The Cemetery
I
Always the wrong time of day when I leave the house. And now, I’m rushing, bopping in my front seat, racing into standstill traffic. I haven’t had any coffee, I’m starving, I’m not sure I even remember how to drive! Who knew that the real rush hour was the time-of-day elementary schools let out. Yellow school buses sound like they’re going to blow a vein in their head to hobble two feet forward. White, silver, and black SUVs bully their way through traffic, do hazardous k-turns, run red lights and stop signs. I just want to get to the Dunkin’ drive thru. I should have woken up earlier, at the very least before rush hour. But I did not. “What can I get you?” The little drive thru speaker crackles, nearly unintelligible. Only one of the screens of the menu is bright white, the other has a crack through it and flickers. Stickers are caked all over the speaker box. “Egg and cheese on a croissant.” A car bangs up and down in the pockmarked parking lot behind me, “and a medium hot coffee.” “With cream and sugar?” Don’t interrupt me. “No, oat milk. Light. One pump of French vanilla.”
Now, I’m shoving this too dry meal down my throat, shedding it like an itchy dog all over this T-shirt that’s too big and unflattering. Mother won’t care about your fashion. Wasn’t she the queen of yoga pants herself?
“What the fuck, dude, watch where you’re fucking going!” The one-thousand-year-old silver Honda civic in front of me only responds by jerking away from my car’s honk. Boston drivers are always doing something. I need Coffee. And just then I remember my coffee cooling bedside me. Thank GOD, the hot liquid feels as though it flows over the gray folds of my brain. And finally, I am before the great maw of the Cemetery, looking down into the winding black throat of its entrance. No turning back now.
II
I remember the moment I woke up. There was a rhythmic thumping vibrating me on my insides, and, although I waited for it to subside, it did not. Annoyance gave way to anger, and I cast off the heavy weights of slumber to investigate. There it was. A short, plump Black girl- a woman- bobbing and swaying in a small, blue car, approaching my entrance much faster than the bright yellow signs state explicitly as the speed limit. I had hoped she wouldn’t be a nuisance. That I could go back to sleep. The heat of the summer had just worn off and I could finally find comfort. But she persisted in that state. Thumping. Bumping. Singing. Laughing. Speeding.
I knew she was lost long before she did. She had stopped at the entrance to peek into the empty attendant stand. She had inched, ever slowly, delicately up to the visitor’s stand. Her car purred and grumbled. She rolled down the window, the rear passenger. This was the wrong one. The front passenger. I could feel her leaning over, squinting through her cat-eyed spectacles. I felt both of us hold our breath as she willed her eyesight to crisp clarity. But the human body does not move through will power.
She hopped, somehow hip first out of her little car. A cascade of crumbs fell from her breast as she inelegantly brushed her hands over the powder pink t-shirt she had soiled with a brown stain of coffee. Bunched up, pink socks peaked out from the elastic ties at the ankles of her loose fitting, black sweatpants. In her details I lost myself. Her hair, her nails, the goosebumps climbing the back of her bronze arm as a light gust of wind cascaded through her. Still, the music from her car continued to thump thump thump. But now a clear voiced woman sang above the vibration. Then, a hard cut to revelry, her door slammed shut. Now, with a map to block her view, she barreled forth, stopping just as abruptly to gaze upon the light striking the rippling surface of a little lake that was black below the chirping of the birds, to read a path marker, to flip around in the middle of the road.
At a point, her thumping stopped. No longer creeping up the winding roads, peaking over hills, she zipped and zoomed in circles, chasing her own skid marks. Weeping hemlocks swayed in the wind, pointing with their tendrils back to the entrance as darkness set over the quiet monument-graves.
I could hear it, the wetness in the air filling her lungs just as panic pressed them down as if with rocks. She wheezed. She tapped away at a phone. She pulled over and fanned out the massive paper map over her lap. She batted back tears.
