interlude 4

interlude 4

She sat there,  Why is it THAT moment that sticks in my mind? Certain memories were so burned in her that she would never forget them and yet the ones she wanted to remember faded much too easily.  She sat in the courthouse and what seemed like an eternity was merely a few moments.  “Guilty” they had said.  She breathed. The hard benches reminded her more of church rather than a courthouse. The wooden stake in her knee high boot dug into her ankle.  At least that comforted her.  God she thought, how the hell did I get here?  Her mind began to wander.

Christmas break was over and school had started again.  Her brother was still missing and she was getting worried. The worry and events leading up to that day were hazy but he was missing and she was scared. She was sitting at the lunch table in the crowded lunchroom facing the front doors of the school.  She was eating and laughing and talking with people when she looked up and saw her father charging in. That was the memory that stayed with her: her father charging in and the realization that her father was not a man to be trifled with.  

He was a southern Baptist minister. He was big and obviously used to holding his audience captivated. He was the kind of man that spoke of and with the Divine and he did so with authority and, therefore, wasn’t very interested in the authority of the world. He marched past school officials looking over the vast amount students in the lunchroom looking for his daughter. Looking for her. There was clearly something wrong.

She stood silently, her friends looking at her. In that moment she knew.  She knew.  She held herself together and walked to the front, as he had not yet spotted her.  His eyes said it all. The pain and fear and need to find his daughter was so pervasive she could feel it.  He needed his baby girl and she knew it. She walked slowly not wanting to hear the reality any sooner than she had to and then he saw her when she was only a few feet from him.  Her mother was just behind him and she stepped forward wrapping her arms around her. Her mother had been crying.

“Oh God, he’s dead isn’t he? He’s dead”, she said

Her mother held her tight and her father right next to her tried to catch her as she began to collapse. A few feet from where they stood was a bench and her parents managed to get her there as she sank. Her reality of innocence and peace and faith and God and all that she knew was evaporating from her soul in that moment. It was as if in one instant the entire world had changed. She sat there on that bench knowing what her mother was about to say while the noise of the lunchroom continued.  There were so many students that few had realized what was happening.  The world continued to turn and go on and she couldn’t make sense of it.  She could not grasp it.

“They found him Hannah.  He’s gone. Aaron is gone.”

“Someone killed him mamma?”

“Yea baby someone killed him.”

In the haze she hadn’t seen the school administration people approaching asking them to come into the office and to come out of the hall so as not to attract attention.  They were walked into the office where she sat she couldn’t remember now if she was in shock or sobbing but she remembered the cool leather chair against her back.

She sat there a few moments and then, “I need my stuff out of my classroom. I left my book bag and my stuff in my classroom.”

“We’ll send someone to get it.”

The moments after that were hazy. Someone got her stuff and a few friends at her lunch table who saw what happened had followed her into the office to see what was going on. She remembered Jess being there and hugging her… or was it Rei? Yea it was Rei. Or maybe it wasn't? She didn’t remember anymore. The memory faded there.

Her mother’s voice reached her then, nudging her out of the courtroom bench. It brought her to the present. The courtroom and the fluorescent lighting and the news cameras outside were real to her again. That one memory of her father charging in that day was so very real. She couldn’t grasp why all the memories around it were so hazy.  She stood and gave a brief smile at the jury not sure or not if she was relieved that she would not need to use the wooden knife or not. She had carved it out of her mother’s wooden giraffe letter opener weeks ago. She fully planned on using it on the defendant who had killed her brother had he not been convicted. She walked out of the room past the metal detectors surrounded by people she barely knew and didn’t care about.  

              Her other brother was near and in the wheelchair too sick to walk, her father an emotional mess beside her, and her mother behind her. She wished she felt happy about the verdict. She didn’t though. She couldn’t. It was the first time she had remembered feeling absolutely nothing.  Her thoughts shifted, Mark really likes me. Maybe we can make out later or something. She sighed. That would be nice.