Rain

Mother always cried when it rained.

At the first sign of lighting and thunder, she would walk around the house, closing all the windows. Then she’d take me in her arms, and twirl me around the room. As the rain poured down from the sky, tears poured down from her eyes.

When I got too big to pick up, mother would sit on the couch by the window, and I would sit next to her. Sometimes she would stand and pirouette and twirl and turn all by herself. Then she’d stop, and sit beside me again. We’d watch the rain drive itself against the window pane, as if trying to break in; lightning streaking across the sky, illuminating the tears on her face. I never understood why she cried. I asked her once and all she said was, “It’s too beautiful not to cry.”

***

Mother died last week. As I sort through her things, I wonder what kind of life she really led. In the years I had been gone, I knew nothing of her life. I deposited money in her bank account every month, sometimes a lot, sometimes hardly worth the paper I wrote the deposit on. I never called, never came back. I never heard from her.

Sometimes I’d run into old neighbors. “Oh, your mother misses you so!” they’d exclaim. “When are you coming home to visit?” Soon, soon, I’d always say, and I’d quickly extricate myself and walk away. 

It was Aunt Bella, the old lady across the street, who had finally called me. “Your mother died, Anna. I found your number on the pad beside her phone.” I didn’t quite catch the rest of what she said. “Alright, I’m coming home,” was all I said, and then I hung up as she was still speaking.

Mother is dead. The thought had echoed in my head. I probed my heart for sadness, and there was none. Immediately my conscience rebelled. What kind of daughter does not grieve at the death of her mother? It taunted me, that little voice in my head. Worthless child. Foolish girl.

I tried to shush that voice, and launched instead into a whirlwind of preparation to go take care of mother. Of course, I would be gone for at least two weeks. I stopped the paper delivery, asked the couple across the hall to gather any mail. The cat…if I left the window partly open, and set out the whole sack of food in different bowls…the cat would have sense not to starve, wouldn’t it?

Now, five days later, I stand in front of her closet, rifling through dozens of dresses—never worn, their tags still on. They are party dresses, dancing dresses, the floaty, airy kind. I look at the tags; all of them from expensive designer shops. Below the dresses are dozens of dancing shoes, all in their boxes, some are scuffed and worn out, some brand new. I remember mother’s love for dresses. When she twirled around on those rainy days, I remember her skirts dancing in graceful circles around her, her bare feet peeking out from the hems.

I remember I had a dress just like mother’s, with a full skirt that flared out as I spun. I would put on that dress every afternoon and twirl around my room, just like mother would. One afternoon, I saw mother watching me from the door, “Look, mother, I’m so pretty, just like you!” She marched towards me, her voice shaking with anger. “No, Anna. That is an ugly dress!” And she yanked the dress off me and tossed it in a heap on the floor. “Never, ever wear that dress unless I tell you to,” she said, kneeling before me, her hands like vises around my arms. “Do you understand?” As I started crying, she shook me. “Don’t cry unless you want me to give you something to really cry about!”

I don’t think I ever cried after that, not even when I heard that mother died.

I go through mother’s desk. There is a thick plastic binder, ripped and taped and re-taped. I open it; it’s full of clippings from newspapers and magazines. The first one is yellowed and brittle and familiar. I realize with a jolt that it is the first story I wrote for a seedy little tabloid, about a dead body found with no head. I flip through the binder. Every story I wrote, every article, every snippet for the past 10 years—all here. I slowly put the binder down and I wonder once again about this woman that was my mother. 

I wander around the house, touching familiar things. The little glass ballerina on top of the kitchen counter; the lopsided papier-mâché horse I made, still on the bookshelf; a picture of mother smiling, her hair blowing in the wind, on top of the piano. In my room, I open the closet. I know it’s still here, that beautiful dress I wore on that last day that I cried. I pry open the loose board at the bottom of the closet, my secret hiding place. Here I kept all the things that I never wanted mother to see. Cigarettes, trashy romance novels (“What kind of things are you reading, Anna? Those are unreal stories, making you believe in things that never really happen!”), love letters from boys…and that dress.

I had never told mother what I did with that dress, and she never asked. The next time it rained, I wore my jeans and stoically stared out the window, ignoring mother as she held out her hands to me, tears running down her face.

I take out the ragged, brittle piece of cloth now, the pretty yellow flowers faded into oblivion. Bits of droppings, dust balls and organic matter explode all over the room as I shake out the dress. I break into a fit of coughing. What did mother hate so much about this dress? I toss it into the garbage bag I have been lugging around with me, together with an equally brittle ream of letters.

At the bottom of the pile is an envelope with spidery handwriting I vaguely recognize. I pull it back out from the trash and gingerly slide out the letter inside. It’s from my grandmother, my mother’s mother. “Dearest Anna,” she had written, “Don’t be too hard on your mother. Perhaps the dress reminds her of when she was younger…”

In a flash I remember. My grandmother had given me that yellow-flowered dress, that pretty, pretty dress that had made me feel like a dancing princess. “Your mother had one just like this when she was your age,” my grandmother had said. “Her daddy used to call her his very own princess bride and twirl her around the room. Yes, they would dance around the house, and right into his study.” Grandmother had stood up and slowly caressed my hair. “They would be there all afternoon and sometimes I’d knock and they wouldn’t let me in and I’d pretend to cry outside the door. Sometimes I wondered what they did in there…your mother never would tell me.”

I had never met my grandfather. He died before I was born. Mother and grandmother would never tell me how, but Aunt Bella from across the road told me once. “He lost control of his truck, right outside the gate.” She crossed herself. “I think the lightning startled him.” “Too much drink, I say,” said Uncle Tomas, Aunt Bella’s husband. Aunt Bella shushed him before he could say any more.

The light flickers as I leave my room. In the distance I can hear the thunder rumbling. I feel the static in the air. I could always tell when a heavy rain was coming on. “That’s so freaky, Anna,” my roommate at college once said. “You are so weird.” I never told anyone else after that.

I look for the candles and matches in the kitchen. In the drawer beside the stove, mother had always kept them there. I open it and draw out two tapers and the matches. Inside the drawer is a bottle of pills with mother’s name on it. Sleeping pills.

When I arrived five days ago, Dr. James—I could never remember his last name, he was always Dr. James— came to see me and told me that mother had a hard time sleeping, that sometimes she took more than what she had to. “She must have taken too many pills by mistake, Anna. It must have been an accident.” I asked, was it raining when she died? Dr. James looked bewildered at my question. Perhaps he was waiting for me to ask if mother had suffered, or if she died quickly or horribly or painfully. Instead I asked about the weather. “Why…I believe so. Yes, there was a thunderstorm that night…Anna, you must be in shock…” I thanked him and quickly walked him out the door. 

I light the candles and turn out the lights. I sit on the couch and watch the storm come in. Mother had told me once, as she sat down on the couch, tired from all her twirling, “I saw him, you know. I saw him that night.” I was a sullen teenager then, finding this rain ritual a tedious chore that I barely paid attention to what mother was saying. I don’t know why I remember it now, as I watch the nature put on a powerful show outside, but I do.

“I saw him. I saw him crash, in the lightning. And he saw me. He saw me standing here by the window. I watched as it rained. Hard. I watched him watch me. I watched him die.” She turned to me. “It was too beautiful not to cry.”

I count the seconds between the flashes of lighting and the cracks of thunder. I could always tell how many minutes exactly before the rain fell. Two minutes, I tell myself. When the rain pelts the windows, I don’t have to look at my watch to know that exactly two minutes have passed.

Rain drops streak the window panes, just like the teardrops streaking my cheeks.