B-A-B-Y doesn’t always spell Baby

Savannah was an early talker, but more impressively, an early reader.  I’m certain I wrote it in my obsessive list of Savannah’s accomplishments, but my memory only places it around very, very early.  I am certain, however, that it was at Super Target, during a time when we lived in a dingy apartment.  We had one car we divided between us, so errands were run in the evening, after a day of baby care and a sleepless night.   I was exhausted and spent, trying to pinch pennies and calculate coupons.  Savannah sat in the basket listening to me ramble, describing everything around us, everything in the cart, everything we needed and couldn’t afford.

“Bay-bee!” Savannah interrupted.

“What are you saying?” I asked, the way any parent would  It is the automatic relex that kicks in even when you’re half asleep.  It replies and encourages without demanding any thought on the parent’s part.

“Bay-bee!”  Savannah demanded thought.  She reached and squirmed in the basket for an object behind me.  I began to back the cart up to find the interesting object, to stop the squirming.  We weren’t close to toys, and I found my curiosity piquing. Then she snatched it, dragging it off the hook and into her chubby little hands.  It was a small black purse with a chain shoulder strap, a chain draping across the front and silver charm letters which hung ever few links:  B-A-B-Y

Months later, while looking through a Clifford book at Barnes and Noble, waiting for the weekly story time, it happened again. Whle I read the words circling around Emily Elizabeth, Savannah yells “Ahh-Choooo!”  They were the letters arching over Clifford’s sneeze on the next page, blowing the fall leaves in his path.

A few months later, it happened again, with a most annoying book about busy bees. The book hummed the bzzzzzz of the bees with each page turned.  She opened the book to the first page, “Biz-beez.  Biz-beez.”

And then it stopped.

It has been years since those spontaneous readings.  It was a skill she lost after losing speech.  A skill that gave us hope her speech would return, until it was gone as well.  Now, she has a closet full of purses.  Pink, purple, black with fur.  Yellow, blue and green quilted.  Velcro-able with PECS, knitted and woven, laced and lined with glitter and sequins.  What she doesn’t have, is the ability to read B-A-B-Y.

All That Glitters May Be Bronze: Area 3 Special Olympics

I remember listening to my aunts voice. My amazing aunt who faced intellectual disabilities in poverty, during a time when knowledge and opportunities were scarce. I was nine years old, and her voice was distant and metallic, echoing over the answering machine, crackling into the air. Crooked letters stumbled on top of each other, creating long indecipherable slurs, but the elation was evident. “I got a silver.” The words were charged. They popped like fireworks made of glitter and trickled through the air until they faded leaving behind currents of sparks for me to breathe.

Friday was Savannah’s forth Track & Field with the TN Area 3 Special Olympics. When the day started with giggles, and the clock whimpered, “4:00,” the air was already electric. It pulsed and thrived with a charged excitement that made my flesh tingle, as i fumbled to make coffee. Whether bowling, bocce or track & field, Special Olympics days usually begin at 3:00am. There’s too much excitement to stay wrapped in dreams. Friday, i was fortunate enough to sleep until 4:00.

Savannah’s first special Olympics proved to be overwhelming, for both of us. There were athletes ranging from eight years old to well over sixty. There were athletes in wheelchairs, unable to move their heads; athletes that barely met the mental cusp; athletes, like Savannah, non-verbal and in need of a constant aide. Every athlete there, from Down Syndrome to Autism to Cerebral Palsy, brimmed and overflowed with the thrill of competition and impending glittering medals. Chatter filled the auditorium, accompanied by excited squeals and the squeaks of wheelchairs. Sweaty palms and pounding hearts echoed off the steel dome and wood-clipped floor. We were shuffled and shifted and caught up in the current of intensity which left us physically exhausted and emotionally drained with two bronze medals of courage in tote. Savannah had been confused and overwhelmed, standing at the 50 meter dash and then later running the dash at the softball throw, but at some point through the chaos, the current of excitement soaked through her flesh, poisoning her blood, causing her skin to glow. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I discovered how much of the event she had actually understood. Before bed one night, I slipped into her room for one last blanket-check. I found her well tucked, sleeping with her lips curled into a soft pink smile, her fingers tightly clinging to a bronze medal.

