After the Thaw

Do you remember how hard it was to go to sleep the night before a possible snow day? Parents would want you to go to bed at a normal time, you know, just in case of school the next day. But you would know in your heart that if you just wanted it bad enough, you could make it snow just enough to get school cancelled for the day. On those nights, sleep felt impossible. The sheets became too scratchy, the pillow became too flat, and even the electronic candle in the window, a leftover decoration from Christmas, became too bright for restless eyes despite being only a dim and orange flicker. So instead of sleep, I would stare out the window, watching the snowflakes fall in the shine of the corner streetlight.

This is a story about how sometimes it’s better just to keep your eyes shut.

I was twelve years old and school that day had been buzzing with word that overnight we were supposed to get pounded by a typical New England Nor’easter. The radio on the bus that morning said there was a great chance of school being cancelled and some towns had already decided to in anticipation of the night’s accumulation. By the time I had gotten home that day, I was certain that I would not be going to school the following morning. But as bedtime rolled around, there was only a slight flurry beginning to fall. I hadn’t touched my homework or anything due the following day because I was just so sure of the mini-vacation coming to me. I was going to have to either come up with a bunch of excuses as to why I didn’t do anything I was assigned, stay up all night doing those assignments, or continue staring out the window hoping to use my pent up energy to create precipitation. I turned on the window candle with a click and laid on my back. The decoration was much less a night light than it was a habit as it was mid-February and I still hadn’t taken it down.

The snowfall had picked up significantly to where I didn’t need to look into the streetlight to see the flakes anymore, now they were falling in big enough clumps to be able to pick one and follow its descent from the sky to wherever it landed. I had spent hours following individual white tufts as they fell when I saw her. She was walking snow and deliberate in the driving storm. Her sundress whipped mercilessly in the wind, so hard that I thought the little red flowers were going to come right off the thin, gauze-like yellow fabric they were printed on. Long red hair dangled around her elbows, unaffected by the piercing gusts. Her skin was pale and not reddened by wind or turned blue by hypothermia, it was almost without color at all. My pre-teen brain couldn’t process what it was seeing. There was a young lady walking around outside during a brutal snow storm and she didn’t have as much as a mitten to protect her.

I was frozen. Was this real? Was this a ghost? Was this a dream? I was in a space between mystery and terror until I began to worry. What if she saw me staring at her? What if she was some creature that isn’t supposed to be seen by people? My head was a blender of confusion as she made her way into my field of view before stopping in the middle of street, right across from my window. I held my breath and turned off the window candle to conceal my position as terrified voyeur. Her graceful form, holding fast in the middle of the street, lost all sense of delicacy as she snapped her head to look directly at me. Her spine arched back slightly, angling her body toward me as she peered through me and turned my insides to cold bricks. She then turned away from me, crossed the street, and began to walk into the backyard of a vacant two-story house, disappearing into the darkness. It wasn’t until I ran outside that I noticed that there were no footprints in the snow. I was never sure if I had dreamed the whole thing or not, it felt so real but seemed so incredible. I decided to tell no one in fear I would be teased for having to imagine a woman to make eye contact with me.

Two months later, the first real thaw was occurring after a particularly brutally cold winter. The neighborhood was finally recognizable after all the thick, frozen blankets of snow had melted away. A family had purchased the vacant home across the street and were moving in. Two blonde haired boys skipped rocks in the river behind the property while the parents brought boxes inside. The new residents weren’t there long before the boys found themselves skipping rocks at something floating in the water, entangled among branches. It took the adults virtually no time at all to identify what boys had been targeting. It seemed sometime in February, an elderly lady was feeding ducks around the bend of this river and had fallen in. Sadly, she drowned and became trapped under ice until she was finally freed by warmer temperature. I found her obituary in the newspaper a few days after she was discovered, and even though the photo used was black and white, I would recognize the print of that yellow sundress anywhere.