CHAPTER 5
Every night, Josiah and his mother would view their screen together.
Screen time consisted of three programs: comedy, informative introductions, and love stories. The comedy program consisted of a light-hearted stand up man, always the same, joking on the small things and giving a needed relief for the end of the work day. Everyone knew the peculiarities of particular age groups and individuals, but it was funny to hear them joked on by the man on the screen and if it happened to be your age group or even yourself joked upon, it made it even more hilarious. It also consisted of a slapstick-like comedy at some of the more dangerous or cautionary jobs. It is complete nonsense to have a fool work in the labs, knocking the flasks about and burning holes in the floor, filling the room with smoke, all the while trying to escape and running into walls. Complete nonsense happens to be hilarious. Such were the scenes every day.
The most intriguing to Josiah were the introductions. This program ran for one hour, divided into five-minute segments, and therefore contained twelve introductions on individuals of the colony. Only three weeks ago, Josiah himself appeared on the screen with his bit. They were all the same. “Hi, my name is so-and-so. I am so-and-so years old. I work at the so-and-so and do so-and-so. My mother is so-and-so. My father is so-and-so. My other relatives are so-and-so-and-so. I enjoy so-and-so, so-and-so, and so-and-so. And so and so and so.” Of course these were prodded by the questioner. The producers would cut any answers that were not deemed appropriate. In fact they had cut much of Josiah’s answers, but it didn’t matter to him much. He would do another one in a year and so would everyone else. It was this program that kept every bit of Josiah’s attention. He never cared much for what they had to say. The screen could be muted, and he would be just as enthralled. He was looking at their faces, tracing similarities. His mother always wondered at this everyday amusement.
It was known among the colony that he had no father. In his section, there was no “My father is so-and-so.” This was not uncommon among the people of the colony, but most did have both parents. Of those that did not, most had a parent to die. Few cases had only a mother from the very beginning. Few children could say they never knew their father. Josiah was the only one of his age group. Screen time was the simplest way for him to look.
The love stories that followed were thought of as love stories by the people because they were called love stories by the producers. The producers called them love stories because they had always been called love stories as far as they knew. What love was, no one could really say. They simply consisted of real life reenacted of how couples met, how they created a family, and how much they enjoyed their job. What was comical about it, at least to Josiah, was that the same actors fell in love with each other, had a family, and enjoyed their job over and over again with many different people. Maybe not funny, but still amusing. They went something like this: Man and woman meet at the commons. They of course have known each other all their lives. But that day something was different. He asks how her family is doing and how her work is going and while doing so slides his hand to hers. At this point she would either withdraw or accept his gesture of affection. It wasn’t always a handhold, but something of the sort. They never did show a rejection. After all this show was about love. It followed a courtship-like approach to their marriage. It focused on their friendship-based attraction, love for their work, and provision for each other. If this particular couple was old enough to have children, it then followed the progress of their family, the childbirth, the raising of their children, and of course their still strong respect for each other. The children actors portraying the actual children eventually became the acting man and woman. And the cycle continued.
One night in particular, after the months of absence, he thought about his Aunt Junia. It had occurred to him as he watched the introductions that he had never seen her bit on the screen before.
“She has been unwell for quite a while, Josiah, and wouldn’t even be able to last through a session. Even if she was well enough, I doubt she would even want to anymore. You know she doesn’t like visitors.”
She doesn’t like any other visitors besides him, he thought. He then felt ashamed of himself because he hadn’t seen her in months. He had even forgotten her. But he must go back. And he decided he must go alone despite what his mother had told him. “Poor woman.”
He hesitated until the weekend. It would have been useless to try for any day during the week since his absence would be noticed. It was only on the weekend that he could visit the old woman and let his mother assume he had been playing with the others.
When the weekend came, he left his mother and came to where the others met and played. He gave his excuse and headed to the hospital. He hated to deceive people, but in this case he felt he had no choice. He simply had to see her again.
His mind wandered as he walked, but his feet knew to take him to the same room he had visited for years. He couldn’t remember the last time she had walked, that her feet had taken her somewhere. She had always been weak and in bed. She had always been a thin, old woman as far as Josiah had known. But she had been like him once. She had been young. She once had a wandering mind and a wandering body. She had simply outlived them both. In weary age, her mind seemed to be fixed to a certain point just as her body was fixed to her bed.
He reached the hospital and went into the doors. In his effort to remain unnoticed, he looked every which way but in front and bumped into a nurse.
“Oh, hey, Josiah. It’s been a while since we’ve seen you here. When she’s awake, she always asks about you, you know. Go on in. Maybe she’ll be awake. She always does seem to wake up for you. It may do her some good.”
“Thank you.” He said it so timidly. It had been a mistake coming here and risking being seen. He knew that he had been a fool for thinking that he could slyly come in to a patient’s room completely unnoticed, but since he had been seen and spoken to, he could not turn back. He went into her room.
