Rain Songs

"Where were you last night?" Susan asked quietly. The smoke from her cigarette rose in the air and seemed to hover over her, as if waiting for his response before it moved on. Her hand had a purplish bruise across her knuckles and another around her wrist. Her hair was loosely knotted on top of her head and the blue ribbon she loved to wear was torn and bloody on the floor. Elias watched as the dust particles in the air seemed to perform a spiraling dance in the sliver of light filtering through the broken windowpane in the corner of the room. The rain was falling and creating an unfamiliar tune of staccato beats against the roof. Elias closed his eyes and listened; he remembered when he was younger he and Susan would sit still for hours listening to the “rain songs,” as Susan used to call it, each one different in its rhythm. She explained to him that each raindrop had a singular, distinctive chord that could not be duplicated or imitated but Elias always tried to find a common thread in each rain song; a conjoint melody that he could identify. If rain originates from the same place, why does it fall differently every single time? How can two things that start from the same place be so different? Susan would explain to Elias that the rain songs were like people, each one was unique and therefore could never be exactly the same.

Although they were the same age, Susan had always seemed older to Elias. After Mama died when they were only 9 years old, Susan did all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and even helped him with his chores. She would brush his hair when it became unruly and tie his shoelaces when they became undone. When he wanted to play with his toy airplane on the front porch, Susan would always stop whatever she was doing and come sit on the porch swing and read. Sometimes Elias would stop playing and sit next to her on the swing. She would look up from her book, put her arm around him, and start to hum an indiscernible tune like Mama used to. He would rest his head on her shoulder, close his eyes, and become lost in the vibrations of her incessant humming. Elias missed those times the most; the peacefulness of just being in the same calm space with his twin sister. Now, the space was filled with only white noise; as if a radio had been left on and the dial was set between stations. The white noise saturated the air and drowned out all other sounds; even the rain songs could no longer penetrate the flimsy, wooden frame house.

Yesterday was Elias’s and Susan’s eighteenth birthday. Susan had asked him to fix the porch swing after dinner so they could both eat birthday cake on the porch. After Mama died, Susan did not celebrate her birthday anymore. She would always make a small cake and hang decorations for Elias, but she never acted as if it were her birthday also.

For all the times she had protected him, loved him, cared for him, he should have been there for her last night. He knew Papa was due to come home. When they were younger, Susan had always made sure he was safely tucked away in the barn with his toy airplane to play with whenever Papa came home so Elias would not have to witness her shame. Last night, he had left while Susan washed the dishes after dinner and ran all the way to the landing strip on the other side of the field. The small crop-dusting planes were due to land soon. Elias loved to watch the iron birds swoop in, smell the fuel, and hear the roar of the engines. The old airfield tower had long been abandoned and replaced with a new, fancier one further away. Elias claimed the old tower as his own long ago, no one gave the old structure a second thought after the new one was built. He would sit in what used to be the control room, close his eyes and wait to feel the vibration of the engines throughout the tower, and his soul. He would sometimes curl up on a pile of old tarps and fall asleep for hours, dreaming of soaring through the clouds and just disappearing one day.

As he sat in the tower last night, Elias thought about why she had asked him to fix the porch swing. He concluded that she wanted to show Papa that her spirit, like the old swing, could be repaired.

Her anger had been coiled for years like a snake waits patiently in a tree for its prey to cross its path; she had been planning this for a long while. She wanted Papa’s anger to finally meet hers; for all of the beatings, for the childhood he stole from her, for not allowing her to live a life full of love and wonder, and for killing Mama.

The rain was falling faster now, creating a frenzied rain song that Elias could finally recognize; it was Susan’s rain song, created just for her.

As dawn approached, the light spilled through the broken windowpane illuminating a path from the window to the far corner of the room. Elias followed the path of light with his eyes until it came to rest on the bloodied body lying on the floor.

Yes, he and Susan were like the rain; two things that started from the same place but were so different.

The light seemed to wash over Susan as if she were an angel without wings. He could not see her eyes; her head was bent low as if she were in prayer, but Elias knew she did not pray anymore.

Susan lifted her head slowly; he watched the smile develop from her eyes to her mouth as if she could no longer contain it. She looked at Elias and inhaled her cigarette, long and slow. "Where were you last night Elias? You missed all the fun.”