I woke two days ago having slept for twenty hours. My dead hand crusted with the drying remnants of whatever corruption weeps from my bite wounds and stained pages of writing littering the floor around me. At first I thought to destroy it, but somehow I can't. I tried to not spread it to others, but my hand--normally bereft of feeling--has begun to throb and ache, and I know the reason just as I know it will stop, at least for awhile, once I hit submit. So forgive me, as I don't know the meaning or consequence of the strange account my hand wrote while I slept. And for any that wonder how I came to be in this position of telling these strange things, the story of my recent life begins here.
It’s not a window. It’s a door.
When my sister gave birth to Emily, it was a big deal in our family. My husband died last year, and I doubt I’ll ever bear children of my own, and even seven years ago Emily was the first grandchild in the family. She was a sweet and beautiful baby with wide green eyes and a bright, cheerful disposition. Even as an infant she had personality, and this only grew as she got older.
I live in Alabama, and my sister lives all the way in the outskirts of Waco, so even though we are a close family, I only get to see my sister and niece at major holidays and for a few days every summer when they come stay with me. Which is what made her suggestion that they come visit last month a bit strange.
We talk on the phone every Sunday, and that evening we had just been chatting about nothing in particular, but I could tell she was stressed or preoccupied. She said her husband, Rich, was very busy at work lately, but that should ease off by late April, and she said Emily was doing well in school, though she was a bit too focused on drawing these days. She said it with a laugh, but I know my sister and something was wrong. I almost asked, but thought better of it, figuring she’d tell me when the time was right. Within a few minutes she had brought up them coming to visit. I was surprised but happy, and at first I assumed she meant during Emily’s spring break, but she meant just a couple of days later.
At this point I couldn’t help myself, and I asked if everything was okay. Had something happened with Rich? Was Emily okay?
She gave a brittle laugh and said everything was okay, but she wanted to see her big sister if it wasn’t a bad time. I told her it wasn’t, and by Wednesday afternoon they were there.
I had just seen Emily at Christmas when everyone had met up in Ft. Worth for the holidays. At the time, she had been the same bright, joyful girl I'd always known. She would flit from person to person, telling jokes, listening to stories, always ready to talk but never rude or demanding. I know she’s my niece, but she was perfect.
But when they arrived at my house in March…she was just different. Her eyes looked dull, and while she still talked and was polite, very little of her old spark seemed left. After we got her settled in the living room, I took my sister into the kitchen to grill her. What was going on with Emily? Had there been some trauma or signs of abuse? When did this all start?
My sister, to her credit, was patient with my barrage of questions. She said that it had started about two weeks after Christmas, and no, she didn’t think it was due to anyone abusing her. That while she was more subdued, Emily still ate okay, made good grades, and didn’t get into trouble except for her drawings.
I had given Emily an antique case full of drawing chalks at Christmas, and while she had seemed only mildly interested at the time, sometime in mid-January, she had started using them more and more. My sister said she would draw windows on walls throughout the house and much to her own dismay. She had scolded the girl, explaining how hard it was to get that kind of chalk off the walls, and forbidding her from drawing on walls outside of her own room.
For a time it worked, as the child focused her efforts solely upon her own walls, drawing windows over every open space she could reach before going back to wipe away earlier, more crude works. This continued for weeks, and a clear pattern emerged. She was drawing the same thing over and over again. Not just the same type of thing—a window—but the same one.
My sister said if you compared them side by side, they all looked nearly identical, but she realized over time that details were being added, tweaked, refined. Almost as though she was focusing the lens of a camera to get a clearer picture. What was strange, aside from the obvious, is the window panes were largely blank. She expected a child’s drawing of a window would mainly be about what was on the other side, but the panes contained no details other than the cut and imperfections of the glass.
At this point in talking to me, she realized how long we had been in the kitchen and with a panicked look she rushed back into living room. I followed, and we found Emily where we had left her, sitting on the sofa with her hands folded, staring off into space. I crouched down and spoke to her for a few moments about the fun we would have while they were visiting, and she responded normally overall, but it was still very muted. I made them dinner, and later on she was tucked into bed with her promise to wait and start any art projects in the morning with us.
A few minutes later, me and my sister were back on the sofa, drinking wine and talking. I told her it was best to let Emily keep at it until she tired of it, as it was almost certainly just a phase, and she was welcome to draw wherever she liked in my house. She seemed unsure, but finally agreed, hoping the child would move past it quicker with all the fun distractions we could provide. We talked about going to the zoo, the amusement park, the movies. Eventually, with the help of the wine, my sister began to relax and I steered the conversation away from Emily.
