I missed you more,
The more I tried to move past you.
You refused to be forgotten,
And refused to be experienced.
I’m in limbo;
No peace in sight.
Day 42 Post-Gavin
I’m not going to spend another moment of my free time inside this fucking apartment. These walls are starting to feel like bars in a cell; my emotions, a warden, frowning down at me, cracking a whip, keeping me cowering in a ball in my bed.
So, I get up. And I put on some leggings, a T-shirt, and the same cardigan I’ve been wearing all month. The one Sabrina and I picked out during my first outing after Gavin left me in my apartment alone.
I inhale, so deeply that it hurts.
After I lost the baby, I tell myself.
Because it happened. It happened, and I had to move forward now.
I finish putting my hair in a bun, wishing I had a car for once. I could go for a nice long drive.
Instead, I walk outside and head toward the T, to South End, hoping that within the crowd of culture, I can find some sort of direction.
There’s no lack of company once I get there. Voices and people dressed in their alt clothes with color in their hair, ready to offer opinions and ideas on a whim.
There’s this creative charge in the air; people are selling jewelry and artwork in some stands and food in others.
I’m alone but I’m far from lonely.
Passing by the old warehouses that now house some of the most beautiful artwork in the world awakens something in me.
I follow a small crowd into one of the warehouses, each step a decision to follow some sort of instinct. Or maybe nothing at all.
After all, I’d planned and failed. Maybe it was time to see what life was like when I didn’t plan at all.
There are areas showcasing different artists. The crowds are thinner in here and I feel like I can breathe for a moment. I head toward an area in the back corner.
Several hues stick out to me and my love of naming colors is put to the test. I see mauve and rust, terracotta and azalea purple. But more than that, I see more shades of blue than I’d ever seen in my life.
I’m drawn to one painting.
At first glance, it’s a woman holding her infant, wrapped in a blue blanket. A woman, painted in hues of blue; the entire painting is in blue.
And yet, the artist somehow makes it stand out beside its neighboring paintings, full of other colors.
One would just see it as a woman and her child.
But I saw more.
In the lines of her face.
In the silence of her baby; no life in its form.
It could be sleeping. But something told me otherwise.
“What do you think?” A voice behind me asks. My hand is over my wildly beating heart and the other has my purse clutched closely to me.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I tell her with a slight chuckle. My eyes scan her, black boots, black stockings, floral dress, and blue hair. Not bright blue. More like the color of a basket of ripe blueberries.
Perhaps admiral blue?
“Well?”
When she doesn’t offer an apology, just a patient smile, I glance around and see that we’re alone.
“What do I think?” The last word of the question sounded a little louder than I intended. I look back at the work of art.
It still speaks to me, though it’s much quieter with this woman watching us.
“I . . . think it’s beautiful.”
“And?”
I press my lips together as a I make a thoughtful sound.
Did I want to open old wounds with a complete stranger?
Did I have anyone else willing to really listen?
“It’s heartbreaking,” I say, telling myself that at the end of this, I’d likely never see her again anyway. “At first glance, it looks like a mother and her child. Simple. And maybe . . . a year ago, six months ago, I would’ve seen it as that and kept moving. But something about it seems . . .”
“Familiar.” She supplies the word, sounding more like she was stating something she absolutely knew to be a fact than offering a suggestion in place of my uncertainty.
My eyes cast downward, away from the strokes of beautiful blue in front of me.
“Something about you seems familiar,” the woman behind me says. I can hear her step toward me and then I feel her body heat as she stands beside me.
“I think you were meant to come here and maybe I was meant to meet you,” she whispers as she sinks down to sit at the bench just behind me.
“Yeah? What makes you think that?” I sit beside her, crossing my ankles and placing my hands on my lap.
I stare at her, marvel at the confidence in her words, even if she might be a nutcase. What’s the worst that could happen?
Murder.
Internally, I shove the idea away.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here. But something told me to come.”
