FAR FROM ERIS • FreenBecky •

TEN

-🎶-

Rebecca had always been a somewhat unstable child. Or that's what the school counselors from the schools she attended liked to call her. And the psychologists she went to. Even her parents whispered that word sometimes when they thought Becky was asleep and she - and her instability - slipped out of bed in the middle of the night.

But Becky wasn't unstable. Becky was simply Becky.

Becky, at six years old, climbed trees, crossed rivers coming home covered in mud, and collected all kinds of animals she found on the street. She had to save them; it was her mission. Her mother's mission, on the other hand, was to get rid of them all and scold Becky for hours trying to convince her that she would end up infected with rabies from picking up stray ferrets and putting them under her bed.

But Becky didn't care about rabies. Because Becky was a happy child, and she had a mission. A mission that apparently no adult understood, so that little girl with huge brown eyes assumed that keeping secrets might not be such a bad idea after all. That way, she wouldn't have to explain anything to anyone. If nobody knew, nobody could stop her from doing anything.

And that girl - unstable - grew up. And that character full of light took on other nuances typical of adolescence that further complicated her relationship with her mother; by the time Becky turned sixteen, that relationship was practically nonexistent.

She spent most of her time with her grandmother, in that house near the river on the outskirts of the city. She had always liked spending time in that house; being able to go out and be at the riverbank in a couple of minutes, where an endless stream of water ran incessantly and tirelessly. She had always been fascinated by the water.

When she was little, she used to wade up to her knees - to her mother's dismay - to look for salamanders and fish, and although that river was cold as an iceberg, she always endured that momentary pain until her lower extremities went numb and stopped hurting. And that was what Becky had been brooding over for several months. It might sound like a cliché perhaps: an unloving and too strict mother. A relatively absent father who ended up distancing himself from a daughter he never made an effort to get to know. A tormented teenager because maybe - and just maybe - she was feeling some strange things for one of her friends. Nothing really important, nothing clearly irreversible, nothing definitively tragic. But there was Becky, looking at the water running in the river, wondering what it would be like to immerse herself completely, endure all that cold and pain until she stopped feeling it and simply float; float and drift away.

Float and feel nothing.

But then she remembered her grandmother. She didn't deserve that. She turned her head towards the house, and sometimes she saw her walking through the garden. Sometimes with Patty, that friend of hers for a lifetime with whom she went to that strange book club every Thursday, where they attended uniformed with a red plaid shirt that Becky never understood. Who wears a uniform to read? And then Patty would tell Becky stories about other worlds and how time really didn't exist. That everything was a huge spiral with no beginning or end. She told her how we could exist here and there, anywhere. How our decisions inadvertently determined our future, and how sometimes there was a turning point that changed everything.

Becky seriously wondered where that woman - who ran a small flower shop - got all those theories about parallel realities and transcendent decisions. She even thought that she planted illegal things in that business; things that could be consumed. Which would certainly explain those thoughts. Or maybe it was the books about parallel universes they read in that literary club. But still, and under the suspicion of regular drug use, she liked Patty. That woman accompanied her grandmother and relieved the loneliness of that house that grew bigger every year her grandfather was missing and every time her father delayed another month in visiting her because she wasn't on his list of priorities. She was getting smaller, and those walls higher. And Becky would have given anything to lift that woman to the ceiling with her own hands. No, she would never abandon her grandmother.

But Becky didn't count on her grandmother leaving her.

Two years later, as winter was coming to an end, she became even smaller than she already was. And those walls became so high that the windows were lost in the distance, leaving those rooms that had always been bathed in light in a heavy and sad darkness. Becky wanted to break the walls; break through the bricks with her own hands and make holes in the living room where she lay on the carpet to watch television, the kitchen where she saw her grandmother drink her coffee every afternoon in that small glass, even though she had twenty different sets of cups; the bedroom where she slept with her every night she couldn't bear to stay at home and ended up exhausted by her side after crying. She wanted to smash the walls and let the light in. She wanted the sun to fall on her grandmother and make her grow again, as if she were a flower eager to receive the warmth from outside after a long time. She needed her grandmother not to go, not to wither away. But even if she had destroyed that house with an excavator, her grandmother would have left anyway. Not even the sun would have stopped that. And now she wasn't there anymore.

Becky disconnected from all reality. Not even her mother affected her in the slightest. She was angry, sad, and lost. But above all, angry. Angry with her mother because she couldn't seek comfort in her. Angry with her father for not appreciating her grandmother enough and make her feel abandoned, and for making her feel abandoned as a daughter. She was angry with her grandmother for leaving her alone. She was angry with Patty because after the funeral, she would leave for another city and leave her too. She was angry with the universe, with the reality she had to face, with life, with death. With herself. She couldn't stand herself. She couldn't fit so many bad feelings in her chest. And the grief; God, the grief was like a worm slowly eating her organs. Making her feel more and more empty parts of her insides like a walnut shell until she heard the echo of her heartbeats in her chest and in her head; as if they were bouncing against the absolute nothingness.

The sun shone insultingly in the sky as her grandmother's coffin finished fitting into that huge white wall. Becky was starting to hate the high walls. She was really starting to hate everything. Even that sun that she had needed so much to help her grandmother, now seemed like a mockery accompanying her in her farewell. She had a furrowed brow. Her gaze on the ground and her arms crossed over her chest. She didn't want to talk to anyone, or look at anyone. She was so annoyed with everything that even the crying of the people around her was torture. -You have no right to cry for her. Only I have the right to mourn her. I loved her more than anyone else. I'm the one who's been left without her, do you understand?- And even so, not a tear had fallen from Becky's cheeks since her grandmother left. And that also tormented her. She wasn't even good enough to mourn her.

Patty watched her from afar with her heart pounding against her ribs. No one should go through that pain in that way and yet, she would also leave. She looked once more at the small cloth bag she held in her hand and gathered the courage to approach the girl who kept away from everyone in that cemetery. She knew Becky was angry with her, and she hoped that one day she would understand that she too had been left alone, and that nothing held her in that huge city that consumed souls. She wanted Becky to understand that she was leaving, but that didn't mean she would abandon her. That would never happen.

She approached slowly, there was no need to speak because they had already told each other everything. Patty handed that bag to a broken and lost Becky, who took it and pulled out the garment inside. Her grandmother's book club shirt. That red plaid shirt that could hardly pass for attire for elderly science fiction enthusiasts. The old woman handed it to Becky, as a sign that they would always remain united by the memory of her grandmother. And then Patty left, leaving Becky there with the shirt in her hand, thinking again about what it would be like to float in the cold and stop feeling.

Maybe now she could find out

*

*