Disappearing

It has never before occurred to me that I could also choose to disappear. This is what she was thinking when she first heard the scratching at the window. She ignored the noise, knowing it was just a stray branch from the old oak tree outside of her bedroom window. The live oak that had been on this land for so long that it had already been fully matured by the time her great-grandpa built this old farmhouse. Its branches stretched far out into the front yard and high above the two-story house, as if they were always searching for something more than just sunlight. In some places they twisted down toward the ground before turning and reaching back up for the sky, groping the space between her bedroom window and the marshy forest that stretched for miles towards the sea. 

She glances toward the window but can see nothing through the thick black curtains her dad hung last year, just after her mom left. She used to love the view out of her window, the oak tree always beckoning her to join in its supposed merriment. She spent countless summer days climbing the branches, pretending she lived in a castle, or on a pirate ship. Her evenings were spent around bonfires built from the offerings of the oak, listening to the generational retellings of the lives of family members long since passed. Now, when she looks out that window she only thinks of the endless pit of dirt and decay that the absence of her beloved mother has left inside of her. 

Every woman in her family has disappeared. The tales of these disappearances are secrets that have been whispered to her by ill-meaning older cousins and scared uncles alike as both a way to frighten her and warn her. She has long since thought of these tales as a way for the men in her family to cope with death, infidelity, abandonment, or helplessness. But now her own mother has disappeared and she wonders if even she is starting to believe these stories as a way to stomach her own grief. 

She rolls over to check the time and sees with some surprise that it is just past midnight. How long has she been lying in bed, pondering the realization that she doesn’t have to wait for her turn to disappear, she could choose to disappear from here on her own. Thinking for only a moment, she knows that the waxing moon has very nearly set in the western sky. Her mom taught her the phases and cycles of the moon even before she taught her to read and thus she has felt indelibly linked to the changes in the sky as well as she is to the changes in her own body. She often thinks of the moon as her protector, especially now that her mother is gone. There are also many times that this companionship has felt heavy and claustrophobic, as if the moon is asking her to share in her celestial burdens as well. On occasion she has longed to be free of this watchful eye, much as she imagines a religious person must feel when they are attempting to go about their sinning in private. Tonight, she gets out of bed and throws on her mom’s old floor-length robe before moving smoothly past the cracked door of her dad’s room, feet landing silently on the thick burgundy rug in the hallway, and heads outside, hoping her sinking friend may provide her with some comfort.

Without remembering making the decision to walk to the outside of her window, she finds herself stepping through the brown remains of the dead marigolds in their front garden and reaching up for the tiny branches that she sees scratching against her pane. She runs her fingers along the smooth bark of the fresh limbs at the very end of the branch and begins to follow its trajectory towards its origin. She touches and holds as the branch becomes thicker and knobby, as she is no longer able to fit her hand around it. She thinks of her mother as she walks, how this part of the branch would’ve been here at the same time she was. How surely she would have touched it. How many rainfalls have there been since then? To wash away anything that was left of the presence of her flesh on the skin of this tree. 

She feels, rather than sees, that the moon has now disappeared completely. And with this realization she feels more alone than she ever has in her life. After a quick look back at the house and its dark windows shrouded in the heavy black cloth, she continues her pilgrimage to the center of the sprawling oak. As she approaches the center of the tree she sits on a branch near the ground that is as large around as a grown man. She lays back into the rough, solid arm and looks up at the sky, the stars made all the more visible by the absence of the moon, and tries to remember what she can of her grandmother. 

Her grandmother was already somewhere in her forties, no one knew exactly where, when she became pregnant with what would be her seventh child and her first daughter. The pregnancy was hard on both her body and her mind and everyone was surprised when she survived the delivery. She lived another forty years, however, before her mind failed her and she wandered out into the marsh, never to be heard from again. 

She has heard this story many times over the years, but thinking about it now is the first time she has wondered at the veracity of it all. Something seems to be tugging at her, like an invisible string between her and the gnarled roots of the tree coming up through the dirt. She rises from where she rested on the branch and sinks to her knees in the dirt and begins digging. She doesn’t know what she is looking for or why but it feels as if she has no other option. 

She digs until her nails are bent and broken. She has scrapes on her knuckles and her fingertips are bleeding but still, she digs. She begins to wonder if maybe she is going mad when she feels her fingers scrape against something hard and solid. She stops long enough to look behind her at the house and make sure all is still before attacking the ground with a renewed vigor. She has an overwhelming urge to call out for a full moon to provide some light, any light, and she lets out a guttural sob that she feels well up from a place deep within her, a place she had never before visited. She does not know for sure what she is digging up and until she can see, she is unwilling to believe what her fragile, tired mind is screaming at her to accept.

The thought that these could be the bones of her mother, of her grandmother, was beyond what she was capable of contemplating if she were to continue, to make it to dawn, to have some affirmation of what she had never before suspected, before she must make a decision of what to do with her unearthing. 

She continues to dig, pulling out bones of varying lengths and width and creating a small pile on the ground next to her. It isn’t until she finds two sacrums that she is able to lay down in the earth and allow her discovery to wash over her. 

As the dawn starts to rise in the east and her surroundings begin to come into terrifying focus, she returns the bones to the roots of the tree. She presses her forehead to the trunk of the tree and murmurs her thanks as well as a prayer of continued protection. 

With one last look back at her house, she gathers her robe around her and disappears into the marshy forest.