Collector of Tears and
Mommy Make The Feather Dance!
Is a story within a story.
Mommy, Make The Feather Dance!
Cyncy’s mother sat in the front seat next to Grandad,
the world’s best grandfather. Cyncy and her little brother Prentice
sat in the back seat with their grandmother, who was carrying on an
animated conversation about Mommy’s trip.
Cyncy’s mother was flying to New Orleans to visit
her own grandmother. They were actually supposed to have taken Mommy
to the airport sooner, but Mommy had changed her flight to a later one
so she could finish sewing the lovely wool suit she wanted to wear on
the airplane.
"Mommy, make the feather dance?" Cyncy had
pleaded again. Her mother, with her cornflower blue eyes, and dark auburn
hair, had laughed softly. Obligingly nodding her head, she made the
partridge feather on her chic, wide-brimmed hat, dance lightly against
the ceiling of the automobile for her little girl.
"Evelyn is as beautiful on the inside, as she
is on the outside," said Mommy's friends.
They had stood on the observation deck of the airport,
Cyncy and her brother and her grandparents, all of them waving goodbye.
"Look!" Her grandmother had cried, "There she is! She’s waving her handkerchief
in the window!" Cyncy had dutifully waved, even though she couldn’t
quite figure out which window, or for that matter, which airplane they
were supposed to be waving goodbye towards.
Cyncy knew how many days her mother was supposed to
be gone because Mommy had told her. Mommy said that when she got back
they would all go downtown shopping and then they would have lunch in
Burdines Tea Room.
Cyncy and her brother would probably order a grilled
cheese sandwich, and afterwards they would each be allowed to have one
of the tearoom’s beautiful ice-cream desserts. Six year old Cyncy would
order Cinderella. That was a scoop of pink ice-cream with the top half
of a little wax figure of Cinderella sitting on top. The pink ice cream
would become the skirt. It would be decorated with whipped cream ruffles
and round silver sprinkles. It looked for all the world like a real
Cinderella doll wearing a beautiful pink ballgown. Just like the Cinderella
in the story Mommy read to her at bedtime.
Her 3 year old brother Prentice would order the clown.
His dessert was a scoop of ice cream with gumdrop eyes and a licorice
smile. A sugarcone hat, capped with a red gumdrop would be perched jauntily
on top of the scoop. Thick waves of whipped cream, drenched in multi-color
candy sprinkles would form the clown’s ruffled polkadot collar. Cyncy
and her brother loved these outings.
There had been a lot of people coming to the house
since late yesterday afternoon. They'd started arriving just a few hours
after Mommy left on her trip. Some of them brought food, which Cyncy
thought was a nice thing for them to have done. She caught only bits
and pieces of their conversation, because whenever she came close everybody
would get very quiet. She didn’t understand exactly what was going on,
all these people filling the house. The snatches of conversation she
heard were just words, never full sentences. She heard …storm…Gulf of
Mexico… down…searching…debris…no survivors
The days were finally up. She had been counting. When
Daddy came to tuck her in bed that night she smiled happily. "Mommy’s
coming back home tomorrow isn’t she?" she had asked. Her father looked
dazed for a moment and then, as if filled with more hurt than he could
bear, he briefly closed his eyes. He drew a deep breath, as if to steady
himself, and then he had said, as gently as he could, "No, Cyncy. Mommy’s
not coming back ever again."
Cyncy was very quiet. Her father kissed her on top
of her head and then turned to go. As he began to close her door she
called after him "Daddy, leave it open just a little bit please. Just
let me see the light." He nodded, and went back to sit with the people
gathered in their living room.
Cyncy had an unusual dream that night. By morning,
however, it was no more than a vague memory. There had been a pretty
lady in the dream, she remembered that much, and something about tears,
but she couldn’t quite remember.
During the first days, Cyncy had crawled into the
back of her mother's closet, where she sat quietly for hours, holding
the velvet hem of a claret colored gown to her cheek, inhaling the faint
scent of Arpege that still lingered among her mother's things.
Her grandmother promptly supervised the removal of
everything but feelings.
