Something In The Mist

Thamarai's hair had long since run gray and her skin had grown dry, her face littered with wrinkles. The tiny red dot that betrayed her nationality and her race was freshly placed upon her forehead. Her sari swept the ground, a silken tangerine orange with a pattern of green and golden vines climbing up the skirt. The shawl that curled around her wiry arms was a transparent blue adorned with tiny green lilies. She was short, and the slight hump in her back seemed to shout out her old age. Her eyes were emeralds that reflected the wisdom of her years and the emotions that she had for so long buried inside of herself.

            She lifted the watering can and some of the liquid jumped down to the ground due to the shaking of her hands. Arthritis had plagued her for years, ever since Father Nesbitt had died from small pox, and she had been left alone at the nontraditional co-ed Abbey. Now she had a quiet life, and the only companions she had were her flowers and her memories. The water droplets hit the stems of the flowers and ran down them to the now wet soil. Thamarai glanced upwards and could see slivers of the sky through the petals of her flowers. Stretching out her fingers she stroked one of the flower stems, rough as the bark of a maple tree. Every day she came to water them, and every day her babies grew another foot towards the sky. Their necks were six inches thick now, and Thamarai could walk between them just as she could walk between the tree trunks in a forest. Her flowers were planted years before, and never once had they wilted from the sunlight or died when the snow covered them. In fact, it seemed as if nothing could ever hurt or scar Thamarai's flowers.

            Thamarai made her way, shuffling her tiny feet across the dirt, towards the well in the center of the quiet Abbey. When she left the safety of her flowers, she at once felt vulnerable, and her head seemed to shrink closer to her shoulders. She could feel the souls of the dead around her. Thamarai knew that all the people from the Abbey that had died were still here, waiting for her to join them. She was the last one, and no one could change that. Thamarai felt no discontent, however, because she loved her life of solitude, of pleasant loneliness.

            Out of the corner of her eye, she could make out the giant iron gateway that had not opened in years. Vines were crawling around the cast iron bars, and Thamarai could make out the noise of the bars being slowly crushed to death. Their screams plagued her and made it hard for her to sleep.

            She remembered the first day she ever came through that gate. It had been a brisk autumn day, yet she recalled how the moment she passed through the gate, the air grew warm, and had never since lost that warmth.

            “Oh, how beautiful it is!” Thamarai yelped quietly as she passed the gate into the nontraditional co-ed Abbey, sitting in the back of the yellow automobile, her single bag of belongings on her lap.

            In those days, Thamarai could still remember how her heart had leapt with such joy at finally having found a home for herself. She rubbed her creased hands, remembering how it felt to have skin that was soft and wrinkle free, that had not seen years of pain and turmoil and beauty.

            “How you have longed for this day, Thamarai. I am glad I am here to share it with you,” Trevor Mangano said quietly from beside her. Thamarai turned to look at him, a smile flitting across her face.

            “Oh Trevor, you sound as though you shall never see me again.”

            He watched her with eyes full of despair that he hid behind a masquerade of excitement.

            “Well, if you say so,” he replied, even though what she said was completely true. 'Once in a abbey, always in a abbey' was the saying in this country. Though this was, in fact, a very nontraditional Abbey for the sole fact that they had invited Thamarai herself to work and live there.

            Thamarai returned to looking wildly about her, at the ancient stone wall of the chapel, to the large garden filled with tiny budding flowers. Her hair was long and charcoal black, dancing in the wind from the automobile. Her tiny facial features were completely relaxed, and she knew she was where she needed to be. The red dot on her forehead appeared scarlet red against her healthy, glowing skin. Trevor watched her in grief, knowing that he was in love with her, but would never see her again. Knowing that she could not understand how he felt about her, not now, not ever.

            When the car came to a stop, Thamarai jumped out and was met by a tall man in robes. His hair was long and brown, and his eyes were oceans, dripping with wonder at the new recruit. He extended his hand to Thamarai and she took it, shaking it faster than considered normal or inviting.

            “I cannot believe I am finally here. Thank you for offering me this chance, thank you,” Thamarai stumbled over her own words.

            The man pulled away his hand as soon as she let it go.

            “I am very pleased to meet you, Ms. Sengupta. We have been waiting for someone with your skills in herb healing for years. Now that you are here, I can't wait to get to know you. My name is Michael Nesbitt, and I am known here as Father Nesbitt.”

            Thamarai stood a full two feet below Father Nesbitt and so she had to tilt her head back to see his face. For a moment, she was taken by the handsome appearance of Father Nesbitt. She could feel a slight tinge of longing that she had never felt before. It scared her, having a feeling like that. It was a feeling so strange, so alien to her. So she buried it deep inside of her, only to have it awaken stronger later in her life.

            “Your quarters are ready for you,” Father Nesbitt told her.

            “Thank you,” Thamarai replied, her voice quieter than before. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt Trevor's hand on her shoulder. Turning to look at him, she could tell he wanted to talk to her.  Without saying a word, Father Nesbitt walked away. For a moment, Trevor and Thamarai stood facing each other. He lifted his hand and stroked Thamarai's cheek, which sent a shiver down her spine.

            “I'm going to miss you,” he whispered.

            “I'm going to miss you too,” Thamarai said. She wrapped her hand around his wrist and slowly removed it from her cheek.

            “Trevor, listen,” Thamarai began, “I don't know why you are acting like this. You have always been so...enthusiastic about my search for a home. You have always been there for me. It feels like only now you are giving me hints of feelings that you have-”

            Trevor lay a finger on Thamarai's lips to make her hush. “I am happy for you, Thamarai. You are going to have a good life here. I wish you the best of luck.”

            Thamarai pulled him into a hug, and when they parted ways, she turned back to embrace her new life.