“I just wanted to see my mother!” She whispered this angry call to the gods instead to her car as she pressed her forehead firm to the steering wheel, gripping it on either side until her knuckles went pink, then white. She righted herself into a deep breath and a wide shoulder role. The world beyond her was then gray and smokey behind a two-branched, bare tree, which she beamed her white headlights at, spotlighting a crossroads.
There she turned off the engine, finally allowing quiet to settle over us. She shivered in the wet cold of the approaching night, but she approached the tree. Two tears fell from her eyes. I could taste her heartbreak in the air. She was just a motherless lamb, ripe to devour.
It was hours ago that her stink—the grease of her hair, the cheese on her breath, the deodorant curdling in her armpits, the animality of her meat—convinced me to keep her.
III
I realized I was lost, too late. The sun had begun to set, and I felt like a child scared of the dark, shivering like a wet cat under this huge wall of rock and clinging vines. Even in the sunlight, it was beautiful and terrifying. It’s so big, and I’m so small. I was a bunny rabbit and somewhere on the other side of this impossible wall, there was something out there stalking me, dreaming about picking its teeth with my tiny, little bones.
Now, it’s dark. I haven’t had service since I passed the initial opening into the grass and the trees. My mother’s grave is on an open, grassy hill. At all times of the day the sun shines on her. There’s a little lake nearby, but not right next to it. All of these gravestones, though, they all look alike. After so many gray lumps of stone, ornate mausoleums, black, bronze statues, trees, fluffy trees, weeping trees, tall erect trees, it all looks alike!
This tree, it has no leaves, just branches reaching in every direction out into the dark. I think it looks familiar, in the endless sea of things that look alike but distinct. But a clue is a clue, a chance is a chance – stay calm, you can’t afford to cry right now! –so I inch up to it, my car’s engine grumbles like I’m forcing it to do something far outside its natural inclination. My heart sinks to learn, though, that this tree is not, in fact, familiar, and, worse, it stands at a crossroads. Panicking won’t help! I’ve seen enough Supernatural to know a crossroads screams silently that it is where the demons wait to make impossible deals. It’s probably a bad idea, but I get out of the car. My sight line at the top of this hill won’t be as limited. I have to do something. This place closes pretty early, if it’s already dark, I have a feeling that time has come and gone, but maybe I’ll catch an attendant? And anyway, if I can get back to the entrance, I can just wait there until morning. Or call an Uber. I can do anything as long as it’s something! Mummy, I know you’re here somewhere.
Please help.
I’m scared.
But standing here, I don’t know at all what to do, but I know what her response would be, “You got yourself here, get yourself out.” It’s so dark. Is the darkness moving behind me? Rising and falling. Breathing? My arms can only hug my body against the cold, I can’t defeat darkness. Was that bush over there rustling? Was that a twig breaking? Calm down. “You always make mountains of molehills.” Not now, Mother, I’m trying to think.
My watch is beeping, asking if I’m doing some sort of cardio. I hold it in front of me, breathing with my whole chest until the little heart goes back to its less angry color. I take several shuffling steps toward the crooked little tree sitting in the crossroads. I lean slowly with just my chest, hinging as low as possible with my hips over past the black, dead bark, to see what waits at the bottom of this hill. A pool of black. A lake! With a weepy tree in the middle. I remember this. It was close to the metal stake fence. The end of the cemetery, I could walk around to the entrance. Or, no, there’s a major street on the other side of the cemetery. And it has a bus route. I just need to go there!
Back in my car, I jerk back the gear shift to reverse, away from the crossroads taunting me. Did I just hear…someone…something… laughing? I’m speeding now. There’s nobody but me here. I’m stopping short. I’m running, climbing, jumping. You were just hearing things, seeing the darkness move but it didn’t. I’m not a fit bitch, but I’m going home tonight! You’re all alone, here.
It takes a couple tries but one, lucky pull-up, and God, I can feel the wind sting my nostrils, as I straddle cold, thin top bar of the fence. My eyes take a moment to adjust while I scope out the view. What am I looking at? This can’t be right.
IV
Oh, Little Mouse, you’re caught now. There’s nowhere else to go. Nowhere else in the world.
End