Never Really Alone

Chapter Two

Miranda Jean drowned in the river that ran through our farm on June 12th, 1953.  We were seven-years old that summer and filled to the brim with the pure tastes of excitement that summertime brings to the young.  The river wasn't very wide and at times when it was very low, we were able to actually walk across it.  But that day it was much higher and moving more quickly than usual.  I imagined that the fish might have a hard time keeping up with it.  Miranda Jean and I were identical twins, at least physically.  But she was always braver than I, more of a risk-taker, more courageous.

That day in June, before I could even get my foot in the water she had jumped in and was hollering for me to "Hurry up, scaredy-cat!"  I looked down at her and the river's current had already taken her well past where she'd gone in, and suddenly she was pulled under.  She rose to the surface and screamed once before she was yanked under again, further and further downstream.  I hollered over and over for someone to help and Daddy came running, along with Bandy, our hired man. 

By the time they got to her, Miranda Jean had gotten tangled in the vines at the root of one of the giant willow trees that stood at the bank, but by then it was too late.  She was dead.

Her braids and arms were tangled in wet green weeds and dirty vines, and she resembled a small mermaid child.  Her lips were blue and though Daddy laid her on the ground and tried hard to breathe life into her, she was already gone, and there was nothing anyone could do.

My father picked her up as carefully and gently as when he handled the baby chicks when they were born.  His hands, so brown and rough looked like rich dark wood against her pale skin.  I had to run to keep up with his long strides and by the time we got to the house, my mother was standing on the porch with Sousa's arm around her, waiting.  She'd heard the screaming.

Seeing Daddy carrying Miranda Jean in his arms, limp and dripping, a small sound escaped her lips, which grew to a terrifying keening and then she simply fell to the floor.

Bandy stood behind him now waiting for some direction of some kind.  Daddy turned and lifted Miranda Jean into Bandy's arms and asked him to take her inside and upstairs to the bedroom we shared.  Then he asked Sousa to take me into the kitchen and get me out of there.  Carefully he lifted my mother into a sitting position and just held her until all the tears she'd ever had, or ever would have, had been spent.

Sousa Irene Alberta Pickett had been a part of our family since before I was born.  She was tall and strong with skin the color of creamy coffee and a voice like poured honey.  She had no one else in her life and kind of adopted us when she came to help out when my mother was expecting Miranda Jean and me.  She had stayed on ever since.

She took me into the kitchen and rocked me in her lap, something she hadn't done in a very long time.  It was then that I understood the magnitude of what had happened.  Sousa's quiet tears blended with my shaking sobs, leaving a saltwater stain on her shirt and my legs, until I finally fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I remember waking up in my parent's bed.  I remember feeling very hungry and I wondered why, since I couldn't have been asleep for very long.  But from the window I could tell that the shadows of the trees were skinnier and taller.  I learned later that I had slept all the way through until the next afternoon.  Quickly I scampered to my room.  I wanted nothing more than to see my sister and prove to myself that everything that happened had been a bad dream.  But she wasn't there.  Both of our beds were empty.

I heard voices downstairs, but strangely, as if people were whispering.  Carefully, I tiptoed down and stopped when I reached the bottom.  But I didn't understand the scene that met my eyes.  Pastor and Mrs. Henley, my Grandpa, Aunt Freda and Uncle Walter, most of our neighbors and even people from town were there.  Mrs. Kramer from the grocery, Mr. Thomas from the hardware and an assortment of other people I didn't know, were milling around our parlor.

My mother was sitting in a chair next to a long wooden box, looking smaller than I'd ever seen her.  My father stood behind her with his hand gently resting on her shoulder.  It was then that my father noticed me standing at the foot of the stairs.  Quickly he came toward me and got down on one knee so as to be on my level and said, "Sarah Jane, would you like to come and say good-bye to your sister?"

I remember thinking, if she was dead, how could I say 'good-bye' to her and if she wasn't, why would I be saying 'good-bye'?  Where was she going?  But Daddy had asked me and so I said, "Yes."

He stood and took me by the hand and walked me over to the wooden box next to where my mother was sitting.  The box that my sister laid in was as shiny as our new dining table that my father had recently gone all the way to Dalton to buy for my mother.  Every single day she dusted and polished it.  My father joked that if she kept that up, one of these days it would just fade away.

It had golden handles on both sides and I remember wondering where a person would get a box like that.  I'd never seen one before.  On the inside it was pink and looked soft and pillowy, like the cotton candy we had gotten last fall at the County Fair.  But somehow I knew that if I touched it, it would be as hard as the ground in winter.

My mother stood as I came toward her and then folded me into her arms.  All around her were smells like Sunday church and bath-water and something else that I couldn't identify and I didn't want to, because it wasn't something good.  Then she kissed my cheek and led me up the small, upholstered stool that stood near the head of the box. 

There lay Miranda Jean, but not my Miranda Jean.  She no longer looked like a mermaid child, or even a child at all, but more like a store mannequin dressed up to look like a child.  Her long blonde braids had been brushed out and fell gently on her shoulders, and her lips and cheeks were an odd pink color.  Her skin was white like the underbelly of the fish Daddy sometimes caught.  Mama bought both of us new dresses for Easter; hers pink and mine blue with dotted-Swiss collars.  She was wearing that dress.  Her new white, patent-leather shoes had been put onto her feet, setting lightly on pink, ruffled socks.  Her hands were folded across her chest and sitting in the box with her was Baby Susan, her favorite doll.

