There is a restless feeling in Autumn when everything seems in motion. Even the sky and the trees feel it: one last dance before winter.
When Vanya was 9, a man came to stay with her mother. He had a soft voice and sounded like a gentleman from the old movies, but his eyes were hard. He let her ride on his shoulders and gave her a silvery necklace. He told her her father would gather her up to heaven when she died.
Heaven is dark. She can feel rot pressing against her eyelids, like a brittle honeycomb. She still wears the necklace: a cold cross on her collarbone. She feels languid, skin prickling with cold sweat as she lies in the darkness.
When Vanya was 15, she spent most afternoons out on the practice field. Clouds over the turf dappled the sunlight, and there was sweat, blood, and spirit in the air — in every breath. That’s why she might never have met Claire. But that one day it was rainy, with big wet drops; playful like water balloons. They darkened the sky, and the clouds promised lightning, and the coach was on the phone: maybe with an administrator, or maybe the rain was an excuse to continue some important conversation. By then they were drenched and cold and they heard shivering thunder from beyond the treeline. Regardless of the reason, they wandered inside, phones ringing, calling parents, arranging carpools. The school band was muffledly playing from somewhere farther in. With nothing better to do, Vanya wandered the school, thinking how eerie the halls felt without anyone in them. Rounding a corner, Claire was just, there. Silly bow tie, curly hair, holding oversized trombone. Then again, maybe Claire wasn’t just “there,” after all she had to go up to talk to her so she could scribble her number on a sticky note. Funny, how fuzzy that flashback was: a feeling more than anything.
Vanya doesn’t know if she should pray — do you have to pray in heaven? She feels like her breath is coming through a sieve. Or maybe a funnel? She always got those mixed up. She must have got everything mixed up, to not know what to do in heaven. When you’re mixed up, you can’t even remember if your shoes are tied, or whether you’re supposed to pedal forward or backward and shift up or down gears, or how to breathe. Vanya feels like she needs to pray. She must, the world is squeezing in around her, she can’t breathe, it is cold in the worst, sweatiest way and her skin is clammy with fear and panic. She has to get out.
When Vanya was 16, she had asked Claire out to homecoming. They were at a park, and the summer air felt like honey, sweet and warm. The last lightning bugs were out, and it was hard to tell where the sky started and ended: which stars were dancing out a cosmic rhythm in time to the fear and joy in her heart, and which were dancing on shimmering wings, a dance of love and loneliness, glowing their soul into the darkness.
Heaven is choking: Vanya finally has a handhold on something in the cramped darkness. It is wet and crumbles beneath her grip like bread pudding. It felt like that game everyone plays at birthdays, the one where they spun you round and round and round and round and round, with a paper donkey tail in your hand trying to find a wall to pin it on, trying to find which way is up and which way is down.
When Vanya was 16, her mother stroked her face, adjusted the lace on a long white dress that a quiet man had put her in, and placed a flower in her hand. The man who lived with her mother had draped the necklace with the cross around her neck. Claire was there too, long straight hair tossed in the wind. She played her violin like an angel, like it was the rapture, like heaven. Vanya wanted to cry, but she couldn’t move her face, she tried to applaud, to even look at the beautiful girl. But the sky got farther and farther away as they lowered her into the ground.
Heaven is harder than Vanya expected, she thinks as she tries to crawl her way upwards. She feels like a child again on the playground climbing up some tube. Only thick with dirt and heavy like a blanket. Clumps of soil get in her ears, in her nose, in her mouth, in her eyes. It tastes like the baking soda her mother would shovel into her mouth when she said a Bad Word, dry and powdery like sand. Except darker, meatier, wetter.
Piece by piece the dirt crumbles down. Inch by inch she works her way upward. Finally, she feels her fingers light upon something new; grasping onto it trying to wrap her arms around it. It’s just like a pull-up bar. Coach always said I was good at pull-ups. Hope makes her heart race, a tension worse than the tight pressure of the soil or the box she was in before. Above the thing in the dirt; it must be a root, there is only more dirt. Piece by piece it crumbles down. Inches turn into hours.
First, her ring finger gives way, the nail ripping off down to the cuticle. The pain is sharp and surgical, but there’s no way to comfort the wound, no way to move her arm close to her chest and hold the sting. No one there to kiss it better. When you’re on the field with friends, or enemies, or acquaintances, or anyone; or when you’re asking a cute girl to dance with you, it feels like you can take all the pain the world can give. Vanya felt like a child, buried in darkness bleeding from a dozen tiny blisters and crying quietly.
Inch by inch. I might never make it out, she thinks, and realizes that she no longer cares either way.
When Vanya was 10, her mother got her a wooden stool so she could reach the countertop. She showed her how to make bread, jam, and cake. Sunlight streamed through the window above the oven, a gentle breeze making the flour floating through the air dance in the light. The man laughed when he saw them and told Vanya she was a good little baker, and that one day she would make her husband happy. Vanya put baking soda in the cake instead of baking powder, it tasted flat and soggy. Her mother told her that it didn’t rise. But it didn’t matter, because they laughed and it was sunny and the whole house smelled like sugar. She doesn’t smell anything now.
By the time Vanya breaks the surface, the pain doesn’t matter anymore. Yes, it runs thick like honey over her body, but it is drowned out by a dull hopelessness, a swelling numbness. Walking on hard ground feels like swimming —- feels like flying after hours underground. The night could be beautiful and austere and cold, but she honestly can’t tell. Years ago, when the lights turned off and her mother was asleep, she would like to drift through the halls and make friends with the darkness. Wandering without anywhere to go, maybe for water then back to bed, maybe to stare down a hallway. Once she saw the man who lived in her house kneeling by the foot of his bed, sweating and shaking as he offered a shuddering prayer.
She wanders now, down empty streets. The checkered-tile patchwork of houses quiet in the night. Somewhere ahead she hears noise, people laughing and dancing, music playing and flashing lights. Vanya wants to be furious with envy. Why do they get to dance? She feels a kind of panicked desperation to be with any other people, in the warm light. She tries to gulp back the fear, but only swallows a piece of dirt unlodged from her teeth.
Vanya reaches a stately window, set into red brick gazing into a small gymnasium with pinprick lights dancing on the walls like stars reflected in a cold lake, misty-blue music drifts across the floor, littered with balloons and napkins. And there, in the center of the room is Claire, white sneakers tripping over someone else’s feet, as together dance badly and beautifully. She’s never looked more enamored, childish delight makes her smile look magical. Vanya can’t look anymore, she squeezes her eyes tight as the darkness closes in around her and she presses up against the glass, wishing she could just sink through into the light.
But Vanya is in heaven. And heaven is lonely tonight.