Forgiving Ararat by Gita Nazareth Read Free Book Online

Pulling the comforter taut, she said: “Let’s go downstairs and have breakfast; I made carrot muffins just the way you like. We can go on that hike up Tussey Mountain later today. I know you were looking forward to it.”
    I watched her, amused by the dream. “But it isn’t morning and I’m not awake yet,” I insisted. “If I were awake, you’d be gone, so I think we’d better change the subject.” Nana placed her hand on my arm—an old woman’s hand, wrinkled and rough against my skin; she was trying to convince me that I wasn’t dreaming; the effect was authentic, but I wasn’t impressed. “Dead people don’t talk to each other,” I said. “And they don’t have eyes to see each other or bodies to touch each other.”
    She squeezed my arm. “That’s true, dear,” she said. “But it’s easier now for you to think of death that way. You aren’t ready yet to let go of life.”
    “But I’m not dead,” I said, “look—”
    I jumped up and down, doing a little jig in the bedroom and waving my arm around to prove it.
    Nana indulged me with a smile. “You know,” she said, “I remember the shoe. Your mother shouldn’t have slapped you like that; I would have been scared too. I can’t imagine what she was thinking. Making a three year old kiss an old dead woman? Yuck.”
    I looked at her in sheer horror. This was one of those nightmare moments just before waking when the thing you’ve been dreading is about to happen and you know you’re powerless to stop it—the moment that produces maximum terror, causing you to scream out in the middle of the night—which is exactly what I did. I ran down the stairs shouting “Nooooo!” at the top of my lungs. Through the kitchen and out the back door I ran, past the sink cluttered with baking dishes and the table with the plate of fresh carrot muffins. I stopped on the back porch and closed my eyes, hoping it would all go away; I even imagined reaching across the bed for Bo and finding his hip with his boxer shorts bunched up, and his legs, warm and downy, pulled up to his chest. I nuzzled close, contouring my body to his, the way a river conforms to the shape of its bank, defining itself by what it is not; his skin smelled masculine and strong and his whiskers thrilled my arm when it brushed his chin; I kissed him on the back of the neck and adjusted my breath to the gradual expansion and contraction of his chest. He stirred and smacked his lips softly. It must have been two or three in the morning because I swore I could hear the faint laughter of the college students who lived on our street returning home from their Friday night parties. But when I opened my eyes to see the clock on the dresser, I found myself still standing on Nana’s back porch in Delaware with the seasons—and my sanity—colliding.
    “Bo! Bo!” I yelled.
    “Brek, honey, it’s ok,” Nana called from the kitchen. “I’m right here.”
    “Bo! Hold me! Hold me!”
    But I couldn’t feel him anymore. I leaped from the porch and raced around the house, hoping a sudden burst of exertion would jar me awake. Through winter, summer, spring and fall I ran, past the oak with the tractor tire swing, around the herb garden simultaneously leafy and barren, through beds of tulips dripping with dew and chrysanthemums covered with snow. I tripped over the hump of a root surfacing through the soil beneath the white pine at the northern end of the house and landed face down on the soft needles, my robe spread out around me like the wings of a fallen dove. I stayed there for a moment, catching my breath, inhaling the sweet pine scent and searching for answers—logical, material answers.
What was happening to me? Why couldn’t I wake myself up?
It was the most terrifying dream I’d ever had.
    I brushed the needles from my robe and looked around. The convulsing seasons had transformed the lawn into a paradise of climates—an entire year of days condensed into a single, dazzling moment of