God and Girl is my first novel, written in 2015. I'll post it, a chapter a day, over the next few weeks.
I opened my eyes and saw Mom. It was as if I was looking through a foggy window pane. I had never seen her look so sad.
“Honey, I am so, so sorry about Ellen.”
I lay my head back on the pillow and looked straight up at the ceiling. I couldn’t think. Ellen, gone? I had been praying in the Chapel. Why? I was so tired from sleeping on the floor. Her Father? He had been here earlier? “She’s gone.” Had he said this? He had.
“No, no, no,” I screamed.
Mom lay beside me and held me close, tight, kissing my forehead.
“Baby, all I know to say is I’m so, so sorry and that I am here for you. Oh, my baby, scream if you need to. I love you.”
Through my tears, screaming, yelling, and I think a ‘damn you God,’ I heard Dad’s muffled voice. “Baby, I’m here, in all ways, in every way I can. I love you and I hope you know I will always be here for you.”
Lying in bed, unable to get up, Mom told me that her and Dad got the call early, around 5:00 a.m., and rushed immediately to the hospital. I was in the Chapel with the Ayer’s. We all hugged and cried and cried more. Then, Dr. Spears and Dr. Baker, and Dr. Thornhill all came in. They said that Ellen had died around 4:20 a.m. and that she had died peacefully, without pain.
Mom said that Dr. Thornhill had said the biopsy results showed that Ellen’s brain tumor was malignant. He said that she probably had been showing signs for several weeks, but they would have been basically undetected, symptoms of a headache, maybe a light dizzy spell. He did say that it is possible that she had a dizzy spell when she was driving, even passed out, and that may have been the cause of her accident.
Mom said I fell apart when I recalled that Ellen had run her bike in a ditch on the side of the road in Mentone. Dr. Spears had ordered the nurse to give me a sedative. Mom and Dad had brought me home and put me to bed.
I spent the rest of Saturday on the couch in the den. Dad had gone out to have my prescription filled, strong narcotics. I slept most of the day, dazed, depressed, and so very lonely. It was good that the meds closed me off from reality.
Sunday morning, we all met at Carr Funeral Home to see Ellen one last time. Her family was very private, and they didn’t want a traditional Alabama funeral, just a simple viewing and a memorial attended only by close friends and family.
I have little memory of what happened after I ate three spoons of Mom’s potato soup late Saturday afternoon, up until now, as we walk into the Chapel at Carr Funeral Home. I do seem to recall Ryan, Lisa, and Sarah coming by the house, but I don’t know when.
“Are you holding up?” Mom asked as we walked down the aisle toward Ellen’s casket and her Mom and Dad standing, looking down, holding each other.
“You are holding me up, Mom. I have no strength and no desire to live.” I said.
We made it to the front and the Ayers turned and hugged me, both crying, wailing. “We love you Ruthie.” Mrs. Ayers said. “Ellen loved you so very much. She came alive after she met you. The two of you were our special angels.” The Ayers walked away and left Mom and me and Dad and Rachel and Jacob alone, besides Ellen’s casket.
I turned and looked down at her. “Oh, oh, Ellen,” I moaned. I suffocated. I couldn’t stand. Mom and Dad and Rachel and Jacob all held me, propped me up. I gasped for breath.
“She isn’t dead, she can’t be. Ellen, get up. I’m here.” I touched her hands and pulled back suddenly, frightened. Death, so this is what death feels like? She was so cold. Her hands were stiff, cold, lifeless. Ellen was dead. She was gone. She was still so beautiful. Her face, her long black curly hair, her lips, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. Oh baby, show me your eyes, let me look once more into your baby blue eyes. I moaned, I couldn’t breathe. “I can’t live without Ellen. Carry me with you.”
I wanted to die. I became so angry. I hated this world. Kill me, please kill me. Help me God. God damn-it. God, how could you be so cruel? You killed my Ellen. You hate me, and I hate you.” I said.
I was and am fortunate to have parents who are really in-tune, at least at times. During my entire ‘losing it’ episode, my family just loved me. They didn’t ever say, stop, or that’s not necessary, or that I shouldn’t be acting this way, at least not here. But, they had a good sense about them that what was happening to me was natural, a response to the death of a loved one. Of course, they couldn’t ever imagine how much I loved Ellen. Only she knew how I truly felt.
And, now she was gone.
After I had screamed and cried, and shouted and cussed all I could, with every ounce of energy and life I had in me, Mom and Dad led me, upheld me, out and to the car and home and to my bedroom and to my bed. Whether it was the absolute best or not, they mercifully fed me my meds and I slide and sunk down the vertical chute into the cave, deep, deep away from this world, up besides little Ella. I say this now imagining, but then, as the meds kicked in, all thought had ceased, and I just floated away.
Again, I slept the rest of the day, all night, and until 10:00 Monday morning. Mom later told me that around midnight I had woke up and said I was hungry and that I asked for cold pizza and was shivering from swimming. She said I must have been hallucinating from the drugs.
I sat in the car at the cemetery. I didn’t have the desire to be with anyone, not my family or the Ayer’s. I wanted to be alone with Ellen. Mom had agreed to leave me in the car, but she stood about half way in between me and Ellen’s grave-site where everyone had gathered. As soon as everyone left, or at least moved away, Mom came back for me as agreed. The Ayers and the funeral home guys had agreed not to lower Ellen’s casket after the service, not until I had my time. Mom and Dad led me to Ellen, and left me and her, alone.
“Oh baby, I am here. This can’t be happening. This is a dream, a nightmare. Honey, we must go back to Mentone, to our Rock, to our old red barn. I love you my baby. I can’t make it without you. What am I to do? Why are you leaving me here? Why? Oh, why? I’m sorry I let you down. I should have noticed something was wrong, especially when you ran off the road with your bike. Forgive me.”
I kept on talking out loud to my Ellen, my baby, for a very long time. Then, it started to rain, not heavy, but a steady rain.
“Ellen, I want to stay here but they won’t let me. I’ll come tomorrow, and we can talk. We will spend time together tomorrow, and we can touch. Before I go, let me have one more dance. Ellen, dance with me. Dance with me like we did in Mentone, like we have so many times.”
Listen, my baby, and dance with me.
I don’t remember if I just spoke these words out-loud or whether I sang them, but Ellen and I did dance, our dance, that dance that only we could. We were back in her car, windows down, singing with the radio as it played “Come Away with Me,” by Norah Jones, on our way home from Mentone, Sunday, just a week ago:
“Come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song
Come away with me on a bus
Come away where they can’t tempt us, with their lies
I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So, won’t you try to come
Come away with me and we’ll kiss
On a mountaintop
Come away with me
And I’ll never stop loving you
And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I’m safe there in your arms
So, all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me
And all I ask is for you to come away with me in the night.”
As the rain fell, harder now, I collapsed in a ball beside Ellen, lifeless except for my fingernails scraping the side of her casket. Finally, as the clouds drew darker and darker, as though night fell like a foggy blanket way before the proper time, Mom and Dad came and gathered me up in their arms. As they tried leading me, I collapsed again during my first step.
“Leave me here. Leave. You two please leave. Leave me alone and never come back, I half screamed, half whispered, fully crying.”
“Darling, it is time to go home.”
Dad picked me up and carried me like a baby back to our car, me screaming for Ellen the whole way home.
Richard L. Fricks 