The Wake

"She looks so pretty in her dress." The little blonde girl speaks casually, sincerely- the way she'd have spoken to the girl in the dress upon meeting up to go to a Christmas party. Her best friend lay on satin, brown curls arranged softly around her face. Pink ballet slippers and a silver softball bat, taken from her room, lay with her- strange decorations representative of posessions she once had, desired and needed, but would never need or desire again.

The girls stand there fidgeting with their own dresses, their hair pulled up with large bows, looking at their friend, admiringly. The little blonde girl touches her, out of affection as much as of a child's curiousity, and she is not afraid. "She's so cold," she says sweetly, sympathetically as if of a fawn who's lost its mother- Oh, the poor thing.

I am taken by their innocence, the lack of preconception, the colder politeness of their parents, and their parents' friends, unlearned. They know her only as their friend and playmate, no different now, except the she is still, like one of the dolls they've cradled together, saying, "Good baby, go to sleep now, it's alright." I admire these qualities so much and feel suddenly aware of having unlearned them over the years, once a little girl, like them, fidgiting with my dress, whispering to my playmates.

I, too, want touch this beautiful child whom I once knew when she jumped on the trampoline, laughing loudly, and saying "my turn my turn" over and over; whom, even when her legs had grown long and slender, was still a child, and would enter the room shyly to crawl into her father's lap and rest her head on his chest, listening to the rumble in her ear as he greeted her affectionately and touseled her hair.

I reach out my hand. Her skin feels strange, unnatural like a rough burlap sack or a heavy canvas, smoothed over with a thick layer of white, powdery paste- the strange texture invisible to the eye, revealing itself suddenly, harshly upon laying my fingers there. The sensation is shocking. I start, but I do not recoil or remove my fingers. They rest there, an air of curiousity trying to peer through a covered window into their unimaginable tragedy. The arm looks soft- small brown hairs veiling the skin, the strange new liquid beneath. It is hard to the touch, and cold. The powdery surface feels almost like dry oil, and for a moment I think of spreading makeup over my face to cover the inconsistencies.

My fingers sit on a very firm surface, a force of its own retaining the arm's shape, stuffing inside a doll. It feels like the stuffing could burst out from the pressure were it not for the burlap wrapped tightly around it, a string fastened somewhere underneath the arm where no one can see it. It would be inappropriate to check, as you'd have to lift the whole arm. And it isn't just a doll with stuffing and stitches, so you don't lift the arm.

The firmness was quietly surprising as I looked at my fingers on the arm, and then to her sleeping face. She was only a child, and her skin should have shaped around my finger's touch in warm, milky, lucid pools.

But it was cold. I thought suddenly of waking once to my left arm being so completely asleep that I could not find it in the dark with my right arm. It was a frightening feeling, having nothing below the shoulder, not even a tingling sensation. Eyes adjusting, I saw my arm dangling there. My right hand finally found it and tried to lift it. It was icy cold to the touch and heavy- nearly impossible to lift it seemed. It felt like a foreign object.

So my arm had experienced something near death? And then I thought, which made me very uncomfortable, that perhaps my whole body became that way when I fell into a very deep sleep, that I lay there in bed like a cold cement statue- gray in the face and limbs, heavy and still, until morning crept over me- toes first, then moving up toward my head- and filled me like liquid with color, warmth, and texture.

But she was not gray. She had rouge applied carefully to her small cheekbones, and I looked under the veil of makeup to find traces of the brown freckles I had always admired.

It was hard to look at her and know that she was dead, because she was a child and because she was so beautiful. But people stood in a line which poured out through the parlour, out the front door, and how much further I could not see, to pay their respects to the good doctor and his family. And it was because she was a child and because she was so beautiful that we wanted to see her just one last time, before, although death had already taken her, before she was really gone.


Written by Rachael Sage Payne ©

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