She sits back, and I follow the movement. Relaxed, still surrounded by that air of quiet confidence.
“Here?”
“Yes,” she says as she looks around the room, stopping at each painting for a moment with a smile. She ends at the painting in front of us and starts rubbing at the bracelets on her wrists. They’re bangles, and they look like they have words engraved in them. “I lost a child once. So long ago that . . . it’s almost hard to remember what her kicks felt like.”
Her words cause me to sit back.
“You know what that’s like.” Again, that certainty. We’re strangers but only in the simple way. The way that we’ve never actually met; we don’t know each other’s names.
But in the most transcendent way, we’re kindred spirits. Our experiences have made it so.
“You were a lot further along than I was,” I tell her. “But, yes. I know what that’s like.”
“I never had anyone to tell me this . . . so I want to tell you. There is hope and things will get better. Not only is it a natural evolution but life hands us hard times to give us strength and to make sure we truly feel the good that’s going to come. And it’s going to come.” She brings my hands to her chest.
“But when? When will I feel better?”
“When you finally feel like you deserve to,” she tells me with a hint of laughter, as if it was that easy. But I had nothing else to base her words on, not knowing anyone else who’d dealt with what I had but on a much larger scale, from the sound of it.
Losing a child plagues you, no matter how long you held them in your body or in your arms. Every milestone is met with a longing. Today, they would’ve been this age. Or I would’ve been this far along in my pregnancy.
I would’ve been someone’s mother.
If I hadn’t lost my child, maybe I wouldn’t feel so broken right now.
Nothing is worse than your own body’s betrayal.
It happened to me. And it still shocked the shit out of me when I think about it.
“You mentioned you weren’t supposed to be here?” I ask on an exhale.
She nods and leans her head toward me with a small smile.
“I’m sure my husband’s looking for me as we speak.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you,” I start and lean forward to get up. Her hand grips my arm and she shakes her head.
“I don’t speak to strangers often. I like this. Just a moment more?”
Her brown eyes are wide, and I nod, not being able to fight the fact that I liked it as well.
We sit in silence for a moment, just staring at the painting in front of us and I wonder what the artist felt when she painted it. If she had any idea that two strangers would meet in front of it and connect in an honest and pure way.
“I requested that I be displayed in the back room. My work is only for the people who wish to see beneath the surface,” she says, and the last sentence sounds like it’s more for herself than for me.
I realize what it is she’s saying, and I face her.
“You’re the artist?”
She nods and smiles, a slow spread that is full of something that reflects wisdom internally. She’s young but something about her looks like she’d been on this earth a little longer than the rest of us.
“You want to feel better?”
It’s my turn to nod.
“You really have to trust yourself. And if you can’t do that, trust the universe. Trust that no matter what you do, your fate will come around to kick you in the ass if it needs to.” Her smile is so bright and genuine that I want to believe her.
Someone clears his throat behind her. A man, whose long hair is tied behind his head. He’s holding a little boy’s hand while a girl holds his other hand.
“Take Dylan to the car, Phoebe?”
Even though the little girl, who looks about ten, doesn’t look like the rest of them, her eyes slanted and her jet-black hair slick and straight while the little boy has soft brown curls, she reacts as if she’s always abided by this man. The children walk off, and the woman beside me stands.
“Ready?” he asks, his now empty hands at his sides.
“Always,” she answers him and looks down and smiles at me. “Remember what I said?”
“I will.” I stand, and we hug. It should be awkward; an embrace between two strangers. But knowing that our bodies have held life and let life go before makes it more soothing than strange.
When she lets go, I look over at the man waiting for her. His eyes are on her, following her as she makes his way to him. Only once her hand is firmly in his does he look over at me and smile.
They start to walk off and I hear bits of their words.
“We have to talk to Miranda about her language around the kids,” the man starts. People enter the room and I am no longer privy to their private words.
But once I’m alone, for the first time I don’t feel lonely.