Then I suddenly recognized her. This amorphous 'she' was actually known to me. She will have no name in this story because I will respect her privacy. Only know that she was pale, frail, a wind-blown little wisp of a girl. Only know that she was skeletal and beautiful all at once with her mixed blood eyes and ethereal caramel pageboy framing a serious face. As soon as I recognized her, I experienced this nagging awareness of having been yanked out of dreamland and back into my everyday world, the world to which she belongs, and she, who gently pushed aside my dreamscape, was now the focal point of everything that lay before me. I had not seen her in about a month, and I worriedly approached her telling her that I had been meaning to tell her I was sorry--that I couldn't, wasn't allowed, to tell her that her final grade was in fact a 93 and not the 92 I had put on that special report card given to her weeks ago. Silly to worry about grades, really. My sub-conscious self squirmed uncomfortably to be telling such a nothing truth in this dream. But, in truth, her grades weren't 'nothing'; they were all tangible, measurable things of her worth and importance in life; they were all that she desired. Surprisingly, mercifully, she absolved me and without an ounce of her usual stoicism said, "It's okay Miss. I know. It's okay. I just wanted to say goodbye." We hugged, and hugged tightly as if the world would end--as if this short time would end. Her caretaker reappeared and wheeled her away. There were no more words said. She was gone, and I was thrust back into dreamland where I could not, of course, go back to dreaming. I forced myself awake, sat up in the shadows of my room, and cried.
As in most stories such as mine, the events that soon followed the dream were appropriately cliche--much like the calm before an impending tragic storm. Actually, the dream was far from my mind in the days that followed it, until I spotted her best friend at a mall--a mecca of Gucci/LV labels, glitzy, tourist-trashy. I ambled over to her and this friend said "Miss, she's doing much better. Much better. In fact, put her on the AP class list for registration." Good news I replied. Sure thing, I said, and my heart relaxed. I let out a sigh. Then I guess it was three or four days later, I saw another of her friends at another mall. Yes, another mall--the local strip mall, staid, austere and plain. Friend number two had apparently spotted me from outside the magazine shop where I was killing time, yelled my name, and rushed towards me. In an intense flurry of emotion, almost shamelessly, she yelled out my frail dream-girl's name and said the words I half expected but that still numbed me when I heard them, words I did not understand, really, for one very long second. This youngster looked at me impatiently as if to say, don't you get it yet? And when I finally got it, we hugged, and hugged tightly because a life had ended.
I went home and told my mother. Very young and very old girls need their mothers at strange junctures, if they are lucky to have one that nurtures even if only for moments at a time. And of course, my mother, with her old-world witchy sensibility, told me that my student had indeed 'visited' me those few days before she had died, and, in spite of the rational world and my western-schooled mind, of course my heart knows and believes something that most people would reject: that the dream had indeed been real. The reoccurence of shopping malls, young girls, hugs, urgent messages, death and its overwhelming shadow were no coincidence. She, who dreamed of becoming a writer someday, came and revealed herself to me in the language that I love and taught--the language of symoblic imagery; the language of metaphors she learned from Homer and Lao Tzu--to say goodbye and to remind me of the constant conflict/balance of life, of youth versus, and in unison with, death, a language that can't die even when we die.
posted by techa @ 4:05 PM
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