The Rope Bracelet

The attic was stuffier than I had expected. Guess Mom had abandoned it after Dad’s passing. I had to stoop to move around. There was only a solitary bulb flickering overhead. Thank God for the east-facing window letting in some sun.

I started with the boxes filled with clothes. Since nothing was marked, I was gonna have to check them all. The old clothes would have to go. The salvation army might take traditional Pakistani dresses. So what if they were a few decades out of date? At least they weren’t moth-eaten.

In one of the last boxes, I came across a few photo albums. Wanting to take a break from the dusty attic, I made my way to the living room. Mom was engrossed in one of her soap operas. I sat beside her and started to flip through the album.

The first pictures were in black and white. Both sets of my grandparents, back in the motherland. Mom and Dad on their wedding day. Why was everyone so serious, was there someone holding a gun behind the camera? Even I wasn’t smiling in the baby photos.

The portraits became less drab after we moved to Canada. I remember how protective dad was of his first Japanese color camera. I finally spotted someone smiling. The lunch box and Lion King backpack told me it was the first day of school. A blue-eyed girl standing next to me was beaming at the camera. Her name didn’t come to me but I remembered spending time with her.

She became a permanent fixture in the next couple of pages in the album. Always next to me, sitting on a table, blowing out birthday candles, standing in the backyard. Why couldn’t I remember her?

I went back to examine the pictures, this time with a critical eye. I noticed a pair of adults next to my parents in some of the pictures, they resembled the girl, especially the woman. After a while, the woman stopped appearing altogether and the man only showed up a handful of times.

I tried thinking about our time in Moncton. Granted it was 20 years ago but if I had spent so much time with this girl, why was my brain coming up empty? I remembered the names of all my preschool teachers, then why was this girl an enigma.

Finally caving in, I asked Mom for help. I was lucky that I caught her during a commercial break. She glanced at the album before turning her attention back to the TV. “That’s Alicia, you two were as thick as thieves back then”.

Her name unlocked a door in my mind and the pieces started to fall in place. She came back to me in waves. Her brown hair, her round cheeks, the denim jacket always around her shoulders. The pink bike with a flower basket in the front. The vividness of it was overwhelming. My heart started to speed up, I got up to get myself a glass of water.

When Mom started praying in the evening, I went for a walk. The cold air would clear my head. Alicia’s memory had always been there, just beneath the surface. I could’ve reached for it any time. But it was hidden, like an old shirt lost behind winter coats.

Over dinner, I asked Mom about her again. She was reluctant at first but eventually opened up. Telling me about the first place we ever lived in, Dad was happy enough at the lumber mill. But being the only brown faces in a rural town, Mom and I were quite lonely.

“That girl and her mother were a god-send”, Mom said between bites. She explained how Alicia’s mother was the first to welcome us to the neighborhood. “You two were stuck like glue. I used to tease you by calling her my daughter-in-law” Mom chuckled.

Her words started weighing on my heart. I felt a familiar pang of sorrow. An ache in the very center of my being. “I wasn’t surprised when she left that alcoholic husband of hers. It was when the lumber mill closed, that’s also when we left town” Mom intoned.

“You were so sad that you stopped speaking.” This made me look up, I didn’t recall anything like that. “We had to send you to a psychiatrist, your Dad was against it, but your new school didn’t give us a choice”. Mom looked away, as she often did when she spoke of Dad.

That night before going to sleep, I remembered the last time I saw Alicia. We had met in the woods behind her house. It was the day my family was leaving town. I had made a friendship bracelet for her. Red and blue rope intertwined. Her favorite color and mine. Tears were streaming from her eyes when I handed it over.

She had hugged me like a drowning man clinging to a rope. “Don’t go.. Don’t go…”, it was like a mantra that she kept chanting. I had taken her face in my hands and wiped away her tears with my thumbs, like I’d seen in movies. “Get your hands off her!”, her father’s voice had echoed like a gunshot.

He hobbled towards us and shoved me to the ground. My head hit a rock and I felt my vision narrow. I had been pushed before by other kids, around the schoolyard but never like this, this was terrifying. I remember thinking that he smelled like spilled paint and cigarettes.

