For the first time since coming from India, I dreamed about my mother. Mary crawled underneath her massive bed, stowing the key to the garden underneath along the wooden frame. Her jump rope and her mother’s little ivory elephant already where safely hidden along the makeshift shelf. It was dark, her secret illuminated by a gas lamp. She was here, in the garden, and the garden was a jungle. Mary fell asleep under the bed, escaping into her dream.
“Come to me,” a woman’s voice echoed.
Incredibly tall plants with thin stalks and large fronds made up the forest that the baby girl was pushing through. She was about two, wearing a white frock, heading for a lady. The lady was her mother. She reached out with her arms, nodding encouragingly to the little girl. She wore a pretty white hat upon her upswept curls, and a long white dress that almost matched the little girls. The girl took a couple steps forward.
The smile faded from the woman’s face, and she spun around and dropped her arms, stumbled and ran towards an ivy covered archway. The jerky movement dropped the hat off of her curls, and she spun around once more to take a glance at the girl in the little jungle, and then ran through the archway, disappearing from the girl’s vision.
The little girls face scrunched up, “Mom.” She rubbed her nose as the tears started to fall down her face. She muttered unintelligible words, some of them making sense. “Mommy, don’t go.” She started sobbing, “Mommy!”
Mary woke, the sounds of her sobs lingering from the dream. She was lying beneath her bed, the gas light still casting is low light. As she popped her head up, she realized that the sobs where not just from her dream. Someone in the manor was crying. She moved out from under her bed and grabbed the light. She was determined to find out who had been doing the crying that she kept hearing.
Mary moved quietly down one of the stairways, holding her lamp carefully, stopping now and then to look back and around. She did not know where she was going, just following the sound of the crying. Finally she came to a door, and she opened it slowly, carefully sneaking into the room. She found herself standing on a balcony, looking through an arch into a bedroom. Where gas lights were still on. She noticed a large tapestry hanging, a medieval man portrayed in its center. She carefully made her way down the exposed hallway, when sobs came from the room below. She moved towards the railing, peering over into the room. A large bed with several pillows was the most prominent thing in the room. The light from the fire cast a strange flickering light, by which she could see a boy, curled up and crying in the bed.
The boy took a deep breath, and then caught the light from Mary’s lamp. He stopped crying, and stared up at her. Mary took a tentative step back from the railing. The boy took another breath and asked in a quiet timid voice, “Are you a ghost?”
“No,” Mary answered, just as timid. “Are you?”
The boy pushed himself up on the pillow farther. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” his words tinged with anxiety.
Mary moved forward into the railing. “I live here. Who are you?”
“I am master of this house, when my father’s away.”
“Your father? He’s my uncle,” the boy sat up when she said this. “Nobody told me he had a son.”
“Come here,” the boy demanded.
Mary left the light on the railing, moving from his sight as she went to descend the stairs. The boy scooted over on his bed, and picked up a mirror with silver on its mahogany wood. He quickly peered into it, touching his hair, pulling his eyelid up so he could look into his own eyes. He placed the mirror back, and then picked up a bottle of smelling salts. He quickly unscrewed the lid, and took a deep breath. He turned back towards an open door into another room where the stairs led out to. Mary stood in the door way, dressed in a long nightgown and barefoot. She stopped, uncertain.
The boy pushed himself around a little more on the bed, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Mary Lennox,” the hint of arrogance back in her voice as she realized there was nothing to fear from a boy her same age. “What’s your name?”
The boy tilted his head, “I’m Colin Craven.”
Mary stepped into the room, “Our mother’s were sisters. Twins.”
Excitement replaced her arrogance.
“Twins?” Colin leaned forward in surprise. “Nobody told me she had a twin.” A sad look came to his face and he dropped his eyes.
Mary took another step forward. “Why were you crying?”
“I can’t sleep,” he said in frustration. A shocked look flitted over Mary’s face before it became its usual mask. “Plump my pillows for me, Cousin Mary,” Colin said with a quick smile, before becoming imperious, used to getting his way.
