And Still

A woman sits cross-legged on a stony beach. Her form is hunched, as though the weight of her head is pulling her toward the wet stones. Jagged rocks push into her body, at war with her bones. Salty wind whips at her hair, tugs at her clothes. On the horizon, obsidian clouds are rolling inland, the ocean responding with sharp white peaks. As the first pelts of icy rain make landfall, chilling her skin, she closes her eyes.

When she opens them, a door is standing freely on the shore to her right, attached to nothing. It’s barely ajar with light glowing from the other side. She rises, limbs feeling heavy and bruised, and stumbles over the slippery stones. She pauses as she reaches the door, her hand resting on the worn golden knob, then walks inside.

A child sits on the edge of her bed in the center of her room. The walls are blue, the bedsheets are purple. It’s dark outside, and toys and clothes are scattered on the floor. A bookshelf sits in the corner beside a desk littered with broken pencils. Seashells, pebbles, and other found treasures line the windows. Pictures of a smiling family sit in frames. The woman watches the child for a moment, then sits cross-legged on the floor in the corner.

The child’s head is hung low. Her hair curtains her, obscuring her face, and her hands rest in her lap. At first, the woman thinks the child is still. But it’s an unnatural stillness. The woman looks a little closer and sees that the child is shaking slightly. Her stillness is that of someone in a dead hang when their hands are slipping and they can’t hold on any longer.

“Go ahead,” the woman says. “You’re safe here.”

The child looks at the woman for the first time. The woman nods once.

In a sudden movement, the child clenches her fists and screams. Tension radiates from her balled hands up through her arms, her neck, her face, tightening every muscle fiber. She slams her fists into her legs as her face becomes contorted and red, her mouth wide and her teeth bared. She squeezes everything, letting her scream get louder and louder until her need for breath overtakes her need for release.

The woman’s face doesn’t change. She doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t move.

The child jerks to a stand, hands still clenched into fists at her side. She paces, pauses, and then rips the blanket off her bed, then the sheet, then the pillow. She picks up a toy, a little stuffed bear, and throws it against the wall. Then a book, which leaves a dent. Then anything her small hands can reach, leaving dents and holes and broken glass in their wake. She rips pages from books, balls them up, stomps them into the floor. Her hands are claws as she lifts clothes and slams them down. Then again. Then again as hard as she can. She finds her pillow and smashes it onto the bed, over and over and over, before letting it lie limp. Then she slams her fists into it, a guttural scream charging out.

She stills for a moment, breathless.

The woman looks on, her hands clasped in her lap. She’s so small, the woman thinks. She can see the pointy shoulders and elbows and knees of childhood.

The child leans forward, pushing her hands into her hair, gripping and pulling at the roots. Her voice is hoarse and ragged but still she screams.

Slowly, then all at once, the scream transforms. The child’s body heaves as tears begin streaming down her cheeks, her form collapsing, sliding down to the floor at the foot of her bed. Her back is to the woman as she curls her knees into herself.

After a time, the woman crawls to the child and leans against the bed, her side putting light pressure on the child’s back. She waits.

Soon, the child turns, her knees a shield against her body. She glances at the woman through red-rimmed eyes, a question asked defiantly. Hair sticks to her face, snot runs down her nose, spittle wets her chin. The woman answers with her open arms. The child sinks into her. You don’t have to carry this anymore, the woman thinks.

They breathe out, leaning toward each other.

Now the tears are whimpers. They roll slowly, big and full and salty. The woman’s shirt is soaked. She pulls the child tighter, rests her chin against her hair, wraps her arms around her, heavy as an anchor. They sit this way for a long while, amid the destruction.

“It’s okay to feel this way,” the woman says. “It’s not your fault. You carry what’s poured into you.”

The child lifts her head slightly. Her eyes jump from holes to broken things to her hands with half moons dug into the palms. She pulls her knees in a little tighter, rests her head once more against the woman, and closes her eyes. Fresh tears wet the woman’s shirt.

“I see. I saw.” She gives the child a squeeze. “And still I love you.”

The child speaks so quietly it’s barely a whisper. “Why?”

“Because your heart beats and your mind thinks and your body moves. Because you exist. I see, I saw, and still I love you.”

Some time later, the woman stands. She puts the sheet back on the bed, then the blanket. She fluffs the pillow and tucks the child in. She brushes hair from the child’s face. The child peers up at her under heavy lids.

As the woman reaches the door, the child calls out, “Will we be okay?”

The woman pauses. Then she looks back at the child.

“Yes. We will be okay.”

She steps out onto the stony beach. The sky over the ocean is misting and the waves are soft, shifting hills. Inland, the roiling clouds are breaking, the rain falling gently on the earth.

She closes her childhood bedroom door behind her.