Chapter Three

 

Before I know it, I’m hovering in a classroom again. This time it’s not math. Dickinson, Shakespeare, and Frost smirk at me from the walls. The desks and room design look vaguely familiar, and I realize I’m in my old high school.

Although I recognize the building, I do not remember this particular teacher. She is younger than my mom, but clearly not a brand new teacher. As she talks to the class, she tucks her bobbed auburn hair behind her ear. She is round-faced and could probably stand to lose a few pounds, but something makes her instantly relate-able.

“I’d like us to read this poem aloud, stanza by stanza, to really delve into its meaning.” She holds the fat teacher’s edition of the text in both hands and looks over her students. “Vera, will you take the first stanza, please?”

My focus shifts to the girl with the mousy brown ponytail in the third row. Startled, she looks up from her book, her eyes wide with fear. The teacher waits. Several members of the class turn to look at Vera. Her eyes flicker from one classmate to another, and then she looks back at her teacher, whose eyes have not left Vera.

Finally, Vera looks down at her book and begins to read. “Because I could not stop for Death,/He kindly stopped for me/The Carriage held but just Ourselves.” Vera pauses, her mouth hanging open for a moment. “And…Immortality.”

The girl in the cheerleader uniform in front of Vera turns around and raises her eyebrow. Did she find Vera’s emphasis of the last word as eerie as I did?

Immortality? Is that what I am experiencing? For millennia, humans have dreamed of being immortal, but is this what it means? Floating back and forth between random acts on Earth and a sheer and utter blackness that lasts so long, panic rises in a throat that no longer exists? If immortality means watching periodic episodes from a life you don’t know, I don’t think the ancient Egyptians would have revered it so much.

The teacher pulls her eyes away from Vera to look at the rest of her class. “How does Emily Dickinson portray death in this first stanza?”

Vera raises a tentative hand, but the teacher calls on a tall boy from the opposite side of the room.

“She’s personifying death. She’s making it sound like a person who is coming to take her away on a trip.”

“Yes, Josh. This is an example of personification. What else is Dickinson trying to say?”

Vera’s is the only hand up now. “Vera?”

“Dickinson says the carriage holds death, herself, and immortality. Doesn’t that mean death is actually making her immortal? He’s bringing her to a place where she can live forever without the pain of life as we know it.”

I remember the scene from the bathroom with the knife. Surely, that’s what Vera had been hoping for. Eternity without the pain of life. That’s what I’d been hoping for when I pulled the trigger. But it wasn’t what I got. Instead, I got this—and I’m not even sure what this is yet.

Like Vera, I look to the teacher for answers, but she seems to be having problems finding an answer too. Her mouth opens, then closes.

A rushing wind roars through the corridor outside the classroom. It reminds me of that tornado movie last year. My first thought is that the roof has blown right off the building, but then I look around and see that no one else is startled by the sudden noise. Can’t they hear it too?

I glide toward the door to see what is happening, but before I reach it, billowing black smoke pours into the room, pushing me back. The smoke is shapeless at first, but it starts to twist upon itself, almost like a funnel cloud. The dark shadow hovers just inside the doorway like black smoke lingering over a fire, only there’s no flame below.

To my surprise, the shadowy cloud goes unnoticed by the living beings in the room.

“I don’t think that’s what Dickinson was saying,” continues the teacher.

“But look at the rest of the poem,” says Vera. “She’s not frightened of death. She seems to welcome it. She wants the immortality that follows death.”

While Vera is talking behind me, I stare at the black cloud. It hovers within a couple feet of the doorway before moving down the aisle. Its shape changes again. No longer a funnel cloud, the smoke becomes a cloaked figure. Under the hood, a face forms. The ghostly image is that of a girl about my age, but her skin is so taut that she’s almost skeletal. Her thin lips are drawn tightly, and her eyes are hollow. Instinctively, I plant myself between the shadowy specter and Vera. I don’t know who she is or what she wants, but I can’t imagine this shadow of a soul bringing anything good.

“I think you’re right, Vera. The speaker of the poem isn’t frightened. Perhaps she is comforted by the idea of death.” The teacher’s tone has changed. She sounds almost wistful. “Perhaps she did suffer in life, and now she is free from her suffering.”

Suddenly, the smoky shadow shifts directions and moves toward the teacher. My first thought is that of relief. Maybe the shadow girl isn’t interested in Vera after all, but then I begin to wonder what she wants with the teacher. What will happen when the shadow reaches her, and why doesn’t anyone notice the evil lurking in the room? Her presence is so menacing I wonder how the living beings in the room can’t sense it at all.

The smoky shape slides closer to the teacher, and I consider leaving Vera to block the specter’s way when a bright light shimmers in the gap between the teacher and the shadow girl. The light seems to hold no shape; it simply emanates from a spot midair. The shadow girl slows down. The light shimmers again, and two flashes of light spread out like wings unfurling from the glow’s center, stopping the shadow girl in her tracks.

“Then again,” continues the teacher, “I’m not sure Emily Dickinson was trying to say she really wanted death.”

“But look at how she ends the stanza,” cries Vera, and the specter swirls before turning toward her. “She writes ‘And Immortality’ all by itself on a separate line. Poets only separate words like that when they want to make them stand out. Immortality is important to her. She wants it. She wants Death.”

