When I sleep, I dream of Sophie. In the dreams, she is talking in radio code, and I am trying to transcribe what she is saying, but the words I write down make no sense. She talks louder, and I write faster, but still I can’t make sense of the words I’m putting on the page.
Yesterday, Sophie told me another story, but this one was not a Bompie story. I’d asked her if she could remember things from when she was little.
She said, “Why do people always ask that?” And then, when I thought she was going to turn around and leave, she started telling me about the little kid again. She told it like this:
There’s a little kid. And the little kid doesn’t know what is going on. The little kid is just cold or hungry or scared and wants Mommy and Daddy. And when other people tell the little kid that Mommy and Daddy have gone to heaven, which is such a beautiful place, all warm and sunny with no troubles and no woes, the little kid feels bad and wonders why they didn’t take their little kid with them to that beautiful place.
And everywhere the little kid goes, people ask what the little kid remembers about the grown-ups who have gone away to the beautiful place, but the little kid doesn’t want to remember that painful thing. The little kid has enough to deal with every day. The little kid wants to be right here, right now, and wants to look at now and at things ahead, on that horizon over there, not back at those times the little kid got left behind.
But no matter what the little kid might want, something inside pushes the little kid ahead while something or someone pulls the little kid back.
When Sophie finished, I didn’t know what to say. All I could think of was, “Don’t you wish we had some pie?”
She said, “Yes.”
She’s been very quiet ever since, as if she is listening to something or someone only she can hear. And at other times, she stands very close to me, as if she is hoping I will speak for her. Then I feel as if I am in my dream again, because I don’t know what words she wants me to say for her.