"Let go."
"I'll let go, but don't think I don't know what
you're doing up there every night," I said. His face
turned so red I could see the crimson in his cheeks
even in the dim hallway light. "You're running away
from tragedy, only you can't run away from
something that's part of you."
He tugged with all his strength, nearly lifting
me from the floor with the ladder. I had to let go and
the ladder went up. He slammed the trapdoor shut. "Good riddance!" I screamed.
May, locked in her world of silence, emerged
from her room with a smile on her face. In my mind,
she was the luckiest one in this damnable home. She signed to me, asking if I would let her
come into my room. I told her yes. She followed me
in and watched me angrily poke the needle and thread
into the picture her sister Laura had drawn just before
she died. As I worked I glared up at the ceiling and
then down at the floor, below which my coldhearted
uncle sat reading his paper. After a while the
mechanical work was calming and meditating. I began
to understand why Laura might have been entranced
with doing so much of it. Everyone in this house was
searching for a doorway.
May remained with me until her bedtime,
practicing communicative skills, asking me questions
about myself, my family, and our lives back in West
Virginia. She was full of curiosity and sweetness,
somehow unscathed by the turmoil that raged in every
family member's heart.
Perhaps her world wasn't so silent after all. Perhaps she heard different music, different sounds, all of it from her free and innocent imagination. When her eyelids began drifting downward, I told her she should go to bed. I was tired myself. I felt as if I had been spun around in an emotional washing machine,