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Always There /
Always There: C.V.M.
She was moving, moving, even before the world became clear. Pudgy baby fingers pressing into hard wood, into stone, into sand, stretching, searching. Searching for what, she did not know. Voices swirled around her. Cooing, sweet nothings, harsh whispers, scolding, wailing–maybe her own, she did not know.
Limbs lengthened, hair fell in cascades, pudgy fingers stretched and thinned. But those same fingers still explored the surfaces of wood and stone and sand, still explored cracks and crevices, still searching for something–something still unknown.
And still she grew–seven, eight, nine, ten, fourteen years. Hands still searching, searching, scraping the covers of novels and brushing feather-light over easily-smudgeable DVDs. Engulfed by the worn, green-and-white-striped couch as she sat watching Juno on repeat while listening to harsh whispers from her mother on the phone in the kitchen. A soft click and her mother has exited the kitchen, just in time to catch a glimpse of the baby on the screen…
Freeze Frame: Sierra Williams
A quivering lip. "Turn that off, please." A quivering voice.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Hands flying over white papers smudged with graphite, ripped edges barely felt on calloused thumbs. Travel books and brochures spread across worn, chalky bed sheets, wrinkled pages flagged with colorful markers. An olive travel pack, stuffed to the brim and propped next to a bedroom door cracked two inches. Planning. Scratching the itch. A road stretched to the horizon. Searching for the unknown, ready to make it comb its fingers through her long, thick hair and whisper sweet words of phone calls and faltering family. Ready to force it down if she had to.
The door was still cracked two inches as she turned away, hoisting her pack, venturing down the hall, making her way down a road that was cracked and split and covered with tiny, sharp pebbles.
One, two, three, four weeks. Half-awake plane rides, gazing out the window onto the soft, hazy, twinkling lights of cities and the cold, clear, twinkling stars. Closed eyes, feeling the thrum of the engines under her feet, ears picking up the snapping of bubble gum and the wailing of a baby down the row–she shivered–and the soft rustle of old, brittle pages being turned with care. Life. Life, everywhere. Were they searching? Searching, like her fingers and her ears and the recesses of her brain? She pressed her body back against the plane seat, imagining the plastic swallowing her whole…
The end of something, or the beginning? She did not know.
Two, three, four months. Hands diving into soil, weaving bamboo baskets, stroking the back of a mare as she gave birth to twin foals. Hands chopping chilis and pressed against skin and stroking the back of an auntie missing her son. Hands gripping tight to the straps of that olive green pack as she stared out the window of the moving bus–going where, she did not know. Hands soaking up the light of the summer sun.
And so the summer passed. Summer, with aching spines and dirt under nail beds and sweat tickling the small of her back. Summer, zipping from place to place on the backs of vespas, buses, trains, planes. Summer, bringing warmth and light and long days dripping away like the last beads of sweet papaya juice in her glass as they cascaded down her throat. She walked, and she biked, and she flew across summer and then–
Cold. Frigid wind cutting like knives across her cheeks, icy air drawing the breath from her lungs. Dark, dark, dark everywhere. Everywhere–
And then it all just…stopped.
She was standing out on a frozen tundra covered in sparkling snow, untouched, stretching for miles in all directions. Before her loomed the great peaks, white and soft. And the moon–full and bright and clearing away everything, everything that had been clouding her vision.
Her shoulders did not shake. Her lip did not quiver. But when the tears came, she let them fall from her eyes and freeze on her cheeks. She did not stop them. Not anymore.
Everything–all of it–beautiful.
How could she have been afraid? How had she ever been afraid? How had she ever been angry?
She did not know.
In the sea of swirling white–a green phone booth. A lightbulb shining a white as bright as the snow outside, surely years old, flickering slightly, but holding strong for her. Fingers searching, shaking, skimming over the icy metal of quarters and numbers. All silence but the soft, clear clinking of coins and the tinny hum of the dial tone as she raised the phone to her ear. Her voice was choked and barely audible, but she knew she had been heard.
She knew.
This time, when she boarded the plane, she did not care about the snapping of gum or the turning of worn pages. But the baby wailed on, and on, and on. She clutched her backpack and closed her eyes, letting the cries wash over her, letting them sink in until they settled in the nooks and crannies of her brain and the deepest ravines of her soul. She breathed in those cries, and she understood. She knew.
She knew that standing still on the stiff doormat and hesitating would be a cliche. But still, her feet would not move.
She had come so far. The tips of her fingers had brushed skyscrapers and mountains. Her toes had burrowed deep into soil and sand. Her arms had pulled her up the tallest trees and across the roughest rocks but she could not lift them to knock, could not–
The door swung open.
And she regretted nothing then, not the thrumming plane rides or the frigid air or the shocking chill of ice connecting with skin or the cold, clear nights punctuated by cold, clear stars. And she was grateful for everything, the books, the pencils on paper, the old films and the new ones, and the deserts and the mountains and the tundras and the hazy city lights…all leading her back here. Back to her mother’s arms. For once, her fingers were not drumming over wood or paper or metal. They lay, perfectly still, stretching over her mother’s back, pulling her mother close. There was nothing to look for. The search had come to an end–not a deafening, screeching halt, but a dreamy close. Teardrops, suspended in the sky, cascading down cheeks.
She was home.
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