imagine that you are a child again

[troubled sleep]

((A/N: I've been away from the Pen for an extended period of time, so I shan't take it personally if no one remembers me. I kind of disappeared, forgot, and then was reminded of this place and became something of a lurker when I graduated from high school and Degorram and Kikuyu Black Paws pointed me in this direction to continue reading their work. But anyways, what I'm trying to say is, hello again, mighty pen! How are you? I'm back, but I'm not quite the same person I was when I left. Like starbuck on battlestar galactica. Only, I promise to not go all crazy on you and point guns at anyone's heads.

 

Basically, it's exam week and I should be doing constructive. Like studying for organic chemistry. Or plant biology. Or writing a 6 page paper on some random book that's due tomorrow. However, I am an insane procrastinator, so when I opened up a word document and started typing this, and not a 6 page paper, came out. It's rather unlike anything I've written before as I usually just stuck to silly humor related thingies, but considering that this is the first coherent thing I've written in awhile, I take what I can get. So I apologize for the overall weirdness to follow.))

 

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I think that as we grow up, imagination is the first thing to go. There just isn't time for it, not with school and jobs and bills and families and car payments and all those other terribly important things that steal our time away. Sure, there are plenty of people out there that can prove me wrong --I like to think I'm one of them -- but on the whole, we're a strange subset of the population, an odd testament to what once was. So what I'm asking you to do might be a little difficult at first. Are you ready? Ok, close you eyes, count to three...

 

Imagine that you are a child again.

 

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Emily Bevel sat at the Court Street bus stop -- the one by the library -- every week for as long as any of us could remember. And while no one's memory extended past four or five years, when you're eight years old that feels like a lifetime. I used to watch her, like all the little kids do. As you're lead by the hand into the library, she smiles at you, or sometimes she glares, but she always notices. You try to smile back, or stick out your tongue, or anything, but your mother pulls you forward and tells you not to stare, it's impolite, sweetheart. But that never stopped me from wondering--or any of the other kids, for that matter. We lived in a world of highly polished shoes and matching hair ribbons; the idea of this strange, frumpy woman who sat at a bench all day was unfathomable and therefore intriguing. While our mothers would trade recipes and gossip, flipping through glossy magazines, we kids would sit on the technicolor floor of the children's section and make up stories about the bus-stop lady. Her adventures varied by whatever book our mothers had halfheartedly helped us find--once she led a whole family of ducklings through the city streets, another time she was a princess, another the president of Canada. There was no limit to what she could be in our eyes. We rewrote her life story a thousand times over, but the name was always the same: Emily Bevel.

 

Of course, none of us had ever spoken to her, and perhaps none of us ever would have if one day Marissa Clarke hadn't uttered that single most provocative of phrases:

 

"I triple-dog-dare you to go talk to the bus stop lady, Carla."

 

Of the children at the library, there were two groups: those that stuck with me, and those that stuck with Marissa--or the redheaded demon of terror, as I liked to call her. She called me Carla, the four-eyed guardian of death, though, so I guess we were about even. There was already a history between us--if I were to refuse this dare, it would be admitting defeat. The redheaded demon of terror had triple dog dared me, and there was no getting around it: I simply had to do it. So, ignoring everyone's protests and speculations about my impending doom, I marched towards the door. I tried not to let my fear show, and pretended to be having a great deal of trouble pulling on my little pink cardigan to avoid catching anyone's eyes.

 

Sneaking out of the children's section was no problem--all I had to do was wait until the Circle of Mothers was adequately distracted, then make a run for it. As soon as they were occupied, I dashed towards the outside door. It opened automatically and I ran out into the world. The cold air caught in my lungs, making me cough--it was a shock after the radiant warmth of the library. I stumbled for a moment, tucking my arms inside my sweater, wondering if I should go back in after all---and then I hit something hard, a bench. And, suddenly, there she was. Emily Bevel. Staring right down at me.