The people finally stopped coming, and after a while
everybody stopped looking for her Mommy. Daddy’s friends told her that
her Mommy was gone forever. Cyncy knew everybody was wrong though. They
would see. It was going to be OK. Her Mommy had told her that she was
coming back.
Once, afterwards, Tiny, the lady who had always come
to help Mommy clean the house, had put Cyncy in for her bath. Kneeling
next to the tub and washing Cyncy’s hair, she had suddenly begun to
cry.
"Po’ lil’ muthaless ‘chile", she had murmered, "Po’
‘lil muthaless 'chile...ain’t nobody never even found yo Mamma, baby."
Cyncy had felt strangely disquieted. I do too
have a mother, she thought. She’s just not back yet.
When Mother’s Day came at school, each of the children
were given a red rose to take home. The teacher gave Cyncy a red one
but after a moment she came back and took it away from her, replacing
it with a white.one. All the other children had looked at Cyncy strangely,
and she was left with a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach that
she didn’t like very much.
White roses would leave her feeling vaguely uncomfortable
for the rest of her life.
The hardest part about Mommy being gone for such a
long time was that there was nobody to hug Cyncy and her little brother.
Daddy was always saying things like "I do NOT believe in a public display
of affection" whenever she had tried to hug him, so she was beginning
to feel pretty lonely.
Little Prentice was lonely too. For some reason Cyncy’s
grandparents and her Daddy had become upset with each other, so they
never came to visit anymore, and the housekeeper Daddy hired didn’t
seem to like children very much at all.
When Easter rolled around, the housekeeper said she
and her brother could color eggs all right, but they would have to use
old coffee grounds to color them, because it was a waste of money to
buy egg coloring. Cyncy and her brother remembered the rainbow of colored
eggs Mommy had made with them the Easter before she went away.
This year they colored all the eggs brown.
One day Cyncy had walked past Prentices’ bedroom door
and seen a tiny lump sitting quietly in the middle of his bed. He had
pulled a sheet over his head to muffle any sound and his tiny shoulders
shook with silent sobs. Cyncy had run to find her father, but by the
time he came Prentice had come out from beneath the sheet and dried
his eyes. Outside of an occasional hiccup, he never made a sound. Her
father had looked stricken.
Cyncy never cried. There was no need. Mommy would
be coming back. She was just taking a very long time to be found.
Once Daddy took them to see a movie about a family
whose Mom was on an airplane that crashed in the ocean. In the movie
they found the Mom safe and sound on a tropical island, and she came
home and everybody lived happily ever after. Daddy had gotten out his
handkerchief and wiped his eyes and told the two of them to stay right
there, because he had to go get a drink of water.
They didn’t go to movies much after that.
Daddy eventually remarried, but their new stepmother,
almost as soon as she married Daddy, promptly decided she didn't like
either of the children, so little Prentice had to be sent away to school.
A big old wingback chair sat in Cyncy’s room. It had
once belonged to her great grandmother. Cyncy found that if she sat
sideways in the chair, nestled against the friendly cushions, a stuffed
toy clasped in her arms, it almost felt like somebody was hugging her.
And so every day, when she came home from school, she would quietly
close the door, sit in the hugging chair and read a book. The books
became her friends, the hugging chair became her family.
"She never cries," she heard her stepmother mutter
to herself once, right after grabbing Cyncy by her hair and throwing
her against a wall, during one of those terrifying explosions that Cyncy
learned, only years later, had always been fueled by alcohol.
"She never cries."
Her Mommy never came back, of course.
After a while, Cyncy grew up and had children of her
own. Before she knew it, she even had grandchildren. But wherever she
went, wherever she moved, for the rest of her life, Cyncy always took
the hugging chair with her.
One day, Cyncy looked in the mail and found that a
friend, who lived a long ways away, had sent her a story to read. Cyncy
loved stories, so she gathered her mail and sat down in the hugging
chair to read this new tale.
Across the room, a television documentary solemnly
recounted the tale of a storybook princess, whose two young sons had
been awakened one shining August morning, with the news that their beautiful
and vibrant mother was never coming home again. For probably the hundredth
time since that special had run, Cyncy sighed and shook her head. She
wondered if anyone who truly understood had been on hand to hug
and comfort those boys, during the onset of that terrible hollow silence,
which would now echo through their years.