Four years later, we were veterans. The electricity and excitement serging through our veins. Savannah held her aide’s hand during the Parade of Athletes, stopping to smile for pictures. Flashes refracted of her pale skin, causing it to shimmer. Anxiously, she pulled and dragged us to her first event, the 50 meter dash, twenty minutes before the event. The year before we had practiced every evening. This year it had rained the month before. “Go!” Rang out, muffled and stifled by cheering. Amazing athletes ran on either side of Savannah. She stood in the middle lane, her head buried in her arms, her eyes squeezed closed. Her aide encouraged her a few steps, but her eyes and head remained hidden. After the other athletes were finished, after they were congratulated and given their times, Savannah’s aide was still walking with her down the lane. Savannah finally crossed the line, never once looking up. She stood stoic on the risers, receiving her bronze, refusing to smile.

As soon as we returned to the other athletes on her team, the giggling began. The weight of bronze resting against her heart had charged it. It was irrelevant she hadn’t run. She had finished. She had been overwhelmed, but more importantly she had overcome. The other athletes had run faster, but Savannah had worked harder for each step, and now there were fireworks vibrating within her.

The energy of the day was starting to wear on all of us by the time her second event arrived. It was time to throw the softball. For her birthday, we had given her a softball. A reflective green softball to lead her practice. To lead her to the silver, which it did after an eight-foot throw. Physically exhausted, emotionally tired, and anxious to leave the currents of electricity behind, she accepted her second silver medal.

We spent the evening physically drained and emotionally charged, with finger foods and movies and giggling. Visiting grandmothers, in town for the electric event, lounged with pride and satisfaction seeping through their flesh, secretly hoping for an early bedtime. For Savannah, the thrill carried through the weekend, as she insisted on wearing her Special Olympics athletic outfit to church on Sunday. The girlie fashionista, usually wearing pink and purple and fur and leopard print and boots and glitter, instead wore sneakers, an athletic skort and the dark blue Area 3 t-shirt. Her fashion statement screamed what she couldn’t: how incredibly proud she was of her accomplishment and, like all of us, how ready she was for next year’s fireworks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the First Diagnosis

A diagnosis is a tricky companion. When you first find out your child is disabled, after you go through denial, you come to the point where you just want a name. A reason. An answer. It’s said that to name something is to have power over it, and that’s what you want when your child is slipping through your fingers, beyond your grasp and out of your control. You want to be able to name it. You want to scream it’s name from the highest mountain. You want to curse and damn it to hell. You want to fall on your knees and beg it for mercy. The diagnosis becomes vital. You have to name it.

The first year we searched for a name, we spent $2000 and visited six specialists. At the end of the first year, we had six different diagnosis, no answers and a kind tax return. Savannah’s seventh specialist, Dr. S., became our touchstone. He was the first to listen, not just to us as parents, but to Savannah and to what she didn’t say. He read all of her previous medical records, poured over my obsessive documentations, studied her videos, heard her story and played with the silent angel before him. We left Dr. S. hours later with a diagnosis of Pervasive Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), an explanation of the short-comings of previous diagnosis and a friend, advocate and blessing, who still follows Savannah to this day.

But friendship doesn’t alter the fact that all things evolve. I took our diagnosis and challenged it by name. I read every book. I went to every therapy. I watched Savannah fight her hardest. But the older Savannah became, the larger the divide between her and the acclaimed PDD-NOS became. More and more questions arose, instead of less. They sprouted in the shadows of speech therapy, in the weighted school air, in the expanding silence at home. The chasm kept growing, until the small gap of developmental delay evolved into an endless ocean.

As of this year, PDD-NOS no longer exists. It has been absorbed into Autism, along with Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD) and Aspergers and Savannah. But still, between Savannah and Autism resides an even larger ocean, with more questions and more specialists waiting to be seen.

Glitter in the Hour Glass

Every day she slips away. Every day a little further from me. I want to grab her and hold onto her so tightly and keep her from slipping through my fingers, but she’s getting too old for that now. Eleven isn’t really the age to be cradled, even if you are disabled. Eleven is the age of boys and fashion and acne and periods. Even if you are disabled, even if you can’t say your name or brush your hair or tie your shoes. Eleven is the age for growing up.

I want to stop the clock. Even moreso, I want to turn it back. I want to watch the hands go left as fast as they went forward. I want to go back to when skills were celebrated, when laughter outweighted tears, when hope lit up the future. I want to go back to before I knew things would only get worse. I want to go back to when it was okay to cradle.