She didn't look like Miranda Jean at all.  She looked like someone who looked like Miranda Jean.  My mother told me to kiss her cheek and say good-bye and when I did, her skin was cold under my lips and I recoiled.  I let go of my mother's hand and moved back to the relative safety of the stairs in the hall.  The room was overwhelming for me.  It was warm, there were too many people and there was an odd odor in the air.  Like the edge of winter when the snow has melted and the leaves that fell in Autumn were decaying.  I felt sick to my stomach and dizzy.  I turned to escape to somewhere, anywhere, and there was Sousa with open arms.

She took me into the kitchen, sat me at the table and served me my favorite comfort food; cornbread floating in warm cream.  When I was finished, she took me onto her lap and rubbed circles on my back until I began to get sleepy.  Then she led me upstairs, helped me into my pajamas and tucked me into my bed.  I felt as if I could sleep for one-hundred years, just like Rip-Van Winkle.  Maybe then, when I woke up it wouldn't hurt so bad that Miranda Jean was gone.

My sister stayed in that box in the parlor for two and a half days, and every time I looked at her in it, for some reason I was always aware of the shiny, newly stained wood.  To this day, I refuse to have any piece of furniture in my house that has a high shine.

The two and a half days followed the same pattern, never changing.  People milling about; whispered tears and neighbors bearing casseroles.  It became a hothouse of smells both good and bad.  My Aunt Freda's perfume that always made me think of roses, Uncle Walter's mints and Mrs. Faylor, who always smelled like rancid powder.  And every dish held its own distinctive aroma.  There were the smells of broccoli and carrots and beef and bacon wrapped together with cherry cobbler, sweet potato pie and chocolate cake. 

Then there were the house smells, my father's pipe tobacco, the smell of freshly waxed floors and Sousa's hair lacquer.  And Miranda Jean herself, I never knew if it was her or the polished box, because I never dared ask, but there was a smell that carried underneath all the others that just turned my stomach.  No amount of pleading or coaxing could get me to eat during that time.  I just couldn't.  I have often wondered since why people think that grief produces hunger.

I wasn't the only one who wasn't eating.  I don't believe I saw a morsel of food pass my mother's lips during that entire time.  She didn't speak much either, but instead alternated sitting in the chair by Miranda Jean, or on the rocker in the parlor holding me.  I remember it as clearly as if it were this morning.

When I could, I spent as much time as possible outdoors.  Aside from the neighbors sitting and standing on our wide front porch, it was easy to just fade into the background.  Our farm was verdant and green that summer and in June, nearly everything was in bloom.  But for me it was as if my world had lost all of its color, everything seemed gray.  The sun no longer danced among the willow tree's leaves and my mother's rose garden seemed to be thorny and lifeless.  I thought at times, that even the birds had stopped singing.  I would never be able to manage without Miranda Jean and I knew it.

On the last day, Miranda Jean was lowered into the ground amid a circle of broken hearts and torn hopes.  That was the first time I saw her.  Miranda Jean, I mean.  I heard a noise and turned away from her grave and there she was, standing under the oak tree smiling at me.  She was wearing her yellow and green plaid sun-suit that she was wearing the day she drowned, and she was waving to me.  I looked at everyone else including my mother and father, but no one noticed her.  I pulled on my mother's hand to get her attention, but she just hushed me and wouldn't pay attention.

I was determined to get to the bottom of this.  I remember thinking if Miranda Jean was back, I was going to do whatever I had to in order to hang onto her, so she'd never go away again.  As soon as the service ended and the group moved back to the house for food and coffee, I ran as fast as I could straight to her.  I tried to hug her but my arms went right through her.  We sat on the grass and she told me all about where she had been for the last three days.  I've wished so many times that I could remember what she said, but at the time I was so excited that she was back, I didn't really listen.

After awhile we ran back to the house, but when I got there she was gone again.  So I rushed into the house to find my mother to tell her the good news.  "She's back, Mama, she's back, " I said, "Miranda Jean is back!"  The room fell silent and every pair of eyes was glued to me.  My mother who had been standing, suddenly dropped into the nearest chair and my father rushed to her side.

Once he was certain my mother was alright, he turned to me.  "Sarah Jane, now you know that's not true.  Miranda Jean drowned and we are all very sad and we miss her very much, but she's gone now and there's no sense in pretending she isn't.  You musn't say those things.  Sousa, please get Sarah Jane some lunch and then take her upstairs for a nap."

"But Daddy, she was there.  I saw her, I did." I said.

"Not another word, Sarah Jane.  I mean it.  Now you go with Sousa."  So off I went, shoulders slumped and very confused.  I ate a cold and wet tuna sandwich, a warm glass of milk and stomped up the stairs.  When I opened my bedroom door, there was Miranda Jean sitting on her bed playing with one of her dolls.

My eyes and mouth popped open and I quickly closed the door.  "Miranda Jean, what are you doing?"  I asked.

"Sarah Jane, I can't go away.  I want to be here.  We're two peas in a pod, like Sousa says."

"But why can't anyone see you except for me?"

"I dunno, maybe it's 'cause we're twins."

She jumped off the bed and hugged me as if she was solid again, and we sat on the floor playing for the rest of the afternoon.  That night she slept in my bed with me and we talked for hours.  It was so good to have her back.