            When she arrived at the well, she found the water closer to the top than before. She set her watering can on the ledge and lay her hand on her chest. She could feel her heart beating dangerously slow, as it had for a few weeks now. Less than thirty beats a minute. It caused her to feel as if she could not breathe, as if her chest was being squeezed tightly. She started gasping and coughing, but after a while she returned to normal.

            She remembered the years back in India, when she was young and healthy. Thamarai wished she could return to the home where she had grown up, where she had so many memories of her long-dead mother. Her mother had been a good woman, with good morals and well learned lessons that she taught Thamarai. Her father, on the other hand, was a strict Indian professor who believed wholeheartedly in the tradition of arranged marriage. Before he died from cancer, he had tried to marry Thamarai off to a well respected Indian man. Thamarai smiled as she recalled the night she ran away from India, the country she loved so much, just to be free. She remembered arriving in England on a hay wagon, and setting off in a city and a world she did not know or understand.

            Thamarai never saw her parents again, not until she was called to India to get their cremation ashes. Two jars of golden flower designed porcelain sitting next to her on the ship ride back to Europe. She let the ashes of her father go into the ocean he loved so much, and of her mother's ashes she kept a small pinch in a locket around her neck. Thamarai felt around her neck and pulled the locket out from under her sari. She fingered it and bit her lip to keep from crying.

            “Hello mother. You see? I'm doing great. I'm working in a nontraditional Co-ed Abbey, but I'm all alone now. I only have you and my flowers. But it's peaceful, mother. It's peaceful,” Thamarai whispered in her now raspy voice.

            Thamarai tucked her locket away and shuffled towards the supply cabinet in the kitchen, her feet dragging and making long and deep crevasses in the ground wherever she walked. Her feet had grown tired over the years, and so she only walked about in a shuffle, a shuffle that left behind deep chasms that would slowly fill back up with dirt. If not, Thamarai would be falling into them all of the time. She just felt so tired, so weary every moment of the day, so that all she would want to do is fall back asleep and never wake up again.

            Sometimes she would sit alone in the chapel for hours and watch as Father Nesbitt walked down the aisle to the pedestal. He would stand there, staring out at the seats, his eyes vacant and looking for something that was never there. Slowly, he would disintegrate into the air as Thamarai watched him with longing. She had felt something for him, something she had thought might have been love. She only found the courage to whisper her faint promises of true love to him as he lay on his death bed. She remembered him grasping her hand and holding it until his last breath escaped the sanctuary of his earthly body. There had been days in between Brother Harding's death and Father Nesbitt's when he and Thamarai were all alone. She could have told him then. She could have said a few simple words to him, but instead he died without her taking her chance.

            Thamarai took a cloth and cleaning supplies in her hand and made her way outside again. This was the daily routine, wake up, water the plants, think by the well, sit in the chapel, clean the graves in the graveyard out back, go to bed. A never ending cycle that kept Thamarai from going insane.

            Down the path she went, threading her way through her flowers, which were at least six feet above her head and still rising. Their petals shaded her from the sun that bit at her cheeks and shoulders, turning them as red as Thamarai's prize roses. Behind the garden sat a tiny wooden fence which she unlatched and passed through. After a short walk down the dirt walkway, she came to a somber looking graveyard. It looked lean and lonely, with twenty graves in all, tiny stones sticking out from the ground like stubby fingers reaching for air that the bodies beneath could not find. Mist rolled over them, trying to cling to the stones, but always losing its grip. Thamarai took her time at each grave, reading the name of the stone and placing a giant rose petal in front of it.

            When Thamarai reached the grave of Father Nesbitt, she felt tears gather in her eyes. They dripped down her cheek and splashed onto his grave that she had dug him. When they hit the ground they collided with the thick mist to become tiny, multicolored fireworks. Orange, blue, and purple sparks littered the area below her until it looked like the grave was a massive flower bed, there one moment, gone the next.

            Through her tears she could make out a grave that she always forgot about. It was a fairly tiny one, with a rough stone for the grave marker. The mist seemed to roll around it and conceal it from Thamarai's view, as if it thought that the stone was a bad omen. Thamarai had decided long ago, if subconsciously, to push this little grave out of her thoughts, so that she never had to dwell on it. It brought her bad memories, ones of pain and petrifying loneliness and a swollen stomach inside of which a tiny secret had grown and died, a secret that had been hers alone.

            For the first time in a long time, Thamarai remembered about that grave concealed by the mist. Finally she was letting herself cry, and finally she allowed herself to remember that one terrifying thought. The one that told her that it was her child buried there in the ground. A bloodstained infant, with a single curl of brown hair that was the same texture as it's father.

            Thamarai could clearly remember that night in the chicken coup with Father Nesbitt; when they had fallen to temptation and spent a single night of feverish passion side by side. A few weeks later, he grew sick as all the others had before him. By the time Thamarai knew there was a second human heart beating alongside hers, it was far too late; it was for certain that Father Nesbitt would die. Still now she hates herself for not breaking the news to him. Still now she begs God to let her return to the moment he died, just so that she could whisper their secret into his ear.

            Falling to her frail knees, she lifted a vibrant orange flower and kissed it softly before placing it on the tiny grave. No name was etched on the stone, all it said was “With Love”.

            When Thamarai could no longer stand the pain, she stood and returned to the Abbey. She once more banished her thoughts of the child in order to take up her routine and keep herself far from her sorrow. In the orange evening dusk, she lay on her bed and as soon as her head hit her pillow, she fell into a dreamless sleep. A single tear slipped from her eyelid, crashing to the floor and splattering into the room; just as her sorrow was splashed into every corner of the now-abandoned Abbey.