Chasing Clouds

I wasn’t supposed to cry. It would always upset daddy when I cried. I couldn’t help it though, life seemed so lonely ever since we lost mama. She wasn’t supposed to leave us when she did. I remember her telling me that she was sick and that she would have to go be with God soon. I didn’t understand why she had to leave us. I was certain, that she would want to be with me more than God. What could he do, that I couldn’t? He didn’t seem like a good person.

I know dad didn’t like God at all. I could hear him scream at him as I lay stiff between my untucked bedsheets. I understood why he was mad at God, but it still scared me when he screamed. I wish he hadn’t screamed so loudly. The echoes of his voice rushing up our stairs and underneath my bedroom door was only a reminder that my mama would never get to tuck me in for the night again.

Things had always seemed better when mama was around. I could laugh, cry, play, be sick, or happy without having to worry about my feelings ever upsetting someone else. She made everything seem so quiet. Having a mom was like playing in the clouds…everything was soft and safe.

Without my mama, I didn’t feel so safe. I had thought dad was a strong man who could protect us, but it didn’t feel that way without my mama. She would always tell me how strong he was, and how he was her protection like she was mine. I wish my mama had been telling the truth to me then, because maybe then dad wouldn’t have let God take her from us.

I tried to stay away from dad as much as I could, since the incident. Anytime I would get happy or be sad, he would find some reason to yell at me. Nothing I ever did made him happy. Maybe God took away his smile when he took mama.

I learned to hold my tears in, whenever I was around dad. If I couldn’t hold them back, I would always find some excuse to go out to our barn in the back of the farm. I was always scared of the spiders that would crawl in the corners of the old wooden structure. Somehow my sadness would help me to forget about the spiders. I would run and jump into the piles of hay that had stockpiled in the barn stalls. It was the closest I could get to playing in the clouds.

I would dive headfirst so that dad wouldn’t hear my muffled crying from the house. My tears would fall into the crisscrossed needles of hay as my motionless body sunk deeper into the pile. After I ran out of tears, I would push myself up to see the wet spot where I had been resting my head. My salty tears would turn the stiff hay soggy like a pot of boiled spaghetti noodles. I would grab some of the dry hay from the sides to cover the spot where I had been crying. I didn’t want to leave any evidence of my tears for dad to find later.

After covering my tracks, I would wipe away the puddle hanging on my eyelids so I could see clearly. I wouldn’t go back inside right away. I had to make sure my eyes could dry before I went back up the hill to our house.

To pass the time, I would pick off the barbs of hay that had gotten stuck to my cotton skirt. Every now and then I would miss a needle and my dry fingertips would snag a fiber. It was such an annoying feeling, but it would help me forget why I was sad in the first place.

Sometimes I would walk around the barn, to see if there were any other little creatures living within the walls other than the creepy crawling spiders. One day, I found a little field mouse stealing a few kernels of dried corn from the chicken feed bag. The mouse looked so innocent and kind, so I didn’t try to stop her from taking our corn. In fact, I would sometimes take things from the fridge back up at the house to give to the mouse. She liked the hard cheeses the best. You know, the ones that would crumble like sand when you tried to cut into ‘em. She would always gnaw away at the little pieces I would leave by her hole in the barn wall.

Eventually, I found myself going out to the barn just to see my little mouse friend. It was nice going out there and not having to cry for once. I think I enjoyed my friendship with the mouse because it felt like I got to take care of her just like mama used to take care of me. She depended on me, and I knew she felt safe with me. There were even a few times when she would climb into my hand to eat the food I had for her. She was so light; I could hardly feel the difference. If it weren’t for her cold little paws dug into the creases of my palm, I would have thought she was just a part of my imagination.

Becoming friends with that mouse reminded me of the warmth that love could bring. I was beginning to heal from losing my mama.

Just as I was healing, the pit of pain I felt the day my mama left returned.

It was wintertime. The farm was covered in a blanket of snow. Usually, that would make me happy. I loved the snow. It was so fun to stomp around in the fresh fall of glistening ice to hear the soft crunch from underneath my boots. This winter was different though. I knew that my friend, the mouse, would be cold and wouldn’t have many options for food.

I put my boots on over my pajamas and threw on my winter coat the morning after the snowfall. I wanted to make sure the mouse knew I didn’t leave her. I was sure, that she would have been scared of the snowfall. I had a few nuts in my coat pocket that I pulled out in front of her hole in the wall.

