The Eyes and Ears of Love (13 page)

Dorothy pushes her mom off the bed, crying out, “Donna! Where are you?”

Dorothy hears her mom’s footsteps scrambling to a standing position and hurrying out of the room. The door slams, and Dorothy begins twisting the knob, trying to pull the door open. “
Mom, you can’t keep me from my sister!
” she yells. She hears her mom’s body weight slide down the door while sobbing, still holding the knob, as her daughter yells to let her out.

Dorothy falls to her knees, banging on the door, as she touches back with reality. Her yells simmer to a soft tone, and finally she says aloud, “it was just a dream, she’s gone.”

She crawls back into bed, holding onto to an image of her sister in her mind to give her comfort. Just before she dozes off, she hears the door come back open and her mother padding quietly over to her bed to adjust her sheets.

She continued to have the same dream, or a similar dream, every time she fell asleep. She didn’t understand what her sister meant by the only way she can forgive Dorothy is if Dorothy forgives her. How could they have both done something wrong and why couldn’t Dorothy remember? Dorothy and her mom fall into a routine where anytime her mom hears Dorothy scream “Donna,” she rushes into her room so she doesn’t have to continue suffering the dream.

Three and a half months pass and its Christmas day. Dorothy has still not left her bedroom except to use the restroom or shower. She has lost about twenty pounds, only eating when several days have passed and the gnaw of hunger finally tells her brain that she must eat to survive.  

Today is especially hard not just because it’s the first Christmas without Donna, but because tomorrow would have been Donna’s twentieth birthday.

Her mom knocks on her door. Dorothy doesn’t answer, but she hears the creak of the hinges, signaling her mom’s entrance.

“I brought you dinner.”

Dorothy shakes her head.

“We’re going to get through this honey,” her mother promises.

Dorothy tightens her eyes, trying to trap the tears that have already developed.

Her mom puts the food on the dresser and sits by her side. “You don’t have to keep your guard up anymore.  Especially in front of me,” she says softly. “It’s time we begin to heal and we can’t do that until you properly grieve.” She pauses, waiting for Dorothy to say something but she doesn’t. “I think tomorrow would be the perfect day to go visit Donna at her grave.”

“No.” She says bluntly.

Her mother doesn’t push it.

By February, her mom has begun counseling and even joins a support group for parents who have lost children. Dorothy is seeing a new side of her mother since the counseling began. She is stern, harder to push around. One day, she even told Dorothy that her psychiatrist had said, flat out, that she was enabling her daughter by doing so much for her. Dorothy just scoffed, but secretly worried if this meant she is going to have to get out of bed more often. 

Her mom understands that she cannot force her daughter to grieve or visit her sister’s grave, but she can force her to go to counseling. One cold winter day, after a forty five minute struggle to get her blind child downstairs, Dorothy’s mom plants her daughter in the car and buckles her. Dorothy screams and fights the best that her physical strength allows.

“This is so stupid.” Dorothy snarls, crossing her arms and flaring her nostrils.

“I really think this is going to be good for you, for us. Counseling has helped me a lot and I truly believe it will help you.”

Dorothy feels the car rumble to a start and begin to move. She mutters, “Sure. After you lose a kid you suddenly want to be a mom. Wish Donna could’ve seen this.”

She slams on the brakes and the car slides on the sleek snow before the traction is felt kicking in.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” her mother yells, her voice sounding canned in the small space. “I am sick of this. I lost a fucking daughter. I lost my nineteen year old daughter. Don't act like you’re the only one who lost someone.”

Dorothy feels her mom’s hands on her shoulders and recoils. Her mother clamps down on them and shakes her, as if she’s begging.

“I am so sorry you were in that car baby, I am so sorry Donna was in that car. I can't go back and change Luke going behind the wheel.”

The sound of his name sends chills up Dorothy’s spine. They’ve never said his name aloud since the hospital.

“I can't change the collision that happened between both of the cars.” She continues, “I can’t change the alcohol you all drank. And most of all I can't change the glass shattering into your eyes. I can't bring Donna or your vision back. I need you to give me a break because my heart needs to try and heal, Dorothy. I am running out of words to say to you.” She sniffles and continues driving.

“Why weren’t you this upset when dad died?”

She doesn’t speak. Dorothy can feel the tension in the air. It cuts her, but she wants to hear what her mother has to say. She prods further. “I mean maybe this whole thing could have been prevented. Maybe if you weren’t screwing your best friend’s husband, dad wouldn’t have hung himself, and then we would still be happy. Then, me and Donna would have stayed in Oregon to go to school and you wouldn’t be fucking everything that has a dick.”

“Dorothy, please stop.”

“No, you deserve this. I sealed my lips for years. Did you really think I bought your stories of going to the grocery store at 10 o’clock at night, or the church fundraisers you were spending all your time attending? I knew you were out sleeping around.”

“Dorothy, I—” her mother’s voice is shaky.

“Mom, how could you that? Do you even miss him?”

“Of course I do, honey. I miss him every day.”

“How could you miss him if you were responsible for triggering his death?”

“Daddy was his own person, Dorothy, with his own choices. You shouldn’t hold me responsible for his decisions. The same goes for Donna.”

“You know, maybe this couldn’t have been prevented, but I am certain of one thing. God is punishing you. God saw how awful of a human being you are and took away the one thing you loved most, Donna. Because of the awful things you did, not only do you have to suffer but I had to be brought down with you. No matter which way you look at this, this is your fault.”

They don’t say anything the remainder of the drive. When they get to their destination, her mom takes Dorothy firmly by the arm and guides her. The air is crisp and it smells like burning firewood.

