If my dad didn’t always disagree with me, I would have buried my mother in this backyard. What he thought was barbaric, I knew she would have loved. He would say, “You don’t want it to look like we murdered her, do you?” Maybe I did. Maybe I wanted everyone to look at us and our dead mother/wife and be so scared that they wouldn’t talk to us ever again. I wouldn’t have to deal with Mrs. Rafferty and her stupid cats. Besides, the backyard was my mother’s favourite place to be when she wasn’t sleeping or cooking.
She would read on the hammock that hangs in between Mike and Ike, the big trees. She taught me how to do a backflip on the trampoline. She landed on her face the first time but it only took her two more tries before she nailed it. She loved to knit on the patio during the fall. And then there’s her garden. Her beautiful, scentful, colourful garden. She would plant everything she thought was beautiful: roses, dahlias, tulips, basil. Roses were her favourite. They’re mine, too.
I’m sitting on the patio now, the April sunlight basking down on my skin while a gentle breeze skims over the unshaven hairs on my legs. I hear a motor rev up in the distance, someone’s blasting their hard rock music in their garage. It’s probably Darren down at 214. I grab my wired headphones that dangle down the side of the little IKEA patio table and plug them into my ears, not even bothering to turn on any music. Nothing sounds good anymore. I lay there, my eyes closed under my Walmart sunglasses, and I’m slowly… slowly… falling…
“Are you alive?”
My eyes pop open, the breeze quickly turning into a chill. Peeling my back away from the chair, I look forward. Behind the patio railing is a little girl. She’s around four or five years old, her hair is in two pigtails tied with bows. Pink, of course, which matches the purple checkered dress she’s wearing. She’s only three feet tall, but her eyes make her seem bigger. They’re squeamishly, perfectly round, and unblinking. I can’t look away.
“You looked dead.” Her voice is mousy and nasally. Annoying, really.
“Well, I’m not,” I say back. “So you can leave now.”
She stares at me, eyes still unblinking. After a moment, she takes her flat palm and swipes a hair off her face. It doesn’t work the first time, but after two more tries, she manages to unstick it from her round face.
“Listen,” I start to warn her, “I don’t know how you got in here, but it isn’t nice to break into people’s backyards.”
A laugh escapes her mouth. It’s vibrant and three pitches too high. Before I know what’s happening, she starts running around on the grass, laughing and holding her arms out as if she were a plane. A faint clinking sound composes with every step she takes. With a swift glance at her ankles, I notice a glistening gold chain swishing around and around. She’s wearing an anklet.
“Hey!” I shout, “This isn’t your backyard!”
“Brrrrrrrrrr!” Airplane noises. Great.
I haphazardly maneuver my feet into my knock-off Birkenstocks and run onto the grass. She whips by me.
“Hey!” I shout again, my sandals clapping under my heels as I run. “Get back here!”
I get close enough to grab her but as I stretch my arms out, she fakes out on me and runs the opposite way. I don’t know where she learned a trick like that but my retired-track-star-turned-wannabe-musician body is exhausted trying to keep up with her games. I’m desperate to get her out of my mother’s backyard. The grass crinkles beneath my feet as I take a lunge forward, closer to her now. I’m just about to grab her when my ratty old sandals get stuck mid-stretch and before I know it, my face meets the dirt. Hard. I hear faint giggling and more clinking before I humiliatingly pick my face up off the ground, dust my dirt-covered mouth off, and look around for this little girl.
But she’s nowhere to be seen.
I check the hammock, the garden, under the trampoline, and behind the patio. She’s gone.
“Good,” I say aloud, before checking around to make sure no one saw me fall on my face. Dusting my hands and knees off, I finally walk inside my house. The sliding door gets stuck on the tracks, and I slam it shut.
—
The next day, after spending too many hours rummaging around my mother’s closet, I’m back in the backyard with a box of old nail polish bottles open beside me. They were tucked behind a pile of crossword puzzles in a dust-ridden corner of the closet. She had a habit of not finishing her puzzles. Kind of ironic how she never wanted things to end.
