The Summer I Met Charlie Sud

“Come on then.” Mamie said heading for the door, I looked back one more time and mouthed to Savannah that I was fine and thankfully she didn’t see through my lie.

We came to a dark wooden door that had fancy gold handles and right when I saw it, a wave of shock went through me. “Were going to my room?” I said more like a statement then a question, she turned around and nodded “Your memories are still here, you sure have not forgotten them.” She was right, I didn’t. They were always there, even when I didn’t know. I used to dream about The Caribbean Islands when I was young; little extract’s of people and places. In most of them, I was with a girl who was about 2 to 5, and we where playing in my room. The room I was about to step in. Let me explain a bit more about my room. It’s not a typical room; I have my bed that is dark wood with silver colored covers, my walls are white with silver outline of a tree that has no leafs, around my room you can see silver leaves floating because of the wind. The rest of my room is pretty simple, a lot of normal things, well, things a 5 year old would like. The special thing about my room is that, there is this wall that has a secret door, I found it and I never told anyone. Well there is someone I think I told but I don’t remember whom, probably a random friend of mine. So getting back to the secret door, when you go in, the first thing you see is stairs. The walls are painted a pale baby blue, with dark blue splashes everywhere, it’s beautiful but the best part is when you get up the stairs. There is a big window, which has the exact view of the lake with the field. The walls are painted so you feel like you’re in the middle of the field itself; you can see the hill from far way, the flowers, everything is there. It’s magical. There is a desk near the window and lot’s of different drawings and writing on it. I never really read any of it because I didn’t know how to and I was afraid that if anyone found out about here, I wouldn’t be aloud to come here anymore. All I did there is go through the pictures again and again and try and copy them on my own notebook, I guess this is how I came to love drawing.

I didn’t want to bring Mamie up there, it didn’t feel right. Like I was breaking an old promise. “Sit down dear,” Mamie said sitting at the end of the bed, I climbed on and sat crossed leg at the head of it. “I need to tell you something, and it’s not going to be easy.” She said with a pained look on her face. “The parents you have known your whole life aren’t your biological ones.” She said. I didn’t understand to start with, she said it in a language that wasn’t English. But then I realized what she was trying to get through to me, and my heads started spinning again. What did she mean? This is not right, I said to myself this is not right, my mom, my dad. They are mine. As much as I wanted to believe myself I knew she was right. I always knew I was different from my sisters they had black straight hair with brown eyes, and I had brown curly hair with abnormal eyes. It always felt wrong when we took pictures together, but I thought I was just being paranoid, that I had gotten my looks from a relative like my gran-grand-grandmother or something of the sort. A silent tear ran down my cheek. “I know this is hard to hear but your going to have to one day or another.” She said, again in the other language. By this time, I didn’t need time to understand anymore. She was speaking Créole, I remember being spoken to and speaking this language when I was younger. “Mathilde was 24 when you became her child. You were only 2, and didn’t know the difference. Your real mother Emilie, disappeared on the 5th of January, and ever since we have never seen or heard of her.” She said her voice starting to crack when she talked about my birth mother. “She was the sweetest girl, your mothers best friend and a girl I considered like my daughter. We never found out what happened to her, for years and years our family searched and searched, in those times you lived here, in this exact room. But after 3 years, we lost all hope, and Mathilde decided to take you back with her. Till this day, we never spoke a word about what happened, I still hope sometimes, but I have learned not to count on anything happening, because every time, my heart breaks a little more. When I heard Mathilde and Daniel passed away, I was completely devastated, I didn’t know any of you or your sisters contact so I send Garance to find out about how you were doing. She came back saying that she met you at their funeral and had talked to you and your sisters. I didn’t want to interfere with your life so I kept a close eye on all of you from a distance. I never thought that you would come here let alone and meet my grandson Charlie and his friends, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. You have truly become a wonderful person,” She said wiping my tears that were now unstoppable away “I’m sure that both of your mothers and father would have been proud of how you have matured.” I can’t believe this, out of all the people in the world this can only be happening to me. Even though this was the most unsettling thing I have heard, a little part of me was relieved. This explains so many questions that have been haunting me since I could think logically. There were three though, that still remained intact, but I knew Mamie could only answer two. “Mamie,” I said looking at her in the eyes that were glassy from all the crying “What about my father?” As soon as I said that, I could see her eyes changing from sadness, to discomfort. She looked away from me. “Maxime, He was a great man too, he used to take care of you all the time when you were younger.” She said smiling to herself at the memory. “ On the day that Emilie disappeared, he was devastated. For week he didn’t do anything, just stayed with you, taking care of you and if he wasn’t, he was nowhere to be found. This was Emilie’s and his room, when she was gone, he decided to make it yours. We didn’t know at that time, but he was planning on going to search for her. We tried to stop him, but he was so determinate to find her. We tried to tell him maybe she didn’t want to be found, but he was sure something was off. He wanted to take you with him, he really did but Mathilde wouldn’t let him, she told him that she would take care of you until he came back and she did. Every few weeks he came to see you, and then he would set off again. This continued for 5 months, but one day, he just started not coming back at all. The last time I heard from him was the day of your 3rd birthday, he send you a card, with a picture of your parents and you.” My life is a complete mess. I thought to myself. A huge complete mess. Mamie looked at me for a while, and then stood up heading for the door. “I’ll leave you to think about all this,” She said.