Claudia Blood

Mirror Me

Claudia Blood

This story received Honorable Mention in the 2018 BWR Short Story Award

The wind whips under my hospital gown, sending chills up my back and down my legs. The hospital doors close with an audible snick. The icy needles of cold don’t matter. Not now.

I am dying.

The staff has said so in whispers outside my room. I have one wish that is brighter than the desire to live. I have to touch the earth one last time. The siren call of the earth has propelled me from my bed, down the deserted hallway, and out to the courtyard.

I hobble to the garden now buried under snow and fall to my knees. I tug off my slipper-sock and wrap my hand with it so I can push away the snow. The dark ground is hibernating and seemingly dead. I put my bare hand on the cleared ground, but it’s not enough.

The earth is still calling me, so I dig out a small handful, rub it between my hands, and smell it. I imagine the scent of clover and remember the feel of it tickling my face as I lie down, remembering the hot sun on my back from a time long past.

I open my eyes. The dirt is still held to my nose, but something is different. I am being sheltered from the cold, the wind, and the aches and pains in my body. The edges of my vision fades to gray. Is this what dying feels like? I wait, holding my breath waiting for the gray to consume me.

But after a long moment, nothing happens. When I move my head, the gray doesn’t move with me. I realize dazedly that the circle of gray is outside of me. I turn and see a ghostly, rounded window with sleek, brown wood trim floating in the gray fog. The light flickers on inside the window, illuminating an empty sleeping car with a freshly made bed and thick folded blankets. The window must be on a train. It makes no sense that there is a train in the hospital’s courtyard garden. I must be hallucinating or dead.

The inside of the train entices me and even though I’m not cold now, the memory of being bitterly cold hovers just under my skin. The golden glow of warmth from inside the train beckons, and I wonder if I could get inside for a moment and warm up while I figure out what is going on.

As I press my hand into the glass, I pass through into the sleeping car. It’s just as I thought, warm and restful, but with a strong antiseptic smell that turns my stomach and makes me want to flee. I throw open the door and enter the corridor. The quiet is a heavy presence pressing down on my eardrums. This what the air must feel like when an ancient tomb is first cracked open. There are no others on this train. Of that I am sure. I am alone in the most profound sense. Only the gentle sway of the train on the tracks makes me think this is anything other than a dream.

I walk down the corridor, drawn toward the light at the end. The open doors and the dark rooms within hold no interest. But when the light flares from a door on my left, I enter without thinking. It is automatic, as if I had no choice in the matter.

The light is from the window. Through the grimy glass, I catch a glimpse of a woman who looks familiar. I touch the glass and the scent of violets wafts from the crushed blossoms beneath her. Her arm is held awkwardly, face swollen and red, but not yet painted with bruises. Blood seeps from a split lip and even a little from an ear. She is not crying, but rocks back and forth singing a soft song.

My heart races and I gasp. This woman is a younger Me.

With a screech, the train stops. I lurch into the doorframe and grab it. My stomach rolls and I remember my life, my pain, my name. Kim. I am the only daughter of a world-famous botanist. Flowers were my everything, until that man. I am seeing the first day my husband felt safe enough to express his displeasure. I watch the younger version of me rock back and forth. Then the scene resets: she stumbles into the garden, lands in the dirt, and begins to rock.

I step back and walk to the next door, the next window. Another Me lowers a small Southern Magnolia into a hole in the center of my father’s garden. My hot tears are the first water his memorial plant will receive. The images in the windows begin to make sense. Each window shows a scene from my life.

The final lit window draws me. There, a woman with white, wire-brush hair and wearing a blue hospital gown, hobbles to kneel in a stark white landscape. She removes one sock and digs through the snow. Dark clots splatter around her as she reaches dirt. She slouches forward, face down in the hole, arms spread wide in supplication. The scene starts again with the old woman entering the garden. This too is Me. I have escaped the hospital he had me locked in and fled to the community garden glimpsed from my window for years.