Dorothy can hear shuffling of paper. The couch she is sitting on is stiff and the plastic cover crinkles every time she adjusts her bottom for a more comfortable position. She can’t see the psychiatrist, but her voice is soft and fragile, a woman probably in her sixties. Her mom steps out of the room and assures Dorothy she’ll be waiting.

“What do you want to talk about today, Dorothy?”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have absolutely nothing to say,” she says bluntly. 

After an hour of only answering yes or no to her questions, the psychiatrist asks Dorothy to leave while she talks to her mom.

The next three months are more of the same: Dorothy’s mom dragging her to the car, sometimes physically, Dorothy refusing to speak, Dorothy’s mom guiding her back up to her bedroom to sleep.

Her mom eventually stops babying her and avoids verbal interaction with Dorothy all together. Finally her mom stops taking her to counseling. Dorothy is showing no improvement and she stops talking to the psychiatrist by the third session, refusing to answer a single question.

It’s May now, the birds chirp outside of Dorothy’s closed window as she’s curled up in her bed. It resembles the same chirping she and Janessa would hear outside their dorm from a tree that was arm’s length from their window, which contained several nests. There was one nest that Janessa noticed had been neglected for several days; it really beat her up to think the eggs would hatch and the mother was nowhere to be found. So she devised a plan to raise the hatchlings as her own and Dorothy was guilt-tripped into it. Dorothy held both of Janessa’s legs while she reached out of the window to retrieve the nest. Instantaneously a bird, presumably the mother, appeared and squawked at Janessa while pecking at her hands. “ABORT! ABORT!” she yelled. Dorothy used all her strength to pull her back in.

Dorothy chuckles and slowly frowns. Janessa should be finishing up her first year of college this month and Donna would be finishing up her second. She wonders how Janessa enjoyed her first year.

Did she get good grades? Is she staying for her second year?

She hasn’t spoken to Janessa since she was in the hospital; she hasn’t even called or visited since. Dorothy understands though. If Janessa had lost her vision and a sister, all in one night, Dorothy wouldn’t know what to say to her either.

The following months are spent doing what became the usual routine, staying in bed unless to shower or use the restroom. Her mom stops cooking and only brings her cold cut sandwiches. It doesn’t bother Dorothy because even after nine and half months of losing her sister, she has no appetite or craving for food so sandwiches were enough to keep her alive. She hasn’t listened to the television or the radio. Hearing cooking advertisements and segments made her the angriest so she neglected television and radio to avoid having to risk listening to them.  

This is how she wants to spend the rest of her life, in bed and away from people. Her bed seems to make time fly by. The faster the time, the closer to death and the sooner she could be finally be put to death next to her sister and father’s graves.  

It’s the beginning of August now and in two weeks the fall semester will begin at the university. Dorothy lays on her bed in the afternoon. She’s braiding the fringes on her crochet blanket. There’s at least fifty braids, so far, based off what she can feel. She hears a knock at the door.

She sighs, “Come in.”

The door opens, but no one says anything.

Dorothy drops the braid tangled between her fingers, “What do you want?” she asks, knowing it’s her mother.

Her mother finally speaks, “I got off the phone with Janessa just a while ago—”

Dorothy’s heart thumps louder and louder. “What did she say?” she interrupts as she sits up.

“She would like to see you.”

“She’s coming here?” she asks, unable to conceal the excitement in her voice.

“No, unfortunately she can’t come here.”

“So, what does that mean then?”

“It means, you and I are going to Florida.”

“Really mom? You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my gosh! I can’t wait to see her! Are we driving or are we flying? When are we leaving?”

“Hold your horses! We are flying and we leave tomorrow.”

I can’t wait to see my best friend!
She thinks to herself.

“I can’t wait to see her!” Dorothy expresses aloud.

At 3:00 a.m. the next morning, Dorothy waits for her mother to get out of bed and help her get ready for the flight. She was unable to sleep because of the excitement she has to see Janessa. Her mother loads Dorothy and the luggage into the car. She then gets into the car and opens Dorothy’s hand dropping two tiny objects inside her palm.

“What’s this?” Dorothy asks feeling the round objects.

“Two of my sleeping pills.”

“Why?”

“I think you should take them. The plane might be overwhelming for you. The flight is seven hours, it might not hurt to just sleep through it.”

Maybe she’s right,
Dorothy thinks to herself.   

She takes both pills and feels herself slowly drifting into sleep with each mile to the airport.

Dorothy wakes to feeling herself in motion. She wipes the sleep from her eyes and erects her posture. She feels a window next to her. “Are we still on the plane?” Dorothy asks, feeling groggy.

“No, we already landed! We are now in a rental car, heading to check into the hotel,” her mother says.

I slept the entire flight?

“Did you carry me the entire way?”

“No!” her mother laughs. “The airport had a wheelchair.”

“Oh. When are we meeting Janessa?”

“We are meeting her at the university at 3:00 p.m.”

At the hotel, her mother helps to get her dressed for the day and then they get back in the car to drive to the university. Her mother puts the car in park.

“Where’s Janessa meeting us at? The Coffee Hut?” Dorothy asks unbuckling her seatbelt.

Her mother doesn’t reply.

She pauses momentarily and asks once more, “Mom, where’s Janessa meeting us at?”

“I lied, honey,” she finally says, “Janessa didn’t ask to see you.”

“What?” Dorothy swallows hard. “Why are we here then?”

“I just didn’t want a struggle,” she sighs. “I wanted to take you here without a fight.”

Dorothy clenches her jaw and grips the door handle. “Where are we?”

“We are in Florida and we are at the university.”