Gold, Fire & Refinement

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." ~Michel de Montaigne

It was four o'clock in the morning when the cat dream woke Eva Pearl up, again. Frank wasn't home for the third night in a row, and she'd had the dream every night, for three nights in a row. The events of the dream happened a long time ago, but her mind didn't want to let go. Last fall, when she was taking a psychology course at UNLV, her professor said anxiety was the most common emotion experienced in dreams. Thinking about it, she knew she had a ton of anxiety, and most of it had to do with the rocky relationship she had with Frank. But tonight and for the last three weeks, the dream itself had become part of her anxiety.

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The cat's last visit was on the first night she and her family slept in the new house her father built for his family; the home where her mother still lived. Daniel Brion, Senior,  had finally made good on his promise to build them a new home to replace the shack they lived in, happily, for years. But it was hot that first night in the new house. Unbearably hot. The electricity hadn't been turned on and her parents left all the windows up. For some rooms, screens hadn't been put on the windows yet, so the cat was able to sit on the sill watching them as they slept.

The cat was the focal point of the dream, but Eva Pearl knew the dream wasn't really about the cat. The dream was her mind's way of depicting anxiety ... telling her how homesick she was. The tortured, lonely cat was an emotional link to the home her father built. Since she left home, she had done her best to forget about home, to forget about her father. Daniel Brion died when she was fourteen, and she had always missed him much too much to want to risk remembering him. Not thinking about him at all made it easier to face life without him.

Knowing it would be hard getting back to sleep, she got up and turned on her laptop. She decided to work on a class assignment that was due in two days. Frank had given her permission to start taking classes again as a way of trying to make up for beating her nearly to death. Enrolled online in the last course she needed to finish her junior year at UNLV, going to school online was best for now since it would be a while before all her bruises healed. Until they healed, Frank, as her manager, said she wouldn't have to go on any dates. He said her skin had to look like golden-brown silk again before he'd allow his "Brown Pearl" to go back to work. 

She learned to look forward to nights like this. Nights when Frank wasn't home; nights when he was at one of his all night high-rollers' parties, drinking and drugging and setting up dates for his girls with men who wanted only the best Vegas had to offer.

These days, her angst was palpable. When Frank was home, she found herself tipping around the house like a frightened mouse, afraid anything she said or did would set him off. In her heart, she knew his kindness over the last several days was only the calm before a big, big storm. Even though he was allowing her to go to school, he resented the fact that she wanted to go. He knew once she got her degree, she would be able to leave him for good, and to him, that meant he'd already lost her. It infuriated him that she was causing him to have to wrestle with such a conundrum. A puzzle he couldn't solve. That's why she knew. His kindness wasn't going to last. It couldn't. He acted like he was sorry for beating her, and kept telling her things would soon get back to the way they were in happier days, but she knew. It wasn't true. None of it. The fact that she was one year from earning her degree meant everything had changed.

She worked for several hours before finishing the last part of her assignment, then crawled back into bed, hoping to get a few hours of sleep. As soon as she drifted off, her father's voice awakened her. It don't matter how ugly your past is, Daniel Brion's voice said. It don't matter how ashamed of yourself you are. You can't stay here, Pearl. This man does not love you. He doesn't know how to love you, and he never will. Don't be afraid, baby girl. Get away from this man. Go home. Your mother and your sisters are praying for you to come home. Find your courage. Leave, Pearly Girl. Leave this man and save your life.

When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed about the last walk she took with her father the day before he died. The two of them took a long walk that stretched halfway around their ten-acre homestead; a home sitting on the edges of hundreds of acres of land in rural Mississippi that belonged to her parents. The house sat inside a green valley surrounded by rolling hills, a place where everything always seemed serene and calm. In her dream, she saw it. 

That day, she asked her father to walk with her because she had to tell him something unimportant that seemed very important to a fourteen-year-old girl. All he said when she asked him to go was, "Let's go, Pearly Girl. Tell me all about it." She couldn't remember what she told him that day, but she remembered he listened to every word. Their walk turned into a very long one, and they ended up standing on the banks of the pond he dug years earlier and filled all by himself. It was in the old pasture where the cows liked to graze. You are not responsible. Her father's voice broke in again. That walk we took is not the reason I had a heart attack the next day. Stop blaming yourself for something you had nothing to do with.

For years she felt responsible for making her father's heart give out, and it hurt to remember the guilt. But now, in a lucid dream, she realized she needed to accept the truth. It wasn't her fault her father died the next day after taking that walk. It really wasn't her fault.

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