By the time I got up, he was dragging her away. When she tried to resist, he turned around and hit her across the face. “Are you gonna leave me too like your Bitch Mother?!”, his voice cracked like a whip. Alicia shook her head meekly. The last image I have of her is a tear-streaked face looking back at me.

I closed my eyes tightly, pressing my face against the pillow. My head and heart were pounding, each trying to outpace the other. I wanted to forget everything again. After hours of tossing and turning, I managed to catch a few winks of sleep. That’s when the nightmares started.

I was running in a forest, being chased by howling wolves. Ahead of me, a little girl with a denim jacket kept walking away. Occasionally she would glance back. Bright blue eyes set in a pale face stared back at me. They were crying red tears. No matter how fast I ran, I never caught up to her.

Over the next few weeks, my appetite and sleep gradually left me. I tried hiding it from Mom but she knew something was up. I caught her spiking my coffee with holy water more than once. My search for Alicia on social media had come up empty, almost everyone I knew from back then had left town.

Having exhausted all other options, I took a few days off work and drove to Moncton. Our old neighborhood resembled a ghost town. As I drove around the old place, the floodgates opened. I saw many versions of Alicia and myself.
Swinging in the playground.
Walking to the comic-book store.
Licking ice cream cones at the stoop in front of the supermarket.

All the memories crashed into each other, making me feel schizophrenic.

By the time I reached her house, I was breathing heavily. Stepping out of the car I looked around. Most of the other houses had boarded up windows, a few had old trucks rusting in the driveways. Feeling numb I knocked on her door.

For the longest time, no response came. I walked around to peek inside the windows, seeing clutter and trash everywhere. If not for the windows, this house would be no different than the abandoned ones. I heard a chair scrape against the floor, heavy footsteps approached the door. An old man opened the door and stepped forward.

His body was bloated like a corpse, paper-thin skin with bulging purple veins. “Whaddya want?” He scratched his stubbly chin and looked at me. “I’m looking for Alicia”, I replied trying to keep my voice from shaking.

Hearing her name made him stand up straighter, his old bones creaked. “Why?!… Mmm… She’s busy, Hmm… You Fuck Off!”. His pale blue eyes, which seemed a mockery of her brighter ones were bugging out. Daring me to say more.

“I need to see her,” I said crossing the threshold. He tried pushing me but I stood my ground. “You… can’t… take her…” his words slurred as he kept trying to manhandle me. I tried to hold on to his wrists but tripped over a beer can and unwittingly shoved him back. He fell to the ground, “She’s mine, She’s mine…” his eyelids were drooping as his fingers scrambled trying to close around a bottle.

I stepped over him, looking at the wreckage of what once had been Alicia’s home. I remembered all the times we had ran through this very corridor, her mother chastising us. I made my way around the refuse, her room was upstairs.

When my hand closed around the doorknob, I realized the old man hadn’t been here in a while. Her room was just as I remembered. The same posters adorned the walls, the same dolls sat on the shelves and the same covers were spread on the bed. Despite the thick layer of dust over everything. My heart skipped a beat as I realized there was someone under the covers.

Hoping against hope, I reached out to pull the sheet. The smell hit me like a sledgehammer. The body was beyond putrefaction. Fighting against the assault on my sinuses, I kept on looking. The rotted bones and sloughing skin had nothing to offer but my eyes caught something on the wrist. It was held close to the cracked skull as if she was sleeping on her side. I saw the rope bracelet. Red intertwined with blue. Her favorite color and mine.

There was a ringing in my ears as I made my way down the stairs. Something black was trying to claw its way out of my throat. Her father was still where I had left him. His back rose and fell in an uneven manner. I tasted salt on my lips. My nose was leaking too, I hadn’t cried like that in 20 years.

My body moved of its own accord. My hands reached out to the mantle-piece above the fireplace, grabbing the hunting rifle. I didn’t want to bother with finding bullets or loading them.

I stood above the man, feet planted on both sides of his head. Grabbing the barrel, My hands lifted the rifle above my head. I could feel my chin quivering, the tears had finally reached it.

I was sure this time, the nightmares would stop.

I brought down the rifle as hard as I could.