Bebette

The dream always unfolded from the same first page. It was hard to pin down exactly where it began, but like all dreams this one started somewhere in the middle. After drifting, then falling into sleep and passing through a tunnel of bright sunlight and pastel colors, she arrived at a meadow. She crossed it like she’d done a hundred times before and smiled as she went along.

The sky was clear and cloudless, sharp blue with the day star hanging brilliantly. It might have been noon since the sun was directly overhead. The moment triggered a memory of a song or a poem that she knew but couldn’t immediately retrieve.

She looked down and noticed that she was wearing her familiar gray nightgown with fuzzy pink slippers.

The meadow lay flat on a cool spring morning, a calm breeze blowing this way and that. Yet she was warm in her nightgown as if she were under the covers of a very large fluffy blanket stuffed with down.

It was indeed springtime, the bed of grass being the greenest possible hue; nothing could be greener. Daisies were in fullest bloom. Nothing could be fuller. White daisies and yellow sunflowers pockmarked the ever-verdant carpet.

Cherry-blossom trees with pink and white blossoms were everywhere, as far as the girl’s eyes could see. In dreams, her eyes could see farther than ever before.

The smell of the air was rich and full of good memories waiting to be remembered.

She took a few steps forward, a little wobbly at first, but then quicker and longer and faster with each one. The ground was soft and giving, almost like it had a spring underneath it. Every footfall bounced back up. It was almost as if the solid ground were a trampoline.

She took long strides, hovering in the air longer with every new step. The motion reminded her of old grainy videos of men on the moon.

It was as if she could float. As if she could fly. Of course, she very well could fly if she wanted to, the girl asserted to the attentive air.

This was her dream after all, wasn’t it? She reasoned that anything can happen in dreams. Anything and everything. If she could think it, then it instantly became real, no matter how silly or serious.

Even dancing a jig with a party of leprechauns. Even climbing a rainbow to the very top and then sliding down into a golden lake, or riding a unicorn with a bright diamond horn.

Even flying.

Yes, she thought. Even flying. It was the thing that gave her the ultimate feeling, the best experience one could ever have. So why not try?

She was about to jump up into the air in one big leap and remain there, floating among the treetops, and sailing through the sky when — WHOMP! The ground no longer had the give of a trampoline.

She came down and landed hard. It didn’t hurt, no, this was only a dream. But it was hers, dang it. In it, the girl remained grounded. Earth-bound.

If she wanted to fly, she should be able to fly! She declared as much, but the air seemed to stop listening.

Her lips curled to one side.

“I never get to go up any more,” she said softly, kicking up some dirt, which took a long time to settle, like moon dust.

“And I think I know what happens next.”

The cherry-blossoms began to fall off the trees, many at a time. Far too many to be a coincidence.

The wind gusted.

The moment changed.

After a short time, so many flower petals covered the grass that not a blade of the greenest green could be seen any longer. The wind began to gale colder and she shivered, although she was still warm somewhere on the inside.

Some part of her mind understood that her body was wrapped in a thick blanket on a cozy bed.

Somewhere.

Somewhere but not here.

With each breath she took, the meadow got darker. Exhaled air steamed in the new frigid wasteland that was forming.

Gray-black clouds gathered together little by little, joining up and conspiring to blot out the sun. Dandelions and other weeds took the place of daisies as she kept trudging forward with her head down.

The trees quickly became bare. Empty. The scent hanging in the air was no longer the smell of good memories. It was the stench of forgotten things.

She paused. She whispered to herself, “I never know what to expect at this point. It could get brighter or it could get darker.”

As it sometimes does, this time it got darker. The wind began to howl like wailing ghosts, bringing with it a prickly chill that cut through bone.

Sometimes when the dream got brighter, she’d see children younger than she was, playing in the clearing of the meadow. There were two of them: a boy and a girl. The girl was older, taller.

They’d wear happy smiles and would ask her to dance with them. Everyone in their pajamas, they would hold hands and dance while singing “Ring Around the Rosie”.

A brightly hued red rose would always be in the middle of the trio. But when the dream got darker as it was now, the scene was different.

The boy and girl still laughed and giggled and asked her to dance.

Their voices were still happy and they were probably smiling.

Except when she looked this time, in the sunless afternoon, black clouds now overhead, she saw that instead of children, they were skeletons.

They were smiling white skeletons, holding hands, dancing, and singing “Ring Around the Rosie.”

The rose in the middle of them was dry, black and drooped over. It couldn’t be deader. It was the deadest dead it could be.

In the past, the dreamer used to be far more frightened of this scene than she was now.

But she’d seen these skeletons of the dancing children before. She was still afraid, yet the fear came in measured doses.

Sadness was the emotion she felt stronger than anything else. She didn’t get to fly. But the worst part of the dream was yet to come.

“Ring around the Rosie,

Pockets full of posies,

Ashes, Ashes” (here it comes)

“We all...fall...down!”

And the skeletons of the dancing children crumbled into ashes on the floor. It was here that she used to scream herself awake.

Used to. Long ago when the territory of the nightmare was new.

Not this time, though. This time she casually awoke and was instantly alert to the world.