 

I favored her with a wide eyed stare, caught by both fear and reverence for this strange woman. Truthfully, I didn't know what I was going to say to her. What did one say to an Emily Bevel? After all the stories we'd told about her--never mind that they were made up--it was like trying to talk to a princess or something. I'd never really thought of her as a real person. And yet here she was.

 

Why do you sit here all the time, I wanted to ask her. Why aren't you at home? Aren't you cold? Why aren't you inside? I couldn't bring myself to say those things. I was too frightened. All I managed to choke out was one syllable: "why?"

 

She stared at me for a moment. I noticed that her eyes were very old, very deep. The kind of green you only see in desperate paintings of the sea. She looked half crazed: her hair, wisps of faded black and grey, had long ago escaped its bounds; the crisp wind had rubbed her cheeks raw and red.

 

"Imagine: it's just before sunset on a cool evening at that time of year when the world is just thinking about spring, but still clings to winter. You're standing there, on top of a mountain and the world seems to stretch out around you, opening up and showing you all that beauty that'd been hiding around the edges. It's so beautiful, so terribly beautiful…it's almost too much for the likes of human eyes."

 

Her voice rose and fell, drawing me closer. I had never heard anyone talk like this before. Even the readers in the children's room at the library spoke in short, clipped sentences.

 

"There's clouds, layers and layers of clouds above you and below you, like white marshmallows floatin' in the sky. And over there, " she pointing a gnarled finger over towards a place which had once been a post office, but had now, by the magic of her words turned into a bank of clouds, "over there is the front of a storm, thick, dark clouds coming your way. Terrible and beautiful, you can just hear the thunder, you just smell the rain over in the distance, can you see it, child? The sun's going down in front of you, leaving bands of subdued oranges and stately purples behind as it sinks below the horizon. Then in the valley below you, the lights start blinking on, one by one…"

 

"Like a thousand little fireflies, dancing and flickering…" I said, caught up in the moment. I realized with a start that I could see them, really see them. Using her words more deftly than any fairy godmother's wand, she caused the street and the cars and the shops and the library to be washed away by this beautiful afterglow, changing them all into mountains and valleys.

 

"And then the clouds close in around you, wrapping you up in a bundle of white and grey until you can barely see. The wind, the wind blows clear through you, but the cold is delicious. Imagine: that wind carries the voices of everyone in the world. All the people you've met, all the people you missed, all the love and all the fear and all the wonder. You're surrounded by beauty, overwhelmed by grace," she paused there, took a deep breath and half sighed before continuing. "That's where I'll go before I die. If I'm going to breathe my last, it might as well we somewhere beautiful. All I have to do is have faith. And so I've been waiting--I sit. I wait for the bus. I think about getting on, but then I decide against it. The time just doesn't seem right. So I stand up, I go to work, I go to the store, I go about my life and that's the end of that. Today's different, though. I could feel it as soon as I woke up, a tingling at the back of my mind."

 

"Maybe it's you being here…change in the weather, I don't know. S'different. You know, I've spent my whole life just waiting. The Lord will provide, they told me. Well, I'm going to help myself. Maybe this is all His way of telling me it's finally time."

 

Normally all this God talk would have lost me completely. My family was not religious, and I had often heard my parents discuss the "bible thumpers" with disdain. However, this woman wasn't thumping anything, as far as I could see. And moreover, with Emily it was different. She looked like she actually believed what she was saying. Like God was actually real. This was something new entirely.

 

Something in my look must have amused her, because she started to laugh. "Nostalgia, especially for the roads we never took, is the greatest killer of man, child. We just have to learn to trust, I suppose. Accept what we've done--or left undone--and keep going. Faith manages, little girl, it's all you need, really."

 

"Carla?" A voice called from behind me. I turned quickly to see my mother walking quickly towards us from the library.

