The bell clanged at 2:30 with measured precision. Pre-teens
in starched shirts and sky blue dresses filed obediently out of the classrooms.
Their schoolbags, emblazoned with three trees and an obelisk, lined up with
similar discipline, waiting to be removed from their hooks and escorted into
waiting vehicles. It was a clear day, the sky was as blue as it could be and
the clouds were scattered irregularly.
The flame tree was in full bloom when Glynis dropped her
home that day. The cars in the street were lined up attentively. The tarmac was
crowded and cramped. She saw familiar cars, displaced in the sunshine and
glare.
What were they doing here? She thought and wondered. Her mind was young
and without foreboding.
The family was perched on the bed like anxious anxious
parrots. Her jungle curtains looked mocking and sad and drawn. They sat her
down like a child, and she was a child and she had never felt sadder and more
exposed when she heard what they said
when
the words came out of her mother’s mouth with all the dignity she could muster.
She said
your
grandmother has been murdered, and the words burned like fire like ice like
heartbreak.
The other people there, they soothed and hushed and patted
and touched to ease the cruelty. Her grandmother her beautiful pen-pal
grandmother her grandmother with snapdragons that guarded her house, waving and
flailing and
useless
They went to the cruel city for the funeral, and the hadedahs
cawed cawed in the background and the snapdragons stood still, too futile. The
house was filled with sad people and covered mirrors and Aunts too young to be
mourning too old to be wailing. The adults sorted through dusty Things and
accepted the bagels with a grace that belied the feelings within. She found a
yellow pocket torch in the room best for hadedah watching and it seemed
significant. The birds cawed a wailing song and the Rabbi intoned solemn
meaningless words and she slipped the small torch into her pocket, away from the
carnage.
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