That’s the thing with regression, you never know when it’s going to hit, never know what it’s going to hit, never know each morning what’s possible. That’s the thing with regression, it takes away the hope of the future. It takes away the joy of the moment. The success for today may be the loss for tomorrow. Nothing is sustained and everything has the potential to slip through your fingers.  Every day I fight to find her, to hold on to her, to save her. Every day I fight to keep my fingers closed tighter so less of her slips through.

Savannah is disabled. You can call it special needs, but it is a disability. While there is plenty that is special about Savannah, there is nothing special about losing abilities. Abilities are stolen from Savannah without regard. Without pattern, without expectation, without reason, skills vanish. They never fade. Whether social, academic, gross or fine motor or self-help, they are all susceptible to the Vanishing. A few are susceptible to success. A few skills find their way back fragile and broken. Sometimes they appear like they never left at all. There is no patten. It is the ultimate magic trick.

At four years old, we sat in the reading room of our first house, in a recliner that once belonged to my grandmother. A stack of index cards waited anxiously on the chess table before us. Incredibly, I remember it was a Sunday afternoon. A sunny day during a Texas summer isn’t actually that remarkable, but it does make the memory shiney and bright like its been laced with glitter.

I placed a marker in her perfectly soft hand, and wrapped my fingers and hers. Slowly, we began to write S-A-V. “Can you feel it?” I asked. “Can you feel that?”  The marker slid across the slick index card. Over and over. Frictionless. “This is what your name feels like.” Finally, I let go. The first time she wrote her name she misspelled it. The second time it was perfect. Then there was the third and forth and fifth and index cards filled up with blue Savannahs. By the end of the week, the first two Savannahs were framed and hanging in my office. Three months later, her fingers didn’t remember how to hug a marker or pen or crayon.

That was seven years ago. It took four years of occupational therapy before her fingers remembered markers. Five years to remember how to colour. Six years to remember how to write her name. Seven years and counting to remember how to do it without help.

Eleven years old is the age to write your name without help. Eleven is the age of purple markers, not blue. Eleven is the age you hope to find the skills you had at four.

I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I wish I could go back to smooth blue markers, hours of cradling and days filled with glitter.

an Introduction

One of Demeter’s children was Persephone, also known as Kore, which she created together with Zeus, the King of the gods.

What Demeter did not know was that, by the time Persephone was born, Zeus had secretly promised her to his brother Hades, the dark god of the Underworld.

One day, when Persephone was still very young, she went out to play with her girlfriends and was spotted by Hades who immediately felt bewitched by her charms. Hades was just waiting for the right moment to come and, when he saw Persephone picking some flowers, he seized the opportunity, opened the earth and abducted her to his gloomy kingdom!

Persephone started screaming so loud that her mother Demeter heard her painful cry and went to the valley to see what was going on. She started searching carefully but she couldn’t find her beloved daughter anywhere. So she went on asking anyone she was meeting on her way, but no one seemed to know anything about it.

Finally, Demeter decided to visit Helios, the wise Sun god, who happened to know the story, and asked him for advice. Helios was a kind god and felt mercy for the mourning mother, so he revealed to Demeter the whole truth.

Nine days past without any change, driving Demeter to despair. She could neither eat, nor drink, nor could she sleep and nothing was blossoming on earth, leaving humans and animals with no food.

Zeus disliked this situation and decided to send his messenger Hermes to the Underworld to talk to Hades. Hades was not willing to set Persephone free, but, after all, it was the king talking to him, so he was obliged to obey. So he gave Persephone to Hermes, who took her up on his golden chariot and brought her back to her mother Demeter.

Demeter was delighted to see her daughter again and cried uncountable tears of joy, bringing this way fertility back to earth. She was hoping to keep her daughter close to her forever, but during her stay with Hades, Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds and was therefore chained to stay in the underworld for four months of the year.

All the time Persephone was with Demeter, Demeter was so full of happiness, that the sun was shining and everything was blooming. All the remaining time, when Persephone had to return to the Underworld, Demeter was in grief and nothing could grow… this was the time winter set out in the world.

http://www.greek-gods.info/greek-gods/demeter/myths/demeter-persephone/

Light It Up

My daughter is wearing blue to raise Autism Awareness as part of Light It Up Blue, which is each year on April 2nd.

Currently she is diagnosed with Pervasive Develpmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS).  In 2013, the new DSM-V will be released.  PDD-NOS will no longer be included, the definition of Autism will be changed, and she will be considered Autistic.

People with Autism precieve the world differently, and in turn, experience the world differently.

