

Her voice trailed off as she lifted the pollen-drenched, canvas cover off the little grill to reveal another pack of cigarettes. She smiled softly at Naomi as she waved them like a white flag. Eli had bought the grill, swearing they were going to start hosting family dinners with burgers and hot dogs, maybe even brisket, like they were back at home. He’d never used it. Maybe he would’ve, if he’d had time.

Naomi handed Ruth her lighter. “Did Lon know?”

“Did Lon know what?”

She tapped her cigarette.

“Oh.” Ruth smiled again. “Of course not. This is Lon we’re talking about. He would’ve freaked and accused me of giving myself cancer or something.”

Naomi’s mouth started to chuckle, but she stopped herself. “Yeah, he would’ve.”

“I gotta say, I’m a little surprised to see you’re a smoker. I would’ve taken you for being cancer-paranoid, too.”

“I used to smoke before Ian was born,” she began. “Then I read something in a parenting book about second-hand smoke, so I quit. But I think I’ve earned taking a few years off. Life’s short.” She swallowed hard as the words slipped out of her mouth, begging her body not to start another day in tears.

“Yeah, it is.”

The door opened again. “Goodness gracious, I didn’t realize we had picked up poisoning ourselves.”

“Well if we were looking for shame, there it is.” Ruth glared at Elora with a numbness in her teasing. “Good morning, sister. Care to join us?”

Naomi wasn’t sure how it was possible that she’d been smoking at this hour every day since the accident, and this was the first time her daughters-in-law had even been awake for it. On the one morning her body, her mind, her heart actually needed the break.

“I’m happy to sit, but I’ll pass on the drugs. I know everything is heavy, but that really isn’t a healthy way to handle this.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Ruth dragged her chair to the side to make room for Elora.

“I finished packing the bathroom stuff,” Elora said. “So that should be everything.”

“Thank you.” Naomi replied. Their intrusion was embarrassing, but it was nice that they were both there. They had much to discuss, with all their earthly possessions divided evenly amongst them into neat cardboard boxes that barely filled the living room inside.

It’d been three months since they’d died. All of them, all at once, her boys, the joy of her life, slipped from her fingers like the last frozen ice cube on a hot summer day. As quickly as blinking an eye.

Perhaps she should’ve seen it coming. Things in the city had not been perfect, but the love between them had not shaken, nor had her husband’s belief that this life was better than the hollowness of home. Her sons had grown tall, even taller than their father, and taken beautiful wives, outspoken city girls with strong wills and smiles that matched the rest of their little family.

It’d been two weeks since they’d received the eviction notice. They couldn’t afford the apartment without the men there to support them.

“Are your parents excited to see you today?” Naomi started gently.

Ruth looked up at her, startled. “Why would our parents be expecting us?”

“Because you’re going home.”

Elora was softer as she questioned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure what else I would mean. None of us can stay here, and you both still have your entire lives ahead of you. Good lives. You can go back to your families and get jobs and maybe even find love again, in time.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ruth cried out. She spoke with her hands, her natural coordination keeping her cigarette tight in her grasp. “You think that after everything we’ve been through we’re just going to hug goodbye, stroll back into our mother’s houses and start all over again?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”

Ruth scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

“What will you do?” Elora asked, avoiding their gazes as she picked the chipping paint off her chair.

“I’m going home, too.”

“This is your home.” Ruth shot at her.

“No, it isn’t,” Naomi argued. “It never was. My home was them, and our home was a little house in a little town with corn fields and blueberry bushes and a sweet little creek.”

Ruth raised her eyebrows. “Sounds perfect. We’ll come with you.”

“She’s right, Ruth.” Elora whispered.

“What?”

“She’s right. This is home to us. There’s nothing for us there, we haven’t even been there before. Our whole lives are here.”

“Our whole lives were here,” Ruth clarified. “Now our whole lives are sitting here, fighting on this porch while we give ourselves lung cancer. This is our family now. I’m not abandoning it.”

“You’re not abandoning anything, Ruth.” Naomi felt the change in her own tone as something maternal rose in her, but these women were not her flesh and blood. They did not deserve to be caught in the crossfire of the curse her blood contained. “You’re moving on.”

A tear fell from Elora’s eye, falling onto the plastic table. The wetness cleaned a bit of the dirt. “I’m going to call my parents. Let them know I’m coming home.”

“You should join her,” Naomi said to Ruth. “They’ll appreciate the courtesy. I’ll drop you both off in a few hours.”

Elora wiped her eyes with a deep breath and retreated into the house, but Ruth remained. “This is ridiculous,” she repeated.

“I don’t know what you want from me, honey. I have nothing else to give you. You deserve so much more than whatever I could offer you, anyways.”

Ruth’s voice cracked as she spoke. “It would be enough for me.”

“It should not be enough for you. If you return with me, it’ll be because you’re giving up on yourself. I will not allow it.” She paused to settle her own voice as the tears started. “You deserve so much more.”

“What about what you deserve?”

The question was enough to halt Naomi’s lecture. The women sat, staring at each other, the lingering of their shared smoke rising from the paper cup between them.

Naomi knew she did not deserve anything at all. She deserved to spend the rest of her days in that haunted house, watching the ghosts of everything that once was dance and skip and laugh and play through the field. She had always feared her life would turn bitter, spoiled and sour, and it had. Now she would sit planted in it.

But she would not ruin another life. “Go home, Ruth.”

“No.”

“Go home, Ruth.”

“I will not. Do not ask me again. Don’t tell me to go home. Don’t tell me not to follow you, because I will. You will take me with you or I will hide in the trunk of your car or I will hitchhike in your wake. I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life in whatever misery you seem to believe you’re destined for. I’ll be at your side, smoking with you on the porch until we have no breath left in our lungs.”

Naomi said nothing. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, searching for the words that could possibly convey the fate of what happened to people who loved her. To dissuade this beautiful girl from standing directly in the line of fire.

There was nothing else to say. She looked at Ruth, and she looked at her, as they both cried. Ruth was stubborn, perhaps. Too stubborn, enough to kill her.

But there was something in her eyes then, something like stubbornness, but it was brighter. Warmer. Something like the way Eli had talked to her when she’d been worrying. Something persistent, untouchable.

Something that made her believe she’d never been cursed at all.

Naomi turned the flower pot over in habit, starting to replace the little box in the hole in the bottom, but she stopped herself. She stood and walked into the small apartment, past the stacked boxes to a trash bag that hung on the front door knob, and threw the pack away.

Ruth watched from the open door, still sitting at that cheap plastic table. Naomi couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

They faced each other again. “I love you,” Ruth said.

“And I love you, my daughter.”