A Light Like Hers
A brief intro: I wrote this short story as a companion piece for my conversation on the issue of Forgiveness with Ntando Masuku on her podcast show. Link at the end of the story.
I heard a low creak as the door was pushed open and groaned as loud as I could to let my unannounced guest know just how unwelcome they were.
“Mary. Are you awake?” I heard a voice ask.
It was my mum, creeping into my room in the pitch-black darkness in the dead of night like a burglar. I rolled onto my side and covered my head with the blanket, partly to block out the blinding light that was streaming in through the open door, but also to convey the message that I did not want to be bothered.
“I brought your dinner, honey,” she said. “You haven’t eaten in days.”
She was courteous enough to pretend that she really believed that I hadn’t eaten in days, and I appreciated that. There was no doubt, however, that she would have noticed the pieces of chicken that kept going missing in the kitchen every night. I heard a click as the door closed, and followed her footsteps as they approached until I felt her weight settling on the edge of the bed. She put the plate down on the nightstand — I heard a low grumble from my stomach as the sweet scent of fried chicken and mashed potatoes met my nostrils. I rolled over and faced the edge that she’d sat on, still keeping my head covered, though.
“Honey. You really should talk about how you’re feeling. That’s exactly what caused…” her voice trailed off.
“Caused what? Huh, mom? Are you saying I’m gonna kill myself, too?” I snapped, tossing the blanket away. If she had intended to taunt me into revealing that I was awake, it had worked.
“I’m saying,” she began, swallowing hard as she carefully chose her words, “that we all had no idea what your sister was going through and that was because she shut us out. Don’t do that too. Please.”
“But I was supposed to know, mom,”
I swallowed my pride and sat up. Even in the inky black void that was my room, I instinctively knew exactly where the table was, and I reached out and picked up the plate. I scooped up a large spoonful of mashed potatoes and gravy, before scooping up another one, and then another one, until the gnawing hunger in my stomach had somewhat dissipated.
“We were all supposed to know,” she replied.
“She was my sister. We spent hours together every day. She dropped hints and I didn’t take her seriously. It’s my fault,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Don’t do this to yourself, honey,” she said, putting a hand on my leg. Her hand was ice cold, and despite my instinctive desire to pull away, I allowed myself to feel the cold which seemed to suck out what little life force I had left.
I heard the words, just as I’d heard those of everyone else who had tried to convince me that it wasn’t my fault, and they just didn’t make sense to me. I could not see how no one else saw that I was to blame for what had happened. I groped around in the dark until my hand found the switch for my bedside lamp. I switched it on and, though the light wasn’t so bright, it was enough for us to be able to make out the features on each other’s’ faces. Mom had huge, dark bags under her swollen eyes — it was clear that she had been up all night crying for several days straight. Her hair was wild and unkempt — like she’d just walked through a tornado and she looked like she’d aged 10 years in just the last two weeks alone. The funny part was that, compared to the rest of us, she had pretty much taken Andrea’s suicide in her stride. My dad had taken to drinking and smoking — I hadn’t seen him since the day of the funeral, and my other sister, Lina, had tried to be the glue that kept the family together but her husband’s job involved a lot of traveling and she didn’t trust him enough to be on the road alone without her, so she left us, even though she was in no state to be alone. In the end, it was just me, mom, and these tall walls. A home can very easily turn into a nightmarish prison, especially when everything in that home reminds you of the very thing that you’re trying not to dwell on.
“Whose fault is it, then, mom?” I asked, looking her right in the eye.
An eerie silence descended upon the room, and all that could be heard was the howling wind just outside my window. Dark clouds had been gathering and it looked like a storm was a-coming, but now the wind threatened to carry them away, averting what may or may not have been a disaster.
“It’s no one’s fault,” she replied, and that was the first honest thing she’d said to me in days.
I saw tears streaming down her cheek and tried to stop myself from crying too, but I couldn’t. I felt a tightness in my chest as if someone was slowly tightening their grip on my heart, and I had to take a few deep breaths to stop the onset of a panic attack.
“It can’t be no one’s fault!” I cried. “What about those girls that bullied her? But then again, I was…umm, am her sister, and I was supposed to protect her, so how is it not my fault, too?”
“Would it make you feel better if there was someone to point a finger at?” she asked, maintaining her gaze. Her hand was still on my leg, but it wasn’t so cold anymore.
I took a deep breath and considered her words. It certainly would have made it so much easier to be able to simply point a finger at someone and say it was their fault, but my mom had resisted that urge right from the beginning. Even after reading the suicide note and going through Andrea’s phone and seeing all the horrible, disgusting things those girls had said to her, she still refused to blame them. She did what many other mothers could never have had the strength to do; she stepped forward at the funeral service and announced that she was forgiving the girls. I didn’t think they deserved it, and they certainly didn’t show enough remorse for me to say they deserved to be forgiven.
“How much remorse do you want them to show?” I remembered my friend, Jemma, asking as we walked out of the chapel that day.
“I want them on their knees, groveling in the dirt, begging for us to just hear them out,” I’d replied.
“And if they don’t?” she’d asked, and I couldn’t come up with an answer to that.
That was what I wanted to see, though, not the sad, pathetic excuse for an apology they had all contrived to give. It felt hollow and meaningless like it had been given more out of duty than anything else.
“It would,” I confessed to my mom, who’d been staring at me like I, too, was about to take my own life.
“Would that improve the situation, though?” she asked. “It wouldn’t bring Andrea back. It would just create a self-perpetuating cycle of anger and hatred, and our main concern should be making sure something like this doesn’t happen to anyone else. It’s all that we can do.”
I resisted the urge to respond immediately, as I considered her words. I’d learned that trick from Andrea, who had taught me that it was always important to carefully weigh my words before responding to anything. I felt deeply sorrowful and angry, but also ashamed, because I was holding desperately onto my anger as if it was the only thing that was keeping me afloat, and maybe it was. Maybe the thought that the only way to get justice for Andrea was to find whoever was to blame for her death and make that person pay was the only thing keeping me from completely breaking down.
“This world failed Andrea; we all did,” she continued before I could respond. “She was always a happy child who laughed and smiled way more than she had any reason to do so. A light like hers comes along once in a lifetime, and so often the world tries to dim that light, ’cause it’s too blinding. The world didn’t deserve Andrea, and maybe my baby is better off now; she’s somewhere out there where she can truly shine. Maybe every time we look up at the sky on an especially clear and dark night and see millions of tiny pinpoints of light, one of those will be Andrea, and she’ll wink at us, just to let us know that she’s watching out for us, and also that she’s free because no one’s trying to dim her glow no more,”
“Wow, you should have said that at the funeral,” I said, wiping a tear from my cheek.
I looked down at the plate that was in my hand and realized that I’d emptied it. I placed it on the table before sliding back under the covers, where my mom immediately joined me and hugged me. I was still angry, feelings like that don’t just evaporate, but my mom had shown me a way out of the abyss, and that was probably all that I needed — to know that there was a way out. The journey would probably start and end with me forgiving myself, but maybe that’s all we need, to recognize that not only are we not perfect, but neither is anyone else, and, for that reason, maybe we’re better off accepting that we will all stumble and fall. That much is inevitable.