It was day, maybe 3 in the afternoon by her reckoning, which was normally an odd time for a nightmare. Maybe it was a day mare. Or more appropriately, maybe it was just a ’mare.

She was sweating under her large, hot blanket. The fever that she had before closing her eyes to rest, had not yet broken. She was on the sofa bed in the living room. It had lately become a makeshift bedroom her father set up for when she got tired.

Sometimes climbing stairs was out of the question.

The lights were out, curtains closed and everyone in the house was being quiet. Only the adjoining kitchen light was on low. The dimmer switch betrayed the darkness and gentle voices betrayed the silence.

Her mother and Aunt Grace were in the kitchen drinking tea while talking to one another in loud whispers.

The girl thought to herself, “Why don’t grownups understand that loud whispers are still loud?”

As usual, she could hear every word. Every time her mother spoke to Aunt Grace, she would cry at some point. This time would be no different. She rarely ever saw her mother cry, but she would hear it often while pretending to be asleep.

The sisters sat on stools at the breakfast nook, underneath a small circular black-and-white clock. It had silver colored metallic lines radiating from its face like light rays from a dull and gloomy sun.

“I don’t know, Grace, I just don’t know what to do. I want her to have a normal life, but--”

“But that’s simply not possible right now, Claire. She’s a very sick little girl. She needs her medicine. The treatments make her weak, you know that. She needs to stay away from strangers so she doesn’t get sick. You do the best you can to make it work. How is she right now?”

“She just had another treatment last week, and today she’s got a fever. The doctor says to give her acetaminophen and let her rest. How much of this can a twelve-year-old girl take without eventually wanting what everybody else has? She deserves what everyone else has. No, scratch that. She deserves more. Universes more.”

“What that beautiful girl has is two parents who love her and would do anything for her, who would give everything they had for a single day of her wellness. What more can any child ask for? This situation is not normal. It’s crazy. You need the right philosophy of life to make sense of crazy things. We get dealt different cards, but we’re all in the same game.

“It just, rains sometimes. In between the sunny days. That’s my philosophy of life and how I try to live it. Endure. We need to be able to weather any storms that come our way because someday soon a ray of light will peak through a cloud, and it’ll feel — just for a moment — to shine only for you.”

“I know, Grace, you’re right. The situation just feels hopeless. Most of the time. I have a home office now, so I can be with her all day. It breaks my heart to see her just watching TV, to see her look out the window at all the kids walking to school, riding their bikes, and being...normal. She used to do those things. The school bus stops right in front of our door to pick up and drop off all the neighborhood children. Lily sees exactly what she’s missing. All those smiling faces.”

“You’re a strong woman, Claire. She gets that from you, and you must keep being that way. You need to be one of those smiling faces. Don’t break, because she can sense that. The last thing you need is for her to lose hope. How’s Peter been lately?”

“Like he’s been since the beginning — a mess. He loves his daughter more than anything; more than me, more than himself. He hides his worry for her sake. But we’re stressed. They laid him off from his construction job a few weeks ago. Now he works odd jobs doing whatever work he can get his hands on.

“A little bit of carpentry, some plumbing. Electrical. You know he’s handy. He built her a birdhouse in the backyard because she loves the sparrows around here. Now she can see them going in and out, taking baths in the fountain.”

Grace’s voice always hardened when Claire spoke about Peter. Before Lily’s illness, the conversation between sisters would often be centered around him needing to get a proper job. A question would arise about when he’d finally become the provider that their family needed.

“That’s very sweet of him. You did tell me that the biggest problem with the jobs he works is how many hours he puts in. I imagine it’s tough when you don’t have a set schedule and sometimes you work nights. Claire, why are you crying? Stop that, she’s going to hear you! What did I say wrong? I was being polite! I love Peter, you know that.”

“It’s not you, Grace. I was thinking about something the doctor said. I didn’t tell my husband yet. Doctor said this is the last shot. The last medicine they’ll try. Any more than that and it’d be cruel to put her through it. If she doesn’t respond well to this last set of treatments, there’s a good chance that...that...” she sobbed in heavy, shivering gulps.

“That what, Claire?” Grace had an amplified twang of breakage in her voice.

Claire sniffled for a prolonged moment.

“That that’s it. That’s all she wrote, and all she’ll ever write. How do you tell a girl her age that she might have already had her last birthday? That all her Christmases might be over. How can a child process that? I think she understands, partly. But she’s not taking things well. She disregards the negative signs, acts like everything’s okay. Lily escapes into her imagination a lot and plays pretend almost all the time now. Like she’s a little kid again.”

A quick patterned rustle of fabric meant that Grace just rubbed her sister’s shoulder.

“Well let’s face it, right now reality stinks. An active imagination can be a good thing. But eventually...” Grace was choking back sobs of her own.

“Eventually you need to have that talk with her. That, if things don’t improve this time...she...might...d-d--”

The little girl in the other room, our resilient and powerful main character, had had enough. She couldn’t stand hearing any more of it. She pretended to just now wake up from the ’mare and screamed loudly.

“AHHH!!! Mom, Mom, come quick!”

“Oh, my goodness, Lily honey, are you okay?”

“I had a bad dream. I had another ’mare.”