Stealing Lavender: Chapter Five

Chapter Five

         Mara came back to life as if the gust of her spirit was being shoved back into a space it did not belong, shockingly shaken awake by an angelic brightness. The blinding white chamber they brought her to begin healing, it tasted like metal and folded origami in her mouth. Mara wanted to spit it back out. She imagined slitting her wrists here and how ripe her blood might look in its colorscape, a special crimson red to make the walls and floors appear more lived in.
         Her eyelids pinched against the invasive light that felt as violent as her last memories with Aiden. A monster, his face contorted into an appearance ungodly and tangled, an old and hollow killing tree. They had been fighting again, voices raving over one another in belief systems that separated them like far off countries. Mara had believed for a miniscule of a second, that she had the right to close a door. A search for serenity. But Aiden had needed validation, his newest melody about his awful sorrows needed Mara’s attention, her praise.
         An unabashed rage lifted from her toes, reaching the crook at the top of her spine, pausing briefly to sense the hard knock of visceral agony that clung there. Her head was directionless, fastened in place by a brace that sheltered her newborn trauma. She was a swollen peach, discarded and left to ripen in a scathing summer sun. When a nurse hesitantly unraveled her and handed her a mirror, she gaped not at Aiden’s darkened presence embedded in her skin but that in this hazy reflection, she looked just like her mother, Anna.
         Anna had always been quiet and quick to veil herself, often inside a book of fantasy or a heavily medicated slumber. Mara resembled her naturally, their childhood photos portraying them as twin sisters separated by decades. Born unruly and throat already worn, Mara claimed an identity opposite of Anna’s shielded nature. Where Anna was cautious, Mara leapt into the unknown. When Anna fell behind into the shadows, Mara reveled beneath any limelight that would house her. How Anna deceived for peace, Mara had led her life with an unbridled honesty. Anna promised, belly swollen and full of herself, that her daughter would never be like her and she kept that oath. Until now.
         It was anguishing to experience; a lead bullet that sat unmoving in Anna’s heart as she examined Mara from a threshold, all the blood draining from her high cheekbones. Anna’s love for her was endless, inescapable despite how often Mara had attempted to free herself from its devoted embrace. She watched as her daughter beveled her gaze as Mara inspected her bruised face in a mirror, the moments lasting too long. Anna wondered what she saw there or what she might be searching for. She reasoned with nostalgia, imagining Mara younger and still vibrant, the clever girl who undermined authority and sang at the top of her lungs. Anna was made timid by Mara on occasion, and as the anxiety lifted higher into her chest, she tried to clear the air,
         “Why didn’t you tell me things had gotten this bad?” Each word dropped like a brick in the silence. Mara’s own heart hardened fast, her demeanor stealing falsehoods of strength from whatever energy existed to be taken from. The inner-tantrum that had been building, that had her foaming at the mouth, dissipated into passivity swiftly like the snap of fingers. As if Mara had secretly been doing this her entire life, illustrating nonchalance, she sighed,
         “It’s not that bad. I’ve seen worse.” That slap landed hot across Anna’s chin, leaving a little blood on her bottom lip. She bit back her anger until it turned to shame, offering,
         “We have been worried about you, Mara…,” she nearly cried.
         “I haven’t seen you in years. Didn’t know you cared,” Mara lied, the phrases like sour dough sticking to her teeth, getting stuck in the in-between. She pretended like she didn’t see her mother’s tears swelling, like Anna hadn’t always called her freckles angel kisses and kissed them second with promises of safety.
         “A phone goes both ways,” Anna stated abruptly, defensive because she already blamed herself; an open wound now that Mara’s sharp nails could easily fester and take as prisoner. Still, she tried as she hesitantly moved into the room, her hues languid and lilac, melting into the floor on her way to the bed. Terrified, she reached out to touch Mara’s icy hand.
         But she lashed and lashed, until eventually, her mother left her again. She was finally alone in the stagnancy of the life she had created for herself. No longer could she blame Lavender, or her mother. Or even Aiden if you viewed the painted canvas in the correct light. Mara was an artist and she had sculpted the very livelihood she lived in, that she had survived in, and she was the reason she was made to endure. She had felt like it was what she deserved.