She was asleep. Very rarely was she ever awake when he entered her room. He always seemed to have to wait for her, but this gave him a chance to look into her face and realize that although she was old and weak, she was still human. One day he would be like her. Oddly enough, the idea didn’t scare Josiah. If anyone had talked about it much by the word itself, Josiah would have known that he loved that old woman. However, most people only talked about care and provision. He felt that he could do neither of the two. The hospital took care of her and provided for her. He just sat by her side. So he never could put a word to how he felt. But she had taught him that there are words that do exist and there are words that should exist.
He sat there for a while. He had learned to never count the time. It always seemed to go by slower if he did, and it always seemed to go by faster if he tried to remember. Slow seconds and fast seconds. He only wished that the seconds in talking to his Aunt Junia were slow seconds, but they never were. She was always only awake for such a short period.
She moved.
Her hand reached out and grabbed his. He quickly took it and interlocked his fingers with hers. Although her eyes were still closed, he knew that she was awake by the change in her breathing and the firmness and warmth in her grip. It was comforting.
His mother had mentioned that she might soon die. That was months ago, and so she was that much closer. He had never had anyone close to him ever die. However, death was no secret. Everyone knew that everyone died. There were just some that didn’t quite understand what it meant. Josiah understood a great deal, but this he did not. Every so often a name would be added to the bronze wall to uphold their memory. In fact, it was called The Wall of Memory. It was taught that this wall had not always been there but was a rather recent addition. Therefore the first name on the wall was not the first person to die, of course, and so that name had no importance. No one could answer who was the first person to die, though if anyone did ask it they would have been rebuked for silliness. Death was never discussed,
but neither was it disregarded. When a person died, a person died. No one ever “passed away.” Away to where? No one ever “went to a better place.” There was no other place to be better. Euphemisms for death, and for anything else, were not part of their language. Even the word “euphemism” was not in their vocabulary.
“I’m glad you’re here, Josiah, very glad, but let’s not talk just yet.” She spoke barely a whisper.
He had wanted to tell her everything, especially how ashamed he was for not coming back to her until then, but somehow she knew. Somehow she understood. Her tone and her warmth told him of forgiveness. There was no need for words in this moment. Josiah then realized that it wasn’t about hearing the stories. He was perfectly content with her silent and comfortable company. He just knew that there was something different about this woman. When he was in her presence, there just seemed to be more to everything than he realized. He didn’t need to hear her strange words to understand that. If she had never been able to speak, he would have felt the same way. It was simply that her words proved what he felt, that there was something else.
She slowly turned her head to Josiah, opened her eyes, and stared into the boy’s. They had turned back into a soft grey with only a hint of her vivid blue.
“It won’t always be like this, will it, dear?”
He was caught off guard by her vulnerability. She had always been honest, but he had heard a sound of worry echo in her voice for the first time. He felt he had to comfort the hand that had been comforting him.
“Don’t be so doubtful, Aunt Juny. Of course, it will.”
“Then let it be as you say.” It was as if she had accepted it purely on his word.
She returned her head to her pillow and stared at the ceiling. Her face held no identifiable expression, and her mind either was busy in difficult thoughts or resting with emptiness. He wasn’t able to tell. She was a very different woman. Perhaps she could do both at once. It was then that he started to count the time. He had begun to do so subconsciously and stopped when he realized it, but then resumed again because he wanted time to go by more slowly.
“I think I have something to say.” She had said it with such insecurity he thought that she might not know what she was saying. She was behaving very differently than he had ever known her to.
“What, Aunt Juny?”
She was still staring at the ceiling.
“What do you need to say, Aunt Juny?”
“Josiah, could you hand me my cloth?”
He looked around the room wanting to help her, but he saw nothing on the tables or shelves, nothing even draped over the chairs. It was neither by the bedside nor on her bed.
“Aunt Juny, are you sure you have one?”
“Did you check to see if it was underneath, dear?”
He crouched down and looked on the floor, and there under her bed was the cloth which somehow managed to get wedged between the bedpost and wall. Whether it had fallen there or had been placed there, he couldn’t tell, but it looked as if it had been missing for quite a while and had been collecting dust and grime in the meantime. It was the closest thing to a cloth that he could find.
“Is this it?” He held the cloth with a pinch at a corner because it was so disgusting.
“Oh, thank you, Josiah.” But as she reached to grab it, he withdrew.
“It’s really dirty, Aunt Juny.”
She said that she wanted it nonetheless and as she took the towel, she examined it with interest and agreed.
“It is dirty, very dirty.”
“Well, it was lying on the floor, Aunt Juny.”
“Will you get me some water so I can wash it?”
There was no sink in the room. There was no running water. In fact, the only water in there was in a pitcher by her bedside meant to drink. It would have to do. The nurses could always replace the water in the morning, he thought. As he brought the pitcher near, she reached out for it. He placed the handle into her hands, but as soon as he released his grip, the glass pitcher fell to the floor and shattered, water and glass both quickly spreading across the floor. Did someone hear it? He held his breath to keep quiet and listened for signs of anyone coming. After he felt convinced that no one was on their way, he looked back to his aunt to apologize. He should have washed the cloth himself. But as he saw her face, he found that it wasn’t because of her weak hands that the pitcher fell. She had fallen fast asleep.