I pluck a reddish-brown colour from the box. Even though the label has rubbed off, I still know the shade name: Chocolate Hearts. My mother’s toes were always painted and she never used any other colour. Even in the winter, when her feet were stuffed into a pair of 2010 Steve Maddens. I begin to twist the cap, but it won’t budge. I twist and twist, gripping harder each time. Suddenly, it feels like a rubber band snaps inside my hand. Shit, a cramp. I begin to stretch my hand out and in when a laugh erupts beside me. It’s mousy and nasally. Slowly turning my head, our eyes meet.
“You again?” I ask. It’s the little girl from yesterday.
“Chase me,” she demands, her arms swinging by her sides.
She’s wearing a different dress today — orange with white polka dots. Braided hair drapes down her back. I can hear her anklet clink in the wind.
“I’m not going to chase you.”
“Chase me!”
“Get out of my backyard!”
I pull my shoulders back. Why am I arguing with a little girl wearing braids and an orange polka-dot dress? Meanwhile, I’m wearing my basketball shorts, the seams decaying by the second, my t-shirt stained with late-night pickle juice, and my ratty sandals that break every three days. I stare longingly at her dress. I wish I could wear it, just to know what it feels like.
I shake my head, snapping myself out of this daze. She’s still staring at me with her round, unblinking, serial-killer eyes. Up close now, though, there seems to be a desperation to them. Huffing, I push myself up with whatever strength I have in my legs and walk slowly towards the grass. Birds chirp around us, and Darren’s music is faint in the distance.
I hold myself back about ten feet away from the little girl. She’s bouncing on the balls of her feet, revving up. I stop her just before she takes off.
“I will chase you,” I begin, “if you sit and talk to me.”
With that, I kick off my sandals and lower myself to the grass. Her eyebrows furrow and crossing her arms, she stomps her way to a seated position right in front of me. I can see my mother’s dying roses behind her. They contrast nicely with the hue of her dress. Her pout, however, sours this moment as she waits for me to say something. I ask her the first thing I can think of.
“What’s your name?”
She continues to stare and pout. So I ask again.
“What’s your name?”
No response. Heat rushes to my head.
“Where are your parents?”
I can hear nothing but the squawks of the birds and Darren’s distantly hellish music. I curl my hands into fists, but in my frustration, that piercing pain zips through my palm again. At the sight of me wincing, the little girl springs up and rushes right beside me, grabbing my hand—which is two times the size of hers—and begins to massage it. Though she’s not firm enough, the muscles in my hand innately relax. Her little fingertips feel like butterflies crawling over my palm.
Looking into her eyes, I finally catch them blinking. She’s concentrating hard on my hand, moving her fingers from left to right, increasing pressure in some places rather than others. We sit in silence as she does this, my steady breathing overpowering the birds and Darren’s music. I don’t realize my eyes are closed until she stops and pulls away.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
I hear Darren’s music in the distance again.
The little girl and I stare at each other for a moment before she asks, “Can we play now?”
She’s pouting again, although this time it’s less irritating. I nod and she stands up fast, adjusts her dress, and begins to run around. And so, I begin to chase the little girl around my mother’s backyard.
She disappears about an hour later as I catch my breath. Any trace of her is completely gone. Panting, I make my way to the patio and rest myself down in the rusty chair. Chocolate Hearts is still sitting on the IKEA table, unopened. I grab it, twist the lid, and it opens right away.
—
A few days pass and I see the little girl every day. And each day she wears a new coloured dress. After orange, it was blue, then pink, then green, and today’s is red. Typically, she comes after lunch around one or two o’clock. I still haven’t figured out how she gets into the backyard, but I’m starting to think she just climbs over the fence. At her age, I was not climbing fences. It’d be more likely to find me in the kitchen with my mother making misshapen rotis.
Every day starts with me asking her the same three questions: “What’s your name”, “Where are your parents”, and “How old are you?” I’ve never gotten a response. She likes to ask questions too, though they’re usually about trees and flowers. I also know that she loves French fries because I once caught her gobbling down my soggy Wendy’s fries from the bottom of the bag.
