Stony Faces

Stony faces:

My eyes are puffy and struggle to flutter open. Last night’s tears streak my cheeks. I know what I sight; I must look. Eyes swollen with crimson veins marring the whites, curled amongst blankets, hair tangled like a lion’s mane. I recall the many times I trudged to high school with such a face. Head bowed like a praying nun, late to class, where I cracked jokes with my friends. The smile would squint my eyes and conceal the previous evening’s events. It’s humiliating when the body exposes us to individuals that do not comprehend our grief. As such, I dread leaving the safety of the empty house and confronting the day.

The soft glow of the rising winter dawn creeps further into the room, slow with secrecy. Desperately tangled into the handmade blankets of my grandmother, I attempt to cocoon myself back into sleep through the lace and cloth. I encourage myself with the thought that I will see them today. They need company, no doubt.

My arms unravel me from the night and pull me through the morning’s preparation. The cold pipes offer icy water, and I watch it coat a glass cup with condensation. My grandmother once pointed this out to me. The memory stains my fingertips as I trace the droplets. It’s not long before I lock up the house and go to visit them.

Step after step, I sneak outside through the past years. Stickered footsteps line up outside stores at six feet intervals. I can picture lace-coloured ghosts glued into place, waiting and watching family from afar, staring with eyes long gone yet alive with death. A soft wind floats the image away from me and gently pushes me along. My grandparents are waiting for me.

Testing booths lay abandoned and dusty, tucked into the crevices of buildings. They no longer offer fear and suspense, but we all avoid their gaze as if they can lure us into their shadowed folds and suck us back into the worst of it. Despite their gnawing presence, it seems we refuse to take them down. Dreading invisible wrath. Frozen at the thought of needing them again.

A stray dog barks in my periphery, and the echo flinches into my body. Everything feels like an omen. Good or bad? It doesn’t matter. Passing the hospital, the sanitised scent wafting out of the door overwhelms me, and I cross the street to escape it. Ashy smog envelops the smoking nurses in the yard, and their soft whispers of gossip reach across the road. A masked individual emerges from the doors, and I see how other passersby avert their gaze. Fearing the unknown. Fearing illness. Fearing death.

My slow pace delays me and prolongs the uncomfortable energy rising in the street. Craving distraction, I attempt to focus on my grandparents. They beckon me to visit, so I ignore the gaping mouths of the hospital’s windows. The ashy concrete under me feels heavy. Injects me with anxiety. I don’t know what I’m still dreading sometimes.

We all did the best that we could. We didn’t know. We didn’t know anything. And our ignorance did not offer us bliss. I look into the future and wonder how our descendants will perceive us. Will they scoff at our choices? Applaud our resilience? History does love a story about human suffering. We study deaths with sickening interest and invest in the stories of nations long lost. Perhaps we seek to learn. Perhaps we seek to revel.

The sun has risen higher now and glares down. The trees shake around the winter breeze like cowering soldiers and passerby huddle into their coats. My fingertips are dipped with purple cold, and my face feels detached. Despite my body arguing against me, I walk down the winding paths. They slip with soft ice, a white journey that leads me to the gates. An arched entrance towers over me, and I bow my head. I pass by the others now. They’re quiet, like always, and covered in blankets of tiny snowflakes as they recline into rest. I envy their positions. Life is too tiring for too long. I can tell that they have reached a new phase of existence, one that hopefully offers peace.

In the murky distance, past the other stony faces, I see my grandparents smiling at me. My blood quickens with anticipation, and before long, I stand with them. The etched drawing beckons me to a seat, but I place my bag on it instead.

“How are you Baba? Dedo?

You look nice today.

Let me wipe this snow off you, though.

It sure is cold.

I missed you, but I’m here now.

I won’t leave.

Not again.

I promise.”

I ignore the tears that fall onto the grave and melt the frosty layer. I ignore the silence of the yard. I ignore my hands turning blue from the cold. I ignore everything. I ignore how the blanket I cover them with slips off the headstone. I ignore the past three years. It didn’t happen. It never happened. Nothing’s changed. They can still hug me. I can still call them. I still feel them. He still holds my hand, and she still makes me food. He still sits at home on the soft lounge, and she still goes out to shop for my favourite treats.

I ignore that their empty house lies waiting for my return, echoing with my tears and their voices. I ignore that I have my return flight in a week. I ignore that they’ll soon be halfway across the world again. I mustn’t worry about such things because nothing’s happened. He never passed, and she never got sick and followed. She got the vaccine in time. He never felt pain or grew weary. They’re still together. Nothing’s changed.