He tried to clean up the floor, but it was no use. All he had was a filthy rag, and that wouldn’t accomplish anything. He then kissed his aunt on her cheek and ran out of the hospital, hoping that the nurses wouldn’t tell his mother that he had been there and that he had caused such a mess. He knew that he could not go there again, not during the week nor the weekend.
Josiah kept to himself and was abnormally quiet afterward. His mother noticed, and his teachers noticed, but no one had asked him why. He was thankful for that, at least. He wasn’t thankful for much else. He was bothered by his dreams which occurred more frequently than ever. The pitcher always dropped, and he always ran. That had been the constant variable of his dreams. Water flooded the floors, and he knew there was no way out. If the water continued to rise, then everyone would die, including himself. He was trapped. He didn’t know what to make of it, he didn’t know what to do, and he had no one to ask. The only person that could help him was his Aunt Junia. Only she had his confidence. He had never shared such intimacy even with his own mother. In fact, as the water rose in his dream, the only person’s death he feared was the old woman’s, not his own nor his mother’s. It was a strange sentiment since he still didn’t understand what it meant to die. He could not ask the old woman for fear that his mother would find out about his visits. He had a feeling that she had already been told about his last visit. It had been useless to hope otherwise. However, she had not reprimanded him for it. She had not said anything. Josiah was not the only one being abnormally quiet lately. To him, everyone seemed to be hushed and everything distant.
He couldn’t say why he felt the need to see the old woman. It was just that she was perfectly genuine, more so than anyone he ever knew. It often drew tears for him to think that his mother was not so perfectly genuine. She had her own secrets that tied her to everyone else. He felt that he needed to be a part of something separate. He yearned for something, and he just knew that that feeling ceased when he was sitting by her bedside, listening.
So he set his mind to it. He would sneak out of his family room after light-off and visit the hospital area which he knew to always have a light on, though a lesser. He knew the way very well, however, he never before ventured there in the dark.
The lights went off in the room of his family and everywhere else. He waited until he knew his mother was asleep. He climbed out of his bed, towards and through the door. He was at a quick pace, sliding his hand against the hall wall for guidance. Two lefts, a right, a left, a right, through the main doors, the second door on the right. He slowly pushed the door open, slid in quietly and sat in his chair. The lesser light in the room shined faintly on the face of his dear aunt.
“Aunt Juny?” He whispered to wake her. “Aunt Juny?” He whispered louder.
She mumbled inaudibly in her sleep. He then got up from his chair and stood by her bed. He poked her cold cheek. Nothing. Slowly, he returned to his chair without ever taking his eyes off of the woman. And he waited. He knew she would always wake during the day, but he had never been there any other time. There was no promise that she would wake.
He had a feeling, not of fear, but of something that he wasn’t quite familiar with or quite sure of. Whatever the feeling was, he knew he felt the need to stay until something happened. She was going to wake up.
He waited, twiddling his thumbs, for fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, trying to remember her strange words and stories. The problem with remembering the words and stories was that he had no way to imagine them, no way to envision them. Whatever image he applied to any one
of her words seemed so fake and transparent that they soon faded from his mind. He simply saw the reality in them when he heard them from whom they were real.
Then she started to sing. He couldn’t understand her words since she was still mumbling, but she was definitely singing, and her eyes were still closed, and she was still asleep. Asleep and singing her song. Such a strange woman, he thought. Her voice eventually faded, and she lied silently and motionless once again.
Something was going to happen, he thought. He just had to wait. So he did. He waited until he fell asleep. It was, after all, a good bit into the night. The soft light was comforting. He fought his heavy eyes as long as he could, but eventually he closed his eyes long enough for sleep to take over without him knowing. He dreamed his dream once again.
He awoke with a start. The water had made it up to his neck. But that image quickly fled as he started to panic, not knowing where he was. As he slowly came to mind, his panic didn’t cease much because he didn’t know how long he had been there. Were the nurses on their way? Would his mother be awake? He tried to calm himself down. He took a deep breath and looked toward the bed.
His breath was suddenly taken from him as the face of the woman startled him. She was facing him. Her eyes were open, but she was not speaking or reacting to the boy’s presence in the least bit. Did she see him? Had she gone blind? She seemed to be looking at something with an utmost intensity, but it didn’t seem to be anything outside of her own mind. The boy stared into her eyes, but she remained staring into her self with a most serene expression on her wrinkled face. He hated to disturb it, but he had to know what she was seeing.
“Aunt Junia?” He whispered.
“Oh Josiah, my sweet nephew, is that you?’
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I’d hate for anyone else to miss it. It is so beautiful. And it’s been so, so long.”
“What do you mean, Aunt Junia? What is it?”
“It’s the sun, my dear. It is so beautiful. And today it is so bright. I do remember it. It was always beautiful. The sun in the sky, I do remember it. Do you?”
“I don’t, Aunt Juny. I’ve never seen it.”
“What a shame. It is so… it is so beautiful.”
“Can you tell me, Aunt Juny? Please tell me.”
But she never answered him. As she was looking into the sun, the poor woman died.