Each time the girl leaves, I head back inside the house to clean out my mother’s closet. My dad wants to sell the unimportant stuff. I don’t know what that means. So far, I’ve found my mother’s old discarded knitting projects, the Gap sweatpants she called her “grocery pants”, and even her wedding chudiyan. I gave the bangles to my dad to throw out, but he shoved them back in my face and told me to “Be serious”.
Today, I’m sitting with the little girl on the grass, the both of us eagerly picking at it. She likes to tear hers from the top, mine come out from the root.
“What happens when you die?”
My head shoots up. She’s not even looking at me, she’s still picking at the grass.
“What did you say?” I ask.
She responds with the same question though more annoyed than before, “What happens when you die?”
Before I can stop and think, I tell her, “You leave everyone you love behind.” And, after a moment, I whisper under my breath, “So don’t die.”
“I won’t, silly,” she nonchalantly promises.
A few moments pass where neither of us says anything at all. And, as if nothing happened, the little girl dusts the grass off her red dress and begins to run around. And, after an hour, like clockwork, she disappears.
It’s evening now and I head upstairs to my bedroom to lie down and listen to the ring of silence. As I pass by the master bedroom, however, I can’t help myself and I start to wander inside. It’s dim in here with the blinds closed and dust clumps fester in the corners of the floor because my dad doesn’t know how a mop works. My fingers graze the walls as I sit down on the right side of the bed. Her side.
When I finally lie down, the pillow is cold and soft. But it doesn’t smell like her. I don’t know what I’m more disappointed in – the pillow for not retaining the scent or myself for not being able to recall it. I close my eyes and in this relief, a single tear rolls across my nose and then my eyelid before making contact with the pillowcase.
I open my eyes after a few minutes, having not rested at all, and begin to walk around the room. When I make my way to my father’s side of the bed, I adjust the nightstand and open the drawer. My breath flies away from me. Sitting in his drawer amongst the old candy wrappers is a photo of my mother. She’s about four or five years old, her hair in pigtails, her arms crossed, and she has a pout on her face. But what strikes me most is her dress — orange with white polka dots. I collapse onto the bed, my eyes immediately pouring out hot tears. They fall down my skin, landing on the floor. No sound escapes my mouth, only my shaky breath gasping for air. I pull my mother close to my chest, bending the photo beneath my grip.
I wake up in the middle of the night to my dad shaking me. I’m on my mother’s side of the bed but have no memory of getting under the covers. Nor do I remember curling up with the picture tucked in my arms. My dad sends me back to my room. I groggily oblige.
—
It’s one o’clock in the afternoon the next day and I’m sitting at the edge of the patio chair. A clinking sound erupts but this time, it comes from my ankle as I jiggle it up and down. My mother’s anklet –which I found stashed in a yellowing plastic Walmart bag in her closet– shimmies around my skin. I desperately need the girl to show up. I want to teach her how to do a backflip on the trampoline. I want to paint her nails. I want to make her misshapen rotis. I want to tell her about death. I want to tell her about my mom. I want to tell her my name.
But after an hour, she still isn’t here. By three o’clock, I check the front of the house but she isn’t there. My vision begins to fog. I swing in the hammock to distract myself, bounce on the trampoline to keep myself awake, and at five o’clock, I grab a shovel and start digging in the garden.
I keep waiting to hear the clinking of her anklet or catch a glimpse of a bright-coloured dress, but nothing comes. I dig deeper and deeper into the soil, each scoop more powerful than the last. Tears well in my eyes and I begin to sob. I can barely see what I’m doing now, my vision too obstructed by my tears to make sense of my surroundings. I will never stop digging.
That is until my hand begins to cramp. I stop to massage it, but it doesn’t help. I wipe my tears from my eyes and raise my face to the sky.
“I miss you.”
Quickly, I remember why I never joined my mother in the garden — I hated the bugs. I feel one crawling on my hand now. Before I swat it away, though, I look down and stare directly into the eyes of a monarch butterfly. Its beautiful orange colour glistens in the dusk. Neither of us looks away and after a moment of silence, it leaves me, disappearing into the sky.