Falling Apart

    The lamb drapes there. Cold and wet, molding and gray. It nestles against the marble of the grave, black stone eyes sparkling and blank. The birth year is the same as the death year, the months are one apart. 1919, just last year. My body shakes with a passing wind, filling it with ice. I pull the shawl tighter to my skin, noticing for the first time the bones that push against my knuckles have become noticeable, defined.

    I kneel down to the grave, pushing aside the grass that has begun its slow creep around it, strangling the last life my sister could hope to give. I gingerly hold the lamb, squeezing rain water from its belly that had given it a bloated, surrendered appearance.

    Father has lost his will to join me on my journey to visit my sister. This was shortly after I took up the farming alongside my brother, so that my father could stay in and sulk, cry in his pillow, stare into a pot of tea as if it would bring her back. He’s been doing a lot of that lately.

    The lamb’s ear falls off as I pick it up, the last string ripping apart, opening a wound of cotton and insects that had burrowed themselves inside. Although I know this isn’t right, the mold seems to be growing as I watch it, telling me, whispering to me that the lamb is part of the earth now, like my sister. Give us the lamb, it says. Reverently, I try to fix it, even though I have nothing close to a needle and thread. Realizing my actions are useless, I become angry. I pull at the eyes, yank at the mouth, bury my hands in the cotton insect beds of the belly.

    I wanted her to be alive. To be here. With Mama and Father and Ben. And me.

    We had made a space in the corner of the room that she was to share with me. Mama had taken the cradle she used with Ben and me, old, decrepit, and chipping. The wood had splintered, and it wasn’t safe. Father had done his best to round out the edges, but there wasn’t much to do. It was all we had. I excitedly wove together yellow daisies, fresh lilac, and baby’s breath, sliding it in and out of the slats in the cradle, readying it for her arrival. She never got to see it.

    Mama was too nervous to keep her in her cradle that month. They both fell ill soon after the birth, and Mama wanted to watch her, to be with her all the time. She never once got to see her room. Our room.

    Cotton and yarn decorate the gravestone, leaving me with the shell of the body of the lamb. A shell of the body covered with mold, deteriorating, no use, no purpose. Like me.

    She is in a better place, she is happy now, I tell myself. I want to believe it. With all my heart.

    But there’s an ache in me that brings the tears to fall on the lamb. The ache reminds me that I will never feel the clasp of her warm, chubby fingers gripping my own. She will never toddle through the grass, fall and scrape her knee, and cry for Mama to help her.

    Until the end of days, all she will know is cold. I touch the mound of earth she lies under. Cold. When I ran my hand over the wooden box we placed her in. Cold. I got a splinter from that and Father scolded me the whole time he was taking it out. I run my hands through the dewy grass, allowing the water to spritz my cheeks, mixing with my tears. Cold, cold, cold.

    The lamb’s left eye hangs by a black thread twisted tightly around the back of it, like a hand clinging desperately to a treasured item. It refused to let go. I remember when Mama would sew that eye every time Ben or I yanked it off with our toddler curiosity. Patiently, I would watch as she held the lamb close to her face, saying, “I can hear its heartbeat.” My eyes would widen with wonder and when the lamb was finished with its surgery, safe and sound, I would run my fingers through the matted, dirty fur, trying to hear a heartbeat. My mother was magical.

    Her fingers, long, elegant, withstanding age, would wind through my hair, speedily creating the most beautiful hairstyles. I’d push buttercup weeds in the braids, painting my fingers with pollen. I felt like a princess.

    We don’t have a grave for her, not a marked one. Father used the money he had on my sister’s grave stone, which wasn’t much to begin with. It just marked her birth date and death date. That was all we had to remember her. Mama got even less, a hole in the ground. She deserved more. I tried to tell Father that, but he got angry and he hit me. I remember clutching the warmth that rose to my cheeks, running away and hiding from him in the fields until I was sure he’d fallen asleep.

    I stopped fighting with him. He stopped talking to me. Ben will still join me sometimes when I go to the graveyard, but today I am alone.

    I watch the cotton float through the air, flying to another permanent destination as quickly as possible. The emotion was too much for that cotton; it had to get out. I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I do, too. I grip tightly to the shell of the lamb that is left over.

    I clutch it to my body and I cry and I cry until my face feels raw and my eyes are too tired for tears. I look down and realize the eye is unravelling from the string - the string has fought its last battle. It falls to the grass silently.

    I roll the stone in my fingers, squeezing it as hard as I can. Am I trying to break it? Is this what I want? I’m not sure.

    I put my head on the soft, damp mound of dirt, listening, hoping, praying for a heartbeat. It doesn’t come.

    My eyes blink slowly, and I finally let them shut, embracing the welcome blackness that washes over me. I don’t know how long I slept.