         Mara sat in that misunderstanding until it could nearly be deemed known, made historical. After Anna escaped into places less volatile, Mara wailed for hours as if she were undergoing a rebirth, the sac of her past and present ripped open by a fever. It pulsed through her violently, kicking her spine into a curl and driving her further into despair than she had ever been. A nurse flattened her back hand like a cloth on her forehead, inquiring intuition, and it told her Mara was unworthy. She hissed,
         “Your mother has enough to deal with, you know. You’ve a baby brother. Wonder what he thinks of this, you carrying on. You’re too young for this…” The singe of her words buzzed behind her as she disappeared into the hall. That cruelty had been enough to separate Mara from her body, a clean cut that left her in the darkest ether of disassociation. Mara had been muted. Any fight that had remained turned to steam and was carried away, her statuesque shell a tea kettle, whistling for the comfort of Death. The weighted blanket of silence that an end offered, she thought lovingly of being wrapped in it, overtaken by its permanency.
         She had attempted the jump before, but the whipping of the wind on the way down had given her enough reason to continue on despite. And Anna had been there in the aftermath, the unfeigned north star that Mara had searched desperately for in others, ignored. She recalled how Anna had bandaged her delicate arms once, their bottoms tattered and face up, open enough to jump in. Mara could still hear her mother’s haunted voice through time,
         “This is all my fault.”
         It took three midnight solus in the infirmary for me to call my mother, tears of regret streaming down my disfigured face, weaving its way over the brokenness. I apologized profusely, reciting sporadic recollections of abuse and madly stealing accountability for Aiden’s behavior. I am unruly and known to fight against all authority, so maybe, my own behavior warranted an explosion and he was an ill man. We both knew that. My sympathy convinced me that Aiden had just lost control, that I had forced him to this cliff of hysteria and misguided fury. If only I had been more quiet…
         But Mara was loud, she had always been an expressionist. A character that loved to unveil her view, create community, and revel in the hard laughter of others. She was bright and colorful, in bursts of magenta, vermilion, and hunter’s green. Mara smiled widely at strangers and felt downhearted whenever that smirk wasn’t returned. She loved the notion of destined meetings, of guards rails that couldn’t keep things in, and the off chance that a sign was a premonition. A sense of pride overwhelmed her whenever she guessed the time. And she was generous, having a capacity for a safe keeping that rivaled churches and ancient vaults.
         The one thing she and Anna had in common had been the thing that marred them, yes. Kindness. Aside from her labyrinthine mind, her kindness was the facet of Mara that Lavender had loved the most. Not that she hadn’t seen her tactlessness, its rare form like mockingbirds diving their sharp bills in sweet vengeance. Mara had a temper, we know but the wells of her patience went on, a tunnel through the earth, looking with its hooks for something to love. And when she loved, she did it with every inch of her being.
         There was this one time long ago, Lavender had pulled Mara close enough that auras dovetailed and lilted with a kind of sweet vengeance too,
         “You should love yourself like that.” What an idea. One that seemed impossible, like a math equation that could never quite click in the brain. And she was still counting on her fingers; the expansiveness of turning one’s love inward was as baffling as it was intimidating. It was a tidal wave and Mara was a ghat of human being, nearly there in the grand scheme, watching her demise encroaching from all around. The ocean would swell its chest, a savage wall of murder, and swallow her whole before she could ever learn these lessons of love. She was hopeless and an exhaustion hit her so heavy that sleep seemed like the sweetest way to live.
         And so, Mara slept, her mother welcoming her back eager and arms wide open. And like Anna, she stayed in slumber for as long as it would take her. When she was top side, Mara lived with her parents and while she licked her wounds, she trained her body in all the ways she could not coach her mind. When she finally left the house, she received compliments of how much she had changed, how she glowed, her cheeks kissed again by angels and sunlight. But Mara knew that below the surface, storms still brewed and the visions she had of it, they were unsightly and grave. She could feel its feathery turnings, its malignity.