The Woods

The oppressive heat of our old house was going to swallow me whole.

It had been unbearably warm for several days, the kind of heat that had me tangled and sweaty in my bed late at night, with the sheets sticking to the backs of my legs. Now, with my home invaded by mourners, their names and faces blurring into an endless sea of black, the air grew thicker and heavier around me.

I tugged at the high neck of my own black frock, which, along with my tights, was suffocating me in the same way all of these people were. An unwelcome current of humid air was pushing its way through the crowd from the open back door.

”They better not let Mum see that door open,” I couldn’t help but think. ”She’s going to have an absolute cow.”

I slammed the door shut on those thoughts before they could go any further as another spasm of pain shot through my chest. My mother wouldn’t have anything to say about the back door ever again.

My corner of the room was not doing the job I had selected it for, to keep me hidden from everyone who showed up for the funeral. People I had rarely seen insisted on crushing me into their chests and wailing about what a terrible shame it was that my mother died so young and so tragically. They would go on about her courage and her strength, about how she lit up every room she was in, about how she was always willing to lend a hand. I would suffer in silence, knowing in my heart something they didn’t: They didn’t know my mother at all.

I had never met anyone as cowardly as my mother. If my father would let her, she would have just stayed hidden away in her room. She fretted and fussed over everything, particularly anything pertaining to me. My first day of school, she cried all day and tried to pick me up at lunch time to go home. She would hide from every salesman that came to the door, panic at the thought of attending church with my father, and shy away from any major cooking utensils. She hated all the ladies who lived in our neighborhood, hated talking to them and helping them and pretending to like them. And if there was one thing my mother certainly never did, it was glow.

She was a small and unimposing woman: short, stocky, and all around very plain looking. Her long dirty blonde hair, hair that I inherited, was always pulled back into a strange knot, making her face appear too wide. Her natural stance was a sort of hunched position, as if she expected to be struck at any moment. She wore the plainest housedresses she could find, all the better to hide herself in plain sight, and she always wore men’s shoes, a habit she never could kick.

“There you are, darling,” said a quiet voice behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to see it was my father, but I did anyway.

He kissed my forehead and looked at me with tired eyes. “How are you holding up?” he asked in that same quiet way.

I always believed my mother and father were made for each other. Neither one was particularly attractive or had much of a personality, and neither one stood taller than 5’6”. They were both paranoid and neurotic, and too soft-spoken to make any sort of real contribution to the world. My parents, while similar in temperament and features, also shared a strange taste in fashion. My father was a fan of the secondhand suit, the ones with patches on the elbows and an overpowering smell of mothballs. His tie was always crooked and adorned with an odd pattern, and the shirt underneath the suit was never ironed since both my parents were too afraid that they would leave the iron on and burn down the house to use it.

Dad, however similar he was to Mum, always kept a certain cheer about him. He was overall a pleasant man with an easy manner, despite his neuroticism. That cheer seemed to seep out of him over the last week; with every night he spent in a hospital chair, he grew dimmer and older. Now he stood before me in a wrinkled black suit, his eyes heavy and his more lined than before.

“I’m fine, Dad,” I told him, though I wasn’t sure how I was feeling. “How about you?”

He shrugged, “Oh, you know…” he trailed off, smiling sadly. “I carry on.”

He slipped an arm around me in a weak hug and kissed the top of my head before walking into the den. He needed to be around people like the ones I had been avoiding all morning. He needed the compliments and condolences, the lies and sympathetic smiles.

I hadn’t been there when she had her accident. The doctor’s think a seizure is what made her fall down the stairs and crack her head on the floor. They also saw no reason why she wouldn’t be able to make a full recover if she fought. I think that’s when I knew she wouldn’t pull through. My mother wasn’t a fighter, in fact she had probably already given up. My father and I, and occasionally Michael, my boyfriend, stayed by her bedside for three days before it was all over. I think Michael was more upset than both me and Dad combined. Dad and I had endured the following days in the same quiet way we had endured everything else in our lives.

It wasn’t long after my father left that I felt a familiar hand slip into mine. I wasted no time wrestling my hand from Michael’s grip and crossed my arms to prevent any further signs of affection. Michael sighed and looked at me as if I were a petulant child, yet another thing I recently decided I hated about him.

“I know you’re just upset right now,” he started, his voice falling into that affected air of superiority, “so I’ll stick by you until you come to your senses. I know you didn’t really mean what you said the other day.” I rolled my eyes and turned my back to him.

He sighed again, and I could picture his slightly curly brown hair flopping into his eyes. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I immediately tried to shrug them off. “Come on, Sammy, you can’t really want to break up with me. We’ve been together nearly two years now. Why ruin a good thing just because you’re upset and feel the need to lash out?”

The truth was I had always thought Michael was a bit of a prat. He was just the first boy that ever took an interest in me, and I hated not being like everyone else so I agreed to go out with him. He liked to patronize me and treat me like porcelain, which I hadn’t always minded so much until recently. He had been captain of the debate team, which made him believe that someday he would be a competent lawyer, so he strutted about with a puffed up air of self-importance. He was stuffy and dull and had no problem with me not going to university, qualities I had inexplicably decided I couldn’t stand two days ago. So I dumped him while my father and I shopped for coffins.

Me: So why did you decide to come along?

Michael: In case you needed me, babe. You shouldn’t be doing this on your own.