The shadow girl heads Vera’s way again. She opens her mouth, dark mucus stretching like elastic between her jowls.

“Mine,” breathes the specter as she reaches a bony hand out of her cloak toward Vera.

Oblivious to the horror I’m seeing, the teacher shakes her head, and Vera only grows more animated.

“What about line 2? She says death kindly stopped for her. Kindly. Like he’s doing her a favor.”

Feathery, black wings burst from the shadow girl’s back.

I glide back towards Vera. “Stop!” I want to scream at the specter, but it’s the nightmare moment again—I have no voice. “Please,” my thoughts cry out, “please someone make her stop!”

The darkness is nearly upon us when a flash of light explodes before me. The same shimmering effect and the unfurling of radiant wings, bursting with light, takes place. Blinded by the light, I cannot tell whether the shadow girl is still present. All I can hear is the teacher’s voice.

“Vera, I think we get the picture. Let’s move on to another of Dickinson’s poems.”

Although the light still blinds me, I can hear Vera relax back into her seat with a sigh. The light fades, but I do not see Vera. I do not see the classroom at all. I am once again in total darkness.

 

I am worried for a while that I have lost Vera. Although I do not really know her, she is the one constant in my fractured existence. No matter how many times I get plunged into darkness, Vera is always there when I return.

While I wait in the darkness, I begin to wonder about her. Why is she the one I always see? Was she someone I knew in life but have forgotten? I don’t remember most of my life. My death is the one thing that remains clear. Should I recognize Vera? She is not my sister Cecille; I remember that much. I had a sister and two parents, although they separated three years ago. Now I worry that perhaps the shimmering light didn’t save Vera at all. Perhaps the darkness got to her too. Perhaps she is somewhere waiting in darkness just like me.

The darkness ends, and I find myself in a church, but it’s not the church I once knew. Church was something my family used to do all the time before my parents separated. Every Sunday we’d march into Saint Isaac’s during the entrance hymn and then book it out of there right after Communion.

St. Isaac’s was old, long and narrow. The walls were white except for the inside of the alcoves, which were painted a bright blue. From our pew in the back, the priest always seemed so far away. It didn’t make matters any better that his homilies made me feel like he was even farther away from me and my life. What did the words spewing from his mouth have to do with me and my problems?

The church I am in now is quite different from St. Isaac’s. The walls and ceiling are exposed wood. Instead of the traditional long and narrow approach to the altar, the pews are arranged in a semicircle. Behind the altar are tall, narrow windows, through which I can see a grove of trees behind a small field. The ceiling lifts up high so that an enormous crucifix is hung over the altar. The figure of Christ is so imposing I can’t decide whether to be frightened speechless or laugh nervously. There’s no missing the Jesus in this church.

But there’s someone else I want to see right now more than a giant crucifix. Vera. What happened to her after I left the classroom? Is she in this church, like she has been in every other episode of light?

I scan the congregation. Two pews ahead of me, a young girl reluctantly rises to her feet as the cantor begins the Alleluia. Her mousy brown hair is not pulled back in a ponytail, but I know it’s Vera. I glide down the aisle to get a closer look. It’s her all right, and she doesn’t look very happy. She is alone.

The priest reads the Gospel, and I vaguely hear him say, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

My attention is focused on Vera. What is it that brings me out of the darkness and back to her time and time again? What is it I’m supposed to be seeing or doing?

The Gospel ends, and everyone sits. The priest begins his homily, and I’m not really listening to his words until I realize a tear is slowly rolling a path down Vera’s left cheek. I remember being bored many times in church, but never bored to tears. My attention shifts to the priest. Something he is saying is making her cry.

“We must persevere. We must believe that God will answer our prayers. If we ask for help, God will respond. If we seek Him, we will find Him. If we knock, God will open the door for us.”

I shake my head. “It’s a lie!” I shout, but of course, no one hears me. “He’s lying!” I try to shout again. “God doesn’t answer our prayers. God doesn’t hear us.”

Through the windows behind the priest, I see the grove of trees, and from that grove, a dark fog oozes out between the trees. I hear the wind picking up outside, but the trees don’t move. The darkness heading across the small field toward the church swirls itself into numerous funnel clouds. Each cloud then becomes a shadow of a cloaked figure, like the bony ghost girl I saw in the classroom. The priest continues, oblivious to the legion of specters gathering outside.

“Sometimes we think God doesn’t hear us because we don’t always get the answer we seek, but that doesn’t mean He isn’t listening. Like a parent caring for a child, God is concerned with what’s best for us.”

“No!” I scream again. I rise up from the pew. “No, it’s not true! God doesn’t care about what’s best for us. He leaves us hurt! He abandons us!” Having unwittingly glided toward the altar, I turn now to face the congregation. Men and women placidly gaze at the priest or cast their eyes down to read their bulletins. Children fidget in their seats, eat Cheerios, or stare off into space. How can they just sit there? Don’t they know the priest is telling them a pack of lies?

“God doesn’t answer prayers.” I’m right in front of the priest now. My face is inches from his, but he doesn’t flinch. He’s still talking, but I can’t hear him. The shadows swirling outside the church windows roar loudly. I hear nothing other than them and my own screams of “You’re lying! You’re lying!”

I catch a glimpse of Vera still crying in her seat before everything goes black, and my memory is flooded with all the reasons I ended my own life.