Chapter 20

JUDE

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At that point, I wanted the ground to swallow me up.

Oliver immediately turned his back on Rick after he aired that question. His arms were quivering. I’m sure if he tried to talk, his words wouldn’t come out right, and he’d be stuttering.

Rick’s brow creased in confusion. He looked at Oliver, then me, then Oliver once again, his eyes becoming slits.

My brother wasn’t an idiot. I remembered one time when I was 10, he had this really cool but damn expensive remote-control drone that our mom brought him on his 11th birthday. I’d cried for one, but mom said I wait till my birthday, so I’d get one too. Meanwhile, Rick and her prohibited me from touching that drone wihout their permission. I had broken far too many of Rick’s stuff. Not that that stopped me. I’d stolen lots of things from Mom’s bedroom and she never knew.

But Rick? Turned out he was nothing like my mom. Four days after getting the drone as a present, I decided I had to have it. Rick and Mom weren’t home when I arrived from school and 10 year old me really wanted to play with it then. So I entered stealthily into his room, noted where he stashed it, assessed how he meticulously left it-including every angle and its entire state-then finally took it.

I played with it for about an hour before retirning it to his room. Once again, I carefully stashed it where I found it earlier, noting every angle it had been placed and whether it matched the physical state it had been in when I stole it.

Once satisfied with my job as a Tom Cruise character, I slid out of the room, making sure any presence of mine was erased.

Rick came about half an hour later. I was tucked in my bed, busy playing Spiderman on my playstation, a smug smile on my face. Him coming home never sent any shiver of worry in me. He would never find out.

Rick later barged into my room, his face completely neutral. Even his eyes betrayed no emotion. “What were you doing in my room?”

Of course, I emphatically denied being in his room.

Rick had quirked his eyebrow before turning abruptly and uttering, “Don’t ever touch my drone again. If you do, I’ll tell Mom and that will be the end of your birthday and christmas presents.”

Ever since that day, I truly never broke into his room. I did not know where he got that level of perception, but it bordered supernatural and scared the daylights out of 10 year old me. I knew his room didn’t have any cameras, so how did he know? After everything I did and he still found out…

Currently, I wondered the same. Could he tell how the atmosphere was tense, how the distance between me and Oliver was sizzling like a roasted barbeque stand, like a Diwali fireworks event?

If I even shifted my body off the ground, he would absolutely tell how tensed up and absolutely turned on my body was right now. Shit.

“Is everything ok?” He asked, the question itself directed at the both of us.

“Everything is fine. All good. Great. Perfect. Y’know.” Oliver answered in the squeakiest voice I’d ever heard.

Rick quirked an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You left me alone in the store all of a sudden. It looked like you were having a panic attack.”

Damn. So it really was true.

“I-I kinda was.” His voice descended into a low muffle. His fingers curled into fists.

Rick suddenly looked at me and something like guilt flashed in his eyes, his face cringing almost like…almost like he was regretting stating that in front of me. Like I wasn’t supposed to be hearing this.

Granted, I agreed. Rick and Oliver were close, and I definitely was not, in any way, friends with Oliver. But for some reason, Rick wanting to exclude me from the conversation made my heart flare up sharply with an emotion I couldn’t decipher.

I was the one who helped Oliver calm down. Excluding all that shit with the kiss, I’d helped him calm down. I knew why he had experienced a panic attack. I’d only done that, however, because it was what a person did out of courtesy. It’s not like Oliver and I were friends.

Oliver suddenly wiped something from his eye. He finally faced Rick and it was clear as day he was close to crying. My heart fluttered. I immediately forgot about any dislike, any ill thought towards him. Something in me wanted to wrap him in my arms or at least rub his shoulders in consolation.

I stood up, almost in a trance. My eyes were still fixed on Oliver. He suddenly noticed me and something in his eyes shut down. He turned his head away from me and that indescribable emotion suddenly flared up once again before I realised what it finally was; A sting of hurt.

Why was I feeling hurt?

“C’mon,” Rick took him by his shoulders and started guiding him away, “I’ll take you home.”

Rick spared me one last glance, mouthing a quick ‘I’ll see you at home.’ before walking away with Oliver.

Hell, if I care, I scoffed. Oliver’s being a wimp as usual.

I squared my shoulders and began my way home.

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1 Hour later.

When I arrived at home, I spotted my Mom’s car and knew she was at home which was unusual. She usually came way later, usually at nine or ten pm.

I checked my wrist watch. What was she doing here at 6 pm?

“Mom,” I called, entering and throwing my stuff blindly.

I immediately went to the kitchen. She wasn’t there. Living room. Absent. Even in the washrooms, she was nowhere to be seen.

“Mom,” I called out again.

Shit. If something happened to her…I couldn’t bear it. It was a lot losing my father but mom too. Did someone break in? Nothing seemed out of place but my mother always answered when we called out to her.

Always.

I climbed the stairs, my heart palpitating. I felt like I was in a horror movie. An image flashed in my mind; my mother’s body laying in a pool of blood.

Once her bedroom door was in sight, I yanked it open. “Mom!”