Me: My father’s here.

Michael: Well, I still feel like I should be here with you.

Me: I can handle it, Michael.

Michael: It would probably help to have someone around with a little business since.

Me: My father is a salesman.

Michael: But you’re not a salesman.

Me: Yes, thank you for pointing that out. But really, Michael, you don’t need to be here.

Michael: Look, Sammy, I know you’re going through a hard time just now, but you need me.

Me: No, I don’t. And stop calling me that, it’s not my name.

Michael: You’re so blinded by grief that you can’t see how much you need me. It’s ok, though, I won’t hold it against you.

Me: Michael, I’d like you to leave.

Michael: You’re serious?

Me: Very. In fact, I want to break up. Right now.

Michael: Babe, let’s not cause a scene.

Me: Who’s causing a scene? I just want to break up!

Michael: Sammy—

Me: That’s not my name! Go away!

Michael: I can see you’re becoming hysterical. We’ll talk about this when you’ve calmed down a bit.

Me: No, we won’t.

End break up.

“I’ve asked you to stop calling me that, Michael. It makes me feel like a dog or something,” I told him as I moved towards the kitchen.

He sighed in that patronizing way of his again. “Ok, Samson, but there are two people in this relationship. We can’t break up without both of us consenting to it.”

That’s right, my mother named me Samson, after that warrior bloke from the Bible. She’d actually attended a service a few weeks before I was born, only I don’t think she was listening very hard. She heard all about Samson’s strength and faith and bravery, but she seemed to have missed the part about him being a man. She also missed the part where he gets deceived by a whore.

“That’s rubbish, Michael. Couples break up all the time without both parties consenting to the split. We’ve just become a statistic.”

He continued to follow me into the kitchen, blathering on about the special thing we have going and how much he loves me. It was getting to be a lot more than I could handle. “—and we’re so good for each other, babe. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”

Maybe it was the overwhelming warmth stirring the air, or I was more upset about my mother’s death than I realized, but I suddenly felt the need to lash out at someone. I had never actually yelled at anyone before or had an urge to, so I decided I would let these new feelings carry me where they liked. I whirled around to face Michael. “I can see everything just fine, Michael! I wasn’t your girlfriend, I was your doormat. Your scared little ’Sammy who never spoke out of turn or embarrassed you or had any desire to leave you! I can’t do it anymore, Michael! You’re pretentious and arrogant and boring, and I can’t make myself pretend to put up with it anymore!” I had not only captured his full attention, but also the attention of half the funeral guests. My cheeks burned red with embarrassment, but I refused to let myself feel it fully until I finished what I had to say. “Now, I really think you should leave, Michael.”

He gaped at me as his face turned a mottled purple. After several long moments he snapped his mouth shut, nodded stiffly, and exited through the open back door. The crowd that had gathered to see my theatrics slowly dissipated, and I fled for the upstairs bathroom. I slammed the door behind me and lay down on the linoleum. The cool tiles felt like heaven against my burning skin, and I sighed in contentment.

Perhaps I was still riding the wave of resentment from my row with Michael, but I started to feel pricks of anger at my mother poking my skin like a thousand tiny needles. How dare she die like that and leave me and my father all alone? How could she raise me to be so weak and afraid or everything like she was? What kind of mother was she?

Tears hotter than the air swirling circulating the house leaked from my eyes and spilled onto the floor around me and into my long, dirty blonde hair. My breath came in short gasps as I cried, not the panicked cry I had become accustomed to over the years. The enormity of the anger and grief I felt tightened like a fist inside my chest and pulled for all it was worth until I thought my heart would fly away from me.

Eventually I cried myself into a deep and fitful sleep. My dreams were shadows of green and brown and black dancing in a terrifying ring around me, and the weight of eyes so deep and black. A pressure rose up from my stomach and forced a cry from my lips as I woke suddenly, the image of an animal burning still in my retinas. I continued to lie completely still on the bathroom floor until the pressure in my stomach rose up again and I emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet.

After brushing my teeth for nearly ten minutes, I slipped back downstairs. The house was deserted, remnants of the gathering strewn about on tables and chairs. The clock about the mantle told me it was nearly half past four, meaning I had been asleep for nearly five hours. I was just about to retreat back upstairs to change into something far more comfortable than my now-wrinkled black frock, but something caught my eye. The back door was still open.

A strange tingling began at the base of my spine and traveled all over my body until I wasn’t sure whether or not I had control over my actions. My legs burned as I slowly made my way onto the back porch. The late afternoon sun hung over the endless expanse of trees, casting shadows all over my backyard. The air was getting a bit nippy, a sharp contrast from this morning, so I pulled my sleeves down a bit as I stepped off of the porch.

The woods loomed up over me, making me feel small and unimportant, and somehow I wasn’t scared. Their malevolence felt almost like a well-worn coat or the warm arms of a friend. My heart gave several tiny thumps as I slowly made my way closer to the edge. I brushed away the hair that had fallen into my eyes as a small wind kicked up. From far away I heard a howl that ran deep in my blood, the tingling in my spine turning to a chill. Still, I was not scared, a first for me.

An image of my mother floated into my head, her lips pursed and her forehead wrinkled. ”What on earth are you doing out here, Samson? You will get right back in that house, young lady! That dreadful place is not for you, do you hear me? Now, go!”

Smiling slightly, I stepped under the dark canopy of trees and entered the woods.