Short Story - The Window (Part I)

Natalee Grant, Contributor

She had begun to study the sky, that vast expanse of endless blue, random kites led by the wind, cloud formations mounting and disappearing. There were stories in those clouds.

Stories of giants and dwarves, ogres and trolls, stories like the ones in the books she had piled around her bed, books she had abandoned in favour of the stories the sky told. Her paint set and doll house were stacked in the corner with all the other amusements she had lost interest in, her new love was the sky. She watched airplanes leave their mark on the blue surface and wondered about the people in them, where they were going and what they would do when they got there?

It was odd how she had never noticed its beauty before, it had been there all the time, through the parties on the lawn, hide-and-seek with her cousins in the backyard, her daily romps with the dog.

From her bed, the sky had become a canvas for her imagination, she had been to so many fantasy kingdoms. Travelling on her trusty cloud, Zipa and her cloud dog Zuma was with her every step of the way in her cloud kingdom - since she could no longer play with her dogs (her mother feared they would make her more ill). She perked up on her elbows as she watched a jet streak across the sky and imagined herself being led along in its wake, off to the Kingdom of Zaneer (she had decided that her letter of the month was Z).

In the two years she had been sick, she had used up all the other letters, some she had used twice. She watched it until it disappeared and sank back unto her pillows and closed her eyes.

Her mother tinkered about in the kitchen, she could smell the beginnings of chicken soup; she could still taste the cornmeal porridge she had been given for breakfast that morning and she longed for a plate of Mac and Cheese.

"Penelope."

She opened her eyes to her mother's gaunt face.

"How yuh feel, pumpkin?" she stood over her, the back of her hand on her forehead assessing her temperature. The lines of worry had become etched into her face. She smiled weakly up at her.

"I'm OK, Mummy," she said bravely watching her mother's attempt at a smile. She remembered her mother's smile, her mother's laugh; it had been a long time since she heard the musical ring of that laugh. The bed sank to accommodate her mother's weight, her fingers massaged her temples as she asked, "Yuh head a hurt yuh?"

"No, Mummy."

She responded even as the throbbing pain echoed like a drum in her head. She had started lying to her mother after overhearing a conversation her mother and Grandma Ruth had about her illness. Her mother had cried and cried, while her grandmother had sat with her cooing softly in between her mother's wrenching sobs. There was nothing they could do. Nothing could reverse her terminal diagnosis (that's what her mother had said). She had looked it up in her pocket dictionary and knew it meant that she was dying even though her parents would never say it to her face.

They made a fuss over her last birthday and she let them. It was more for them than for her. She had smiled as brightly as she could. Her bed had been decorated - pelican pink. Her dress was pink, her cake was pink, and her party hat and party favours were pink. Her two best friends came, but she had not wanted them to see her like that (she had a feeling they had not wanted to see her like that either).

Busy party

In the end, it was her mother's forced happiness that put the party to bed. She flitted from this to that, cramming every activity she could find for a bed-ridden girl into one evening, as if she was trying to celebrate all the birthdays she would never have. Her father was his usual silent, non-combative self. He sat wordlessly with her, holding her hand helping her eat her cake, enduring the most heart-wrenching 10th birthday party in the history of birthday parties.

Her mother's fingers on her temples had the desired effect - it lulled her and eased the intensity of her headache,

"I'm going to get you something to eat now, OK, P?"

"Ah sleepy, OK," was all she could muster, and slowly rolled onto her side.

Her Hello Kitty clock signalled that it was 3 p.m. The after-school crowd would soon announce itself. From the window of her room, she lived vicariously through the children she heard playing. She ran with those who ran and laughed with those who laughed. The thing she missed the most was puddles - splashing in them, skipping across them, and watching them fit into the holes and cracks in the sidewalk. On evenings when it rained, she loved being outside in her father's old Volkswagen, watching the raindrops hit the windshield, listening to the pattern and the sounds that it made as it rained. She missed that, too. She missed that old Volkswagen in the back. They had thrown it out with everything else when she got sick.

She woke up to a symphony of bird calls; each winged trumpeter animatedly trying to out-chirp the other. It was a beautiful din and she raised herself up on her pillows trying to catch a glimpse of the beaked orchestra. Her father hummed innocuously in the hallway just outside her bedroom, and she smiled. For as long as she could remember, her father hummed. She had never heard him sing and she thought how odd she had never heard her father's singing voice. She wondered if he could actually sing.

"Penny," he whispered as he gently opened her door, "Awake?"

She answered him with her brightest smile. His face creased widely and he walked over to her and placed his hand on her forehead.

"I'm taking yuh to the country today."

Unwilling

Her smile died. She had not left her room in two years and she did not anticipate leaving now. The protest died on her lips when her mother entered wheeling in the gaudy pink contraption that would be her temporary mode of transportation. She smiled at Penelope, searching her eyes for excitement - some emotion that would signal her willingness to partake in the day's activities. Penelope instinctively grabbed her sheet. The bed was her haven, her room was her haven, and the window was her eye to the world. She closed her eyes and balled her fists, kicking her legs weakly when her father lifted her from her bed.

"The fresh air will do you good, Penny," he reassured her. "That nice sea breeze is good for you."

"Kingston is a little polluted," her mother chimed in. "You need --" A glare from her father stopped her mother mid-sentence.

"Too much," his gaze seemed to say. She wrung her hands and leaned into the door jamb. That was the Penny's last visual of her mother before she was wheeled out of the room and ushered into the sunshine.

See part II next week.