Chapter Two: A Mother’s Cry
Carol Calloway had not slept in six days.
She stood at the edge of the coffin with the particular stillness of someone who has gone so far past exhaustion that the body simply forgets how to move. Her husband, Thomas, stood beside her, one hand on her back, his face gray and hollowed out. Their son, Danny — Maya’s younger brother, nineteen years old — stood on the other side, staring at the floor, jaw tight, refusing to cry in the way that young men sometimes refuse, as though the tears might break something structural inside them.
Carol reached out and touched Maya’s hand. It was cold. She had known it would be cold, had prepared herself for it — and still, the coldness went through her like a blade.
“She looks like she’s sleeping,” someone behind her murmured. It was meant as a comfort. It wasn’t.
“She always slept like that,” Carol whispered. “On her back, hands folded. Since she was a baby. I used to go into her room at night just to watch her breathe.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Then it broke entirely.
“No.” The word came out quietly at first. Then louder. “No, no, no — ” She gripped the edge of the coffin with both hands. “I can’t do this. I cannot do this. Thomas — ” She turned to her husband with wild, desperate eyes. “I can’t leave her here. I can’t let them — “
“Carol — ” Thomas reached for her.
“Take me with her!” Her voice tore through the hall like a physical thing, silencing every murmur, stopping every breath. “I can’t live without her! Bury me next to her — just put me in the ground next to my girl, I don’t want to breathe this air anymore, I don’t want to — “
Thomas wrapped both arms around her. She collapsed against his chest, sobbing so hard her whole body shook. Danny finally looked up. His eyes were red. His chin trembled. He put his hand on his mother’s shoulder and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
People began to approach. Maya’s aunt pressed a handkerchief to her own eyes. A childhood friend, Joelle, buried her face in her boyfriend’s shoulder. Old Mr. Pendleton from next door, who had taught Maya to play chess when she was seven, simply removed his glasses and held them in his hands and looked at the floor.
The grief in that room was not the quiet, composed kind. It was the raw, animal kind — the kind that makes you understand, for the first time, why ancient people tore their clothes and poured ash on their heads. It was grief that wanted to do something and had nowhere to go.
Carol’s sobs softened, gradually, into a low and constant weeping. Thomas held her. The room breathed again, slowly.
And then Carol straightened.