We talked about work, and then local gossip from our respective towns that meant little to each other but was still good for a laugh. Then we talked about Rich. I had known Richard for two years before my sister did. We had met in a sophomore Intro to Philosophy class and quickly became inseparable. He was from Tennessee originally, but he had lived all over the world and carried an air of exotic intelligence and wisdom about him. We were best friends and more, and we pushed each other to be more and be better both physically, mentally and spiritually.
When I was a senior I invited my sister to come visit, as she was starting to look at colleges. I introduced her to Richard, and within a month they were dating. Within a year, they were married. And did I ever have misgivings or sad nights about it? Yes, of course. But I understood it was for the best and was necessary. It was meant to be and I had to accept it.
As we talked, she began to drift off, fighting to focus as she told me about how Richard had grown more distant lately and wasn’t as concerned about Emily as she thought he should be. I commiserated in a vague way and her chin drooped to her chest as she finally fell asleep. I considered that sitting like that, bereft of the lively sparkling eyes and wryly curling smile that had always made her so charming, she looked like she was dead. A pale dead toad.
Banishing the thought, I kissed her head and gave her a shake. We stumbled to bed, and the next day our week of fun began.
Zoo, park, movies, go-carts. We did it all. And Emily participated dutifully, but with no real joy. And every afternoon when we returned home, she went to the empty guest room I had designated at her art room and drew on the walls.
The drawings were remarkable. Whatever they had been originally, they had become almost indistinguishable from the real thing now. And Emily worked amazingly fast, but with such a level of detail, it still took hours to complete a version before starting another. My sister wanted to stop her, but I held her back from interceding, and by the fourth day I had run out of fun suggestions and we decided to just let her go until she burned out, so long as she rested and ate.
On the sixth day, Emily woke me in the blue hour of early morning. When I looked at her, she nodded and led me to the room. All had been scrubbed away except for one, last example in the middle of the back wall. I examined it closely and then bent down to smile at Emily and kiss her forehead. I told her we would wait and show her mama that night.
Emily slept most of the day, but she went outside and played in the
afternoon, which delighted my sister. That night, after a dinner where
Emily ate and talked more than she had all week, we took her mother up
to show her the art room. She entered slowly, looking left to the
scrubbed wall and center to the impossibly perfect drawing there, and
then her gaze continued its trajectory to the right and landed on Rich,
who stood there beaming at us. Her eyes widened, and Emily ran forward
to hug her daddy.
My sister took a step forward and then caught herself. She asked what he was doing here and was anything wrong. He had taken a deep crimson length of chalk out of his shirt pocket and given it to Emily with a nod. She ran back to the drawing as he stood and smiled at his wife, saying it was really good to see her, to see all his girls. My sister glanced at me, but I barely noticed, as my focus was on Emily as she finished drawing a red knob on the expertly replicated dark gray frame she had labored on the night before.
She had barely finished lifting the chalk from the wall when the
knob began to turn. I felt the buzz of excitement that been building in
me for days swell and explode. I turned to my sister, not able to
resist stealing a glance and a shared smile with Rich in the process.
“It’s not a window.”
My sister blinked confusedly, her face paling now. “What?”
I fought down the maniac urge to laugh. “It’s not a window. It’s a door.”
As I spoke, the knob had completed its third slow revolution and the door opened—first, just a crack, and then enough to let something in. The lights dimmed at its entry, which was a momentary kindness for my sister, as I don’t think she truly saw what dragged her back in. I saw too late that the door was swinging back closed, and neither Rich nor myself could reach it before it shut with a brittle snap and became chalk on a wall again. I pounded the wall with a curse, but Richard put a comforting hand on my back, telling me to check the lines, that it would be okay.
Stepping back, I pulled out the piece of glass I had received from
Greenland six weeks earlier. Part of an original door. Looking at the
drawing through the glass, I could see the lines of power fading,
seeping away like water at the slight imperfections that existed. I
told Rich the same and he smiled. It was okay, he said, because we had a
sweet little girl who would keep trying until it was just right. He
looked down at Emily, who was now holding his hand, and she returned his
smile and nodded.
Feeling overcome with love and pride, I went and hugged them both. We would keep going until a door was perfect and stayed open. And what a glorious day that would be.
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Credits
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