 It is estimated that 70% of people diagnosed with Autism suffer from comorbidity (more than just one disorder).  Which means they face more than just Autism each day. (www.gel.bbk.ac.uk/index.php?page=comorbidity-in-autism)

40% of people with Autism will remain non-verbal. This does not mean they cannot say words, but they are unable to use verbal language as their primary form of communication. AAC devices (Augmentative Alternative Communication) are very helpful for those who are non-verbal to express their needs, desires and thoughts.  (www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/signs.html)

 

83% of people with Autism have irregular sleep patterns. (www.healthism.com/aritcles/autism-sleep)

Yes we’re wearing blue eye-shadow.  While looking at someone when they talk is usually considered polite, for many with Autism, it is multi-tasking.  Many have poor eye contact.  It isn’t that they are not listening, but that they are listening. Concentrating on what they see and hear at the same time can be quite distracting, so by not looking at you they are better focused on what you are saying.

Like any other disability, Autism affects every member of the family, re-defining family life.

Siblings offer something special to their Autistic siblings, teaching them in a way no one else can.

There are great benefits to therapeutic animal services, from service dogs to equine therapies.  While the therapies nor service dogs are covered by insurance, they are tax deductible and Autism Service Dogs are covered in the American’s with Disabilties Act. (www.autismservicedogsofamerica.com)

i have learned more from my daughter than i have from any individual, and she continues to teach me with each new challenge and each new success.

Information about Autism is rapidly evolving due to large amounts of ongoing research.  What is true today may not be tomorrow. If you’d like to learn more please visit www.cdc.gov/autism or www.health.nih.gov/topic/Autism

the Silent Box

The world was crashing around her in the shape of tulip petals, pastel ribbons and snowflakes that tumbled and danced into her tender skin like tiny razors leaving it puffy and pink to match her eyes.  This was wrong.  Every milky bone in her fragile and broken form quivered and screamed that this went against nature.  She took a deep breath.  It burned through her and caught fire in her chest.  She was surprised the amount of tears couldn’t extinguish it.

Ade didn’t remember falling to her knees, but the coarse ground had already left lasting imprints through her stockings.  She reached to the oak box for strength.  The box was polished and shiny, glimmering in the audacious sunlight.  Sweat coated her trembling fingers, and her hand slid down the box, causing a screech that would echo through her for years.  She looked to heaven and blinked the water from her swollen eyes.  Again, Ade’s hand reached for the box and this time clung to it.  She pulled herself from the ground, the small box shaking under the pressure, threating to tip over and reveal its contents.  For a moment, she wasn’t sure her hand would ever separate from the box.  Timeless and motionless she stood there, biting her lip until a tear-shaped drop of blood began to free itself.  She took one last smoldering breath and let the fire consume her.  Then Ade turned her back on her only child and walked away.

The room was cool and sterile.  Men chattered around her, their voices bouncing off the walls and falling into other conversations.  Papers were shuffled, and the legs of chairs grated the linoleum floor, echoing throughout the building.  Ade pulled her sweater around her tighter and shifted in the rigid plastic chair.  The grey walls and floors blended together, suffocating her, but there was nowhere else to go.

“Go home, Mrs. Triste.”  The detective entered his office.  He was surprised to see her there the day after the funeral, before breakfast, but his voice concealed it.  Detective Bixby sat at his desk and began rummaging through drawers.  He could feel her eyes on him, weighted by grief and desperation.  He shut a drawer and faced her.  His wrists rested on his desk, his fingers locking together to stress his intent.  “Mrs. Triste, go home.  I will call you when I know something.”  He hated the way she looked at him.  As long as he’d known her, her eyes had held the same expression.  He stared into the deep brown chasms and could feel himself falling into them.  He was their only hope.  The detective looked down at his knotted fingers of strength, knowing he was defeated.  His chair was just as relentless as the others against the cool floor when he stood from his desk.  He left his office without a word and returned with two cups of coffee.

She held the coffee with both hands, as if to keep warm.  Detective Bixby always got coffee for Ade.  He hoped she considered it a courtesy, but actually it was the only way he knew to keep her fingers from shaking.  Without something to cling to, her long bony fingers and jagged nails sent quakes through the air with their constant tremors.  He had tried to look away, tried to busy himself, but he could feel their force through the air like giant salty waves.  “I don’t know anything new.”

Ade looked from her coffee back up to him.  Her eyes spoke for her.

