Her grandmother is knitting. Deva watches the slender needles, sharp at the ends like a shout, spin out a soft, cloudy fabric, the exact cacophonic blue of her mother’s eyes. If Leena were here, she would tell Deva it wasn’t true.
Mami is gone, Devi. Souls don’t have eyes. They don’t need to see.
Deva doesn’t believe this, but there is a door in her mind she sometimes hides behind and wonders. What, she wonders, is the color of eyes no one can see into - or out of - any longer?
Devorah?
Deva jumps. Grandmother is looking at her. Grey eyes behind stormy hair, mountain range wrinkles on her forehead topped with a snowy crown. She looks nothing like Deva, with her dark-chocolate-tissue-paper hair and eyes like green grass after the first frost, like Papi. But where Grandmother and Leena are tall, stretched like fruit in the sun, Deva is a tiny thing, unsure of her next move, and whisper-quiet, like the scent of dawn on a fall breeze. Deva can vanish with the twitch of a finger.
But finger-twitching doesn’t seem to affect Grandmother, because now she is looking at her absent-minded granddaughter.
Devorah, is everything alright?
Devi has heard that question so many times, too many times for her to believe her next lie.
Everything is fine, Nana.
This will not be difficult to believe; Leena and Grandmother and Papi all see what Devi wishes she still could, the little girl with her mind cracked wide open with room for all her stories, who still doesn’t understand why Mami never came home.
Do you need to go out somewhere?
Does she, wonders Devi? Devi went everywhere with Mami, when Mami’s eyes were a safe soft blue and not the red of sunset after fire in the mountains. Yes, Devi thinks, maybe Mami went outside so she wouldn’t be trapped inside her own head. Devi could use a walk outside of her thoughts.
Devi nods, smiles, good little child, and glides out the door with no shoes and no sweater, just old jean shorts and Leena’s purple cross-country T-shirt. With a snap of her lithe fingers, glitter polish flaking off her pinkie, Devi glides an inch above the dirt path into the trees. She is excited, she knows Mami is here somewhere.
There is a tree near a craggy rock, old and worn with bark the color of Papi’s violin case. In it is carved:
We tried, I’m sorry, there was nothing we could do anymore.
Devi skirts carefully around this tree to avoid tripping over the thick, immobile roots. Devi has tried to run out the writing with her sleeves, but it is in her own handwriting and better left well enough alone. She shrugs. She didn’t like the hospital, full of the stench of stale bagels and tears. What did the doctor know, anyway? All those tests, all that paperwork, all the cold-custard atmosphere conversations with the tense doctor in the gray scrubs, and all that mattered was that Mami had promised to come back to Devi. Devi gives the stubborn tree a firm pat with her small, pale hand, to remind it to stay in the background. She drifts on, angular toes brushing violet dew off the prickly grass. Devi is becoming impatient, now, Mami promised she would return, so where is she? Devi’s steps quicken and falter, little rabbit heart thumping against her ribs in panic. She comes to a clearing, finally, still running, don’t fall Devi, stay standing, and relief, because there is the old car, paint flaking off, front bumper warped and twisted, wrapped around an invisible break in the air. Trembling in her eagerness, Devi bounds over the bent and buckled lump of metal something on the ground, the side door, something, and climbs through the jagged gap in the side of the vehicle.
Devi’s Mami is beautiful in a very serene, wispy way, like the smoke of a single rose, and long, braided hair the streaky, scarlet-grey of its ashes. The pallid light of the bruised sky trickling through the shattered windows of the car ricochets off the circle of beads curled around her delicate neck. Leena has an identical set of beads that, out of grief, she no longer wears, and Mami has promised Devi a necklace for her 9th birthday. After they came home from the man in gray scrubs, and Papi had slammed his fist so hard against the front door that it cracked in the shape of a spiderweb, and cried Nonononono, Devi had taken Leena’s beads and held them up against her neck, so that when Mami came home, she would be proud of her grown-up daughter. All Devi wanted was to slide, slippery silent, into Mami’s way, but when Papi had come through the door of her room, he had stared at her as though he had seen the face of Judas. Devi had stared back, and after a while, Papi had simply stopped looking at her.
But that no longer mattered, because Devi had found Mami, and now she wrapped her arms round Mami’s sharp ribs and breathed in the scent of rosemary and lemongrass. Devi feels as though she should say something, but there is a coppery lump of thorns in her throat and she has to gasp now, in order to swallow. Something is wrong; Mami is lying on a starched pillow, eyes transparent, hands as cold as the skin of a
No.
Devi wills, commands Mami’s eyes to open, and is rewarded by a flash of icy blue. But Mami’s face is tilted, cheekbones too angular, this isn’t how she looked before, is it? Devi is trembling again, she can’t remember, say something, Mi Vida, please, speak. something is pounding on the door in Devi’s head, trying to force its way in and force her out.
Doors, Mami.
Devi mutters involuntarily, and just like that, there is a sound like a shattered wineglass and Mami moves.
There were no doors where you went, Devi, my dear heart. Only seventh-story windows.
And Devi remembers, and her world bends, twists around her until the only sounds she can see are the frightened, fur-grey thudding of her heart.
Mami is gone, Devi is drowning in blue, and suddenly
She
Has
Had
Enough.
So Devi reaches forward and grips her window frame, cold metal sinks its teeth into her palm, and lifts her legs onto the ledge, teetering on the balance for one heavy moment before.
Before she jumps.
Falling. Fast.
Devi, dear heart.
Whatever has been pounding on the door in Devi’s head is victorious, finally, and Devi’s mind forces its way out of itself.
Grandmother is Knitting.
Everything is Fine.
No, it isn’t.
Lost, that’s what Mami smelled like.
Winesmell wrapped in a cocoon of chrome and plastic, eyes open and drained, white aimed at nothing, and no one there was awake to hear Devi scream her name.
Nothing is fine, Grandmother. Nothing is ever fine again, because one day when the leaves were turning and the dew was purple on the grass, a little girl and her mother walked out the door, and neither of them ever really came back.
Still Falling.