The Tiny One

ONE: Staying with Puddle


Via Revere. She's just a kid in the morning except that she's sitting still on her bed in the thick of far-gone winter with her mouth parted open like a grown woman's in thought. Life's got her for the first time pinned up against a wall, openmouthed. But other than her mouth, and her stillness, the rest of her's pure kid, but stunned. She's slouched and static, puffy-eyed, staring at the rug where it meets the wood floor. She's sitting waiting, lopsided, dumbstruck, not even thinking yet what to think.

Her mother would have put her in the gray flannel or Black Watch plaid dress. Instead Via's wearing an Easter dress that curdles, but nicely, with the raw winter surrounding her. Its white cotton is springlike, clean and pleated, cool over her dark wool tights. Lavender smocking is embroidered across her chest, and her young fresh head grows up out of the starched scalloped collar that petals at the neck. Her hair's got so much static that she can feel it clinging silky to her cheek, buzzing, tickling at the side of her chapped mouth.

One of the cats jumps up beside her and arches to rub along her arm. She pats it without looking at it and with her electricity gives it a little shock so the kitty twitches its whiskers but keeps purring. Via twitches too, her eye, but keeps staring.

She's just a kid and it's morning but nothing's the same. Everything's different now. She's at the beginning of a new chapter. She's perched at the edge of a new era. Grief has been born boring into her soft ripe life full of cartwheels and digging with sticks, leaves and laughter, sky and light, her mother's face and jumps in the air. Grief's been injected like a strange sedative that has the opposite effect -- it wakes you up. It's jarred her like shaking her shoulders. It has her. The grizzle of life has rattled her numb. It's like she's been whacked in the head out of laughter and now she sits alone on her bed, looking out, in awe at anything, in awe at everything, stunned.

Hearing the news is like this: The day was like other days and then it happened. Then the news came like those film clips where huge buildings sway gracefully to the ground like someone's sucking them down with a vacuum. It's a whirl of air. It's a night of movement with billowing as the darkness is go everything go, everything moves, disheveled and alive, rushing with sound. Then suddenly it is silent. It's like the sound has been turned off but you're watching a storm. The trees bend like slingshots and the leaves tornado up into the air. Where is the sound? And then it is over.

Then it is over and it's morning. You've heard the news. You'd almost rather hear it again -- fresh -- than begin a life with what you know now. It is morning. It is a morning when everything is hit white-yellow and windows of buildings shine in dull flashes. The windshields of slowly moving cars turn weak sun in your eyes. You wince. You feel like a fever that's petrified.

It's her older sister Marly's voice in the door behind her. "You ready?"

Then it's her father. "All set?"

They're in the door together but Via doesn't want to turn around to see.

Marly comes and sits beside her. "All set?" she says, like her father just did.

Via nods. She pats the cat Puddle and listens to the purring. "She's purring," Via says.

"Come on," says Marly, nudging her. Marly heads toward the bureau. "I'll get you a sweater."

"No," says Via.

"No what?"

"No sweater."

"You'll freeze, V."

"I don't think I will."

"Well you think wrong," says Marly. "Look at it out there."

Via looks up from the floor to look out the window. She doesn't remember yesterday. Today looks like it's trying to snow.

"I want to stay here with Puddle," Via says.

Marly goes over to her. Marly squats down and looks at her little sister in the eye. "You want to stay with Puddle?" Marly asks her.

Via nods.

"It's not time to go yet," says Marly. "Want me to come get you when it's time to go?"

Via nods again. "Yeah," she says. She's patting Puddle.

Marly kisses Via's forehead as she's standing up. "We'll all be right downstairs if you want to come down," Marly tells her. "Okay?"

" 'Kay," says Via.

When Marly leaves, Via looks back up out the window while she listens to Puddle purr. It's as white as can be out there. Only the rattly knuckled trees are dark and still against the icy snow that's beneath them and behind them. Above the world is the long white sky, open and bare.