Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide of a Celebrity

CHAPTER THREE: First Brush With Mortality

CHAPTER THREE

First Brush with Mortality

The summer break after I left primary school started well. The sun blazed above the battleground neighborhood as kids loaded their water pistols, preparing for apocalyptic conflicts on the cobbled paths. Stray cats meandered across the railway tracks and freshly cut grass scented the balmy air.

     Lisa, Elliott and I grew even closer that summer, riding our bikes through each bright afternoon and sitting in my front garden at night. Owls filled the air with their placid hooting, while nocturnal creatures explored the thorn bushes under the decrescent moon. The mysterious sounds in the darkness filled each warm night with the perfect atmosphere for telling ghost stories. Mine were so farfetched they were laughable. I once persuaded Lisa to believe I’d converted my attic into a laboratory, which was home to a lumbering monster I’d created (it was an odd fantasy…) using the same life-giving method as Victor Frankenstein. Elliott’s stories rarely concerned the supernatural. They were about murderers with motives. I found them boring. Elliott argued they were more realistic than my crappy tales. Lisa hushed us by telling her stories, but we’d always catch her out because she used to steal from movie plotlines.

     A sentimental mate of mine, who often spoke in questionable epigrams, once told me in my college years that ‘Youth gently trips before it falls.’ I had no reason to think about the end. The end of our ghost stories, our bike rides and water fights. We couldn’t make the sun stand still for us. Unattended, the thorns grew wild, infringing on the railway tracks. But the trains never stopped journeying.

     My grandmother passed away that summer. I’d never gotten to know her well, because she’d been too similar to my mother to get on with her. I wanted to console my mother, put my arm around her shoulders. She became more depressed as the funeral grew closer, staying in bed each day and sobbing into her pillow during compassionate leave from the local pharmacy she worked at. I should have comforted her, but I was too young to understand. She’d hardly spoken to my grandmother, so why did she act upset now?

     I’d never seen a dead body before. My mother told me she’d first seen a corpse at the age of thirteen. She and a girl named Ginger used to play on a nearby construction site. They would jump onto the back of big industrial lorries for fun. Those lorries rolled back slightly when they came to an incline. Ginger had called for my mother one Saturday morning, but she’d felt ill and couldn’t go out and play.

     Ginger died that day. She fell off a lorry as it rolled back, crushing her to death. My grandmother had forced my mother to see the body as a lesson against recklessness.

     ‘And now I have to see her body,’ my mother said when she concluded that story. ‘There’s a bitter irony there.’

     The dapper young gentleman gave us a courteous smile, his eyes filled with permanent sadness. He let my mother and me into the silent room. Candlelight flickered as we entered, casting shadows across the white walls. My hands trembled as I walked towards the coffin and gazed at my grandmother’s ashen face. She looked more peaceful in death than she had during any Christmas or birthday, her senses sealed to the flames and the sweet scent of a forlorn white rose beside her. I half expected her to open her eyes and laugh at how she’d fooled us into believing she’d passed away.

     Tears pricked my eyes as my mother bent down to kiss my grandmother’s forehead. I realized that every tear falling down her pale cheeks was a sign of regret, an acknowledgement of the affection she’d rarely shown my grandmother, but wished she had.

     My mother sat on the chamois leather sofa and beckoned me towards her, her eyes fixed on the shiny surface of the hard oak coffin, the brass handles glimmering under the pale light. Finally, I put my arm around my mother’s trembling shoulders.