TELL ME EVERYTHING
DETROIT 1978
Ienter my shop in the early morning hours the next day. Even the city, apart from the auto factories humming, sleeps when I arrive. I left with little thought, only grabbing Carya and locking the front door of what I now saw as a fractured estate.
I should not have driven in the state that I was, so desperately in need of sleep and a hug. One clove after another, just to stay awake. I look at my hand. The cold, comforting feeling of a ring that looks dull and weighed down by all the hope it’s lost.
The only thing going through my mind now is the answers I desperately seek. Two people hold those answers, and I only hope that their keeping me in the dark had good reason.
Looking at the items in the shop now brings a new feeling of nostalgia. These aren’t just items on display to sell. No, these are not just antiques. They’re echoes. Each one a mess I lived through.
Past beloved treasures. How could I not have seen it before? Is that why I searched them out? By a feeling? An invisible tether of truth I was chasing?
A cracked floral vase from Ry that once held a promise in the form of sharp, thorny flowers. The first edition Frankenstein book that marked the moment I discovered his watchful eyes for the firsttime in Racine. A Scottish coin—just enough to buy a room, and a little time to fall apart.
And the paintings. The paintings Ry and Que would bring back to me from their travels abroad as soldiers—at least that is what I believed then. All just things, but more than that to me now.
A key part of the best moments with Ry is here, so many failed attempts at keeping our tainted love from becoming sour. These possessions hold my connection to that past. A past I can’t escape. Maybe part of me never wanted to.
I am left thinking, even crying when the feeling of weakness holds me hostage. I finally notice the sun has risen over the city as light starts to filter into the shop windows. I put on a pot of coffee, wiping the leftover drops of heartache out of my vision.
The caw of the crows is a welcome noise, but even it holds a different meaning now. There is something about the birds. Their watchful eyes, a vessel for someone else. And I now know who.
The hawk, a silent and deadly overseer for Ry. And the crow, a noisy observer for Que. This much I know, but how its possible is still foggy.
Carya is curled up in her bed in the corner of the store, like she never left. Maybe we should never have left. Lollie should be here any moment to open up the shop, and I know I’m the last face she will expect to see.
At 7:55 a.m., I hear the door jingle and the chime ring as Lollie lets herself in. She looks up, feeling my aguish immediately. I must shock her. The last time I looked in the car mirror, dark circles wore like war paint under my sunken eyes.
With a mix of exhaustion and mascara bleeding down, making me look like something that just crawled out of a grave. In a haunting way, I guess that’s exactly what I’ve been doing life after life. Crawling out of my own dreary grave over and over, brain full of mush, hoping I can live a normal life.
“Oh, Jade,” she runs to me, and cups my head in her hands. Tearsfall before I can even try to hold them back. “Oh, my dear Jade.” She speaks as if she knows. I look to her then, and her eyes tell me she does.
“Please. Enough with the secrets. I need to know everything,” I say.
She gets up and locks the door, coming back to sit with me on the floor. She takes my hands in hers, threading her fingers through mine, and for a moment we sit in silence.
I look to her, love and wonder mixing with anger, defiance and mistrust. My shoulders straighten, and my eyes lock onto hers.
“I’m ready. Tell me everything.”
27
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
DETROIT 1978
“You’ve had numerous human lives with us before he found you on Earth. I’ll start with the first one he made his presence known. That may be the easiest way to go about this. It was Dacia in 140 AD, which is now known as Romania,” Lollie says solemnly. Her first words pull the air from my lungs.
“Things were simple then. You lived in a quiet village, surrounded by love—your mother and me. But you started staying out longer. Every evening you would go get water from the well until one day you just didn’t come back. We searched forever, it seemed.” Her confession tugs at my knowing.
“I’ve seen this in my dreams. The wheat field with hidden thistle,” I say more to myself.
“All we found was the water pail close to the edge of the woods. And instead of water in the pail, there was only blood. You were gone to us.” Lollie’s eyes gloss over remembering. I can tell it’s hard, but she continues. “And we were broken, thinking you were gone forever. We didn’t know you would come back as a mortal again, whether he found you or not.”
“But instead, I’ve been set up to live out this torment, life afterlife…” I look at her, tears swelling with rage. How could she not know the pain this would cause?
“That’s not fair. We were trying to give you freedom. Your mother wanted you to live.” I scoff at her words. Lollie doesn’t realize their contradiction. They wanted me to live, but I feel like I die a million times every time I slip that ring on.
