“It begins with the drums of our father on high,
rolling his thrums through the darkening sky.
A heartbeat to start all his daughters’ new lives,
filling the earth with their jubilant cries.”
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“He gathered us all in his ballroom of cloud,
our bodies of mist and his love so endowed.
His shape dwindles stark as we all tumble down,
his safety foregone but his countenance proud.”
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“We step through the air with rebellious advance,
falling so freely with fate up to chance.
Though sometimes we batter and sometimes we prance,
this sound is our song. May we please have this dance?”
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I stare out the window as the thunder rattles the windowpane. I’ve turned out all the lights in the house except for the one on the corner table next to the chair where she used to sit. Her book is still open, lying pages-down on the floor.
The house is so much quieter without her in it. So much emptier. So devoid of the life she brought to it. Yet she left all her pieces behind, hanging on the walls and in every bit of kitsch she had surrounded herself with.
Nin. That’s what my grandmother used to call me. Not Nina. She liked how fantastical it sounded. Somewhere along the way to adulthood I had demanded that she stop, and she did. I can’t remember the last time she had used that nickname, and it bothers me.
I repeat the poem she taught me, fogging up the window. Many summers and winters had been spent on this lawn, dashing through sprinklers or rolling in snow. I know the world outside just as I know the one in with me, but the separation is greater than the thin glass between me and it. Guilt does that. It pulls you away from the thing you should be amending and stretches the space between for good measure until you’re scared to cross the distance, even though you know you should.
The photo album shakes in my hands, and my tears beat the rain to falling. I turn the page. She had saved every scribble and poorly-written letter I had ever made for her. I can see the transition of my life in each passing year as the lines get smoother and the letters more concise. They eventually stop being letters and start being print-outs of emails. Then eventually they just stop.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, clutching the book to my chest. I’m shaking. The guilty distance has become so vast and non-traversable that it’s hard not to stretch it further—to come up with excuses for its length. I was too busy. I had my own life to live. It was too difficult to be bothered. And all the while she had sat here with this album in reach.
I stare at her chair again and am struck by a memory, sudden and overpowering.
“Did you know that I have sprites in my garden?” Grandma said.
She snares my attention immediately. My eyes go wide and her face wrinkles all the more with a conspiratorial smile. “They help take care of my flowers for me. They’re shy, but they come to chat when I’m lonely. What they really want, though, is a friend to play with. If you’re patient, and if you look like you’re having fun, they will come out of the garden to join you.”
From that point on I played every game I could think of, even laughing for no reason just to show what a good time I was having in the hopes of luring them out. Grandma would later teach me the poem as a way of enticing them, claiming it was their favorite.
They never showed. But she would always encourage me to keep trying, watching over me with a smile that never went away.
The thunder rumbles again, louder, and I’m snapped back to the dark, empty house with its one little light just as the rain starts to fall. The words bubble up again without my encouragement.
“This sound is our song,” I say softly. “May we please have this dance?”
I’m out the door before I realize it.
I leave my shoes inside. My dress and hair are drenched in seconds. I don’t care. My only regret is that I’m wearing black and not the bright, welcoming colors that Grandma loved to see me in.
I step into the garden, sinking my feet into muddy earth and wriggling my bare toes in the grass. Lightning flashes overhead. The thunder rolls again, filling me with its deep, encompassing rhythm to replace my heartbeat, and I’m no longer in the garden. I’m up in the sky with my millions of sisters, with wings of crystal and dresses of moving water, here to help Grandma’s flowers grow.
Our song is playing. It’s time for our dance.
I fling my arms out wide and twirl, tossing my hair through the sheets of water in a wild spin. I jump, flinging my legs out wide in a scissor-kick and fall into a roll, summersaulting through a puddle and coming up with fresh mud down my back. I sway with the wind in one moment only to stand against it the next, letting it blow through my clothes until my dress molds to my body and no longer feels like a dress, but another skin. Then the sky drums again and I let the wind take me, spinning me with my sisters as they end their lives around me for the sake of raising bright, vibrant children.
I crash to the ground, head bowed. My hair settles in a wet veil around my face. My chest heaves with heavy breaths. My dress is ruined, and the neighbors probably think I’m crazy. They don’t matter. Nothing in this world matters except for what I want to matter, because I’ve realized something: our lives are like the rain.
We are born in a place of such great height that we can’t see the ground until we’re falling, and when we do the world goes by so fast it’s exhilarating and terrifying. We sing like water striking puddles and scream like pounding thunder. Sometimes we batter and sometimes we prance, but we always hit the ground at the end, no matter how long the fall.
So why not dance on the way down?
I close my eyes and listen to the world around me, as part of it as it’s a part of me, and for the briefest of moments the distance between Grandma and I has disappeared.
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