There has to be a reason I am here and why I can so clearly see my life. Perhaps I am meant to change it. The thought sends a thrill through my system. Perhaps this train is time and I can change what happened. Could I unkink the path that brought me so low?

I peer in window after window, getting closer to the beginning of the train. I finally find the Me—the Me just before I marry that man.

“Please don’t go with him.” My voice is a loud croak.

But she is deaf to my voice and talks to the flowers about the wonderful man she has just met and will move away with. I reach and grab for her in order to shake some sense into her, but my hands only pass through her. “He will only hurt you. Hurt us.”

She is closed to me, committed to her path. No matter what I say, the battered Me remains, hugging her broken arm and rocking.

I wander down the train, looking in at each version of Me. Perhaps I need to start the change sooner. I reach through the window and touch a young, open version of Me trimming a bush. She jumps back with a scream, cuts herself on the shears, and fades away. I wait for her to return, but she never does. Instead, she is replaced in seconds with a new version of Me. A bandage on her arm, she tiptoes into the garden, starting and glancing around at every noise.

Did I just affect time? I watch the other Mes and see that, yes, I have changed the pattern slightly. All later versions of Me glance around before finally sitting in the garden, but one still plants the tree in tribute to my father’s passing. Another snips dead blossoms as she did before. I still meet and marry that man and end up broken. Only I can see the gathering gloom and know what lies ahead for each of the innocent Mes oblivious in their gardens.

I find my highest moment: the North Carolina State Fair. The ruffles of my Sunday dress flare around my knees. My Tokyo Delight hydrangeas are on display in my booth. The judge steps in and awards me the blue ribbon; he shakes my hand and smiles. I can still feel the whisper of the thrill of this moment in my chest. My mother and father beam proudly and next to them stands a man. Tall, dark, mysterious. I no longer feel the tug, but that seventeen-year-old self stares and blushes as he introduces himself. That’s how I caught his interest. The win at the fair. There was but one thing to do.

I wait for the scene-loop to start once more. My soon to be prize-winning flowers are alone once more, and with terrible purpose, I uproot and destroy every last blossom. Torn white and pink petals flutter around me, layering the inside of the train, and forming a barrier between me and the other Mes. The stems and leaves, too, lay broken at my feet. My hydrangea has no smell, but I swear I smell clover in the aftermath.

The train warps around the petals and I can see all the Mes; they freeze in their windows and slowly turn to look at me. For the first time they all really see me. Eyes widen and mouths open in silent screams. They see me and are afraid. Then the teenaged Me who is entranced by that man fades to shadow and a new Me takes her place. She stands taller, her gaze more direct. The train straightens out and one by one the windows blaze with light.

I walk to keep pace with windows that brighten, pass my father’s tree as I grow older living in his house and expanding his garden. The cowering, defeated Me fades from sight and is replaced with a healthy, happy Me. One Me brings a man into the garden and it is the love in his eyes that catches my breath. And then, just as I had dreamed but never realized in my old life, I watch my wedding ceremony in the garden to that same man.

One future window has a little girl who looks like a young version of my mother. She dances into the garden and sits with her back against the thick magnolia tree in the center of the garden. I watch my alternate life spread out before me in snippets and flashes of activity seen from these windows into the garden.

Then finally, I am at the window where the mirror Me arrives and takes my spot in the train. More Mes continue to fill the space after her, but it is this Me that I pause and marvel at. She is what I am not. She glides in, wearing a pressed tan pantsuit and her hair up in a neat bun.

A wide smile and saucy nod. For one moment as I would have faded, we are connected.

She looks at me, her eyes clear and direct. “I understand now.” She reaches through and hugs me. “Thank you.”

The train shakes and wheels clack as it starts forward and slowly gains speed. I resist the draw of the light at the front of the train and slowly pace down windows to follow the new life I gave my mirror Me.