It sets on slow.
There's a woman in white, hot air blowing in your face, and the pull of the earth tugging on your bones. You look around, your curious eyes landing on smoke stained walls and empty guitar cases. A voice, thick and southern, chimes in your head.
This is your home, remember?
The Woman holds her hand out to you, her soft eyes putting you at ease.
This is my home?
The Woman points to a relic on the wall, a dead, dried out tarantula trapped underneath clear packing tape. It was here when your family got this house, it was the first thing you noticed when you entered the basement and it brought constant nightmares on your sister and you as kids. This is the Yellow House, you finally remember. This is the house where you found that green snake underneath the tulip plants. This is the house where you had your first dog.
This is the house where your mother died.
-
Every morning, 9:43, you pray. Every afternoon, 12:06, you pray. Every night, 6:32, you pray. In respectable homes most people would say that this is too much, you would agree if you knew any other life.
Your mother has always been a feeble woman but a God-fearing servant.
She used to tell you every night "even the stars came out to protect you" and kiss you on the forehead.
-
"Why do you do that?" Callie asks you, a girl of sixteen with long blond hair and a piece of gum always in her mouth.
"Do what?"
"Why do you pray if there's nothing listening?"
You take a moment to evaluate the question at hand, roll it over your tongue, let it resonate. It is perfectly sound to be curious of the inevitable and unseen. The truth being, if you ever try to explain your religion to some one, you will sound insane.
"I don't know," you turn to her, "I just have to believe that there's someone there."
-
Your brother Joseph is a disappointment.
"You can't listen to what they're feeding you. It's all a lie." He grips you by the shoulders, his eyes grey and dead. A shiver enters the room and it wraps around you like a hug.
"There is nothing out there." He says indefinitely.
"How do you know?"
"If there is a God, we wouldn't have lost her."
-
Callie lifts her perfect eyebrows."I don't understand."
"That's kind of the point-"
She puts her phone down, "but why? We can see everything else but we can't see a so called God? Is he too much of a coward to show himself?"
You can feel the words in your throat, stuck, begging.
"I don't know."
"So you admit that there is no God?
"I admit that there are things that I do not know, we aren't supposed to know everything."
You stomach wretches, you are a perfect illustration to her as somebody who's known nothing but not-knowing her whole life. You think she pities you sometimes, after all, you'd pity you.
-
You still remember the day it happened.
It was very sunny, maybe even beautiful. You passed family after family on the street, some of them fighting, some loving, one group barely speaking. You thought to yourself- "Is this it? Is this all there is to life? One God, one husband, one family?"
You remember this when people tell you that things happen for a reason. You still think it's your fault, you thought it was all so boring. You thought what seemed like the "Godly" ideal of life was a tempered down waste of what the world had to offer. How could this be it?
Like he will sometimes do, God answered.
-
"Where is he?" Callie asks, no longer caring for anyone who wanted to take a listen.
Your mom used to tell you that God was in the wind, even though we could never see it you always felt it. You knew the wind was there when it hit you or blew the leaves away, the subtle breezes and shifting seasons.
"I think that's something you need to figure out for yourself."
Callie found her God in pieces of paper, the gracious placing of words.
-
You die in a freeway car crash on June 27, 2009, a Wednesday.
Your dad locked himself and your brother in the car, they sat and cried, the rain poured and it disgusted them.
How dare it rain when you needed the sun? Was God and space and time and life's unanswerable questions all in that storm? Did you pay close enough attention? Would you ever truly know?
Joseph turns to your father with tear stained eyes, they're just sitting here now. The two of them too scared to speak to one another, too fragile to touch. He tells him everything he needs to know in one look, in one glance.
-
The name Anna means "graceful". Something Aunt after Aunt has attempted to explain to you but ultimately means that you must find out what is grace to you, yourself. The same way you learn that cold Florida mornings were things to be proud of, or that History was just the crossroads at which Science and Faith met. That maybe God and Death walked hand in hand, like brothers and not only coexisted, but interacted.
Maybe you'll never know how that tarantula got stuck on the wall, or why Joseph lived the way he did, or why humans could never comprehend the unseen.
The answer to everything comes simply: we may never know.
