A Prayer
A Prayer
By Chase Polyak
“Shhhh buddy,” Mateo whispered, “Why are you crying?” Four year old Gabriel sniffled, shrugged, and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hands, dropping the blue stuffed dinosaur he had been holding. With a grunt, Mateo set Gabriel down on the bench beside him and bent down to pick it up. He had been with Joanna when she bought the dinosaur for Gabriel. She dug through bins and bins of plush bears and fish and other animals until she found the perfect one. It had an ocean blue belly, and the rest of it was green; not green like the grass, but more of a pale green, like the color of Joanna’s favorite sweater.
Feeling a lump in the base of his throat, Mateo refocused his attention on Gabriel. “You miss her?” He asked the still sniffling toddler.
Gabriel nodded, “She said we were gonna go and get gummy bears from the store once she got home from practice and I never got any.”
Mateo suppressed the sudden need to let out a sob, and placed his hand on Gabriel’s knee. “I know buddy, I miss her too. Let’s talk about something else, okay? Joanna told me… I mean I heard that you have a loose tooth!”
Gabriel gave him a watery smile and began to point out the wiggly tooth. Just then, the door to the hallway opened, and Gabriel’s mother walked out. The tear tracks on her face were obvious, but Mateo could see she had tried to fix herself up before coming to retrieve Gabriel, who upon seeing her jumped up to give his mother a hug.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, giving him a half-smile., “Are you ready to come back in and sit with Mommy and Daddy?”
He nodded and grabbed her hand, clutching his dinosaur in the other.
She then looked up at Mateo. “Thanks for watching him,” she said., “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
Mateo stood and straightened his tie. “I’m okay, thanks Mrs. Hart. I think I might say hi to some people before the service starts.”
“Not a bad idea,” she said with a smile. “There’s a spot for you in the front pew, for when you’re ready.”
Mateo nodded and mentally prepared himself for the walk back through the church, which was today full of pictures of the girl he loves, and people who love her. His best method was distraction. It’s the only way he’d survived this last week. He checked his watch, 12:58; two minutes until the funeral was supposed to start; one week and 37 minutes since he last heard her voice.
“But anyways, I can tell you that story later. I promised Gabe I’d take him to the store once I get home, but maybe we can go get some dinner or something tonight? I miss you. I’ll call after practice if that’s okay. I hope you’re having a good day. Also, remember to delete this after you listen to it. I know you forget sometimes and then your voice mailbox fills up. Okay, I love you. Bye.”
Mateo followed Mrs. Hart and Gabriel back into the vestibule. They began making their way to the front, but Mateo froze. He heard the gentle swell of the piano music and felt the lump reappear in his throat. In a split second decision, he ran out of the church and onto the sidewalk. He couldn’t bring himself to feel this. He sat on the curb for a moment, loosening his tie, and blinking back the tears that threatened to fall. His breath was coming quicker, and he didn’t know where to go. His first instinct was to shut down. It was what he wanted to do, but it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t here anymore. He couldn’t go home, not where her Valentine’s Day present sat unopened on his desk. He couldn’t go to her house, with the pictures, and the food waiting for people to return after church.
Without knowing where he was going, Mateo just started walking. His feet carried him forward, mindlessly kicking rocks and sticks. He flinched every time he saw a car go by. It was hard sometimes for him not to think about what it was like for her. In his head, he hoped it was quick, but his heart for some reason wished she had hung on at least long enough for her to see that he had tried to call her back. He assumed that she had made it to practice when she didn’t pick up her phone, and was kicking soccer balls around with her friends, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, except for the little curly hairs that escaped and fell to frame her face. He hadn’t even seen her face that day.
He remembered she’d been crying the last time he saw her. She claimed hormones and a bad night of sleep, but Mateo knew she was scared of all the time conflicts the two of them had coming up, which would almost certainly make it more difficult for them to see each other. She still smiled as he got into his car, and she yelled at him to text her when he got home, which he did; otherwise she’d worry. Though he hated when she was crying, something about the way her tears highlighted her eyes made his heart skip a beat. She had the most beautiful eyes. They were a pale green when she took pictures with the flash on, but a deep, earthy emerald in person. They were unique. Joanna was unique. Joanna… Joanna… Joanna…
His family all knew that he intended to marry her one day, not that everyone took them seriously. Seventeen was not old enough to have people believe him when he claimed that Joanna was the only girl for him, for the rest of his life. Unfortunately for Mateo, seventeen was old enough to fall in love, and to grow a bond with a girl so strong, she was like another part of him.
It wasn’t that Mateo thought he was above crying. Joanna was good about reminding him that crying was healthy, and it meant that he was feeling things. She cried all the time, whether it was happy, sad, tired, or even if she was feeling deeply the emotions of someone else, she would cry. Not that sometimes it didn’t bother him, it did. Some weeks she seemed to be crying more than she wasn’t, and she took everything personally. She felt deeply, and as hard as that was sometimes, he loved that about her. He knew she loved him. Truly, he had never felt more loved than he had with her. Joanna… Joanna… Joanna…
Crying meant feeling, and this wasn’t something he could let himself feel. If she could have told him to, he may have listened, but she couldn’t, and in an act of defiance, he would not feel this. He distracted himself best he could, watching Gabriel, and helping the Harts wherever he could. He started helping to clean Joanna’s room, but had to stop when he found a small box. He didn’t know what it was at first, but when he opened it, he found an array of cards, notes, and little trinkets. The first folded piece of paper he opened had his name on the top, and with a pang of realization, he closed the box, and put it back on her bookshelf. His nose stung, and his body tingled, wanting so badly to cry: the deep kind, that comes from the chest, and is accompanied by heaving breaths and a flow of tears that can’t stop.
Mateo snapped out of his trance and looked up to see a corner store. He didn’t know how his feet had carried him here, but they had, and he opened the door. There was a jingle as he walked in. The store was mostly empty, except for a couple of highschoolers at the slushie machines. Mateo rounded the corner into one of the aisles, stopping as he saw a bag of chips.
“Come on baby, please, just a couple, I don’t even have to take my eyes off the road.”
He had handed her chips one by one as she drove down the highway. He couldn’t help but laugh at the way she stuck her tongue out to the side to catch each one.
“Don’t… laugh at me!”
She cried, barely talking between the orange chips in her mouth and her laughter, which echoed in the car, and in Mateo’s ear, as he fell to his knees. And he sobbed. Inhaling, and exhaling, and holding the orange package so tight he surely crushed all that was inside. His cheeks glistened, and he made a choked sound that the store’s other patron’s thankfully ignored.
Joanna… Joanna… Joanna…
After a couple moments, with the same emptiness in his gut, but a lighter weight on his shoulders, Mateo stood. He grabbed a package of gummy bears off the shelf, and paid. He walked back to the church slowly, with tears still streaming down his face. Before he walked back in, he wiped off his face, swallowed the lump in his throat, and took a deep breath, saying a prayer. Joanna… Joanna… Joanna…