Detective Bixby pulled some cream and sugar from a desk drawer and began to lighten his coffee.  Just because she took it straight and bitter, didn’t mean he had to suffer with her.  “I have my men at your house, running labs, making phone calls.  It takes time.  I will call you.”

She looked back down at the coffee before taking a long slow sip.  The steam escaped the cup, veiling her face, accentuating each new line.  Creases ran through her forehead, cut deeply around her mouth but had abandoned the milky skin around her eyes.  He wondered if she’d slept.  He was certain if she were to open her mouth, her teeth would be stained from endless coffee over the past few days.

“Really.”  He spoke softer now that she was veiled.  “I can’t tell you anything until the investigation is over.  Legally, I can’t.”  Her brown eyes lifted and sliced through the steam.  “I will call you.  You’re still at the hotel?  Room 429?”

She stood, holding the coffee close to her chest, keeping the veil between them.  The heat accentuated the pulsing of her heart, pumping fire through her limbs, just below the surface of her pale skin.  Her lips tried to curve into a grateful smile, but her eyes remained truthfully the same.

Room 429 was the modest suite they’d called home since their daughter’s disappearance.  It didn’t have a tulip garden over the kitchen sink nor pink ribbons to hold back the heavy drapes.  Instead, it held everything needed.  The bland magnet-less refrigerator concealed fresh ice trays, never contaminated with grape juice.  The smooth carpet flowed seamlessly from one room to the next, with each piece of furniture and each knick-knack flawlessly in place, while the bathroom bellowed the harsh scent of bleach and lemons. The serenity of room 429 reflected the hollowness that filled the marrow of Ade’s bones, which if tapped would shatter into tiny heart-shaped shards of glass.  Ade stood next to the coffee maker.  She had poured herself a cup of coffee, only to stand next to it lifeless, immersed in the heat of its steam, aching for it to fill her.

“You okay?”  Chris reached behind her to slide a frozen pizza in the microwave.  The chill of his pungent scent spread through the air and up her spine, rung by rung until it hit the base of her neck, sending ice to her fingers and toes, frosting her nails.  The freezer door had opened with a resounding pop and artic gust and shut with a rippling shutter, shaking the crumbless floor.  The staleness of him embraced her, sending razors thrashing against each nerve, fraying them and leaving them broken and raw.  The buttons on the microwave screeched with the pressure of his clumsy fingers.  “Ade?”

The kitchette in room 429 was much too small.  Ade carried her coffee gingerly to the solid couch.  As she floated from one room to the next, the carpet grazed the bottom of her feet, attempting to wear through her skin in search of her soul.   The blue cushions were familiar with sorrow and molded when she slightly sat.  They longed to conform to her, to hold and comfort her, but she sat on the edge, her sharp elbows crushing into her thighs.

Ade and Chris had been estranged for some time, but the final ribbon tying them had now been cut.  He had snipped it easily and carelessly.  Children had to be watched, especially children like their daughter.  There wasn’t a moment she could be without a watchful eye.  It was a knowledge they both lived with, that now haunted them and grew between them.  A weed that crowded out pastel petals, scented the air with bitterness and bore silent thorns that cut deeply, leaving scars they could never forgive.  It had been four days.  It had been a lifetime.

The shower water had been warm and comforting that day.  It tumbled through the faucet, falling from the sky, dancing across her hair and skin and eyes, as smooth as petals.  It was her daily solitude, the only time of the day when she rested her watchful eye.  Each evening when Chris came home, he took over, and she took twenty minutes in the thick steam and water and washed the day away.  Ade’s days with her daughter sometimes lasted through the night and were always full of tutors, therapists, and watching. Tutors spoke through their hands and with enunciated lips, while Ade and her daughter learned.  For seven years Ade watched, and for seven years Ade learned.  For seven years, Ade hadn’t slept.  At each noise, each creek, she was up and checking on her child.  Her daughter’s breath was warm at night.  It had a sweet smell all it’s own, yet carried so much heat Ade marveled that the soft feathers beneath her head didn’t catch fire.