She wasn’t there.

Damn it! I punched the wall next to me, ignoring the sharp jolt of pain. Where could she possibly be?

I rested my head against the wall. No no no no. Please mom. Please be okay.

I stared at her picture on the wall. She was smiling. She always had Rick’s smile. Her brown caramel skin glowed, her dark brown hair punctuating just how pretty she used to be. She still was pretty, but her face had visibly aged right after Dad died, gaining about three wrinkles on her forehead.

Rick likes to say I was the most affected by my father’s death, but really, it was my mother. She, like Rick, seemed to move on a lot faster from his death than I was…or, so I used to think. After dad died, mom had to make ends meet fast. It wasn’t like we were poor but she had to quickly step onto the role of both sole provider and caregiver. Two boys were a lot to manage.

On top of that, she also had to emotionally support us through that. Rick had been older when Dad died. He did shed tears after dad died but his recovery period came very quick. By about three weeks, he was back to normal, more or less.

Me? I didn’t shed any tears. I didn’t acknowledge my dad’s death. I locked myself in my room for two weeks and didn’t go to school for that entire period. I ignored my Mom and Rick’s attempts to get me to see his body before they buried him.

A month later, I turned to alcohol and LSD. If I hadn’t seen his dead body, I could still see him in some shape or form, even if they were hallucinations. I heard that everyone experienced grief differently, but one thing that is usually the common factor is that there is a period of ‘letting it all out’. Rick had it. I was yet to have mine.

It wasn’t until my mom later found out I was using those drugs that she hugged me tight and told me quietly to let it all out. And I did. I cried on my mom’s shoulder like a wimp. I was supposed to stay strong. I was a man. I didn’t want to cry on my mother’s shoulder like I was still 10 years old or something.

So Rick had his… and now I had mine. However, I’d never stopped to think about Mom. She was our rock for so long that I didn’t stop to think how she was handling dad’s death. To her dad was more than a husband. They were one soul in two bodies. Dad could make her laugh in a way no one else could. It was when I could not remember when I’d heard that laugh, that I started to realise Mom was never ok. She would force a smile whenever she saw us, a smile that hid everything and you could never know… until one night, when I awoke from nightmares, 3 months after my dad’s death, that I heard quiet sobs echoing from the hallway. Getting up to investigate, I realised it wasn’t Rick. Rick never sobbed that softly. It was mom. She was not ok. She had never been ok.

And the worst thing is that I didn’t care as much then. I was too busy getting over my own grief, shutting the world out by any means necessary.

Now karma was finally here. If Mom was dead, I would never forgive myself.

Suddenly, my ears were pierced by a soft sound from outside the window. At first, it was very vague but, as I listened to it more carefully, I was once again in the hallway, 3 months after my dad’s death.

I got out of the house as quickly as I could and headed to the backyard towards my mother’s garden. My breath was knocked out in an instant.

She was on her knees in a purple dress, the material completely smudged with dirt. Her hand held a mound of dirt. Half of her bougainvillaea had been completely decimated. Before I could ask who did that, she suddenly turned and I realised who was the culprit. The front of her dress was also completely covered in dirt. Her eyes were red and swollen, the black in her irises almost completely engulfing the white.

My mother had been rolling in her own garden in despair.

I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t breathe.

When she saw me, her eyes crinkled and she tried for a smile. “Hello Judah.”

I broke out of my short-lived paralysis and rushed towards her but she held up her hand. “It’s-It’s al right. I’m fine.”

“No you’re not. We need to go back to the house.” That’s when I noticed her phone in her hand. “Mom what’s wrong? Is it Aunt Becky? Is she still blaming you for what happened to dad?”

My mom sniffled. “No.”

“Then what is it?”

Almost in a delirious tone, she reached up with her hands and cupped my cheeks and said, “Oh my sweet Judah. You haven’t been this affectionate to me in a long time.”

My breath was almost knocked out once again, now from the fact that she was verbalising what I internally knew. I wanted to tell her how much I still loved her, how much I wanted to show her that I loved her but the words got stuck in my throat in a ball of stinging bitterness.

“Mom,” I swallowed. “We need to go back to the house. You’ll catch a cold here.”

“Robbers,” She suddenly whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“Robbers. They were spotted near your grandparent’s house. They-they-” her breath quickened and I realised she was starting to hyper-ventilate.

“Are they ok? Mom, breathe.” I began to rub her shoulders slowly.

“They’re fine,” she managed to put out, “but-but…”

I waited patiently. A long gap of silence ensued before my mom got a hold of herself. “Your grandpa says they didn’t realise they were also….they were also gra-gra…”

I waited, but now anxiety was taking a hold of me. It took everything in me to remain calm and also calm my mom down.

“What is it Mom? Its ok-“

“No it’s not ok! They were grave robbers too!”

You could have thrown a brick at me and that still would not have hit as hard as that statement.

“No. No. It can’t be.” I looked at my mom, realization slowly dawning on me.

I could barely register my mom’s nod. Fresh new tears began to mark another pathway down her cheeks.

“His body, Jude,” she whispered, “his body is gone.”