“What?” Shock etched through her. She didn’t do stuff like that.
“My pillows!” Colin’s face reflected his disbelief and slight anger. People did what he said. “My covers have gone all twisted,” he started pulling on them, kicking slightly with his legs.
Mary watched for a second, then turned to him again. “Well I don’t know what to do about it!” She said in her consternated way. “I’ll get Martha, or Mrs. Medlock,” she stated as she turned towards the door into the connected sitting room.
“No!” Colin cried from his bed, his cry urgent.
“Why not,” Mary asked in exasperation.
Colin looked down at his elaborate quilt and snowy white sheets. “Mrs. Medlock won’t allow you in here,” he looked at here again, and took a breath. “She’d be afraid you’d upset me.” Colin licked his lips, “And make me more ill.”
“Do I,” Mary asked, turning slightly, “I’ll go.”
“Stop! Stay here!” Mary turned once more to him. “How old are you?”
“Ten”
Colin gave a little laugh on the bed, playing slightly with the sheets in his hand, “We are the same age!” Mary smiled before pressing her lips together to put her mask back in place. His next question wiped it away, however. “What’s your mother like?”
Mary took a second, then glanced down, “She’s dead.” Her gaze returned to her cousin.
“Mines dead too,” Colin said in a slightly sad matter-of-fact voice. He turned and nodded his head. “You see that cord?” Mary looked towards where he had indicated. “Pull it,” he said in his arrogant way. Mary moved towards the fireplace, pulling one of the two tasseled cords hanging there. Above the fireplace, the tapestry of the medieval man she had noticed before split in two, and moved apart as she pulled, revealing a portrait of a woman. Once it was open, she moved around to the front to better see the portrait of her mother’s twin. “That’s my mother,” Colin started to explain on the bed, “My father never wants to see me cause,” he took a little breath, “I don’t look anything like her,” he stressed the anything. “But you,” he started again in an excited voice, looking between Mary and his mother’s portrait, “You look like her.” He stared at the picture and sighed.
Mary turned back to him. “Why do you keep curtain over her?” She moved towards the end of his bed.
“She smiles too much,” he stated matter of factly.
“Smiles too much?!” Mary cried in shock. “How can anybody smile too much?” Her voice turned into her own arrogant one, confusion also evident.
Colin ignored her, staring at the picture. “Sometimes I hate her. She died when I was born.”
Mary cut in quickly, “But I thought she died in her garden?”
“Garden?” Colin looked interested, pulling himself up and forward. “What garden?”
“Oh, just a garden,” Mary stated anxiously, trying to play it cool, “There are so many of them here.”
“Are there?” Colin asked, the breath leaving his lungs making his small chest fall.
“Of course! Don’t you ever go outside?” Mary asked arrogantly.
“Never,” he said with a shake of his head.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mary asked rudely.
“I’m going to die.” Colin said it in an almost happy voice. Mary became scared.
“From what?” Her emotion tinged her voice.
“Everything,” Colin said with a head tilt and a nose scrunch. He plopped his arms on his bed, patting it. “I’ve spent my whole life in this bed.”
“You don’t know how to walk,” Mary said with amazement and empathy.
Colin ignored that comment. “You are real?” An apologetic look came to his shallow face. “My dreams are so real sometimes.”
Mary smiled widely and hiked up her nightgown, putting her knee on the bed and then shuffling towards him. “Shall I pinch you to prove it?” Colin moved around, keeping his wide eyes on her, scared and shocked. Mary reached forward and grabbed a small chunk of his arm, as his other hand came around and grabbed her wrist.
“Ow!” Confusion, disbelief, and then finally happy, his face changed with his emotions until he started to laugh a little.
Mary retreated to the end corner of the large bed. “See?” Mary said with a smile and a laugh. Colin kept laughing, rubbing at his arm and moving it around. They stayed like that for some time.