Cyncy picked up the remote control and lowered the
volume on the television. Flicking on the reading lamp next to her,
she slipped the story from it's envelope.
The story turned out to be about a little girl, whose
Mommy was never going to come home, ever again, and as she read, goosebumps
began to rise on Cyncy’s arms.
The tale described a pretty lady who had come to the
child in the middle of the night. The lady had called herself The Tear
Collector.
Muriel’s father reached for her
hand.
Even as he led her, ever so lightly, she found
it difficult to take her eyes from the large wooden box.
Mommy's box.
"C'mon Ree." Her father's voice was low and
rough, sounding a lot like the time he had that awful cold. His
arm circled her shoulders as he turned her gently towards the
car. "It's time to go."
It was a short, quiet walk back to the long
black limousine. Once in the back seat her father stared out the
window, nibbling softly on the knuckle of his first finger while
she stared into the shiny tips of her patent leather special occasion
shoes. Since it was only the second time she had worn them, she
could still see a clear reflection of herself staring back.
Tons of people were already at the house by
the time they arrived. The kitchen was filled with food, casseroles
and colorful gelatin dishes, with bits of fruit floating in them.
Neighbors, friends, cousins, aunts and uncles, were everywhere,
telling stories, laughing, and passing tissues amongst themselves.
Muriel didn't recognize most of the people,
yet many of them took a moment to tell her that everything would
be all right, that everything happens for a reason and that this
was, somehow, for the best. Then they would stare into her eyes
and wait, holding the moment as if there was something she was
supposed to do.
"Thank you," she’d say, as a strange, uncomfortable
warmth on her face forced her to look away.
That night, after everyone was gone, the house
seemed bigger than usual. When her father carried her upstairs
to bed, Muriel noticed a sort of empty quiet hanging in the air
around them. He set her down gently and tucked her in better than
he ever had before, making sure her blankets were pulled right
up to her chin.
"Don't forget Mr. Scruffs," he said placing
a well-loved stuffed rabbit beside her.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, baby."
"Will Mommy be all right now?"
Her father stopped smoothing the covers. His
face was tired. His mouth pulled into a tight smile to hide a
subtle quiver. He brushed at the hair lying across her forehead.
"Mommy will be fine now." Scooping his arms
beneath her, he pulled her into a warm, tight hug, sniffing as
he held her.
"Now," he said after a while, "try to get some
sleep."
Muriel lay back, feeling the dampness of her
father's tears on her pillow. She watched him leave, taking the
light with him as he pulled her door closed.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah."
"Can you leave it open a bit, so I can see the
hall light?"
"Sure."
Curling into a small ball around Mr. Scruffs,
Muriel fell asleep as she stared into the line of light that traced
her door. Soon after, a soft breeze brushed her cheek, drawing
her away from a dreamless slumber. Pulling herself up onto one
elbow, Muriel rubbed at her eyes to make clearer the figure that
knelt before her. Not like a person, but not like a ghost, she
saw the form of a woman in robes made of a soft white light.
"Who are you?" she asked through a sleepy whisper.
The woman smiled with a gentle softness. "I
am the collector of tears."
With her tiny fingertip, Muriel traced the line
under her eye. "I'm sorry," she said squinting as she looked at
her hand, "I don't have any. See? It's dry."
"Then I shall wait," the woman said in a soothing
whisper.
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes."
"Daddy has some now, if you need them bad."
Muriel said. "He even left some on my pillow." She ran her hand
across the once wet spot, only to find it dry.
The woman's light grew bright with a smile of
kind understanding. "Your father has given me all I need."
Muriel studied the woman's face. "I had tears
when I thought I lost Mr. Scruffs that one time, and I had a lot
of tears last week when I fell off my bike. Why didn't you come
for those?"
"Because I have come for very special tears."
"Special tears?" Muriel asked. "What are they?
What are you gonna do with them?"
"I take them to those you cry for."
Muriel pulled Mr. Scruffs closer as she thought
about what the woman said. "I don't understand."
A hand of light reached out to brush the hair
from the girl’s face.
"When people lose someone they love very much,
they make extra special tears. I collect those tears, then I take
them to those who the tears were made for. It is a gift of great
comfort and happiness. It lets the ones who are gone know that
they are loved and they are missed."