 

"Carla, sweetheart, what are you doing out here?" I knew Mother's voice well, and I could hear the hint of concern and disapproval hidden away in those few syllables. I wanted to tell her, it's ok, she's not trying to kidnap me or anything, we were just talking. But I couldn't say that. Mothers are a very strange breed of people, you can't always say what you mean, they take it the wrong way. So instead I didn't say anything. I just kept watching Emily watch the road, smiling.

 

"I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into her," Mother said, slipping her soft, cold hand into mine. "Carla?"

 

"'S'fine, she wasn't harming anyone, were you, dear?" Emily said, without looking at either of us. Here eyes were still unfocused. I wondered if she was still on her mountain, still enjoying the beauty she had described to me.

 

"No, ma'am," I said, remembering my manners.

 

"Come along, Carla," Mother said. She guided me back into the library and I followed without protest.

 

I expected Mother to ask me what the woman had told me, to ask what had gotten into me, running outside like that. Instead she paused at the entrance to the children's section, then bent down to my level,

 

"She's just a sad old woman don't you pay her any mind, Carla. Now, run and play with your friends, there's a good girl."

 

"Yes, ma'am," I said, and she patted me absently on the cheek before returning to the circle of Mothers.

 

"Well, what did she say? What did she tell you?" All of the other children gathered around me, pushing to get to the front, identical expressions of eagerness painting their faces.

 

"I didn't actually think you'd do it," Marissa said, pushing to the front of the group, "I made Michael and Kelly-Ann stand at the window, to witness. And they said you did it, so…" she paused, put on her sweetest smile, as though we were old friends and not bitter enemies, "what did she say? Was it just like in the stories?"

 

I paused for a moment, trying to get my thoughts in order.

 

"Well," Marissa said, hands on hips, tapping a foot impatiently, "Did you talk to her or what?"

 

I floundered for a moment more, and then I just spilled into it. I told them everything, all the things she had said about pretty clouds and mountains and God and living. Everything tumbled out, perhaps not with the eloquence of Emily Bevel, but out it came just the same.

 

I took a deep breath after I was finished; I felt as though I had just run a marathon.

 

My fellow children stood silently, staring at me, and for a moment even Marissa couldn't seem to think of anything to say.

 

It was then that one of the boys came up and poked Marissa mercilessly in the side, causing her to yelp in surprise and start off after him. Soon everyone was on the run again, boys versus girls, group versus group, running around laughing -- all much to the horror of the children's librarian who quickly rose from her desk to referee. And thus all thoughts of Emily Bevel began sifting slowly to the back of minds.

 

Imagine you are no longer a child. Imagine that many years have come and gone, etching themselves in your face and manner, snatching the minutes and the hours so deftly that half the time you never even noticed their passage.

 

However, out of a million threads of memory flapping about, I never did forget this one. I held onto our conversation, a strange, childhood memory that's been gone over in my head so many times that even I'm not sure if it's entirely true or not. Maybe she didn't really say all that, maybe it's just my imagination taking hold of me. Maybe I've forgotten and filled in Emily's silences with snatches of other conversations. Maybe all she did was stare at me. I don't know. Regardless, it is her memory, her words that have propelled me forward through the years. But still, whenever I walk past that bench in front of the library where the old bus stop used to be, this time with my own child in tow, I think about her, the bus-lady. I don't know what happened to Emily, whether or not she ever made it to her mountain. I like to think that she did. I like to think that where ever she is, she's happy. That her faith managed. I hope that for once, life can end like the children's stories at the library: and she lived happily ever after until the end of her days.

Edited May 26, 2010 by troubled sleep

[Savage Dragon]

i often find that simple words can convey my meaning better than any lengthy explanation so i'll just say this

 

thank you so much for sharing this piece

 

it was wonderful

[Degorram]

Amazing. Truly amazing. Whatever you do, humor or seriousness, you seem to do it so effortlessly. Love love love.

[troubled sleep]

Thanks, both of you...your comments mean a lot to me :)

[Ran Yoko]

very neat. I read it, and wished in a way that I could write something simple like that. my stories always turn out kinda gloomy. but very good job on that!