It took a while before I heard her squeak. I could barely hear her as she was not in her home. I turned around after realizing the squeak was coming from across the barn. I watched as I saw her small little brown nose poke out from the hay pile, I used to cry in. She must have been sleeping under it for warmth the night before. I was so happy to see that she was okay.

As mouse, as I called her, ran towards me; I held my hand towards the ground with my palm open. I wanted her to eat the nuts from my hand. I had thought that the warmth from my body would be able to warm up her cold little paws. She was excited to see me and didn’t hesitate hopping onto my palm to claim her breakfast.

What took place next happened so fast, that it would put me in shock like falling off a tree. I watched the mouse eating the nuts I had brought her until she vanished before my eyes like a flash of lightning. She just disappeared like a magic trick. I wouldn’t make sense of what had happened until I felt the warm pooling of my own blood fill the cup of my hand. I looked down in a dazed state as I saw the gash across my palm for the first time.

The silence of shock was broken by a squeak and a crunch from the barn rafters above me. I looked up to my horror to find, mouse in the claws of a barn owl. My friend, like my mom, was gone.

I felt the tears welling up from the insides of the corners of my eyes. The tears weren’t for the pain throbbing in my hand though. I was reliving the excruciating pain of losing someone close to me all over again. The knot forming in my throat stopped my cries from coming out, but only for a moment. I wouldn’t want to stay in the frozen barn with the creature who was now ripping my friend to shreds above me.

I clasped my hand tightly and ran back up to the house crying. The blood in my hand froze to red ice the second I left the barn. I didn’t even care that my hand was cut or that my dad would see me crying.

I burst through the back door sobbing with snowflakes and tears blocking my view. My dad jumped out of his seat to ask what was wrong, to which I screamed, “I HATE YOU!”

I don’t even know what caused me to say that. I think, to me, the owl was no different than the harshness of my dad. I hated him as much as I did that owl. I would have traded him and the owl back for my mama and mouse in a heartbeat.

The rare show of my intense emotions must have scared my dad from coming upstairs to my room to tend to me. I didn’t mind it. I didn’t want to see him anyway. I just wanted to cry in my room. I sunk my crying head into my pillow as I had done in the hay pile in the barn.

After a few hours had passed and I was too tired to cry anymore, I decided that I should go downstairs to have my dad wrap my hand. I was hesitant at first. I wasn’t quite sure how angry he would be at me for telling him that I hate him.

In my fear, I would quietly step out of my room and slowly take the stairs down, one step at a time. My stomach churned with each step, thinking about how my dad would yell at me. If it weren’t for the surfacing pain of my hand in the absence of my crying for mouse, I don’t think I would have come downstairs until Spring.

As I was inching my way to the living room, I could hear weeping coming from my parent’s old room. It was weird because I had never heard the sounds of these cries before. I quietly tiptoed down our drafty hallway to peer behind the cracked door. It was my dad. He was kneeling next to the bed with a picture of my mom. He was crying.

“What do I do baby? I am so lost without you. Our little girl needs you; I need you. I’m so afraid.”

Hearing my dad cry and talk to my mom like that shocked me as much as the barn owl did. Maybe my dad wasn’t so rough, unapproachable, and emotionless as I had thought. He was just as afraid, hurt, and lost as I was.

I snuck back down the hallway making sure he didn’t hear me. I went to the kitchen sink to run my hand underneath some hot water. It wasn’t long after turning the rusty handle to the faucet, that I heard the bedroom door to my parent’s room creak as it was opened.

“Samantha darling, is that you?” My dad called out.

“Yes.” I replied with a sobbing tone as a knot began to form in my throat once again.

Dad turned the corner to see that my hand had been bleeding. He rushed over to ask what happened. I wept as I told him about the barn owl and the mouse. My father didn’t seem to care that I was crying like he used to. He just put his big old bear arm around me to pull me into his red wool sweater.

It felt warm with my body tucked into his. He gave me a soft kiss on top of my head as he turned the faucet off. I remember feeling a rush of warmth flow through my body for the first time in a long time. I hadn’t felt this way, since mom had left. Then I remembered the feeling. I felt safe, like in a cloud again.

“Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t hate you.”

He hugged me even tighter and told me, “I know”, while rubbing my back.

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