"But, I don't have any tears." Muriel said in
a whimper. "What if I never have..."
"Hush, little one." the woman said. "Don’t fear
such things. There are no rules for making tears. You must find
them in your own time, and they will be as good today as they
will be fifty years from today. No matter how long, I will wait."
The woman drew back her hand. "Sleep now."
Muriel offered an uncertain smile. Her eyes
grew heavy again as she settled herself down with Mr. Scruffs
tight in her arms. Standing over the young girl as she fell back
into sleep, the woman of light, the collector of tears, faded
away with the rising of the sun.
The morning came with the sounds of her father
busily making breakfast in the kitchen. Muriel padded down the
steps, led by the scent of fresh pancakes, still trying to recall
the dream she had. She was sure there was a lady, but she couldn’t
remember much else. As she neared the table, something caused
her to stop. Two places instead of three. Her shoulders sank.
Despite her growling stomach, she wasn’t hungry anymore.
The days that followed offered more of the same.
Each morning Muriel woke up more tired than the day before. Her
father had taken time off from work to cook them both large breakfasts
that neither of them ate, and to take her to the park for long
walks through the woods, which she usually loved, but everything
was different.
The quiet emptiness she had noticed in the house
before, now seemed to follow them everywhere. The thrill of being
pushed on the swing so she could see above the bar, now made her
sick. The snacks she used to eat while watching her afternoon
cartoons were tasteless. Even Mr. Scruffs, who once felt like
two armfuls, seemed small to her, no matter how hard she hugged
him.
One night, near dinner time, Muriel went about
her job of setting the table. She tried extra hard to get everything
just right since her father would be going back to work after
the weekend. She used real plates. She used the special napkins
from the drawer next to the refrigerator. She made certain that
all the forks, and spoons matched. Then, as she reached for the
glasses, the ones that didn’t have any pictures on them, she stopped.
Goosebumps traced her arms as she looked at her work.
Three places were set.
As she stared at the table, her eyes filled
causing the scene before her to go blurry.
"Daddy?" she said with a hitch in her breath.
"What is it pumpkin?"
"I miss Mommy."
Her father dropped everything. He knelt down
and pulled her into a hug that could never be tight enough. Each
sob caused Muriel to shake. She wrapped her arms around her father’s
neck, never wanting to let go, holding on until she fell asleep
in his arms.
As she slept that night, a familiar breeze once
again stirred her awake.
"I found my tears," Muriel said feeling her
eyes well up again.
The woman of light looked down at her with kind
and understanding face. "I know."
"Will you take them to Mommy now?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell her I miss her?"
"I will."
"And will you tell her I love her?"
"Yes."
"Very much." Muriel added.
"Very, very, much," the woman assured as she
smiled brighter. "Look."
Muriel watched as the hands of light moved before
her to produce a small crystal goblet. The little girl leaned
over to peek inside. One shining tear dripped from her eye and
fell into the tiny pool below, causing the water to ripple with
life and light.
"That, little one," the woman said, "Is a most
precious tear, for it is a tear of joy. This gift will make your
mother very happy."
Muriel laid back down with Mr. Scruffs filling
her arms. Her heart grew warm as she nuzzled her face deep into
the rabbit's soft down. A peaceful sleep fell upon her. The woman
stood with the goblet of tears and watched over the little girl
until the morning claimed her light once more.
Muriel woke with a smile for the bright morning
sun. The air around her was fresh and she breathed in deep as
she lay in the warmth of her covers. She had that dream again.
She couldn't remember any more of it than she did before, but
this time she knew it had a happy ending. Somehow she knew her
mother was happy, and wherever she was, like her father said,
Muriel knew her mother would be all right now, forever.
Then suddenly, she buried her face in her hands, and
began to weep.
"Allright," she whispered softly to The Tear Collector.
"Take these to my Mommy.
Tell her I miss her."
|
Collector of Tears - by Jeff
Meyers - Copyright 1996
Mommy Make The Feather Dance - by Cynthia
Loomis Gurin - Copyright 1997
Dedicated to the memory of the passengers and crew of National
Airlines Flight 470.
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