Murmur Lee Harp
I am a bullet shooting through what seems to be a thick wall of light. All around me my life—or at least the memories of that life—shatter into ash, sand, pollen, dust, leaving me to ruminate on the lessons I’ve learned since dying.
My mother was raped.
I was the seed of that rape.
I was not my father’s daughter.
I was not a product of love and longing.
I was not a wanted child.
I was the manifestation of torture.
My husband never loved me.
My husband’s abandonment of our child was a cowardly act by a man who refused to feel pain.
My husband’s refusal to participate in the pain of Blossom’s death does not mean that he did not love her. He did.
I fell for Billy Speare out of loneliness. And because I feared loneliness more than I feared pine rattlers, I ignored what I knew to be true: A man is not worth your time, your devotion, your effort if he doesn’t love his mother.
Billy Speare was not as good a man as I deserved.
Oster Harp should have never named his island in honor of a goddess who played nanny to the souls of dead women.
I was a lousy dream interpreter.
In death, life’s puzzles are beginning to make sense.
No wonder women drop like flies on Iris Haven.
No wonder my mother loved me so fearfully.
No wonder my father remained forever on the other side of the room, watching me with the cautious gaze of a distant uncle.
No wonder my mother disappeared into the rosary.
No wonder she turned golden at the possibility that I was not a bastard product of violence, but holy.
No wonder I never had a successful relationship with a man: I had no role models.
No wonder I lost my ability to breathe when Blossom died.
No wonder I fell for Billy Speare: I needed, wanted, craved a life partner.
These are not forgivenesses.
These are not excuses.
These are not absolutions.
These are not damnations.
All I’m saying is, as I hurtle through this vast ocean of light—understanding what had been mysteries to me in life but clueless as to what is happening in death—there is, at least at this very moment, no wonder.