She put her arm around me and led me to the couch, then sat down beside me. “I’m not one to tell a person how to feel or how to grieve,” she began, “but she was still your mama. And at some point, all that you’ve lost with her passing—whether that’s something real or something wished for—will hit you. Sometimes grieving for whatcould’ve beenis harder than grieving for whatwas.”
Pearlie’s words struck me more than the actual news of Vivian’s death. And the tears came before I even realized it. Once the floodgates had opened, I couldn’t close them again. Pearlie pulled me close, smoothing my hair, rocking me as I sobbed for all that never was and the missed opportunity to ever change it.
“There now,” she murmured. “I’ve got you, baby. You just let it all out.”
I don’t know how long I cried. Probably not as long as it seemed. When I finally lifted my head, Pearlie brushed my hair from my eyes.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to get you a cloth for your face. And then you’re going to go see Henry and Whit who are down at Whit’s apartment making quite a mess. And you’re going to let them cheer you up a little bit. You just remember we all love you, Zellie. And you might have funeral potatoes and cobbler to last you till Christmas—”
I laughed and dabbed at my eyes with the heel of my palm.
“—but you’ll never be alone as long as you have us.”
After applying the cool washcloth to my eyes to reduce some of the puffiness and then saying goodbye to Pearlie, I took a deep breath and forced a smile beforewalking down the hall to Whit’s apartment. The door stood open, and I could hear Whit’s deep voice and Henry’s giggling.
I followed the sounds, and when I entered the bedroom where they were, I nearly burst out laughing. Whit was letting Henry “help” paint the walls. White paint was all over Whit’s jeans and shoes, a large puddle on the drop cloth evidence of a spill. Henry had paint on his cheek, in his hair, and all over the back of his clothes where it looked like he’d leaned against the wet wall. He held out his hands toward Whit, palms covered in paint, pretending like he was going to wipe it on him. Whit jumped back with an exaggerated yelp, which Henry thought was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen. He threw his head back, cackling.
And suddenly my smile was no longer forced.
“Hey there,” Whit said when he noticed me. He came toward me, opening his arms to hug me, but I laughed and ducked out of his embrace.
“No way,” I said, backing away, my hands held out in front of me.
“Oh, come on,” Whit teased following after me. “Just a little hug?”
Henry giggled. “Yeah, Mama! Just a little hug!” He ran to me and threw his arms around me, paint-covered hands pressed against me.
“Ewww!” I laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Whit said, grinning. “The paint’s washable.”
I lifted by brows. “Oh, really? In that case…”
I wiped my hand across the wet paint on my clothes and reached toward Henry.
He giggled and ran a few feet away, out of my reach. Whit wasn’t so lucky. I dabbed a bit of white on the end of his nose.
Laughing, Whit caught me around the waist and lifted me off my feet, spun me once, then set me back down, still smiling as he kissed me, the paint on the end of his nose transferring to my cheek.
Now it was Henry’s turn to “Ewww!”
Whit chuckled and held me close, whispering in my ear, “I love you.”
My arms around him tightened. “I love you too.”
“You doing okay?” he asked softly.
I nodded. “Yeah. I am now.”
I buried Vivian in a simple private burial service. I insisted on the residents of Dawes House letting me do this on my own with just Whit and Henry as support. Henry soon grew bored, though, so Whit led him away to feed the ducks at the cemetery pond while I stood alone as the attendants lowered a plain box into the plot Whit had insisted on paying for. There were no flowers. No hymns or readings. I threw in a handful of dirt on top of her coffin and then turned my back on that part of my life.
Or so I’d thought.
Most of the few possessions Vivian had in her apartment I either threw away or donated to local charities that helped victims of domestic violence, hoping that some good would come from what she’d left behind. The only things I kept were a few spiral-bound notebooks she’d written in sporadically. I should’ve just thrown them away with all the other trash.
But curiosity got the better of me. I don’t know why, but I had to get into her head now that she was gone, try to understand why she was the way she was.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for the deranged scribblings of a woman who had been completely consumed by paranoia. I almost felt sorry for how terrifying her thoughts must’ve been—her claims of being stalked by demons, seeing their monstrous faces lurking everywhere, being tormented in her dreams by images of fire and people screaming, being accosted in her sleep by terrifying creatures who drew power from her fear.