Their daughter inherited Ade’s dark eyes and used them as efficiently.  They were dark pools of fudge, hidden in her milky face, full of sweetness for the world.  Sweetness that became contagious, infecting not only tutors and doctors but busboys and cashiers and even the postman.  Each day, when the sun beamed its brightest, causing the world to shimmer with heat, their daughter would run to the front porch to silently greet her favourite person.  As the small bland jeep would pull up to their little box, their daughter would jump up and down.  Her skirt, whether pink or purple or laced with tulips, would twirl out from her screaming the greeting she couldn’t.  Both arms waved over her head, almost high enough to be burnt by the sun.  Glitter sprang forth from her deep eyes, and her pastel lips would gape open into a large smile making her shiny teeth look too large for her mouth.  In that moment, the burden of bills and a dead-end job melted, and the postman waved back.  His lips would spread just as wide, his hand and fingers flailing their greeting.  It was the moment he waited for each morning and the moment he carried with him the rest of the day.  On the day her box was swallowed by the earth, the mail was not delivered.  The postman hid in a black suit, undisquinshable when removed from his solid blue uniform, and stood by the oak tree.  His eyes were hazy and lain with liquor, the hidden brandy his wife didn’t know about.  His heart sank that day, buried in the coarse ground with the shining box that now held the fudge-like sweetness.

On the day Ade’s heart stopped, the sun blistered the air, and the birds’ songs were loud and shrill, echoing through the silent breeze.  The soft cool breeze flowed and tumbled through fence posts and danced across the short green grass.  It twirled between the smooth metal chains that promised soaring and giddiness, leaving ribbons flowing behind, tempting young girls better left inside.  While the warm water beat down on Ade’s skin, massaging each pale inch, the steam grew heavy and weighted, blinding the mirror and coating the tired walls.  It forced it’s way into her lungs, like stones filled with sorrow.  Ade turned off the water and grasped at a towel.  Water dripped from her fingers, as they hesitated before opening the bathroom door.  The air was still on the other side.  Ade ran down the stairs, the towel loosely covering her, flapping desperately, a trail of water staining the carpet from the life she’d left behind in the shower.  Chris sat in the kitchen, his back to the window, on the phone. His conversation continued as he pointed outside, answering her frantic eyes.  Ade ran into the backyard, but everything around her was calm.  The soft grass clung to her wet feet, coating them in shoes of green strands, which she tracked back into the house and into each room.  Every room was still.  The house was motionless, lifeless.  She found herself standing outside of time, in front of Chris, gasping for air, the stones in her lungs turning into tumors, creeping into her throat, crushing her chest on the way.

Chris hung up the phone. “She’s in the yard.”  His voice was calm and patronizing. Ade’s head shook, vibrating the air, sending waves of fear that filled the kitchen and tumbled into the rest of the house.  Chris went outside and called her name.  He meandered around the corner of the house, and as he left the back gate, Ade realized it wasn’t stones, but tulips lodged in her throat.  She could feel their velvet petals forcing their way on her tongue, where she tasted their bitterness.

“I just stepped inside for a second,” Chris justified to Detective Bixby that smoldering afternoon.  His voice was stale and tight.  Guilt and fear weighted it down, making it near impossible for the words to squeeze through his quivering lips.  “It was a work call.  Just for a second.”  By that time Ade had wrapped herself in a light robe and tied the pink belt around her waist.  When Detective Bixby first saw Ade, she had made a fresh pot of coffee and sat on the edge of the sofa, veiled in coffee steam, her brown eyes already lost, her milky fingers clinging to the mug for stability, her elbows imprinting in her thighs.

Chris had sat down across from her, the single serving pizza resting on the coffee table between them, half of it already eaten.  “How long are you going to do this, Ade?”  Her brown eyes looked at him, unblinking.  “It isn’t my fault.”  Cheese stretched between his lips with each word, some affixing to his gums while the rest fought for its release, until his tongue swiped through the creamy melted strands, swallowing them in a brief and final moment before he took another bite. Life continued so easily, bite after bite, until there was nothing left between them.  The plate echoed harshly in the sink.  “I can’t do this anymore, Ade.  I just can’t,” and he walked out the door of room 429, away from the life he’d lost years before, in search of an identical home on a different floor, leaving behind a dirty dish, an empty pizza box and a silence that stretched from the bland refrigerator to the lemon-bleached bathroom to the solid blue couch.  The thud of the door resonated through her, knocking against her bones, yet nothing changed inside of her.  Ade sighed and sipped her coffee that had already turned cold.

Darkness had fallen, when the phone’s cry broke the stillness.  “Mrs. Triste.”  Detective Bixby’s voice was deeper than usual, making the receiver heavy in her frail hand.  “I’m downstairs.”

