The Entering

by Lin Van Hek

When I was eleven, I met a boy who liked me more than anyone I ever met again in all my life. Our families were refugees each wounded in their own ways. He was seventeen. The friendship was not encouraged, rather, I should say, forbidden. We were threatened and warned and this drove us to speak in terms of soul bonding and other youthful extremes.

We barely could stand being separated and hid and whispered through illicit years until finally I was seventeen and we married.

The age difference began to matter less. He had become an architect and we lived in a tumbling old house in the country with olive trees that grew along the dirt road that led to the house.

He said one day he would drive with some friends and would not come home overnight.

I slept in our house with our baby and listened to the noises of the owls carrying away the rabbits. I could hear their awful screams and the possums on the roof with their guttural hissing. The full moon came through the muslin curtains and ate away the night with its light.

During the night, I developed fevers and spontaneous weeping overtook me and sleep dragged me down and I awoke so changed that I was nervous of my own self.

When the telephone rang and told me he was dead I ran out along the track under the olive trees holding my daughter who smiled and chuckled at the game.

I heard a voice that said I am in you. I looked in the mirror and saw another face imprinted on mine and the features became interchangeable and vibrated with shuddering smiles that ended with endless weeping. This was mourning they told me, this is loss.

It did not go away however and I realized that his energy was impaled on mine and I had to carry him with me forever. Every utterance was his. My very thought spiralled on his. I began to think that my body housed two souls and that this was a hard work.

(from: Anna's Box - Selected Short Stories of Lin Van Hek)

Anna's Box Website