Room For More

Chapter Two

I edited the chapter. Please do read again.

About Two Years Ago

The last time I saw so many people wearing the same color of black was at mom and dad's funeral. I'd known a few faces then - family members, neighbors and my parents work colleagues.
But the faces presently looking straight at me either belonged to strange men and women I definitely had never meant or the memory of them I couldn't remember. My first thought upon seeing a lot of them was that the house was no longer Ted and Josie's - it was now a place of meeting for everybody above the age of sixty. To simply put it, there were just so many old people in wrinkles and hardly anybody half their age except for me was present. And one thing about old people that their age would allow them with was their uncanny ability to stare unabashedly at people and give loud comments that they thought nobody would hear as it was presently being done to me. Loud whispers of me flowed through the room as I looked on surprisingly from the front door that I had walked in through unexpectedly some seconds ago.
"That must be the sister."
"You mean the prodigal daughter?" Okay that was deep.
"I thought she was in far away Timbuktu." Timbuktu?
"Where's Timbuktu?"
"Nowhere darling."
"No, it's somewhere in Africa." At least someone paid attention in their Geography class.
"I thought she was dead. Josie always said she was no longer with them. I assumed that meant death. Death runs so deep in their family. Nobody ever makes it to forty. Death may soon come for this one too. Poor people." Alright, you've all been fun to listen to but it was time to get this party shutdown. Thank you all for coming.
As I was about to voice out my last thoughts, I saw the very first familiar face in the gathering - the face I hadn't seen in ten solid years. In the few seconds that our eyes collided I went down the memory lane and remembered the many times I'd looked into those comforting brown eyes and found strengthin them to continue and fight all my battles against all odds.
I smiled up as he approached me. It was my turn to comfort and strengthen him as he'd done for me a lot of times in the past. He needed me now, I encouraged myself to believe as  my body shook and prepared for the unknown as he walked up to me at the front door while the old folks watched along in perfect silence. He wouldn't hate me for my long time absence. He'd welcome me home just like the prodigal daughter I was said to be. We needed to be there now for each other.
I inwardly continued to boost up my courage until he got to me. Age and life and dealt him much since the last time I physically saw him. He was still as handsome as he'd been but his beauty now came with some roughness that depicted strength in his body, a streak of grey hair that lined his temple at both sides of his head and a deep well of stories in his golden brown eyes.
I offered a small smile as he looked down at me with eyes I could no longer read as I'd once read perfectly.
"Hello Theodore," I said just as I put my hand on his right arm.
His left hand came to rest on my hand. He squeezed it just for a second before he abruptly took it off his arm.
"Get the fuck out of my property." I would have thought had heard wrongly but I knew his words were loud for even the deaf octogenarians in the gathering to hear.
Despite all my hopes and thoughts of how I imagined the day would go, fate was just not ready to smile at me.

1999

Mom and dad were buried ten days after I left the hospital to live in Josie and Teddy's small house. Everything was little at Josie and Teddy's. I got the room Teddy once used as an office for my bedroom. It was far smaller than my room at home - more the size of the bathroom but I couldn't complain. Teddy had tried moving a lot of his mechanical junks down to the garage but a few things still littered the room leaving behind the very presence of Teddy in the room. He'd decided to leave behind the wooden brown shelf housing his boring collections of classical literature - hoping I would find them good company.
Nothing and no one had been good company for me since the night of the accident. Hardly had I been a good company to either Josie or Teddy and other well-wishers who paid their condolences to our house.
I stayed mostly upstairs in my little room, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling most times until sleep took me off to a dreamless state. And sometimes, when chance permitted, I listened to the back and forth quiet but heated argument between my sister and her husband - me being the reason for their discussion.
"She hardly eats. She doesn't talk. She hasn't even cried a tear yet for mom and dad. There's nothing normal about that." I'd heard Josie tell Teddy one late evening, from their bedroom.  I imagined they thought I was asleep.
"Maybe that's her own kind of normal." My brother in law said. I imagined him lying carefree on his side of the bed, with legs dangling off the bed and a toothpick in one corner of his mouth while he watched my sister amusingly as she paced the length of their room. I always wondered about their relationship - how a carefree, no worry and always happy person like Teddy ended up with the General Manager of Worryland, aka my sister. They were the evidence that opposite terms did attract.
"That's not normal for her babe.  Erin loves soccer and she loves feeding the ducks in the water. And painting... She used to do a lot of water color paintings of animals and plants. And she is a talker. She talks a lot. So that person up in the attic is not the Erin I know."
Nope! She couldn't be the Erin her sister remembered because that Erin died when she was six. I still loved soccer but I no longer dreamed about being an international football star. I played the sport for the enjoyment and rush it brought me. And I loved music now.
I fell in love with classical music at 4th grade,during my first time at summer camp when Toby Jenkins, a boy in my class who I'd earlier thought was boring and uncoordinated, had played a slow but captivating music on the piano, that wowed everybody that year at summer camp. I'd walked up to him after the beautiful performance and asked what music it was. I remembered him smiling widely at me, with two front teeth gone and saying that it was classical music. I'd returned home, befriending Toby Jenkins and gathering enough knowledge on the classical music to get me started on learning how to play like Toby Jenkins on the piano. And my dream since that time had been to get into Julliard and play masterpiece music.
But music had taken mom and dad away from me. If they hadn't taken me for the Christmas concert at school, they'd still be alive and we would all be at home, celebrating the new year in the Devereaux traditional style - with hot chocolate and sharing of incredible funny stories in the past year. But they were gone and a new year happened without them. And I wondered if I would ever appreciate music the way I did with them being my biggest supporters.
I couldn't blame Josie for worrying about me. I worried about me too. I haven't cried about them - not even a tear had rolled down my face for them. I went to their funeral, saw them being put into the ground, spread dust on their grave, saw many familiar and unfamiliar faces mourn their loss but nothing moved within me to join them. I'd earlier thought the tears would come, that I only needed to be in my own space and quiet. That their memories will rush up in my head and heart and then something will break open in my body like an open prison door and I'd be free to mourn my the loss of my parents the way it should be done.
I'd been in seclusion for more than a week - it was more than enough time to remember and reminisce about their beloved memories. But as each memory and picture of our time together resurfaced up in my mind, the prison door of my emotions stood solidly locked - the room of imprisonment shrunk and became smaller and tight. I became more imprisoned in mind and I could not mourntmy parents the way I really should.
Mom and dad deserved more than a million tears and I  couldn't even shed one for them. More than being worried, I was angry and bitter in my heart. It was because of me they were dead, still I couldn't mourn them rightly.