Detective Bixby could feel Ade, when she entered the hotel bar.  Shadows of sorrow enveloped her in a thick haze. Veiled, she floated through the other patrons.  A simmering radiation flowed from the frayed edges of the shadows, causing men to gulp their beers and women to uncross and re-cross their legs.  Even the bartender wiped his forehead with the bar rag when Ade passed by, leaving a smoldering trail behind her.  The shadows melted when she sat under the light at the small table, although Detective Bixby could still feel their radiation pulsing in the air.

Ade showed no surprise when the detective waved to the waitress ordering them both her preferred drink.  He waited until the waitress had sat down the double bourbons before he started.  “Ade.”  Her eyes filled with panic when he addressed her familiar.  They clung to him like a child who’s been lost too many times will latch onto her mother’s hem, and he couldn’t seem to free himself.  Since the disappearance, he too had been tortured.  He watched with envy as sweat from the tumbler slid between the flesh of her long fingers, under the ridges of their tips and the crevices under each knuckle, refreshing the most neglected parts of her body.  Detective Bixby swallowed his bourbon in one burning gulp and waved for another round.

“You’re neighbor’s boy came down to the station today.  He said some friends of his . . . She wasn’t suppose to . . .” Her brown eyes held burning embers, and the detective was forced to look away.  He took the tumblers from the waitress and set them on the table.  He wanted to take Ade’s hand.  He wanted to engulf her hands in his and feel her brittle nails within his coarse capable fingers.  He longed to stroke her dark hair and wake up in the morning to her fudge-like eyes.  She smelled of coffee and grief. He couldn’t help wonder what she smelled like before and if he could help her smell like that again.  He ached to breathe her hair and taste her faded lips, but most of all, Detective Bixby wanted to bury her in comfort and watch her sleep.  He could almost feel the ugly dirt beneath his fingers until they bled, mud permanently staining his cuticles, and still he would continue to dig. Then he would open the oaken box and cry stars until he could will her daughter back to her.

“It’s just that her body couldn’t handle three teenage boys.” His words sounded distant, like they were speaking through tin cans attached by a faded pink ribbon.

When he finally looked back to her, her brown eyes still pleaded for more.  He could see her breaths rising and falling, desperation tied to her chest with chains of stones and lost hope.  Each breath burned, melting the air it was cast upon, then vanishing in a heated smoke. He swallowed the next bourbon.  The faint vanilla seemed too sweet for the occasion, and a shutter ripped through him leaving a gruffness in his voice.  “They’re all in custody.”  It was all he had to offer her.  “I have them.”

Ade could see her daughter in front of her, pink lips gaping open trying to scream, silent screams that fluttered through the slight breeze, shaking leaves and terrifying birds and bunnies.  She could hear the cry of fragile glass breaking when her pelvic bone shattered from the forcing, pulsing, throbbing.  There was soft summer grass tangled in her locks of sunshine, and water like bleeding hearts fell from her eyes.  Then her daughter smiled at her.  It was the smile of a toddler with glittering bright brown eyes full of excitement and anticipation as she looked at her swing-set for the first time, never knowing it would bring her death.

Ade’s eyes focused on Detective Bixby, who sat silently across from her, looking at his large hands that hid his empty tumbler, which could never hold enough bourbon, despite how much he ordered.  It would burn his throat and chest, but in the end, the fire would always fade leaving him with nothing more than cinders.  Her fingers reached across the table and landed on his wrist.  She could feel his heart quicken, pulsing and racing under her flesh.  It took longer for him to tear his gaze away from the emptiness before him and look at her.  Ade’s lips curved in an appreciative smile.  This time the tender skin around her eyes creased.

She walked into the brisk night air and took a deep breath, noticing it didn’t burn.  The sky opened up and mourned the oaken box with tears that smelled of spring.  The future fell before her, mixing with the rain, like puzzle pieces fashioned from broken hearts and fudge, dancing down from the sky and gingerly fitting together before her.  Tulips and ribbons laid at her feet.  The stones in her lungs crumbled to ashes, easily coughed up and discarded on a fresh clean handkerchief. Earthquakes stopped fluttering through her, and her skin breathed in the sky and let the stars radiate through it.  A gentle breeze descended and washed over her, baptizing her, tossing her damp hair behind her, flowing with each new step.  Her cotton shirt clung to her, forcing the darkness that had embraced her to pour over her delicate skin, desperately clinging to her legs until it was only shallow pools that collected behind her, leaving Ade abandoned to the silver moonlight.