Then, of course, there was the incident that happened on the day that her father left home. That was different, though. That time, it wasn’t so much that she saw a person’s thoughts or feelings; it seemed more like she suddenly felt the way the world was moving; almost, you could say, as if she had known the thoughts of life itself. She had been able to say goodbye to him just fine when he was telling her to be a good girl and look out for her mother and telling her mother not to worry and that he would be careful, and she was fine when he was getting on the transport with the rest of the men who were coming from their town and trading a few words with those who were already in from different locations, and she was fine when she was waving to him when the doors were beginning to slide shut in front of all those faces. But as soon as the thick doors of metal and hard wood shut completely, covering her father’s face from view, something new… yet vaguely familiar… seared through her mind and heart.
She didn’t exactly see something, nor exactly hear something. She wasn’t sure what happened to her there. The wooden boards of the platform that stood at the edge of the rich-hued translucent field seemed to melt from under her. The creaking and groaning of the transport, the chatter of the gathered families, the lone crying voice, and the cheeps of the birds and the drowsy summer insects had swirled into an incomprehensible blur of sound. The warmth and fragrance of the afternoon sunlight on the fronds of grass and the late blooms shivered and dissolved from around her. She was left in a bright black, silently screaming still void that whirled dizzily around her firmly planted self. Nothing could be comprehended there. Everything was much too real. The only things at all that she could perceive was that she understood how an eternity could be spent there and that she understood why nobody came back after they died.
Then she did come back. Everything spun and re-formed back into its proper place with a nauseating twist and she found herself whole again, solid again, crumpled down in a heavy weight on the rough boards. Her hair was softly whisking her face, air was coming in and out of her lungs, her mother’s hand was pressing on her backbone through her clothes, and her eyes were open to the breeze. And she was crying.
Nothing had seemed to happen, nothing had seemed to have been told to her. Yet somehow she was suddenly convicted she would never see her father again. Nobody on the platform would see anyone in the transport ever again. Tears burst out of her eyes and she was panting for breath, and she knew everyone was scared and concerned but she couldn’t help any of that. It didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that her heart was breaking.
She had cried for more than two full hours in someone’s arms before she could manage to gasp out any words to answer the questions everyone had stopped asking a long time ago. Nothing was very clear to her except what she somehow suddenly felt sure of. Nobody really believed her anyway once they could finally make out her shuddering broken sobs.
Nobody but her mother. She had cried too, but only a little bit in the middle of the night, and when Veri asked her what was wrong she answered too quickly that she just missed her father, that was all. Veri hadn’t been convinced, but her mother had redirected her train of thought by telling her that this was the first night in her life that she hadn’t had anyone else in the house – of course she had her daughter, but she meant nobody there to watch out for her. Nobody older and stronger than her. Veri had said she would be there. She was little, and not very strong either, but together they would be strong for each other until… until father came home. He was gone for now, and it made their family seem a little broken, but the ones who remain always made each other whole and build themselves anew over the love of the one who has gone.
Her mother had stared at her again and her sightless eyes filled with more sudden tears.
It didn’t really matter that time, though, because even though Veri had no idea what “anew” meant, she knew that what she had said was true, and it helped fill the hole that the whatever-had-happened had torn in her heart.
They had helped each other, and they had grown much closer since then. Veri was her mother’s physical aid and guide, and her mother had been the same to Veri but led her in the choices she should make. It didn’t mean life was easier, but life wasn’t hard in general anyway. Only the nights, when memories and shadows inescapably haunted her, were hard.
But now it was day. None of this mattered to the little girl who had finally caught sight of the lone house she had been waiting for.