I begin to clean and polish and wipe. I rip out the overgrown weeds and attempt to warm the stony grave in a foolish act of mock revival. I bring out food and drink and snack on our favourite foods. I consume more food than my body can fit. Even when I feel full, I stuff cake in my mouth, chasing it down with sugary juice. I want to try to fill the hole inside me. I sit, eat, eat, and eat, yet my mind is never content with my stomach. After some time of this constant consumption, I feel the food regurgitate in my throat. Panicked and disgusted, I throw it all up in a nearby garbage can. It feels like I’m drowning. I can’t breathe, and my eyes are watery with tears. I stare down into the portal of waste, wishing I, too, could be discarded and hidden from the world.

I flinch at a nearby sound only to meet the eyes of a hungry stray dog. Embarrassed at being seen in such a state by anything alive, I hurry back to my grandparent’s grave. I take solace under its dusty iron roof. Ashamed, I hug my knees to my chest and cower against the bench, ignoring the sour taste of vomit in my mouth and the burning of my throat. I imagine I appear like a sad, premature baby, huddled in her mother’s womb, revelling in the warmth and innocence of a life not yet suffered.

I wish I hadn’t been born. My mother chastises me when I say such things, but what human doesn’t think this? What human experiences suffering and is still content with this life? A life pockmarked with goodbyes that never truly leave our throats.

I feel too much. I know that. I feel everything in extremes, and it scares people. When Baba died, I cried till my whole body ached. I screamed and begged my mother to bring her back. I only succeeded in summoning my sister, who yelled at me to contain myself. I cried more. How can I contain a grief that is on my whole body? It is a mould that has spread to all the corners of my life and brought me hours of weeping. I am not in control of its contamination.

Though three years have passed, I still cry. I still ache. The mould has become a part of my skin and joints; it slows my movements, caught in the hinges of my bones. My body has become riddled with grief, and my bedroom walls still witness tears. They absorb them in sympathy and vow protection. If those walls could talk, they would only be capable of releasing screams.

Looking at the engraved dates of the gravestone, I grieve the seventeen years I knew her and the sixteen I knew him. I grieve the many more that I’ll have to live without them. I grieve more than I live. I weep more than I breathe.

This visit has been both static and fiery with emotion. My mind and body are telling me to leave, to get inside a warm room and start to heal, but my soul is glued to the spot. How could I leave them? It would feel like a betrayal. I had already missed their funerals. I had been stuck, helpless, continents away from my flesh and blood, flesh and blood that were disappearing into the abyss of the afterlife. A world that I could not call. I could not just phone them anymore and hear their sweet voices. Tell them about my day.

Despite my anger and frustration permeating every crevice of my mind, I could hear my grandparents telling me to go and rest. I felt like my mind was running too fast. thinking too much. I could hear Baba telling me to slow down. She always used to say that to me. She was always telling me to slow down and not stress. Telling me that everything will always turn out ok and never to worry. Never stress about things that cannot change. God, I wish I could change this.

Nonetheless, I packed up my belongings like I knew they’d want me to, and I tried to prepare myself to start the walk back home. Even though I don’t live here, my mother country always felt like where I was meant to be. Perhaps my parent’s migration had caused a rift in our family. Maybe that was why me and my sisters were never well. Perhaps that was why we cried and ached, and our bodies caused us pain. Maybe we existed in a completely wrong space. One that our DNA had not been prepared for. We had been brought somewhere new, hoping for a better existence, but maybe it had ruined us. I prayed Baba and Dedo weren’t feeling the same about their new movement. We have moved continents, but they have moved through time.

As I slowly ambled out of the graveyard, my bag of food knocking against my side, many thoughts were flying across my consciousness. How does one end a visit to dead people? Where does one see them again? And can they see me now? As I reached the graveyard gates, I allowed silence to settle in my head. Looking back over the sea of grey statues, and headstones, I felt watched by everyone there. Watched by people that once had the same ethnic blood running through their veins. It felt like I was looking at an army.

I knew that even if I wanted to collapse into the ground and join them, I had a story to tell and a story to live. Like they all had once. I needed to keep going and ensure our stories did not disappear amid the tensions of the world. I had to live for my people. For my ancestors and for everyone else that once shared my same culture. I had to live for my Baba and Dedo. I had to try to think that I will see them one day. I know it will not be soon, but it will be inevitable. And at least I can smile about that while I age.